The Blood Star (81 page)

Yet long ago I had delivered myself into the
hands of my god, and he had thus far kept me from death. If he had
indeed given me a
sedu
to watch over my life, then I could
only pray that it had not deserted me.

On the third day there was a frightful
lightning storm such as sometimes happens in those mountains. In
the middle of the afternoon the sky was black as night yet torn by
ghastly sheets of fire that burned a man’s eyes. I thought the
thunder would shatter my head, for it made the very breath in my
nostrils tremble. There was no wind, and the air was dry as sand.
My horses were terrified, but I judged it best to keep them moving
ahead, for a horse is like a man and will panic the sooner if
tethered to one spot.

I rode over the summit of a line of low hills
and saw a village, much as I had imagined I would find, spread out
against the face of a cliff.

Perhaps I have been here before, I thought.
Perhaps I have spent a night in one of those stone houses after my
advancing armies had sent the inhabitants fleeing into the
mountains. Yet there were so many in those days, who can know?

At the base of the mountain was grassland. I
could have crossed it and been in that village in an hour, except
that spread out across the plain was a line of horsemen, fifty at
least. They seemed to be waiting for me.

In their center, mounted on a black horse
that could have been the great stallion his father rode on that
last day, was Khshathrita. He was some distance from me and I had
not seen him since he was a boy, yet I picked him out from the rest
as easily as one might pick a lion cub from among a litter of
kittens. After all, he was Daiaukka’s son.

At precisely that moment, when I first looked
across and saw the Medes, the storm ended abruptly. It might have
been a sign from the gods—I hoped Khshathrita and his followers
would interpret it as such. The thunder died away in an echo, and a
light wind stirred the grass on the plain below. I rode down the
rocky hillside to meet whatever destiny the Lord Ashur had prepared
for me.

When perhaps no more than forty paces
separated us, I reined in Ghost and stopped to contemplate the
faces of the men who seemed to make of themselves a wall against my
approach. Many of them, I discovered, I knew by sight; they were
the
parsua
, as the Medes call their tribal leaders, who had
gone down on their knees to me after Daiaukka’s final defeat. They
meant nothing, for they had tasted subjection once and, of their
own, would never dare to raise their hands against me a second
time. They were beaten men who could not even meet my glance.

Then there was Khshathrita himself, a young
man now, perhaps not yet twenty years old but already a king in his
bearing, the image of his father. He could be restrained, I
thought, but never by fear. At his left hand was the youth whose
life I had spared, whom Tabiti had designated Khshathrita’s younger
brother. He kept his gaze down, as if conscious that he had made a
fool of himself once already.

And at Khshathrita’s right hand, on a dappled
stallion that seemed to totter under his weight, was my real enemy.
A huge man, as tall as myself yet built on a broader scale, with
thick-fingered hands that made the reins they held look like
threads. I knew him at once from the expression of hatred that
seemed to have stamped itself permanently around his eyes, which
were just a trifle too close together. This was not a clever man—I
could see as much at once—but he was dangerous the way a bull is
dangerous, by virtue of its mindless ferocity. This was Arashtua,
parsua
of the Miyaneh and younger brother of Daiaukka. And
not twenty days before I had slain his two eldest sons.

Yet my fear had deserted me, as it always did
at such moments. The great merit of danger that it does not leave a
man leisure to be afraid. I could look this man in the face and
feel nothing but a certain impatience to be finished with him, one
way or the other.

“So it is you in truth, My Lord Tiglath
Ashur. I will not claim that I am not disappointed.”

I had to force my attention back to
Khshathrita, for it was he who had broken the silence. I looked at
him and smiled.

“A king should learn to be less candid,” I
answered. “Yet you were always so, My Lord
Shah
, even as a
boy. Still, I see you are a boy no longer.”

An expression crossed Khshathrita’s face like
a shadow, and I saw that he did not relish this interview,
conducted in the presence of so many of his vassals. I could only
guess what had constrained him to arrange it so.

“Why have you come back, My Lord?” He glanced
quickly from side to side, as if to tell me that it was not he whom
I must satisfy with my answer, that the question, though spoken
with his voice, had passed already through many other lips.

I allowed myself one more faint smile before
speaking, that he might know I understood my part in this
recital.

“I have come, My Lord Khshathrita, Son of
Daiaukka,
Shah-ye-shah
among the Medes, to remind you of
your oath, made not to me but to your noble father, may the glory
of his name survive forever, that there must be peace between your
nation and mine so long as I live as a servant of my king. I remind
you of this because it is folly to challenge the might of Ashur and
because I would not have your people’s blood on my hands a second
time.”

“Oh Worshiper of Fiends, you need have no
fear of more blood on your hands!” shouted Arashtua, his horse
stamping the ground with its hooves, as if it shared his impatience
for my life. “Your conscience will be clear while you live, for
that will not be long!”

His words died away into silence, leaving
behind a terrible suspense as palpably real as the ache that
gathers in a man’s wounds to tell him of an approaching storm. I
could see it in the faces of the Medes, that longing that a hasty
word might be taken back, that dread of what must follow because it
cannot.

Yet the fact still remained that I was one
and they were many, so why would they be afraid when I was not?

And then, of course, I understood: I faced
only death, whereas they. . . I threw my head back and gave myself
to the luxury of laughter.

“It is not a jest, My Lord,” exclaimed
Khshathrita—I believe he was not angry but shocked. “You have slain
two of this man’s sons, for all that no one can hold you guilty of
their deaths. . .”

“I hold him guilty.” Arashtua’s horse
cantered a few steps forward and then was reined back. “He is here,
speaking and breathing, while they lie in the towers of silence,
their flesh picked over by carrion birds. He gave them no more
chance that he did the Lord Daiaukka, whom all men know he murdered
with treachery and foul magic.”

“My magic lay in the strength of my arm and
the favor of the bright gods!” I snapped. Let them see my anger, I
thought. I will gain nothing by abasing myself. “It is my proudest
boast that I carry on my body the scars from Daiaukka’s lance—magic
did not hold back his point when it tore into my bowels. Daiaukka
issued his challenge and I accepted it, for Daiaukka was a great
man whom even his enemies respected, and whom it was an honor to
have killed in equal combat! Yet I can see the same generation can
bring forth both a hero and a buffoon.”

Arashtua’s neck seemed to sink into his
shoulders. His eyes bulged and the muscles in his whole body tensed
and trembled with wrath. I think it likely he would have gone for
me that instant if Khshathrita had not laid a restraining hand upon
his uncle’s arm.

“Yes, it is well that there be a limit to
your grief and anger,
Parsua
,” one of the gray-bearded
elders said to him. “You saw yourself how he came among us not as a
man but mantled in a cloak of fire.”

The lightning—was it that? Or had the god,
with his protective hand, covered me with a
melammu
?

I was never to know. Perhaps it did not
matter, for I felt myself guarded by the Lord Ashur’s divine
strength. Perhaps that was enough.

“I do not care if he came cradled in the hand
of his unclean god,” Arashtua shouted. “I will not swallow his
insults, for he is only a man after all and he butchered my sons
like cattle.”

Nothing would stop him now, I thought, for
his wrath has blinded him to everything else. And not simply
because I had killed his sons, but for some other reason I could
only guess at. Just so. I decided to make the most of the advantage
this fool offered me.

“If they are dead, then the guilt is yours,”
I said, grinning at him, showing my teeth in mockery. “Who sent
them if not you? Who else would send boys to do battle against one
he had not the bowels to face himself?”

Had I guessed right? Close enough, it seemed,
for with a growl of hatred Arashtua shook off his nephew’s hand.
His dappled stallion bolted forward as he drew the long curved
dagger from his belt.

He was on me almost before I had drawn my
sword—I had just time, as our horses jolted together, nearly
toppling us both to the ground, to catch his blade on mine and turn
it harmlessly aside.

Arashtua yanked back on the reins to put
himself beyond my reach, but not before his stallion had a chance
to bite Ghost on the throat, just under the jaw, making him scream
in pain and wrath. Ghost reared and struck out with his hooves, but
his enemy, like mine, had withdrawn to a safe distance.

“Unclean dog, I will kill you!” Arashtua’s
face was nearly black with rage. Still, I had lived through his
first charge, and that had taught him caution. He kept the reins
pulled tight. “I will spill your guts onto the ground for crows to
eat!”

“As I did your sons’? But even before they
died they were already shriveled with womanish terror—I think the
maggots could hardly make a meal of them.”

Thus we circled one another, hurling insults,
hardly ten paces apart, as the Medes waited in silence to see who
would make the first mistake.

Arashtua charged again, and I pulled out of
his way so that his curved sword cut with a whistle at the
emptiness. He rode past and wheeled about, cursing. Ghost showed no
signs of panic; I was beginning to feel a certain confidence that
he would keep his courage.

“Fight, why don’t you? Fight!”

The dappled stallion stamped the ground, as
eager, it seemed, as his master.

I flourished my sword in the air.

“Are you so impatient to die then? Very well.
As you wish.”

I touched Ghost’s flanks with my heels and he
bolted forward in a furious gallop, as if he hated the earth
beneath his hooves. Arashtua, who thought the initiative all his
own, had not expected this, which gave me the advantage of a
moment’s surprise.

What happens almost too quickly for the eye
to follow can sometimes seem to unfold with excruciating clarity.
Thus it was when we came together—I can still remember the
sickening whine of metal against metal, the way the horses snorted
for breath, the little cry of astonishment as my sword slipped down
the blade of Arashtua’s dagger, caught for an instant at the hilt,
and then, meeting the clenched fist, cut away two of the fingers
and half the hand, all the way down to the wrist.

It should have been finished—for me, it was
finished. This was no more than a lucky accident, yet it would have
been the work of a moment to swing Ghost about and fall on my
adversary, killing him while he was still stunned and helpless.
Yet, like a fool, I did not.

Let him live, I thought. This fight is
over.

Arashtua sagged for a moment, almost falling
to the ground. He let his horse carry him back among the Medes as
the blood poured down over its flanks.

“You are vanquished, Uncle,” I heard
Khshathrita say. “He has beaten you, and still he has spared you
your life. Let it end here.”

But Arashtua only glared at me as he wrapped
his severed hand in a strip of cloth. This man, I saw at once, was
no rabbit.

“It does not end here!” he shouted. He
snatched a lance from someone and, gripping it in his left hand,
broke free of the Medes surrounding him. “I will kill this
unbeliever, lower than any beast. I will not suffer him to
live!”

I drew a javelin from my quiver—it was not as
long as a Median lance, but it would serve.

Yet again Arashtua charged. There was no
difficulty about turning his point away, for he managed the lance
awkwardly. My javelin slid inside his defense and caught him just
under the ribs, tearing a great hole and pulling him down from his
horse. I circled around slowly, but he did not even attempt to
rise. This time he really was finished.

And I would see to it—I would leave no such
enemy alive to trouble me again. I dismounted, sword in hand, and
walked over to where he was lying. His face was twisted with pain
as he held the wound in his belly, the blood pouring out over his
hands. He did not even resist when I grabbed him by his long hair
and prepared to hack through his neck.

A moment later, covered with blood, I stood
and held up the severed head for the Medes to see.

“Now it will end,” I said, suddenly filled
with a wrath that, until that moment, had not possessed me. “I
would have shown him mercy, as I would have shown mercy to the Lord
Daiaukka, but neither would accept it from my hand and now both are
dead.

“Thus have I learned my own folly, and you
shall see how I put the lesson to use: if ever I find the hoofprint
of a single Median pony on the sacred soil of Ashur, then there
will be no more mercy. I will come back to this place, bringing
fire and sword, and I will not depart from it until the last of
your nation, even to the sucking babes, are left as corpses to rot
under the summer sun. And for this you have my oath.”