The City of Silk and Steel Read online

  Masood gave a despairing sigh. He liked Zahir well enough most of the time: he was a good worker, quiet, and asked few questions. Today, though, he was being completely impossible. ‘Really,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you’ve never had trouble understanding your job before. I hope you’re not being deliberately insolent.’ Still muttering, he turned back to his post.

  Zeinab’s cudgel hit him squarely in the back of the head. Glancing around to make sure that none of the guards on the other tower had seen, she knelt to tie his hands with a small sigh of relief. Knocking him out now had been a risk, one that could have endangered the success of everything they had worked for. But she had spent many months in Masood’s company, and if he was obtuse and ineffectual, he was also polite and good-natured. When the storm hit, she wanted him out of harm’s way.

  Even had he been prone by nature to surprise, Captain Ashraf would not have been unduly alarmed by his urgent summons. Since its capture, Bessa’s purification in the cleansing fires of the One Truth had been an ongoing process, unceasing by night as by day, and he had been called upon to perform his duties at far stranger times. He was with his men in their quarters, the former women’s chambers, when the messenger reached him, so he arrived in the throne room minutes later. Hakkim began talking before the man had even straightened up from his low bow of obeisance. Ashraf’s face darkened as he heard the report, but Hakkim had chosen his captain well, and he made no comments as he listened other than to enquire as to the Holy One’s pleasure.

  ‘How soon can your men be made ready?’ Hakkim asked him.

  ‘Immediately, Majesty. There are already archers patrolling the city walls, and I can have both infantry and cavalry regiments assemble on your order.’

  Hakkim considered this for a bare second before he gave his orders. The time which elapsed between the sultan’s deliberation and his command was not sufficient for a handshake, or the drawing of a sword from its scabbard. The entire force of the city of Bessa was nocked as to a bow, its trajectory decided in a bare moment. Armies fall and leaders are toppled from the honed edges of such moments. When he had assured the Holy One that his will would be executed, in this as in all things, Ashraf bowed again and departed.

  In an alleyway beside the Eastern Gate, Rem’s eyes widened. ‘I have to talk to Zuleika,’ she said abruptly, cutting through the whispered conversations of the women around her. Umayma glanced at her in puzzlement. ‘So? You don’t have long to wait. She’s due here for the second phase,’ she replied.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. We’ve made a mistake; she needs to know.’ Rem started to leave without waiting for a reply. Umayma dashed after her, grabbing her arm as she reached the mouth of the alley.

  ‘Rem, you can’t,’ she hissed. ‘The soldiers will be leaving any minute now. You’re needed here. Whatever this is, it can wait.’

  Rem almost screamed with frustration. ‘No, it can’t. I have to talk to her now, Umi!’

  The urgency in her tone must have alarmed Umayma, for her grip slackened and she opened her mouth as if to enquire further. Rem immediately darted from her grasp and took off round the corner, calling back as she went, ‘I’ll take a different route to the soldiers. They won’t see me, I promise! I’ll be back in plenty of time for the second phase!’

  Umayma made as if to run after her, but stopped at the top of the street, torn between conflicting impulses. It would not be long now before the army marched out of the city. She could not abandon her post. Rem’s footfalls died away as she hesitated, and she turned back to the other women, throwing up her hands in frustration.

  ‘Do you think she saw something?’ Bethi asked her as she returned to the bottom of the alley. ‘I mean – you know. Saw it?’

  ‘She’d better have,’ Umayma growled. ‘For anything less, she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do when she gets back.’

  Taliyah pounded up the Street of Silversmiths, her breath sounding loud in her ears. She had been loitering outside the Northern Gate all morning, sweltering under her heavy robes as she watched for the little scrap of red cloth which was her signal.

  When she saw it fall, she started off, along with the four other runners who had been assigned to carry the message to the other gatehouses. Nasreen was going to the Eastern Gate, Thana to the old Merchants’ Gate and Reema to the Western Gate. Taliyah herself was bound for the Water Gate, the furthest away from their starting point, so she ran especially fast, fighting the urge to throw off her thick veil and feel the welcome coolness of a breeze on her face. Before the first of Hakkim’s army had cleared the palace compound, she had reached the southern watchtowers, where Nafisah was waiting for her.

  ‘The army has been sighted,’ Taliyah panted as she slowed.

  Nafisah nodded, then motioned with her arm. From the alley to her right a crowd of veiled women emerged. She turned to them. ‘We’ve had the signal,’ she announced. ‘We’ll wait another few minutes, to give them time to clear the gates. Then we move.’

  Zeinab emerged from the door at the bottom of the guard tower and walked toward the nearest group of women. The tallest of them raised her head at her approach. ‘They’re coming?’ she asked softly.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Zeinab confirmed in the same undertone. ‘Heading towards us as we speak.’ Her words were taken up and repeated in whispers among the crowd.

  ‘Then it’s time,’ Zuleika replied. ‘Once they’re outside the gate, they will stay close to the city walls and wait for the army’s approach.’ Al-Bokhari had always done the same thing in his youth, whenever one of his quarrels brought an army to Bessa’s walls.

  ‘I’ve taken care of the other guard on my tower,’ Zeinab continued. ‘You’ll have to deal with the rest of them though.’ Zuleika acknowledged this with a curt nod. Not long after that, they heard the rhythmic tramp of boots on stone, and not long after that, the first row of soldiers appeared at the top of the wide street.

  The soldiers marched by in grim silence. A long column of infantry marched behind a much shorter one of cavalry, who rode slowly so as to keep pace with the foot soldiers.

  Captain Ashraf rode at their head, passing the veiled faces which lined the road without so much as a glance. If he thought of them at all, it was as citizens who had turned out onto the streets to see the soldiers march by. The crowd drew respectfully to the sides at the army’s approach, as befitted those in the presence of the royal guard. Many of the men wore the blue garb and leather breastplates of the city guard, but others were swathed in the black robes and headscarves of Hakkim’s personal force. Regardless of their dress, all had their eyes fixed before them on the Northern Gate, which swept outward in the grandiose gesture of a ringmaster to the desert beyond.

  If any of the soldiers had broken military protocol to glance to right or left, they might have noticed how the women surged in behind them as they passed, following them up the street. Even if they had, they would not have found anything disquieting in the sight. The guard was tasked with the defence of the city; most of them did not find it hard to believe that a crowd of grateful people might congregate to wish them well as they marched out to perform their duty. Perhaps the silence of the crowd was slightly unnerving, but then this was easily put down to fears for the safety of sons and brothers who marched in the force. The keenest mind in Ashraf’s troop had all these assumptions ready to hand should he chance to look at the women in their inscrutable veils, and it so fell out that most did not look at them in any case.

  Distances can be deceptive in the desert. From a couple of leagues away, a group of old women and children raking oversized combs through the sand can look a hell of a lot like an approaching army. The legions of Hakkim Mehdad marched out to face an enemy, strong in numbers, stout of heart, and armed to the teeth. They did not know that their foe was behind them, and as the last soldier passed out of Bessa, the first of the concubines were already breaking on the great wooden gates of that city like a tide.

  The walls of Bessa we
re thick, so that each of the city’s six gates was in reality twofold in nature, an inner and an outer gate separated by a barracks yard and flanked on either side by a tall watchtower like a sentry. First, the women pulled the outer gate closed, its great weight yielding easily to the force of many hands. While Zeinab and five other women hefted the great iron bar across it, the other members of the seraglio fell back to close the inner gate behind them. Those who carried baskets threw their coverings off as they went, producing daggers, cutlasses, bows and slingshots. Others shed voluminous shawls to reveal swords hanging at their waists, or sheaves of arrows on their backs.

  The second bolt fell into place with a dull thud. The women were in the dim barracks yard, enclosed on all sides by the two sets of gates and the towering bulk of the watchtowers.

  Their towers had been assigned to them before they arrived, so there was no confusion as the group split into two, Zuleika leading one half towards the door at the base of the right watchtower, while Zeinab took the rest towards the one on the left. The thin wooden doors gave easily, and the women poured inside. The ground floor was empty, the guards normally posted there having been drafted into the outgoing force. Followed by the rest of the women, Zuleika took the tightly spiralling staircase at a run, holding her sword before her. They met the first guard a few turns up. He was running too, so fast in fact that he had impaled himself on Zuleika’s blade before he even registered the woman’s presence. Najla gave an involuntary gasp of horror at the confusion and pain on the dying man’s face, but Zuleika pushed him over the side of the staircase without breaking her stride.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the top of the watchtower, and they met no one else. The remaining watchman on duty, who had been gazing vacantly at the departing troops, turned around when he heard the noise of feet on the stairway to see a crowd of women pouring into the guard post. He began to rise from his chair, reaching for his sword as he saw that they were armed. Then he realised several things at once.

  Firstly, the scabbard at his belt was empty. Secondly, though he had intended to reach for the weapon that usually hung there, his arm had not in fact moved. His gaze flicked sideways. A woman, tall and terrifying, was standing over him, gripping his wrist with one of her hands. In her other hand she held a sword. He looked down, following the length of the blade. Its point had disappeared into his chest. He opened his mouth, raising the index finger of his free hand as if he desired to speak. Then he sank back into his seat with a broken sigh.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Jumanah’s voice cracked as she spoke and her eyes filling with tears. Zuleika only shrugged and turned her attention to the walls beneath the tower. The rest of the concubines poured into the guard post and took up defensive positions around its sides.

  Similar scenes were repeated at each of Bessa’s watchtowers, though the details differed according to the temperaments of the fighters assigned to them.

  On the left watchtower of the Eastern Gate, Umayma led the charge to the top with her hunting spear. She took out the two watchmen on duty there with a single throw, skewering both men through the chest. This feat both amazed and horrified those behind her. The right watchtower was laid to the charge of Bethi and Anwar Das, who achieved a more modest body count. The guards at the top of their tower were confronted not by a crowd of women and men with swords but a single, ragged-looking man. His eyes glinted with madness, and he held a young woman before him, a knife to her throat. ‘Don’t move,’ he snarled, ‘or I’ll bleed her out!’ The watchmen hesitated a moment, hands wavering just above the hilts of their swords, but the woman wept so piteously, and her eyes were so wide with horror, that they could do nothing but submit to having their hands tied. They perhaps regretted this decision when she grinned impishly, danced out of her captor’s grip, and retrieved the swords of both men from their scabbards.

  As the other members of the seraglio spilled out into the guard post around them, Anwar Das complimented Bethi once again on her skills of deception. ‘That?’ she said dismissively. ‘It would have been subtler if I’d just stabbed them.’ She turned, flashing him a broad grin. ‘I think we both know I’ve done better, Anwar, as have you.’

  On the plain below the city walls, Captain Ashraf surveyed his men with austere satisfaction. It never occurred to him to make them a rousing speech; they were a strong force, well arranged in columns straight as a ruled line, and thus ready for battle in all practical senses of the term. The concept of morale was an alien one to the Ascetics, who were doctrinally obliged to regard discontentment with material circumstances exactly as they regarded success, as one more illusion to withstand and ignore. Once satisfied, such worldly appetites only increased in their rapacity. So Ashraf viewed any fear or apprehension in his men rather as he would the sulkiness of a small child, as emotions which would disperse naturally if their demands were ignored.

  The shutting of the city gates had not startled him; far from it. It was natural that the sultan would give orders for the city to be made secure with a battle imminent.

  Had Al-Bokhari still been sultan, he would have waited for the oncoming army to come to him, keeping his troops with the city at their backs, supported by archers from the walls. This was the traditional tactic employed by the desert cities when they came under attack, long held to for the simple reason that it generally worked, and there was no point in fixing a cart that still had four functioning wheels. From the outside, Bessa was almost impregnable, a vast fortress of stone and wood reinforced with steel. Thousands could throw themselves against its walls, and it would stand firm. The women had factored this into their strategy when they planned their attack on the city.

  What they had never paused to consider was that the man at its head was the son of a shoemaker. Hakkim Mehdad had had no training in the old military traditions, and he had no especial sympathy for them. Indeed, in that knife’s edge of time when he had paused to consider his course, the thought that he might order the troops to hug the city walls had occurred to him. But it was only one possibility in a sea of possibilities, unweighted by the old usage and familiarity that had always endeared it to the likes of Al-Bokhari, for whom the right decision had usually been whatever his father had decided before him. Hakkim, free from such legacies of military tradition, entertained the idea, and then dismissed it, choosing in the end a plan more suited to his general philosophy of nipping things in the bud.

  Ashraf did not waste words as a rule. His army did not get a speech, but a word, barked out with terse precision. ‘Advance!’

  Within minutes of the army passing out of the gates, the seraglio had taken the city walls. The watchtowers stood a full six feet above the battlements, so that the women had the advantage over the archers who patrolled below. They worked swiftly and methodically, one group sweeping the battlements, stripping the archers of their weapons and tying their hands, while another covered them from the nearest watchtower. Most of the guards were too intelligent to resist, making the process doubly quick. Zuleika was standing on the left guard post of the Northern Gate, covering the group of women currently securing the walls, when she felt a tug on her arm. It was Rem, panting and red-faced.

  ‘Rem? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to—’

  Rem cut her off. ‘They’re marching away. Hakkim gave the order to advance on the enemy. I left as soon as it became clear to my sight, but it took so long to get to you!’

  Zuleika’s head whipped round to face the plains, properly examining the view for the first time. The army was already several hundred yards beyond the city walls, and moving fast. She went still, her limbs and even her gaze freezing in place as if all the energy required to move them had been drained and channelled into her mind. Other women began to congregate at the edge of the guard post, alerted by Rem’s presence to the fact that something was wrong. They stared at the departing troops in horror.

  Maysoon started to shake. She rounded on Zuleika. ‘You said they’d stay here!’ she yelled.
‘You said they’d stay by the walls. My little girl is out there, Zuleika!’

  Zuleika did not appear to hear her. After what seemed an endless time, she turned and cast around the guard post until she saw the ivory bugle hanging from a hook by the stairway. She seized it, ran to the edge of the wall and blew, a flurry of harsh, urgent blasts. The riders at the head of the army slowed, halted, appeared to look back.

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ Rem said. ‘They’re too far away to see that the walls have been taken. It will give them pause, but it won’t stop them.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Zeinab asked. In answer, Zuleika strung her bow and let fly an arrow towards the departing army. A figure in black crumpled to the ground. ‘Open fire,’ she commanded calmly. Zeinab was momentarily appalled. ‘But they have their backs to us!’

  ‘Because they’re heading towards your children. Open fire.’

  The women had been well trained, and dozens of men fell as the first wave of arrows rained down. Beneath them, the mass of soldiers writhed in sudden panic, casting around for an enemy they could not see. Every fallen man seemed to send a ripple through the troops nearest to him, distorting their strict formation and slowing the pace of the march. Some even ran back towards the city. But most of those hit were at the back of the column, and even as the soldiers nearest Bessa shouted out and turned, the front of the army pressed on, passing out of the range of the women’s arrows without even knowing that they had come under attack.

  The men who had turned back shifted their weapons from hand to hand, milling uncertainly before the city gates. Eventually, they would probably think to send a messenger to the vanguard to inform captain Ashraf of this development, but they were only foot soldiers, unused to taking control and faced with a situation that none of them had foreseen. Meanwhile the rest of the army marched on, already beginning to dwindle into the middle distance. Soon they would become a dust cloud on the horizon themselves, and soon after that, the two dust clouds would merge, and the plain would ring with distant screams.