“Khanom,” the eunuch said. “Do as you choose. You don’t need advice from a half-man. Now I must rush to make sure your horse is readied and the saddle properly fastened.”

Narcissus had ordered the saddle himself. The seat was sturdy, sewed together in double stitches and with the thickest horsehair, the reins of the strongest hide and decorated with gems. The girth was made of calfskin, the most inferior leather.

It would not hold a cat’s weight, let alone the sultana’s.

31

On the fourteenth of the month of Farvardin, followed by the last trace of the winter winds, the Persian army embarked on an arduous march toward the outskirts of the northern mountains. The Shah had prepared well. It was an organized force, and its like had never been seen in Persia or anywhere else. Philosophers, historians, geographers, and scientific men, such as botanists, were among the royal retinue. A most revered man, Davoud the Red-Haired, a renowned scholar, was among the civilians invited to join the troops. He kept a daily journal, secured information about routes and camping grounds, and recorded distances traversed. Following the soldiers came a train of sappers and miners skilled in the construction of siege towers and rams on wheels, invented by a Jew who had been forbidden to join the army.

Behind the final cavalry rumbled engines set up on giant wheels and clad with hide, each with a row of catapults, massive open-jawed bows. Farther around the bends stretched hundreds of mules, carrying equipment for combat. Camels heavy with tents and food supplies followed.

A company of royal pages, the finest marksmen in the army, stood guard over the tents where the Shah and Gold Dust would sleep.

The Shah had sent the archers ahead to hold the enemy at bay if they changed plans and moved around the mountains in hope of trapping the Persians from behind.

Taking precautions to use stony tracks so the dust of their march would not alert the enemy, the army started up the mountains.

The left flank was held by Arsalan the Magnificent, a general who had defeated none other than the White Div, a giant whose scaly hide resisted the strongest impacts and whose only vulnerable spot was his navel. General Afrasiab, whose bellowing war cry had once, with one inhuman outburst, deafened the ears of a whole army of Macedonians, commanded the right flank. His sharp gaze could pierce through the surface of objects and uncover the truth beneath.

The side columns were two kilometers apart and much heavier than the center, which was intentionally thin and only a few ranks deep in order to deceive the opponent into attacking the center phalanx, after which the flanks would crush the enemy in a pinching motion.

The rear phalanx was commanded by General Darius, the war minister, a silver-haired, melancholy man known not for his strength but for his gentle ways and great wisdom and lack of desire to appear heroic. He was the oldest officer in the army and indispensable.