Tamerlane's Boys 17

Chapter 17 – Wisdoms

(Kashan, Persia, December 1392)

Arman at first looked at Nicolai with utter shock and disbelief before deciding to trust his own instincts.

“Vissarion isn’t dead!” the young Armenian exclaimed, whilst brushing past the tearful Muscovite and then through the leather entrance flaps into Tamerlane’s tent. The lachrymose 12 years old immediately followed the 16 years old, who was exhibiting strange confidence in his assertion, given that he had not seen the young Georgian for several hours.

“How can you say that?” Nicolai not unreasonably screamed at the back of Arman, rapidly running across the large bedroom compartment of Tamerlane’s tent towards the bed where Vissarion’s still body lay, attended by the wailing conqueror and Rezan. However, the young Armenian did not yet reply. He also did not make any comment about the fact that the young Persian was finally showing his true emotions. The 10 years old’s beautiful face was buried in the lap of his overlord, his brown eyes shedding copious tears whilst his hands firmly grasped those of the man.

Arman ignored everyone except the white-faced Vissarion, against whose chest he pressed his ear. However, the young Armenian could detect no sound or movement. There was also no pulse evident in his closest friend’s wrist. Nevertheless, this did not demean his fervent belief or deflect his intent. The soon-to-be 16 years old instead addressed Tamerlane, Nicolai and Rezan in an unprecedentedly rude way.

“Shut up all of you,” Arman shouted, “and help me. Our Vissarion isn’t dead yet but will be soon if you don’t stop being sorry for yourselves!” The sounds of weeping immediately ended, and associated tears suddenly began to dry.

Despite their incredulity at Arman’s announcement and the manner in which it was conveyed, Tamerlane, Nicolai and Rezan subsequently obeyed the young Armenian’s equally forthright rapidly issued instructions without demur, clinging to the hope that somehow the 15 years old might be proved correct. This desperate aspiration was despite the fact that Vissarion had been declared dead by not one but six doctors.

Tamerlane had never been commanded in this manner by anyone since boyhood but complied with Arman’s instructions without anger or complaint. The conqueror soon lifted Vissarion’s head whilst Rezan opened the young Georgian’s mouth and Nicolai pinched the boy’s lovely pert nose. The young Armenian simultaneously introduced the contents of the phial he was carrying to his beloved friend’s exposed tongue. Everyone then waited for a miracle to happen. However, seconds, which seemed to the conscious present to be like an eternity, passed with no visible reaction from the motionless yet still magnificent form lying on the bed.

Then, the miraculous did happen. Vissarion’s previously quiescent mouth suddenly sought air and, as it succeeded in its mission, the movement in his throat indicated that he had also absorbed the liquid placed on his tongue.

“He’s still alive!” three voices suddenly shouted in disbelieving but elated unison, although Arman remained silent. The young Armenian had just known that his young Georgian friend would not have departed this world without somehow relating a goodbye, if not verbally then spiritually. However, his intense relief that his belief had proven correct was overwhelmed by delayed shock and he fainted, thoughtfully collapsing onto the bed alongside, rather than on top of, the miraculously still living Vissarion.

Later, it took much persuasion on the re-awakened Arman’s part to dissuade Tamerlane from beheading a certain sextet of doctors. The young Armenian’s most persuasive argument was that Vissarion would not approve. The conqueror, watching colour gradually returning back to the young Georgian’s cheeks, as the boy’s chest slowly began to display more noticeable signs of breathing, eventually began to lose his anger in favour of an overwhelming sense of blissful forgiveness. This was fortified further when a pair of sparkling blue eyes eventually revealed themselves.

“How did know?” Tamerlane subsequently asked of Arman. “Instinct,” the young Armenian replied, relating his perceptive wisdom, “as I would have felt Vissarion’s death deep inside, wherever I was or whatever I was doing. As I hadn’t, I knew that he was still alive, regardless of what others said!”

Tamerlane then hugged Arman so tightly that, if he had continued for much longer, the recovering Vissarion would himself surely have instinctively felt the demise, through asphyxiation, of his closest friend. However, the tight embrace was not the cause of the young Armenian’s first tears since his arrival back in the army encampment. These were simply induced by acute happiness.

(Kashan, Persia, January 1393)

Vissarion’s recovery was remarkably swift, given how close he had been to death. The young Georgian’s convalescence was only prolonged because of the need to heal the bandaged knife wound fully to avoid infection. He therefore waited impatiently in Tamerlane’s bed to celebrate belatedly his 16th birthday, with the conqueror considerately relegating himself to the boy’s rarely used tent compartment. However, there were compensations, for the man was not only joined nightly by Nicolai but also now by Rezan.

Sibur was the most put out because Arman spent most of his time, including every night, looking after Vissarion. However, the young cavalry officer was not too displeased, as his young lover was where he should be at this time. He was also wise enough to be sure that he would eventually secure highly pleasurable compensation.

Vissarion’s plot to humanise Rezan had, in the end, not been needed for the shock of the young Georgian’s near death had shattered all of the young Persian’s emotional defences, making him actively not only seek comfort but also love. Tamerlane had been unable to resist administering to the boy’s now obvious fullest needs, and so a long lasting physical as well as spiritual relationship began, with the conqueror careful to cause as little pain as possible when he deflowered the now very willing 10 years old.

The particularly joyous but belated festivities arranged to celebrate the 16th anniversary of Vissarion’s arrival on Earth were, appropriately in the circumstances, to be a joint event shared with Arman because it was scheduled for the latter’s own similar birthday. Tamerlane’s mobile treasury had been denuded to provide sumptuous fare not only for the conqueror, his boys and closest entourage but also the whole army and citizenry of Kashan, one of whom, an old hag with black teeth, was suddenly the focus of attention from many would-be husbands.

The names of Vissarion and Arman, as well as Nicolai and Rezan, were celebrated copiously in Kashan and its environs not only on the festival day itself but also for years afterwards. This was not just as a result of the very generous largesse provided for the birthday occasion, or the money pumped into the city later by the conqueror in gratitude for the salvation of Vissarion, but also because of genuine recognition of the worthiness of Tamerlane’s boys.

Vissarion had proved himself a hero when saving the conqueror’s life, as had Nicolai by killing the assassin before the man could deliver his second blow. Rezan’s perceptiveness had raised the original alarm and produced the solution to the young Georgian’s later prospectively fatal disablement. Arman, through following his instincts, had ensured that the young Persian’s suggestion had born magnificent fruit. Even most of those who had good reason to hate Tamerlane could not help but admire his boys.

Vissarion appreciated the joint festivity with Arman so much that, in future years, he always deliberately celebrated his birthday a month late, in remembrance of this particular very happy occasion. The event was made even more splendid, in the eyes of the young Georgian and Armenian, when Tamerlane announced what one of their presents would be. When spring arrived, the conqueror had declared, he would return to the homelands of the two boys to give appropriate thanksgivings for their continuing key parts in his life.

The beautiful sensuous eyes of all four of Tamerlane’s boys became damp as the conqueror made his heart-felt announcement, and not just at the thought that the young Georgian and Armenian would be seeing their homelands again soon. The young quartet had appreciated once more, from his words and face, how important a role his boys played in their master’s life. However, it was not until the next afternoon that they were to become truly acquainted with their full significance in his existence and, as usual, it was Vissarion, in his wisdom, who spotted the reasons for another’s personal distress. Meanwhile, before this problem manifested itself, Nicolai wondered when he might see his own homeland again.

(Forests of Rus, Khanate of the Golden Horde, same time)

After the earlier devastation heaped upon them by Tamerlane, the Mongol hordes of Rus were regrouping under their overall leader, Toqtamish, whose forces the conqueror had already crushed once. However, the defeat had not been so overwhelming that trouble would not re-emerge from the vast northern forests.

In fact, it would be Toqtamish, actually a former ally of Tamerlane but now merely one of the conqueror’s principal irritants, who would be responsible for Nicolai’s return to his homeland, and sooner rather than later. However, the Mongol leader’s actions would eventually prove to have been initiated without wisdom.

(Edirne, Ottoman Empire, same time)

3 year old Mehmet, heir to the Ottoman throne, played happily with Vladimir, his similarly aged Slav eunuch. Both boys would greatly enjoy each other’s company for almost a decade until someone entered their existence who would change their lives forever.

(Delhi, India, same time)

Krishnan’s impeccable light brown naked form was being intimately and humiliatingly inspected by Islamic traders in the slave market of the capital of the Moslem kingdom. The very pretty young Hindu orphan did not appreciate that it was actually his own 5th birthday. He also did not know at the time that many of the people teeming around the market, and in the multitude of crowded streets of the great metropolis outside, would be dead before he became 11 years old.

(Kashan, Persia, next day)

Vissarion knew instantly what was wrong with Tamerlane and it was not as a result of the surfeit of wine the man had consumed, despite being a Moslem, during the course of the previous day and night in celebration of two 16th birthdays. The conqueror could not rise from his bed and the cause was not physical but mental, because he could also not stop crying as a result of anguish of the mind not body.

Vissarion, wisdom as profound as ever, knew that Tamerlane had suffered much inner turmoil whenever his boys had been in trouble, an apparently regular occurrence. The hidden strain of it all had now caught up with the man. The young blonde blue-eyed Georgian, supreme boyish beauty now fully restored, realised that his master was enduring a mental breakdown, which, if prolonged, could have dire consequences for not only themselves but also everything the conqueror had so far achieved.

(To be continued in chapter 18 – ‘Thanksgivings’)