Blood of Kings

by Andrew James

  From behind them came the release of a thousand bows, arrows arcing over the heads of the gathering camels, forcing the enemy back from the stockade. Ammonian warriors fell shrieking beneath razor-sharp points. ‘Open the gates!’ Darius shouted. With a groaning of wood and creaking of palm-fibre rope they were thrown open. Dadarshi cracked his stick over the camel’s shoulder, threw back his head and shouted. Five squadrons of a hundred camels each lurched through the gates and trotted down the sandy slope, the riders screaming their chilling, high-pitched cries. The camels struck, their bellowing and rank smell terrifying the westerners’ horses, which whinnied and reared. Carthaginians struggled to stay mounted on bucking horses. Persian scimitars slashed and the Carthaginians shouted to each other in fear and confusion. Suddenly there was a great thuddering of hooves and heaving of bodies. Thousands of horses pointed their faces west, stampeding down the slope in panic like a migrating herd. With their allies routing, Ammonian warriors cowered behind their shields and cried out in fear. Abandoning the stockade they turned and ran. Whooping and yelling, weapons raised high, Dadarshi’s riders chased them down the slope, cutting hundreds down from behind.

  The sound of fleeing horses receded into the distance as Dadarshi’s victorious camels returned through the gates. The men’s eyes glittered and their voices were over-eager as they swapped tales of enemies they had slaughtered. They were brave men, and Darius was overcome with pity for them. How had it come to this? Phanes had been a bastard but he was a hugely skilful general whose meticulous planning had carried the army across months of hostile desert. Until a storm turned that desert on its head. Even then, if his army had arrived just one day sooner they would have been saved. Darius remembered the treacherous guides screaming on their crosses. They had delayed Phanes but paid with their lives. He wondered if they were aware their sacrifice had been worthwhile.

  Then Darius remembered Phanes’s taunt as he left Thebes: ‘The world will soon see if this ram-god is worthy of all his priests and temples.’ Whether the storm was the Ammonians’ god waging war or just a freak of nature, it made no difference. The end was near.

  Darius had always been taught that courage brought its reward, if not now then in paradise. He remembered the tales he had heard at his grandfather’s feet, of his ancestors’ dying glorious deaths. Of Achaemenes, Chishpish and Ariaramna, legendary warrior kings who led their men in battle against Saka, Assyrians and Elamites. When their time came they died with spears in their hands, proud words on their lips. Their blood was in his veins. He wouldn’t disgrace them, he would take as many of the enemy with him as he could. Deep inside, a small part of Darius was choking, but he kept it under control. Outwardly he was fine. Calm, resolved. If any Persian made it home he wanted them to tell tales of the Glorious Death of Darius. Parmys would hear those tales and remember him as her eyes filled. He wanted a death she would be proud of. Then at least his memory would endure in her heart.

  He recalled her last words before they parted and suddenly wanted to howl with grief: ‘I love you, Darius. No matter what it takes, come back to me alive!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Parmys. I failed you. I won’t be coming back.’

  Dawn pearl suffused the eastern sky. The air was sweet with dew. Their losses forgotten, the Ammonians and Carthaginians were massing for yet another attack, huge numbers milling halfway up the slope. Nervous horses blew loudly, stepped sideways, lifted their feet. Nervous men chanted, a low dark sound that spread on the breeze. Darius’s eyes swept over the enemy, sensing their anger and frustration at their failure to crush a relative handful of men. At the bottom of the slope whips cracked. Warriors were dragging something heavy and long.

  At the sight of it Darius’s heart sank. He gripped his sword and prepared to die.

  Book Three

  REVENGE

  24

  The rising sun sent a flood of light over Darius’s shoulder, bathing the camel riders in gold. A hush descended on the plateau as everyone contemplated what was coming. Next to him Vinda stood very still, his scimitar dripping blood as it hung loose in his hand. His face was in shadow, but Darius knew that like everyone else he was looking at the ram, a great ironwood tree sheathed in copper, suspended by ropes of twisted jute on a wooden carriage. One swing from that beast would splinter the palm-wood stockade. The realization that there was no hope set a thousand emotions swirling in Darius’s head. Afraid of the flood that would be unleashed he suppressed them all, and accepted the inevitable. He tapped Vinda’s shoulder. ‘The time has come.’

  Vinda nodded solemnly. ‘I never thought I would say it, Darius, but I am proud to have known you. You have done all that any man could. I may have been … unfair … in some of the things I said in the past.’ He held out his fist. Darius gripped his arm, and together they walked slowly up the slope from the stockade towards the tombs.

  With each footstep, Darius felt the responsibility for the fate of his men dragging him down. He thought of their families back home, the wives who would be made widows, the children fatherless, and he knew he had to try to save them. He wanted that glorious death so badly the emotion in his veins made him tremble. But the choice was not his. His ancestors had been great because they cared for their people, put duty before selfish glory. Darius must do the same. He gave an order to a satapatish. ‘Bring the boy.’

  Si-Ammon trod with light, easy steps as he was brought from the tomb. He knew the Persians had lost. Angered by the smirk on his thin face, Darius grabbed his hair and dragged him to the edge of the cliff with a blade pressed to his throat. Looking at the savages below, Darius felt sick to his stomach. He had been defeated. He must surrender. The shame and humiliation of being taken prisoner scared him more than any wound. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, steeled himself to open them again and shouted down. ‘Sutekh-Irdis! Fate is against us. For my part I would go down fighting, but I have a duty to my men.’

  The Great Chief of the Desert Lands stepped from the shadows, his face in darkness, the feathers in his hair backlit by an aura of light. ‘You want my word not to kill them in return for my son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He won’t keep it,’ Vinda muttered. ‘He is a Creature of the Lie.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Darius agreed. ‘But do I have a choice?’

  Vinda sighed. ‘No.’

  At the base of the cliff, the Ammonian king raised both hands to the sky, spread them wide, tilted his head back. ‘I swear by Ammon that I will spare them. Or may the god strike me down.’

  He said it with such conviction, if Darius hadn’t known him he would have believed the man meant it. Darius hesitated … then let the boy go. Before clambering down the ladder, Si-Ammon stopped, turned and gave Darius a malicious look. The blade in Darius’s hand twitched. Prince Si-Ammon held his tongue.

  Iron rang on rock. Blades snapped, bows splintered, spear shafts shattered. When the Persians had destroyed everything of use, less than three thousand survivors from Phanes’s army of fifty thousand trudged slowly off the plateau, past the stockade and down the slope. One of the men unfurled the Griffin Standard and set it to burn. Darius watched solemnly as the embroidered linen flared into charred blackened scraps. When it was gone, he formed the Persians up in three hazara on the open sand and gave his final order. ‘Let them come to us.’ The men cheered bravely. Darius was overcome with sadness. They deserved better than this. The desert swarmed with enemies. The Great Chief of the Desert Lands stepped from their midst, approaching with his strange shuffling gait, while his sons, tribal chiefs and counsellors walked at his side. A tall, bony, middle-aged man stood out among them. He had a high forehead, thin, truculent face and sullen eyes. Wearing finer clothes and more gold than the rest, his air was that of a senior counsellor. The two men walked together and conferred, occasionally pointing at the stockade or the Persians, or to some feature in the desert. Attended by a warrior guard, they stopped five paces from Darius. Four spear-armed warriors stepped forward and flanked him.
Darius hadn’t had the heart to destroy the ancient swords of his ancestors, the kopis scimitar and akinakes stabbing sword. Forged not from simple iron but rare, heat-hardened Luristan steel, they had hilts of old ivory as yellow as cream and swirling patterns of bronze. Now a scrawny warrior pulled them from his belt. Seeing them defiled by an enemy’s hand Darius felt his face burn with shame and he instantly regretted the surrender. But it was too late now. Squaring his shoulders he looked the Great Chief in the eye and waited.

  The Great Chief considered the three neat squares of Persians and shook his head. ‘On the slave blocks of Carthage or Greece these men would fetch a fortune,’ he muttered, as though debating with himself. ‘But how would I get them there without those Punic bastards robbing me?’ He turned to the senior counsellor. ‘Do we have need of slaves to work the land?’

  ‘No. Nor food for so many. Kill them.’

  Darius had known it was going to happen but his anger at the betrayal was still intense. Feeling it swell inside him, he spat at their feet. ‘They are brave men who were fighting for their king! They deserve to live!’ He shouted the words, his voice carrying across the desert to his men, who stood silent and still as they watched their fates being debated.

  The Great Chief rounded on Darius furiously, arms flailing at his sides. ‘They are brigands who came to murder and plunder my land! They deserve to die.’

  ‘And your oath?’

  ‘It served its purpose. Later I will make my peace with Ammon.’

  ‘You fool. If you want to insult your god that’s up to you. But if you kill them the King of Kings will hear of it, and he will send an army to punish you.’

  ‘I have defeated one of his armies. With Ammon’s help I will defeat another.’

  Unable to hide his contempt, Darius laughed. ‘You are just a cockerel having your day on the dung heap! Do you really imagine you can defeat the King of Kings? In all your oases combined you have thirty-five thousand people. He rules over forty million! From the limitless expanse of Asia he can draw a second army like the last, and if you defeat that a third, and if you defeat that a fourth, and a fifth. His treasure houses are greater than even your greedy dreams. Kill these men and, however long it takes, however much it costs, Persia will have her revenge.’

  The men cheered Darius’s words and the Great Chief shuffled awkwardly. No one could doubt Darius was right. But nor could the Great Chief lose face in front of his counsellors. He scratched his armpit, eyes turning this way and that. Then a new firmness came over him, perhaps remembering that the King of Kings was far away. He turned to the counsellor and tilted his head back. ‘Kill them. All except the noble officers. They shall pay for this war.’

  The counsellor’s high forehead dipped briefly. His sullen eyes flicked past Darius, who turned to follow their line as the Ammonian shouted a single command. Thousands of bows were drawn, arrows whistling in arcs across the sand. There were cries of shock, anger and pain as waves of points tore the flesh of defenceless Persians, then the scuffing of sandals and riding boots as desperate men raced up the slope to the safety of the stockade. Darius started to follow, but the four warriors seized his shoulders and held him back. Excited by the chase, whooping Carthaginians kicked their mounts forward. Dust rose and javelins flew from their hands.

  Screaming at the horses and flinging handfuls of sand in the riders’ faces, a block of Persians broke through and sprinted into the desert, while others pulled horsemen from their mounts and beat them, grabbing reins and mounting up. Horses were turned west, or south, but more arrows came, thick clouds of them, and before the Persians had gone twenty paces they were dead on the ground.

  The Great Chief watched it all with hooded eyes. Sickened by the slaughter, Darius couldn’t stop shaking. ‘You miserable lying bastard!’ he screamed in the king’s face. Sutekh-Irdis looked at Darius and his upper lip twitched. Darius didn’t see the man who struck from behind, just heard the thump and felt pain shooting through his kidney, setting his back ablaze. Another blow and his legs crumpled beneath him. He collapsed onto the sand. Out of control, Darius screamed in blind rage. ‘You fucking lying barbarian bastard!’ A shod foot smashed into his face, crushing his lips against his teeth, jolting his head back, filling it with pain. Blood mingled with sand and saliva, they kicked again and again, each blow shaking Darius to the core until he felt himself falling through a whirlpool into oblivion.

  Everything went black.

  Barren sand gave way to clumps of spiky grasses. Carpets of grey-green camel thorn were vicious underfoot. Silver succulents with leaves like tiny grey grapes formed circular mounds as wide as a man is tall, forcing the lines of prisoners to detour around them. As far as Darius could tell, about three hundred Persians had survived the massacre. It was a two-day ride from the Two Lakes to Siwa, but it had taken the prisoners eight days on foot. They had been force-marched, shivering in the cold winter nights, burning in the hot midday sun. Only twice had the sun not shone, and on both days a storm had whipped up, stinging the Persians with showers of sand as they staggered west. Darius was grateful the wind hadn’t reached the violence of the great storm that had destroyed Phanes’s army. But weakened by hunger, thirst and exhaustion, for some of his men it had proved the final straw.

  Darius had sunk into lethargy and gloom. His wounds hurt, his kidneys burned. He was starving. Worse, he grieved for the dead and feared for the living. If the Great Chief didn’t want them as slaves, and they were too lowly to ransom, why had he kept these three hundred men alive?

  On the eighth day, the guards stopped for their mid-morning rest. They squatted down, sipping from the waterskins, while the prisoners stood in the sun. Darius was at the front. The ropes around his neck prevented him turning to see Vinda and Dadarshi, but he could hear Dadarshi crooning in Armenian, his voice croaky from thirst. He was mourning his brother. The guards joked as they drank, pouring water into the sand in front of the prisoners to torment them. Darius looked at the liquid stream longingly. Wondering how much further there was to go, he turned his head as far as the rope allowed. Beyond the last dunes of the desert shimmered the dark blue of a salt lake. All around it, white crystals glittered like frost. Beyond the lake and slightly to its left, rising above a clump of date palms were five low, flat-topped hills banded in red and cream limestone. Phanes had shown him a rough plan of the oasis, and with his head woozy, he closed his eyes and struggled to recall it. ‘Dakrur Mountain,’ he muttered through cracked lips. They were nearly there.

  When the guards had drunk there was the crack of whips, then groans from the prisoners and the Persians shuffled forward. One man was so weak he couldn’t move. Darius heard the commotion; his whimpering as the guards cut him free, and the thud as they threw him aside and left him on the sand to die. He winced at the sound of the man’s sobs, frustration seething inside him at the knowledge that he was powerless to help. So weak from hunger he thought each step would be his last, Darius placed one blistered foot in front of another, willpower all that kept him going. But the pain in his body was nothing to the pain in his heart. He had often seen captives of war, but never imagined he would become one. Even after eight days, the horror hadn’t dimmed. Each moment brought fresh misery.

  Slowly, date gardens and olive groves appeared, green and grey splashes hemmed in by ragged fences of brown palm-frond thatch. Climbing up the lower slopes of Dakrur Mountain was a village of scattered mud huts, single-storeyed and flat-roofed like the ones at the Two Lakes where the Persians had been buried alive. The road was dusty, just a track in the sand, littered with piles of asses’ dung in various stages of decay.

  Darius tensed at the sound of shouting and jeering ahead. He saw crowds of men, women and children lining the route. A guard raised a spear and poked him in the chest, forcing him to stop so suddenly that Dadarshi crashed into his back. All along the line came angry cries as men collided. About a hundred Ammonian warriors trotted forward, spears in hand, and took up stations lining the Persians
’ flanks. Darius wondered if they were there to keep the hostile crowd back or to pen the prisoners in. The crowd howled, waving fists and shrieking. Dadarshi, Vinda and Darius were cut free, along with Mithrayazna, the archery commander who had questioned Vinda’s order. They were tied together in a line and dragged to the side of the road then the guards prodded the remaining three hundred men with spears, herding them towards the crowd. Hands tied behind their backs, hobbles on their feet, they were defenceless and slow, taking just short shuffling steps.

  Darius watched them move away with mounting apprehension. He thought about protesting but realized it would do no good. He heard clashing cymbals, tapping drums and voices raised in song floating on the breeze, and saw a cloud of dust approaching from the heart of the oasis. Below it, a chariot progressed slowly along the track, followed by a group of men in white. Slung on poles over their shoulders was something like a small wooden boat without sails or oars. As the procession came closer he made out the Great Chief standing in the chariot and saw that the men were priests carrying a sacred barque. Inside it, a golden statue was shrouded from view by gauzy linen.

  The chariot stopped a spear-cast away and the Great Chief jumped off the footplate. His head was low and bent forward as he slouched towards Darius, shouting to be heard over the clamour. His eyes shifted from side to side as he spoke, never meeting those of his prisoner. ‘Ammon has come to witness his final victory. Your men will provide the sport.’