Empire of Dust (21 page)

Then Aesarians and Macedonians throw themselves against one another in the center of the courtyard. A wiry, olive-skinned Lord rushes straight for Alex, sword outstretched. Alex rushes to meet him and their weapons ring out. This is more like a normal battle with air and light and room to maneuver, but also with danger coming from unexpected places. At least now in the jostling skirmish it must be hard for the archers to make sure they don't kill their own. On his periphery he sees them, squinting one-eyed as they aim, jerking their bows this way and that, hesitating.

Suddenly the wiry Lord peels off and disappears in the melee and Alex is faced with a taller, broad-shouldered Lord who looks vaguely familiar. But as the two clash, he can't quite remember who he is and it bothers him. He should know. It's important for him to know. But it's hard to rack his brains when parrying the Lord's blows with sword and shield. The man is strong, his brown eyes radiating a quiet ferocity. They are well-matched, the two of them, and could probably go on like this for hours, circling, dodging, feinting, parrying, then coming together in a loud clash like two angry rams vying for a female.

That's it! This is Jacob, Kat's Jacob. Her foster brother, the one she loves, who won the Blood Tournament and became an Aesarian Lord. Alex curses his luck. Of all the men in the fortress, why does he have to come face-to-face with Jacob? Kat has lost the rest of her entire family. How can he kill Jacob? Alex leaps away, Jacob follows, and an arrow that must have been meant for Alex hits him in the arm. He cries out in pain and drops his shield.

Now
, Alex tells himself.
Drive the sword into him now.
But he hesitates. And a moment later his sword is plucked from his hand by a tiny person somersaulting through the air. He doesn't have time to wonder what just happened. He needs to survive the next few moments. In front of him stands Jacob, an arrow sticking out of his left biceps, blood pouring down his arm, holding a sword in his right hand, hard fire in his eyes. And Alex has only a shield.

“Alex!” cries a voice at his side. It's Phrixos, handing him a sword. When Alex looks back, Jacob is picking up his shield and racing back into the thick of fighting.

The gate. They need to open the gate to let in the hundreds of Macedonians outside. But he sees smoke rising from the top of the gate towers, darker smoke than that of the greenwood fires. Boiling pitch perhaps. He needs to keep moving or an archer will fire at him.

As he zigzags through the fighting, he blows three short times on his ram's horn. This is the signal for Diodotus and his men to move the battering ram out of the way and for the bulk of Alex's forces to prepare to storm the gates. But before they do, Telekles and his team must secure the east tower, Phrixos and his team the west.

A lithe, golden-haired warrior races through the confusion, sword raised, followed by several men. Telekles. It's a tough job slashing your way up a winding staircase, but it must be done. For two days, Phrixos, Telekles, and their chosen men practiced with Diodotus in a narrow turret in the Pellan palace. But where is Phrixos?

An arrow whistles out of nowhere and impales a nearby Macedonian in the thigh, its ridged head poking out of the back of his buckskin trousers. He drops his weapons and crumples in pain. A Lord rushes over, spear raised, to finish the job. Alex's sword flashes, and the Aesarian's spear—and his hand—drop to the ground. Blood spurts obscenely from the stump as Alex, sword tucked under his arm, drags the wounded Macedonian out of the thick of the fighting. Another Aesarian marches toward them, intent on wounded prey, but two Macedonians spring to either side of Alex and shield him as he pulls the man behind a staircase.

Alex slices off the man's trousers and quickly examines the bloody wound. The arrow has torn through muscle, but not bone. He removes from his pouch the long strip of bandage all soldiers carry and wraps it tightly around the thigh. “I will send a medic as soon as I can,” he says gently.

It's time to return to the fight. Alex emerges from behind the stairway just as two bodies fall from the top of the east tower, and Telekles leans down and blows five short times on his ram's horn: the signal that the tower is clear.

Alex never saw Phrixos enter the west tower and worries he is wounded or worse. But Macedonians are certainly in there now. Alex hears screams and curses, the clatter of metal against metal, the thwump of metal against ox-hide shields. Yet no one has given the signal that the west tower is clear—four short blasts of the horn. Still, if the Lords in that tower are busy defending themselves, they may also be too busy to pour boiling oil down on him and his men. He can't wait any longer. He must try.

Alex blows on his horn again—one long and two short blasts. Six handpicked men disengage from fighting and join him in the passageway to the gate, as six more form a wall behind them, battling any Lords trying to prevent them from opening the massive oak and iron-bound doors. Five large logs lie horizontally in brackets, a clever way to absorb the force of the battering ram.

He looks up. Telekles is leaning over the battlement aiming an arrow at someone on the other tower, someone ready to pour something boiling down on Alex and his men. The arrow flies directly over Alex, then Telekles waves down, smiling.

Quickly Alex and his men pull the logs out of their brackets and swing open the gate. The first man to hurtle in, not surprisingly, is Diodotus. Alex grins to see the burly, hairy body, the broken nose and scarred face. He spots Alex and grins back, waving his sword and screaming wildly, followed by dozens
of Macedonians. Arrows whizz into them, some men screaming and falling. But most make it into the courtyard unscathed, looking eagerly for helmets with horns.

On Pellan Fields last month, Alex wished heartily for a bird's-eye view of the battle. Here, at least, he can get something comparable. He marches into the west gate tower and takes the narrow winding stairs three at a time, stepping over three bodies—two Aesarian and one Macedonian.

“Macedon!” he cries as he nears the top so his men will know it's him, rather than a Lord intent on pushing them from the battlements.

The two men guarding the doorway relax when they see him. “Good job,” he says, clapping them on the back. He waves to his men on the other tower. Where's Phrixos?

But in between the towers, something is going wrong at the gate. Aesarians have rushed the incoming Macedonians and managed to close the gate, though the fighting is heavy around it. Alex storms over to the side of the tower overlooking the hill below. Through the shifting smoke, he sees his men trapped outside.

“Sir, we have their pitch,” Telekles says, gesturing to the cauldrons of a foul, bubbling black brew over open fires.

Alex looks down at the vicious battle for the gate and sees Macedonians and Aesarians in equal numbers. “No,” he says. “I can't do that to my own men.”

Some eighty paces away, rocks explode into the courtyard like an avalanche as part of the wall crumbles. A nearby wooden parapet lurches sideways and falls as the two Aesarian archers in it scream. Alex's heart skips a beat. As the dust settles, he sees a red-crested helmet push through the breach in the wall, followed by the rest of Kadmus, a wide grin on his tan face, his sword gleaming in the sun. Behind him more Macedonians rush through cheering wildly and head straight for the gate, which they soon open once more to let the rest of their comrades stream in.

He's winning. Yes,
again
. He's winning against the Aesarian Lords. The greatest fighting force in the world. Joy surges through him. Men the world over have praised his father's victories, but Alex will have so many of his own he will make them forget Philip.

Already the plan forms in his mind. He will execute Lord Gideon and his Elder Council for their treachery. The rank-and-file men he will imprison and hold for ransom. The Lords are known for always taking care of their own and should be able to raise much needed funds for Alex's treasury.

Somewhere a horn is blown—two long and one short blasts, Alex counts. Aesarian. And the Lords back away from the fighting, some of them dragging wounded comrades. Clearly, it's the signal to retreat. Alex wonders where they can retreat to in this squat, crouching fortress. If they try to escape through the mine shaft, they will fall right into the hands of the regiment he stationed outside the entrance.

An explosion rips through the air, then another. Heavy smoke wafts through the courtyard. Alex sees horned helmets racing into it and disappearing. What is happening?

“Lord Prince, they've set fire to barrels of olive oil in the next courtyard,” says a Macedonian, in between heaving coughs.

“And barrels of pitch and resin in those buildings over there!” says another. More explosions. The fortress and even the hill itself tremble as smoke billows everywhere.

Now the enemy is using smoke against
him.
Alex can't see.

Anger pulses through him. Alex missed capturing High Lord Mordecai because of Heph's prideful rage. He will
not
miss again.

“A sack of gold and a farm to anyone who captures High Lord Gideon!” Alex shouts. “He's not easy to miss!” Some of his men nearby laugh. Gideon is the only black giant they've ever seen. “Search the entire fortress! We have men posted on all sides. They'll signal us if the Lords try to escape.”

But when the smoke clears and the fires are put out, Alex finds not a single Aesarian Lord who isn't dead.

All the rest of them, with their weapons and even their horses, have disappeared into thin air, like smoke.

Chapter Twenty

AS SHE FLIES
over the pitted road on the stolen horse, Zo's arms ache from their tight grip on Ochus's waist. She has lost track of the days since they found the princesses' decomposing bodies in the woods. At first she thought Ochus was intent on putting as much distance between them and the corpses as he could. Then she wondered if he was circling around in an effort to confuse any pursuers. She thinks they approached the same craggy hill three times from different directions. There's an air of panic in Ochus's concentration, in his intense silence, that strangles her questions about their journey in her throat.

She has tried talking to him about the murdered princesses and the bloody Xs on their chests. But whenever she brings it up, he waves his hand as if swatting a fly and says, “Robbers.”

Robbers, leaving all that gold.

And then there's the way he handled the farmers—killed them discreetly and swiftly, without a second thought. Especially after one of them stared too long at Zo and seemed to guess she was from Sardis...

For most of their journey, Ochus irritated her to no end. But even then, she thought she understood him. He was her prideful and prickly captor, determined to prove himself to the Great King. Or so she believed. Now, this Ochus of the last few days frightens her. Who is he, really? She can't help but feel that their initial quest of finding a Pegasus has changed into something else, something more sinister. He hasn't mentioned the mythical horse in well over a week, and her doubt that he actually believes in her story keeps getting stronger. She is suddenly very afraid of this man and of the mysterious journey they're on. Where is he really taking her, if not to the Flaming Cliffs to find the Pegasus?

And now today, in a land of starved and stunted trees on dry hills, the pounding of the horse's hooves jolts up through every bit of Zo's aching body. She feels like a piece of tough meat that an enraged cook has beaten to tenderness, beaten to...

Her hands start to release their clenched grip around Ochus's waist. She tells them to hang on, but they no longer listen to her instructions.

She tumbles backward in slow motion. She sees sky—searing turquoise sky—as she falls.

She feels Ochus try to grab her before she hits the ground but he isn't fast enough. He stops the horse and leaps off, gently lifting her to a standing position. He keeps his arms wrapped tightly around her so that she is pressed up against the warmth of his body. She looks up, and sees his glinting amber eyes drilling into her.

For a moment, she feels safe. He leans down, as if he is going to kiss her, and in her thirsty daze, she half wonders what it will feel like when their lips touch. But then he is whispering into her left ear: “It's time we part.”

She can't have heard him right. Dizziness threatens to make her fall again. She stumbles toward the horse, shaking her head.

He grabs her shoulders. “Zofia.” He hands her the goatskin of water and she simply stares at it, confused, wondering why she heard him use her real name when he doesn't know it. “You must go,” he says.

“Go?” What does he mean? She must be hallucinating. They are in the middle of a no-man's land of near desert, and she's supposed to take a goatskin of water and...go? Go where? She can barely stand, let alone walk. He pulls away from her and takes the reins of the horse.

She staggers forward and grabs at his back. “What—what's happening? Are you insane? You're not leaving. We're, we have to—” But at the look of his face, it's clear he's not interested in the Pegasus. Maybe he never was. She tries to clear her parched throat. “If you no longer want to look for the Pegasus, why don't we go back to the Royal Road and you can leave me at a posting house?”

“We have to part, Zo.” Ochus's voice is the rich timbre of a drum, pounding and insistent. “It is the only way.” He's avoiding her eyes.

They've come this far and now, out of nowhere,
in the middle of nowhere
, it's over?

“Only way for what?” She looks around at yellow grass on crumpled hills. She has no idea where the nearest village is, nor any idea of which direction. Her heart starts thumping hard in her chest. Panic swells like a dust storm within her. “If you leave me here,” she says hoarsely, almost like a whisper, “you're sending me to my death.” Her whole body shakes. She is still clinging to his ragged, torn tunic.

This can't be happening.

This isn't happening.

He finally looks at her, his face hard, his eyes shrewd. “Remember where we found water yesterday? Look for thick clumps of trees. It's a sign of a pool.”

“What?” she practically shrieks, and the sound scratches her throat. This is real. He actually means it. “You're—you're leaving me here to die. Why?”

Ochus gently pulls away from her grasp, and where she was once hot, she now feels like ice. “I'm not leaving you to die. I'm leaving you to live. You
will
die if you stay with me,” he says, getting ready to remount the horse. “This is the only way.”

“The only way? Have you lost all reason?” she says, pushing him hard in the chest. Fury, desperation, and confusion swirl around and through her in rapid gusts. “Who are you? Where were we going? What really happened with the dead princesses? You
knew
they weren't killed by robbers! You never cared about the Pegasus, did you? You've had me
chained
!
You've been lying to me! What's going on? What did those bloody marks on the bodies mean? Why did you kill those farmers? Why—”

He claps a large hand over her mouth. Fury blazes in his eyes and hardens the lines of his face. His next words are quiet but threatening, like the slow scrape of a knife over stone. “I know who you are, Princess Zofia of Sardis.”

Her heart stops. Time moves slowly and her lips part—he knows? He's known all along?—but nothing comes out. Suddenly, her heart kicks back in, beating as rapidly as the patter of raindrops in a summer storm.
Why?

Ochus drops his hand. “And I
should
have killed you before now.”

“K-killed me?” Her voice is back, but it's weak. He isn't making any sense.

“I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't—” he begins, fumbling for words for the first time since she's known him. He is staring not at her but at the horse, looking almost like he will break. “I couldn't kill you.” His voice drops lower, softer. “All those nights when you were sleeping. It would have been so easy to snap your neck. I should have—it was my duty to do so—but I couldn't, I
couldn't
, and I can't.” He looks at her, his eyes burning. “And I won't.”

“But why?” she croaks. “You need to tell me
why
you were supposed to kill me.”

“You were marked for death the moment your marriage to Prince Alexander was announced,” he says, his voice so low it is almost a whisper. “If you had set off for Macedon, you never would have made it. Your caravan to the coast would have been attacked, like the one we found. Or your ship to Macedon sunk. Or perhaps something more subtly Persian—you would have eaten or drunk something that disagreed with you. Whatever the case, you would most certainly be dead by now.”

Zo feels as if all the breath has been sucked out of her. Finally, her lungs draw in a huge, gasping breath, and she tries to clear her head to think about this logically. Living in a palace all her life, she knows this isn't about her. This is about politics. About the ancient rivalry between Persia and Greece. She would have been a civilian casualty like the three princesses in the
harmanaxa
. She pictures their bloated, maggot-ridden bodies, and bitter bile rises in her throat.

She swallows it and straightens. She can't get sick. She needs to think. To figure this out.

King Artaxerxes himself has sanctioned the alliance between Persia and Macedon by marriage. Was it a trick to lull Macedon into complacency while Persia planned an attack? Or is there something going on that even King Artaxerxes doesn't know?

She racks her brains to remember the Persian history lessons the old eunuch, Bagadata, taught her and the other well-born girls in the palace. She wishes fervently she had paid attention instead of passing notes to friends and doodling on her wax tablet.

“Your foolishness in running off to find that soldier saved your life,” Ochus adds, almost spitting the words.

Her eyes widen. Cosmas—how does Ochus know about Cosmas? Does everyone—the Great King of Persia and his ministers—know she was meeting Cosmas in the palace cellars? She feels a hot blush of shame tingle on her neck and rise to her cheeks.

“We have spies everywhere,” he explains, reading her thoughts.

“We?” she whispers.

He shakes his head. “I could never tell you,” he says. “But I will tell you this much. When you disappeared, I was sent to find you, to kill you so you couldn't return from the dead and head for Macedon.”

“What?” she says, her voice almost inaudible.

He looks off into the distance. “When I first saw you, climbing out of the cage, I knew who you were. I had been given a good description of you. But I couldn't kill you in front of the entire regiment. Not all of them knew of my mission. So I decided to pretend to believe your story about being a horse breeder's daughter and knowing where a Pegasus lived. I was going to leave the Royal Road and kill you in the woods the next day with two men loyal to me.”

Each word is like a punch to her gut. Javed and Payem, the amiable companions of the road those first days. Javed, with his big horsey white teeth, whose stomach had been ripped open by the mountain lion. Curly-haired Payem, bleeding to death as Zo held his head in her lap and sang a lullaby. She had mourned them both and blamed herself for their deaths. But they knew of Ochus's mission and would have gladly seen her die and molder in a secret grave.

Part of her wants to push her fists into her ears so she can't hear any more. And yet she needs to know, to understand, to...

“But I postponed it,” he continues. “Not yet, I said. It doesn't have to be today. Days turned to weeks and it became harder to even think about. Now I know I can't do it.”

“Why
didn't
you?” she retorts, feeling as though she might snap, might fall facedown into the dried grass that goes on endlessly and die right now, alone, of pure exhaustion and confusion. It would have been better, maybe, to be dead already. “Why can't you?”

“Because I—because...” He stops himself. His arrogance seems to be dissolving like salt in water. Finally, he whispers, so close to her that his hot breath brushes softly against her cheek. “You must know.”

Suddenly, she can't swallow. Can't think. Can't breathe. Heat floods back through her body, and the vast yellowed landscape around her swims in her vision as she realizes with a flash of clarity: of course. She
does
know.

She felt it from the beginning, the way he looked at her. The way he liked to tease her, infuriate her.

And she knows, now, too, that he is not alone in this feeling she refuses to name. That she—she, too—has felt it pulling her toward him, despite the fact that she carries another man's child in her womb.

And all this time, Ochus needed to kill her. Now she understands. Now it all makes sense.

She stares at him. “And yet you plan to leave me to my death out here.”

He shakes his head. “It's your only chance to live. Follow the track east until it meets a road. Take that road south, and in three days you will be back on the Royal Road. But do not go back to Sardis. Never tell anyone your name. Start a new life.”

He turns back to the horse and pulls a small sack out of the saddlebag. “Here's the gold we found near the
harmanaxa.
Take it. The last of the dried beef is in a cloth inside.”

She just looks at him, her arms like lead weights at her side. He ties the sack to her belt and then removes his knife from his own belt and ties it to hers.

“Never mention my name either,” he says, knotting the leather thongs securely. His voice sounds raspy, almost desperate. “I cannot appear to have let you live.” He takes the reins of the horse.

“You're taking the
horse
?” she asks, her voice a frantic squeak. “If you actually do care about me, why don't you let me take it? That way I would have a better chance finding my way back to the road instead of stumbling through the dirt and heat and...”

“If anyone tries to track us,” he interrupts, “a horse is much easier to follow. Those who killed the princesses might not be far. Please, Zofia. Run. Run now—for I cannot stand to let you go, and I don't know what I will do if you stay.”

Zo's eyes sting with anger and fear. And what she refuses to name bubbles up to the surface, overpowering all other thoughts. She is drowning in an emotion that can no longer be suppressed:

Love. For Ochus.

Love for his fire and energy and the heat that sizzles between them. Love for his keen intelligence, for his smoldering amber eyes that take in everything at a glance, that know everything with a fierce and immediate wisdom.

Love that is stronger than anything she ever felt for Cosmas, who now seems to her like a schoolgirl crush. A love that suddenly blazes through her body, deliciously consuming her for a few seconds before she snaps back to reality. What a fool she has been to deny it. And now it is too late.

The horror of the situation descends upon her like a black, wet blanket, suffocating her. The moment she realizes she loves Ochus is the last time she will ever see him.

He drops the reins and steps toward her. She can hardly see him through the hot tears in her eyes. But she feels his muscular arms encircle her, feels the strength of his chest pressing against her. And then, he is kissing her. Softly at first, but then deeply, urgently, as though their kiss might save him. One of his hands is on her waist and the other he moves up to her neck, and then into her hair. He tilts her head back and keeps kissing her, biting her lower lip, then trailing his own to her ear, then her neck, even as tears spill onto her cheeks. She feels his need and her own, and for a moment thinks he will pull her onto the dirt and make love to her right here and now. And that she will welcome it.