Orion and the Conqueror Read online

  I did the best I could, crossing whole nations in days, I avoiding the main roads and the bigger towns, hunting or stealing what I needed and pushing constantly on toward the setting sun.

  Until at last I reached Chalkedon.

  It was a large city, bigger than Pella, smaller than Athens. A port city, across the Bosporus from Byzantion. Its streets were crooked, meandering down the slope from the city wall to the waterfront docks. Its buildings were old, in poor repair, dirty. Garbage stank in the alleys and even the main square looked dirty, uncared for. Inns and taverns were plentiful, however, and the closer I approached the docks the more the streets were lined with them. Knots of drunken sailors and keen-eyed merchants stood before open bars built into many of the house fronts, exchanging drinks and gossip, making bargains and deals for everything from Macedonian timber to slaves from the wild steppes beyond the Black Sea.

  The busiest place in Chalkedon was the slave market, down by the docks. I was going to push past the crowd gathered there; I was looking for a cheap ride across the water into Byzantion. I had a few coins in a cloth purse I had taken from a horse trader who had made the mistake of traveling with only four guards.

  But while I was trying to work my way through the crowd that filled the open-air slave market and spilled out across the street that led down to the docks, I stopped dead in my tracks. I saw Harkan.

  He had changed his clothes and even trimmed his beard. Like most of the other men thronging the slave market, he wore a long plain coat over his more colorful robe, and covered his head with a felt cap. At a distance he looked like either a moderately prosperous merchant or the owner of a large farm who was shopping for hands to work it for him. But closer up, the scar on his cheek was clearly recognizable; so was the flinty look in his coal-dark eyes. I glanced around the crowd and spotted several of Harkan's men, also with their beards neatly trimmed, wearing decent clothes.

  I pushed through the murmuring, jostling pack of men waiting for the market to open, heading for Harkan. He was turned slightly away from me, but his eyes kept searching through the expectant crowd, on the alert for danger. Then he saw me.

  His eyes went wide as I came up beside him, but he quickly mastered his surprise.

  "Your pilgrimage is over?" he asked.

  I nodded. "I'm heading back to Pella. I have responsibilities there."

  He nodded. "You look different."

  "Different?"

  "Calmer. More certain of yourself, as if you are sure of what you are doing now."

  I felt a slight surprise at that, but inwardly I realized he was right. There was no turmoil within me now. I did not know exactly what I had to do, but I knew I must return to Pella and do Hera's bidding, no matter what it might be.

  Then I looked squarely into Harkan's leathery face and realized for the first time that he reminded me of someone I had known. Another soldier, from long ago: Lukka the Hittite. He might have been Harkan's forebear, they looked so much like one another. In Harkan's eyes I saw something that I had noticed only once before, when he had spoken of his family. I realized why he was here.

  "You are searching for your children," I said.

  "If they haven't already been sold. I was told the people taken from Gordium were brought to the market here. They won't let anyone except the wealthiest buyers inspect the cages before the auctioning starts."

  I thought a moment. "You are hoping to buy their freedom?"

  "Yes."

  "And then what?"

  He shot a questioning glance at me. "What do you mean?"

  "It will be difficult to continue your life as a bandit with an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter to take care of."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "I don't know."

  "Neither do I, pilgrim. For now, I'm seeking my children. What happens afterward, I'll worry about after I've found them. First things first."

  I stayed at his side through the whole long miserable afternoon. The slave dealers paraded out their wares, one by one. Young women brought the highest prices; strong healthy-looking men young enough to work in the fields or the mines also made profits for the sellers. There were dozens of children, but they brought very little. Most of them were still not sold when the sun dipped behind the warehouses lining the docks and the auction ended.

  Hardly a scattering of buyers was left in the square by then. The children, miserable, dirty, some of them crying, all of them collared by heavy iron rings, were led by their chains back to their pens.

  While the slave dealers huddled off behind the auction block, counting their coins, the chief auctioneer climbed down wearily and headed toward the tavern across the square.

  "It's a shame," said the chief auctioneer as we watched the children being led away. His leather-lunged voice was slightly hoarse from the long day's work. "We can't keep feeding those brats forever. They're eating up any profit we might make on them."

  Falling in beside him, Harkan asked as casually as he could manage, "Where are they from?"

  The auctioneer was a lean, balding man with a pot belly and cunning eyes. He shrugged his thin shoulders. "Here and there. Phrygia, Anatolia; we got a clutch of them from Rhodes, believe it or not."

  "Have there been any from Gordium?"

  He stopped walking and looked sharply at Harkan. We were more than halfway across the square, almost at the door to the tavern. "What is such information worth to you?"

  Harkan's face became a mask of granite. "It is worth a life, auctioneer. Yours."

  The man looked at me, then glanced back over his shoulder where the dealers were still gathered behind the block. A half-dozen armed men stood guard near them.

  "You wouldn't get to utter a single word," Harkan said, his voice low with menace. "Now just tell me, and tell me truly. Have there been any children from Gordium here?"

  "A month ago. Nearly a hundred of them. There were so many that the bidding went down almost to nothing. A bad show, a miserable show."

  "Who bought them?"

  "Only a few were bought in the open auction. The bidding was too low. We can't sell goods for nothing! Can't give them away! The dealers closed the auction when the bidding went down too low to satisfy them."

  "So what happened to the children who weren't bought?"

  "They were sold in a lot. To a Macedonian. Said he was from their king."

  "Philip?" I asked.

  "Yes, Philip of Macedon. He needs lots of slaves now that he's master of Athens and all the rest of the Greeks."

  "This is the truth?" Harkan asked, gripping the auctioneer's skinny forearm almost hard enough to snap the bone.

  "Yes! The truth! I swear it!"

  "The few who were bought by men here," Harkan went on urgently, "were any of them an eight-year-old boy, with hair the color of straw and eyes as black as mine? Or a six-year-old girl with the same coloring?"

  The auctioneer was sweating and trying to pry Harkan's fingers off his forearm. He might as well have tried to dig through the city wall with a dinner fork.

  "How can I remember?" he yelped. "There were so many, how can I remember an individual boy or girl?"

  "Let him be," I said to Harkan. "The chances are that your children are on their way to Pella."

  He released the auctioneer, who dashed through the tavern's door without another word.

  "To Pella. In Macedonia." Harkan drew in a great painful breath. "Then I'll never see them again."

  "Why do you think that?"

  "I know little of Philip and his kingdom, but I've heard that they don't tolerate bandits there. Philip's men keep the law. There's no place for me there."

  I smiled at him and placed my hand on his shoulder. "My friend, Philip does not tolerate banditry, true enough. But he has the finest army in the world, and he is always ready to welcome new recruits."

  I had heard that in ancient times heroes had swum across the Hellespont. Alexandros had sworn to his Companions that he would do it one day himself. P
erhaps I could swim the Bosporus; it was narrower than the Hellespont, although its current was swift and treacherous. It would be far easier to buy a place on one of the ferries that plied between Chalkedon and Byzantion. And, of course, I could not expect Harkan or his men to swim.

  His band had dwindled to nine men over the winter. The others had drifted off, tired of their bandit ways, trying to find their way back to their home villages or looking for a new life for themselves. I was glad to see that among the remaining nine was Batu. Harkan told me he was a strong fighter, with a cool, calculating mind.

  "They say there are Macedonian troops in Abydos," Harkan told me, "down by the Hellespont."

  "Truly?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. "That's the word in the marketplace."

  Philip's show of strength, I realized—holding a bridgehead on the Asian side of the water in case he ultimately decided to move the bulk of the army against the Great King. Diplomacy works best when it's backed by power.

  "We'll get to Pella faster by taking passage across the Bosporus to Byzantion," I decided.

  "That takes money, pilgrim. We don't have enough coin to buy passage for the eleven of us."

  "Then how do you expect to buy—" I stopped myself in mid-sentence. I knew the answer before I finished asking the question. Harkan was saving whatever coin he had amassed to buy back his children.

  So I said instead, "I know where there is coin aplenty."

  Harkan grasped my hint. "The slave dealers?" He smiled grimly at the thought. "Yes, they must have more coins than old Midas himself."

  "But they are always heavily protected," said Batu. "Their homes are guarded and they never venture into the streets alone."

  "We are strong enough to overpower such guards," I said.

  "Yes, I agree," said Batu. "But before we could take their coin to the docks and get aboard a boat, the city's guards would be upon us."

  I nodded. He was right. Brute force would not work; the city was too small. An attack on one of the rich slave dealers would immediately bring out the whole force of guards and the first thing they would do would be to halt all the ferries attempting to leave the docks. "Then we must use guile," I said.

  Chapter 27

  It rained that night, which was all to the good. I stood beneath the gnarled branches of a dripping olive tree, studying the house of the richest slave dealer in Chalkedon. Harkan and Batu were at my side, shoulders hunched, wet, miserable and apprehensive.

  "The wall is high," murmured Batu, his deep resonant voice like a rumble of distant thunder.

  "And the gods know how many guards he has in there," said Harkan nervously.

  "Six," I told him. "And another dozen sleeping in the servants' quarters on the other side of the courtyard."

  "How do you know that?" Harkan's harsh whisper sounded surprised, disbelieving.

  "I spent all evening watching, from the branches of that big oak tree across the street."

  "And no one saw you? No one noticed?"

  "This is a very quiet street in a very rich neighborhood. My only trouble was getting past the constables' patrol down at the foot of the hill. Once I slipped past them there was no one on the street except a fruit vendor and his cart. I waited until he had gone around the corner and then climbed the tree. Up there the leaves were thick enough to keep me hidden. It was fully dark when I came down."

  I heard Batu chuckle in the darkness.

  "Is my report satisfactory?" I asked Harkan.

  "For a pilgrim," he grumbled, "you have strange ways."

  We agreed that they would wait out of sight in the deep shadows beneath the olive trees that lined the residential street. They would have to deal with any of the city constables or private guards who might pass by.

  "The rain helps us," I said. "There will be no casual strollers this night."

  "And it discourages the guards on the other side of the wall from roaming the grounds," Batu added.

  I nodded. "If I'm not back by the time the sky begins to lighten, go back to the inn, gather up the rest of the men, and get out of town."

  "You speak as if you were the commander, Orion," said Harkan.

  I grasped his shoulder. "I speak as if I want you and your men to get away safely even if I am captured."

  "I know," he said. "The gods be with you."

  "They always are," I replied, knowing that he had no idea of the bitterness behind my words.

  "Good luck," said Batu.

  I shook my rain-soaked cloak to make sure it would not hamper my movements, then stepped from under the dubious shelter of the tree. The rain felt cold, almost stinging, although there was barely any wind at all. The wall surrounding the slave dealer's house was high, with spikes and sharp-edged potsherds embedded in its top. The groundskeepers had cut down any trees growing along the length of the wall. Its whitewashed surface was blank and smooth, offering no handholds.

  So I ran from the olive tree, across the brick-paved street, and leaped as high as I could. My sandaled right foot slapped against the wall and I stretched my right arm to its limit. My fingers found the edge of the wall as my body slammed against it almost hard enough to dislodge me. Mindful of the sharp pottery bits and spikes up there, I hung for a moment by the fingertips of both hands, then pulled myself up until my eyes could see the top of the wall. It looked like a little forest of sharp objects.

  Carefully I pulled myself up to my elbows and got one leg levered up onto the edge of the wall. There was not much room that wasn't covered with cutting edges or spikes. The one thing I worried about was the dogs. During my afternoon and evening observation of the house and grounds I saw several large black dogs trotting through the garden or lolling outside the doors, tongues hanging out and teeth big and white. The rain would help; dogs do not like being cold and wet any more than people do, and the steady downpour would deaden my scent. Or so I hoped.

  I edged across the jagged potsherds and spikes and lowered myself slowly to the grass. Dropping to one knee, I waited long moments as the rain sluiced coldly down my neck and bare arms and legs. Nothing was moving in the dark courtyard. There were no lights in the servants' quarters and only one lamp gleaming feebly in the main house, through a window on the ground floor.

  My senses hyperalert, I scuttled quickly to the closest window of the main house. Its shutters were closed tight. I heard a growl from their other side, low and menacing, a warning from the dog who had been sleeping inside. I backed away, then moved to the farther corner of the house and froze in my tracks. A guard sat there, trying to stay out of the rain beneath the overhang of the second story, his cloak wrapped tight around him, his chin on his chest—asleep or not, I could not tell.

  I took no chances. Sliding along the wall almost like a snake, I was within arm's reach before he realized I was there. With one hand I muffled his mouth and with the other I chopped the back of his neck. I felt him go limp.

  Then I sat him down again exactly as he had been, chin on chest, cloak secure around him.

  I swung up onto the overhang and climbed to the second-floor window. It too was shuttered, but I gripped it by the slats in one hand as I hung there and forced it open with only a slight groaning, squeaking noise. Not enough to warn anyone, I hoped.

  I pulled myself through the window and into the dark room. My eyes were fully adjusted to the dark and I swiftly saw that this was a bedchamber and that a woman lay asleep in the bed, tossing unhappily and muttering in her dreams. I tiptoed past her and went out into the corridor beyond her door.

  It was a balcony, actually, that ran along all four sides of the house's inner courtyard. Sleeping chambers and other rooms lined its entire length. The area below was lit by that one feeble lamp I had seen from outside. It was a large central atrium, with rooms opening onto it. Peering through the polished wood railing of the balcony, I could see two guards squatting by the door, miserable in the chilly rain. The dog that had growled at me was pacing nervously across the flooring beneath the balcony
on the far side of the atrium, his claws clicking against the stones. He looked up at me, ears pricked, but apparently he had been trained not to climb the stairs. He was a ground-floor dog, and for that I was extremely grateful.

  Now the question was, where did the dealer keep his money? I smiled to myself in the shadows. In his own room, I was willing to bet. But which room was his?

  I stood there for long moments, studying the area The balcony was lined with doors, all of them closed. They were all single doors, except for those at the far end of the balcony, opposite the side where the stairs were. Double doors. Handsomely carved, at that.

  Staying in the shadows along the wall, I made my way swiftly and silently to those double doors. They were locked, of course. Very well. I retreated, testing each of the other doors as I went until I found one that opened for me. The room inside was unoccupied; it looked like a storage room, with shelves lining two of its walls. There was only a narrow slit of a window, but I pushed its shutter open and stuck my head out into the rain. The wall was smooth and straight; no handholds, no ledge or anything else to plant my feet upon. But there was the roof above.

  I squeezed out through the narrow window, stood up precariously on its sill, and reached for the overhanging eave. The roofing tiles were slippery from the rain, but I managed to haul myself up onto the sloping roof. As quietly as I could, I edged across the tiles to the spot where the master bedroom must be. Leaning over the eaves I saw a double window. One of the shutters was even open a little. The master of the house liked fresh air. Good!

  I swung down and went in through the window as silently as a shadow. And heard the growl of a guard dog.

  I had no time to waste. The dog was standing before me, fangs bared. There was no time to try to soothe it; in another instant it would start to bark and rouse the entire house. Faster than it could react I seized it by the throat and yanked it up off its feet. It clawed at me and tried to snap at my face but I kept it at arm's length as I squeezed the breath from its throat. It jerked convulsively, then went limp. I eased the pressure of my hands. I could feel a pulse beat in its neck, heard it sucking in air. I let the animal down gently, hoping it would remain unconscious long enough for me to find the dealer's coins.