The Great King glared at his counsellor. I didn’t know who the man was, but he was beautifully dressed.
Mardonius looked at the man as if a heap of dung had materialised at his feet. ‘How dare you interrupt the king?’ he hissed.
‘An oath to the gods is not like a statement of policy, my lord,’ the old man said. ‘It has effects that ripple through all of the universe. I beg you not to push the king into such an oath.’
Mardonius put a hand to his chest like a bad actor. ‘The king but reacts to the arrogance of the Greek ambassador! I have nothing to do with this sort of manipulation.’
For less than a single beat of a desperate man’s heart, Xerxes’ eye caught mine. A hint of amusement — and fear. It was not all pomegranate juice and slave girls, being the Great King.
I watched them — and managed to glance to my right and left, to see the courtiers around me, the palace officers, the soldiers. In a single sweep of my gaze, I saw the depth of the central division in this court. I had no idea what had caused it, what factions existed, but I could see approval and disapproval, anger and fear and outrage and hope, writ all about me. There was a war party and a peace party — that much was clear.
If I had five years and a million darics to spend, I suspect I could have exploited it. But I had neither.
The Great King sat back and raised his hand for silence. ‘Very well, old friend. I will not swear to the gods. I will merely state the obvious — my armies are ready to march, my ships have been summoned to their duty, and there are stockpiles of food throughout my realm. Let Athens and Sparta shake with fear, for my hand is not light. My spear is long, and I will take my bow in my hand and my chariot wheels will roll over their armies as a farmer threshes wheat.’
It seemed to me a dismissal, and I stood straight — waiting for the blow, or the motion of his hand — whatever it might be.
But as the silence lengthened, I realised that they were all waiting for me to speak in reply.
I had in my hand the caduceus — the bronze staff of a herald.
I did not bow.
‘Great King!’ I said. ‘I have come seeking peace, and been promised war. So be it. My land is poor and yours is rich, and your reach is long. You have a thousand thousand slaves and fertile land that stretches away with uncountable riches, and my land is girt by the sea and has little to offer but rock and stone.’
I held my staff over my head. ‘But before the immortal gods, Great King, Greece is far, the world is wide, and we, too, have spears.’
I threw my staff on to the marble. It rang like the hammer of Hephaestos on the anvil of the gods.
Then I turned on my heel and strode from the hall. Aristides walked by my side. We expected to be cut down at every step, and no one would meet our eyes, but behind us, the king was silent.
We didn’t make it out of the second hall. We were moving swiftly when a dozen guards — fully cloaked and with their faces covered by the tails of their headscarves — surrounded us with spears. They didn’t even speak.
My knees grew weak. Why not? My friends, I was unarmed, and these men were in armour, and I knew I was going to be executed in some back hallway.
I was terrified, but I knew I had to do something or die, so even as they moved in around us and directed us toward a side corridor, I began to look at them with professional desperation. I was looking for an ill-hung sword, any available weapons — a spear I could seize.
I jostled Aristides with my hip and our eyes met.
We were taken into another, even smaller corridor, and I was lost — I think we were in a servants’ area, but there were no frescoes.
I heard the sound of running footsteps, and the guard nearest me — not a royal guardsman, unless he was wearing a disguise — turned to look.
I hit him in the ear with the palm of my hand — very hard — grappled close, and grabbed his spear. Without stopping, I turned the shaft to kill the man behind him, but the man had also started to turn to see who was running up behind, and my spear’s metal butt caught him in the head and laid him out.
Two down and ten to go.
Aristides got the second man’s spear before his body hit the floor.
The guardsman closest to me was very good — he dropped his spear and drew a short akinakes from his belt — he was inside my spear — and cut at my head. Aristides saved my life by covering me with his spear shaft.
But that one attack wrecked any hope we had of escape, and we were two men surrounded by ten.
‘Stop!’ ordered a voice. ‘Stop!’
It took me a whole ten heartbeats to realise that he was shouting in Greek, and it was Cyrus.
He appeared around the last bend in the corridor, and his eyes took in the scene.
‘Hold!’ he roared in Persian. ‘Stop! Put your weapons down!’ he then said in Greek. He knelt by the two men I’d felled and put a hand to their throats.
‘No one is dead. No one needs to die.’ He looked back and forth. ‘These are the Queen Mother’s men, and they have orders to protect you.’ Cyrus turned to the man with the drawn sword. ‘He speaks Persian — why did you not speak to him?’
The man looked at me with undisguised hatred. ‘It never occurred to me that he and his companion were so uncivilised as to use violence in the Royal Palace.’
Cyrus looked at me.
‘I thought we were about to be murdered,’ he said.
Aristides laughed. ‘As did I, Lord Cyrus. Come — if we are all friends, here is my spear.’
He handed it to the captain of the guard, who glared at him — and took the spear.
‘The queen will not thank you for mistreating them,’ Cyrus said, but we were prodded — almost beaten. Our guards were angry and afraid, and men were left to look after the two men we’d put down. I took a number of knees and fists in the dark corridors, and then we emerged into the light, and I was blind. Cyrus walked between us, a hand on his sword.
‘This is not going well,’ he admitted.
The guards took us across a courtyard I didn’t know and into another palace. A dozen more soldiers surrounded us, and then we were put into a windowless room — quite forcibly. My shoulder was hurt — two men took my arms, and I tried to struggle and failed.
And then we were alone, in the dark. And Cyrus was locked in with us.
‘This is not what was supposed to happen,’ Cyrus said. ‘The Queen Mother wants you to go home alive. Because she does not want Xerxes to be guilty of any more impieties, and because she is an old friend and ally of my master.’ He sat against a wall and fingered his beard by the light that came in around the door. Once our eyes adjusted, it was not so very dark.
‘And those were the Queen Mother’s guards?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. This is not. . I have not been here in a long time. Things were not done this way in the time of Great Darius. He was master in his own house.’
We sat in the dark for a long time.
Eventually, Aristides put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You spoke well,’ he said. ‘I particularly liked your piece on slavery.’
‘I don’t think Mardonius liked it,’ I said.
And later, when it had begun to get darker outside, Cyrus told us a great deal about the inner workings of the court.
‘When Lord Xerxes took power,’ he said, ‘he had to make many agreements to win over some of the Persian and Mede vassals. He offended some of Darius’s best officers by promoting younger men. It is almost always the way — so my father tells me. But Xerxes — it is not that he is weak, rather that he is changeable. Today’s alliance may be tomorrow’s enmity. Men say that the only council that he trusts is the last council to reach him.’ He shrugged. ‘This prevarication is not the normal way of a Great King. Mardonius and Atosa the Queen Mother and his brother Haxāmaniš all seek to dominate, him or at least influence him.’
‘And Artapherenes?’ I asked.
Cyrus shook his head. ‘My master is too wise to play these games. He is a loyal man and he rules his provinces, levies taxes, raises troops — and stays away from all this. We thought. . perhaps you would help us to stop this war.’ He frowned at me. ‘Why make such inflammatory answers?’