The King and the Slave

by Tim Leach

  ‘What kind of plan?’

  ‘A trick for the Massagetae. You will like it. Risky, but inventive.’

  ‘That does not sound like you.’

  ‘Your bad influence on me,’ Harpagus said. ‘I can always say it was one of your daft ideas if it goes wrong.’

  ‘How comforting.’

  Harpagus stood, slapping the dust from his tunic. ‘Come on. The boats are waiting.’ He reached down and offered the slave a hand. ‘You cross with me.’

  Croesus took one last look at the river, then clasped the other man’s hand, struggled to his feet, and made his way slowly towards the boats.

  As he walked, motion caught his eye. He watched a single horseman ride down from the high point on the plains, travelling south. A lone traveller, he thought to himself, and paid it no mind.

  4

  At dawn the next day, a Persian detachment marched out from the encampment on the far side of the river. They hunted, not for water or meat, but for a particular kind of landscape. They did not look for a place to stage an ambush or fight a pitched battle. They looked for a place that would be tempting for other reasons. They looked for a place of beauty.

  After some searching, they found a pleasant hollow beside a small river, a tributary of the great Yakhsha Arta. It was a spot where any seasoned rider would stop and water his horses, then be tempted to linger on, listening to the silvery sound of the shallow water, enjoying the sun on his face and the soft earth under his back.

  They planted four high poles and strung a heavy cloth covering between them. There were clouds blowing in, and it would not do to have their trap made unappealing by the rain. In the dry space below they laid heavy cushions and unrolled thick carpets that were perfect for bare feet to dance on.

  They laid out the gifts, chosen with care. Gold was worthless to the Massagetae. One of their most common metals, it was considered a poor, soft substitute for brass. They would have laughed at jewels as well, trinkets for women of no value to a warrior. Instead, the Persians offered iron daggers with intricately patterned bone handles, bronze spears and axes, light tents that held out the rain and were quick to put up or collapse. Fine treasures for nomads who valued only practicality.

  They surrounded these with dozens of amphoras of wine, dark and unwatered. They placed skinned sheep carcasses above stacked wood and kindling, and waited for a north wind to blow. When it came, they lit the fires under the carcasses, watching the cooking smoke blow north, towards the Massagetae.

  They should have waited all day and night with no success. The Massagetae, at the great conference of shepherds that had gathered their army together, had been warned against greed and told to be alert to the trickery of the Persians. But, by chance or by fate, a group rode within sight of the camp, and at their head was a captain who had his own reason for taking a foolish chance.

  He gave a long, ululating war cry, and swung his band of horsemen back towards the trap.

  As Croesus passed through the camp towards the king’s tent the next morning, he noted, as was his habit, the mood of the men around him, the way a sailor would study the sky to glean a sense of the day ahead. He had learned to watch for the signs of trouble, the whispering talk, the silent man sitting alone, that spoke of illness or defeat. On this day, he saw spearmen smiling openly, small infractions of discipline going unpunished by the captains, people telling stories with animated motions of their hands. Whatever had happened in the night, it seemed the plan had gone well.

  He reached the king’s tent, but paused before he went in, stopped by a sound. He listened again, and from within the folds of the tent he recognized one of the many sounds of war that he had almost managed to forget. The soft clink of chains.

  The prisoner was a young man, who sat hunched and dirty and miserable, in one corner of the tent. His hands and feet were bound together with iron chains, which moved and rattled as the prisoner lifted them up and stared at them. He stared at his bindings with such horror that Croesus wondered if the young man had seen such a thing before. Perhaps the rough justice of the plains had no use for such things, exile and the whip being sufficient punishment for all the crimes that a man could commit. Confinement was a horror that he had not dreamed of.

  ‘Your trick worked, I take it?’ he said to Harpagus.

  ‘Their messenger gave me the idea, when he refused the wine,’ said the general. ‘Their people are not used to it.’ He nodded towards the prisoner. ‘We caught them sleeping off the drink.’

  ‘And who is this?’

  ‘The queen’s son,’ Cyrus said. ‘He is called Spargapises.’

  At the sound of his name, the one word he could have understood out of what was being said, Spargapises burst into tears and covered his face. Croesus looked away from the prisoner, and noted an absence in the tent.

  ‘Where is Cambyses?’ Croesus said to the king.

  Cyrus hesitated. ‘There are other things that I wanted him to do,’ the king said slowly. ‘There is no need for him to be here.’

  You did not want him to see this, Croesus thought. ‘What will you do with him?’ he said aloud.

  ‘Tomyris’s messenger is back again. No doubt to bargain for the return of her son.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  Croesus reached out a hand and leaned against one of the poles of the tent, feeling the grain of the wood against his palm as if it were a spear in his hand. He felt something akin to the warrior’s weariness, a particular exhaustion born of fear and doubt. ‘Keep her son as a hostage,’ he said. ‘Make peace with her. That is what I think you should do.’

  The king’s face was unreadable. ‘Harpagus?’ he said.

  ‘It has been done before,’ the general said slowly. ‘But she will not surrender fully to you. Not even for her son. You may get a tribute, but that is all.’

  ‘I do not know if I can be satisfied with that,’ the king said, almost to himself. ‘We have come a long way.’

  ‘No one has ever won tribute from the Massagetae,’ Croesus said. ‘You could be the first.’

  Cyrus fell silent and thought for a time. He looked at the prisoner, who stared mutely back at him, and then nodded to one of the guards.

  When the Massagetae emissary entered, he did not bow, and spoke at once. ‘I have a message from the queen.’

  Cyrus inclined his head. ‘You may speak.’

  ‘Glutton as you are for blood,’ the messenger said, ‘you have no cause to be proud of this day’s work. There was no soldier’s courage here. Your weapon was the fruit of the vine. Give me back my son and leave my country, and be content with your little victory. If you refuse, I swear by the Sun to give you more blood than you can drink, for all your gluttony.’

  There was silence in the tent, broken only by the quiet sobbing of the prisoner, the rattle of his chains.

  ‘She certainly has courage,’ Cyrus said at last. ‘And a fine way with words. Tell her that her son will be safe if she offers me a yearly tribute, and will swear to a peaceful alliance with me. I will not seek to conquer her people. I do not ask her to prostrate herself before the king of Persia, but she must bend her knee a little.’ Cyrus paused, and when he spoke again, there was a different quality to his speech. He spoke as a man, not as a king. ‘Will she accept, do you think?’

  The messenger hesitated, caught by the king’s plain talk, and Croesus wondered if he had sons in the army. If he, like Croesus, confined by the inflexible demands of his ruler, was looking for some way of making peace. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps. I will try.’

  A voice spoke in a language that Croesus could not understand. Spargapises was speaking to the messenger in the tongue of the Massagetae, his palms open in supplication.

  ‘What does he say?’ the king said.

  ‘He asks that his hands be freed, so that he can write a reply,’ the messenger said.

  ‘He can relay it through you, can he not?’


  Hearing the objection in Cyrus’s tone, Spargapises repeated his words.

  ‘He wishes to write it,’ the messenger said. ‘To be sure his message is exact.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Cyrus. ‘Why not? Free his hands.’

  The guard unchained the young man’s hands and handed him a wax tablet. Spargapises stared up at the messenger again, and the other man nodded to him. The prisoner gripped the sides of the table, in one sharp motion he brought his head down against the corner.

  The snap seemed to fix every man in the room to his place. Every man, except Spargapises. He lifted his head from the table, his movements slow and clumsy, his eyes dull, already lifeless, as if he were already dead and moving by instinct, the way a bird with its head struck off will dance from the butcher’s block. He brought his head down again.

  His head came up, and in the stillness of the moment Croesus saw his face quite clearly, sheeted with blood, running with tears. A guard stirred at last, stepped forward and reached out a hand to stop the prisoner, but Spargapises brought his head down a third time, and Croesus heard a sound like a dry branch breaking.

  No one spoke. Croesus stared at the ruined man, curled up in front of the table like a sacrifice before the altar, and watched the blood run out over the ground. This body would be the first. There would soon be thousands more to join it.

  ‘I think you have your answer,’ Cyrus said. ‘You can expect us some time after dawn.’

  ‘Very well.’ The messenger bowed, and when he stood, he spoke again, offhand, the way one would give advice that had little consequence. ‘My people cannot read or write. If you had studied us better, you would have known that. And you would not have let them unchain his hands.’

  Cyrus stared at him levelly. ‘I should have you killed for your part in this.’

  ‘Perhaps you should. But you will not.’

  ‘You knew what he would do?’ Croesus said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Massagetae. ‘And I wish he had not done so. Perhaps we could have had a peace.’

  ‘So why did you let him?’

  The messenger paused. ‘Who am I to get between a man and the death he chooses?’ he said, and walked from the tent.

  The guards stepped forward to take away the body, but Cyrus waved them back. He stared at the dead young man, his mouth slightly parted, and said nothing for a time.

  Croesus exchanged a look with Harpagus. ‘Master?’ the slave said.

  ‘He did it because he shamed his mother,’ the king said eventually. ‘Do you think Cambyses would do the same thing for me? That he would take his life, to save my honour?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘That is a lie. He would not do it, would he?’ said Cyrus. ‘I miss speaking to you of things other than war. We used to, did we not? In Babylon, and before then as well. My tame philosopher. That is what Cassandane used to call you.’

  Used to. Croesus saw that Harpagus had noted that. ‘You flatter, master,’ Croesus said. ‘I’m not wise enough to have earned that name, even given in jest.’

  Cyrus did not seem to hear him. ‘After our war is done, we will go to Pasargadae. Or back to Babylon. And we shall talk as a king and a philosopher. For the rest of our lives, perhaps, like something out of the old stories. What do you say?’

  ‘I would like that,’ Croesus said.

  ‘Perhaps I will free you. I imagine your thinking is shackled as much as you are. I would like you to think freely with me.’

  He will free me now that I am too old to run from him, Croesus thought. ‘A generous offer, master, but not one that I have earned.’ He ran his tongue over dry lips. ‘We should leave you, master. Rest and sleep, Cyrus. Tomorrow, after the battle is won, we can go home.’

  5

  The army slept.

  They were a city of men once more, their women and children left on the other side of the river. Some had tents, but most simply threw their blankets down on the ground, spoke for a time around dying campfires, and then let themselves drift into sleep. All feared the omen that might come in a dream, the gods whispering a man’s death to him the day before it came.

  The gods could not turn death aside from their favourites. They could merely give warning to those they loved. The greatest of warriors knew for decades when and how their deaths would come, and they could shape their lives around that end, fear no man in battle save the one they knew was destined to kill them. The ones the gods blessed only lightly, mere passing fancies to the divinities, knew of it just one night before.

  These men lived in a world where death was commonplace; where men died in their thousands on the battlefield; where a fever could kill in a day and no one could tell you why. Yet this truth was known by all – some knew their death was coming days or hours before, some barely moments before the end. But there were few who could meet it well.

  Perhaps none.

  *

  Sometime after midnight, many hours before dawn, Croesus woke to the sound of footsteps.

  He had slept through the hundred pairs of feet that passed by his tent that night, as the sentries came and went, but this particular pair had woken him. After many years of conditioning, even his sleeping mind was able to pick out the distinct tread of a man heading straight towards him, of a guard coming to summon him to the king. He had, he supposed, had much practice.

  And so, when the guard threw open the tent, Croesus was already sitting up and busy gathering his few possessions. He nodded to the guard and put a finger to his lips, and quietly, carefully, stepped over the other slaves and made his way out of the tent.

  He had always slept alone when he was a king, and, at first, had been unable to sleep in a tent filled with the sounds and smells of half a dozen other men. Now the thought of being alone in the night terrified him, and he found himself quite afraid of waking without the comfortable warmth and sense of safety that their company provided. He wondered if the king had the same terror. As a boy, the stories said, Cyrus had been raised as common horse herder, and perhaps had never grown used to the lonely sleep of the king. Perhaps this was why he had fallen into the habit of summoning his slave in the middle of the night.

  Sometimes Cyrus woke him for his advice in an emergency. At other times, it was to talk idly, or to share old stories. Sometimes he would be summoned to the king’s side in order simply to sit in silence with him until dawn broke. Croesus often wondered if Cyrus woke anyone else in this way, though on reflection, he thought not. After all, he was the only member of the council who was an actual possession of the king.

  He reached the great tent, and passed deep into it, to the chamber where the king slept, or did not sleep. A small fire burned in a tiny brazier, and by its light he could see the king, sitting upright in his blankets, staring straight ahead. He did not acknowledge his visitor.

  ‘Where are your guards, Cyrus?’

  ‘I sent them away.’ In the darkness, Croesus could not read the king’s eyes. ‘I do not want anyone to hear this but you.’

  ‘You can trust them with everything, Cyrus.’

  ‘Not this.’ Abruptly, he said: ‘They say you had a true dream once, Croesus.’

  ‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘I dreamed the death of my first-born son.’

  ‘Did you know it? When you woke? That it was a prophecy?’

  ‘I thought that I knew at once. I did not truly know until what I had seen came to pass.’

  Cyrus said nothing, and Croesus came forward and sat on the ground beside him. ‘Tell me your dream.’

  ‘In my dream, I saw Cambyses standing over Babylon. He stood tall, like a giant or a god, towering over the city. On his back was a pair of huge black wings. Like a crow’s wings, thick feathered and dripping oil. They stretched out, over the horizon in both directions. Even as large as he was in my dream, the weight of those wings should have broken his back. But he stood, tall and impossible, and he smiled at me.

  ‘In an instant, I could see one wing dipped in the waters of the Aegean. Black
oil seeped from those feathers into the sea around Phocaea. The fish floated on the surface and drowned in it. Then, in a moment, I could see the tip of the other wing. It rested, taunting me, in the main square of Pasargadae. My home. He had spread his wings over my whole empire. Then I woke.’

  ‘Are you afraid, Cyrus?’ said Croesus.

  ‘Yes.’

  Croesus thought on this. ‘I have never seen you afraid,’ he said.

  ‘I have never had a dream like that before. Do you still dream, Croesus?

  ‘I do not sleep much. I think my body knows it will die soon, and wants to squeeze all the waking life it can from what time I have.’

  ‘I do not sleep either. I suppose the happy sleep well. Not men like us.’ He paused, lifted his hand and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. Perhaps some remnant of the dream was still embedded in his vision, and he sought to wipe it away. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘I do not know. I am not a seer.’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘You should do nothing. If it is not a true dream, then it would be madness to act on it. If it is, then there is nothing you can do to stop it.’

  ‘Perhaps it is a warning. A call for me to take action.’

  ‘I do not think the gods have given us the power to change our fates. They decide, and there is no altering the course they have chosen. Sometimes they offer us a glimpse of our ruin, and they call that a kindness.’

  ‘I cannot believe that. All my life I have been protected by the gods. Would they abandon me now?’

  ‘The gods abandon us all eventually.’

  ‘Enough. You will not speak in that way.’

  ‘You want me to speak when you want, and to tell you what you want to hear. I think that that you have no intention of freeing me. That was just empty talk, I suppose?’

  Cyrus closed his eyes and dropped his head. Croesus had never seen him look so tired. ‘We should have stayed in Babylon,’ the king said. ‘Or we could have gone to Pasargadae. I have never even seen the palace there. It might not even exist, for all I know, except in my dreams.’ Cyrus opened his eyes again and looked at his slave. ‘You could not change prophecy. But perhaps I can. I am a greater king than you were, Croesus. You have forgotten that.’