The Ionia Sanction (11 page)

Araxes, sitting before me, said, “My man standing behind you is possessed of remarkable strength. I’ve seen him snap the collarbones of someone in the position you currently occupy. I wouldn’t recommend any sudden moves.”

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have taken Araxes to be a successful middle-class trader, not a killer and slaver. He was clean, his white hair hung loose to his shoulders, he wore a colorful tunic of good trim. When he spoke I saw he had good teeth. He had a pleasant face with a small nose and blue eyes. I still couldn’t tell his nationality.

Araxes smiled, settled back on his stool, and said, “How good to see you again. Tell me, what’s your name?”

“Nicolaos.”

“May I call you Nico?”

“No,” I said through gritted teeth.

Araxes glanced up at the man behind me and the pressure eased, but did not disappear. He glanced down at my half-empty bowl.

“You’ve not been eating that stuff, have you?” he asked in unfeigned horror.

“Why not?”

“I hope you like rat.” He shuddered. “Gah!”

I blinked, then realized he was only saying that to unbalance me. “Rubbish. You don’t know it’s rat.”

“I do. I used to catch them. I wasn’t always the successful businessman you see now. I began in the streets, on the docks, Nicolaos. We boys used to make our living catching rats. The better taverns paid us to catch and dispose of them. The worst kind paid us for the bodies. This is one of the worst kind. It’s amazing what a drunk sailor will eat, or a foreigner, especially if they use that old saw about ‘traditional local dish.’” He peered at the half-eaten stew for a moment, then stuck the point of his dagger in and pulled it out with a tiny bone hanging on the point, and an even tinier sliver dangling by a sinew. “No doubt about it, that’s the pelvis and the bone from its penis.”

My stomach lurched but, love him or hate him (I selected hate), Araxes was an impressive, highly educated man. One part of his story was hard to swallow. “
You
were a rat catcher?”

“I was an orphan,” he said shortly.

“Oh.” He had my sympathies. In Athens, orphans are the responsibility of the archon who runs the city, but even in Athens that was only true for the children of citizens. Other orphans were on their own. If they were lucky, they would be picked up as slaves. The ones who weren’t ended up as criminals or grew to be very, very tough men, good only for mercenary work.

“I killed my first man, right over there.” Araxes pointed to the far end of the docks.

“Back when I was a boy. I’d had a brother, we’d looked after each other for as long as I could remember, but he’d been taken from me and now I was on my own. I was hungry, I hadn’t eaten in days. A drunk sailor had staggered there and collapsed to sleep off his wine. I
needed
his coins. But I misjudged his stupor. He opened his eyes as I was bent over him. He grabbed my wrist, my left one, luckily. I snatched his dagger with my right and stabbed him in the throat. It was an awful blow, all I cut was his windpipe. I was inexperienced, you see. I took everything of value while he lay there asphyxiating and then rolled his body into the water. No one heard the splash. That was when I realized if I wanted to get anything out of my life, I would have to stop catching rats and start improving myself, so I could move on to more profitable activities.”

“Tough childhood.”

He sighed. “Good times, Nicolaos. Good times. Though of course, back then I certainly didn’t think so. I was young, no responsibilities, free to do whatever I wanted, no father to tell me nay. You have a father, don’t you? Of course you do. I’d wager he gives you grief. I never had that. But I wanted more from life. Have you noticed the young are never happy with their lot? Always ambitious, always wanting more.”

“Not like you and me at all.”

“Precisely. I, for example, would be perfectly content with a villa somewhere in the country, nothing too large, a nice, quiet estate with enough land to grow my own food and a little extra to sell at market.”

“I wish you luck.”

“I must ask you Nico—”

“It’s Nicolaos.”

“I must ask, Nicolaos, what are you doing here?”

“Having dinner.”

The pressure on my shoulders returned at once and I grunted with pain.

Araxes said, “Oh, no, no, no. This won’t do at all. You have no one watching your back—if you did they’d be on me already—and here you are trying to play the tough man. Dear boy, it simply won’t do. Save the pretense and the smart-ass comments for the amateurs who might be impressed by it. Let’s start again, shall we? What are you doing here?”

The pressure eased. “Looking for you, of course.”

“But you brought the girl with you. That was a bad mistake.”

I blinked. Araxes had just told me I’d been followed.

“I’m returning the girl to her father.”

“Don’t. She’s in the greatest danger here.”

“From you?”

“No.”

“Then why do you care?”

“She’s a child. She doesn’t deserve to be a player in this game, but if she remains, she will be. My advice is, take the girl and get out. Go back to your work in Athens.”

“That’s all very well for you to say, Araxes, but I don’t have any more work. I lost my job because of you.”

“What’s this?”

I found myself in the odd—bizarre would be more like it—position of spilling my heart out to my enemy.

“But this is dreadful,” he commiserated. “Has your employer no idea how the game is played? Would he sack a general of the army for a single reversal in a long war? No, of course not. Yet he sacks a fine agent like yourself at the first mishap that comes by. It’s outrageous! This Pericles of yours is not entering into the spirit of the thing. I’ve a good mind to write him a letter of protest on your behalf.”

“I’m not sure that would be helpful, coming from you. No offense intended.”

“None taken. Fair warning, Nicolaos: if you remain, I may eventually have to kill you.”

“Then why not do it now while I’m helpless in your underling’s hands? Not that I want to encourage you…”

“The answer to that is simplicity itself. I am a businessman. At the moment, no one is offering to pay for your death, but if you continue as you intend, then I see you as not so much a threat as a maturing revenue stream.”

A commotion at the door made Araxes look up. I followed his gaze. A man stood there, a Persian, with the nose of a hawk and expressionless eyes under hair that was black as Hades. Though there were men of many different lands in The Great King, few of them were Persians.

Araxes turned back to me and said, “And now, I must leave you.”

Araxes had ruined my reputation with Pericles and I’d sworn to get my revenge. Instead, he’d walked in front of me, made me helpless, talked down to me, and now he would walk away as carelessly as if he had nothing to fear from me.

I looked down at the formerly delicious, now cold, bowl of stewed rat. I could feel some of the gristle still in my mouth. I worked it around with my tongue, sucked in for a moment, and spat.

I spat right into the face of the blue-tattooed barbarian next to me. He turned to me in surprise, put his hand to his face, and felt the spittle running down his cheek. He snarled.

I rolled my eyes upward, to the thug holding down my shoulders, and jerked my head upward as if to say, “It was him.”

Either I was about to lose most of my teeth or …

The barbarian smashed a fist into the thug behind me. The thug let go and took two steps backward, yelling in surprise.

I didn’t hesitate. I pushed the bench back and launched myself over the table at Araxes. He was totally surprised. He made to stand, but didn’t have time. I dived into him headfirst and we both went tumbling, me on top. Good. I straddled and punched him one-two in the face, enjoying every moment.

I got two more punches in, just for fun, before I was whacked from the right. The blue-tattooed man on Araxes’ side of the table hadn’t been fooled by my trick; he’d seen me spit on his friend. He picked me up and roared—I felt like a child’s doll in his hands—and threw me across the room.

Except I didn’t go far. I landed smack into the Ethiopians and Karians who’d been arguing. They dropped their argument in favor of beating me. I had to hit back to defend myself while stepping aside, anxious to get back to Araxes before he got away.

I needn’t have feared. The barbarian had stood Araxes up against a wooden pillar, the better to beat him. I laughed. The barbarian had seen us talking together and thought he was my friend. Meanwhile the other barbarian and Araxes’ thug were throttling each other, to the cheers of the onlookers. They were both huge, heavily muscled men, and both had rictus grins of determination.

A tall man landed on my back and tried to get his arm across my throat. It was one of the Ethiopians. I staggered but didn’t fall. I reached behind me to grab at him, fell to one knee, and pulled. He flipped over my shoulder.

I looked up to see Araxes get control of his situation. He planted a hard knee into the barbarian’s groin and then clubbed him doublehanded on the back of the neck. A stiletto appeared in his hand.

I shouted, “No!” and charged him, which knocked us both into the crowd of locals by the window. They weren’t amused and set about us both. We found ourselves back to back. There were too many punching; I had to put my hands up to defend my head. The Ethiopian had charged again—I think he must have gone berserk—and ran into the recovering barbarian, who backhanded his new attacker away, straight into the oily plaited riders, who’d formed a defensive ring about their corner and were striking anyone who came near. The Karians were hitting at the remaining Ethiopian.

Other men, all of them drunk, had decided to join in. I saw the innkeeper, wielding a club in one hand and a hydria of water in the other, stepping over struggling bodies to get to the torches and douse them before someone knocked one over and started a fire.

Someone pushed me from behind and I was ejected from the group hitting me, back into the room. I staggered straight into the barbarian, who smiled to see me again and took me by the throat with both hands and pressed in hard with his thumbs. I couldn’t breathe. My hands flew to his and tried to pry them away, but it was like trying to bend iron. He grinned through his tattooed face and I saw his teeth were stained black.

At the window the locals had tired of beating Araxes. They picked him up, and as one, they tossed him out the window. He flew out cleanly.

My vision began to fade. I tried to kick the barbarian’s groin like Araxes had but he was ready and blocked me. At any moment my eyes were going to roll upward.

From nowhere, a bowl smashed over the barbarian’s head. He looked puzzled, then woozy. His hands relaxed and I could breathe again. He collapsed, like a mountain falling sideways, to reveal the Ethiopian standing on the table behind, holding the broken pieces of the smashed bowl and spattered with leftover stew.

I gasped, “Thanks, I owe you.”

He replied with gibberish and grinned.

I looked to the door, between me and it were men fighting and men looking for a fight. I hadn’t the slightest chance of getting through.

There was only one thing to do. I picked out the nearest local in the group, turned him around, and punched him in the face. He hit back, but his friends grabbed me by my clothing and lifted me high. I told myself to keep my arms and legs in. They ran me two steps and then I flew. I remember passing through the window and then hitting the ground.

I rolled to a halt before a pair of boots. Above the boots were trousers.

Hellenes don’t wear trousers.

I looked up from my prostrate position in the dirt to see the Persian. Two soldiers stood at his back.

He stared down at me. I stood at once, because Hellenes do not prostrate themselves before any Persian, not even by accident.

“Did you see a man come flying by here a moment ago?”

As I said it, two more flew out the window. The Persian and I watched them hit with dull thuds and lie still.

He said, “A man rolled, as you did, and jumped up and ran away. Perhaps that was your friend.”

His hair was black but his skin very pale. This was not a man who worked in the light of day. His eyes were dark—they could not have been any other color. His age I guessed to be somewhere between late twenties and midthirties. His hair hung ringleted, and his beard curled, in a style you would never find on a Hellene. The robe he wore had large sleeves and flowing folds and was striped in dark red and yellow. Obviously he was a high-ranking officer but he wore his rank as if it were of no account.

“You are?” He spoke perfect Greek.

“Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus.”

“You started the fight in there.”

“I didn’t.”

“I saw you. Know this, Hellene, lawlessness is hateful to the Great King.”

The officer turned and walked into the night, his soldiers following. I watched him fade to black. Most officers I have seen swaggered in their importance, but he simply walked as if he were impatient to be done with another detail. Dear Gods, if all the Persian commanders were like this man, how had we managed to beat them?

I toed three unconscious bodies, just in case, but none were Araxes.

I looked back. The Great King was a heaving mass of struggling men, thrashing each other in the near dark, because the innkeeper had managed to douse the last of the torches.

The Persian had delayed me too long. Araxes would know paths and places to hide that I could never find. He’d got away.

*   *   *

“With Araxes on the prowl I don’t want you out on your own,” I said to Asia back in our room, as I washed my cuts and bruises. In fact, the sooner we cleared Ephesus the better, but I had too much work to do to leave for a few days.

“The man you met,” Asia said. “I think I know him. His name is Barzanes. He … works with my father.”

“Works with?”

“Barzanes arrived at Father’s palace about three months ago, not long after my mother died.”

“Oh. I didn’t know about your mother. I’m sorry.”

Asia shrugged. “So am I. Barzanes arrived, and things changed.”