The Chiliarch grinned tautly through tangled gray whiskers and skipped away. A play for time, of course. It succeeded. The other three men climbed the bank, shouted and rushed. It was a disorderly attack. Superb fighters as individuals, the Persians had never developed the mass discipline of Europe, on which they would break themselves at Marathon and Gaugamela. But four against unarmored one was impossible odds.
Everard got his back to a tree bole. The first man came in recklessly, sword clashing on the Greek shield. Everard’s blade darted from behind the bronze oblong. There was a soft, somehow heavy resistance. He knew that feeling from other days, pulled his weapon out and stepped quickly aside. The Persian sat down, spilling out his life. He groaned once, saw he was a dead man, and raised his face toward the sky.
His mates were already at Everard, one to a side. Overhanging boughs made lassos useless; they would have to do battle. The Patrolman held off the lefthand blade with his shield. That exposed his right ribs, but since his opponents were ordered not to kill he could afford it. The righthand man slashed at Everard’s ankles. Everard sprang in the air and the sword hissed under his feet. The lefthand attacked stabbed low. Everard sensed a dull shock and saw steel in his calf. He jerked free. A sunset ray came between bunched needles and touched the blood, making it an impossibly brilliant red. Everard felt that leg buckle under him.
“So, so,” cried Harpagus, hovering ten feet away. “Chop him!”
Everard growled above his shield rim: “A task your jackal leader has no courage to attempt for himself, after I drove him back with his tail between his legs!”
It was calculated. The attack on him stopped a bare instant. He reeled forward. “If you Persians must be the dogs of a Mede,” he croaked, “can you not choose a Mede who is a man, rather than this creature which betrayed its king and now runs from a single Greek?”
Even this far west and this long ago, an Oriental could not lose face in such a manner. Not that Harpagus had ever been a coward; Everard knew how unfair his taunts were. But the Chiliarch spat a curse and dashed at him. Everard had a moment’s glimpse of eyes wild in a sunken hook-nosed face. He lumbered lopsidedly forward. The two Persians hesitated for a second more. That was long enough for Everard and Harpagus to meet. The Median saber rose and fell, bounced off Greek helmet and shield, snaked sideways for another leg cut. A loose white tunic flapped before Everard’s gaze. He hunched shoulders and drove his sword in.
He withdrew it with the cruel professional twist which assures a mortal wound, pivoted on his right heel, and caught a blow on his shield. For a minute he and one Persian traded fury. At the edge of an eye, he saw the other circling about to get behind him. Well, he thought in a remote way, he had killed the one man dangerous to Cynthia…
“Hold! Halt!”
The call was a weak flutter in the air, less loud than the mountain stream, but the warriors stepped back and lowered their blades. Even the dying Persian took his eyes from heaven.
Harpagus struggled to sit up, in a puddle of his own blood. His skin was turned gray. “No… hold,” he whispered. “Wait. There is a purpose here. Mithras would not have struck me down unless… ”
He beckoned, a somehow lordly gesture. Everard dropped his sword, limped over and knelt by Harpagus. The Mede sank back into his arms.
“You are from the King’s homeland,” he rasped in the bloody beard. “Do not deny that. But know… Aurvagaush the son of Khshayavarsha… is no traitor.” The thin form stiffened itself, imperious, as if ordering death to wait upon its pleasure. “I knew there were powers—of heaven, of hell, I know not which to this day—powers behind the King’s advent. I used them, I used him, not for myself, but because I had sworn loyalty to my own king, Astyages, and he needed a… a Cyrus… lest the realm be torn asunder. Afterward, by his cruelty, Astyages forfeited my oath. But I was still a Mede. I saw in Cyrus the only hope—the best hope—of Media. For he has been a good king to us also—we are honored in his domains second only to the Persians… Do you understand, you from the King’s home?” Dim eyes rolled about, trying to see into Everard’s but without enough control. “I wanted to capture you—to force your engine and its use from you, and then to kill you… yes… but not for my own gain. It was for the realm’s. I feared you would take the King home, as I know he has longed to go. And what would become of us? Be merciful, as you too must hope for mercy.”
“I shall,” said Everard. “The King will remain.”
“It is well,” sighed Harpagus. “I believe you speak the truth… I dare not believe otherwise… Then I have atoned?” he asked in a thin anxious voice. “For the murder I did at my old king’s behest—that I laid a helpless infant upon the mountainside and watched him die—have I atoned, King’s countryman? For it was that prince’s death… which brought the land close to ruin… but I found another Cyrus! I saved us! Have I atoned?”
“You have,” said Everard, and wondered how much absolution it lay in his power to give.
Harpagus closed his eyes. “Then leave me,” he said, like the fading echo of a command.
Everard laid him upon the earth and hobbled away. The two Persians knelt by their master, performing certain rites. The third man returned to his own contemplations. Everard sat down under a tree, tore a strip from his cloak and bandaged his hurts. The leg cut would need attention. Somehow he must get to the scooter. That wouldn’t be fun, but he could manage it and then a Patrol doctor could repair him in a few hours with a medical science future to his home era. He’d go to some branch office in an obscure milieu, because there’d be too many questions in the twentieth century.
And he couldn’t afford that. If his superiors knew what he planned, they would probably forbid it.
The answer had come to him not as a blinding revelation, but as a tired consciousness of knowledge which he might well have had subconsciously for a long time. He leaned back, getting his breath. The other four Persians arrived and were told what had happened. All of them ignored Everard, except for glances where terror struggled with pride and made furtive signs against evil. They lifted their dead chief and their dying companion and bore them into the forest. Darkness thickened. Somewhere an owl hooted.
9
The great King sat up in bed. There had been a noise beyond the curtains.
Cassandane, the Queen, stirred invisibly. One slim hand touched his face. “What is it, sun of my heaven?” she asked.
“I do not know.” He fumbled for the sword which lay always beneath his pillow. “Nothing.”
Her palm slipped down over his breast. “No, it is much,” she whispered, suddenly shaken. “Your heart goes like a war drum.”
“Stay there.” He trod out past the drapes.
Moonlight streamed from a deep-purple sky, through an arched window to the floor. It glanced almost blindingly off a bronze mirror. The air was cold upon bare skin.
A thing of dark metal, whose rider gripped two handlebars and touched tiny controls on a panel, drifted like another shadow. It landed on the carpet without a sound and the rider got off. He was a burly man in Grecian tunic and helmet. “Keith,” he breathed.