A commotion near the edge of the camp drew her attention from the journal. A pair of samurai came over a ridge made of the black, gritty sand that comprised the ground. Between them they carried a man.
Earhart hurried over as the samurai laid the man down. His clothes were singed and the skin burned and blistered, reminding her of the man who had attempted to go through the portal on his own. When she saw the man’s face she froze, her heart pounding.
“It can’t be.” She didn’t even realize she’d said the words out loud.
She knelt, cradling the man’s head in her hands. “I saw you die,” she whispered as George Noonan’s eyes flickered open and he smiled at her.
CHAPTER 4
Xerxes’ anger knew no bounds as he surveyed the tattered remains of the bridge. He had stood in the storm for hours as the debris from the bridge was blown away and his men desperately tried to salvage as many boats as possible. His cloak and robes were thoroughly soaked, clinging to his body.
The rising sun produced steam from the rain-soaked ground and the bodies and clothing of the thousands of men at work. It also revealed the extent of the disaster. All that was left of the bridge were the main anchor pylons on the near shore.
This invasion was five years in the planning and making. Four years earlier Xerxes had dispatched a force ahead to the peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece off of which his father’s fleet had been destroyed in a storm. Rather than try the dangerous waters around the Mount, he had ordered his engineers to cut a canal through the isthmus that attached the Mount to the mainland. For four years conscripted laborers had dug and the canal was finally ready ahead of them so his fleet could shadow his ground movement.
But first there was the Hellesponte to be crossed by the mighty army while his fleet waited on the eastern side of the Aegean. Xerxes walked to the land’s edge, between the two large tree trunks that were set ten feet into the ground and had served as anchors for the failed effort. Behind him were the chief engineers, cowering in the arms of Immortals.
“Time is short,” was the whisper in his ear.
Xerxes looked at the woman who all in his court thought was a slave and perhaps a concubine as she slept inside his imperial tent when the army was on the march. She was indeed worthy of the Imperial bed, tall and willowy with striking black hair that had a single streak of gray in it from above her left eye flowing over her shoulder. However, Xerxes had never bedded her.
Her name, according to her, was Pandora. Xerxes had had one of his Greek scholars tell him the legend of Pandora and Prometheus and the box given to her by the gods. He thought it no coincidence that she bore the name of that character and he was always wary of her advice, taking some of it when it made sense to him, discarding others that he felt uneasy with.
Where her homeland was, Xerxes did not know. She had appeared at his court in Persopolis, unable to even speak Persian at first, except the three words that were her mantra at every meal. Her beauty — and a weapon she was carrying- had spared her long enough for her to show one of the captains of the Immortals a box she carried. It did not contain the evils of the world. Instead there was a map, drawn on paper the likes of which the most educated scholars of his court had never seen. Shiny, resistant to tear, and waterproof, the material was enough to amaze. But even more astonishing was the detail of the land from Persia to the west, with all of Greece drawn in exquisite detail.
She’d also carried a spear, a most fascinating weapon. A staff with a blade on one end made of metal the likes of which had also never been seen by anyone in his court. The edge was so sharp it could slice through an armor breastplate as if it were water. The other end of the staff was also fascinating, metal carved into the shape of seven snakes’ heads. She’d called it a Naga Staff, but said little more about it.
The map had been useful in finding the correct spot to build this bridge, and in helping his engineers in the digging of the Mount Athos canal. It was also helpful in keeping Xerxes from having the strange woman executed until she learned enough Persian to tell him why she was here — to help him defeat the Greeks and gain revenge. Her motivation for that she did not reveal, nor anything else about herself. The Naga staff he’d had taken from her and placed in the guard of his Immortals.
“Why is time short?” Xerxes asked without turning his head, as he continued to stare at the dark waters of the Hellesponte.
“I have shown you many true things,” Pandora said. “You must trust me on this.”
“Trust you?”
“I have seen the futures.”
Xerxes was intrigued by her use of the plural. “Which futures?”
“The future if you move quickly and the future if you do not cross the Hellesponte in the next four days.”
“And?”
“The first leads to victory, the latter to defeat.”
Xerxes was a Zoroastrian, a belief begun two hundred years previously by the prophet Zoroaster. Unlike the beliefs of the Greeks and other countries, which both he and his father, Darius, had conquered, Zoroastrian was a monotheistic religion, worshipping Ahuramazda, the Lord Wisdom. The core of the faith was the battle between truth — asha — and lie. He felt that battle every time he consulted with Pandora, uncertain of her motivations, thus unclear about the veracity of what she said. It was true she had never misled him up to now, but as far as Xerxes was concerned that only meant she might be waiting for a moment when the stakes were immense. And many of those moments would be coming in the pending campaign.
“There can only be one future,” Xerxes said.
“Yes, my lord but your actions will determine which one it will be.”
His magi — wise men — had consulted the heavens before he began this campaign and told him that the timing was fortuitous. The previous year, on the 10th of April, there had been an eclipse, the sun being blocked by the moon. His magi had said the moon represented the Persians while the sun was the Greeks. Thus he would eclipse the enemy of his father and have his revenge.
Omens. Vague words and predictions. Faulty construction. Xerxes felt the anger rise once more in his chest. He raised his voice so those surrounding him could hear.
“Perhaps the Greek god of the water—” he turned to his adviser who quickly supplied the name—“Poseidon, has seen fit to try to stop us. I will show him what I think of him and his fellow Greek gods and how they hold no power over my kingdom and the followers of Ahuramazda.”
Xerxes signaled to his master-at-arms. “Throw a set of shackles in the water to bind this god. Then three hundred lashes and a branding to follow to show who rules this strait and the water that flows through it!”
There was no hesitation on the master-of-arms’ part. The shackles splashed into the water before the end of the second sentence. Then there was the crack of the whip and the snap as the leather tip hit the surface of the water. There was no laughter among the thousands assembled watching, no muttering in the ranks.
When the last lash was delivered, the master-at-arms was covered with sweat, the muscles in his arm quivering. Despite his rage, Xerxes had been thinking throughout the symbolic act and he knew that given the multiplicity of nations represented in the forces surrounding him, more was needed to show he had a firm grip on the mantle of command after this disaster.