Blood of Kings

by Andrew James

  ‘Where did you get the blade?’

  Si-Ammon smiled faintly. ‘Your guard gave it to me to eat with.’

  Darius looked at the Persian. ‘Is this true?’

  The guard lowered his face. ‘Yes, sir. He said it was shameful for a prince to eat with bare hands like a peasant, and swore by all his gods not to turn it on us. He’s a prince, sir, and he swore, and he seemed reasonable enough. So I took his word.’

  Darius could have struck the man. Instead he spoke to the prince. ‘I was going to release you in the morning. But if you have murdered two men justice must take its course.’

  Si-Ammon scowled defiantly.

  The guard threw himself at Darius’s feet and clung to his knees. ‘Mercy, sir! I meant no harm.’

  When Darius thought of the two innocent men cut down by treachery and stupidity he was furious. But with a tough fight ahead it was no time for harsh discipline. ‘You will live the rest of your life with the deaths of your friends on your conscience. There is no worse punishment I could give. You are stripped of all rank and privileges. Go.’

  Dust sparkled in the air. The sun turned it into showers of gold. Darius felt the strain of waiting pulling at his innards. ‘I never thought I’d be so pleased to see Phanes,’ he admitted to Dadarshi, as the first units of Phanes’s army coalesced out of the haze like men stepping from a mirage. They were usabari scouts mounted on swaying, two-humped Bactrian camels. They had seen the signal fire and were criss-crossing ahead and to the sides of the main column, probing the desert minutely for signs of ambush. Just visible beyond them were the Persian spearmen, like columns of tiny marching ants. Sun glinted off iron spear points and flashed off armour. Too far away to make out details, Darius knew their hooded caps would be knotted against the dust, the bronze scales on their corselets clinking softly, the daggers suspended from their hips swinging gently as they marched. The men would be bone-weary but alert, dark eyes staring longingly at the oasis with its promise of food, water, shade and rest. Perhaps they could see the two bitter lakes, like sapphires in the sun, and the green of the palms where the Ammonians were camping. He imagined their relief at seeing the Griffin Standard raised over the heights, knowing they had a safe camp to march into.

  The relief was just as strong on Darius’s side. After getting used to being outnumbered and cut off, suddenly the tables were being turned on the Great Chief, whose warriors and mercenaries would be no match for the professional soldiers of the Persian Spada. With every step the advancing spearmen took, Darius felt the despair lifting off his shoulders.

  Six of Phanes’s usabari pulled up just five hundred paces from the Two Lakes, the camels sinking to their knees while the riders waited. On the plateau, Prince Wen-Ammon and Prince Aldum swung themselves over the edge of the cliff, climbed down the rope ladder and walked slowly towards their father’s camp. Darius could see the Great Chief as a tiny figure down there, waiting to meet them. In a moment they would explain about their brother’s detention for killing two guards and the Great Chief would approach the plateau, blustering and threatening. He and Darius would argue, then come to some arrangement. The magi had demanded that Prince Si-Ammon suffer two hundred lashes of the whip – the punishment for murder laid down in the Holy Avesta. This would have killed him. But Darius would allow the Great Chief to persuade him to let the prince live.

  Phanes and his army drew closer. The Ammonians blew horns, beat drums and chanted as they prepared to attack. Their assembled army of thirty thousand men would use their local numerical superiority to decimate the head of the great snake crawling towards the oasis, sending its body reeling into spasms of confusion and chaos.

  Darius heard a sharp clip of hooves as six asabari trotted out of a gate in the stockade and clattered into the desert. They swung south, then quickly disappeared behind a hill. He had chosen the fastest animals and riders he possessed. He hoped they were fast enough.

  Twenty-four Carthaginians gave chase. Mounted on swift, light ponies they thundered from under the palms to head off the asabari, long hair straggling in the breeze, javelins in their hands. They took a course diagonal to the waiting Bactrians, whose camels rose to their feet and started trotting to meet the Persian horse.

  The six asabari cleared the hills and came back into Darius’s field of view. Their leader shouted, pointed at the Carthaginians and edged his troop to the right. The Carthaginians’ shadows lengthened slightly as they shifted their angle of attack to intercept.

  Darius froze as the forces converged. He couldn’t stop a muscle in his neck fluttering. Everyone on the rock was gripped by the same tension. Vinda’s hands were clasped tightly behind his back, Dadarshi was muttering beneath his breath.

  The Persian riders glanced over their left shoulders and saw the Carthaginians approaching rapidly. Realizing they were about to be cut off, they lay low over their mounts’ necks and urged them faster, the commander raising his fist in the air, opening his fingers wide to spread his men out.

  The Carthaginians rose on their thighs, drew their arms back and cast. Javelins arced through the air, flying strongly into a shallow dive. They landed wide, kicking up spurts of dust. The asabari veered slightly, then guiding with their knees they lifted hands off reins, drew their bows, twisted supple shoulders and torsos back while still riding forwards, and loosed a volley of arrows.

  It was obvious that the westerners had never seen horse archers before. They rode on blind, taking no evasive action, not realizing arrows had been fired until suddenly three riders jerked upright on their horses and went down, probably never knowing what had hit them. Darius was deafened by the cheers from his men as a fourth Carthaginian was swept clean off his horse by the arrow’s power, landing dead on the sand. The rest threw up their heads, finally understanding something was wrong, and scattered in confusion.

  The asabari and Bactrian usabari converged, rode through each other’s lines as they slowed, wheeled in a half circle, and stopped. The commanders hugged, the men cheered. The asabari leader pointed towards the oasis. He was giving Darius’s message for Phanes. There was an animated conversation with waving of hands and shaking of heads, then all twelve Imperial riders rode together in an arrow formation, horses on the left, camels on the right, straight at the re-forming Carthaginians. Amidst more cheering from the oasis, their hail of arrows brought down another six mercenaries before the rest broke and fled. Hands raised in farewell the Bactrians wheeled their camels south, back to Phanes.

  Thousands of Persians had seen the skirmish. Now they erupted in a riot of whistling and whooping that rolled on and on, filling the oasis. Dadarshi grinned broadly. ‘That should put heart back into the men, sir. Those mercenaries aren’t all they look.’

  Vinda sounded relaxed for the first time since arriving at the Two Lakes. ‘Just as importantly, Phanes will know how things stand. I had a horrible image of him blundering into that Ammonian force and being cut up badly.’

  ‘Will he follow my suggestion?’ Darius asked.

  ‘Yes. He will do as you say.’

  ‘Good. Then with luck, all our problems will soon be over.’ Darius closed his eyes and thought of Parmys, longing to return to her. For days now that longing was all he had had to sustain him. But now there was good reason to be hopeful. The Ammonians were trapped between the hammer of Phanes’s army and the anvil of the oasis. Their cavalry would be powerless against a wall of advancing spearmen backed by ranks of archers. And when they tried to retreat they would find Darius’s men waiting, driving them back onto Phanes’s spears.

  With the Great Chief of the Desert Lands’ entire force defeated, the road to Siwa, and the Oracle of Ammon, would be open.

  23

  The sky was bruised purple and yellow. The wind tore great gashes in the desert. As it screamed across the oasis, scraps of vegetation suddenly leapt from the ground and flew. Trees shivered, branches shook, fronds rattled and trembled. Sand broke in torrential waves that hurled themselves against the flat-topp
ed mountains like a storm-tossed sea against rocks. Dust flowed like a river over the ground, shrouding Darius’s feet in tendrils of unnatural orange mist as he, Dadarshi and Vinda ran full tilt for the plateau and the safety of the tombs.

  Darius was shocked by the sudden violence of the storm. Never in his life had a tempest whipped up with such speed. Above him, the sun was now an orb of flaring silver, glowing through a veil of sand. As he skidded over sand-strewn rock the wind strengthened, the haze thickened, the orb faded, casting the oasis into stifling gloom. Placing his feet on unfamiliar ground he looked down, but everything was lost in a sandy mist. He searched around for the others, but he was alone. He turned his head left and right, desperate for bearings, but the desert had closed in. He lifted his hand in front of his face, but it was an indistinct blur. He forced himself to think. The route back to the plateau was a straight line. He couldn’t get lost! Perhaps he had gone too far? He filled his lungs and shouted. But the words were whipped away by the wind.

  Turning back, Darius placed one cautious foot in front of the other, trying to guess where the sand ended and solid ground began. He misjudged, missed his footing and stumbled, his arms flying out to break his fall; then he was sprawled flat out on the rocks, aching and bruised. The dust was an impenetrable fog that hung so thickly around him he could barely tell which way was up or down. He finally admitted to himself that he was hopelessly lost. He had no idea which way to head for the tombs.

  Feeling a strange fluttering in his throat, Darius realized it was panic. Fighting it down, he remembered that the wind buffeting his face with such force had been blowing from the south, which gave him north, east and west. Hope sparking, he struggled to work out his position. But the hot dry gusts against his skin were so fierce they drove everything from his mind. They were blasts straight from the furnaces of hell. They sucked the air from his nostrils, seared his lungs and made him pant, they tugged at his gown and swept showers of sand over him like driving rain. Tiny grains scoured the backs of his hands and the soft skin around his eyes, hot and sharp like swarms of biting ants. Forcing their way past dry lips they gritted in his teeth and coated his tongue. Gathering his strength, he staggered to his feet and drew the end of his headcloth across his mouth to shield it, raised an arm protectively over his eyes and ploughed on, sure eventually he must reach either the plateau or the watch rock.

  His ears were deafened by the roar of the storm and the relentless hiss of millions of sand grains colliding with linen and bronze. His muscles ached and his chest burned from the effort of pushing against the astonishing force of the wind. Feeling himself weakening he dropped to all fours and began to crawl, but now the sand poured straight down the neck of his gown, rubbing the skin raw where it was tight over his shoulders and the back of his neck, forcing its way into his throat and lungs where it made him rasp and choke. He thought he was climbing but, blind and disorientated, he couldn’t be sure.

  He must have missed the plateau again, because suddenly he placed his right hand on the ground and felt around blindly but found only thin air. He drew back, his hand searching in ever wider sweeps for something solid. His heart thumped as he realized he was teetering on the edge of a sheer drop. Poised on the brink, a brief lull in the wind gave him a glimpse of the desert below. Sand was rising like smoke from smouldering, wind-blurred dunes, clouds of it sweeping across a desert vista of boiling gold.

  The wind rushing past him was a screaming banshee, its feral moaning so painful against his eardrums that Darius thought they must burst. It rose and fell in an endless rhythmic wail that jarred his nerves, coming now not in gusts but long, drawn-out waves, each accompanied by a moan from the desert that rose higher and higher, reached a crescendo and shattered, before starting all over again. Darius didn’t want to give in to dark imaginings, but it sounded exactly like a vast set of lungs drawing breath, blowing hard at the desert, resting, drawing breath and blowing again. He refused to believe the storm was the breath of Ammon. But he couldn’t dismiss the thought either.

  Darius felt the ground shake beneath him as the storm roared again. He tried to move, but worn out by the constant battle with the wind his body refused to respond. His legs were lead weights dragging him down, his arms numb with exhaustion. Cut off from the world, trapped in a private hell of sand and noise, he lay down. ‘Just for a moment,’ he told himself. ‘Let me rest.’ He stretched out on his belly on the rock, too lost, too exhausted, too hopeless to move, while the sand piled around him, lapping at his windward flank in tiny waves that climbed up his body and began spreading over his back. His ribs ached from struggling to breathe. His chest felt constricted by the dryness and heat, making him think of smothering pillows and airless lungs. The skin on his arms, legs and back prickled from heat and dust. He knew he was sweating like a pig but his forehead was dry, the wind whipping away the moisture as fast as it poured off him. He remembered Phanes’s warning about the sandstorms; it was true, the astonishing dryness of the air was sucking the moisture from his body. He was drying out. His head felt light as a feather, his thoughts floating in a sea of confusion; there was a dull thumping ache at the back of his neck. A female face swam in and out of focus but he couldn’t place it, the rosebud lips and gold-flecked eyes just beyond his memory’s reach.

  Craving rest, Darius closed his eyes in blessed relief while the rising swell of sand caressed him with its soft, deadly embrace. On the backs of his eyelids he saw the faces of the men who had collapsed in the desert searching for Pillar Rock, the vacant expressions and blank looks as they fell. Refusing to share their fate, something deep inside Darius drove him to fight the weariness. He heard a distant female voice warn that he couldn’t stay where he was; if he didn’t find water he would die. He tried to block the voice out, to stay in peaceful slumber, but it was urgent and persistent, refusing to go away.

  With his head swimming and body aching, Darius gave in and began to stir, shaking off the sand with a tremble that came from some last inner strength, groaning with the effort as he forced his limbs to move one at a time. He followed the line of the rock with his right hand, the movement seeming to draw more air into his lungs. His mind began to clear. It felt as though he was heading downhill now, the ground falling away beneath him. Somewhere to his right there had to be a gap, which would open out onto the plateau. Shuffling forward on his belly, his armour scuffing the ground, he pressed his hand against the rock, shifted a little, then a little more, then waved his arm into empty space. He crawled forward into the opening. Overcome with relief, he threw back his head and laughed manically into the storm. He had found the plateau!

  Lying in the lee of the hills the plateau was more sheltered. The sand was still thick in the air but Darius could just make out the outline of the tombs. He headed towards them, crawling over ruined tents that were shreds of leather weighted down with rock. He felt a sharp pain in his arm, scrabbled around and found the shards of a cracked cooking pot, dropped in haste as men rushed to safety. As he crept towards the tombs a huge shape flew at him. He threw himself flat as half a tamarisk tree hurtled past his head and smashed into the hillside, splintering with a great crack, then coming to rest in a graveyard of debris and orange dust accumulating against the sharp slope of a rock.

  Reaching the tomb he crawled through the entrance, but even inside the sand was swirling. Vinda was lying on his blanket, chest rattling. Dadarshi had collapsed onto his bed in a choking heap. They sat up and looked at Darius as though he were mad. ‘What were you doing out there?’ Vinda asked, incredulous.

  ‘I got lost, you fool, what do you think?’ Darius croaked, then grabbed a waterskin and gasped with relief as the warm water eased the rasping dryness of his throat.

  He lay down and tried to relax, trying not to think of the damage being done to the defensive works. The stockade might withstand the wind, but the palm-frond barrier around the spring would have been shredded by now. All that work by thousands of men, wasted. But it didn’t matter any long
er. Phanes’s army was here. Once the storm passed, Darius would only have to hold the Ammonians off for half a day while Phanes’s units assembled. Then the Ammonians would be driven from the oasis.

  Phanes’s army! At the thought a knot twisted tight in Darius’s guts. How on earth would they cope? Men were suffering up here, high above ground and sheltered by the tombs, with plenty to drink. But down in the open desert, with nothing to stop the sand piling around them, things must be grim. They would have very little water left. They could not afford to be delayed. Dread for the army settled over Darius.

  He told himself that Phanes was an old hand. He would have his men dig into the dunes or shelter behind the camels. But Darius knew from the deserts of Persia that in a really bad storm entire dunes shifted, and with forty thousand men out there, they couldn’t all shelter behind the camels. Besides, something told him the normal precautions were not going to be enough. Remembering that uncanny moaning in the wind, Darius knew this was not a normal storm.

  For two days and nights, Darius was haunted by dreams of being buried alive, feeling sand closing over his face, the weight of it pressing down as he choked. Often he woke close to panic, only to hear Vinda and Dadarshi wheezing hoarsely. He would shake his clothes and push back the creeping piles of sand threatening to cover him, lie a while in the orange-tinted darkness of the storm, with no idea whether it was night or day, then drift back into restless sleep.

  On the third day, the wind stopped. One minute it was roaring, then silence. Unsettled by the sudden stillness Darius sat up, brushed a thick layer of dust from his gown, shook more dust from his hair and beard, rubbed life into stiff joints and walked unsteadily to the entrance of the tomb. Behind him he heard Dadarshi wheezing as he followed. Outside the light was hazy. A cloud of fine orange dust hung in the sky. But the terrible dryness had gone from the air, the sweetness was returning. He saw the ghostly shapes of soldiers stirring from other tombs, looking disorientated as they walked slowly across the sand-misted plateau, heads turning this way and that as they took in the incredible destruction the storm had wrought. The tents were all gone, the hillsides half buried, some of the south-facing tombs completely filled with sand, the entrances blocked. Darius hoped no one had been inside them. Standing at the cliff edge and looking down into the haze he could see neither the oasis nor the sweet water pool. He took the horn from around his neck, shook out the sand and blew a challenge. The sound was muffled in the thick, soupy air. No one answered. He half turned to Dadarshi. ‘Get twenty men. We’re going down.’