Men of Bronze (39 page)

Dawn striped the eastern sky with bands of coral and ivory, fading overhead to diamond-studded lapis. Bedouin guards crouched at the gates of Qainu’s palace, passing a skin of fermented goat’s milk back and forth. They were supposed to be on station inside the walls, as sentries and door-wards, but the desert men felt uneasy surrounded by so much stone, constricted. A man needed open sky in order to breathe.

They had passed the night cursing and grumbling in their beards at being left behind to watch over the fat king while their brothers gained gold and glory in the Egyptian camp. Zayid had promised each of them an equal share of the booty. In that, at least, they did not feel cheated.

“How much do you think we will get?” the youngest of them said, his beard a mere wisp on his chin. The others laughed.

“More than you’ve ever seen, boy,” one said. “Enough to buy every whore from here to Damascus!”

“You lie!” the boy said, walking away from the others. He stopped at the stone curb of a well occupying the center of the plaza. In a few hours time, women would bring their jars here to be filled, the first of many chores.

“He speaks true, Khatib,” another said, rising from a crouch and stretching. “Gold in Egypt is like sand in Arabia. You have only to stoop and pick it up. What
shaykh
Zayid takes from their camp, even divided, will make all of us rich beyond our dreams.”

The boy, Khatib, grinned. “I will buy herds, not whores,” he said. “And wives! I will have a hundred wives! I …” Khatib paused as something came arching out of the gloom. It struck the ground with a meaty squelch and rolled to the stone curb. Khatib frowned as he walked around to the thing and squatted. The others laughed, shouting to their young cousin.

“What have you found, boy?”

Khatib rose and turned toward them, eyes wide, face pale. He cradled a severed head in his hands. Its features, frozen in the act of dying, were all too familiar to the Bedouin.

Zayid.

The guards surged to their feet, cursing and howling in rage. “Watch yourself, boy!” They gestured behind the young Bedouin.

“What is it … What …?” Khatib spun as Barca stepped from the shadows, his sword splitting the boy’s skull like a ripe melon. The Phoenician kicked the corpse aside and fell on the remaining half dozen guards. Egyptians poured into the plaza at his back.

The Bedouin did not stand a chance.

“Take the gate! “ Barca roared, droplets of crimson falling from his blade. Qainu’s palace, a temple in a previous incarnation, was designed to be easily defended. The crenellated walls had murder-holes and sally-ports carved into the ancient brick. Besieged archers and soldiers could easily rain death down on an attacker. Even the simple gate was a heavy, ponderous affair of corroded bronze and cedar; it looked to Barca like it had not been closed in a generation or more.

A handful of Bedouin, along with a sprinkling of slaves and servants, rushed to the gate and threw their backs into closing it. It moved an inch. Two. Four. Grins of triumph on their faces were short lived as the huge portal ground to a halt. They panicked as a wave of Egyptians in glittering armor crashed against the gate, forcing it open. After a flurry of blades left Bedouin corpses across the threshold, the rest turned and fled into the courtyard.

Barca expected some kind of organized defense. Arrows and rocks from on high. A rush of swordsmen. Something. Even a mutiny among Ahmad’s men who were secretly loyal to Qainu. But, this last stand of the groomsmen and the kitchen help had taken him at unawares. Surely Qainu was not so foolish as to commit his entire household guard to the fight in the camp?

“Are any of your men within?” the Phoenician asked Ahmad. The Arabian captain shook his head.

“No. We’re billeted in the city. Qainu fancies himself more of a
shaykh
than a king. The only soldiers within are Zayid’s mercenaries.”

“He’s neither,” Barca growled. “He’s governor of a city under Egyptian rule. His folly is thinking beyond his station.”

“Whatever his folly,” Ahmad said, “he is my king. I swore allegiance to Qainu and his forebears, not to Egypt. I cannot help with what you intend.”

“Then do not hinder me, either!” Barca said, turning and leading his Egyptians through the gates.

The courtyard was a blending of worlds: an Egyptian lotus pool surrounded by Arabian date palms and Hellenic sculpture. The servants faced them with cleavers and kitchen knives, fear shining in their eyes. Barca stalked toward them. The look on his face promised murder should his will not be done. He raked them with a withering stare.

“You’ve proven your valor,” he said. “Stand down and you’ll not be harmed.” There were murmurs among them; then, one by one, their weapons clattered to the ground. To his Egyptians he said, “Keep them here.”

Barca ascended the steps to the throne room doors, his wrath cold and righteous. With a snarl, he shouldered them open …

… and stopped in amazement. Instead of a horde of Bedouin warriors, he saw a sight that brought a deep, throaty laugh from him. Callisthenes. The Greek sat upon the ebony throne of Gaza, a bloody knife driven point first into the inlaid armrest. A tiger lay dead, a spear sprouting from its body like a grisly vine, and near it a corpse Barca recognized as that of Merodach, the chancellor. Something else crouched at Callisthenes’ feet, something barely discernable as a naked man, his face streaked with blood. An indelicate hand had taken a knife to the fellow’s hair and beard, shearing both away without thought for the skin beneath, and a leash trailed down to a collar around the man’s neck. With a start, Barca realized it must be Qainu.

Barca chuckled. “I’ll be damned, Callisthenes. Here I thought you might be in need of my help. What happened to the squeamish Greek who abhorred violence?”

“Someone tried to kill him,” Callisthenes said. He rose and tossed Qainu’s leash to Barca. “I promised Merodach I would not kill him, but you’re under no such constraints. I only ask you do it elsewhere. I’ve had my fill of murder for the day.”

Barca passed the leash to Ahmad. The Arab captain crouched, his fierce face inches from the deposed king’s, his blood-spattered beard bristling. “You wretched bastard! I served you, and your father before you, with faith and honor and this is how you repay me? Damn your black soul! You will share in Zayid’s fate, you son of a bitch!”

Qainu whimpered and pleaded as Ahmad and his soldiers dragged him into the bowels of the palace.

Barca followed Callisthenes out into the courtyard. Overhead, the sky faded from the coral-ivory of dawn to a bright and vibrant azure. Sunlight filtered through a pall of dust raised by the battle as the last of the servants were bound together in an uneven line.

“I bear ill news,” Callisthenes said, sitting on the stone curb of a lotus pool. The adrenalin rush left his body cold and shaking. “Phanes. That bastard was here; he travels with the Persian vanguard. They have crossed the wastes and already sit on our doorstep. The cities of Phoenicia must have given in to Cambyses’ demands.”

Callisthenes tensed for a sulphuric tirade, but Barca did not waste breath cursing his countrymen. He stood in silence, studying the tracery of shadows cast by the date palms lining the pool. His people were merchants; they dealt in profit and loss, leaving the vagaries of morality to those who could afford it. All of the treaties signed with Egypt, all of the pledges of friendship and offerings of fealty were nothing compared to what the Persians offered: capitulation or annihilation. To a Phoenician, it was not that difficult a choice.

“What do we do now?” Callisthenes asked.

“We’ll have to pull back, choose better ground,” Barca said. “If the Persians use ships to get troops behind us, our delaying action will become our last stand. No, we must abandon Gaza. It’s too open to properly defend ourselves. We …”

A clamor at the gate drowned Barca out. He heard a flurry of incredulous shouts, cries to the gods for mercy. Frowning, he went to investigate. Callisthenes followed in his wake.

A crowd gathered in the plaza outside the palace. Arabs, for the most part, leavened with a sprinkling of Judaeans; dark-skinned Nubians, even a pair of scarred horse-traders out of Thrace. Egyptian soldiers rested in the morning shade. Barca could not make out what was being said, though he divined the gist of it. Peering northeast, shading his eyes with a blood-grimed hand, he could see what had inspired their sudden panic. Behind him, Callisthenes mumbled a prayer in his native Greek. Barca remained quiet, his jaw muscles knotted.

In the distance, a pillar of dust marred the blue perfection of the sky.

The Persians.

The hills ringing Raphia were slashed with gullies and arroyos; bleak cliffs stood sentinel over the Way of Horus. The road curved serpentine before plunging into a deep cleft surmounted by ridges of loose rock and scree. The natural bottleneck was the perfect site for an ambush, and Otanes, who commanded the Persian outriders, knew it too. He and his men were part of a probe, the tentative thrust of a hand well-versed in strategy and tactics. This was the third time they had tested this section of road in as many days; Otanes had lost count of how many such sorties they had attempted in the week since leaving Gaza.

Otanes reined in his horse, peering through the swirling dust kicked up by the column of soldiers at his back. His throat was raw and dry; sweat poured down his ribs, soaking the linen corselet he wore under his scale armor. By the blessed Ahuramazda! This place was a furnace. The cooling winds of the Mediterranean did not reach this far inland. Here, nothing moved the humid air.

He scanned the ridges above, wary. Otanes’ heritage gave him the right to command — he was of undiluted Persian blood from Anshan, at the heart of the empire — and his wits gave him the wherewithal to command well. A soldier born, as the old adage says, to bend the bow and speak the truth, Otanes did not consider it a slight that his name was never offered as a candidate to lead the regiment left behind to secure Gaza in preparation for His Majesty’s arrival. He knew his instincts made him more useful in the field. These same instincts warned him: the cursed Phoenician and his soldiers were waiting ahead.

“Sir?” his lieutenant, a young Mede called Bagoas, leaned forward in the saddle. “Do we proceed?”

“So quick to find glory and death, Bagoas?” Otanes murmured, not looking at the man. His gaze was riveted on a spot where the jumbled boulders hung precariously to the cliff-side. “Tiribazos rushed in, and look what happened to him. An Egyptian arrow in the gullet. Myself, I’d like to die in a different kind of saddle, if you get my meaning.”

Bagoas chuckled.

After a moment Otanes nodded to himself. He saw no sign of an ambush, despite the tightly-clenched ball of foreboding in his gut. Perhaps it was farther up the road this time, or perhaps the Egyptians had withdrawn. Either way, he would proceed with caution. He held his hand up and motioned his column forward.

Harness jingled as the Persians entered the defile. Dozens of eyes rolled skyward, staring at the silent cliffs. With every step breathing became more difficult as the noose of apprehension tightened about their throats. Each soldier made a promise to himself to sacrifice to the blessed Ahuramazda should they live to see the far end of the ravine.

Otanes’ neck muscles creaked as he glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Bagoas shifted uneasily and looked up. His breath caught in his throat as he spotted the reflection of sunlight on metal. He opened his mouth to shout a warning …

“Loose!” a voice roared from above, echoing through the narrow defile.

Arrows slashed down through the bright morning sunlight, a bronze-barbed rain that found chinks in armor, punched through hastily raised shields, and clattered on scorched rock. Otanes shouted as he toppled from his saddle; horses bucked and reared as arrows raked their dusty flanks. In an instant, the well-ordered Persian ranks were thrown into disarray.

Young Bagoas, so far unscathed, controlled his mount with his knees, spinning the horse about. For the rest of his life, Bagoas would remember only one thing about that ambush, a single vision sharpened by adrenalin and fear: Otanes slumped against the rocks, his eyes fixed and staring, with an arrow jutting from his cervical spine.

Bagoas signaled a withdrawal …