Qaran let out a deep battle cry and spurred his horse forward. His massive spear, as battle-worn as its wielder, lunged straight at the prince’s heart.
Almost by instinct, Arslan deflected it. The spearhead veered into empty space, but the prince’s arm went numb up to the elbow from the impact.
“Clever trick!” The second strike came down.
If surviving the first blow felt like a miracle, dodging the second was nothing short of one. But whatever favor the heavens or the hands of fate had shown ended there. The third strike meant to brush aside any feeble resistance and pierce straight through the center of Arslan’s body. What stopped it was Dariun’s voice.
“Qaran! Your opponent is me!”
He had arrived late because the forest path had turned into a swamp after rain two days earlier, slowing his advance.
Qaran’s face twisted in disappointment. It was clear that he was still haunted by the memory of being overpowered by Dariun on the plains of Atropatene. He gave up the prize in front of him. His horse wheeled around, and the hands of death closing in on Arslan rapidly retreated.
“Your Highness, are you safe?!”
A black shadow, man and horse as one, piled up corpses of enemy soldiers around Arslan.
A knight tried to drive a spear into Dariun’s back, but he screamed and flew from his saddle. An arrow from Farangis had pierced his face.
Panic spread through the enemy ranks as two black shapes burst into them. Narses and Giv witnessed the skill of their new comrades firsthand.
Steel rang out. Blood sprayed.
Several horses lost their riders and vanished into the darkness. Half of the attackers failed even to keep their footing on the cliffside path and fell away with screams.
For Qaran’s men, it must have been the worst night imaginable. Their enemies were not only fierce but terrifyingly cunning. Using confusion, darkness, and terrain to their advantage, they would leap into the midst of the enemy ranks, spread death in every direction, then slip out of the maelstrom of men and horses and vanish into the curtain of night. After this happened again and again, the army’s order collapsed beyond repair. There was no longer any hope of restoring their formations.
“Dariun, go after Qaran!” Narses shouted after cutting down another enemy.
Dariun nodded, kicked his black horse forward, and raced after the fleeing commander, stones and dirt flying under its hooves.
A few riders tried to block him, but he speared one down and knocked another aside. Without caring about the blood spraying in the night wind, he closed in on Qaran.
“Is that your idea of valor—picking on a young boy? Where’s all your famed bravery gone? You’re fleeing in disgrace! Is this really the renowned Qaran?!” This chapter was copied from NovelPing without permission.
The taunt worked. His wounded pride drove Qaran into a rage.
“Don’t get full of yourself, you brat!”
He swung his spear and knocked Dariun’s weapon aside. The impact was tremendous. Dariun was thrown off balance, and his black horse staggered briefly. It nearly rushed off the steep slope, but managed to steady itself in time.
Qaran immediately drove his spear toward Dariun’s face. Recovering in the saddle, Dariun parried the fierce thrust at the very last moment.
Shocked, Qaran’s men tried to rush in, hoping to break between the two fighters. But the clash of man against man, horse against horse, and spear against spear erased any opening for a third party to intervene. They struck, swung, parried, thrust, deflected. Sparks flashed blue-white in the half-moon’s glow.
Qaran proved why he had risen to marzban. When fear did not cloud his mind, he fought with a ferocity that matched even Dariun’s.
But his men could not keep up that same resolve. Cut down and pinned by arrows, they fled into the depths of the night, where the defeated found refuge. Many had never imagined the enemy numbered so few.
Arslan spurred his horse and rushed to the site of the duel. As he watched anxiously, Narses rode up beside him, his bloodied sword still in hand.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” he said. “Dariun won’t lose. But if this drags on, we may not be able to take Qaran alive.”
His judgment proved correct. The moment Qaran’s spear and movements slowed somewhat, the first blood was drawn, flying from Qaran’s left cheek.
Dariun had sliced away a strip of flesh with the tip of his spear. It was not a deep wound, but the blood splashed into Qaran’s eyes and stole his vision for an instant.
Dariun’s spear shot forward like lightning, and Arslan’s breath caught in his throat. But Dariun had not forgotten their objective. Instead of the spearhead, he drove the shaft’s butt hard into Qaran’s side. The marzban lost his balance and was thrown from his horse, crashing to the ground.
Up to that point, everything had gone as Dariun and Narses expected. What ruined the plan was the steep terrain and Qaran’s own weapon. Still gripped in his hand, the spear struck a rock on the slope, snapped loudly, and—without breaking cleanly—twisted at a strange angle. The spearhead skewered its wielder’s neck diagonally.
By the time Dariun had dismounted and lifted him up, Qaran was already half gone. The spear jutted from both sides of his neck, but his eyes remained open, glowing with a dim light.
“Where is the shah?” Dariun forced the question into the ears of the dying man. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Andragoras… is alive,” Qaran rasped. “But the throne… is no longer his. The rightful king…”
A clot of dark blood choked off the rest. After a brief, violent spasm, Marzban Qaran expired.
“The rightful king?” Dariun murmured, exchanging a glance with Narses.
The circumstances of Andragoras’s accession to the throne came to their minds. At the time, there had been quiet whispers that he had murdered his elder brother and seized the crown for himself. In other words, that he was a usurper. However, Andragoras, backed by a powerful army, went on to secure numerous victories against neighboring countries, thereby enriching the realm. In a sense, his effective rule came to serve as proof of his legitimacy.
Arslan, whose horsemanship was inferior to Dariun’s and Narses’s, arrived a little late. He cast a questioning glance at them both.
“Shah Andragoras is still alive,” Narses said. “Unfortunately, we could not get anything more out of him.”
Arslan looked toward Dariun, who laid Qaran’s body on the ground. The young knight in black was silent. Narses did not share the second half of Qaran’s last words, a decision Dariun agreed with. A fourteen-year-old boy did not need to hear something like that.
“Your Highness, if he’s alive, then you will meet again someday,” Darius finally said. “And if the Lusitanians have kept him alive this long, they must have a reason. They will not harm him without cause.”
Arslan nodded, not so much in genuine agreement as to keep Dariun from worrying.
Narses introduced the two young newcomers to the prince. First, a beautiful woman with long hair stepped forward and bowed deeply.
“Are you Prince Arslan?” she said. “My name is Farangis. I served at the temple of Mithra in Khuzestan. I have come at the behest of the late high priestess, to offer my bow to your cause.”
“My name is Giv,” the young man said next. “I escaped from Ecbatana to serve Your Highness.” This was a complete lie. Before they could cast suspicion on him, Giv shared information to earn the prince’s trust. “Queen Tahmineh, your mother, was alive and well when I left. I was even granted the honor of speaking with Her Majesty directly.”
The future would take care of itself. He had always been fond of trouble to begin with. For the time being, he could stay close to Farangis and also gain a good reason for running Lusitanian soldiers through his blade. If things became inconvenient, he could always slip away. That was Giv’s plan.
A short distance away, Dariun spoke quietly to Narses with a strained smile. “We went from four to six, a fifty percent increase in strength. But can we really trust them?”
“If there are 300,000 Lusitanian soldiers, then each of us would only need to take down 50,000. That makes things much easier, doesn’t it?”
Narses wasn’t painting a rosy picture. He was simply pointing out, in his own sarcastic way, how difficult their position had been up to now, and how little it would likely improve.
At any rate, it became clear they would need to infiltrate Ecbatana to confirm the whereabouts of both the shah and the queen.