One of the court ladies standing to either side of the queen sprang forward. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I know this man. He’s a terrible person,” she exclaimed, raising a finger. “You must not trust him. He tricked me. He’s a fraudster.”
“He tricked you?” asked Queen Tahmineh. “What do you mean by that?”
“If Your Majesty permits it, the truth will become clear once I confront him directly.”
When the queen gave her permission, the court lady glared at Giv and said, “You told me the other night that you were a prince of the Marquisate of Sistan, traveling the world disguised as a minstrel in order to train as a warrior!”
“I did.”
“And now you tell Her Majesty that you’re a minstrel. So that was a lie?!” the lady shrieked.
“You make it sound so crude,” Giv said, calmly stroking his chin. “That was a dream of mine, and for one night you shared it with me. And when the darkness of night yielded to the light of dawn, the dream vanished like dew upon blades of grass, never to return. All that remained was a beautiful memory.”
It was exactly the sort of words that made one wince, yet when Giv spoke them in his musical voice, it somehow sounded convincing.
“Come now. Why ruin such a lovely dream by cutting it apart with the ugly sword of reality? If you simply accept it, the dream becomes a memory, sweeter and more beautiful with time, adding color to your life. To drag everything before the laws and cost-benefit thinking of this world is terribly vulgar. There’s no need to deliberately walk such a barren road.”
In other words, Giv had swindled money and gifts out of the court lady.
While she stood there speechless, he turned back to the queen. “Sistan is merely an ancient country’s name. It no longer exists, so no one suffers any harm. What truly amazes me is how helpless women are before the word prince. No matter how sincere a lover they already possess, they abandon him the moment some mysterious wanderer claiming royal blood appears before them. Truly, shallow dreams suit shallow women.”
He completely dodged the issue, and did so shamelessly, but Giv undeniably possessed the grace and elegance to pass for royalty if he simply sat in silence. It was the sort of beauty better suited to a young woman’s fantasies than to reality.
“I understand now how eloquent you are,” said Queen Tahmineh. “And we have already witnessed your skill with the bow. In that case, perhaps we should see your talent in your true profession as well.”
The queen lightly raised a hand, and a court lady brought forth a golden lyre. Giv took it and immediately began to play with complete confidence.
His technique was not flawless, but no one present noticed. Even to the sophisticated ears of the courtiers, the music he drew from the lyre sounded graceful and fluid. To the women especially, it was almost sensual.
When he finished the piece, the women applauded the handsome minstrel enthusiastically, while the men joined in rather reluctantly.
The queen ordered an attendant to present Giv with two hundred dinars—one hundred for his archery, and one hundred for his music.
As he bowed respectfully, Giv cursed the queen’s stinginess in his mind. He had expected at least five hundred dinars.
“I have already deducted the amount for deceiving one of my attendants,” the queen said.
Giv bowed even deeper.
Beyond the reach of Giv’s lyre, fire and steel continued to play their song of slaughter around the city walls. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The Lusitanian army was daunted for a moment after their hostage was killed, but soon resumed their assault on the walls. The Parsian army spread across the battlements to meet them.
When one of the Lusitanian siege towers rolled closer, a soldier hurried to report to Marzban Saam. “Those towers launched the fire arrows that caused us so much trouble!”
“Those toys?”
Clicking his tongue, Saam ordered his men to prepare sheepskin bags filled with oil. The defenders raised their shields against the arrows from the tower, and in the brief moment when the barrage ceased, they loaded the oil sacks into catapults and fired. The sacks smashed against the siege tower. Oil burst from the split seams, soaking both the structure and the soldiers aboard it.
“Fire arrows!”
Hundreds of flaming arrows streaked red across the sky. From the walls, the siege tower stood at a perfect angle, with nothing blocking the shot.
In moments, the Lusitanian tower became a pillar of fire. Soldiers engulfed in flames screamed as they fell to the ground, and soon the tower itself collapsed.
After losing the siege tower, the Lusitanian army quickly set up long scaling ladders against the ramparts and began climbing them. The Parsian defenders answered with arrows raining from above, boiling oil, and flaming arrows. At times they even hurled large stones from catapults, crushing Lusitanian soldiers beneath them. A few attackers managed to reach the top of the wall, but every one of them was surrounded and cut down by the defenders.
Thus the siege of Ecbatana dragged on for ten days, and still the Lusitanian army failed to set foot inside the walls.
The Lusitanians had already lost fifty thousand men at Atropatene. Perhaps they finally realized the futility of relying on brute force alone, because one day they turned to psychological warfare instead.
On the fifth day of the eleventh month, more than a hundred severed heads appeared on display before the Lusitanian lines. The message was simple enough: “Surrender, or this will happen to you.” Yet for those who recognized familiar faces among the dead, the shock ran deep.
When Marzban Saam came to report at the palace, Queen Tahmineh turned a pale face toward him. “Surely… surely His Majesty is not among them.”
“No, Your Majesty. From what I saw, the shah’s head was not displayed. But Eran Vahriz… and Marzbans Manuchehr and Khayr were among them,” Saam said through clenched teeth. He could not remain calm after seeing the severed heads of men who once rode beside him in battle and drank with him afterward.
“Saam, we should open the gates and ride out,” Marzban Garshasp asserted. “What’s the point of cavalry if we cower behind walls? We cannot keep letting those savages do as they please.”
“There is no need to rush,” Saam replied. “We still have one hundred thousand soldiers inside the city, along with ample food and weapons. We hold out until reinforcements arrive from the eastern frontier. Then we strike together from inside and outside the walls, and the Lusitanian army will collapse in a single day. I see no need to sally out at all.”
As the two highest military authorities in the capital, Garshasp and Saam often clashed. Garshasp favored swift, decisive action, while Saam argued for endurance and defense. When the Lusitanian army began calling out from beyond the walls, urging the city’s ghulams to rise up in revolt with promises of freedom, Garshasp insisted on suppressing the ghulams by force before unrest could spread. Saam opposed him, arguing that doing so would only incur their animosity and further amplify unease.
“I keep telling you, there’s no need to panic. Keshvad is out there. So is Bahman. They’ll come with reinforcements.”
“When?” Garshasp’s reply was short and spiteful. Saam had no answer.
Even if Keshvad and Bahman, who guarded the eastern border, received news of the defeat at Atropatene and rode at once to help the royal capital, it could still take a month. Furthermore, Saam and Garshasp faced a grave problem unrelated to military matters. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
“His Majesty’s fate is unknown. So is the crown prince’s. In whose name are we even supposed to continue this war?” Garshasp wondered. “And if something has happened to them both? What becomes of the Kingdom of Pars then?”
“In that case, we have no choice but to crown Queen Tahmineh and have her rule as sovereign.”
Garshasp clicked his tongue. “If it comes to that, the remnants of Badakhshan will be overjoyed. The former princess-consort of Badakhshan becoming Queen of Pars? In the end, it would mean Badakhshan won after all.”
“Stop clinging to the past. Whatever she once was, she is now the queen of our kingdom. And there’s no one else left for us to rally behind.”
Even as they argued, the Lusitanian offensive continued. Their appeals to the ghulams inside the city only grew more fervent.
“People of the city who suffer under oppression! Slavery has no place in the world of men. Under Yaldabaoth, all people are equal. Shah, knight, farmer—before God, all are the same faithful believers. How long will you groan beneath tyranny? Break your chains and rise up to defend your own dignity!”
“What nonsense. The ones oppressing us are you bastards,” Garshasp muttered bitterly.
Just then, an urgent report arrived.
“Ghulams from the Great Temple have started fires! They beat the priests to death with chains and are trying to open the western gate to let the Lusitanian army in!”
At the time, Garshasp commanded the defense atop the north gate. Leaving the position to his subordinates, he vaulted onto his horse and galloped alone toward the western gate.
Flames and black smoke churned through the air. Ghulams and soldiers clashed in a chaotic melee.
“Hold the gate! Don’t let them open it!”
Garshasp spurred his horse straight toward the gate. The ghulams, carrying torches and clubs, scattered at first, but when they saw he was alone, they swarmed him, trying to drag him from the saddle.
His sword flashed from horseback, sweeping right and left. Blood sprayed upward from the ground, and bodies tumbled across the stone pavement. Screams erupted. Just as the ghulams finally began to flee in earnest, Saam and his soldiers arrived and encircled the area. The gate was barely held.
“Garshasp, are you proud of killing ghulams?” Saam spat icily.
Garshasp bristled. “They weren’t ghulams. They were rebels.”
“With nothing but sticks in their hands?”
“They carried swords in their hearts,” Garshasp hissed.
Saam fell silent for a moment. But as he watched the captured ghulams being dragged away under the lash, he said, “Look at their eyes, Garshasp. You may have killed ten rebels, but in return you will create a thousand more.”