The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century by Harry Turtledove Page B

lighter-colored folk from whom Dragomir and his mistress had sprung. They were, he’d gathered, peasant Slavs over whom the Bulgars proper ruled.
    He also found that, being mostly unacquainted with either Christianity or Islam, they let in women along with the men. It was scandalous; it was shocking; in Damascus it would have raised riots. Jalal ad-Din wished his eyes were as sharp as they’d been when he was forty, or even fifty.
    He was happily soaking in a warm pool when the three Christian envoys came in. Theodore hissed in horror when he saw the naked women, spun on his heel, and stalked out. Niketas started to follow, but Paul took hold of his arm and stopped him. The older man shrugged out of his brown robe, sank with a sigh of pleasure into the same pool Jalal ad-Din was using. Niketas, by his expression still dubious, joined him a moment later.
    “Flesh is flesh,” Paul said calmly. “By pledging yourself to Christ, you have acknowledged that its pleasures are not for you. No point in fleeing, then.”
    Jalal ad-Din nodded to the Christians. “You have better sense, sir, than I would have looked for in a priest,” he told Paul.
    “I thank you.” If Paul heard the undercurrent of irony in the Arab’s voice, he did not let it affect his own tone, which briefly shamed Jalal ad-Din. Paul went on, “I am no priest in any case, only a humble monk, here to advise my superiors if they care to listen to me.”
    “Only!” Jalal ad-Din scoffed. But, he had to admit to himself, the monk sounded completely sincere. He sighed; hating his opponents would have been much easier were they evil. “They would be wise to listen to you,” he said. “I think you are a holy man.”
    “You give me too much credit,” Paul said.
    “No, he does not,” Niketas told his older colleague. “Not just by words do you instruct the barbarians hereabouts, but also through the life you live, which by its virtues illuminates your teachings.”
    Paul bowed. From a man squatting naked in waist-deep water, the gesture should have seemed ludicrous. Somehow it did not.
    Niketas turned to Jalal ad-Din. “Did I hear correctly that you are styled as-Stambuli?”
    “You did,” the Arab answered proudly.
    “How strange,” Niketas murmured. “Perhaps here God grants me the chance to avenge the fall of the Queen of Cities.”
    He spoke as if the caliph’s armies had taken Constantinople only yesterday, not long before he was born. Seeing Jalal ad-Din’s confusion, Paul said, “Niketas’ mother is Anna, the daughter of Leo.”
    “Yes?” Jalal ad-Din was polite, but that meant nothing to him. “And my mother was Zinawb, the daughter of Mu’in ibn Abd al-Wahhab. What of it?”
    “Ah, but your grandfather, however illustrious he may have been (I do not slight him, I assure you), was never Basileus ton Rhomaion —Emperor of the Romans.”
    “ That Leo!” Jalal ad-Din thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He nodded to Niketas. “Your grandfather, sir, was a very devil. He fought us with all he had, and sent too many brave lads to paradise before their time.”
    Niketas raised a dark eyebrow. His tonsured skull went oddly with those bushy brows and the thick beard that covered his cheeks almost to the eyes. “Too many, you say; I would say, not enough.”
    “So you would,” Jalal ad-Din agreed. “Had Leo beaten us, you might be Roman Emperor yourself now. But Abd ar-Rahman the commander of the faithful rules Constantinople, and you are a priest in a foreign land. It is as Allah wills.”
    “So I must believe,” Niketas said. “But just as Leo fought you with every weapon he had, I shall oppose you with all my means. The Bulgars must not fall victim to your false belief. It would be too great a blow for Christendom to suffer, removing from us all hope of greater growth.”
    Niketas’ mind worked like an emperor’s, Jalal ad-Din thought—unlike many of his Christian colleagues, he understood the long view. He’d