Harvest of Gold (8 page)

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Niq’s narrow face lit up. “You liked it?”

“Not at the time. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not Babylonian training.”

“You noticed.”

Darius ignored the sarcasm. “Where then?”

“Not so much where as who.”

Darius loosened his feet from the confinement of their stirrups in order to stretch his legs. “Who?”

“When I was a young lad—nine, maybe, or ten—my father brought home a strange man. Near death, he remained unconscious for days. He had been set upon by a large band of robbers while travelling, and the brigands had left him for dead. My mother said he had more broken bones and bruises than a chicken has feathers. By some miracle, he survived his grave injuries.

“He seemed odd-looking to me, with exotic narrow eyes and a wiry build that appeared deceptively small. He said he came from a faraway land called China. His country had suffered a great war and he had been banished, I think. He never did tell us his full story.”

“He taught you to fight?” Darius guessed.

“That’s right. His people knew a whole new manner of combat. My brothers were too old, he said, to become adroit in these new methods. But he declared that I had tolerable talent and was young enough to mold.”

“How long did it take him to train you?”

“Years! It isn’t merely the body that needs to be trained.” He tapped his bound hands against his forehead. “You start here.” He tapped his chest. “Then your heart. Your body follows.”

With subtle pressure from his thigh, Darius nudged his horse closer. “Where is this man now?”

Niq gave a wry twist of his lips. “Your guess is as good as mine. One day he was there. The next he vanished like smoke.” He made his fingers wriggle and float upward, an impressive feat given the tightness of the bonds around his wrists. “He left me his staff though. That was a special gift, I’ll own. You experienced its bite earlier.” He pointed his chin at Darius’s wounded face and smiled.

Darius touched his bruised cheek gingerly and wondered how the cocky young Babylonian riding next to him had survived as long as he had considering his annoying tongue. Then again, not many people could beat him in a fight.

“I might be able to arrange a suspension of your punishment if you agree to teach some of our men your combat techniques.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Your life. Interested?”

Niq and Nassir answered the questions of the new recruits, adding as many helpful details to Darius’s debriefing as they could. After stressing the need for secrecy, Darius left upon one final errand in preparation for their upcoming confrontation.

He found his friend Lysander in his usual haunt in Susa—a disreputable tavern with a secret stash of decent wine. Darius lingered in the shadows of the doorway and studied his friend.

Lysander was a Spartan by birth, bred for war from early childhood, and thickly muscled from years of intense training. His long blond hair spread about him in a disorganized tangle. Before him sat a half-finished cup of wine, not his first of the day, judging by the relaxed posture of the wide shoulders as they leaned against the rough wall. Scarred fingers were engaged in carving a delicate statue from a block of light-colored wood. Darius could not make out the image, but he knew from old experience that when his friend completed the carving, it would be a trinket worthy of a royal household.

“Well? Are you going to stand there forever, Darius Pasargadae, and gawk? Or are you going to show some manners and come out of hiding to greet me?”

Darius smiled. “You always had the eyesight of a jackal. How did you know it was me?”

Lysander sniffed. “You stink of courtly spices. And I could see the glint of your gold finery a
parsang
away. Besides, the sun shone on you for a moment and I saw your face.”

Darius sat across from his friend on a rickety wooden stool. Placing his foot on the edge of the table, he pushed the two front legs of the stool off the floor, tilting himself backward. “I was with the king earlier. I have a royal commission for you.”

“Agh. The last time I had a royal commission, I broke my nose.” He touched the offended organ with a forefinger, tracing the slight kink that marred an otherwise perfect feature.

“Do you want to know what the commission is, or moon over your pretty face?”

Lysander took a deep swallow of his wine. “By all means. Entertain me.”

When Darius finished doing just that, Lysander shoved his cup away and set down his forgotten carving. “You swim in dangerous waters, Darius.”

“Will you join me or not?”

“Keep your beard on, Persian. Of course I will join you. I was merely making an observation.”

The tavern—Pardis—had been named after the lush Persian gardens that reminded visitors of paradise. There were a couple of pots of droopy yellow violets outside the tavern’s peeling walls, but beyond that, Darius could not find any similarities to the formal gardens.

He had already looked over the place and directed each of his men to their assigned location. The men blended well with the crowd that had gathered in the dark corners of Pardis, drinking cheap wine and making noisy conversation. There was one entrance and one back door. Reconnaissance should prove simple.

They were more than an hour early. Darius, aware that their target might have taken the same precaution, studied the place, looking for signs of danger. Niq and Nassir came in together and sat on torn cushions arranged against a wall. Darius placed himself in a dark corner facing the brothers. They put a filthy sack before them on the dirt floor. He had given them the sack as a hiding place for the ivory box, which contained the dagger. In a place such as Pardis, a priceless box would draw as much attention as the bejeweled dagger lying snug within.

Near their meeting time, a slender man approached the brothers. Without invitation, he sat down, his movements fluid. Darius could feel his team of men growing tense as a strung bow. He withheld the signal for attack, however, wanting to make certain there was no mistake. If they captured the wrong man, the right one, were he present, would fly without detection.

The noise in the tavern had risen to a crescendo, preventing him from hearing the conversation between the man and the brothers. Darius studied him minutely, looking for clues to his identity. He could be a soldier; he had the bearing of one—the ease of movement, the athletic build. Slowly, the man reached a hand inside his outer garment to extract something. Darius straightened, ready to spring. But the man merely withdrew a couple of coins and gestured to a pin that rested on Nassir’s shoulder. Nassir shook his head. With a subtle movement of eyes and neck, he shifted the direction of his gaze so that it encompassed Darius. Then he shook his head again.

Loud enough so that Darius could hear, he bellowed, “I said my father gave it to me, and I don’t want to sell it. Now put your money away and leave us in peace. My brother and I don’t want company.”

The man responded with a rude gesture and rose. Darius nodded to two of his men, indicating that they should keep an eye on him. The possibility existed that Nassir and Niq had betrayed him—that this
was
, after all, the assassin, and the brothers had just tipped him off. The man left the tavern shortly, followed by Darius’s guard. Now he was two men short.

Darius resumed his watch. Lysander, his bright hair darkened with oil and slicked back, sat to the right of the brothers, keeping an eye on the entrance as well as on Niq and Nassir. He had an interesting trick of folding his massive body into a twisted stoop that made it seem shrunken and unimpressive. In spite of his arresting looks, he could make himself seem invisible in any crowd.

With a casual motion, Lysander lifted up the back of his hand and wiped it across his nose. Darius tensed. This had been the agreed-upon signal between them of a possible development.

A new man approached the Babylonians. He was tall and carried himself with a regal air. His clothes, though plain, were made of fine cloth. No sweat stains. No repairs. He made a furtive examination of the room. He had intelligent eyes, Darius thought. For a moment those eyes rested on him. Darius buried his head in his cup, letting his hair fall across his face. When next he lifted his head, the man was taking a seat with the brothers.

A shiver tickled the back of Darius’s neck. The conviction that he was looking at his prey filled him.
Wait. Wait
, he cautioned himself.

The man pointed to Niq’s head and said something. Niq ran a hand through his short hair and shrugged. The man then pointed at the sack. Nassir leaned forward and whispered in the man’s ear. In the ebb and flow of noise in the tavern, several moments of quiet settled over the room. In the relative silence, Darius could hear the man’s voice, accented with a guttural undertone that he could not recognize.

“You brought me the package?” he asked, and gestured toward the sack again. Nassir hesitated and then pushed the sack toward him. The man pulled the sack open. Without extracting the ivory box into common view, he opened the lid and examined the dagger.

Darius gave the signal to his crew, and they descended on him in a purposeful circle of menace. The man saw his betrayal instantly. He cursed, jumping away from the brothers, the sack still in his hand. Darius picked up speed, hurtling his body toward the man, but someone slammed into him drunkenly, slowing his progress by a fraction of a moment. He shoved the drunk aside, once again gaining speed as well as a free view. Then he saw the flash of the dagger.

Their prey had no chance of fighting his way out, no matter how skilled he might be, Darius reasoned. The odds were simply against him. But he could not silence a nagging premonition. He observed Niq taking a battle stance, stepping cautiously forward.

And then the unthinkable happened. The man did not fight. He turned the dagger and, in a flash, before any of them could reach him or have hope of disarming him, drew its sharp edge against his own neck. Niq was upon him, and then Darius and Lysander. Darius pulled the dagger away from his still-clutching fingers and laid him on the ground.

They had arrived too late. With knowledgeable precision, their prey had severed an artery. Copious waves of blood gushed out of the self-inflicted wound and pooled in the hollow of his neck, overflowing onto the dirt floor.

“Who?” Darius screamed in impotent rage. “Who sent you? A name. Give me a name and I will take care of your family.”

Gathering the last of his strength, the man moved his lips. It wasn’t to speak. He spat into Darius’s face and then went still.

The crowd began to gather like flies around stinking carrion. “Get rid of them,” Darius told one of his men. His lips barely moved. Shock gripped him. He forced himself to focus past the dead man, trying to salvage what he could of the wreck of their mission.

“Carry him outside and put him in the cart. You three, stay here and search this area. Perhaps before killing himself he discarded something that might reveal his identity. Look under the cushions where they sat. Examine every unlikely hiding place.”

Outside the tavern, he turned on Niq. “How could you let him do it? You were much closer to him than I. Why didn’t you stop him?”