Chapter 22: Peter
THE Persians found the fugitives and brought them back to their colossal stronghold without much effort. In the camp, both kids saw many soldiers and slaves tirelessly lifting large sacks of food and military hardware onto very massive Indian and African elephants. Obviously, the middle-eastern invaders were preparing to move out.
“They must have taken Thermopylae,” Matthew realized, but his senior sister didn’t hear him.
Nora had once more attracted Dora’s courageous apparition owing to her contact with her captors when her hands were being tied behind her back. She had even forgotten why they had been forced to return to the camp.
On the other hand, Matthew still knew what had brought them back, since he could tell who he was even after becoming the Spartan boy, Mathildes. He marveled at his ability to do this, and knew that all this had to do with the book, because he’d felt more in control of the ancient scroll hidden underneath his flowing garment as this Greek drama progressed. And although he still dreaded the final outcome of this very unpredictable journey, he was beginning to relax despite that uncertainty.
The fugitives were soon forced into the presence of an enraged Xerxes, who quickly seized a broad sword from one of his masked guards and stepped towards them as they were being coerced into kneeling before him. Dora’s neck was his immediate target and she craftily evaded his swing.
Matthew was amazed by his sister’s speed, but the king countered this excitement by dropping the sword and repeatedly slapping the young girl hard across the face.
“Please stop,” Matthew wailed in Old Persian. “Mercy! Spare her life.”
“Ahura Mazda curse you for releasing my slaves,” Xerxes snarled, and hit Nora again before restraining himself. “Such is the impudence of your race! You shall surely suffer before your death even though you are young! You desecrate the laws of my people! Every single one of you will be wiped out from the face of this Earth.”
“We will never bow to you,” Dora vented, and the king impatiently turned to an aide standing near his throne, probably an interpreter. After hearing this man, he callously turned to Dora and smiled at her, before swerving round and going back up the stairs to his mammoth contraption of gold and ivory, near which five female slaves from various parts of his huge empire waited on him.
Mathildes hoped his sister fully realized the probably fatal consequence of her outburst and fell into prayer for her, although he soon saw that the king was not going back for a sharper sword. A red robe concealed an object on a golden tray beside the Persian’s golden couch, and this he now grabbed to pull away, revealing a bearded head positioned upright on the tray.
“No,” Dora shouted as she struggled to free herself towards the lifeless head. “You killed him, you murderer!”
Matthew shook his head at the king’s interpreter, but the Persian ruler appeared to have ignored Nora completely. He reclined on his couch and stretched out his left leg.
“Even your own oracle at . . . Delphi proclaims my coming and victory over your lands,” King Xerxes chuckled. “I hear Athens was told to defend herself with wooden walls! What better way to warn her of the futility of resistance? I can see no other.”
Dora started crying and Mathildes couldn’t go to her because he was being restrained.
“Your king, Leonidas, was strong-headed,” King Xerxes continued, smiling at his own witty line as he turned to the Spartan ruler’s head. “I offered him wealth, but he refused my benevolence! He even laughed in my face when I warned him to provoke me no further, and laughed the more when I told him his name will forever be blotted out from the annals of the world.”
“And how wrong you were.” Matthew couldn’t help adding this.
“Silence, slave!” the ruthless ruler roared, standing up and stepping towards him. “I shall not have you speak thus in my divine presence or I will have your tongue cut out for you!”
Matthew suddenly felt annoyed by this. That Nora had read about the Persian Wars in History class was enough evidence for the truth in what he’d just said and he had a strong impulse to use the book on this pompous leader no matter what the consequences would be.
The obnoxious king had accepted the prisoners’ present silence as proof of their enthralled recognition of his ‘divine presence’ and had once more filled his couch with his lean form. “I have defeated your king in battle,” he reminded them. “Hence, you are both my slaves even if you deny this and forget you actually became yoked with this burden the moment you were caught with your countrymen while the sun still hung above us.”
Matthew realized the fellow was right. A day had not passed since they were captured.
“Your bones shall be mixed with the ashes of Athens after you have burned with her,” the Persian leader proclaimed. “I will spare your lives only if,” turning to Dora, “you excel in battle, which your fellow Spartan had already committed you to. . . . You do this for both your sakes, since I am a merciful and generous god.”
“I will do no such thing,” Dora snapped defiantly as soon as the interpreter had conveyed the king’s devious judgment to her.
Matthew prayed the more for his sister as their hostile host was told her objectionable choice. The king looked ready to cross an anger threshold.
“Very well, then,” he suddenly said, fuming. “Await your deaths.”
The Spartan slaves were removed from his sight and shoved into a wheeled brass cage for the long haul to Athens.
The Black Book Page 53
