by Andrew James
‘Frada!’ Darius roared his friend’s name and spread his arms wide, then stopped and stared in dismay. Frada’s wounds must have turned feverish after all. His powerful shoulders and bull-like neck had wasted away, his eyes were sunken and dark. But once Darius got over the initial shock his joy returned, unable to contain his pleasure simply that Frada was alive. He leant over the stretcher and grasped the bony shoulders. After all the madness Darius had witnessed, it was good to see his friend.
With a drawn smile, Frada pulled a leather pouch of boiled camel from under the blanket on his stretcher. Then surreptitiously added a skin of date wine.
Darius squatted beside the stretcher and laughed for the first time in ages. He had tried hard to come to terms with dying, telling himself that all he would leave behind was an ungrateful world where the innocent suffered for the powerful. Then he would remember the things he loved: Parmys’s laughter, a red sun over the desert, a leopard stalking in the mountains, a falcon swooping in a crystal sky … and, with a sob, he’d admit he desperately didn’t want to die. But now that he knew he hadn’t been totally abandoned, the cold sweats in the early hours, the black moods, the crushing despair, all were forgotten in an instant. He reached into the pouch and tore hungrily into a chunk of the delicate, pink meat.
Frada smiled as Darius wolfed it down, then pointed at his chains. ‘So what’s going on? You get drunk and hit someone again?’
‘Drunk? By the Sacred Flame, is that what you heard? I thought the “Fall of Darius” was the talk of the camp?’
‘Must have passed me by. A lot did. I vaguely remember you saying you were going to report to Cyrus, but you never came back. Then the surgeon cut, and when my head finally cleared from all the poppy and wine I was too ill to speak. When the fever broke, everyone I asked about you was tight-lipped. I only found out you were with us when I came across Hystaspes this morning.’ Frada looked at Darius strangely. ‘Even he was reluctant to talk about his son.’
‘I’m here because of Vinda and Cambyses. Lying bastards.’
Frada glanced at the tent flap anxiously. ‘Be quiet! It looks like you’re in enough trouble already …’
‘What do I care, Frada? They can only kill me once, and thanks to Vinda, insulting our beloved Crown Prince is already on my list of crimes.’ Darius related what had happened in Cyrus’s tent.
Lying on his side on the stretcher, Frada listened attentively, occasionally giving a small, astonished gasp. ‘I knew the army was preparing to march, but I thought they were following us south. It never occurred to me they would go north. The only way through the mountains is the pass that we took!’
‘Exactly. And the only way out is down into the valley where the Saka are waiting.’ Darius could see it all. ‘As soon as Cyrus has gone through the pass the Saka will block it behind him. He will be trapped …’
Frada looked pale. ‘After all we went through to find the Saka camp. Now they ignore us!’
‘I can cope with being ignored. It’s these chains that bother me.’
Frada laughed softly, recapturing a little of his old sparkle. The laughter quickly passed and his face darkened. ‘Oh … Cambyses mentioned something about you dishonouring a princess. Is that true?’
Darius felt his hackles rise at Cambyses’ lie. He and Parmys had merely kissed, nothing more. Well, not much more. She hadn’t been dishonoured. And Darius was annoyed at the way Frada asked the question. Almost accusing. What business was it of Frada’s, anyway? ‘Ignore him, Frada. It’s nothing. She hasn’t been dishonoured.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure! I would hardly forget, would I?’
‘Darius, I love you like a brother, but even I can see you are your own worst enemy sometimes.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that sneaking into the seraglio to see Parmys would land you in trouble one day?’
‘I love her, Frada.’
‘Things are so simple with you: “I want to do this and I’ll let nothing get in my way.” ’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘Not if you are trapped in a cave surrounded by enemies and you have to cut your way out. But if you love a girl who’s beyond your reach …’
‘She’s not beyond my reach!’
‘All I am saying is that if you … well, if somehow we can get you out of this mess … it may not be wise in future to be so … intense … about her. It was a childhood infatuation the two of you had, that was all. She’s a catch greater than a sea of emeralds! You must have realized Bardiya was always going to marry her off to some rich noble. Be realistic.’
Darius glared at him. Frada spread his hands wide. ‘I know. It’s none of my business. I just wouldn’t want you to be hurt if it happened, that’s all.’
‘Bardiya would let her choose,’ Darius said, hoping it was true.
‘Maybe. But even if he did, would she choose you?’ Frada shifted on his stretcher. ‘She might want someone more … sociable.’
‘Sociable?’
‘You never showed your face at court. You didn’t mix much in society.’
‘I hunted with Cyrus and Bardiya.’
‘True. But even there, most of the courtiers just hunt to be seen, and for the banquet afterwards. You went for the chase and the kill.’
Darius tried to fathom his friend’s sudden interest in Parmys, and decided he didn’t like it. ‘Frada, leave it, please.’
Frada shifted again on his stretcher, his face turning away into shadow. He sounded distant, almost cold. ‘All right, my friend. I can see you have other things to worry about right now.’
For reasons Darius couldn’t yet understand he felt intensely sad, as though their friendship was in peril. He stared at the side of his friend’s head, trying to understand the sudden coldness, searching for words to bridge the gulf that he sensed opening between them. No words came.
A bronze-helmeted head appeared through the tent flap. ‘Sorry, sir, the hazarapatish is coming for an inspection. You will have to leave.’
Frada waved his slaves to their feet. In silence he wound a rectangle of beautifully embroidered cloth around the crown of his head like a turban, and tied the ends in a neat knot at the side. The slaves lifted his stretcher. As they were about to carry him away, Frada seemed to hesitate. He lifted his head, paused, and held his hand out over the edge of the stretcher, palm up. Relieved, Darius took it, leaning over the stretcher and smelling his friend’s familiar, comforting sandalwood and myrrh scent. They clasped wrists and hugged.
Frada smiled, albeit a little thinly. ‘I’ll sweeten the guards to make sure they feed you properly. I’ll come back tomorrow.’ Then his smile grew warm. ‘You saved my life. You are my brother; what is mine is yours. Nothing should ever come between us.’
The friends clasped hands again. ‘Live long, Darius.’
‘And you, Frada. Live long.’
Alone again, Darius thought of Parmys. She had a way of crying out softly when she was frightened or sad and he heard it now, saw the shock on her face when they confronted her with his letters. How could he have been so stupid? Didn’t he realize anything he sent on the Royal Road would be intercepted by Cambyses’ spies? And why had he admitted the letters were genuine? He could have lied. It might have damned his soul, but he would willingly suffer more than that to spare her harm.
He had often wondered why he found Parmys so compelling. She was beautiful, of course; but so were many girls. He cared nothing for her status as an Imperial Princess. In fact he wished she wasn’t royal at all. As a daughter of the House of Cyrus, she should have been his natural enemy, as all Cyrus’s blood were. When rival houses fight for a throne and men are killed, the bitterness doesn’t fade quickly.
Yet their minds were in tune. When she smiled he was happy. The thought of her suffering pain filled him with dread.
What would they do to her? Some of those magi were sadistic bastards, they’d enj
oy making a beautiful girl scream, claim they were cleansing her soul with pain. Imagining her dragged to the whipping stake, proud and haughty but terrified, Darius pulled frantically against the chain, determined to escape and find her. But he had watched them fix the pole deep into the ground, and he knew it wouldn’t move. Exhausted, he sat grinding his teeth and clenching his fists until the nails dug into his flesh and drew blood. One moment of stupidity and he’d brought fear and shame on the person he loved more than any other. Now there was nothing he could do to help. His muscles relaxed and the anger faded, replaced by misery. Darius sat with his head in his hands and let the helplessness wash over him.
In Saka territory, three days north of the Yaksharta River
Vivana hunkered down as another barrage of arrows fell. He lifted his shield above his head mechanically, used now to the whistle and thud as the shafts struck. Things hadn’t been too bad at first, when they’d been able to fire back. But the resupply camels were cut off behind them, and they hadn’t received any new bundles of arrows for ages. His own bag was empty, and the men around him were about to fire their last shafts. Taking the punishment was tough, but not being able to fire back was tougher still. He shrugged off the problem. Soon it would be hand-to-hand. And though they were surrounded, massively outnumbered and cut off, twenty thousand Persians were no easy meat.
Beside him a youthful soldier straightened his back, drew and released. ‘That’s the last one. Let’s hope it kills one of the bastards.’ The man’s narrow face was drawn, the dark eyes intense, the eyebrows surprisingly bushy. He had the tightly curled ringlets of a courtier, but hadn’t yet managed to grow a beard to match. He was too young for the serious old soldier’s expression that had settled on his face that morning.
Vivana managed a laugh. ‘Even you can hardly miss from here, Ardu. There’s millions of the buggers.’
They were shouting over the din of perhaps a quarter of a million screaming tribesmen. At least that was the estimate everyone had been throwing around at the start. How anyone counted them was beyond Vivana. All he knew was that they were a solid mass filling the far end of the valley, overlapping onto the steppe and encircling the beleaguered Persian army. The only way out he could see was to scrabble back up the mountain and cut through the pass. The same bloody pass where the ambush had been. Vivana hadn’t enjoyed marching through it again. It felt eerie. He looked up at the twin peaks towering above him, then at the gouge in the side of the mountain, which Darius had described as the site of a rockfall. He thought he could just make out the pine-strewn ledge where Darius had looked down into the valley. He couldn’t believe he was back here again.
He felt bad about what had happened to Darius. He was a good man who had been treated like shit. As a commoner, Vivana hadn’t been in Cyrus’s tent that day when Darius was condemned, but Ardu had, and when Vivana heard from him what had happened he wanted to tear Vinda’s body limb from limb. Just let him come across the stuck-up bastard in a dark alley …
Ardu was Darius’s cousin, but from a distant branch of the family who had survived the fall. And as rich as Croesus, from the look of his armour and weapons. It was purely by chance that they had met on the long march here. Ardu had been keen to hear all he could about the scouting raid. Like Vivana, he’d admired Darius, thought he’d been terribly treated. It wasn’t just a matter of family honour; it was justice. Vivana didn’t hear that word often from nobles. He liked it. The two men had become firm friends. Not that the friendship was going to last long. Vivana was sure the whole bloody lot of them were going to die.
More arrows came in, some skittering off shields, others thudding into them, or cutting through and striking armour. Every so often a man screamed. The army was being slowly worn down, and without arrows there was nothing they could do about it.
Suddenly the Saka bombardment stopped. The savages’ screaming rose to fever pitch, drowning out the endless beating of the Persian drums. ‘What’s happening?’ Ardu asked anxiously.
Vivana looked around the side of the man-high spara shield in front of him. As the front man in his file, it was his job to keep it upright when the attack came, the long line of sparas forming a tough barrier against assault. ‘By the Holy Fire!’ Persians began shouting and pointing in alarm. The Saka archers were parting to leave a wide gap, and charging up the valley towards Vivana was a mass of warriors. As he watched they stopped a hundred and fifty paces away and began waving weapons in the air and chanting, a repetitive, menacing sound which swamped the valley and echoed off the mountains.
There was a low groan from the trapped Persians, then shouts of defiance. The camel drums started thumping, a low resonant sound that rumbled up through his feet and for a while competed with the Saka’s chants. Cyrus stood defiantly on the footplate of his chariot and brandished his sword, swinging it in the air with reckless abandon. Above him, his famed battle standard fluttered in the breeze. Vivana felt his eyes drawn to it. Purple and gold, the Griffin Standard had never known defeat. Fired by that certainty and Cyrus’s indomitable spirit the resistance swelled. The camel drums beat louder and the Persians sent back a tremendous roar. Vivana joined in, his throat pouring out the tension built up during a morning of constant danger.
Surrounding Cyrus, Vivana could see the Immortals – purple cloths knotted over bronze helmets, long spears in their hands. The thousand Pomegranate Bearers held the centre, the other nine hazara divided into equal blocks on each flank. The left-hand block of Immortals was anchored against a rocky outcrop. Cyrus had drawn his men up as well as he could, but in the confined valley there had been no room for the asabari squadrons to deploy. Ardu and Vivana had been ordered to dismount and join a unit of Persian spearmen protecting the flank of the right-hand block of Immortals. To Vivana’s right lay the mountain.
The screaming and shouting died down. The entire mass of savages roared in reply, a low sound from the gut that shook the valley. Vivana felt a rumbling on the ground, looked round the spara again and saw the warriors charging towards him. Ma-Saka with fur capes and bronze axes, Pointed-Hat Saka with their conical caps, haoma-drinking Saka with crazy leering faces, men from Saka tribes he’d never even heard of. Vivana had always approached fights with calm acceptance, but this time he was surprised to find he was afraid. There were a hell of a lot of them, and they looked mad enough to tear him apart with their teeth. ‘Still, it’ll be fine once we get going,’ he decided, trying hard not to notice Ardu shivering with fear beside him.
‘They’re not coming for us! They’re going for the Immortals!’
Vivana smiled at the relief in his friend’s voice. Ardu was right. The Immortals could see it too, they were preparing to receive the charge, the shieldsmen in the front rank leaning into the sparas while the rest took up their spears. The slingers screening them slung their last stones then withdrew through the line, moments before the Saka hurled themselves at the Immortals. There was a tremendous shout and a cloud of dust was thrown up. Vivana strained his eyes to penetrate it, but the mix of screams and triumphant curses told him all he needed to know, as the warriors dashed themselves helplessly against a solid wall of shields and were thrown to the ground to be stabbed with spears. Bloodied and beaten the surviving Saka scurried back to their lines.
The Immortals cheered wildly. They were invincible and they knew it. They dropped their hacked-up spears and shields, knelt down, dipped their hands in the blood of the fallen and held up their palms red with it, waving them in the air like badges of honour, taunting the Saka as women and as cowards.
But looking at the heaving mass of warriors, Vivana knew that if the first wave failed there would be a second. And if that failed, a third. In the face of such odds, how long could even the Immortals hold out?
Just before noon, the air freezing and the sky blue, after four failed charges the Saka turned their attention away from the Immortals. Vivana noticed their changed angle of attack as soon as they ran in and knew this was the moment. He looked round
his spara and saw the warriors coming closer and closer, their screams getting louder and louder. He looked again and they were just ten paces away, fur capes flapping behind them and madness in their eyes.
Behind Vivana an officer shouted, ‘Remember Cyrus’s orders. Stand firm and they will break!’ He loosened his sword in its scabbard, gripped his shield and planted his boots firmly on the ground. Behind him men thrust spear points between the gaps in the shields. All down the line came a thud and clamour as crazed warriors smashed into them, some impaling themselves on the iron points, others hacking at the shields with swords or axes. Someone crashed into Vivana’s spara with such violence it threw him back. He dug his feet into the ground, managed to stay upright, then felt the shield wrenched sideways. He resisted, then yelled as the leather handle snapped, and let go and drew his sword. The shield fell away and a Saka was standing there in filthy matted furs and leather cape, panting hard and sweating like a pig. His eyes were wild as he raised his axe. Vivana’s left arm shot up to block the stroke, then he rammed his sword up into the warrior’s armpit, screaming in the man’s shocked face. That face twisted horribly, the mouth falling open as the axe fell from his hands, and blood streaming down his side the warrior collapsed.
Suddenly all the Saka were gone. The charge had been broken and they were running! Vivana glanced around, realized everyone was chasing and followed. He saw a few Saka cut down from behind but hadn’t gone far when an almighty roar behind him swept the battlefield. He turned to see the Immortals engaged front, back and flank. He knew at once what had happened and felt sick. How could they have been so stupid? Why didn’t the officers stop them? Right in the centre of the fighting, on a slight rise on the ground, Cyrus was again brandishing his sword on the footplate of his chariot, surrounded by Immortals with their spears pointing out in a circle. This time, with Vivana’s unit lured from the Immortals’ flank, the royal guards were completely encircled. They were drowning in a sea of howling warriors.