Xerxes' eyes bulged. His mouth opened, but only a wheezy rasp came forth. He thrashed and struggled, his face turning blue.
Artabanus drew a short court sword from under his garments and leaned over the king's writhing form. He drove the blade again and again into Xerxes' hairy chest, saying in a low tone:
"This is for your brother Masistes ... And this is for all the daily slights and insults I have taken from you ... And this is for the pigheaded stupidity that lost us Salamis ... And this—"
"He is dead," said one of the sons.
"Why, so he is!" said Artabanus, wiping his blade on the king's scented beard bag. "To our business, lads."
Thus died Xerxes son of Darius—a great reformer, a great administrator, and a great builder; but, because of basic flaws of character, not quite a great king.
Myron dashed into Ostanas' chamber. "Bessas! I have hunted through this whole polluted palace. Are you still alive?"
"I suspect so. What in the seven Babylonian hells goes on?"
"Xerxes has been murdered!"
"Good! Who did it?"
Myron sawed with his knife at the straps that held Bessas' wrists. "I know not. Some say Aspamitres, some—ea! What's that lion doing here?"
Bessas' low laugh rumbled. "Fear not. 'Tis old Rustam, dead. Here, give me the knife."
His wrists free, Bessas sat up and with two slashes severed the straps that bound his ankles. He rubbed his swollen hands and feet. "My members are full of ants, from the tightness of the straps. Let's get out, ere the Immortals run wild and start shooting and spearing everyone in sight."
Outside in the halls, utter confusion reigned. People ran shrieking. Some tried to stop others, clutching at their garments and shouting questions. Those clutched at only ran the harder and shrieked the louder.
A fat old eunuch went puffing past, helping himself along with an ebony, gold-tipped staff of office. Bessas snatched away the staff, saying:
"I need it more sorely than you, grandfather. To the barracks!"
The Bactrian set off with great strides through the halls, familiar to him from his service in the Immortals. Myron trotted after.
"Oh, there you are!" cried a powerful voice.
Myron and Bessas whirled. Coming towards them, sword out, was Zopyrus son of Bagabyxas.
"You escaped my men, but you shall not escape me!" snarled the nobleman. "Suborn the rape of my little daughter, will you?"
"Well, drown me in the Bitter River!" cried Bessas. "Are you still seeking my head, Zopyrus? Here it is!"
Zopyrus came on with a whirl of steel. Myron, unarmed except for his little table knife, gave back helplessly. As he looked around for something to throw or use as a club, Zopyrus was upon Bessas.
The Bactrian, nearly naked and unarmed but for the eunuch's staff, gripped the staff as he had seen the Egyptians of Siout do: one hand at the center of the staff, the other a foot behind it. Thus Bessas had two ends, a longer and a shorter, to strike with.
He parried Zopyrus' first slash, and his second. Zopyrus lunged; Bessas knocked the point aside.
Bessas feinted and struck the Persian a sharp rap over the head. Zopyrus shook his head and blinked. Bessas feinted again. As Zopyrus parried Bessas drove the end of the staff into the pit of Zopyrus' stomach.
The Persian doubled over, coughing. Bessas swung mightily. The staff swished through the air and broke with a crash against Zopyrus' head. The Daduchid tumbled to the floor. His sword fell with a clang and slithered across the marble.
"I'll just take this knave's head—" began Bessas, picking up the sword.
"In the name of Zeus, no!" cried Myron. "You cannot kill all the Daduchids, and to kill one were to worsen our plight! Come on!"
"Oh, very well. But I warn you, old man, this soft-heartedness of yours will be the death of you yet!"
A fortnight later, Myron and Bessas sat at the board of Myron's friend Uni, the Egyptian priest, in Shushan. Winecups stood on the table before them. Bessas was speaking:
"So, you see, my dream was fulfilled after all. 'O man, who seeketh what is sought in vain,' and 'that which dwelleth far above the flood,' refer to the sirrush, which exists not. 'Red shall engender red, blood call to blood,' no doubt means the True Anthrax and Xerxes' blood. 'That to trust which were to grasp a wraith' means the magical powers falsely ascribed to the gem, which may have played a part in saving my gore. Methinks it gave Xerxes—a superstitious wight, though in many ways intelligent—a false sense of security, so that he gazed upon the gem to see if it had darkened when he should have been looking to make sure that his guards were at their posts."
Myron interjected: "I knew the thing didn't work, when I saw Kothar looking at it unperturbed at the moment when Bessas was stealing up to shoot him."
Bessas concluded: "And 'a dreadful deed within a narrow room' is of course Xerxes' murder."
"I wouldn't call Xerxes' bedchamber exactly narrow," said Myron.
"Belike not. But it may be that the spirit of Artagnes had to use that word to make the rhyme come out right. That's a difficulty which we poets know all too well."
"Pray do not digress, my sons," said Uni. "I am all a-twitter to know what happened next."
Bessas took up the tale again. "Well, when Xerxes was dead, Artabanus and his sons ran to the quarters of Prince Artaxerxes. Him they awoke, and Artabanus told the lad that his brother Darius had just murdered the king, and he must needs avenge his sire.
"So Artaxerxes, being young and confused with sleep, armed himself and gathered his bodyguards. He did not doubt Artabanus' words, for it was notorious that young Darius hated his father, the king, for seducing his wife. So Artaxerxes went to his brother's apartment, dragged him out of bed, and butchered him."
"What a night of knives!" said Uni. "I am glad I was not there when such dreadful deeds were done. Then what happened?"
"Seeing that things were going so well, Artabanus, thinking to seize the throne for himself, called upon his sons: 'Strike for empire, boys!' They all attacked Artaxerxes and dealt him a wound, so that for half an ush the fate of the dynasty hung in the balance."
While Bessas drank a swallow of wine, Myron took up the tale: "Both Aspamitres the chamberlain and Lord Bagabyxas, I hear, were involved in the plot, though just how I am not informed. No doubt the chamberlain shuffled the palace guards so that none was within call of the king when Artabanus struck.
"Bagabyxas, too, had a grudge against Xerxes. You recall that he had wed Xerxes' daughter Amytis. Later, when he accused her to the king of adultery, Xerxes let her off with a scolding.
"Yet Bagabyxas, they say, had no desire to see the whole dynasty supplanted and the realm rent by civil war. So he came to the aid of young Artaxerxes. The two fought off the attackers for the instant needed until the guards came running and cut down Artabanus and his sons. Bagabyxas sustained a grave wound in the struggle but may recover. The new king sentenced the chamberlain Aspamitres to the boats. The wizard Ostanas, they say, has fled to Egypt."
"Ambition must have addled Artabanus' wits," said Uni. "Even had he slain Artaxerxes, Xerxes had another legitimate son, Hystaspes, in Bactria. To him the great nobles would have rallied."
Myron: "And even if he had disposed of Hystaspes, the pretender Orontes would have popped up to claim the throne."
"Not that," said Uni. "Orontes is dead."
"Indeed?"
"Whilst you were struggling through the African jungles, Orontes raised the standard of revolt in Syria. The sub-governor of Phoenicia gathered the local levies and marched up the valley of the River of Freedom to oppose him. To get his army—mostly Arab mercenaries—across the Serpentine, Orontes built a floating bridge. But at the first shock of battle his Arabs broke and fled. In his retreat, finding his bridge obstructed by fugitives, Orontes tried to swim his horse across the Serpentine and drowned."