Darius turned, taking note of small details that might give him an advantage in the unequal fight. In a corner of his mind he became aware that the grass felt cool and damp beneath his bare feet and the air crisp in his chest. To his astonishment, he saw that only one man approached him, his gait slow. The pale light of the fire could not hide the fact that even though he was of slim build—shorter and thinner than Darius—his compact body displayed an impressive array of hard muscles. The man’s companion held back, in no haste to come to his aid. They certainly did not seem to expect much trouble from their prey, Darius thought.
Unsure of how the man intended to use such a thin reed of a staff in a fight, Darius flexed his sharp knife in one hand, considering. He stepped forward into a well-practiced stance, and put his weight behind the knife as he lunged at the man. To his surprise the man did not veer either to left or right, but in the last moment, stretched out an arm, and with what felt like a soft touch, pushed against Darius’s wrist in an arc. Darius found his knife hand travelling wide off the mark, his own strength being used against him.
He regained his balance and turned to face his opponent again. The white staff suddenly whirled in the air, sounding more like a whip than a wooden stick. Darius pulled his shield in front of his face just in time to catch its downward strike. Amazingly, the wood did not splinter as it came into contact with Darius’s thick wicker-and-leather shield. Instead, it bent and found its way around the shield, whipping the side of Darius’s face with a painful strike. He put a hand to his stinging face; it came away bloody. He had never experienced anything like it in battle before.
Darius gripped his knife harder. The man had taken a strange pose, his knees bent, one arm forward, his palm flat, the other fisted around the staff and pulled back. Darius rushed at him, intending to use the weight of his core body to wrestle the man to the ground. Before he had the opportunity, however, his opponent uncoiled with tremendous speed and brought down the edge of his hand diagonally against the side of Darius’s neck. The blow bore down on Darius with the force of metal instead of mere flesh and blood. He knew he would have lost consciousness if his neck muscles were not so strong. Darius resisted the dizziness that enveloped him, swallowing hard to overcome the urge to vomit.
With a growl, he threw aside the shield and rushed at his attacker, hoping to surprise him with an unexpected counterattack. The man grabbed Darius just above the elbow and pressed. It was as if a string had been pulled from his elbow all the way down into his fingers; Darius lost his grasp on the knife, his fingers nerveless.
He managed to break contact and took up a defensive stance, but realized that he was losing control of the fight. It was clear that his opponent was proficient in a form of combat hitherto unknown to Darius. With sudden speed, the man rushed toward him and flew high in the air as if he had grown a set of wings, landing a forceful kick straight into Darius’s solar plexus. It felt like being hit by a tree trunk. Darius collapsed, unable to breathe.
Time slowed. As the world came to a standstill, he remained aware that everything was happening much faster than it seemed. From the side of his eye he saw his opponent’s companion standing to the side, his arms crossed, a relaxed grin on his face as he watched, secure in the knowledge of his opponent’s extraordinary ability in battle. Without warning, the man’s grin wavered and his eyes rolled back before he slid to the ground with a noisy crash. Sama stood behind him, holding a fat rock in his hand.
Darius’s opponent grew distracted for a moment by the noise of his companion dropping to the ground. It was the opening Darius needed. The thought of what this man could do to his wife should he lose gave Darius the strength to get back on his feet, ignoring the fire in his ribs. Taking advantage of his opponent’s slack-jawed surprise, he landed his elbow into the man’s belly and knocked him in the side of the head with a double-handed punch. The man staggered to one side. Darius swept a kick against his knees in the opposite direction and his opponent toppled. On the ground, he could not use the staff. Sama joined the melee, and between the two of them they finally subdued the adversary. He lay unconscious, a trickle of blood falling from his fast swelling lip.
They rushed to help Meres; Darius experienced a rush of relief when he realized that although the others in the gang of attackers were skilled fighters, they were nowhere near as extraordinary as the man whom he had faced. Within minutes, Meres’s two challengers were quashed and tied with severe knots that held them helpless against one another. The other three men in the gang, now in various stages of unconsciousness, were restrained in similar fashion.
He had barely finished tying up the last man when Sarah ran to his side. “Are you all right?” She couldn’t manage to hide a small quiver in her voice.
“You were supposed to wait until I called you.” He tried to sound stern, but heard relief drown out every other emotion in his words.
“Pardon, my lord. In all the excitement, I forgot.”
Barefoot as she was now, the top of her head came to his chest. Her hair, wild from sleep and her haphazard run, tangled about her face. The full mouth, trembling with fear only moments ago, now grew flat into a stubborn line as she tried to regain her composure. If not for the carefully averted gaze of his men and the deep bruise at his side, he would have clasped her to him and kissed her—to reassure her or himself, he could not be certain.
“You took a few hard hits,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Anything broken?”
It occurred to him that for a woman unused to battle and bloodshed, she was acting with admirable self-possession. No tears. No hysterics. No embarrassing scene before his men. He knew that self-control came at a high cost, and appreciated it all the more. “I may have a few cracked ribs,” he said, keeping his voice light.
“And your cheek is bleeding. It will probably scar. Too bad. You won’t be as good looking as Meres anymore.”
Darius swallowed a smile, enchanted by her indomitable humor. “Saucy wench. You’d better attend me, then. Or will you faint at the sight of a little blood?”
He would have laughed at her offended expression if the moan of one of the captives hadn’t forced him back to the present situation.
“Search them,” Darius said through gritted teeth as Sarah bound his ribs with bandage. “Strip them naked if you have to. I want to know who they are and why they attacked us.”
Arta, who had regained consciousness and sat nursing a prodigious headache, growled. “Thieves and rascals—that’s who they are. Looking for our silver, no doubt.”
Darius made a noncommittal sound in his throat. The five men did not strike him as ordinary robbers. They fought like professionals, not bandits. Their high-quality horses were well cared for. He could still picture the unusual moves of the slim man he had fought; if not for Sama’s help, he would have lost that clash. Those were not the moves of a common thief.
He deliberated for a moment on whether to take the time and solve the puzzle of this mysterious attack, or bundle the culprits on their horses and deliver them to the magistrate in Susa and let him untangle this enigma. After all, the king, who had summoned him and Sarah for a special audience, expected their speedy presence.
Yet, something about these men continued to nag at him. He felt uneasy at the thought of leaving the investigation to someone else. A baffling mystery was at work here, and he grew convinced that he needed to solve it, even if it meant a delay in meeting with the king.
The sun had risen high by the time his men had made a small mound of their attackers’ belongings in the middle of the campground. Darius picked up the white staff and examined it. It was made of a kind of wood he had never seen. He flexed it in opposite directions several times. It gave with incredible ease, bending in ways that would have broken any other wooden stick. He wondered how the staff had been fashioned in order to have at once the solidity of wood and the flexibility of leather. He discarded it and began to go through the pile of sacks and parcels in front of him.
At the top of the pile rested a flawless box, carved from ivory. Inside, Darius found a dagger decorated with exquisite jewels on one side of the handle and plain gold on the other. The delicate construction allowed the dagger to rest comfortably in one’s hand. He hefted it in his palm and tested the edge; although it had been designed as a ceremonial piece, it proved more than battle worthy. The blade was well balanced, honed, and sturdy.
This was no ordinary dagger. The consummate craftsmanship and the rare jewels used in its creation marked it a worthy offering for a nobleman of high rank. Darius examined it a moment longer, looking for identifying marks or clues to its ownership. Finding none, he replaced it in the box and set it aside.
Unlike the dagger, everything else in the pile appeared commonplace and well-used. Extra clothes, coins, a couple of jars of oil for the treatment of leather and metal, camping gear. Wine. Dried date cakes. Nothing incriminating. At the bottom of the pile, a sealed leather pouch caught his eye. He did not recognize the seal; the palm tree and stylized lion motif weren’t Persian. He showed it to Sarah. “Do you recognize this seal?”
She studied it before responding. “It’s unfamiliar to me.”
“Can you break the wax, but retain the integrity of the design? I need to figure out its source once we arrive in Susa.”
“I think so. It depends on the quality of the wax.” She pulled out her knife and drew a careful line into the seal. With a delicate snap, she broke it into two undamaged sections.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice was deep and calm. Darius turned and found the broad-shouldered man who had attacked him regarding him through intelligent brown eyes.
“Ah. Awake at last. Did you have a pleasant nap?”
“You better leave that package alone.”
Darius crossed his arms. “You aren’t in a position to make demands, are you? Who is it for?”
The man said nothing. Darius unrolled the leather and found a short letter inside. “Not very illuminating,” he said after he read it.
“What does it say?” the man asked, shifting against his tight bonds.
“You don’t know?”
“I just carry them. I don’t read them.”
“How noble.” He held out the letter to Sarah. “What do you think?”
She studied it in silence for a time. “Interesting.”
“Really? I found it disappointing.
Carry out the instructions I send you. You now have everything you need for the New Year ceremonies. May you walk in safety
. How is that of any help? What are the instructions? That’s what I need to find out.”
“Your problem is that you don’t know your grammar. You see the way the author of the letter has used the verb
send
?”
Darius gave a desultory kick against a round pebble, sending it spinning into the air. “Are you trying to put me to sleep?”
Sarah tapped the rolled letter against her thigh. “Listen, your lordship, and you might learn something of benefit. The way the author has used this verb indicates that the instructions are not coming later. Nor have they been sent ahead. Whoever wrote this letter is saying that the instructions should be delivered at the same time as the missive, which strongly indicates that these gentlemen have them hidden somewhere. Possibly on their persons.”
Darius whistled softly at that bit of news. He executed a showy, court-worthy bow before Sarah. She pushed against his shoulder with an exasperated hand. The hand, soft and mildly ink-stained from her furious work on the estate records before their departure, was speckled with dirt—no doubt a result of her dive behind the outcropping of rocks.
“That is an excellent grammar lesson.” He turned to the intruder. “Impressive, isn’t she? Too bad for you. Would you like to tell me where these blessed instructions are?” He sighed as the man stared back, turning mute. “I didn’t think so.”
He bade his men to search the intruders again while he went through the pile of their possessions once more. There were no other items of interest in the remaining pouches—nothing that pointed to the missing instructions. With sudden insight, Darius began to search through the piles again. This time, he wasn’t trying to
find
something, but to ensure that a certain crucial article was missing.
“Where are your travel visas—your
viyataka
?” he asked.
The man’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Your permits. You can’t be travelling on the king’s roads without the required documents. Yours seem to be missing.”
“Must have lost them.”
Darius patted the pile in front of him. “I don’t think so. I think that’s what you were after when you attacked us. There happen to be five men in our party and five in yours. It must have proven too convenient a coincidence for you to overlook. You are travelling the back roads, so your chances of running into the king’s soldiers are diminished. But to enter a large city like Susa, where this road leads, you will need the official
viyataka
. Much easier to enter the city with the appropriate documents than to try to sneak in without them, which must have been your original plan.”
“You forget—you also have a woman, which we don’t. So you see, your travel documents would be of no use to me.”
Darius knelt in front of his captive and poked him in the chest with his index finger. “You underestimate yourself. It would be easy enough to pay a woman at the gates of Susa to pretend to be a member of your party.”
The man turned his face away from Darius’s penetrating gaze. “So what?”
“So, this proves that you aren’t simple thieves looking for money. You are on a mission of some kind—a mission secret enough to prevent you from applying for travel documents. Would you care to share what that mission is?”
He snorted. “Would you care to share yours?”
Darius sighed. “You insist on making this difficult.”
By now, his men had searched the intruders and their horses down to the skin, but had found nothing. The whole troop had regained consciousness and sat brooding in their ropes, but made no move to resist the thorough examination.