The Towers of Samarcand Read Online Free PDF Page A

loved them above all things and decided that his punishment would be to be removed from them. His father had given him Luke to train. He hadn’t said how.
    *
     
    Over the winter months, life in the camp was pared down to the necessities for survival. In the early days, when the sun still had some pale energy, the meat from animals was pegged out to dry and huge vats of ewes’ or mares’ milk boiled to extract butter and the rock-hard curds that would keep through the cold days and be turned into yogurt. Cured meat and milletmeal were stored inside the gers alongside piles of dried cow dung and sheep pellets for fuel.
    Afterwards Luke would remember it as a sort of hibernation where all activity was rationed, directed solely to the task of staying alive. He spent much of the time sitting with Arkal in the ger, where the light through the horn of the smoke hole disfigured all that it touched. At first, Arkal just stared at him. Then, by degrees, she began to talk to him. Then to teach him.
    First, she taught him the words to describe the pale cocoon of their existence.
Khana
was the wooden lattice, and she stretched her thin arm out to touch it, on to which the
isegei
, or felt, was attached; the poles in the ceiling above were
uni
and the smoke hole, which could be opened and closed by these pulley ropes, was the
toghona
.
    When the snow paused, they went outside and he learnt the words for the trees that bunched on the valley sides like teeth, for the freezing river below them and the snow all around. She limped over to the giant open sheds that stretched between poles, pulling his sleeve as they went. She told him about the sheep and cattle and goats that lived there. She pointed high, high into the sky, to describe the clouds and wind that moved them and the black birds that were flung about on its currents.
    By now he knew that the strange girl who’d sought shelter from the storm had survived. Her ger had been erected away from the others with the same horsehides and skulls surrounding it like hunched spectres. She never appeared but the old man did, usually to scavenge amongst the bones left outside doors or to gather water from the river. Luke wanted to know about them but Arkal scowled and tapped her head to say they were mad and dragged him away to show him other things.
    And so Luke learnt to speak their language, thankful forthe gift that Fiorenza had said was the most remarkable she’d seen. He learnt simple words at first and some names. The chief was called Etabul, his son Gomil. The mad man had no name but he was the shaman who would enter trances to connect the tribe to their ancestors and the old, old gods of the wind and steppe that they’d not quite forgotten in the onslaught of Islam. The girl was called Shulen and might be his daughter and was a witch. It was said that she had the art of healing although few dared approach her for she was unclean and evil spirits walked at her side.
    Arkal told him that Gomil was the best archer and bowman in the tribe but that he was a proud and violent man. He’d gone with Yakub to fight for Bayezid at Nicopolis where the tribe had lost many men. He’d returned from the battle full of hate for the infidel West, repeating again and again Bayezid’s threat to water his horses at the altar of St Peter’s in Rome. But his father had shaken his head and talked of Tamerlane and now this infidel, Lug, was living among them. She told him that Gomil hated him entirely.
    Arkal became his friend, shy at first then firmer than granite. Luke told her about himself, how he was a Varangian and how Varangians had once been numbered in their thousands, an imperial guard to an emperor that ruled in Europe and Asia. Now they were few and there was little of the Empire left to rule. He didn’t tell her of the treasure but then what was there to tell? Only Plethon and Anna knew where it was. What it was.
    As the weeks dragged on and the air turned colder and great drifts of snow