Blood of Kings

by Andrew James

  Darius knew it was the end. Feeling strangely flat, he realized he was ready to die, would welcome it. But not for this deceitful bastard’s entertainment. He looked around, instinctively searching for somewhere to run. They were in an open place bordered by date gardens to the west, camel-thorn scrub to the east, open desert to the south and the five hills of Dakrur Mountain to the north. But in addition to the warriors there were a thousand Ammonians surrounding them, their high foreheads creased with hatred. Feeling like a cornered animal about to be hunted his breathing grew rapid. Everything around him became a disjointed blur.

  The Great Chief raised his hands. The crowd fell silent. He harangued them in Siwi, in short aggressive sentences, jabbing his fingers at the Persians. His words drove the Ammonians into a rage. Darius saw the fear on the prisoners’ faces as the mob shouted, stamped their feet and raised their fists. The Great Chief stepped back and his guards closed around him. The senior counsellor shouted a single word and pointed at the Persians.

  The mob surged forward and there was a carnival atmosphere as Darius’s men were dragged away, screaming, and beaten with sticks and rocks. Some the Ammonians seized and tied behind asses, to be dragged along the ground where their heads were smashed against rocks or the camel thorn tore their flesh. Others were taken by groups of veiled women. They were surrounded, stripped and jeered at. The gelding knives flashed in the sun. Terror echoed off the hills. A young woman with bloody fingers came over and screamed at Darius. A guard shoved her roughly away. Children came, boys and girls with innocent faces and sharp knives, and the mothers watched as they stabbed bound men in the eyes and laughed.

  Watching his soldiers die, rage built inside Darius, a pressure he could not contain. They were brave men being torn apart by animals. How long it went on he couldn’t have said, but when the last bodies stopped twitching the Great Chief came to him, looking triumphant. ‘Your neck was stiff. Your men have paid the price.’

  Overcome with anger and hatred, Darius raised his manacled arms and smashed the chains into the Great Chief’s face. Sutekh-Irdis stepped back with his nose pouring blood. This time the beating was far slower and more skilful. Darius did not pass out quickly. He lay in the dust under the hot sun, praying for it to end.

  Darius tried to sit up. His head was spinning, his body a mass of pain.

  ‘Don’t move.’ A hand pushed against his chest. The fingers and wrist were slender, clinking with rings and heavy silver bracelets. A woman’s hand, but she seemed very strong. Or perhaps he was very weak from his wounds. Darius lay back and tried to focus. A dark blue, loose, flowing gown with rectangular sleeves hid her body. Her narrow face was young and pretty with a wide mouth, high forehead, long brown hair tied at the back, and clear skin the colour of pale honey. The gown was embroidered with red and orange zigzags around the square neckline. Large silver half-moons hung from her ears, each dangling with seven silver stars. She looked exotic, foreign. In different circumstances he might have thought her exciting, but now he recoiled from her touch with hatred. She was an Ammonian. Member of a tribe that had butchered his men.

  Gently she pulled her hand away. ‘You killed my husband. Now I am tamza.’

  ‘Tamza?’ He heard his own voice but it sounded dry and cracked.

  ‘Possessed by the evil eye. I brought him bad luck. For four and a half moons no one will come near me.’

  He nodded slightly, too weary to care about one more death.

  She puckered her mouth and almost spat the words. ‘I am glad! He was cruel.’ Then she smiled. ‘And it means my brother will not harm you while I am here.’

  Though her accented Greek was fluent, he struggled to understand. What was his life to this stranger? His mind turned and slowly things became clearer. Her brother wanted to hurt him – Prince Si-Ammon! ‘Your father is the Great Chief?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he wants you to keep me alive to be ransomed?’ Darius made no effort to mask the hostility in his voice.

  She looked embarrassed. ‘You came to kill us, so they beat you. You have blood in your water. You must rest.’ Darius caught a glimpse of an elegant neck as she turned away. She came back carrying a wooden bowl. Dipping in a fingertip, she smeared something over the wounds on his face. It made them sting.

  He drew back, wincing as his body protested at the sudden movement. ‘What is that?’

  Her laughter annoyed him. ‘You are brave warrior, scared of medicine! It is spider web, ash from the fire, and salt. For wounds.’ She undid his sword belt, pulled off his gown and treated the wounds on his torso. Her touch was light on his body. She began to turn away, then stopped and lay her fingers softly over the healing white blister on his hand. ‘Scorpion?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said gruffly, scowling as a sharp pain in his wrist stopped him moving his hand away from hers. He wondered if it was broken. When he looked up she was gone.

  She returned carrying another bowl and spooned a thick paste into his mouth. It was sweet and oily with a heavy, cloying flavour. Suspicious, he spat it out.

  ‘Food! You do not like it?’

  ‘No. What is it?’

  ‘Dates mixed with olive oil.’

  He made a face. ‘We don’t eat olives.’

  She threw up her hands in dismay. ‘No! In your land there are no olives?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I do not believe this! Here are so many olives.’ Picking up his headcloth she rubbed the material curiously between her fingers. ‘This cloth. It is not linen, and it is not wool?’

  ‘Cotton,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘Cot-ton? From where?’

  He sighed wearily. ‘Spun from wool that grows on a bush.’

  Delighted, she looked at him with shining eyes. Arms folded across her breast she stood with one hip thrust forward. Darius noticed its swell as it broke through the line of her gown, and the fine, silky hair of her eyebrows as she arched them in disbelief. ‘Sheep growing on a bush? You tease me! Now I believe nothing you say.’ She skipped lightly to the door, her laughter mingling in his head with the screams of his men. At the doorpost she turned. Her wide mouth parted and her smooth cheeks dimpled in a smile. ‘I am Turquoise. You are Da-ri-us?’

  ‘Yes …’ He paused. ‘You said that your brother wants to hurt me?’

  She gave a slight shrug of her slender shoulders. ‘You humiliated him making him prisoner. He wants to kill you. But my father wants gold, so he says no.’

  The door swung shut on its leather hinges and Darius lay back, glad to be alone. He trusted no one in this hostile land, least of all the daughter of a man who had shown himself to be so crooked. Yet he admitted that she had tried to be friendly. And Turquoise had spoken of her dead husband with such venom she had obviously hated him. He wondered if she resented her father for forcing her to marry? She’d sounded respectful but not affectionate when she mentioned the Great Chief.

  Talk of ransom worried him. Through a fog of nausea and pain he wondered what the Great Chief would do when he realized Darius had no gold?

  Too weak to move he stared at the mud-plastered walls where the imprints of the plasterer’s fingers had left long, parallel lines. The ceiling was of palm trunks, split down the middle, laid side by side and thatched with reeds, the wood sagging alarmingly in the middle. Apart from a table and chair of woven palm fronds, the room was bare of furniture. A crudely woven rug covered the floor; its zigzags and dots made him dizzy. After staring at it for a while he had to close his eyes.

  When he opened them again there was something coiled on his pillow. A broad heart-shaped head with cold, black eyes. A sand-coloured scaly body patterned with brown zigzags, blotches and dots, like the Ammonian rug. But this was alive. A forked tongue flickered, so close it almost touched his nose. ‘Turquoise?’ he called softly. The snake lifted its head, the two forks of its tongue flicking from its mouth.

  ‘Turquoise?’ he called again. Agitated, the snake coiled and uncoiled, unblinking eyes staring
into his. It was only the length of his forearm and thickness of his thumb, but he knew it as a deadly viper. His breathing became ragged. There was sweat on his brow.

  ‘Turquoise!!!’ Panic gave strength to his voice.

  Angered by the shout the snake writhed on the pillow, forming ‘c’ shapes with its body then breaking them, hissing with a sound like red-hot iron being quenched in water. It opened its mouth and Darius saw the fangs being lowered, two fine white needles in its upper jaw. He tried to slide away on the pallet but terror and weakness pinned him down. For the first time in his life he understood what it meant to be paralysed with fear.

  He heard the door swing open but didn’t dare look. Turquoise’s voice called out in warning. ‘Stay still!’ Darting warily round the bed, she moved to the window and shouted something Darius could not understand. His body rigid, his eyes intent on the snake just a few fingers from his face, he heard a scratching at the window and a faint rustle as something jumped through. Soft feet pattered to the bed, a shadow leapt at his face and brushed past. Long, low, lithe, it was beautifully proportioned with spots of cinnamon brown on short, sand-coloured fur. Back legs braced wide against the bed pallet, spine arched, one front paw on the pillow, the other reaching tentatively forward, it made an exploratory swipe, extending sharp, hooked claws. Small dark punctures appeared in the snake’s scales. Turning its head to the threat the viper writhed furiously, its tail lashing Darius’s face, its fangs striking in a blur. The spotted creature swayed its head effortlessly out of reach and swiped again. It kept attacking, graceful and fluid, sometimes stretching its head forward on its neck, sometimes pulling it back, green eyes with intense black slits and large ears always fixed on its prey.

  Goading the snake with vicious claws it sent it into paroxysms of rage. The hissing became a furious boil in Darius’s ears that filled his head with pounding fear. The snake reared up, head swaying from side to side, its tongue flicked, its fangs bared as it struck with lightning speed at the whiskered face. Darius’s breath caught, expecting a scream, but the whiskered animal pulled back with amazing suppleness.

  Suddenly it darted forward. A paw clamped down on the sinuous creature, its jaws opened and with an audible crunch two huge fangs sank deep into flesh halfway down the reptile’s body. Then, in a blur of cinnamon and sand, it quickly leapt away. The snake’s anger was explosive. It rolled on its back, twisting and coiling, its body contorting in furious loops and its jaws biting itself in its frenzy. Slowly it spent itself, the scaly head lolled and the writhing stopped.

  Taking its limp prey in its mouth, Darius’s rescuer jumped off the bed. With a crunching of bone it chewed the snake in half and began to eat from the middle of the body downwards. Turquoise stood over the spotted creature and smiled. ‘She has young. Normally she eats lizards and grasshoppers, but she likes snake too.’

  It looked to Darius like a tiny leopard cub. ‘It is some sort of cat?’ he asked, using the Greek word ‘gata’.

  She shook her head. ‘I do not know this word “gata”. It is mau.’ She looked closely at the head of the mangled snake and her face grew long and stormy. ‘This viper is bad. Very bad. It should not be in here. Sometimes they climb …’ She turned to the open window. ‘But I think my brother does not leave you alone after all. I will speak to my father.’

  Ashamed at the helplessness he had felt, Darius began shaking with relief. Dissolving his earlier hatred for her, the relief turned to gratitude. ‘We are enemies. Why should you care what happens to me?’ There was no hostility left in his voice, just confusion.

  Turquise looked at him, but didn’t answer.

  Leaning heavily on Turquoise’s arm, Darius let her guide him to the tiny window. For the first time since the massacre he looked out at the world, and saw five low, flat-topped hills banded in red and cream limestone. ‘Where is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘A house outside Dakrur village. I lived here with my husband.’

  Trembling, he recognized the very mountains beneath which his men had been murdered. The images flooded back and the anger returned. He saw the blood again, heard the screams, remembered the casual torture of men who had disarmed, surrendered, and were no threat. ‘Those mountains? How can you expect me to sleep in peace so near the spot where my men were murdered?’

  ‘They are dead now,’ she said with a dismissive shake of her head. ‘What does it matter?’

  Hearing her, he understood for the first time the harsh code the oasis dwellers lived by. Though he and Turquoise could speak a common language, they were worlds apart.

  Seeing his contempt she lowered her eyes. ‘Besides, you were too ill to move far,’ she added softly. ‘That is why my father give you to me.’

  ‘My friends? Where are they?’

  ‘They are at the palace.’

  ‘Are they well?’

  ‘My father wants gold.’ She lifted one shoulder. ‘They will be alive.’

  Eager to be up and about, he asked her to show him the house. He found it simply furnished, everything made out of the tough, woody sections of palm fronds, which had been dried, cut and nailed. In a wealthy Persian house there would be trinkets, bowls, vases of precious metals and rare woods but here the only ornaments were woven from reeds. As his strength returned, he began making short exploratory journeys around the house, but never venturing beyond the high outer walls of mud and salt. Stumbling two days later into a roofless, three-walled room with a fire, Darius knew that he had found the kitchen. Two women were standing beside a cauldron chopping vegetables for a stew. Horrified, they stopped chattering and immediately threw what looked like heavy, embroidered blankets over their heads and faces. Surprised, he asked Turquoise about it later. ‘They are married,’ she explained. ‘If their husbands heard they had let another man see their hands or face, they would be beaten.’

  ‘If life here is so strict, how are you alone with me?’

  ‘My father sent guards, but I have sent them away.’ She fleetingly touched Darius’s arm. ‘I think you are gentle. You will not harm me.’

  Turquoise helped him climb the eight steps to the flat roof. Comfortable with rugs and cushions, it afforded a view of the date gardens and olive groves below. Men with two-handed saws were cutting side shoots from the base of the palm trees, while others spread manure, repaired the sandbanks that kept the irrigation water in the fields, cut fodder from beneath the olive trees and stacked it on carts, or used scythes to chop back reeds where they choked the irrigation ditches. Winter was nearly at an end. The pomegranate trees were sprouting new leaves, red-tipped as though dipped in blood, the buds on the grapevines were bursting open, and on the desert fringe exotic ivory-coloured flower spikes were erupting through the sand.

  Kneeling demurely, Turquoise poured Darius some wine and held it out. ‘It will give you strength.’ She watched as he tasted it. ‘It is good?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘You made it?’

  Delighted, she slipped her hand through his, led him too breathless to resist down the steps, through the courtyard to the north of the house and past a solid wooden door. The light was dim. His eyes adjusted to see wooden racks filled with rows of clay jars, stoppered with wood and sealed with clay. ‘Everything we eat, we make ourselves.’ She pointed at each rack in turn. ‘Salted olives, olive oil, date honey, pomegranate syrup, honey in the comb and … wine.’ The wine rack held over a hundred jars. On the far side was a block of greyish-white salt cut from the nearby lake, palm-fibre sacks of flour, piles of four or five different kinds of dates, some dry, some moist, and woven baskets full of onions, beans, dried figs, almonds.

  Proud of her craft, she chattered happily. Feeling in her debt, Darius listened politely. ‘Perhaps the wine is not as good as the best from Greece, which we buy from Cyrene,’ she admitted. ‘But I like it, and to import wine needs a long sea voyage from Greece and a journey across the desert.’ She made a face at the ceiling. ‘It is so expensive!’

  Suddenly Darius had an insig
ht that left him crushed. The reason there were no luxuries in the house was that anything the Ammonians couldn’t make themselves had to be dragged across the desert. It was a barrier that isolated the oasis: kept out invading armies, stifled trade … and made escape impossible. With Phanes’s army he had crossed the desert in winter, relying on the enormous camel train to carry water. But now summer was approaching. And he had no animals. Trying to escape would be suicide.

  Yet what choice did he have? Soon the Great Chief would realize he was too poor to be worth keeping alive.

  They went back upstairs and Darius sat on the roof, staring helplessly at the dunes to the south. Turquoise saw the direction of his eyes but said nothing. The dunes were gently rounded and as smooth as ice. If he was to live, he had to cross them.

  It was a bright morning eight days later. Darius’s wounds were healing and the dizziness almost gone. After so long confined indoors, he was seduced by the promise of strolling through warm sunshine and sparkling desert light. He let Turquoise guide him, pulling on his hand. ‘Come. I have sent the farmhands away. I will show you the farm.’ They walked through sweet-scented date gardens and groves of gnarled grey olive trees. A low winter sun cast black shadows beneath them and washed the tops of their leaves with silver. Darius picked up a handful of the sandy brown soil and rubbed it between his fingers. Years of manuring had made it light and fertile. Together, they watched a kestrel hover over the reedbeds, head perfectly still but body jerking in the wind, then Darius explored a palm-thatch shelter near the trees. He found farming implements, sickles, scythes and a large pile of rope harnesses. Stooping down, he chose a harness at random and held it out curiously. ‘Why so many? How many asses does your farm need?’

  Turquoise shook her head and laughed. ‘They are not for the farm, they are for the date caravans. The mules are fattening down by the spring. In years of peace the caravans take the oasis’ surplus to the coast. But this year there is war, and the caravans will not run.’