Blood of Kings

by Andrew James

  ‘Live long, Darius. May Ahura Mazda be your friend.’

  The army marched from Thebes with the sun rising behind it, casting a clear light over the desert, turning the corpses of the God’s Wife and the High Priest into gold as they rotted on their stakes. Her face was no longer beautiful, the skin on the defiled body heaved and trembled as the maggots swarmed beneath it. Darius felt a terrible sadness at the sight, raging inside at Cambyses’ cruelty. Remembering her delicate beauty and courage in the face of fear he was again reminded of Parmys. He flinched at the thought of anything happening to his betrothed.

  This campaign was going to be an ordeal. Darius dreaded serving under Phanes. The Yauna made his blood run cold. Nor was he looking forward to taking orders from Vinda, a man who had already had him falsely condemned to death, an injustice which Darius could neither forgive nor forget. Summoning him to his general’s tent that evening, Vinda left Darius standing while he reclined and drank. ‘It will be like old times,’ the noble said in his languid drawl. ‘Only this time I am in control.’

  As Vinda sipped from his crystal goblet, Darius looked around the tent. Precious woods blended harmoniously with silver, pearl and ivory, all that privilege could bestow. ‘I see you’ve been well rewarded for your treachery.’

  Vinda pulled his head back on his neck and frowned, lower lip jutting out. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘For a man who spends his life in a cesspit of deceit, you’re a poor liar.’

  Vinda smiled. ‘All right, I admit it. There is no point pretending now. But what is an Aryan of ancient stock supposed to do when he is not being promoted? My family were loyal to Cyrus, but he gave me nothing.’

  ‘Perhaps he promoted on merit?’

  Vinda thought it through. ‘Are you insulting me?’

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  ‘It had to be done! Don’t you see, Darius? The Empire was stultifying while his old cronies filled all the choice positions at court. It was time for new blood.’

  ‘And what about the blood of five thousand innocent Persians who died in the ambush?’

  ‘That was regrettable. I wish it could have been otherwise. But Cyrus was too well guarded, and his guards too loyal, to reach him any other way.’

  ‘And my blood, when you had me falsely condemned?’

  Vinda did not answer. Feeling the urge to hit him, instead Darius reached over and helped himself to a handful of honeyed walnuts piled on a silver platter.

  Vinda gave a resigned sigh and tried to make his refined, well-scrubbed features look authoritative. ‘I called you here for a purpose, Darius. Not to rake over the past, and not to steal my food. I think you have been pulling the wool over my eyes. And I warn you, I am not stupid.’

  ‘What wool?’ Darius asked innocently.

  ‘After we were ambushed by the desert Arabs you went to Egypt and met Phanes, am I right?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘And after you left Phanes you came straight back to Persia?’

  Darius hesitated only slightly. ‘… Yes.’

  Ringed with kohl, Vinda’s soft brown eyes studied his face. ‘Phanes was detained by Pharaoh’s men, escaped, tried to reach his family, then fled to the port where he had a ship waiting. He then sailed to Phoenicia, got delayed in a storm … yet he still reached Persia before you. He didn’t even have an Imperial pass to get fresh horses on the Royal Road.’

  ‘Poor man. And the question is?’

  ‘The question is, how did it take you so long?’

  ‘Are you accusing me of getting lost, Vinda?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’m accusing you of spiriting Parmys away, and you know it.’

  ‘Parmys was kidnapped.’

  ‘So you claim.’

  ‘It must have happened. You reported it to the Great King.’

  Vinda narrowed his eyes, trying to decide if Darius was mocking him. ‘How do I know the men who took her were really Arabs?’

  ‘Find them and ask them.’

  ‘And where are your two friends? Ardu and that peasant boy in armour?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Cannot? Or will not? Because I have checked. Neither answered the Great King’s muster. The punishment for which is death.’

  A red mist descended before Darius’s eyes, rage pounded in his chest, guilt combining with fury to send him over the edge. Bunching his fists he stepped towards Vinda, who scrambled off his couch and backed up against a wooden screen. Grabbing the front of his gown, Darius put his nose up close to Vinda’s face and stared hard into his eyes. They were round with fear. ‘Hazarapatish or not you are still a witless, treacherous dolt. If you make trouble for my friends I shall rip your tongue out with my bare hands, I swear it.’ Vinda’s eyes grew even rounder, his mouth hung open, his breath coming in gasps. Darius raised his fist, wanting to strike this elegant courtier playing at soldiers, a man who had casually murdered thousands to advance himself.

  Vinda swallowed, not daring to look away from Darius. He raised his hands palm outwards. ‘All right. I will not say a word.’

  Darius knew he was lying but dropped his arm all the same. ‘I won’t hit a woman,’ he said, and turned on his heels. As he left the tent he was shaking. It didn’t matter that he had humiliated Vinda; if he reported Darius for insubordination Phanes would just laugh, and say if he couldn’t control his men he shouldn’t be in command. But somehow Vinda had guessed the truth about Parmys, Ardu and Vivana! Or at least he suspected it. He obviously hadn’t said anything to Cambyses yet, but when the army returned to the Nile he would, and then they’d be in real danger. Cambyses had informers everywhere. Even – or especially – in Bardiya’s castle. Once alerted those informers would start searching, and they would surely discover the truth.

  The fact that Ardu and Vivana hadn’t even known the kidnap was planned wouldn’t stop them suffering for it. They would be killed – slowly – along with their families, and it would all be Darius’s fault. After the assurances he had given Ardu, Darius felt the guilt gnawing at him. And if Cambyses took the enquiry far enough, Parmys might be found.

  None of this could happen until Siwa had been conquered and the army returned to the Nile. As Darius lay in his tent that night, he thought of ways to protect Parmys and his friends. There was only one thing he could do. Kill Vinda.

  In the desert, west of Thebes

  Phanes jabbed at the map with a hard finger. Hanging from the wall of the tent, the stiff linen square creased under his assault. ‘No army can carry more than five days of food and water. That’s why I will be spacing our caches five days apart. Here, and here, and …’ He jabbed at the map eight more times, each as precisely placed as a sword thrust. ‘Some men say the desert is dangerous. Rubbish. Desert survival consists of two simple elements, gentlemen: organization and discipline. I will provide the first; you must enforce the second. I don’t care what they do with their food, but tell your men if they drink all their water on the first two days they’ll simply drop dead on the fourth. They won’t get any more. Understood?’

  From his vantage point next to the stratekos, Darius ran his eyes over the fifty hazarapatish sitting cross-legged on the floor. They were listening with rapt attention to a soldier they plainly admired, and a buzz ran through the tent as they murmured their agreement. Phanes also looked at ease. Blind obedience always made the Yauna happy.

  ‘The King of Kings has spared us eight thousand baggage camels. Each in its prime, at least eighteen months old. Again, it is simple: one camel can carry water for one warhorse or ten men for five days. Therefore they will be distributed to infantry units at the rate of one camel per data; ten camels per sata; one hundred camels per hazara. Asabari squadrons will get camels for both men and horses. It is your job to look after these animals. If any die, so will your men. The rest are needed to carry food, equipment and fodder. There are no spares.’

  Darius knew this wasn’t true, but it impressed Phanes’s officers. Each haz
arapatish commanded a hazara of one thousand men. Thirty-five of these hazara were units of the Imperial army; Persians, Medes, Armenians, Arachosians and Gandarans from near the Indus River, Bactrians from the deserts of the East. Men whose sun-darkened skin and fierce eyes told of being used to heat and privation. The rest were mercenaries who Darius trusted less; lean-faced Arabians, arrogant, crafty-looking Greek spearmen, black-bearded Babylonian archers, a few Egyptians, their shaven faces and heads standing out oddly among the bearded men. He studied the two Egyptian commanders with suspicion, convinced that they were survivors from Pharaoh’s defeated army.

  Watching them parading that morning in neat squares, Darius had been forced to admit to himself it was an impressive-looking force. Enough to satisfy even Phanes’s lust for command. Knowing his reputation as a tough, successful soldier the ranks had cheered the stratekos loudly, waving swords or spears in the air. They remembered the vast plunder taken from the temples in Thebes and were expecting the same from Ammon’s temple in Siwa. Though spirits were high, Darius wondered whether a smaller, faster-moving army wouldn’t have been better. There was a hell of a lot of desert to cross. And though Phanes had marked his intended supply caches with military precision on his map, and given copies to all the commanders, Darius couldn’t help wondering who had drawn the map in the first place. Did anyone really know where they were going? How much of it was guesswork? And what if it was wrong?

  18

  ‘The track is an ancient route, lord. Very well marked.’ The dapper little Egyptian guide pointed his small brown fist confidently at the ground. Darius looked down but could see no sign of any track, just windswept desert, buff-coloured sand, powdery white rock. The guide was a short, weathered man in white kilt and tunic. To Darius he seemed excessively polite, bowing at every opporunity. He claimed to have spent his life smuggling wine into Egypt from the Greek colonies on the North African coast, and therefore knew the route well. ‘Used for a thousand years by Libyan tribesmen raiding into Egypt,’ he told Phanes and the assembled staff officers. ‘But your great army has scared them away. There will be no enemies.’

  The guide led the army west over a high desert plateau where patches of soft white limestone alternated with cracked sheets of hard, black volcanic rock. Cone-shaped mountains rose like brown warts on the face of the desert. Sometimes their peaks were flat, as though some giant sword had sliced off the top. Great lines of them stretched into the distance, bounded by nothing but sand and rock. In Sinai they had never been that far from a city but here, Darius knew, they were at the very edge of the world. Part of him wanted to strike out and explore. Another part shivered, feeling the emptiness as a hollow ache in his bones. For the first time he could remember, there was no singing or joking from the army as it marched. Instead, men looked around suspiciously at the forbidding landscape. The camels’ soft, padded feet had no difficulty negotiating the ridges and furrows of volcanic rock, but men twisted ankles, while mules and precious horses stumbled over the uneven ground. The first casualties of the expedition were a mule, who snapped its foreleg, and its driver, who dashed his brains out on a rock as he fell.

  The army was bruised and aching from the rocky terrain when it hit the first sand sheet. Thousands of feet threw up a permanent dust cloud, caking Darius’s hair and beard, choking his throat, forcing its way into his boots where it rubbed the skin away until his feet were blistered and bloody. Despite the guide’s assurance that there would be no resistance, Phanes often stopped and stared moodily into the desert, eyes narrowed, face grim, as though engaged in a battle of wills, trying to force it to give up its secrets. He was meticulous about sending out patrols of camel-riding scouts. Darius could always see them, tiny specks in the distance probing ahead and criss-crossing on the flanks, leaving their trails in the virgin sand.

  With water strictly rationed, Darius soon found himself tormented by thirst. It was late autumn, the days still warm, the nights growing cool. But the weather could change in an instant. A morning would start calm and clear, then suddenly a squall would blow up, sending Darius hurriedly winding a veil across his face and tying the flaps of his felt hood tightly beneath his chin. Gusts of fresh, cool air blew in from the north or east, becoming screeching gales that tore at his gown, flinging grit in his face or rattling it against armour, while sombre, rainless clouds choked the sky.

  Early in the evening of the seventh day out from Thebes, Phanes was marching jauntily at the head of his army, carrying his own kit. Two days ago the first cache of food and water had been recovered from the desert exactly on time. Everything was going well. Marching beside him, Darius made out a patch of dark green ahead. Above it soared cliffs, tinted rose-pink in the reflected light of the setting sun. Suddenly a wave of cheering erupted from the ranks. Men whistled and waved their caps or helmets in the air. ‘The Great Oasis,’ Phanes announced proudly, staring at the stunning pink cliffs. He turned to the small knot of favoured officers. ‘Congratulations, gentlemen. Under my command you have travelled further west than any Persian force in history.’

  Darius pictured Phanes’s map. The Great Oasis was only the first in a chain that had to be crossed, strung out across the desert like a string of pearls. Lying in a depression which was approached from the east, it was bounded on two sides by plateaus of hard black rock, with sand dunes on the third. Weary and footsore, the army descended into mud-brick villages clustered around springs, strung along a line running north to south. After the endless brown of the desert Darius was astonished suddenly to see lush green orchards and rippling fields of grain. The road soon swung south, passing a spring that bubbled steaming hot from the ground. Beyond the spring, a mass of date palms surrounded a sprawling mud fortress on a hill. Darius studied the towering fortifications warily. Decrepit and ancient, in places the irregular, mud-plastered walls were completely broken down. Despite their height they would be easy to assault. But Darius quickly saw that assault would not be necessary. Only doves walked the high ramparts, cooing ecstatically. If Pharaoh ever had a garrison here it had fled, leaving the desert dwellers to their fate.

  A huddle of mud huts gave way to a scattering of tents, low and dark against the ground in clearings among the palms. Palm-frond mats lay under the trees, the first of the date harvest spread on them to dry. A clay dovecote rose against the sky with pigeons fluttering around it. Pale, savage dogs ran barking at the army’s approach, fowl squawked, and hungry Persian soldiers eyed the flocks of sheep and goats grazing beneath the palms. Desert dwellers with heavily shrouded faces and loose robes sat very still on mules, or squatted silent in the shade of pomegranate or fig trees. Darius felt their hostility. Only their eyes moved as they watched the Persians march in. Those eyes were sullen and dark as they waited to judge their new masters.

  Looking down, Darius noted a well-worn track leading towards the bazaar. It was the time of the evening market, but the Persians’ arrival had scared people and the only traders were two young, barefoot boys. They approached hesitantly, eyes down, one carrying a basket of round flatbreads on his head, the other driving a donkey loaded with fresh dates and a skin of water. Persian dates were dark, but these oasis dates were a luscious golden amber. Keen to taste them, Darius pointed and held up his hand to ask the price.

  Phanes stepped in front of him and pushed the boy away with a hand against his chest. ‘We’re an army of occupation. We don’t buy, we take.’ He grabbed the strings of dates from the donkey, held them above the boy’s reach and started handing them around his guards.

  In a tongue Darius didn’t understand the boy shouted something that must have meant, ‘Thief! Thieving Persians!’, adding a torrent of bitter-sounding curses and trying to take the dates back. Phanes ignored him. The boy jumped up and down, dragging with his flimsy weight at Phanes’s arm. Growing desperate, he bit Phanes’s hand. Phanes stiffened. Puckering his face, he examined the neat ring of tooth marks and looked murderously at the boy, nostrils flared. Shrieking in terror the boy abandone
d both donkey and dates and ran for his life. Phanes turned to an aide: ‘Pass an order through the ranks. No trading.’

  Darius was indignant. ‘These people aren’t our enemies, Stratekos,’ he reminded him. ‘Didn’t you tell us they hate the Ammonians, calling them “savage Libyan raiders”? And didn’t Cambyses give you a chest full of gold to buy supplies?’

  Phanes turned slowly, the rage Darius had seen at the Pelusium beerhouse in his eyes. His guards looked anxiously at their commander, hands on swords. Darius’s right hand twitched, but with difficulty he kept it away from his akinakes and returned Phanes’s stare calmly. The Greek’s chest rose and fell beneath his armour. Phanes smiled his lean, wolfish grimace that did not reach his eyes. His voice was dangerously soft. ‘I want my commanders to have fighting spirit, Darius. But don’t take it too far, or we shall fall out.’

  Knowing that if he spoke again the guards would kill him, Darius struggled with his temper. But it was madness. Phanes was alienating the very people who should have been their allies.

  For the next half a month, the oasis was filled with screams and shouts, splintering doors and burning houses and weeping women as Phanes forcibly stripped it of anything edible. A gibbet was set up in the bazaar and Darius watched with impotent fury as each day a man or two was hanged for the crime of trying to hold back food to feed his family, or seed corn to plant his land.

  Everything seized was sent ahead by well-guarded camel train to be cached in the desert. When the army marched away the oasis was left bare. The bazaar was deserted, the flocks slaughtered, the dovecotes raided, the pomegranates pulped, figs dried and olives crushed. With the last of the date harvest gathered, Phanes had taken every single bunch as fodder for the camels. That winter the oasis dwellers would raid another tribe, or starve.

  The dapper Egyptian guide had turned back at the Great Oasis, his purse weighed down with gold. Apparently tempted by a similar reward, two locals volunteered to take his place. Darius studied them carefully. The eldest was a tall, grim-voiced man whose body was long and bony beneath his flowing robes. His face was almost completely shrouded, his eyes in shadow. But there was a grave, sober air about him which inspired confidence.