Prince Guiscard was busy drawing up plans for the future division of land and maintenance of order, both for the Kingdom of Lusitania and for himself. When Qaran came to visit him in the former office of the framadar, he was admitted with little delay. Perhaps the prince simply wanted a break from his work.
After entering, Qaran bowed deeply and requested permission to hunt down Prince Arslan and his companions.
“Arslan is no more than an inexperienced boy,” he said, “but Dariun and Narses are another matter. They cannot be taken lightly.”
“What sort of men are they?” asked Guiscard.
“Narses once served as a dabir in the palace. Even Shah Andragoras valued his intelligence, though he has since withdrawn from court service.”
“Hmm.”
“As for Dariun, Your Highness may already know of him. He was the lone knight who broke through the heart of the Lusitanian army on the plains of Atropatene.”
For the first time, Guiscard reacted. He tossed aside the quill adorned with peacock feathers that he had been holding.
“That black-armored knight?”
“Indeed.”
“Several of my friends and acquaintances met their end in a foreign land because of him. If I could, I’d skin him alive.”
Qaran said nothing.
“Still, there’s no denying he’s a formidable warrior. You must have some chance of success if you came here asking for this.”
“I have a plan.”
“I see. Well, give it a try, then. If you Parsians cannot handle the matter, we’ll simply send in Lusitania’s regular troops and finish it ourselves.”
Guiscard had his own calculations. If Parsians fought among themselves, Lusitania lost nothing. If a Parsian prince died at Parsian hands, Lusitania’s own hands would remain clean. And if Qaran personally killed the prince, there would be no turning back for him afterward.
Whatever his brother and Archbishop Bodin believed, it was impossible to wipe every Parsian from the face of the earth. Better to win over one-tenth of them and use that tenth to govern the remaining nine. Divide and rule—that was the wisdom of conquerors.
A man like Qaran had to be used to the fullest. At the very least, he was far more useful than someone like Bodin. If he wished to earn distinction, then let him earn it.
The foundation of Guiscard’s plans was simple: seize Parsian lands and ghulams and distribute them among the Lusitanians. Yet he could not treat an eager collaborator like Qaran the same way he treated other Parsians. Guiscard intended, at minimum, to let him keep his domain. Still, there would almost certainly be opposition among the Lusitanians.
Absurd. Why should conquerors curry favor with the conquered? All the wealth of the defeated belongs to the victors. We paid for it with our own blood. What reason is there for us to hold back?
Such were the thoughts of greedy men with narrow vision. And as always, people of that sort formed the majority and wielded the greatest influence. Unless Guiscard found a way to reconcile those interests, his true ambitions would never be realized.
“In any case, I’ll leave the matter of Prince Arslan to you for the time being,” he said. “Handle it as you see fit.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way, Qaran.”
A question suddenly occurred to Guiscard. If the King of Lusitania took Tahmineh, the Queen of Pars, as his wife, how would the Parsian nobles and generals feel about it? Read the latest chapters at g.com.
With a blank face, Qaran answered, “Her Majesty was not originally of Pars. She was once the Princess Consort of Badakhshan. Everyone remembers that.”
“Hm.” Guiscard tilted his head slightly. “I suppose that is one way of looking at it.”
Seeing no reason to detain Qaran any longer, he dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
The bazaar,[1] reopening for the first time since the fall of the capital, bustled with a respectable crowd and a fair number of goods. Without it, life for the people of Pars simply could not continue.
Among the crowd was a young girl.
She was tall and strikingly beautiful, with light brown skin, silky black hair, and dark eyes. More noticeable still was the vitality and intelligence that shone from her face.
One of the Parsian soldiers under Qaran’s command, assigned to guard the bazaar, approached her. The girl seemed slightly annoyed by the attention, but when she saw a column of cavalry passing beside the bazaar, she asked whose troops they were.
“Those?” said the soldier. “They’re under Marzban Qaran himself. Well, Eran Qaran now.”
“Where are they going?” she asked.
The girl’s voice sounded perfectly innocent. Eager to impress her, the soldier told her everything he knew—though in truth, it wasn’t much.
Then, casually but forcefully, he seized her wrist and led her away from the bazaar into a deserted alley. For too long he had stood by helplessly while Lusitanian soldiers committed acts of violence. Parsian women ought to belong to Parsian men, not foreigners.
As the girl struggled and twisted to break free, excitement overcame the soldier. He grabbed her head, trying to force her into submission.
Then he screamed. Her hair had come off completely, along with the cloth wrapped around her head. It was a wig! The soldier’s shock was just beginning to turn into anger when an acinaces[2] flashed—quick and sharp—and buried itself in his chest. By the time the soldier collapsed into the dust, his assailant had already darted into another alley like a swift little bird.
“Ugh. Disgusting.”
The beautiful girl—or rather, the boy disguised as one—spat in irritation. It was Elam.
At Narses’s request, he had slipped into the royal capital of Ecbatana to gather information on the movements of the Lusitanian army inside the city. Narses had repeatedly warned him not to do anything dangerous, which Elam found to be rather ironic.
In any case, he needed to report what he had learned.
Turning down a couple of streets, Elam slipped into the backyard of a house. He removed the girl’s clothing and changed into a set of men’s clothes that had been washed and left out to dry. Leaving five mithqals[3] behind as payment for both the clothes and the disguise, he smeared mud over his face and garments.
As he made his way back through the bazaar, he faintly heard the voices of soldiers raising an alarm after discovering their comrade’s corpse.
“Qaran left the capital with more than a thousand cavalry?”
Hearing Elam’s report upon his return from the royal capital, Narses tilted his head thoughtfully. Arslan and his companions had been moving from one settlement devastated by the Lusitanian invasion to another.
Arslan folded his arms. “Isn’t that a bit excessive just to capture me?”
“It’s only natural, Your Highness. They have no idea how many of us there are. And besides, you are a walking banner of legitimacy. Put you at the head of an army, and every force opposed to Lusitania could rally around you. From the Lusitanians’ perspective, that would be a disaster. It’s no wonder Qaran is uneasy.”
“If I were Qaran,” said Narses, “and I needed to capture Your Highness as quickly as possible, I would first attack and burn a suitable village.”
“Burn a village?” Arslan’s eyes widened.
Handing Elam a towel so he could wash his face, Narses explained, “After that, there are several options. One is to burn a village, slaughter its inhabitants, and then announce what was done. The message would be simple: unless Your Highness surrenders, more villages will be attacked and more innocent people killed. There are other methods as well, but that would likely be the first.”
Arslan swallowed hard. “Would Qaran really go that far? Despite what he’s done, he’s still a warrior.”
“A model warrior who sold his shah and his country,” Narses replied dryly.
Arslan fell silent. Qaran had already crossed the river and reached the opposite bank. At this point, he probably saw no reason to spare innocent lives if it served his purpose.
After a long moment of thought, Arslan broke the silence. “Narses, can you tell which village Qaran intends to attack?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“They will show us the way. We simply follow them. Shall we?”
Arslan nodded firmly.
As the prince stepped outside to saddle his horse, Dariun, who had listened thoughtfully to the exchange, finally spoke, “Qaran is not a simple man. He left the capital in broad daylight with his forces in full display. Could this entire operation be a trap designed to lure His Highness out?”
“It could be.”
“Then why did you not stop him?”
“My friend, I have rather high hopes for that prince. And I intend to remain true to those hopes.”
Dariun blinked, and Narses smiled at him.
“Sooner or later, there is no way to learn the truth behind these events except from Qaran himself. If one wishes to catch a shir’s cub, there are times when one must enter the shir’s den.”
Dariun’s brow twitched slightly. “You were prepared to abandon the prince if he chose not to save the village, weren’t you? You would have judged him unfit to be a ruler.”
Narses gave no verbal answer. He merely smiled mischievously. But that expression clearly affirmed his friend’s insight.
1. Parsian term for a marketplace. Based on the Persian bāzār, referring to a marketplace or market district, often the commercial center of a town or city. ↩
2. Parsian term for a dagger. Based on the acinaces, the characteristic short sword or long dagger of the ancient Persians. ↩
3. Parsian term for a copper coin. Based on the Arabic mithqāl, a historical unit of weight used throughout the Middle East, especially for weighing gold and silver. ↩