Blood of Kings

by Andrew James

  Shivering in his cloak and lulled by the monotony of the journey, Darius’s mind began to wander. Soon they would find the Persian camp, and he would warn Cyrus that if he advanced north he’d be walking into a trap. The King of Kings would listen calmly, his long face impassive as the reality of Darius’s words sank in. He would sigh a couple of times before reluctantly postponing his plans for an invasion, while more men were brought up from other parts of the Empire to reinforce his army. That would take months, by which time the Saka would have slipped away into the empty wastes. They were nomads, they had no cities, just herds and wagons. Letting them go now would mean postponing military action until next autumn, when they migrated south to raid again. The Ma-Saka despised the Empire’s farmers as cowards and unnatural corruptors of nature, but that didn’t stop them coming south every autumn to steal their crops.

  And the raids this year had been savage and unremitting. Darius had never known a time like it. Almost as though the northerners were trying to provoke a response. He thought of those armour-piercing arrows and something deep in his mind nagged at him. Too tired to tease it from the tangle of thoughts swirling round his head, he considered Cyrus’s expedition. The twenty thousand men Cyrus had led north could defeat any one of the Saka tribes. But the Saka weren’t just one people. Their tribes stretched away into the unknown northern wastes, where the never-ending snows fell and the sun didn’t rise for months at a time. These fierce, warlike tribes never combined. Yet remembering the multitude of warriors hiding in the valley, Darius knew that somehow, this time they had. He rubbed the back of his neck, worried by the prospect.

  Of course the news would not please Cyrus, but the king would see that in bringing it Darius had done him a great service. He would understand that it had been necessary to take a stand against Vinda, and ignore the Crown Prince’s written order.

  And when Vinda slandered Darius to the Crown Prince, surely Cyrus would protect him?

  4

  The Persian Camp

  ‘Been in the wars have we, soldier?’ The Immortal satapatish leant casually on his silver-topped spear and took a leisurely look at Darius’s filthy gown and bloody armour. He was a Pomegranate Bearer, member of an elite, and the mockery in the man’s voice was tinged with indifference.

  Darius had already been held up by some idiot perimeter guards half the morning, even though he’d showed his Imperial token and explained that he had vital news. They said something about ‘orders from the Crown Prince to tighten security’, but whatever the orders were they hadn’t detained Vinda, who had strolled straight through. Now Darius fretted at the further delay as he handed over his dagger and sword. ‘I have an urgent message for the King of Kings!’

  The Pomegranate Bearer stared at him.

  Darius pulled a clay token from his gown and thrust it at the guard. The Pomegranate Bearer looked at it dubiously, then sent one of his men into the massive purple and gold royal tent behind him. At the same moment, ten paces away, Vinda emerged from Crown Prince Cambyses’ tent. He was dressed in a clean gown, his beard freshly curled, the smug look on his face suggesting that while Darius was delayed, Vinda had been eating a hearty meal. The Immortals snapped to attention as he passed and the noble flashed Darius a superior smile. Darius noticed with a stab of envy that Vinda’s skin had the pink glow of a man who had just bathed in hot water.

  A thin, lavishly attired court eunuch peered out of Cyrus’s tent and minced towards Darius, holding the token he had given the guard. The eunuch looked the filthy soldier up and down, frowned, pursed painted lips and wrinkled a delicately powdered nose. Deciding he really didn’t have any choice in the matter, he ushered Darius into a bathroom scented with unguents and rich with bowls and tubs of gold. He watched from the corner of his eye as Darius washed his hands, face and feet, then led him through a dining chamber, a drinking salon, an ante-chamber and finally into an audience chamber fifty paces wide. Opulent with silks, precious metals and rare woods, the middle of the floor was covered by a finely patterned rug, around which sat such a gathering of men that Darius had trouble stepping over them. Some, wearing the dazzling armour of generals, were sitting bolt upright. Others reclining against cushions wore the elegant gowns of high-ranking courtiers. Among the crowd Darius recognized the sloped shoulders of Crown Prince Cambyses, the immaculate figure of Prince Bardiya – decked as ever in tasteful jewels – the distinctive red beard of Field Marshall Otaneh and the golden robes of Croesus, the former Lydian king. Shoulders back, head held high, Darius ignored their stares.

  The tread of his feet softened by the rug, Darius paused and breathed deeply. The air reeked of luxury and power. White curls of frankincense rose from silver altars, and costly essences wafted towards him from the clothes and bodies of the counsellors. But stronger still was something he couldn’t define, an aura of authority that emanated from the man at the far end of the chamber, the man who held the fate of twenty-two nations and forty million subjects in his hands. On a carved, cedarwood throne rich with ivory and pearl sat Cyrus, King of Kings, King of Lands, King of the Persians and Medes, King of the Four Corners of the World.

  Cyrus was an elderly man with a long, determined chin and intelligent, sparkling eyes. His skin was dark for a Persian, betraying his father’s Elamite blood. Resting on his swept-back white hair was the golden kitaris crown. Of the men in the tent, Cyrus alone made no concession to fashion, dressed in the finest cloth but simply cut, wearing little jewellery beyond ear pendants of crystal and gold. He was in the middle of speaking, his soft, low voice managing to fill the tent. Seeing Darius he stopped, lifted piercing grey eyes and furrowed his brows.

  But Darius knew Cyrus would receive him. He had been commanded to report back as soon as he returned, no matter what time of day or night. He briefly touched his forehead to the ground then rose. ‘Forgive my intrusion, King of Kings, but I have important news. You sent me to …’

  Cyrus cut Darius short with a raised hand. ‘I sent you to spy out the northern bank of the Yaksharta, and I thank you for your efforts. But Crown Prince Cambyses has received intelligence from his most trusted spy in the Ma-Saka camp, who assures us there are no tribesmen within three days’ ride of the river. My army is already preparing to cross. We are just discussing the details now.’

  Shocked by the news, Darius couldn’t keep the horror from his voice. ‘Great King! I have seen a vast Saka army!’

  A flurry of murmurs rose from the assembled counsellors, some disbelieving, others anxious. Cyrus waved his fingers to dismiss them. In silence the counsellors picked up their clay tablets and parchment rolls, touched their foreheads to the ground or kissed the King of Kings’ cheek, according to their rank, and left. When they were gone, Cyrus ordered his guards to withdraw. Darius wondered what had brought on his anger. He had followed his orders and come back to report. Why did it look as though the King of Kings was getting ready to dress him down?

  Swaying with exhaustion, Darius stood facing the most powerful man in the world. Having just risked his life for his king he expected to be offered wine, or at least water. He was not. Nor did Cyrus ask after his health, the blood on his armour, the obvious stiffness in his shoulder or the wounds on his face. Cyrus slammed an open palm against the side of the throne. ‘Why do you come to my council and lie?’

  Darius stared at the king with his jaw hanging open. This wasn’t the reception he’d expected. When he tried to speak, no words came out. He swallowed and tried again.

  ‘Lie, Great King?’

  ‘Oh, just tell me what you say you saw,’ said Cyrus curtly.

  Pulling himself together, Darius told his story. When he’d finished Cyrus’s face was inscrutable. He unlocked a small ebony box, removed a clay disc stamped with a griffin’s head and held it out for Darius to inspect. ‘Have you seen this before?’

  Darius felt the blood drain from his face. It was a token from the pirradazish, the Imperial messenger service. Each was uniquely numbered and he recognized t
he number. ‘I … have, Great King.’

  Next Cyrus took from the box two fist-sized clay tablets with groups of thin, wedge-shaped marks impressed into the clay in neat rows. He showed them to Darius. ‘And these?’

  Darius did not need to inspect them. They bore his seal, a lion and a spear. His legs felt weak. He looked the king in the eye and nodded.

  ‘Good. Crown Prince Cambyses assured me they were genuine, and that his spies intercepted them on the Royal Road. But in the interests of justice I thought I should check. No man should be condemned without being heard.’ He placed the items carefully back in the box, locked it and hung the key on a fine gold chain around his neck. ‘They are just the final proof. Even without them your murmurings were well known to me. Little is said in this Empire that I do not hear about eventually. You think I am a “war-crazed old fool”, do you not? That the invasion is “a waste of lives”? That we need a king who “develops trade rather than making war”?’

  Darius’s guts churned as he recognized his own words. Vaguely he wondered which bastard had informed on him, but he would probably never know; Cambyses had paid informers everywhere. He swallowed hard. ‘That was wineshop talk, nothing more. I have always served you loyally, Great King.’

  ‘The magi think otherwise. They warned me they had seen clear portents of your treachery in the stars. As did my son. Just before noon, Cambyses informed me that his spies have picked up on a plot to kill me. He said that you would come here with a story about finding a Saka army. He warned that you are trying to lead me into an ambush. No sooner has he finished than you turn up in person trying to peddle this absurdity, which flies in the face of everything he has learned about the size and location of the Saka forces.’

  ‘But it is true, sire!’

  ‘Tell me, Darius, why should I believe your report, and doubt my own son’s, when I already know that you dishonour my house and conspire against me?’

  Realizing the hopelessness of his situation, Darius’s shoulders slumped. He looked at the box with the two clay tablets and lowered his voice. ‘I may have done some foolish things, I admit, sire, but I have never conspired against you. When Crown Prince Cambyses came to see you he already knew I had found the army, because Vindafrana, son of Vayaspara, has been in his tent half the morning while I was held up by the perimeter guards. The same Vinda who tried to stop me scouting the valley in the first place, and claimed it was on Crown Prince Cambyses’ orders.’

  Darius felt the King of Kings’ eyes boring into him. He looked into them. They were as hard as flint. ‘Are you accusing the Crown Prince of lying to me?’ Cyrus asked slowly.

  Darius knew he was trapped. He dare not tell the truth; but he would be damned if he lied. Beginning to comprehend just how serious his position was, he lowered his eyes.

  ‘Understand this, young man. No matter how hard you try to drive a wedge between us, when I die it is Cambyses who will rule in my place. No one else. Perhaps he will prove a bad king: I know he drinks too much, I know he has a temper. But Cambyses will be crowned.’

  Shocked, Darius spoke his inner thoughts aloud before he could stop himself. ‘Sire, even knowing his faults, you would set him to rule over Persia. Why?’

  Cyrus shrugged. ‘He is my son.’

  ‘Is a king’s duty to his subjects not greater than his duty to his son, Great King?’

  Cyrus’s face coloured with anger. He settled deeper into his throne, wrapped his cloak tightly around him. The all-powerful King of Kings was gone, in his place was an old man with a pointed white beard and sad eyes. His voice was soft and low. ‘It is a fair question. And for the sake of what I am about to do to you, I feel I owe an explanation. Shortly after I was born, Astyigas, my grandfather and Emperor of the Medes, dreamt that I would take his throne and ordered that I be exposed on a mountain. As King and Queen of Anshan my parents had an army, and the chance of an alliance with Babylon. But they did not even try to resist. They simply gave me up to die.’

  Cyrus’s fingers plucked idly at the gold tassels on the flared sleeve of his gown. His expression was distant. Lost in the past he barely seemed to know that Darius was there.

  ‘Fortunately Ahura Mazda smiled on me. He saved me, and I survived. For ten years I was a slave, a shepherd boy tending the royal flocks. Then Astyigas relented, acknowledged me as a prince of his blood and took me to his palace. I thought when my parents saw me they would love me and regret what they had done. Instead they were cold. I swore then that when my own sons were born I would love them and protect them against the world. Come what may.’

  Cyrus’s eyes were fixed on him, waiting for a reaction. Darius understood. Knowing what it felt like to be abandoned by his own parents, Cyrus would defend Cambyses to the bitter end. Good or bad, right or wrong.

  Cyrus’s anger had evaporated. Leaning forward, he placed a hand on the young man’s forearm. ‘Darius, I know you carry the blood of a king in your veins. As a dutiful grandson you must have hoped one day to take back Arsama’s throne. That was an honourable thought and I do not blame you for it. Nor am I blind. Perhaps you would have made a better king than Cambyses. You are a good soldier, and I am told you have a sense of justice, which my son does not.’ He reached for a goblet and moistened his lips with wine. ‘But I must protect my own!’

  There was an edge to Cyrus’s voice that made Darius look up sharply. Cyrus’s eyes were wet, but his face was hard. Whispering, ‘Forgive me, Darius,’ the king cried out to his Immortal guards who rushed into the chamber and seized Darius, forcing his arms behind his back.

  The Immortal satapatish swept back immaculate robes and knelt before the king. Cyrus looked down at him. ‘Prepare a sharpened stake. Send word to Darius’s father, Hystaspes, son of Arsama. It is only right that he be told. Darius has been sentenced to die.’

  5

  Hystaspes was looking old, his hair greyer and his face sagging more than Darius remembered. But he was still agile enough, once he had hitched up his gown, to lower himself to his knees and touch his forehead to the silken rug in front of Cyrus’s throne. Darius reminded himself that his father was only a little over fifty. Given that his grandfather, Arsama, was well into his seventies, Hystaspes might have many years ahead of him. But that didn’t look likely at present. Although Darius was still reeling from the body blow of his arrest, exhaustion and hunger compounding the shock, it didn’t take much to work out that neither Darius nor his father had very long to live.

  As Hystaspes crawled on his face to the throne, tightly packed courtiers jostled for a better view, shoving their elbows discreetly into each other’s ribs. Darius heard them chattering waspishly. Stranded among them he saw Ardu, his young kinsman, looking utterly bemused. Though he felt anything but confident, somehow Darius summoned sufficient composure to give him a smile. Ardu smiled tensely in reply, but his dark, shaggy eyebrows were drawn tightly together and his palms were turned upwards as if to ask, ‘What on earth is going on?’

  Darius shook his head. He wished he knew.

  There was shouting outside and Cyrus waved Hystaspes to one side as a prisoner was dragged into the tent, kicking and screaming. The man had dark eyes and the powerful chest and upper arms of an archer. The guards threw him roughly to his knees. ‘He raped a slave girl, cut her throat and stole a horse, sire. We just caught him trying to ride out of the camp. Will you deal with him now, Great King, or shall I take him away?’

  ‘A horse thief, rapist, murderer and deserter?’ Cyrus stared at him. ‘Do you deny the charges?’

  The archer hung his head.

  ‘You realize an example will have to be made?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘What tribe are you?’

  ‘Maraphii, Great King.’

  Cyrus turned to one of his four Spearbearer guards. ‘Your tribe, Mithradata. Kill him as you see fit.’

  The archer began struggling. ‘She was only a slave!’

  Mithradata signalled the other guards, who pinioned the arc
her’s shoulders and ripped the gown from his body. A eunuch brought a sharpened stake. He rolled aside the rug and leather floor sheet, pushed the throng of courtiers back.

  Seeing the sharpened stake the archer’s face turned pale. His struggling redoubled. ‘No, Great King! Put me in the front line! I swear, I’ll fight …’

  Three guards overpowered him, threw him to the ground, pinned him on his back and splayed his legs, while the fourth took the stake from the eunuch and placed it carefully, the point touching the archer’s flesh just below the base of the scrotum. Feeling the sharpened wood against his skin the man cried out in panic. With both hands the Spearbearer rammed the stake in, then struck it three times with a mallet, driving the point through the archer’s pelvic cavity into the abdomen. Skewered through his bowels, the archer’s body went rigid, his repeated shrieks so wild that many courtiers grew pale. Several turned aside to vomit as a foul mixture of blood and faeces gushed from the wound. The Spearbearer struck three more times, forcing the point up through soft guts and along the length of the spine, tearing major nerves and blood vessels, into the chest cavity, where it pierced the spongy tissue of a lung. Blood spewed from the archer’s mouth as he wailed, writhing on the stake in excruciating pain, his contorted face and bulging eyes looking barely human. The massive rupture in his lung caused it to collapse, producing a sucking wheeze as he struggled to breathe. Short of air, the archer’s heart began to race, cold sweat breaking out on his skin. His lips turned blue, the veins in his neck began to swell. Striking again with the mallet, the Spearbearer drove the point deeper still. When it cleaved the archer’s heart his frame was gripped by a massive convulsion. His rigid limbs slumped, his mouth went slack.