"This robber is no dolt," said the first guard, returning again to report. "He will send men down to the road before and behind us, to be sure of trapping us."
"Then—" began Bessas, but broke off to stare at the heights. "I think," he said, "that I saw a piece of cloth waved on the end of a stick. That were a signal. The tribesmen are probably clustered behind a hillock around the next bend or two; at least that is how such vagabonds do it in Gandara. Is there any way by which we could get behind them?"
"We have just passed a dell that leads away to northward," said the guard.
"Good. We will see where that dell goes."
"Troop Leader Bessas!" said the guard. "Would you attack this whole clan singlehanded?"
"Why not?" grinned Bessas. "If we can get behind and above them, we shall have the advantage."
"You are mad! I will have nought to do with this witless scheme!" The trooper set off at a gallop along the road by which they had come.
"Some day," said Bessas, "I will pull down that lousy craven's breeches and spank him with the flat of my sword. But then, he's not under my orders, and it is better to know the cowards before the fight than later. You!" he barked at the other guard, who rode up from his latest reconnaissance. "Are you rabbit-hearted like your comrade?" Bessas explained his plan.
The man paled but said: "Verethraghna aid us, what a conceit! Natheless, I will go anywhere you do, Captain Bessas."
Myron's heart rose into his throat. He thought, I am no fleet Achilles, alas; affrays like this affright me witless. But I must not let these foreigners see that a Hellene quails.
They rode up the dell but soon were forced to dismount. The dell narrowed to a ravine, along which they picked their way, squeezing past boulders and hopping from rock to rock. Bessas halted to listen.
"The Corpse Fiend take this wind!" he exclaimed. "A man can't hear himself think. But I hear horses coming down ... What are you staring at, Myron?"
"That insect," said Myron. "I have never seen one like it, and I wondered—"
Bessas gave a snarl of nervous exasperation. "Ahriman eat you! Here you're about to fight for your life, and you look at insects! Stay here, you two, and hold the beasts."
Bessas bounded up to the next bend. There he braced himself against the side of the ravine and pulled from its case his powerful Parthian bow, strung with tendons of stag. He took out a fistful of arrows and thrust them, one by one, into a patch of dirt. He slipped a leather bracer over his left wrist.
For a while he leaned unmoving against the rock. The wind whistled among the crags and made the grasses and mountain flowers nod. The horses stretched their necks towards scanty patches of herbage.
Suddenly, Bessas straightened up, bent his bow, and let fly. A hoarse yell sounded from around the bend. Before it had stopped, Bessas had whipped up another arrow from those in the ground and shot. A third and a fourth followed, then a pause.
"Come on up," said Bessas.
Around the bend, Myron saw three men in ragged coats and trousers lying in the bottom of the ravine. Each had an arrow through his ribs. These arrows had been driven with such force that little more than the feathering showed. Crimson stains were spreading on the tribesmen's jackets where the arrows pierced them. One man moved and groaned. Their horses had run back up the dell, then stopped to graze.
"I missed one shot," groaned Bessas. "In broad daylight, at less than twenty paces, I make a clean miss! I must be getting old. But then, a sudden gust carried the shaft aside. Kill that one who lives, trooper, and help me to get these arrows out. They are too good shafts to waste."
The road guard, awe in his face, thrust his spear through the wounded man. Myron- winced, though he knew that this was how things were done, that the hill-men would have used him the same way, and that it was not his place to tell Bessas how to manage military matters. Feeling a little shaky, he said:
"Those are the men who were going to take us from behind, as the monkey took the miller's wife. Now what?"
"You shall see," said Bessas.
They followed the Bactrian on an hour's scramble. Then Bessas said: "Hist! We are almost in sight of them. Tie the horses and come on, keeping your heads down. Remember what I told you about tethering high, Myron!"
Soon Myron cautiously thrust his head above a sharp-edged ridge. Before him, the slope fell away gently. Then the ground rose again to another ridge, lower than the first. In the distance beyond, blue mountains towered.
Just behind this more distant ridge, thirty-odd hillmen clustered. The wind whipped the loose ends of their ragged garments. A better-dressed man stood behind them on an outcrop, peering over the lower ridge with fists on hips. Bessas whispered:
"Methinks our road is just beyond the second rise, and the fellow in the turban is our man. Trooper, I am going out to take that rogue. Cover me with your bow as I re-turn, in case the others come after me. Myron, take my bow—"
"I'm no archer, alas!" said the Greek.
"Oh, fiends! Take the spear, then. If I fail, prick a couple of the knaves as they come up, and they may give you time to get to your horse."
Bessas unstrapped his bow case and sword belt but took the crystal-pommeled sword. He stepped across the ridge and started down towards the watching group, hopping lightly from rock to rock. He would have been in plain sight, had any of them looked around. But all eyes were turned away from him; the tribesmen's gaze was fixed on the road below. The howl of the wind muffled Bessas' approach.
Coolly, as if he were but another tribesman late to the muster, Bessas strode up behind Puzur.
Just before Bessas reached him, the Ouxian half turned his head to speak. With one great leap, Bessas was upon him. The Bactrian's left arm swept around and gathered the smaller man in a bear hug, while Bessas brought his sword up under Puzur's beard, so that the edge touched his throat. Puzur screamed something in Elamite.
The tribesmen, who at the first movement had begun to draw knifes and to reach for bows and spears, froze into immobility. Bessas backed up the slope, dragging Puzur with him and keeping the sword blade always against the chieftain's throat.
"Trooper!" said Bessas. "Give me something to bind this knave with and then lasso me one of those loose ponies."
"The Lord of Light preserve us!" gasped the road guard. "You are Rustam come again!"
"Belike; but hurry, lest the tribesmen rush us regardless."
Later the same day, the travelers reached the next relay station. Here Bessas turned his prisoner over to the road guards, despite the outcry of Puzur: "You said you would not slay me if my men did not attack you!"
"I'm not slaying you," said Bessas. "What the king does is between you and him. Myron, give me a sheet of your parchment and a pen."
Myron got out his writing materials and cut a piece off the end of the roll of parchment. He filled a cup with water, dipped a reed pen into it, and rubbed the point of the pen briskly against a block of solid ink. Then he handed the materials to Bessas.
The Bactrian pressed the sheet against the wall of the guardhouse and wrote his message, letter by letter, with terrific concentration. The pen trembled in his mighty fist. As he wrote, he contorted his face into frightful scowls and grimaces, licking his mustache. After a long time, and many re-inkings of the pen, he handed, the letter to Myron with a weary sigh.
"Think you he'll be able to read it?"
"With the eyesight of Argos and the wisdom of Nestor, perhaps," said Myron. The letter, a barely literate scrawl, said in Aramaic: