Time’s Eye

There was a great deal to be put in place, and little time to do it; the meeting broke up.

***

Bisesa drew Abdikadir and Casey to one side. “You really think this battle is inevitable?”

“Yeah,” Casey growled. “Alternatives to war—nonviolent means of resolving disputes—depend on the willingness of everybody concerned to back down. Back in the Iron Age, these guys haven’t had the benefit of our experience of two thousand years of bloodshed, give or take a few Hiroshimas and Lahores, to learn that it is sometimes necessary to back down. For them, war is the only way.”

Bisesa studied him. “That’s surprisingly thoughtful for you, Casey.”

“Shucks,” he said. But he quickly relapsed into his jock act; he cackled and rubbed his hands. “But it’s fun too. You know, we’ve got ourselves in a crock of shit here. But, think about it—Alexander the Great versus Genghis Khan! I wonder what they’d charge on pay-per-view for that .”

Bisesa knew what he meant. She had trained as a soldier too; mixed in with her dread, and her wish that none of this was happening—that she could just go home—was anticipation.

They walked out of the throne room, talking, speculating and planning.

33. A Prince of Heaven

After a day and night alone in the dark, Kolya was taken to Yeh-lü. His arms pinned behind his back by horsehair rope, he was thrown to the ground.

He had no desire to face torture, and he talked fast, telling Yeh-lü what he had done, as much as he could remember. At the end of it Yeh-lü walked out of the yurt.

Sable’s face loomed over him. “You shouldn’t have done it, Kol. The Mongols know the power of information. You saw that for yourself at Bishkek. You could hardly have committed a worse crime if you’d taken a swipe at Genghis himself.”

He whispered, “Can I have some water?” He’d had nothing since being discovered.

She ignored his request. “You know there’s only going to be one verdict. I tried to plead your case. I said you were a prince, a prince of Heaven. They’ll be lenient. They don’t spill royal blood—”

He found the phlegm to spit in her face. The last time he saw her, she was laughing down at him.

***

They took him outside, hands still behind his back. Four burly soldiers held him down at his shoulders, his legs. Then an officer emerged from a yurt, his hands heavily gloved, carrying a ceramic cup. The cup turned out to contain molten silver. They poured it into one eye, then the other, and then one ear, and the other.

After that he could feel them pick him up, carry him, throw him into a hole lined with soft, fresh dug earth. He could not hear the hammering as they nailed down the floorboards over his head, nor could he hear his own screams.

34. “Dwellers All in Time and Space”

Alexander threw his army into a strict regimen of training. Most of this followed traditional Macedonian methods, involving a lot of forced marching, running under weights, and hand-to-hand combat.

But there were attempts to integrate the British troops into the Macedonian force. After a few trials it was clear that no British rider or sowar was good enough to ride with Alexander’s cavalry, but the Tommies and sepoys were accepted into the heart of the Macedonian infantry, the Foot Companions. Given the language and culture clashes a unified chain of command was hardly possible, but the Tommies were trained to understand the Macedonian trumpeters’ key signals.

Abdikadir’s work with the cavalry made fast strides, even though, as Eumenes had predicted, the first attempts to have the Macedonians ride with Abdikadir’s prototype stirrups were farcical. The Companion cavalry, the army’s senior regiment, was recruited from the youth of Macedonian nobles; Alexander sported a version of their uniform himself. And when they were first offered stirrups the proud Companions just sliced off the dangling leather attachments with their scimitars.

It took a brave sowar to climb onto one of the Macedonians’ stocky horses and, inexpertly but effectively, show how tightly he was able to control even an unfamiliar horse. After that, and with some heavy pressure relayed from the King, the training began in earnest.

Even without stirrups, though, the Macedonians’ horsemanship was astonishing. The rider steadied himself by holding onto the horse’s mane, and steered his horse purely by the pressure of his knees. Even so, the Companions were able to skirmish and wheel sharply, a flexibility and agility that had made them the hardened cutting edge of Alexander’s forces. Now, with stirrups, their maneuverability was vastly improved, and a Companion could brace his legs against impact and support a heavy lance.

“They’re just remarkable,” Abdikadir said as he watched wedges of a hundred men wheel and dart as one across the fields of Babylon. “I almost regret giving them stirrups; a couple of generations and this kind of horsemanship will be forgotten.”