Men of Bronze

16

Her legs wrap around his waist, urging him deeper. Their bodies undulate with a sinuous grace. The sweat of lovemaking rolls down her breasts and pools in the hollow ofher throat. He grunts, hiships thrusting against her buttocks; she moans, purring in feline contentment. The room is dark save for a cone of brilliance illuminating their sweat-slick forms. A figure approaches from the shadows. The light strikes fire from a blade held in his hand. He sees the interloper, but he cannot move. Her legs and arms bind him to her. Shelaughs, her teeth cruel yellow points that rip his flesh. She laughs, caressing him with hands rotted to bone …

Barca jerked awake, eyes flaring open, hands fending off something only his mind's eye could see. He bit back a scream before it could escape his throat. Slowly, he sank back down on the bed. The Phoenician shifted his frame and tried to relax, listening to the sounds in the night. Beside him, Jauharah whimpered in her sleep. The tent soughed in the breeze. The flame in the lamp crackled, flickering, its oil almost exhausted. A horse whinnied in the distance, followed by the faint cry of a sentry's challenge.

You are a fool, Barca! He should have been angry with himself for what he had done, for breaking a twenty-year old promise to the gods to never let a woman close to him again, yet he had no anger in him. Not at this moment. Only a strange feeling even the after-effects of his nightmare could not taint. He looked down at Jauharah's sleeping form.

Her body was balled up tight against his side; her hands twitched, and the muscles in her legs quivered. A veil of hair hid her face from view, though Barca heard a faint moan escape her lips. He kissed her gently, stroking her scalp. Jauharah was an exceptional woman: strong yet compassionate, brave yet vulnerable. She could have been a queen had Fate not made her a slave. But then, in Barca's experience, Fate had a way of punishing the innocent and rewarding the wicked.

Quietly, he rose from the bed and slipped on his kilt. There was no way he could sleep, not with so many concerns running through his mind. How to handle Qainu, how to extract Callisthenes from the Arabian's grasp, how to defend Gaza from within and without, even how to treat Jauharah. What did he feel for her, and would it interfere with hisjudge- ment? He …

"Hasdrabal?" Jauharah said, her voice thick and drowsy. She stretched and rolled toward him. "Is something wrong? Come back to bed."

"No, everything's fine. I have never been able to sleep for any length," Barca said. He picked up his breastplate and set it on the small table, trying to ignore the lush invitation her body made.

"Nightmares?" Jauharah asked. She reached down and snagged her shift off the floor, draping it across her naked breasts and thighs.

Barca shrugged. "Sometimes. You have them too, I noticed."

Jauharah sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "I only have one," she said. "Every time I close my eyes, I see Meryt and Tuya's tiny bodies drowning in a lake of blood. They're screaming my name, begging me to help them, but I can do nothing. I'm afraid, and that fear keeps me rooted to the spot as they slip under the surface …" Tears clung to her lashes, spilling down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Barca moved back to the bed and sat. His hand stroked her back. "I'm sorry I wasn't there to save them."

"You can't save everyone, Hasdrabal," she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "You had your hands full that night, as I recall. No, I should have never left them. I try not to imagine what their last minutes were like. Their father lay dead in front of them. Their mother, too. I try not to think about how terrified they were." She sighed and slipped her shift over her head, running her fingers through her hair. "I failed them, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life."

"There's nothing I can say that would ease your mind. The pain is something time will lessen, if you allow it. I'm proof that rage and guilt aren't simple things to live with."

"I could never forget them," she said.

"No. You'll never forget them, or what happened. Just try, as though your soul depends on it, not to let it control you."

"How…" she began, then stopped. A scream drifted in, a cry of alarm that ended abruptly. Barca shot to his feet. His nostrils flared; he caught the acrid smell of smoke. The Phoenician swore as he grabbed his sword and raced from the tent. Jauharah snatched a knife off the table as she followed in his wake.

Outside, lurid flames leapt from the supply wagons and from tents on the outskirts of camp. In the ghoulish light, Jauharah saw the silhouettes of horsemen thundering through camp, men wearing the tell-tale robes and turbans of Bedouin. On the ground, a handful of Egyptians struggled to rise, to extricate themselves from the clinging folds of their shelters, only to be cut down by the flashing swords of their attackers. Men screamed in pain and rage.

"Awake, dogs!" Barca roared. "Awake!"

They rode in from the northeast, a wedge of half-wild horsemen who trampled tents and slaughtered men as they bore down on the ruins forming the geographic center of the Egyptian camp. Chaos ruled as men, torn from the arms of slumber by Barca's cry, stumbled out of their tents only to be set upon by Bedouin wolves. Arab and Egyptian strained breast to breast, fighting with a primal fury that erased all vestiges of humanity. Men reverted to their animal natures, slashing with knife and sword, tooth and nail. Barca saw a naked Egyptian, his standard-bearer, drag a Bedouin from his horse and kill him even as another rode him down from behind.

Snarling, Barca slung his sword over his shoulder, snatched a bow from a weapons rack, and strung it on one fluid motion. The Bedouin were overwhelming his men, forcing them back to the ruins. With machine-like efficiency, Barca drew and loosed, sending arrow after arrow into the fray. He saw horses rear, pitching their riders into the dust. Men screamed as bronze-heads slashed into their bellies, their chests, their faces. So tightly were they compacted that the Phoenician's arrows could not miss.

The timbre of the battle changed as Barca's archery provided a toehold. The Egyptians shook off the effects of surprise and rallied together. A hedge of spears arose, skewering horse and rider alike. Bedouin flung to the ground by their terrified mounts were set upon and slaughtered.

The stench of spilled blood, the clash and clamor of battle — these things stirred the anger in the pit of Barca's soul. Bare-chested, clad in only a brief kilt, he waded into the fray. Furious cries of "al-Saffah" rose from the throats of the Bedouin, mingling with curses and prayers. The Bloodshedder had come. As a mob, the desert men charged the Phoenician, robes flapping, beards bristling.

A horseman screamed wordlessly and leapt from the saddle. Barca dropped his bow and caught him in mid-air, slamming him into the ground with bone crunching force. A savage kick from the Phoenician ended the fallen man's struggles. In an instant the other Bedouin were on him. Barca ducked a sword-cut, his left fist stretching the man out senseless, and batted aside a knife-wielding arm that streaked toward his face. His own sword sang from its sheath. Bearded faces rose and fell; swords and knives lashed out only to be knocked aside as Barca scythed through their turbaned ranks.

The Bedouin fell back in dismay. In that instant, the Egyptians seized the advantage, pouring into the breach Barca had wrought like air in the wake of lightning. They surged past him, sinewy bodies naked, brown hands grasping axe, spear, and sword. Though slow to anger, the men of the Nile did not lack for courage; they fought like men who had little to fear from death.

Dripping blood, very little of it his own, Barca dropped back and surveyed the dead. With his foot, he flipped a Bedouin corpse over. An arrow had pierced his throat and broken off; the shaft forced his chin up in an almost comical pose. Barca rifled the body, found nothing. His weapons and clothing were of a better quality than what could be expected of a desert raider. Someone had paid this man, and paid him well.

"Phoenician! "

Barca glanced up. In the orange glow of the fires, he saw Ahmad and his men approaching. The old Arab gasped for breath. "We came as soon as …"

Barca did not let him finish. "Son of a bitch!" the Phoenician snarled, back-handing the garrison captain. Ahmad staggered and would have fallen had Barca not snatched him up by the front of his tunic. "Decide who you're loyal to, and decide it now! I want answers! Are these Qainu's Bedouin?"

Barca's fury took Ahmad's men at unawares. By the time they recovered their wits enough to draw blades, their captain's upraised hand stilled them. Ahmad tore himself free of Barca's grip. He dabbed at the blood oozing from his split lip as he knelt and studied the dead men at his feet. "Aye, these are Zayid's men," he said at length. "I recognize this one by the scar above his eye. Could be they were just after plunder."

"Don't be a fool, Ahmad! It was plain for all to see that we were heavily armed, yet they attacked regardless. Why? If it's plunder they were after, why not loot one of the outlying caravan camps? No, this is Qainu's doing! "

Ahmad stood. His shoulders slumped. "What do you want from us?"

"Loyalty," Barca said. "Tell me what Qainu has planned. We need…"

Barca's head snapped up. Above the shriek and din of battle, he heard a scream of a different sort. His lips peeled back over his teeth in an expression of bestial rage.

It was a woman's scream.

Callisthenes paced the perimeter of his prison, the knife in his hands like an impossible weight. The fury and bravado he had felt upon discovering the weapon had petered out. Despite all he learned from Barca, the thought of having to kill again left a cold knot of apprehension in his belly. What was he afraid of? Death?

After Memphis, Callisthenes had sought to approach the dynamics of killing from a philosopher's point of view. Violence, he decided, was a necessary evil; indeed, the gods of Hellas held those capable of dealing death in high regard. Even the afterlife was segregated. Warriors and those who excelled at violence found eternal bliss in Elysium, while the common man faced the grim reality of Tartarus.

He thought back to the countless afternoons spent in Barca's company learning the intricacies of sword-play. The Phoenician instructed him in the best ways to kill a man, where the arterial points were, how to incapacitate the enemy by targeting his torso and belly. What struck Callisthenes was not the feel of a hilt in his sweat-slick palm, or even the sound of metal grating on metal. No, the thing Callisthenes remembered most was the nonchalance in Barca's voice. He could have been a farmer describing the most economical ways of harvesting grain.

"I don't kill out of joy or capriciousness," Barca had told him later, as they prepared for Gaza, "but to preserve what I hold dear … my life; the lives of my friends; Egypt. And those I kill are generally deserving of it."

Slaughter bred arrogance, Callisthenes reckoned. Killers justified it to themselves by painting their foe in the worst possible light; by telling themselves they helped rid the world of another vile soul. It was a skewed sense of justice that Callisthenes just did not possess. Men like Barca saw the world in stark primary colors — black and white, right and wrong — defined by their experiences. They were confident in their own perceptions and as unflinching as granite. For Callisthenes, right and wrong, like the truth, were mutable. Ask a hundred men to describe the same struggle, and you would get a hundred different answers. Which one was the truth?

There was no easy solution to his situation. He would have to kill again, damn the consequences. His fate and the fate of his friends hung in the balance. Resigned, Callisthenes stopped pacing.

"Guard!" the Greek roared, battering on the thick cedar door. "Damn you, you impertinent fool!" He hoped Qainu had told them to see to his every desire.

"What do you want?" a voice grated from the hall beyond. Callisthenes mumbled something. "What?" A key rattled in the lock. The bolt was thrown back. The door opened enough to admit the guard's head and shoulders. A hawkish Bedouin face peered within. "What is it you …"

Callisthenes moved quicker than he thought possible. He hurled his weight against the door, pinning the guard's shoulders as his hand clamped down on the Bedouin's skull. His knife ripped across the man's throat. Blood gushed over the Greek's fist. He hauled the still-thrashing guard into the room and threw him headlong over the divan. The Bedouin's helmet clashed and clattered; his spear skittered across the tiled floor. Callisthenes risked a glance into the empty hallway, then closed the door and turned back to finish off his victim.

The Bedouin clutched at the wound in his throat, his fingers trying to stem the tide of blood spurting from his severed arteries. He gurgled like a man drowning, and his voice weakened with every pulse of his racing heart. Callisthenes could only stare as the Bedouin guard — a man he did not know; a man he had no quarrel with save for his choice of loyalties — died. His blood washed over Amphitrite's feet.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, snatching up the Bedouin's spear. It was a sturdy weapon, a six-foot long shaft capped with a bronze blade the length of the Greek's forearm. It would do. He thrust the knife into his gold-scaled belt and moved to the door, inching it open. The hallway was deserted. A few well-spaced lamps provided succor from the oppressive darkness. Callisthenes exhaled. With a prayer to fleet-footed Hermes, he stepped out into the hallway, pulled the door closed behind him and shot the bolt.

He crept along quickly, following the path Merodach had sketched on the platter. He descended a flight of stairs and darted into a broad hallway. Callisthenes had no clue how he would deal with Qainu's guards, but he prayed the Arab had gone to slumber and his retinue with him. If that were the case, it would be a small matter to slip out into the courtyard and steal over the wall. If not … well, if not, Callisthenes would do his utmost to earn entrance to the endless feasts of Elysium.

Tension and fear exaggerated his senses, causing him to notice little details about the palace that he had not had the luxury to study earlier. Flaking plaster, crude reliefs imitating the Egyptian style, lamps and fixtures of hammered copper. It seemed to Callisthenes that the Arabs sought to emulate the art and architecture of the Nile, but with far less aplomb. Even the aromatic cedar he could smell seemed less than clean, barely masking an underlying stench of decay.

He was nearing the end of the hallway, and the side door leading to the throne room, when a sound made him pause. Voices. His heart leapt into his throat. Callisthenes cast about for a hiding place, then stopped. The voices were not growing closer, only rising in intensity. He was hearing an argument emanating from the throne room, itself.

He glided closer, listening …

Jauharah left Barca's side and sprinted across the sand. She could serve no one by cleaving to the Phoenician's shadow; her knife would not sway the fight's outcome in the tiniest degree. At the hospital tents she would be in her element. She darted through the ruins, dodging fallen columns and leaping a low wall, clutching her knife close to her body.

The sounds of fighting — the screams of rage and agony, the crash and slither of iron on bronze, the moist impact of iron on flesh — echoed beyond the wall of the ruin. She tried not to think of the Egyptian soldiers out there as young men, tried not to recall their laughter, their voices. Soon, they would come broken and bleeding into her care. Some would die; others would pray for death.

Jauharah rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. Flames erupted from the hospital tents. Men clashed together, heaving this way and that in an obscene dance that would end with a life extinguished. As she watched, Bay, kindly, meticulous Bay, hurled himself on a Bedouin's back, a surgeon's knife flashing in the firelight. The raider fell, his throat slit. Another stepped in and rammed his spear into Bay's chest. Jauharah screamed as the quartermaster was lifted off his feet and slammed to the ground, gurgling through the blood filling his lungs as the Bedouin cruelly twisted the spear.

At the sound of her voice, a woman's voice, the Bedouin turned. Malice glittered in their dark eyes. Malice and lust. Dread clutched Jauharah's heart with talons of ice.

Suddenly, she doubted the wisdom of leaving Barca's shadow. Jauharah backed away, then turned and disappeared into the ruins. Like hounds, the Bedouin bayed and gave chase. They had taken only a handful of steps when a squad of Egyptians fell on their flank. The woman was forgotten as spear, knife and sword licked out, driving them back into the crackling flames.

Jauharah slowed, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She pulled herself over the low wall and stopped. No one followed her. Tears blurred her vision. She turned …

… and screamed as a raider blind-sided her, lunging from the darkness like a desert spirit. He caught her like a man does a child, his arms wrapping around her, pinning her to his chest. "Come, my sweet lotus flower! " he whispered in her ear, his breath foul.

Jauharah's shrieks had an altogether different quality as she struggled against the Bedouin, her lithe strength brought to nothing by bands of iron muscle. He chuckled darkly and hurled her to the ground. Jauharah hit hard, her breath whistling from her lungs. Somehow, she kept hold of her knife.

Light from the distant fires seeped in through chinks in the crumbling walls, striping the darkness with slashes of orange. "Qainu said kill you all," the raider said, grinning. "But he said nothing against taking our sport first!" He drove his sword point-first into the ground and hiked up his robe, tucking the hem into his sword belt. Leering, the Bedouin stalked her, his ugly, goatish body naked from the waist down. Jauharah smelled the reek of smoke and sweat, the stench of horses permeating the Bedouin's frame. She pulled herself to her knees and staggered to her feet.

"Q-Qainu?" she said.

But the Bedouin offered her nothing more, save a cruel bark of laughter as he threw himself at her. Grimy hands pawed at her breasts, tearing her shift from her shoulders. In that instant, Jauharah remembered the knife in her fist. Snarling, she drove it forward with all the strength in her arm.

Flesh parted under the keen blade. The Bedouin's howls changed pitch and timbre as her knife slashed up through his groin, emasculating him before continuing deep into the juncture of his inner thigh. He sank to the ground, clutching himself, gobbling at the blood spurting from his lacerated femoral artery. He pushed himself away from her and crawled to where his sword lay.

Jauharah's world shrank to a pinpoint, a speck dominated by the writhing body at her feet. Her mind's eye no longer saw a Bedouin, but a Greek, an assassin, covered in the blood of children. He tried to rise. "No!" she snarled, throwing herself on his back. Her knife flashed again and again. She had to save them! She …

When Jauharah looked down the Greek was gone. Instead, she straddled the Bedouin's twisted corpse. The blood-slick hilt of her knife protruded from the shredded flesh of his shoulders. She held her trembling hands up. They were covered in blood, as well. Jauharah spun away, vomiting.

"Egyptian women are soft!" A figure sat atop the low wall. He dropped to the ground. His silhouette gave Jauharah the impression of a bird of prey; his ripped robes and bloodblasted turban left no doubt that he was Bedouin. He walked closer and leveled a gory scimitar at her breast.

"Salim was a fool," he said, "but I'll not make the same mistake. Touch that knife and I'll split you in two, girl!"

Fear hammered through her brain as she sought a way out, some kind of edge over the lean desert fighter. The other Bedouin, Salim, had been blinded by lust; this one was different. This one had lusts no woman could slake. She pushed herself away from him, passing through a shaft of light.

"You are an Arab!" he said, grunting in surprise. "Are you Barca's whore?"

Jauharah spat. "I'm no whore, you cursed Asiatic swineherd!"

The Bedouin chuckled. "You have learned impertinence in the cities of Egypt. That is good. Taming you will provide me with a challenge. Remember my name, woman, for you will be Zayid's whore after I have killed the Phoenician dog."

"You're not man enough to kill Barca! " Jauharah said, with far more bravado than she felt. "If you were a man, you'd be out there dying with your kin instead of cowering in the darkness with a woman! "

Zayid's jaw clenched and there was a dangerous glitter to his dark eyes. "Do I have to show you how much of a man I am?"

"Don't show her. Show me." Barca stepped from the shadows and leaned against a shattered column, his sword held loosely at his side. Zayid spun and backed away as Barca stood erect and walked toward him.

"Gods! How I have waited for this moment!" Zayid said. "The great al-Saffah! Did you think you could spill the blood of my brothers and escape unscathed?"

"You've overestimated your ability. It seems to be a common failing among you Bedouin. Make your peace with the gods, sand-fucker! "

"I may die, but I'll send you to Hell before me!" Zayid surged forward, his blade whistling in a tight arc about his head. A blood lust gripped him that made him ignore any thought of defense. He loosed an eerie undulating howl.

Jauharah saw them crash together. She caught the flash of blades, heard the slaughterhouse sound of iron cleaving flesh. She blinked, and in that brief span, Barca's sword slammed into Zayid's chest, left of the sternum, shattering bone and splitting the muscles of his heart. The Phoenician held Zayid on the end of his sword as the Bedouin clawed feebly at the blade.

"Not a man, after all!" Barca growled, and kicked him away. Zayid was dead and forgotten before he hit the ground.

Barca rushed to Jauharah's side. "Are you hurt?" He tried helping her stand, but she threw her arms around his neck, instead. Her body trembled; he did not trust her legs to hold her. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. For a long time Jauharah held him tight, her head buried in his shoulder as sobs wracked her already weakened form. He stroked her hair. "H-He was ggoing to rape m-me. I …"

"You did what you had to."

She looked up, the anguish in her eyes like a knife to his soul. "I'm going mad! B-Before I killed him I thought he wwas one of the Greeks w-who. . "

Barca held her close and said nothing. He could have told her a similar tale, about the face he saw when in the grips of katalepsis; he could have told her that every man he had slain bore an uncanny resemblance to himself. But, she needed to believe it would pass, that Time would lessen the pain. Only then would her heart start down the slow path of healing.

A path she shouldn't travel alone.

Outside the ruin, the sounds of fighting died away. Jauharah stirred. "I heard him say Qainu ordered them to kill us."

"I know."

"What do we do?" Jauharah asked. She did not know what was more disconcerting: Barca's silence or the look in his eye as he stared at Zayid's corpse.

Callisthenes crept to the door of the throne room, listening.

"Why are you badgering me about this Greek?" Qainu was saying. "What matter is it of yours what I plan to do with him?"

"It is wrong, what you plan!" a voice answered. Merodach. "He came to us in good faith and we repay his candor by clapping him in chains! Have we become like the wretched Bedouin? Men who possess not a shred of honor?"

"Guard your tongue, Merodach," Qainu said, his voice a dangerous hiss. "The future of Arabia lay with the Bedouin. Had you sense, you'd see it too."

"All I see is a weak fool dancing on the end of a string. a string held by the Persians!" Merodach said.

Callisthenes inched forward. Silently, on well-kept hinges, the door opened on a small alcove that widened out into the throne room proper, with its forest of columns. The place was dark; the only source of light a trio of bronze lamps burning about the throne. The Greek saw no evidence of guards, for which he breathed a prayer of thanks, as he crept along the wall.

Suddenly, Callisthenes stopped. Qainu's tiger, chained to the king's throne, glared at him and coughed. The big cat's eyes glowed a sorcerous green in the dim light.

"What has happened to you, Merodach? You were once my staunchest ally. Now, you sound like your predecessor, a sniveling toad who lacked a spine. Have these Egyptians cast some sort of spell over you? Do you hunger for my throne?" The Arabian king looked thunderstruck. "That's it! You've made some unholy alliance with the Egyptians! "

"Don't be absurd!" Merodach said. The chancellor paced back and forth, the movement catching the tiger's eye. "It pains me to see these Persians using you as a pawn in their political games. Cambyses doubtless has never heard of you, majesty. Not with a glory-hound like Phanes at his side. You are nothing to this man whose attention you crave. A puppet!"

"Rather a puppet than a corpse!" Qainu said. He leaned down and loosed the tiger's collar. With an ear-splitting roar the beast launched itself off the dais, clearing the intervening space in a single lithe bound to crash full onto Merodach's chest. The pair fell in a welter of thrashing limbs. A chilling shriek echoed about the throne room as the tiger's powerful claws disemboweled the chancellor.

Qainu's laughter amid the cracking of bone roused the Greek from his shocked silence. An unfathomable rage clutched him. A rage that could only be sated with blood.

"No!" Callisthenes screamed. He sprinted out into the open.

The sight of the blood-splashed Greek hefting a spear sent a paroxysm of fear through Qainu. The Arabian king recoiled, curling up into a ball on his throne as he awaited the cold hand of death.

The tiger glared at the Greek from above the gory mess that was Merodach, ears flattening against its skull. The spear cocked behind Callisthenes' ear flew straight and true, a cast worthy of Hector. The long bronze blade flashed through the dim light of the throne room and smashed into the tiger's side. The god of war must have blessed that cast, for the spear knocked the beast sidewise off Merodach, splitting its heart in two. Without breaking stride, the Greek ripped his knife from his girdle and leapt at the king.

"Guards! " Qainu hurled himself off the throne and tried to run. Years of sloth, of debauchery, had taken their toll on the fleshy Arabian. Callisthenes caught him easily by the scruff of the neck and hurled him back against the dais. "Guards! " the king squealed. In a rage, the Greek struck Qainu across the mouth, his fist stiffened by the hilt of his knife. The Arab fell back, stunned. Callisthenes gave him not a moment's respite. Again and again he pommel-whipped the king, his face a mask of fury. Barely did he hear his name being called.

"C–Callis … C–Callisthenes!"

The Greek looked up. Amazingly, Merodach yet clung to life. With great effort the chancellor extended a hand toward Callisthenes. The Greek let go of the king and rushed to Merodach's side.

"I am sorry, my friend. I brought this on you." He stroked the Babylonian's forehead. The tiger's claws had shredded his abdomen, exposing intestine and bone. A lake of crimson formed around the fallen man. "I am so sorry."

"P-Please …" Merodach whispered, bubbles of blood breaking on his trembling lips. "Do n-not kill h-him…" His eyes rolled toward the dais, toward the bruised and bleeding form of his king. "P-Promise … m-me …"

"I promise, Merodach," Callisthenes said quietly. "I will not kill him." Merodach gripped the Greek's arm, then gave a last, wet, shuddering sigh. Tears rolled down Callisthenes' cheeks. This man, a stranger to him, had shown more grace and honor in dying than any man the Greek had ever known. Far more grace than the wretched dog he served.

Callisthenes glanced up, hatred in his eyes. His hand gripped the hilt of his knife.

Qainu's scream echoed about the throne room.

Dawn striped the eastern sky with bands of coral and ivory, fading overhead to diamond-studded lapis. Bedouin guards crouched at the gates of Qainu's palace, passing a skin of fermented goat's milk back and forth. They were supposed to be on station inside the walls, as sentries and door-wards, but the desert men felt uneasy surrounded by so much stone, constricted. A man needed open sky in order to breathe.

They had passed the night cursing and grumbling in their beards at being left behind to watch over the fat king while their brothers gained gold and glory in the Egyptian camp. Zayid had promised each of them an equal share of the booty. In that, at least, they did not feel cheated.

"How much do you think we will get? " the youngest of them said, his beard a mere wisp on his chin. The others laughed.

"More than you've ever seen, boy," one said. "Enough to buy every whore from here to Damascus! "

"You lie!" the boy said, walking away from the others. He stopped at the stone curb of a well occupying the center of the plaza. In a few hours time, women would bring their jars here to be filled, the first of many chores.

"He speaks true, Khatib," another said, rising from a crouch and stretching. "Gold in Egypt is like sand in Arabia. You have only to stoop and pick it up. What shaykh Zayid takes from their camp, even divided, will make all of us rich beyond our dreams."

The boy, Khatib, grinned. "I will buy herds, not whores," he said. "And wives! I will have a hundred wives! I …" Khatib paused as something came arching out of the gloom. It struck the ground with a meaty squelch and rolled to the stone curb. Khatib frowned as he walked around to the thing and squatted. The others laughed, shouting to their young cousin.

"What have you found, boy?"

Khatib rose and turned toward them, eyes wide, face pale. He cradled a severed head in his hands. Its features, frozen in the act of dying, were all too familiar to the Bedouin.

Zayid.

The guards surged to their feet, cursing and howling in rage. "Watch yourself, boy!" They gestured behind the young Bedouin.

"What is it … What …?" Khatib spun as Barca stepped from the shadows, his sword splitting the boy's skull like a ripe melon. The Phoenician kicked the corpse aside and fell on the remaining half dozen guards. Egyptians poured into the plaza at his back.

The Bedouin did not stand a chance.

"Take the gate!" Barca roared, droplets of crimson falling from his blade. Qainu's palace, a temple in a previous incarnation, was designed to be easily defended. The crenellated walls had murder-holes and sally-ports carved into the ancient brick. Besieged archers and soldiers could easily rain death down on an attacker. Even the simple gate was a heavy, ponderous affair of corroded bronze and cedar; it looked to Barca like it had not been closed in a generation or more.

A handful of Bedouin, along with a sprinkling of slaves and servants, rushed to the gate and threw their backs into closing it. It moved an inch. Two. Four. Grins of triumph on their faces were short lived as the huge portal ground to a halt. They panicked as a wave of Egyptians in glittering armor crashed against the gate, forcing it open. After a flurry of blades left Bedouin corpses across the threshold, the rest turned and fled into the courtyard.

Barca expected some kind of organized defense. Arrows and rocks from on high. A rush of swordsmen. Something. Even a mutiny among Ahmad's men who were secretly loyal to Qainu. But, this last stand of the groomsmen and the kitchen help had taken him at unawares. Surely Qainu was not so foolish as to commit his entire household guard to the fight in the camp?

"Are any of your men within?" the Phoenician asked Ahmad. The Arabian captain shook his head.

"No. We're billeted in the city. Qainu fancies himself more of a shaykh than a king. The only soldiers within are Zayid's mercenaries."

"He's neither," Barca growled. "He's governor of a city under Egyptian rule. His folly is thinking beyond his station."

"Whatever his folly," Ahmad said, "he is my king. I swore allegiance to Qainu and his forebears, not to Egypt. I cannot help with what you intend."

"Then do not hinder me, either!" Barca said, turning and leading his Egyptians through the gates.

The courtyard was a blending of worlds: an Egyptian lotus pool surrounded by Arabian date palms and Hellenic sculpture. The servants faced them with cleavers and kitchen knives, fear shining in their eyes. Barca stalked toward them. The look on his face promised murder should his will not be done. He raked them with a withering stare.

"You've proven your valor," he said. "Stand down and you'll not be harmed." There were murmurs among them; then, one by one, their weapons clattered to the ground. To his Egyptians he said, "Keep them here."

Barca ascended the steps to the throne room doors, his wrath cold and righteous. With a snarl, he shouldered them open …

… and stopped in amazement. Instead of a horde of Bedouin warriors, he saw a sight that brought a deep, throaty laugh from him. Callisthenes. The Greek sat upon the ebony throne of Gaza, a bloody knife driven point first into the inlaid armrest. A tiger lay dead, a spear sprouting from its body like a grisly vine, and near it a corpse Barca recognized as that of Merodach, the chancellor. Something else crouched at Callisthenes' feet, something barely discernable as a naked man, his face streaked with blood. An indelicate hand had taken a knife to the fellow's hair and beard, shearing both away without thought for the skin beneath, and a leash trailed down to a collar around the man's neck. With a start, Barca realized it must be Qainu.

Barca chuckled. "I'll be damned, Callisthenes. Here I thought you might be in need of my help. What happened to the squeamish Greek who abhorred violence?"

"Someone tried to kill him," Callisthenes said. He rose and tossed Qainu's leash to Barca. "I promised Merodach I would not kill him, but you're under no such constraints. I only ask you do it elsewhere. I've had my fill of murder for the day."

Barca passed the leash to Ahmad. The Arab captain crouched, his fierce face inches from the deposed king's, his blood-spattered beard bristling. "You wretched bastard! I served you, and your father before you, with faith and honor and this is how you repay me? Damn your black soul! You will share in Zayid's fate, you son of a bitch!"

Qainu whimpered and pleaded as Ahmad and his soldiers dragged him into the bowels of the palace.

Barca followed Callisthenes out into the courtyard. Overhead, the sky faded from the coral-ivory of dawn to a bright and vibrant azure. Sunlight filtered through a pall of dust raised by the battle as the last of the servants were bound together in an uneven line.

"I bear ill news," Callisthenes said, sitting on the stone curb of a lotus pool. The adrenalin rush left his body cold and shaking. "Phanes. That bastard was here; he travels with the Persian vanguard. They have crossed the wastes and already sit on our doorstep. The cities of Phoenicia must have given in to Cambyses' demands."

Callisthenes tensed for a sulphuric tirade, but Barca did not waste breath cursing his countrymen. He stood in silence, studying the tracery of shadows cast by the date palms lining the pool. His people were merchants; they dealt in profit and loss, leaving the vagaries of morality to those who could afford it. All of the treaties signed with Egypt, all of the pledges of friendship and offerings of fealty were nothing compared to what the Persians offered: capitulation or annihilation. To a Phoenician, it was not that difficult a choice.

"What do we do now?" Callisthenes asked.

"We'll have to pull back, choose better ground," Barca said. "If the Persians use ships to get troops behind us, our delaying action will become our last stand. No, we must abandon Gaza. It's too open to properly defend ourselves. We…,

A clamor at the gate drowned Barca out. He heard a flurry of incredulous shouts, cries to the gods for mercy. Frowning, he went to investigate. Callisthenes followed in his wake.

A crowd gathered in the plaza outside the palace. Arabs, for the most part, leavened with a sprinkling of Judaeans; dark-skinned Nubians, even a pair of scarred horse-traders out of Thrace. Egyptian soldiers rested in the morning shade. Barca could not make out what was being said, though he divined the gist of it. Peering northeast, shading his eyes with a blood-grimed hand, he could see what had inspired their sudden panic. Behind him, Callisthenes mumbled a prayer in his native Greek. Barca remained quiet, his jaw muscles knotted.

In the distance, a pillar of dust marred the blue perfection of the sky.

The Persians.