‘What can I do?’
Cyrus pointed to a place beside his throne. ‘Kneel at my side, and don’t speak unless I tell you to.’
Slowly, his body still unused to responding to such commands, Croesus did as he was told.
‘Good.’ Cyrus looked at Harpagus. ‘Admit him to our presence.’ He looked around the circle. ‘And the rest of you, be quiet. You stink of fear. If you can’t control yourselves, then leave.’
The court settled, and a single figure approached from the darkness. The bodyguards gave him the briefest of glances as he passed them, but Croesus saw them tense, their hands disappearing into the folds of their robes.
Croesus looked at the emissary, and recognized the man. It was Lakrines, the Spartan who had come to his court, many years before, when he was a king who could still dream of empires. The Spartan’s hard face had not changed, though now he wore his hair long, down far past his shoulders, and Croesus wondered what strange new custom had prompted the change. He dropped his head and studied the ground, but Lakrines paid no attention to a slave. He had eyes only for Cyrus.
The Persian king looked at the emissary and said nothing, stretching out the silence at his leisure. ‘You bring a message?’ he said at last.
‘I do.’
‘And what is it?’
‘The kings of Sparta command you to withdraw from these lands, and return to the east, Cyrus. That is all.’
Cyrus stared at him blankly for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Who are the Spartans?’
The emissary must have anticipated many responses, but not this one. Eventually, he smiled thinly. ‘You are joking, I think.’
‘I have never heard of you.’
‘We are the greatest warriors in the world, Cyrus. The most powerful of the Hellenes. You would do well to listen to us.’
‘Your fame, I’m afraid, has not crossed the sea to reach me. I think you are a long way from Sparta, to be giving commands to a king.’
‘I have seen your army. We have little to fear from you.’
‘Perhaps you should speak more carefully.’
‘We both know you won’t harm me, Cyrus.’
‘Do we?’ Cyrus looked off into the distance and said nothing for a time. Without looking back at the emissary, he said, ‘Tell me, what lies at the centre of your city?’
The Spartan narrowed his eyes. ‘A market square, where the tradesmen gather. What does that matter?’
‘I thought so. You see, in Persia, we have no such thing. We do our business behind closed doors. We do not make a god of trade. You claim to be great warriors. I do not know your people, but I have no fear of a nation of men who have a place to meet, swear this and that and spend all day cheating one another. Yours is a nation of merchants, not warriors.’
‘You cannot frighten me with insults, Cyrus. We have the blessing of the Gods. Our oracle says that we will win a great victory if we fight against Persia.’
‘Really?’ Cyrus said. ‘Tell me, did they say when you would achieve this great victory?’
The Spartan hesitated. ‘No.’
‘Croesus, look up,’ Cyrus said. ‘You recognize this man, Spartan?’
‘Yes.’ Lakrines inclined his head slightly. ‘I am sorry to see you this way, Croesus.’ He looked back to the king. ‘I suppose it is true what they say, if you would treat Croesus like this.’
‘And what do they say?’
‘That every man in Persia is a slave to the king.’
Cyrus laughed. ‘Tell this man of prophecies, Croesus,’ he said. ‘Tell him about the favour you asked from me, two years ago, when I made you my slave.’
Croesus swallowed, and let his eyes drop back to the ground. ‘For the boon you granted me, I asked you to send my chains to Delphi,’ he said slowly. ‘I had made many sacrifices to them. They told me if I went to war I would destroy a great empire, and that my people would rule Lydia until a mule sat on the throne of Media.’ He shook his head. ‘I wanted to know why their God had betrayed me.’
‘And what did they tell you?’ Cyrus said.
He closed his eyes against the memory. ‘They told me that the great empire I was to destroy was my own. And that you, the child of a Mede mother and a Persian father, were the mule that the prophecy described.’
Cyrus looked back at the emissary. ‘Your prophecies are no use against me,’ he said. ‘Look what your Oracle did for Croesus. You think that you can travel across the sea, and wage a war against me without consequence. Have an adventure in the East. If you win, you can take my empire. If you lose, why, then you may retreat, and come back another time. Croesus thought the same. You think I am too far away to come and wage war against you. You are wrong. Cross the sea to face me, and after I have broken your army, I will travel halfway across the world to find your cities and burn them to the ground. That is my promise to you.’
‘Cyrus-’
‘You may tell your kings,’ Cyrus continued, ‘that if they come here, I will put a collar on them both and have them kneeling at my side, like this slave who was once a king. Tell them I am a king who makes slaves of kings. Perhaps, one day, your people will win a great victory against mine. But not yet.’ He made a small gesture with his hand. ‘You may go.’
The Spartan opened his mouth to speak, but, looking once again at Croesus, he hesitated, and remained silent. He bowed, looked for one last time at the man who had been king of Lydia, then turned and marched out of the circle and into the darkness. There was silence in the court.
‘Do you think that will succeed?’ Cyrus said to Harpagus, when the emissary was out of sight.
Croesus had never seen Harpagus smile. His lips seemed to twitch; perhaps this was as close as he got to a true smile. ‘I think it will,’ the general said.
‘A fine performance, my lord,’ Cyraxes said. Others began to speak in praise, but Cyrus waved off the compliments.
‘We shall see what comes of it. It pains me to play the ignorant Eastern king. But a man who has never heard of the Spartans will have no fear of going to war against them.’ He yawned. ‘Have our people watch him until he has left the country, and send word to our contacts in Sparta. If they are going to come, we must know of it. Send for that man Tabulus as well. It is about time we gave him his orders. We’re going to put him in charge of your old kingdom, Croesus.’
Croesus did not reply. Cyrus looked at him, and for the first time Croesus saw hesitancy on the king’s face, something close to regret. Or perhaps he only imagined that he saw it.
Croesus bowed deeply, to hide his shame. ‘I am here to serve, master,’ he said.
Later, Croesus returned to the tent, stumbling with exhaustion as the first sign of dawn appeared on the horizon. He entered carefully. He did not want to wake the others.
When Cyrus had told him that the Persians did not like to keep slaves, he had thought it a piece of empty rhetoric. Yet he had spoken truthfully, for in Persia it was only those who were most unfortunate, those cursed by the Gods, who found themselves the property of other men.
Half a dozen slaves shared the tent with him. They were the favourites of the court, each with his own particular function, some quality that made him too valuable to set free. One young man was the lover of a Persian nobleman, pampered and spoiled by his infatuated master. A few years of beauty were left to him before he would be discarded for another and cast out to be a catamite for the soldiers; he spent his days staring at his reflection in pools of water and polished stones, watching for the slightest sign of ageing. Another of the slaves had been a poet as a free man, and was lucky that Cyraxes had a weakness for the epic. But the old man never liked to hear the same poem twice, and so the poet chased around the camp searching for a poem he did not know, or spent hours in the tent in a fever of forced composition. Each of them, like Croesus, was a plaything of one nobleman or another. Existing to entertain, and surviving on a whim. A single mistake would be enough for them to be cast out.