The curse of naram sin, p.1
The Curse of Naram-Sin, page 1
Copyright © 2022 Peter Gibbons
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Erelis Design
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
For Sean, Rian, and Liadh.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
From Herodotus, Ancient Greek historian;
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
About The Author
Books By This Author
From Herodotus, Ancient Greek historian;
"Bloodthirsty Cyrus... give me back my son and depart unpunished from this country... if you will not do this, then I swear by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that for all you are so insatiate of blood, I will give you your fill thereof."
Words attributed to Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae people of central Asia in 530BC.
The Curse of Naram-Sin
Book One in the Time Warrior Series
By Peter Gibbons
One
530 BC.
A snarling, scorched-faced horseman chased him, and Xantho ran for his life. His heart thundered in his chest like a war drum, and he swerved hard to the right towards a rocky escarpment as the screaming and crying of his fellow slaves rang around his skull. The tribesman howled with vicious fury, brandishing a wickedly curved blade as he closed in for the kill. Xantho whimpered as he scurried across the steppe, his head hunched deep between his shoulders. He could hear the panting, rhythmical breath of the horse over his shoulder and the jangling of its traces as the beast and its rider came within striking distance. Xantho threw himself into the short dry steppe grass, landing heavily with a grunt and rolling to his left, away from the scything blade and its pitiless master. The horseman shouted in his guttural, clipped language, savaging the reins, yanking the horse around in a flurry of hooves and steel.
Xantho’s jump gave him a few vital extra seconds, and he used the time well, leaping to haul himself up onto a jutting spit of rock. He climbed over its lip and then sprang to an adjacent boulder and onto the rise of the escarpment, scrambling up its face on his hands and knees like a lizard. Xantho risked a glance over his shoulder, and his heart lifted to see his attacker wheel away in search of new prey on the flat grasslands. If there was one thing Xantho was good at, it was running. He had been running and hiding his whole life.
The Massagetae horsemen had appeared from the steppe like ghosts, whooping and snarling and slashing with their long-curved blades, peppering the Persian slaves with vicious whistling arrows from their recurved horn bows. Now, from his safe position atop the rocks, Xantho watched them, swirling like devils as the last of his fellow slaves met a grizzly end beneath their flashing blades. He alone survived. Being a coward had its advantages, he supposed. A score of slaves, including Xantho, had made the trek around the steep hills to the river from the vast army encampment of Cyrus the Great, Emperor of Persia, and King of Kings. The slaves had hauled their masters’ clothes and war gear to wash in the cool, fresh river water to prepare their Persian lords for the battle with the tribesmen, which must come soon. The Massagetae roamed the sea of grassland to the north of the Persian Empire and remained a thorn in the Great King’s side. They were yet to be conquered, and Cyrus had brought his vast and terrible army into their lands to bring the wild tribesmen to heel. Guards had escorted the slaves as they brought the clothes and gear to the river, and those brave soldiers had stood their ground in the face of the swift attack. In reward for their bravery, they now lay still and dead, looking like cacti, feathered shafts sprouting from their chests.
Xantho’s stomach turned at the sight of so many dead. Their corpses seeped lifeblood into the slow-flowing river, staining it crimson. It wasn’t their deaths that made him sick; he had stood close to death many times before. The appalling truth of their deaths was that the slaughtered slaves would never see their homelands again, the places they held in their hearts, clinging on to dreams of freedom and a better life. Like all slaves with the army, they had marched here to the inhospitable and unexplored far north alongside their Persian masters, led by their King, Cyrus the Great. So many slaves, men and women from distant lands across the vast Persian Empire, were dead now, murdered by heathen plainsman. Xantho clenched his fist and slammed it down onto the cold stone where he lay, chest heaving with the exertion of the mad dash to safety.
He turned away from the bloody scene, climbed up and over the ridgeline, and slid down the opposite rock face scattered with scree. Tiny stones were skittering beneath his sandals and hands as he gathered pace, a plume of dust billowing behind him. Xantho looked at the sprawling camp on the plain below. More tents, horses, and men than any man could count, thousands upon thousands of souls to wage war on the tribes of the Massagetae. Xantho spat a clump of dust from his mouth and nearly lost his balance as he reached the foot of the rock face. He knew he must notify the Persians, his father, and the other lords; he must tell them of the surprise attack and slaughter at the river. Xantho swallowed hard, knowing he must now bear his father’s wrath. That anger would come not because of the deaths of so many slaves at the hands of the Massagetae but from Xantho losing his father’s fine clothes, silk tunics and underclothes, and his shining war gear during the attack. Those items were worth more to his father and master than the lives of easily replaceable slaves. A Persian warrior frowned in his direction, oiled beard gleaming in the sun. Xantho hated these Persians, hated their glossy beards and the superior look in their eyes. Perhaps because his father reinforced his lowly status at every opportunity, making sure that Xantho didn’t forget, not even for one second, that he was more Thracian than Persian. Xantho’s mother was a Thracian slave, but she was long dead now. She had raised Xantho amongst other Thracian slaves, and although his father was indeed a Persian, Xantho thought of himself as a Thracian and a slave.
Xantho ignored the haughty Persian’s gaze and scampered through the camp, jumping over tent ropes and skidding around busy warriors and animals as he went. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of azure, and it stopped him in his tracks. Xantho turned, hoping to see someone smiling and glad to see him––someone he knew could not possibly be there, no matter how much his heart desired it, his wife, Lithra. But it wasn’t her. It was another slave girl, her blue scarf fluttering in the light wind as she hustled along to perform some task for her Persian master. It couldn’t have been Lithra. She, too, had died years ago. Sadness forced Xantho’s eyes closed. Beautiful Lithra. He snapped himself out of the painful memory and pushed on toward his father’s tents.
“Where have you been?” demanded a familiarly gruff voice as Xantho reached his father’s camp.
Jawed was the owner of that voice, his father’s man at arms, short and swarthy, standing with his arms crossed and a look of pure disdain on his face. Xantho slumped, hands on his knees and his chest heaving.
“The tribes…they attacked us,” Xantho said between gasps.
“What madness are you talking, boy?”
Boy. Xantho wasn’t sure how old he was, but he had seen twenty summers at least. Two since Lithra had passed.
“Horseman…all dead…surprised us.”
Jawed took three spry steps forward and grabbed Xantho by the tunic, hauling him upright. Once at his full height, Xantho was taller than Jawed. Rather than look down his nose at his father’s man in the eye and risk a beating, Xantho did the age-old slave trick of picking a point in the distance just to the left of Jawed and focused his gaze on that.
“When, where?” asked Jawed, his dark-ringed eyes boring into Xantho’s.
“Behind the escarpment, all dead. Clothes gone, the guards dead.”
“How many of the enemy?”
“Maybe twoscore, I’m not sure.”
“Where are the others?”
“All dead. I was the only one to escape.”
The corners of Jawed’s mouth turned down, sneering as he let go of Xantho’s tunic. The man at arms span on his heel, yelling at everyone around him, raising the alarm. Jawed had a second thought and turned back to Xantho.
“You. Stay there. Don’t move.”
Xantho hadn’t planned on going anywhere. He only hoped his father inflicted his wrath on the Massagetae and not on him. Losing his father’s gear would certainly mean another thrashing, even though he could not possibly have saved any of it, even by giving his own life up to the Massagetae’s blades.
He wiped the dust from his face with the back o
Xantho closed a nostril with his finger and blew dirt from the other. A string of muddied snot trailed from his nose, and he leaned forward to avoid splattering his clothes. But, given how dirty they were, it was pointless. He opened his eyes to see his father standing before him, a grimace stretching across his stern face. Xantho commended himself on his impeccable timing.
“You were the only survivor,” his father sneered. His eyes poured with accusation, delighted to have a new opportunity to degrade his half-breed son.
“Yes, Fath…Yes, my lord,” he said. Almost uttering the unforgivable.
Xantho’s father was Tiribazos, satrap of a swathe of land south and west of Pasargadae. Tiribazos had brought over four thousand warriors and horses––and the supplies to feed them all––to Cyrus’ banner. Under no circumstances was Xantho to address his father as such. His back bore scars that served as a painful and unforgettable reminder of that.
“How is it, brave Thracian, that you alone survived?”
“I ran, lord.”
His father reared up to Xantho’s chest. He was not as tall as his son, and Tiribazos’ belly barged Xantho backwards.
“You ran. That’s the Thracian in you––your first instinct is to flee, to save yourself. No thought to the other slaves or the valuable clothing in your care. The craven nature of you and your barbarian people never ceases to amaze me. I go now to avenge the glory of Persia on these filthy desert dogs. You stay here and clean my tent. Keep out of my sight.”
Xantho again found a spot behind and to the left of his father and stared at it. How could his mother ever have lain with a man like Tiribazos? Maybe she’d had no choice. Such was the lot of a female slave. Thinking of her lifted his spirits a little. A feeling of warmth enveloped Xantho’s heart as the smell of her hair, and the glow of her kiss found their way into his mind. His mother had always been a slave. They had captured her as a child during Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia. Her father, Aristaeus, had been a mercenary, fighting for the Lydian king across the sea from his home in nearby Thrace. As his mother told it, Aristaeus was a great and noble warrior who fought to the end and was the epitome of honour and strength. Cyrus had crushed Lydia, Xantho’s grandfather was killed, and his mother was sold into slavery. Tiribazos had bought her and subjected her to this half-life of servitude and drudgery that it was to be a slave. All in the name of Cyrus, the greatest warlord in all history. King of Persia, Media, Great King, King of the World, and of Sumer and Akkad.
Tiribazos spun on the heel of his supple leather boots and waddled off. His men hustled around him, weapons jangling in scabbards, shouting erupting from across the camp as the brave warriors rode out to be avenged on the Massagetae for their stinging attack on Persian property.
Xantho sighed, wondering if his life could be any worse. He didn’t think so. He made for his father’s tent, easy to find as it was standing bright yellow and tall amongst the smaller tents of the army’s grunts. As he walked, he felt eyes upon him, burning and judging him for his cowardice. But he was alive. Would it have been better if he had stood his ground? Honourably washing clothes in the river to the bitter end whilst rabid steppe horseman shot him with arrows or hacked him to bits? On reflection, Xantho thought maybe it would. After all, would the world miss a mixed-blood slave? He didn’t have a family. Yet most of the other men he knew from the slave pens had wives and children, which gave them something to live and work for.
He reached his father’s tent, and the two guards at its entrance completely ignored him as he entered. Shoulders hunched and exhausted from the slaughter by the river. He shuffled past those guards in their shining soft blue, and yellow tunics and conical helmets polished to a gleam. Their tall, wicker shields rested against their legs, and sleek, poled spears pointed straight up to the sky, sharp and deadly. Xantho carried on, avoiding a red-dyed tent rope as thick around as one of his wrists. Spiky, dry grass ended and gave way to a luxurious carpet under his sandals like a warm cloud. He ducked under the tent flap and into the tent proper, his senses assaulted by the perfumed burners smoking nearby. Aromas of sweet and spiced meats attacked his nose, making moisture appear in his mouth where there had been only dust and dirt before. Xantho swallowed his saliva and saw the trays of meats on a trestle table placed at the centre of a gathering of intricately woven carpets. Short, deep goblets of watered wine and other delicious drinks dotted the remnants of one of his father’s war councils.
Xantho craned his neck and peered through the tent opening. All quiet, the guards still standing silent and alert, Tiribazos’ horse warriors off chasing shadows on the open steppe. Xantho licked his lips and swallowed hard. He lowered himself slowly to his knees and took another long look at the tent flap. Still quiet. Xantho crawled across the rugs, low and sleek, like a lion stalking its prey. He reached for a wide plate filled with wonderful meats and fruits. Xantho snatched up a slice of chicken and devoured it, juices running down his chin into his beard. With his other hand, Xantho grabbed grapes and pomegranate seeds and stuffed them into his mouth with the meat. Cheeks bulging, he munched as fast as he could, staring all the while at the tent opening and expecting to see his father or Jawed burst in at any moment to lop his head off for his insolence. He gulped before the food was fully chewed, and the lump of it went down like swallowing a horse whole. He picked up a goblet and swigged a mouthful of sweet wine. It slid down his throat like honey, caressing his insides.
Noise, shouting. Xantho stopped dead, frozen and staring at the opening. Nothing. He shot to his feet and jumped from the rugs, away from the food. Visions flashed through his mind of floggings and other hideous punishments he would surely endure if caught eating from Tiribazos’ table. Nobody entered, though. Xantho wiped his mouth on his sleeve and breathed out, not realising he had been holding his breath. More shouting, some screaming. He moved to the opening of the tent and peeked outside. One guard had gone, and the other had his feet planted wide, shield raised on his left arm, his spear lowered. The guard’s head flicked right and left, searching for danger. All around, people ran here and there, aimlessly panicking. Xantho heard a wet thud and his head snapped back to the guard who had fallen to his knees, a black feathered arrow jutting from his eye. We are under attack.
Horses exploded from the tent across from his father’s, the riders crashing through the tent itself and whirling their mounts in search of targets. A slave ran past them, head tucked into his shoulders and arms raised, waving in terror. A Massagetae warrior laughed and threw a short spear at the slave, which slammed between the man’s shoulder blades, flinging him to the ground. Xantho looked at the sun-darkened faces of the attackers, hungry and lean, their small ponies quick and relentless. He looked at their broken teeth and savage snarls and fled back into his father’s tent.
Xantho ran four long strides and then halted. What am I doing? There’s no way out of the tent other than the entrance. It could only be a matter of moments before the Massagetae warriors crashed through the tent, and they would trap him. Succulent meats and fragrant wines would not protect him from the vicious tribesman. He looked about him for something, some way out. Xantho’s heart pounded. Noise from the tent flap whipped his head around. They were coming. Resting between a silver tray of fruits and a tasselled pillow was a knife, a short knife with a jewelled hilt used for cutting food. Xantho dived for it, rolling across platters and cushions as he picked it up. The metal felt cold and unfamiliar in his hand. He stood and sprinted to the rear of the tent and slashed at the canvas. Two deep cuts and he could get his arm through. Two more, and he could poke his torso out. Harsh cries erupted behind him. They were upon him. Xantho heaved himself out of the hole he had cut. He sucked in his stomach and twisted, jerking desperately against the canvas walls. Suddenly he surged forward, and he was out, collapsing to the grassy steppe outside, breathing hard.
