The soldiers severed the ropes. The coiled irons sprang loose. A hail erupted. Flaming orbs filled the mountains. A torrent of rocks charged into the valley. Horses of the enemies reared. Scorched bodies fell; barebacked animals bolted. The valley suffocated under noxious fumes.

Although the center column and the best warriors of Teymour the Lame had been weakened in the first round of attack, with the aid of the Arabs and Mongols he assembled his soldiers for another charge.

Teymour the Lame led the middle column. He wheeled around to outflank the enemy’s left. The Shah rushed to send his soldiers to prevent the assault. Luring more of the Persians to the left, Teymour the Lame began thinning out their center. Then he called up the reserves and with himself at the head, cried out a curdling war yell and came thundering for the Shah.

The Shah faced the man who never smiled. A man with the face of shadows, prominent cheekbones, and hooded brows. A wide nose and flaring nostrils. Slanted eyes shiny as black marbles. A mouth pressed to a blade, framed by a thin mustache that hung down to his chin. In his dark eyes, which could cut through the heart of the boldest warrior, the Shah saw towers built with skulls of his people.

The Tartar did not face a feeble king. The Shah, poised on a most regal stallion, had the testament of war and death etched on his strong features. Teymour the Lame had committed a grave mistake. He had trusted his spies, who had drawn a languid Shah in love with roses, a man who, like women, turned his eyes away from executions, a man who had spent most of his youth in the debilitating confines of the Cage. Now the Tartar was forced to fight a formidable enemy, whose manner of fighting was a mystery, in face-to-face combat on unfamiliar terrain.

The Shah glared back at the warrior, at his right leg held in a stirrup shorter than the left, and the sword in the left hand. Although still a superb bowman, having lost two fingers from his right hand, the Tartar must not be the splendid swordsman he had once been. The Shah stirred his horse toward the Tartar’s disadvantaged side. Drawing his sword, the Shah slashed his horse’s rump and bolted to meet the leader. They locked in a ferocious fight, muscles strained, blades clashed, inhuman roars testament to iron wills.

Shrill screams burst against the mountains and reverberated inside the valley. A burst of Persian toxic arrowheads, with pierced holes that whistled and shrieked to scare the enemy, surrounded the Shah and Teymour the Lame. The Shah was prepared; so was his bow bearer. They held tight to their reins. Teymour the Lame’s horse bolted. The Tartar lost his stirrups. He struggled to curb the animal. With acrobatic suppleness, he dodged the blade of the Shah and the Persian arrowheads. During another avalanche of stones from the Machine, the Tartar backed off down the valley to ready himself for another assault.