The Paper Maker: Historical Novel E-Book

Alfred Bekker

• Herausgeber: Alfredbooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 474

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Alfred Bekker and Silke Bekker The size of this book corresponds to 444 paperback pages. A passionate love story between two worlds. Around 1000 AD in western China: a group of papermakers are abducted by Uyghurs and taken to the west. Among them are Master Wang and his beautiful daughter Li. In Samarkand, Li meets the Saxon knight Arnulf von Ellingen, who is immediately fascinated by the paper maker. A passionate love develops between the two. But when Arnulf falls victim to an intrigue, they both have to flee, and an adventurous journey via Venice to Magdeburg begins .. .

Leseprobe

Alfred Bekker, Silke Bekker

The Paper Maker: Historical Novel

UUID: 0955680c-6fde-4b32-ab1a-8a7636c99d64

Dieses eBook wurde mit StreetLib Write (https://writeapp.io) erstellt.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

The Paper Maker: Historical Novel

Copyright

Prologue

First chapter: The material that carries the thoughts

Chapter two: Captured and abducted

Chapter three: Arnulf of Ellingen

Chapter four: Steppe wind

Chapter five: On the way to the city of books

Chapter Six: At the Emperor's Court

Chapter seven: The Prince of Samarkand

Chapter Eight: A knight from Saxland

Chapter nine: A warning

Chapter ten: Ride into the Iron Mountains

Chapter eleven: A long way to the west

Chapter Twelve: After Baghdad

Chapter thirteen: The Holy City

Chapter fourteen: New paths

Fifteenth chapter: Constantinople

Sixteenth chapter: Li

Chapter seventeen: Besieged

Eighteenth chapter: duel

Chapter nineteen: Confessions and twists

Chapter Twenty: Betrayal and intrigue

Chapter twenty-first: Papers

Chapter twenty-two: Venice

Chapter twenty-three: A new beginning

Chapter twenty-four: A cold time

Chapter twenty-five: To Magdeburg

Epilogue

The Paper Maker: Historical Novel

Alfred Bekker and Silke Bekker

The size of this book corresponds to 444 paperback pages.

A passionate love story between two worlds.

Around 1000 AD in western China: a group of papermakers are abducted by Uyghurs and taken to the west. Among them are Master Wang and his beautiful daughter Li. In Samarkand, Li meets the Saxon knight Arnulf von Ellingen, who is immediately fascinated by the paper maker. A passionate love develops between the two. But when Arnulf falls victim to an intrigue, they both have to flee, and an adventurous journey via Venice to Magdeburg begins ...

Copyright

A CassiopeiaPress book: CASSIOPEIAPRESS, UKSAK E-Books, Alfred Bekker, Alfred Bekker presents, Casssiopeia-XXX-press, Alfredbooks, Uksak Special Edition, Cassiopeiapress Extra Edition, Cassiopeiapress/AlfredBooks and BEKKERpublishing are imprints of

Alfred Bekker

© Roman by Author

© this issue 2024 by AlfredBekker/CassiopeiaPress, Lengerich/Westphalia

The fictional characters have nothing to do with actual living persons. Similarities in names are coincidental and not intentional.

All rights reserved.

www.AlfredBekker.de

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Everything to do with fiction!

Prologue

Everything can be moved by not acting.

Lao-she

First chapter: The material that carries the thoughts

With a quick, nervous gesture, Li brushed the single strand of blue-black hair that had escaped from her hairstyle out of her face. The young woman kept her eyes lowered and appeared completely calm on the outside. But inside she was extremely tense. It doesn't help if the farmer tries to speed up the rain clouds so that he has enough water to grow rice, she recalled a piece of wisdom from one of the books stitched together from the finest tissue paper, the pages of which had been inscribed with the words of venerable sages by skilled calligraphers. Sometimes there were small drawings illustrating these sayings. Pictures that often consisted of just a few strokes and at first glance looked as if they had been casually drawn. But a second glance always revealed the extraordinary skill of the makers of such books.

No wonder that such writings sometimes cost a fortune if you were not on friendly or family terms with someone who had mastered this art.

Li tried to let her breathing become calm and steady in order to better control her inner restlessness.

The gaze of her dark almond eyes, which lay exactly in the middle of a finely cut, even face, was directed at a serious-looking man whose hair, braided into a plait, was already streaked with gray. This man was her father. His name was Wang and he was considered one of the best papermakers far and wide. Hardly anyone understood this art as well as he did and knew the secret of how violently the materials had to be pounded to a pulp, from which the material of the mind and writing could then be made - paper! Handling the sieve required a lot of practice and skill and even when the sheets were pressed, everything could still be spoiled when the rotary press was released.

Wang picked up one of the dried leaves and held it up to the sunlight shining in through the open window. Finally, the master nodded and an almost relaxed expression appeared on his face, which until then had looked very stern.

Wang turned his head and looked at his daughter.

"You've been a studious pupil," he said. "I can teach you nothing more. All you have to learn now will come with the experience of years."

"Thank you for your words," Li said - infinitely relieved that the sheets she had made had withstood Master Wang's stern gaze. A restrained smile played around her lips. Her father's face, however, remained serious. The look was introspective. After Li's mother had fallen victim to the plague that brought silk traders from Xingqing to the area years ago, Li had never seen her father truly carefree again. Almost half of the population in the small town on the far western edge of the Xi Xia Empire had been swept away by the fever. This included two of Li's three brothers. The third brother had then died in an attack by a band of Uyghur robbers. Gold and silk had been flowing along the Silk Road for a long time. Recently, the trade in horses in particular had been added, as the empire of the emperor ruling in distant Bian was constantly threatened by uprisings. Accordingly, the conflicting powers there had a great need for mounts. But there was also a craving for horses, gold and silk.

Trade on the Silk Road had also brought prosperity to the papermaker Wang and his family. Where contracts were concluded, lists of goods written down and bills of exchange issued, this special material was needed almost as much as the goods themselves. Paper bore the verses of the wise men of Tibet, the suras of the Koran or the Holy Scriptures of the Nestorians, who had brought the faith in Jesus Christ to the borders of the Middle Kingdom, as well as numbers and delivery dates. The skills of papermakers were therefore just as much in demand as those of scribes and translators.

"The art I have taught you is worth more than a lump of gold or a large possession," Wang said, addressing his daughter. "Property can be taken from you, but your knowledge cannot. Times are uncertain and wealth attracts robbers like light attracts moths. But no one can take away your skill in the art of papermaking, which I have planted in your soul, just as my father did with me. Always remember: knowledge and skill are not only your most valuable possessions, but probably the only ones you will keep for sure until your soul has gone to the ancestors."

"I will always cherish this knowledge," Li promised.

"You know that I speak from experience," Wang continued. Respect for her father forbade Li from pointing out that she had heard this story dozens of times before and had certainly learned her lesson long ago. "You were just an infant when we had to leave the capital," Wang continued. "But sometimes it seems like only yesterday... I owned a thriving papermaking business and had twenty journeymen working for me!" When Wang spoke of the capital, he was by no means referring to the capital of Xi Xia, but to distant Bian, where the Sons of Heaven ruled the Middle Kingdom. "The imperial court and the administration had such a high demand for fresh paper that you can't even imagine it here, on the edge of the civilized world," Wang explained. "And there were so many discarded silk robes that could be used - here, on the other hand, we often have to crush all kinds of rags and, as you know, some of my less honorable competitors even mix dried bushes, wood shavings and straw into the paper pulp, which you can see in the sheets later! Yes, some sheets even smell of chicken dung, camel hair and things that are so unclean that I can't even try to imagine how our noble art has been dragged into the dirt in the truest sense of the word." Wang made a dismissive gesture and grimaced in disgust. The mere thought that holy prayers or high poetry might have been written on such unclean paper seemed to him like an unbearable desecration. He never tired of getting upset about such sacrilege to a cleanly executed craft. Then he shook his head and his expression took on a touch of melancholy. "I could have made a good living in Bian for the rest of my life, and at the end of my days I would probably have bequeathed each of my sons his own paper factory and left each of my daughters a generous dowry..." This time, Wang spared Li the trouble of having to recount the fate of that time in detail. A fate that began with the seizure of power by a military governor who had risen to become emperor. The denunciation of a competitor had placed Wang on a list of disagreeable persons. Only a quick escape had saved his life and that of his family. His former property had ended up in the hands of the state. He had left everything behind and started anew here in the far west.

Xi Xia still belonged to the realm of the Son of Heaven by law, but in fact the area was independent. Wang had hoped for a secure future for his family here.

But this hope was not fulfilled.

His wife and sons were dead - and the factory that Wang ran had only three journeymen on its payroll. Wang had had to rebuild it twice. Once after a big fire and another time after a raid by steppe bandits. "To end up empty-handed in front of the ancestors - I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Wang muttered to himself. Li knew that at that moment he was talking more to himself than to her.

Excited voices could now be heard from outside. One of the journeymen from the manufactory rushed in. "Riders are coming! There are many of them! They're carrying torches!"

"By all the gods!" muttered Wang and the papermaker's face turned pale. "Lock the windows and doors!" he shouted and then grabbed the journeyman by the shoulders. "Are the doors and shutters of the workshop locked, Gao?"

"It won't do us any good!" the journeyman feared.

Li hurried to the window and pushed the heavy curtain aside. The thundering of hooves was already unmistakable. Shouts rang out. They were orders issued by hoarse male voices and Li understood at least a few fragments of them.

"Uyghurs!" she groaned.

In Xi Xia, Tanguts, Uyghurs and members of the Han people from the Middle Kingdom had always lived together more or less peacefully. These three languages, together with Persian, dominated the markets and Li had therefore come into contact with Uyghur from an early age. Many of the traders and caravan leaders spoke one of the Uyghur dialects and it was said that it was almost impossible to bargain for a horse or a camel at a fair price if you did not speak the language.

At least Li had picked up enough of it to be able to communicate to some extent, just as she understood some Persian. Otherwise she would not have been able to make a deal at the market, as hardly any of the traders could express themselves well enough in the Han people's tongue.

At least a hundred riders rode along the main street, where almost all the houses in the village and the stables of the caravanserais were lined up like a string of pearls. A protective wall of sharpened palisades surrounded at least the inner area of the village, which had been built around a watering hole.

Like the manufactory, Master Wang's house was outside this protected area. Normally, people retreated behind the palisades in case of danger - but it was too late for that in view of the suddenness with which the riders had appeared. The first houses were already on fire. The attackers hurled their pitch-soaked torches onto the roofs, which immediately caught fire. The Tangut guards were completely unprepared. They were quickly fought down. Their death cries mingled with the crackling of the flames and the panicked voices of those trying to get behind the palisades. But they were just trying to close the gates there.

The attackers were met with a hail of arrows from the breastworks. Some of the Uighurs were taken out of their saddles, but before the Tangut archers had even inserted their second or third arrow, the first attackers were already fighting off the guards at the gate and dashing into the inner area.

The first Uyghurs had also reached Master Wang's house. As they rushed past, one of them threw a torch through the window before Li could close the shutters.

The torch rolled across the floor. The flames caught a curtain and paper wall decorations. The contents of an oil lamp ignited and it only took a few moments for thick smoke to appear.

"Out!" she heard her father's hoarse, coughing call. She saw his figure staggering through the thick smoke, then a second - the apprentice Gao.

That's their goal, Li thought with bitter anger in his heart. They want to drive us out into the open... Us and the cattle!

The smoke stung Li's eyes. A few moments later, together with her father and the apprentice Gao, they rushed out of the door into the open, where the Uyghurs were already waiting for them. "Come on, faster!" one of them shouted in bad Chinese with a heavy accent, only to immediately switch to a Uyghur dialect. "Get out of here! Or we'll slit your throats right now!" The Uyghur's face was marked by a scar that ran diagonally from his left eyebrow across his entire face to the right corner of his mouth. A sword strike must have disfigured his face in this way. He wore a helmet that still showed that the falcon badge of the ruler of Xi Xia had been crudely removed - a badge worn by outposts and scouts whose task it was to warn of an attack in good time.

But those men had probably never gotten around to it. May the gods know where the scavengers were now gnawing on their bones. The Uyghurs had obviously divided up their equipment among themselves.

Meanwhile, Wang let out a cry of horror when he saw that his workshop was in flames. One of the men had forced his way inside and now returned with a colander, which he was not quite sure was of any value.

He finally threw it carelessly into the dust when a rider rode up and shouted something at him. Li understood the meaning of the words. Apparently the Uighurs had managed to capture the city commander.

The men raised their arms high and let out wild cries of joy.

"That's a big ransom," shouted the man with the scar.

Li took a deep breath. So that was what this gang was primarily after: ransom. Anyone who was rich or powerful, or even better both at the same time, would be paid a lot of silver for their freedom and had a good chance of returning unharmed soon. The fate of the others, on the other hand, was completely uncertain.

No one will pay for us, Li thought resignedly.

The fighting inside the fortifications had died down. The whimpering of injured Tanguts could still be heard here and there. The Uighurs stabbed them so that they could take their weapons, boots and breastplates without being disturbed.

Together with the horses, Li, her father and the journeyman Gao were driven to the square in front of the palisade gate. Cattle and chickens were also running around there and one of the Uighur warriors was upset that there were also unclean pigs, which were inedible for Muslims.

The scar-faced man approached Li, grabbed her roughly by the wrist and snatched her bracelet and necklace. After a brief inspection, he let both disappear into the pockets of his leather jerkin. Then he grabbed Li roughly by the chin and bent her head to one side. With the pressure of his fingers on her cheeks, he forced her to open her mouth so that he could see her teeth. "You look pretty," he said. "With any luck, we can sell you well." Then he pushed her forward so roughly that she fell to the floor.

Her father wanted to help her and took a few quick, determined steps towards the scarred man, as if he wanted to pounce on him. But another Uigure held the tip of his sword to his throat. "Careful!" the igure grimly groaned. "I will teach you respect!"

He raised his sword and took a swing.

"Leave him alone!" the scarred man's voice stopped him.

Irritated, the other Uigure lowered his blade. "Why do you feel sorry for someone like that? He tried to attack me!"

"My father only wanted to protect me," Li intervened.

However, the man with the scar paid no further attention to the young woman. He pointed to the workshop, from whose windows dark columns of smoke were now billowing out. "Do you own the workshop?" he asked in barbaric Chinese.

"Yes."

"Then you are the one who makes the fabric on which the painted words are written!"

"Yes, that's right."

"Praise be to Allah!" he exclaimed, sending a glance towards the heavens. He pointed to the sieve that had been carelessly thrown into the dust. "Then this is yours?"

"Yes," Wang nodded.

"By the Prophet, I've already watched your kind scoop the paper, even if I didn't understand what you actually have to do. But anyway, I need someone like you!" The man with the scar picked up the sieve and threw it to Wang. He caught it. "You may not be able to read the Prophet's words, but Allah will see that I have helped to spread his book by capturing this slant-eyed heathen! We will take all those who belong to you, man! And take your sieve with you - because you'll soon have to prove that you spoke the truth and didn't lie to me!" He gave Wang a disparaging look and then turned to the warrior who had just tried to cut off Wang's head. "Take extra care of this man and don't harm him or anyone who works for him, Mahmut!"

"As you command, sir!" Mahmut replied, somewhat irritated.

The man with the scar patted him vigorously on the shoulder. "In Samarkand and Bukhara, Persian scholars supposedly write a book every day! They dictate their wisdom to whole armies of calligraphers and fill libraries so unspeakably large that Allah does not allow a simple man like me to really imagine it! They need paper there as badly as they need water to drink and I've heard that you can get a good price for a papermaker who knows his trade!"

"Allah has given you wisdom, Lord!" Mahmut said submissively. He obviously belonged to the still small but increasingly numerous group of Uyghurs who followed the words of the Koran, while Mani's belief in a perpetual battle between light and darkness was generally the most widespread among the Uyghurs. Mahmut's posture tightened a little. He lifted his eyes and looked at his leader, waiting.

The scar-faced man made a sweeping gesture and called out to the men nearby: "There must be more papermakers here. Find them all! Their weight will be weighed out in silver!"

"But we should still get out of here as quickly as possible, Toruk!" said Mahmut. "The Emperor of Xi Xia will hunt us down until we have left the borders of his dominion behind us!"

Toruk, the scar-faced man, laughed hoarsely. "The Emperor of Xi Xia is a pathetic fool who seems to think he only needs to give himself the same title as the Lord of the Middle Kingdom. But by the wisdom of the prophet Mani! This Tangut upstart will never become a son of heaven - and no one need tremble before his pathetic power!" Toruk turned to Wang once more. "Show us who you're working with!" he demanded. "Go on!"

Wang pointed at Gao. "This is my journeyman and my daughter Li has also been trained in the secrets of this art. She has already reached the level of masterly perfection."

Toruk's gaze wandered to the young woman. Li didn't like the way the igure was looking at her. His face contorted.

"Are you still a virgin?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"You could get a good price for that too! We'll see which of your talents gets the higher bid!"

Chapter two: Captured and abducted

The Uyghurs did not take anything that could not be lifted on horseback. The captured horses were rounded up and loaded with goods and silver supplies from the fur traders. Any saddles that could be found were strapped to the backs of other nags.

"Father, what's going to happen now?" asked Li, as all this unfolded in front of her.

"What happens now is out of our hands," said the paper maker with an outward composure that Li was unable to muster in the same way. Fear of the uncertainty choked her throat. Being sold as a concubine to one of the countless petty khans on the Silk Road was really not what she had imagined for her life. But being taken away to work in a distant, uncivilized place was not a rosy prospect either. It was not the first time Li had heard of coveted craftsmen being taken away by bands of robbers to serve in faraway places where there was a shortage of their particular skill. Gifted weaponsmiths were among them, as were master builders and arithmeticians. Normally, none of them ever managed to return home and one could only guess how they fared abroad.

Li was put on a horse. As her dress was not really suitable for riding, the Uighur warrior who helped her into the saddle cut it open with his sword.

Within less than an hour, the Uyghurs had brought everything they intended to take with them on horseback - people and goods. Faint with rage, many a merchant stood helplessly watching as his goods were taken away. But only those items that could be easily taken away. Jugs and other fragile objects were sometimes smashed by the foreign riders out of sheer wantonness.

However, no one dared to fight back. The merchants - most of them Persian - were happy if they were not considered rich, so it might be worthwhile to kidnap them and demand a ransom.

This fate, however, befell several dozen members of the most respected families. The Uyghurs only ever took one family member prisoner at a time and simply judged the wealth of each family according to the furnishings in the house or the type of clothing.

Li clung to the pommel of the saddle. It was not the first time she had been on horseback, for she had occasionally ridden around the neighboring villages with her father or his journeymen to buy up rags. Rags that could be crushed and then used to make the precious fabric that carried thoughts and laws and whose very special magic even allowed it to fly into the air - provided you knew how to fold it properly and the wind spirits were kind to you.

The other prisoners were also put on horses. It did not seem necessary to tie them up. After all, none of them were armed.

In addition, each of these captured horses was hung with luggage, including salted meat, hides, blankets and whatever else the Uyghurs considered valuable. Only weapons, jewelry and silver coins were kept away from the prisoners by Toruk and his men. Belts and colorful robes that appealed to the riders and the odd decorative dagger were immediately taken by the mounted warriors. Then the horde rode off. Countless dead were left behind. Whoever the Uyghurs from the Tangut city guard had found alive had been killed. After all, they wanted to prevent them from being pursued in the near future.

Those left behind were traders without weapons and desperate relatives of the abductees, who now had to see to it that they could raise a ransom. And this after they had just been completely plundered! For those who had no rich relatives elsewhere, the prospects of a return looked bleak.

The ride was so sharp that Li struggled to stay in the saddle. She was completely cramped and clung to the pommel with all her strength. The Uighurs took the horses with the prisoners into their midst. It was by no means impossible that these brazen thieves had just taken back the very horses they had previously offered for sale at the horse market.

Li wasn't sure, but she thought she recognized at least one of the riders. He rode very close to her, had leathery skin with a relief of wrinkles running through it. His hair was streaked with grey and his coat was held together by a brass-colored clasp in the shape of an isosceles triangle.

The sign of the Manichaeans," Li recognized. This belief had even penetrated the heartlands of the Middle Kingdom, where its missionaries claimed that the prophet Mani was not only the perfecter of the teachings of Jesus Christ, but also a reincarnation of the sage Lao-she. Li had always felt repelled by the zealotry so often found among Mani's followers. But all the strict rules and rigid morals to which the Mani believers subjected themselves apparently did not stop them from acting as robbers and murderers. For these nomads, robbery and trade were just two sides of the same coin anyway.

They rode continuously all day - apart from a short break at a waterhole.

They passed ever steeper hills and finally reached a mountainous region where the ground became increasingly stony and barren.

The pace at which the horses had previously been driven forward became somewhat more moderate. They were obviously prepared for a long journey and did not want to put the animals to shame. Li kept close to her father and tried not to get too far away from him, as far as possible without causing a stir among the Uighurs.

"The man with the scar - Toruk! He seems to be the leader," Li said as they rode a little slower to spare the horses. The Uyghur riders had a very keen sense of how much they could put their mounts through.

Wang nodded. "Yes, he could be the man they call the scarred butcher elsewhere," he said. "The fat Persian from Samarkand told me about it when I sold him the paper for his delivery lists!" Wang was far more accustomed to riding than his daughter. He had told Li about how he had been sent on long embassy rides as a boy by his father, who had also been a papermaker. In Bian, in the heartland of the Middle Kingdoms, this had been possible without danger at the time, as no one except the emperor's soldiers had been allowed to carry weapons. The Son of Heaven had guaranteed safety for everyone and his laws had still had unlimited validity at that time. So no one had had to fear being attacked by gangs of robbers on the way.

In Xi Xia, however, conditions had always been far less secure in this respect. It was not advisable for anyone to ride through the steppe alone. Especially not a woman. And even caravans accompanied by heavily armed escorts were not safe from the greed of the nomadic tribes. Sometimes they could be satisfied with tolls. However, it was not so often that they were so bold as to attack a place with fortifications. Li was now certain that she had actually met the Manichaean with the triangular clasp at the market. He probably didn't even remember it. No, he had been focused on completely different things, Li realized. Even though the Manichaean had pretended to be one of the countless merchants in the area, he had actually been scouting out the conditions in the city.

"What do they know about the scarred butcher?" asked Li, whose every muscle in her body was aching by now and who was only praying to the gods that this terrible ride would soon come to an end.

"He is the son of a Uyghur khan in the western mountains."

"And the Lord of Xi Xia lets him do it?" Li asked uncomprehendingly.

"You know how weak the emperor of Xi Xia is."

The journeyman Gao now spoke up. "As long as no one attacks his distant residence, he will hardly try to do anything," he was convinced. "People there are looking eastward, spellbound, to see how the new son of heaven is holding his own and whether they might have to pay him tribute again in the future!"

Gao was an erudite young man who had learned the craft of papermaking well, as Master Wang never tired of emphasizing - if only so that Gao would not get the idea of selling his art elsewhere for good silver. After all, he would have been free to return to the Middle Kingdom, as his clan had not fallen out of favor. Rather, he came from a family of scribes who had ended up here when the power of the emperors from the Middle Kingdom still reached as far as Xi Xia and taxes had to be levied, collected and recorded in the name of the Sons of Heaven. But those days were long gone. At its edges, the Middle Kingdom resembled a Persian tapestry, ornate but frayed and moth-eaten, whose stitches were unraveling inexorably. Every attempt to stop this process only made it worse.

In those days, when the Xi Xia Empire had shaken off the rule of the Sons of Heaven of Bian like a burdensome yoke, Gao's family had also gradually lost its modest prosperity. The number of scribes had dwindled, as had the number of soldiers and officials. And taxes were often not levied according to lists, but were set purely arbitrarily.

Under different circumstances, Wang would certainly have thought that Gao would have been a suitable son-in-law for his daughter. In fact, he had everything he needed. He was a skilled craftsman and had learned the art of papermaking in a way that few others could claim. In any case, he had a secure basis for earning a living. Apart from that, he had the acquisitive spirit and gentle, even-tempered nature that Wang would have wished for in a husband for his daughter. But the papermaker had always imagined that his daughter's marriage would also increase his property. And as long as she was young and pretty, he had always believed, he did not need to give up this hope.

Li had always viewed her father's plans with mixed feelings. It was certainly a father's duty to ensure that the property of future generations increased. But hadn't Wang's own life shown that possessions weren't everything? In any case, it was no guarantee of truly profound happiness. In this context, Li had always thought of the self-imposed poverty of the Tibetan monks who spread the Buddha's teachings, relying solely on the wisdom of their words and the power of their personal example as a means of conversion. But strangely enough, for the Nestorian monks too, giving up possessions seemed to be a prerequisite for salvation - and if two teachings as different as those of Buddha and Christ agreed on this point, then perhaps there was a kernel of truth in it.

The Uyghur invasion had of course thrown everything Wang had ever planned for his daughter's future into disarray. Not even the gods knew what lay ahead of them.

On the first night, the Uyghurs camped at a waterhole for a few hours between midnight and dawn. It was sheltered between the barren, rocky mountains and you had to know it to find it.

The Uigure with the Manichaean triangular amulet, whom Li now believed to be one of the sub-leaders, instructed some of his men to tie up the prisoners. Long hemp ropes were then taken out of the saddlebags. They were probably actually used to tie up horses.

But the scarred Toruk intervened.

"Where are they supposed to go - alone at night in this wasteland?" asked the leader of the predatory troop. "Apart from that, most of them won't be used to covering more miles in the saddle in one day than they've probably ever done before in their lives."

Toruk then addressed the prisoners personally. In the light of the campfire that the Uighurs had lit, she saw a muscle twitching restlessly just above the scar that disfigured his features. "Anyone who dares to flee will have no mercy!" he shouted. "We will kill anyone who tries to do so immediately, regardless of whether their noble origins promise a good ransom or we could just sell them as work slaves!" Toruk then repeated his words once more in a barbaric, accent-laden dialect of the Han people's language, as some of their descendants had brought it to the westernmost provinces of the Middle Kingdom. Li only had no trouble understanding him because she had already understood what he wanted in Uyghur. Finally, Toruk followed up with roughly the same words in Persian. Li had not expected him to be so erudite in the art of learning foreign languages. But then again, these nomads traveled far and wide along the Silk Road and could hardly expect anyone in the large cities, which were strung together like a string of pearls in both the east and the west, to master the tongue of an insignificant nomadic tribe.

Li was shivering. It was getting very cold that night and apart from what she was wearing, she had nothing on her. Toruk saw this and a wry smile played around his lips. "The horses' dung may keep you descendants of stray dogs warm," he growled. "But perhaps it's better to herd you together by the fire - then you can be seen better and none of you sensitive inhabitants of solid houses will die from coughing in the next few nights..."

"We're supposed to sit around a fire with this vermin from the Han people?" Mahmut now got angry. "By Allah, Mani and the wind spirits of the steppe - you're asking a lot of me, Toruk."

Toruk laughed. "But you're also asking a lot of the new god Allah, whom you got to know in the West. I don't think his imams approve of you invoking everything in one breath. Or have the followers of Muhammad recently made every mountain spirit one of their saints? That would be news to me."

"You mean like the Manichaeans do!" Mahmut growled, his eyes sparkling in a way that made it clear that Toruk's mockery was difficult for him to bear. One of Mahmut's hands closed around the hilt of the slightly curved sword he wore on his belt, which was obviously forged in the manner of the Persians and Arabs.

Even Li, who otherwise knew nothing about the arts of war or weapons, recognized this. Damascus steel had an almost legendary reputation, even in the markets of Xi Xia. But even more famous was the so-called black steel that came from the mountains of Khorasan. Persian blacksmiths cast it into dark ingots. Li had already seen them being traded in the markets from time to time and weighed out in pure silver, as these ingots could be used to forge swords of particular strength. At least when they came into the hands of accomplished master smiths, such as those in the service of the Son of Heaven in distant Bian.

However, these nomads had not forged such swords themselves, but had presumably captured them when raiding caravans or traded them far to the west for the looted goods they had captured elsewhere.

"Let the prisoners have a drink!" Toruk shouted to his men. "Lead them in groups of ten to the watering hole and let them drink when the horses have had enough! And don't kill too many if they resist. Otherwise the raid won't have been worth it!"

The Uyghurs roared with laughter, but Li felt a chill run down his spine.

"My stomach is growling," Wang later said quietly to his daughter. He rubbed his hands together. He was obviously freezing too. They huddled by the fire and had to watch as the Uyghurs unpacked their supplies.

"They won't let us starve, otherwise they won't be able to sell us on," Li said. "Or expect a ransom for the high-born members of our suffering community..."

"Whatever happens, we will have to endure it, Li. There's nothing we can do. Nothing that could improve our situation."

Li looked at her father and, for once, a wrinkle appeared on her smooth forehead - clearly visible in the light of the increasingly crackling and flaring fire. "Does that mean we have to give up all hope?" she asked in a whisper.

"Oh no, there's no question of that," Wang replied. "But just as the trees and the grass of the steppe bend to the wind, we will have to bend too. We are not the wind, Li - but the grass."

Li slept restlessly and uncomfortably on the bare floor. She had curled up as far as possible. The neighing of a horse and the rough shouts of Toruk's men finally woke her up.

Li's legs and buttocks ached. Every muscle and tendon all the way up to her back ached when she tried to stand up.

Wang noticed how his daughter was feeling. "We're not used to riding," he said. "Not like this, at least..."

"I can hardly move," said Li.

"Yes, you can," said Wang. "You can endure more than you might think possible at the moment. Whatever happens - take it as a test, just as the sage Lao-she demands of us."

Li did not disagree - because even if her father did not look very dignified at the moment, this did not change the deep respect she felt for him.

She knew the words of Lao-shu and other sages very well. But at the moment, she did not believe she was strong enough to pass these tests.

The journey continued before the sun had even risen. An icy wind was blowing from the north, while in the east the first rays of the blood-red morning sun were already stealing across the horizon. The mountains formed jagged shadow lines that stood out darkly and menacingly against it.

Before the train set off, the Muslims among the Uyghurs performed their morning prayers. Around two out of ten men professed their faith in the teachings of Muhammad. The others had apparently stuck to the traditionally widespread Manichaeism among the Uyghurs. They looked at their praying companions with skeptical faces.

"When we Uyghurs still had a large empire, it would have been unthinkable for anyone to follow anything other than the teachings of Mani," Li heard one of the men say. "No father should allow his sons to travel west on caravans, because what they bring back from there are infectious diseases and this new faith, which spreads like a pestilence!"

From what Li knew about the teachings of Mohammed, Mani and Jesus, what they all had in common was that they told their believers to proselytize all non-believers and to ensure that their faith reached the furthest corners of the world.

Believing in only one God seemed very monotonous to her and, above all, respect for the ancestors did not seem to be as important as she would have thought appropriate. And so Li could well understand that there were quite a few Uyghurs who took part in prayers to both Mani and Allah. They had probably found their own personal blend of both faiths or simply wanted to play it safe, which probably meant not offending any god or prophet by ignoring them and securing as much supernatural help as possible.

Li did not remember the details of what happened over the next two days. She clung to the pommel of her mount and tried not to slip out of the saddle. The breaks were rare, there was nothing to eat the whole time and only when the horses were watered were the prisoners able to drink some of the ice-cold water from the small streams or springs, which Toruk's people were obviously very familiar with.

When a camp with several hundred yurts appeared in the distance, Li could not believe her eyes at first. After all, the riders had deliberately moved away from the trade routes over the last few days and had also avoided all the settlements that were scattered across this increasingly barren land.

A city of tents lay before them and some of them were bigger than many a house.

Toruk's men drove the horses forward once more on the last part of the journey. Meanwhile, the camp had also become aware of the new arrivals and within a short time hundreds of men, women and children had gathered. Some wolf-like, half-wild dogs barked hoarsely at the returnees. The daze that had stunned Li for so long was now blown away.

Toruk and his men celebrated their rich haul, while those who remained in the camp took care of the horses. Li was literally torn from the saddle. Dozens of children grabbed her.

"She looks like one of the Han people!" she heard a woman say. "Like the soldiers who killed your father and your older brothers!"

The children then looked at Li like an evil spirit. They involuntarily backed away at first, while their mother told them that most of the prisoners were Han people from the Middle Kingdom. One boy spat out in response. A little later, a lump of dry, fairly solid but nonetheless horribly smelly camel dung was thrown. Li tried to protect himself with his arms.

This was followed by stones and lumps of earth raining through the air, while one of the prisoners shouted that he was a Tangut and by no means descended from the Han people. But Tanguts didn't seem to be any more popular in this tent camp than people from the Middle Kingdom. And so the Tangute - a distinguished merchant whose equally distinguished clothing had already suffered badly from the violent treading of the last few days - got a few more clods of dirt.

But a piercing voice silenced everyone else. It was Toruk himself who silenced the mob. "Take care of the horses! And then give the prisoners water, blankets and something to eat!"

"Are we the hosts of these snooty townspeople?" shouted the woman, whose husband had apparently died at some point in the battle against the soldiers of the Middle Kingdom. Probably in one of the raids that the nomads had already led into the heartland. Or they had been recruited as mercenaries by a rebellious warlord. The woman grimaced contemptuously.

"These prisoners are valuable possessions - and you'll look after them like a good saddle!" Toruk told her, whereupon she fell silent.

Chapter three: Arnulf of Ellingen

Byzantium!

Constantinople.

Nova Roma...

How many names had this mightiest of all the cities of Christendom already borne - names that had an almost legendary ring to them. Arnulf of Ellingen reined in his horse and looked up at the mighty, awe-inspiring walls, which neither the Goths nor the Huns, Bulgars or Arabs had been able to overcome.

The imperial palace in Magdeburg, on the other hand, seemed like a fortified farmstead to Arnulf - even though attempts had been made to create a Rome on the Elbe since the reign of Emperor Otto Magnus and his first wife Editha. However, although its imposing palace may have surpassed the Octadon of the great Charles in Aachen, it ultimately only looked poor compared to what could be found in Constantinople.

The knight from the family of Ellingen took off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His dark blond hair was almost shoulder-length. The thickening beard had probably only appeared during the journey this man had made. He wore a leather jerkin and a cloak over it, which also ensured that his sword did not stand out so clearly. His alert, green eyes could hardly take their eyes off the mighty walls, whose individual stones had once been piled on top of each other with a precision that Arnulf could only admire - after all, he himself had occasionally supervised the construction of castles in the Billunger Mark. He was therefore aware of the effort required to erect such protection.

A wall for eternity, Arnulf thought.

Even from a distance, the city, which the Norman merchants simply called Miklagard - the great city - had made an overwhelming impression on Arnulf. Shimmering golden domes, churches of a size in which entire castles would have disappeared and behind them the blue ribbon of the strait that connected the Pontic Sea with the Mediterranean.

"What are you waiting for?" came the words of a hoarse, very dark voice. "You can also admire the walls of this city from the other side and believe me, they are by no means the greatest wonders to be admired in Constantinople!"

The voice belonged to a man in a monk's habit, who was riding a lean pinto horse that was considerably shorter than Arnulf's noble steed. The monk pressed his heels into the flank of his animal and passed the knight. After a few lengths, his horse suddenly stopped and the monk turned around in the saddle. "You don't want to wait so long until all the gates are closed! Or we'll be taken for Bulgarian spies because we're looking too closely at the walls."

Arnulf now detached himself from the sight. A gentle smile played around his lips and he stroked his prominent chin, which was covered by an increasingly thick beard after all the weeks they had been traveling without interruption. "We're not on the run from anyone, Fra Branaguorno!" he then turned to the monk who had been assigned to accompany Arnulf on his journey. Fra Branaguorno supposedly came from Elbara, a village near Milan. Others claim that his mother was a runaway Moorish slave from Sicily who had abandoned her child outside a monastery in the hope that it would thus receive a good education and have a future in a life of faith. But even if many a secret seemed to surround Fra Branaguorno's past, his fame shone all the clearer in the present. The boy's special spiritual gifts must have revealed themselves early on.

In any case, Fra Branaguorno was now famous for his linguistic skills and erudition. During a meeting of the greats of the empire convened by Emperor Otto III in Verona, Fra Branaguorno's services were required in negotiations with Greek-speaking envoys from Constantinople. As he knew at least the basics of some of the languages of the East as well as Greek, having learned to speak them on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he seemed to be the right man to accompany Arnulf of Ellingen on the delicate mission entrusted to him by Emperor Otto. Apart from that, Fra Branaguorno enjoyed the emperor's personal trust. Both shared the same vision: the idea of an empire of faith and a renewal of the Roman Empire under the banner of Christianity. What Carolus Magnus and Otto the Great had begun, the current emperor wanted to continue and Fra Branaguorno had encouraged him in this in long discussions.

Even if the scrawny, pale-faced man, who, despite his graceful figure on the much too small pinto, appeared to be a simple beggar monk, neither the emperor nor Arnulf von Ellingen had ever met a man of higher education and greater knowledge. In Magdeburg, Arnulf himself had witnessed some of the conversations that the monk brother had had with the almost boyish-looking emperor. And Otto, who himself was considered highly educated and already very knowledgeable and well-read despite his young age, had clearly shown how much he appreciated this interlocutor, who was at least his equal.

Otto trusted Fra Branaguorno like few others around him and Arnulf von Ellingen was under no illusions that the monk had been placed at his side to guard him. Too much depended on the success of the mission for which the knight of Ellingen had been sent on his journey to the eastern lands.

Lands whose size and location were only vaguely imagined in the imperial palace at Magdeburg and even among the scholars at Corvey Abbey.

Apart from Fra Branaguorno, someone else was traveling with the knight. It was a seventeen-year-old boy who served Arnulf as a squire. His name was Gero and he was a distant relative of the famous Gero to whom the present emperor's grandfather had once given the Slavic Marches between the Elbe and Oder rivers. Since then, some still called the Billunger Mark the Mark of Gero.

Gero had ash-blond hair and pale blue eyes. Gero had always been a good student in sword fighting and archery, but he had given up writing and reading early on. He dreaded dealing with long rows of characters drawn on parchment and, above all, he lacked the patience to practise long enough. Arnulf knew that true mastery could only be achieved through constant practice. In this respect, sword fighting was no different from the art of writing and reading or playing the lute, which Gero was far better at.

Gero was best at handling horses, so it was a good thing that caring for Arnulf's horse was one of his squire's main duties.

Arnulf turned to Gero, pointed at the walls and said: "Take a good look at that, Gero. You may never see anything like this again, unless our lord manages to poach a few of the master builders who are working in this city!"

Then Arnulf drove his horse forward again and Gero followed his example.

The three men rode along the mighty walls, which formed an impregnable bulwark between the city and its easily conquered surrounding countryside.

The sun had already turned milky and had sunk very low. Merchants they had met along the way, who had no doubt come from Constantinople, had told them that the city gates were closed early at dusk. The time changed slightly each day and was apparently the responsibility of the individual officers in charge of that section of the city wall. As the merchants Arnulf and his companions had met had told them, only Varangians - members of the emperor's bodyguard made up of Northmen - were currently taken for these posts. No one else seemed to be trusted. Even if there was a fragile peace at the moment, people behind the mighty walls of the second Rome were constantly afraid of attacks by the Bulgarians - and of guards being bribed and enemy fighters entering the city and perhaps setting fire to it. Although the city was built almost exclusively of stone houses, fire was one of the few things that could really pose a threat to its inhabitants.

The other enemy that the walls could do nothing against was the plagues that repeatedly ravaged Constantine's city. These plagues came with the ships and as there were probably no more ships anywhere in the world than here, it was hardly surprising that not only the goods and merchandise, but also the diseases of the whole world gathered in this place.

Fra Branaguorno had therefore made detailed enquiries with the traders they had met on the way to find out whether an epidemic had broken out in the city.

In this case, the monk would have suggested waiting in one of the smaller villages in the Thracian hinterland to see how things developed.

"I've never heard of these horrors!" Arnulf had confessed.

And a restrained, wise smile appeared on Fra Branaguorno's face. "All kinds of news and tales make their way from a place like this in all directions. Tales of golden domes and ships spewing Greek fire. Tales of rats in the narrow alleyways and the stench of death that spreads when the plagues come... But apparently the latter didn't make it to Magdeburg!"

"When was the last time you were in the big city?" asked Arnulf.

"Oh, that was several years ago. Actually, I was supposed to accompany Bishop Bernward of Würzburg when he set off on Emperor Otto's courtship... But, as is so often the case, my services were urgently needed elsewhere..."

"As usual!" said Arnulf.

A little later, they reached the Xylokerkos Gate.

The guards were Normans. They spoke a Greek that must have sounded barbaric to the ears of men like Branaguorno.

"Who are you and what do you want in the city?" asked the officer - a tree-length Varangian with blue eyes and blond hair in plaits that spilled out from under his helmet.

"We have a letter of recommendation to be admitted to John Philagathos, who is currently staying at the court of Emperor Basileios..."

"Half the city is called Johannes," said the Varangian. "I haven't heard anything about yours. Just show me your document and we'll see."

Fra Branaguorno took out the letter and handed it to the officer. The blond giant unfolded it and looked at the rows of letters with a furrowed brow. "This is Latin, not Greek," he noted.

"By all the saints, this must truly be a city of wonders if even the Northmen can read here!" Gero exclaimed in amazement.

The Varangian had heard that. "Saxland?" he asked.

"Yes, that's where we came from," Arnulf confirmed, although Branaguorno had actually told him beforehand to leave all negotiations at the gate to his Greek-speaking companion. If only because this was not Branaguorno's first time in the city of Constantine and he knew how to deal with the guards. In an emergency, he would even have known who to bribe to get what he wanted.

However, things had obviously changed in some respects since his last stay. Even what the merchants they had met on their way through Thracia had told them had been astonishing to Fra Branaguorno's ears. The Emperor's Varangian Guard had existed years ago, but the warriors from the harsh north had had more important things to do than guard gates. The fact that the emperor had to entrust the elite of soldiers with such mundane tasks was a sign of how insecure they felt despite the mighty walls that stretched from the Marmara Sea to a bay called the Golden Horn, completely sealing off the city on a peninsula in between.

The Varangian officer looked Branaguorno up and down once more, then turned first to Arnulf and then to Gero. "Saxland!" he said again, this time like a statement.

Among the Norsemen, Saxland was a collective term that included not only the land of the Saxons between the Elbe and Ems rivers, but all the duchies of the Regnum Teutonicorum. Sometimes, however, the Norsemen also referred to the entire empire of Emperor Otto in this way and included not only the lands between the Alps and the North Sea, but also Italy and Burgundy. And why not? As the Saxons provided the German king and the Roman emperor, they were obviously the most dominant of all the peoples in the empire.

"We come with a written message from Emperor Otto," said Arnulf. The language of the Saxons was not so different from that of the Northmen that they could not have understood each other if they tried hard and did not speak too quickly. Sometimes, Arnulf had often thought, it was more difficult for a Saxon to understand a Swabian or a Bavarian than a Dane.

"It's enough for me that you're not Bulgarians," said the Varangian. "I am Thorstein from Birka and used to serve the King of Orkney before I was recruited by the Kievan Rus and finally made my fortune here in the golden city."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Thorstein from Birka!"

"All mine." He laughed. "I fought against you Saxons in Britain and was always victorious."

"Well, here you need not fear that I would have come to avenge that."

"I'm glad of that!" Thorstein said ironically and his men couldn't help but laugh. The officer then turned to Gero: "You are the squire of this noble knight?"

"That's right," Gero nods, visibly embarrassed.

"I don't know what you've been told about us from the north, but the fact that you think we're no good at learning to read is almost a reason to challenge you!"

The other Varangians laughed - and Fra Branaguorno seemed very relieved that Thorstein's words were obviously meant as a joke.

Thorstein and his men let them pass - but only after they had been shown exactly what weapons the three men were carrying. In Fra Branaguorno's case, these were only the weapons of the spirit anyway - and as far as Arnulf and Gero were concerned, no one had anything against them carrying their swords. But the warriors of the imperial bodyguard were looking for flammable substances, special oils or the like, which might indicate that someone was planning to set fire to the city.

Anyone who brought something like this into the city needed a special permit.

Finally, Arnulf and his companions were allowed to ride through the gate.

The walls protecting Constantinople were more than ten paces wide for a tall, long-legged man. Doors could be seen from the inside, which probably led to guardrooms and quarters for the guards. The battlements with their battlements, from which the imperial soldiers watched the surrounding countryside, must have been wider than most streets in Emperor Otto's empire.

Gero couldn't help it, he turned around in the saddle once more. Entire carriages could have traveled along the wall on these corridors and it must have been possible to move even larger catapults there.

Gero barely had time to look around, as more than a dozen beggars were already surrounding him and his master. They barely noticed the monk Branaguorno. They obviously didn't think there was anything to be had from the gaunt, pale man in the coarse robe.

The beggars - among them children, adolescents and cripples - talked incessantly to Arnulf and Gero in Greek.

It was Fra Branaguorno who put an end to this hustle and bustle by throwing a few copper coins on the ground, which the beggars immediately pounced on - he, who rode in the garb of the mendicant monk, would have been expected to behave like a high lord in the end.

"And now put some pressure on your horse, otherwise you'll still be held here in a year's time!" Branaguorno murmured.

A little later, the three of them rode along one of the wide streets that ran through the city like a net.

"There are more people in the city than when I last visited years ago," said Fra Branaguorno, "and there are fewer ruins where beggars live..."

"You can see that at a glance?" asked Arnulf.

"Oh yes! This city may seem like a huge forest of houses and people when you compare it to Magdeburg, Cologne or Venice. But take a closer look... It was once built for more people than currently live here. You can see that from the wall!"

"Yes, I've noticed that too," Arnulf noted. In his homeland, few cities had a city wall and when they did, it was usually as ill-fitting as a too-tight chain mail shirt that a knight had inherited from his ancestors or won from a very weak opponent in a tournament. The walls of Constantinople, on the other hand, were generously proportioned. Too generous.

They rode through the outskirts, past the Pege Church, as Fra Branaguorno called the church on their left.

On the outside, near the walls, it was mainly poor people who lived in narrow alleyways. Beggars who had settled in empty houses, as well as day laborers who hoped to help the merchants load and unload goods when they traveled to the markets or the city's various ports. Mercenaries from the guards also lived here with their families - apart from the members of the Varangian Guard, of course, who had a far higher status and - despite their barbarian origins - would not have been satisfied with such a modest abode. The Northmen seemed to know how valuable their war skills were for the Emperor of Constantinople and the security of the city. They appeared correspondingly self-assured.

The quarters of the poor in the immediate vicinity of the walls were followed by an area with extensive gardens belonging to luxurious villas on the hills on both sides of the river Lykos. It was obvious that this was where the particularly rich and noble retreated. Armed guards paced along the palisade fences of these estates, which were obscenely spacious in view of the otherwise cramped nature of the city. Many a castle in Saxony or Franconia did not have the dimensions of these country estates, which were also located in the middle of a town. And yet they were surrounded by green hills.

Arnulf reined in his horse and let his gaze wander for a few moments.

"So the almost fantastic stories that are told about the city of the Eastern Emperor are true," the squire muttered.

"Yes - and imagine what a descent it was for a woman like our Emperor's now blessed wife to go from Constantinople to Magdeburg," said Arnulf.

"Oh, don't exaggerate in that respect," objected Fra Branaguorno.

"Exaggerate?" Arnulf wondered. "How can you exaggerate the difference, since it is simply overwhelming to the human eye!"

"That may be. But for Theophanu, getting to Magdeburg was certainly the luckiest of all possible coincidences - even if the weather there is certainly far more unfriendly than can be said of the coast of Thrace..."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, only a few people know that, and I'm not sure if I should say it openly..."

A wrinkle formed on Arnulf's forehead. "Don't be coy, Fra Branaguorno! First you arouse my interest and then you leave it at a few mysterious hints!"

Fra Branaguorno sighed. "Well, I will tell you what was said behind closed doors at the court in Magdeburg: Theophanu was not of such noble blood as it was often made out to be."

"Doesn't the blood of an Eastern emperor flow in her?"

"She was the distant descendant of an unappreciated general named Konstantin Skleros, whom no one remembers..."

"So no purple-born!"

"No. However, any reference to it has been erased from the documents. It would have been difficult to marry her off well and the court in Saxonland was the best of many bad options."

"Oh, I didn't really know that," Arnulf admitted. "And to be honest, she always struck me as a very dignified regent..."

"You can learn many things," smiled Fra Branaguorno, "and it seems that in some cases this even applies to high birth!"