The Syrian - by Karl Bane
The year is AD 713. Constantinople, pre-eminent metropolis of Asia Minor and capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire, is imploding following a century of internal strife; priests, princes and politicians vie and scheme for supremacy. Theodosius, the cowardly, dissolute and unwilling Emperor, cannot keep order.
In the South-East, the mighty Umayyad Caliphate is stirring. Vast forests are felled for timber. Lance points are sharpened on the anvil. Shipyards ring out with noise, day and night, constructing a war fleet larger than any in history. Bloodthirsty Prince Maslama, son of a beautiful slave girl, and half-brother of the sickly Supreme Caliph Sulayman bin Abd al-Malik, is raising the greatest army on Earth.
To seize Constantinople, the richest city in all Asia, and the gateway to Europe, is his all-consuming ambition. To put its heathen population to the sword and to burn its magnificent churches. When he is crowned Patriarch in the throne room of Hagia Sophia, he will turn his victorious armies South-East again. He will take Damascus, his birth right, and put to death Sulayman, ruling as Caliph in his place. Thence to the Steppes and to Persia. His thirst for power, for blood and treasure, is insatiable. There is no greater warrior alive than he.
Twenty-five years earlier, in the Syrian province of Commogene, was born a son of peasants. His obscure and inauspicious nativity belied a most incredible future; averting the tides of history and changing the known world.
Though neither knew it, their destinies were intertwined: Prince Maslama, "Scourge of the Infidel", and the son of peasants, a man known simply as "The Syrian".
Foothills of the Taurus mountain range
Dust collected on the boy's forehead, forming a sweaty, faintly irritating paste which caked his eyebrows and dripped from his cheeks onto his goatskin, itself almost yellow with dirty from the road. Following behind him unbidden, laden with wicker panniers, and the gutted remains of two goats, was the boy's horse, Karakus, a name meaning 'black hawk' in the local tongue.
Behind Karakus, processing in single file and lashed together at the neck by a succession of leather straps, was a goatherd, two dozen head. A bleating kid, too weak for the march, was hogtied around the boy's neck. Its noises had become far less insistent as each new hour passed.
The sun, though still huge and fierce in the sky, had relented somewhat from its earlier cruelty. The boy guessed they were barely three hours from sunset, and the easing gradient gave him hope that he might reach home by nightfall. Home, where he could rest his weary feet, and numb his dry, dusty palate with cool water fresh from the well, and thick, syrupy wine from the skins. Home, where his mother was waiting, gazing south toward the hills.
A further hour, and the sun had passed behind a growing wall of thick grey clouds. It was a welcome relief, but an ill omen all the same. Below them and to the right, some quarter-mile away, the boy spied a gully, snaking its way through a body of pale red earth. At the apex of the gully on either side, where it plateaued, were dozens and dozens of thorn bushes in flower. He wondered, the boy, whether he could find shelter in the gully; wait for the storm to pass, or even take shelter from the worst of it and continue along his way. He could see the gully stretched for miles, wavering here and there, but with a northerly tendency.
The boy changed direction accordingly, and half an hour later was at the lip of the gully, gazing down. It was shallower than expected, which would make it easier to descend. He plotted the route in his mind, with consideration to Karakus's weariness. He was sure-footed enough, but they had been on the march since dawn, almost without rest.
Curiously, it was not Karakus but a goat which lost its footing, a weighty buck with great black horns like an oryx. Scree gave way beneath its hooves and the all of a sudden the creature was airborne, bleating fearfully. It fell only ten or so feet, but of course it was tied by the neck to the others, which proceeded - front and back - to stumble, pulled sideways by the bulk of the male. The boy grabbed the nearest goat by its front legs and held it steady; its hind legs jerked back a moment later and almost dragged him over the side. But it was too late for the others, and within seconds half the herd was lying on the gully floor, writhing and bleating.
The boy cursed. On his father's instructions he had travelled to meet and had purchased this herd from a second cousin who lived in a village south of the Taurus hills, so obscure it had no name. It was claimed that the milk of these goats was sweeter than honey; that their pelts were especially fine. The claims were evidently exaggerated, but the boy had come so far and he could not return empty-handed. Now, in addition to the two whose carcases were bound to Karakus's saddle, a further two were dead and three or four lamed. Wasted gold.
As lightning flashed on the horizon, and a few moments after that a rolling thunder, the boy got to work. With a heavy rock he stunned two of the lame goats, and killed the other two outright. He rolled a dead one onto its back, drew his knife and made a very careful incision a little above its anus, a cubit or so in length and parallel to the direction of the goat's spine. The thin, translucent skin enfolding the creature's innards was exposed, and thick, dark blood gushed out. The boy reached inside the wound until he had a handful of guts, and he wrenched them loose, casting them on the dusty floor of the gully - a windfall for any fox nearby.
Thirty minutes later and he was finished. Six more gutted carcases were bound to Karakus's saddle. The horse was now overburdened, and it whinnied plaintively.
"Easy, my brother," murmured the boy, stroking his horse's muzzle. "It is our lot to suffer. The journey which remains is not far, and we have shelter from the storm, which will at least quench our thirst."
Madīnat al-Yāsmīn (City of Jasmine, Damascus)
The decrepit judges of the ulamā, The Learned Ones, muttered darkly at their bench, which was set on a dais accessible by a staircase, elevating them several feet above the courtroom, which was packed with observers - bearded scribes; servants; court gossips; lackeys of the sultan; guardsmen wielded enormous lances, far too long to have been of any defensive use in that place. There was a low level chatter whilst the judges conferred ahead of their pronouncing the verdict. Cool air drifted in through a single vent in the wall behind the judges' bench, such that they, the judges, could remain comfortable and focused on the task at hand.
Before them, imprisoned in an ornate - albeit sturdy - iron cage, was a young and beautiful woman of about twenty-five years. She was dressed exquisitely, in a voluminous black dress covered every inch with gold thread arabesques. Its hem was rich beige fur. Draped over her hair and shoulders was a kind of veil, dyed red and abounding with sequins each the size of a gold dinar. The veil was fastened over her pale, unconcealed breast with a silver clasp. On that clasp was the embossed symbol of a rearing stallion. On its obverse, invisible to the court, was engraved a talisman - seven concentric circles, each containing writing in a peculiar, foreign alphabet.
She was called Maysum, born Avar and once a servant girl in the train of a Bulgar general. She was taken amongst other spoils of war at Sebastopolis, and presented to the then Supreme Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who found use for her in his harem.
Once she had enjoyed the Caliph's favour, and she bore him a handsome, healthy son, at that point in time his first. But the Caliph grew tired of this pallid foreign girl - beauty though she was - with her stilted Arabic and her ill-concealed disdain for the court's imams, who pressed her to convert and renounce her pagan gods. She spent her days alone in the palace gardens, wandering aimlessly from fountain to fountain, peering at the strange plants and curious birds flitting overhead, speaking to no-one and mourning her family and her homeland in silence.
One day, she came into the path of an exorcist; a black-skinned itinerant who had won some degree of fame and wealth in the land for his powers over the jinn which possess men from time to time. He had been invited to the court by a prince whose son suffered intense and regular fits. There is much to be said of this stranger, whose own tales are dark and seductive, but for now suffice it to say that Maysum was drawn under his spell.
It was that association - whatever it amounted to in reality - which led Maysum to where she stood now, in the gilded cage.
Presently, the eldest on the judge's bench, a turbaned creature so old it was a marvel he still drew breath, did precisely that, and then spoke in a thin, raspy voice:
"We find the testimony of these witnesses to be sufficient," he said, indicating with a bony finger the three individuals standing immediately to the left of the bench who had testified against Maysum in the course of the trial. "You are guilty of practising witchcraft. The punishment is death by beheading."
Maysum promptly fainted, as the court erupted in cheers and jeers. The judges, including he who had spoken, nodded with satisfaction. Only one in the courtroom, a gangling adolescent hiding his face beneath the cloak of a Bedouin, was not smiling. Clasping the robe against his chin, he forced his way through the crowd, out into the courtyard, and thence to the refuge and silence of the palace.