Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

Mighty warrior, I told myself after each of those silly little raids. Terrifying women and children.

Then I came across real bandits.

The ground was rising, and off along the horizon I saw low-lying clouds that might have marked Lake Van. If it was the lake, I was more than halfway to my goal, with still two weeks to get there.

I camped for the night in a hollow and built a sizable fire. The nights were cold up here, but there were plenty of trees and windfalls for firewood. I ate the last of my latest farm fare and wrapped my cloak about me, ready for sleep. In two weeks or less I would see Anya. If Aten had told me the truth. The possibility that he was toying with me, as Hera had earlier, bothered me. Yet I had no choice but to push ahead. If there was any chance at all that Anya would be at Ararat, I was going to be there to see her.

I was just dozing off when I sensed them. A dozen men. More. Stealthily approaching my fire.

I always kept my sword beside me under my cloak. I gripped its hilt now and rose to a sitting position, letting the cloak drop from my shoulders. Fourteen men, I saw, skulking around in the shadows beyond the firelight. All of them armed. Too many to take on, even for me.

“You might as well come in and warm yourselves,” I said. “You’re making too much noise for me to sleep.”

One of them stepped close enough to the fire for me to see him clearly. Tall, well-built, scruffy beard turning gray, a scar across his left cheek. He wore a black leather corselet, stained and scuffed with hard use, and held an iron sword in his right hand. Bareheaded, but he looked like a soldier to me. Or rather, an ex-soldier.

“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” I said, still sitting. Then I realized that they would happily slit my throat for the two horses.

The others slowly came closer, forming a ring around me and the fire.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

“My name is Orion. I’m heading for Ararat.”

“The sacred mountain? Why?”

“He’s a pilgrim,” said one of the other men, with a wolfish grin. Like the first, he wore the black leather corselet of a military uniform.

“Some pilgrim,” said the first.

“But that’s what I am,” I said, letting go of my sword and hauling myself to my feet.

“Orion the pilgrim, eh?” His voice was hard, suspicious.

“And what might your name be?” I asked.

“I’m Harkan the bandit, and these are my men.”

I said, “Harkan the soldier, I would have thought.”

He gave me a bitter smile that twisted the scar on his cheek. “Once we were soldiers. That was long ago. Now the Great King has no more use for us and we must make our own way.”

“Well, soldiers or bandits, you can see that I don’t have anything to steal.”

“Except two fine horses.”

“I need them to get to Ararat.”

“Your pilgrimage is going to end here, Orion.”

Fourteen against one are impossible odds. Unless I could make it a personal duel.

“I’ll make you a wager,” I said to him, trying to sound cheerful.

“Wager?”

“Pick your best two men. I’ll fight them both at the same time. If they win, you get my horses. If I win, you let me go in peace. With my horses.”

“A pilgrim who wants to fight. Who is your god, pilgrim, Marduk? Shamash? Who?”

“Athena,” I said.

“A woman!” laughed one of the men.

“A Greek woman!” They all began to laugh.

Even Harkan was grinning at me. “And what weapon does your goddess want you to use? A spinning wheel?”

They roared with glee.

I raised my bare hands. “These will be enough,” I said.

Their laughter cut off abruptly. I could see in their faces what they were thinking: This is a madman. Either he is mad, or he truly serves the goddess Athena.

“All right, pilgrim,” said Harkan, brandishing his sword in my face. “Let’s see what you can do.”

“Who else will help you?” I asked.

The grin came back. “Who else? Just me and my sword. That’s all I need.”

I flashed out my left hand and gripped his sword arm before he could twitch. With my right I grasped his belt and lifted him off his feet. He yelled as I held him aloft and then tossed him to the ground so hard that he dropped his sword and I heard the breath woof out of him.

The others stood frozen, eyes wide, mouths agape.

Harkan climbed painfully to his feet. “Zoser, Mynash—take him.”

They were experienced fighters. They moved warily, swords in hand, one to my left, the other to my right.

I feinted left, dived to my right, knocked Mynash off his feet with a rolling block and wrested the sword from his hand with a quick twist that made him yelp in pain. Zoser was swinging overhand at me. On one knee, I blocked his sword with Mynash’s and then pounded his midsection with an uppercutting left that lifted him completely off his feet. As he landed flat on his back with a heavy thud I pricked the skin of his throat with the point of the sword, then spun and did the same to Mynash.

Harkan smiled grimly at me. “Can you take three at a time?” Before I could answer, he went on, “Four? Ten? Twelve of us?”

I had impressed him, but he was no fool.

“You agreed to a bargain,” I said.

“That was only part of the bargain,” he replied. “The rest of it is this: we are heading toward the country around Lake Van. Better pickings up there and fewer of the Great King’s pretty soldiers to bother us. You’re heading that way yourself, so until we reach the lake you are one of my men. Agreed?”

“I prefer to go alone. I need to travel fast.”

“No faster than we!”

The bargain was clear. Accompany Harkan and his men or be slain here for my horses.

“As far as Lake Van, then,” I said.

He stuck out his right hand. “Agreed!” We clasped forearms to seal the bargain.

They did not travel as fast as I did alone, but fast enough. Harkan’s band was being hunted by the Great King’s men and they rode as if devils were hunting them down.

While I rode as if a goddess were calling me.

From Harkan I learned that an empire always has troubles when a new king comes to the throne. Dareios III had been Great King for little more than a year. Apparently his first royal act was to poison his grand vizier—who had poisoned the man who had sat on the throne previously and then picked Dareios to be his pawn. This Dareios was no pawn. Yet many of the nations in the vast Persian Empire had immediately rebelled, wanting their own independence, before the new king could solidify his hold on the people, the government bureaucracy, the treasury, and the army. Especially the army.

“We’re from Gordium,” Harkan told me as we rode northward. It was a gray day, with a chill damp wind blowing down on us from the distant snow-capped mountains.

“Whoever holds Gordium holds the key to the heartland of all Asia Minor,” he went on. “Our prince rebelled against Dareios, thinking that he could make himself Great King, with luck.”

“He was wrong?” I prompted.

“Dead wrong,” said Harkan grimly.

The Great King summoned troops from many distant lands of the empire, far-off Bactria, wild mountain warriors from Sogdiana, Parthian cavalrymen and even Greek mercenary hoplites.

“We were outnumbered ten to one,” Harkan said. Then he ran a finger along the scar on his cheek. “That’s where I got this. We were lucky to escape with our lives.”

“What happened to Gordium?”

He did not answer for several moments, his eyes like dark chips of flint staring off into painful memories. The horses plodded on, noses into the damp wind.