Brave To Be a King tp-2 Page 3

  Harpagus sucked in a sharp breath, taken aback by the invocation. But then, almost visibly squaring his shoulders: “We have only your word, the word of a Greek, that you were told by an oracle—that you did not spy out state secrets. Or even if the God did indeed send you here, it may as well have been to destroy you for your sins. We shall ask further about this.” He nodded at the captain. “Take him below. In the King’s name.”

  The King!

  It blazed upon Everard. He jumped to his feet. “Yes, the King!” he shouted. “The God told me… there would be a sign… and then I should bear his word to the Persian King!”

  “Seize him!” yelled Harpagus.

  The guardsmen whirled to obey. Everard sprang back, yelling for King Cyrus as loudly as he could. Let them arrest him. Word would be carried to the throne and… Two men hemmed him against the wall, their axes raised. Others pressed behind them. Over their helmets, he saw Harpagus leap up on the couch.

  “Take him out and behead him!” ordered the Mede.

  “My lord,” protested the captain, “he called upon the King.”

  “To cast a spell! I know him now, the son of Zohak and agent of Ahriman! Kill him!”

  “No, wait,” cried Everard, “wait, can you not see, it is this traitor who would keep me from telling the King… Let go, you sod!”

  A hand closed on his right arm. He had been prepared to sit a few hours in jail, till the big boss heard of the affair and bailed him out, but matters were a bit more urgent after all. He threw a left hook which ended in a squelching of nose. The guardsman staggered back. Everard plucked the ax from his hand, spun about, and parried the blow of the warrior on his left.

  The Immortals attacked. Everard’s ax clanged against metal, darted in and smashed a knuckle. He outreached most of these people. But he hadn’t a cellophane snowball’s chance in hell of standing them off. A blow whistled toward his head. He ducked behind a column; chips flew. An opening—he stiff-armed one man, hopped over the clashing mailclad form as it fell, and got onto open floor under the dome. Harpagus scuttled up, drawing a saber from beneath his robe; the old bastard was brave enough. Everard twirled to meet him, so that the Chiliarch was between him and the guards. Ax and sword rattled together. Everard tried to close in… a clinch would keep the Persians from throwing their weapons at him, but they were circling to get at his rear. Judas, this might be the end of one more Patrolman…

  “Halt! Fall on your faces! The King comes!”

  Three times it was blared. The guardsmen froze in their tracks, stared at the gigantic scarlet-robed person who stood bellowing in the doorway, and hit the rug. Harpagus dropped his sword. Everard almost brained him; then, remembering, and hearing the hurried tramp of warriors in the hall, let go his own weapon. For a moment he and the Chiliarch panted into each other’s faces.

  “So… he got word… and came… at once,” gasped Everard.

  The Mede crouched like a cat and hissed back: “Have a care, then! I will be watching you. If you poison his mind there will be poison for you, or a dagger ”

  “The King! The King!” bellowed the herald.

  Everard joined Harpagus on the floor.

  A band of Immortals trotted into the room and made an alley to the couch. A chamberlain dashed to throw a special tapestry over it. Then Cyrus himself entered, robe billowing around long muscular strides. A few courtiers followed, leathery men privileged to bear arms in the royal presence, and a slave M.C. wringing his hands in their wake at not having been given time to spread a carpet or summon musicians.

  The King’s voice rang through the silence: “What is this? Where is the stranger who called on me?”

  Everard risked a peek. Cyrus was tall, broad of shoulder and slim of body, older-looking than Croesus’ account suggested—he was forty-seven years old, Everard knew with a shudder—but kept supple by sixteen years of war and the chase. He had a narrow dark countenance with hazel eyes, a sword scar on the left cheekbone, a straight nose and full lips. His black hair, faintly grizzled, was brushed back and his beard trimmed more closely than was Persian custom. He was dressed as plainly as his status allowed.

  “Where is the stranger whom the slave ran to tell me of?”

  “I am he, Great King,” said Everard.

  “Arise. Declare your name.”

  Everard stood up and murmured: “Hi, Keith.”

  6

  Vines rioted about a marble pergola. They almost hid the archers who ringed it. Keith Denison slumped on a bench, stared at leaf shadows dappled onto the floor, and said wryly, “At least we can keep our talk private. The English language hasn’t been invented yet.”

  After a moment he continued, with a rusty accent: “Sometimes I’ve thought that was the hardest thing to take about this situation, never having a minute to myself. The best I can do is throw everybody out of the room I’m in; but they stick around just beyond the door, under the windows, guarding, listening. I hope their dear loyal souls fry.”

  “Privacy hasn’t been invented yet either,” Everard reminded him. “And VIP’s like you never did have much, in all history.”

  Denison raised a tired visage. “I keep wanting to ask how Cynthia is,” he said, “but of course for her it has been—will be—not so long. A week, perhaps. Did you by any chance bring some cigarettes?”

  “Left ’em in the scooter,” said Everard. “I figured I’d have trouble enough without explaining that away. I never expected to find you running this whole shebang.”

  “I didn’t myself.” Denison shrugged. “It was the damnedest fantastic thing. The time paradoxes—”

  “So what did happen?”

  Denison rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I got myself caught in the local gears. You know, sometimes everything that went before seems unreal to me, like a dream. Were there ever such things as Christendom, contrapuntal music, or the Bill of Rights? Not to mention all the people I knew. You yourself don’t belong here, Manse, I keep expecting to wake up… Well, let me think back.

  “Do you know what the situation was? The Medes and the Persians are pretty near kin, racially and culturally, but the Medes were top dog then, and they’d picked up a lot of habits from the Assyrians which didn’t sit so well in the Persian viewpoint. We’re ranchers and freehold farmers, mostly, and of course it isn’t right that we should be vassals—” Denison blinked. “Hey, there I go again! What do I mean ‘we?’ Anyhow, Persia was restless. King Astyages of Media had ordered the murder of little Prince Cyrus twenty years before, but now he regretted it, because Cyrus’s father was dying and the dispute over succession could touch off a civil war.

  “Well, I appeared in the mountains. I had to scout a little bit in both space and time—hopping through a few days and several miles—to find a good hiding place for my scooter. That’s why the Patrol couldn’t locate it afterward… part of the reason. You see, I did finally park it in a cave and set out on foot, but right away I came to grief. A Median army was bound through that region to discourage the Persians from making trouble. One of their scouts saw me emerge, checked my back trail—first thing I knew, I’d been seized and their officer was grilling me about what that gadget was I had in the cave. His men took me for a magician of some kind and were in considerable awe, but more afraid of showing fear than they were of me. Naturally, the word ran like a brushfire through the ranks and across the countryside. Soon all the area knew that a stranger had appeared under remarkable circumstances.

  “Their general was Harpagus himself, as smart and tough-minded a devil as the world has ever seen. He thought I could be used. He ordered me to make my brazen horse perform, but I wasn’t allowed to mount it. However, I did get a chance to kick it into time-drive. That’s why the search party didn’t find the thing. It was only a few hours in this century, then it probably went clear back to the Beginning.”

  “Good work,” said Everard.

  “Oh, I knew the orders forbidding that degree of anachronism.” Denison’s lips twisted. “But I
also expected the Patrol to rescue me. If I’d known they wouldn’t, I’m not so sure I’d have stayed a good self-sacrificing Patrolman. I might have hung on to my scooter, and played Harpagus’ game till a chance came to escape on my own.”

  Everard looked at him a moment, somberly. Keith had changed, he thought: not just in age, but the years among aliens had marked him more deeply then he knew. “If you risked altering the future,” he said, “you risked Cynthia’s existence.”

  “Yes. Yes, true. I remember thinking of that… at the time… How long ago it seems!”

  Denison leaned forward, elbows on knees, staring into the pergola screen. His words continued, flat. “Harpagus spit rivets, of course. I thought for a while he was going to kill me. I was carried off, trussed up like butcher’s meat. But as I told you, there were already rumors about me, which were losing nothing in repetition. Harpagus saw a still better chance. He gave me a choice, string along with him or have my throat cut. What else could I do? It wasn’t even a matter of hazarding an alteration; I soon saw I was playing a role which history had already written.

  “You see, Harpagus bribed a herdsman to support his tale, and produced me as Cyrus, son of Cambyses.”

  Everard nodded, unsurprised. “What’s in it for him?” he asked.

  “At the time, he only wanted to bolster the Median rule. A king in Anshan under his thumb would have to be loyal to Astyages, and thereby help keep all the Persians in line. I was rushed along, too bewildered to do more than follow his lead, still hoping minute by minute for a Patrol hopper to appear and get me out of the mess. The truth fetish of all these Iranian aristocrats helped us a lot—few of them suspected I perjured myself in swearing I was Cyrus, though I imagine Astyages quietly ignored the discrepancies. And he put Harpagus in his place by punishing him in an especially gruesome way for not having done away with Cyrus as ordered—even if Cyrus turned out to be useful now—and of course the double irony was that Harpagus really had followed orders, two decades before!

  “As for me, in the course of five years I got more and more sickened by Astyages myself. Now, looking back, I see he wasn’t really such a hound from hell, just a typical Oriental monarch of the ancient world, but that’s kind of hard to appreciate when you’re forced to watch a man being racked.

  “So Harpagus, wanting revenge, engineered a revolt, and I accepted the leadership of it which he offered me.” Denison grinned crookedly. “After all, I was Cyrus the Great, with a destiny to play out. We had a rough time at first, the Medes clobbered us again and again, but you know, Manse, I found myself enjoying it. Not like that wretched twentieth-century business of sitting in a foxhole wondering if the enemy barrage will ever let up. Oh, war is miserable enough here, especially if you’re a buck private when disease breaks out, as it always does. But when you fight, by God, you fight, with your own hands! And I even found a talent for that sort of thing. We’ve pulled some gorgeous stunts.” Everard watched life flow back into him: “Like the time the Lydian cavalry had us outnumbered. We sent our baggage camels in the van, with the infantry behind and horse last. Croesus’ nags got a whiff of the camels and stampeded. For all I know, they’re running yet. We mopped him up!”

  He jarred to silence, stared awhile into Everard’s eyes, and bit his lip. “Sorry. I keep forgetting. Now and then I remember I was not a killer at home—after a battle, when I see the dead scattered around, and worst of all the wounded. But I couldn’t help it, Manse! I’ve had to fight! First there was the revolt. If I hadn’t played along with Harpagus, how long do you think I’d have lasted, personally? And then there’s been the realm itself. I didn’t ask the Lydians to invade us, or the eastern barbarians. Have you ever seen a town sacked by Turanians, Manse? It’s them or us, and when we conquer somebody we don’t march them off in chains, they keep their own lands and customs and… For Mithras’ sake, Manse, could I do anything else?”

  Everard sat listening to the garden rustle under a breeze. At last: “No. I understand. I hope it hasn’t been too lonesome.”

  “I got used to it,” said Denison carefully. “Harpagus is an acquired taste, but interesting. Croesus turned out to be a very decent fellow. Kobad the Mage has some original thoughts, and he’s the only man alive who dares beat me at chess. And there’s the feasting, and hunting, and women.…” He gave the other a defiant look. “Yeah. What else would you have me do?”

  “Nothing,” said Everard. “Sixteen years is a long time.”

  “Cassandane, my chief wife, is worth a lot of the trouble I’ve had. Though Cynthia—God in heaven, Manse!” Denison stood up and laid hands on Everard’s shoulders. The fingers closed with bruising strength; they had held ax, bow, and bridle for a decade and a half. The King of the Persians shouted aloud:

  “How are you going to get me out of here?”

  7

  Everard rose too, walked to the floor’s edge and stared through lacy stonework, thumbs hooked in his belt and head lowered.

  “I don’t see how,” he answered.

  Denison smote a fist into one palm. “I’ve been afraid of that. Year by year I’ve grown more afraid that if the Patrol ever finds me it’ll… You’ve got to help.”

  “I tell you, I can’t!” Everard’s voice cracked. He did not turn around. “Think it over. You must have done so already. You’re not some lousy little barbarian chief whose career won’t make a lot of difference a hundred years from now. You’re Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, a key figure in a key milieu. If Cyrus goes, so does the whole future! There won’t have been any twentieth-century with Cynthia in it.”

  “Are you certain?” pleaded the man at his back.

  “I boned up on the facts before hopping here,” said Everard through clenched jaws. “Stop kidding yourself. We’re prejudiced against the Persians because at one time they were the enemies of Greece, and we happen to get some of the more conspicuous features of our own culture from Hellenic sources. But the Persians are at least as important!

  “You’ve watched it happen. Sure, they’re pretty brutal by your standards: the whole era is, including the Greeks. And they’re not democratic, but you can’t blame them for not making a European invention outside their whole mental horizon. What counts is this:

  “Persia was the first conquering power which made an effort to respect and conciliate the people it took over; which obeyed its own laws; which pacified enough territory to open steady contact with the Far East; which created a viable world-religion, Zoroastrianism, not limited to any one race or locality. Maybe you don’t know how much Christian belief and ritual is of Mithraic origin, but believe me, it’s plenty. Not to mention Judaism, which you, Cyrus the Great, are personally going to rescue. Remember? You’ll take over Babylon and allow those Jews who’ve kept their identity to return home; without you, they’d be swallowed up and lost in the general ruck as the ten other tribes already have been.

  “Even when it gets decadent, the Persian Empire will be a matrix for civilization. What were most of Alexander’s conquests but just taking over Persian territory? And that spread Hellenism through the known world! And there’ll be Persian successor states: Pontus, Parthia, the Persia of Firduzi and Omar and Hafiz, the Iran we know and the Iran of a future beyond the twentieth-century… ”

  Everard turned on his heel. “If you quit,” he said, “I can imagine them still building ziggurats and reading entrails—and running through the woods up in Europe, with America undiscovered—three thousand years from now!”

  Denison sagged. “Yeah,” he answered. “I thought so.”

  He paced awhile, hands behind his back. The dark face looked older each minute. “Thirteen more years,” he murmured, almost to himself. “In thirteen years I’ll fall in battle against the nomads. I don’t know exactly how. One way or another, circumstances will force me to it. Why not? They’re forced me into everything else I’ve done, willy-nilly… in spite of everything I can do to train him, I know my own son Cambyses will turn out to be a sadist
ic incompetent and it will take Darius to save the empire—God!” He covered his face with a flowing sleeve. “Excuse me. I do despise self-pity, but I can’t help this.”

  Everard sat down, avoiding the sight. He heard how the breath rattled in Denison’s lungs.

  Finally the King poured wine into two chalices, joined Everard on the bench and said in a dry tone: “Sorry. I’m okay now. And I haven’t given up yet.”

  “I can refer your problem to headquarters,” said Everard with a touch of sarcasm.

  Denison echoed it: “Thanks, little chum. I remember their attitude well enough. We’re expendable. They’ll interdict the entire lifetime of Cyrus to visitors, just so I won’t be tempted, and send me a nice message. They will point out that I’m the absolute monarch of a civilized people, with palaces, slaves, vintages, chefs, entertainers, concubines, and hunting grounds at my disposal in unlimited quantities, so what am I complaining about? No, Manse, this is something you and I will have to work out between us.”

  Everard clenched his fists till he felt the nails bite into the palms. “You’re putting me in a hell of a spot, Keith,” he said.

  “I’m only asking you to think on the problem—and Ahriman damn you, you will!” Again the fingers closed on his flesh, and the conqueror of the East snapped forth a command. The old Keith would never have taken that tone, thought Everard, anger flickering up; and he thought:

  If you don’t come home, and Cynthia is told that you never will… She could come back and join you, one more foreign girl in the King’s harem won’t affect history. But if I reported to head-quarters before seeing her, reported the problem as insoluble, which it doubtless is in fact… why, then the reign of Cyrus would be interdicted and she could not join you.

  “I’ve been over this ground before, with myself,” said Denison more calmly. “I know the implications as well as you do. But look, I can show you the cave where my machine rested for those few hours. You could go back to the moment I appeared there and warn me.”