Blades and spearpoints flashed through the fog like lightning tearing across summer clouds. Here and there, muddy red flames burst upward, blowing waves of scorched heat across the battlefield.
The young knight in black could not help wondering if he was less brave than simply reckless. In this vast, chaotic battlefield, he was trying to find a single person.
“Prince Arslan! Where are you?!” Dariun shouted for the umpteenth time.
His black armor was speckled with the blood of Lusitanian soldiers. Since leaving the king’s camp, he no longer kept count of how many men he’d cut down with his spear. One thing alone was certain: no one lasted more than three exchanges against him.
His gaze, sweeping left and right, suddenly fixed on one spot. About a hundred gaz away stood a familiar face. Marzban Qaran. But the expression on that face was not one Dariun recognized.
The moment Qaran saw him approach, he silently raised one hand. The mounted warriors around him lowered their spears toward Dariun.
And Dariun realized they were not Pars cavalry. They were Lusitanians.
“What is the meaning of this, Marzban Qaran?” Dariun asked, but he already knew the answer from Qaran’s face.
Qaran had not mistaken friend for foe. He had not lost his senses. He knew perfectly well who Dariun was when he ordered the Lusitanian knights forward.
Dariun drew a sharp breath. “So you betrayed us, Qaran!”
“Betrayed?” Qaran scoffed. “No. I acted for the true good of Pars. That’s why I joined the plan to drive Andragoras from the throne.”
He did not even use the title Your Majesty. He spoke the king’s name plainly.
Understanding flashed through Dariun’s eyes. “I see now. You urged me to advise His Majesty to retreat before the battle so I would fall out of favor and lose my rank as marzban.”
Qaran burst into laughter. “Exactly right, Dariun. You’re not just some muscle-brained brute after all. That’s precisely why I couldn’t leave ten thousand cavalry under your command. No matter how fierce you are, one man alone cannot turn the tide of a battle.”
His triumphant laughter cut short. Dariun, spear at the ready, exploded forward on his black horse.
One of the Lusitanian knights guarding Qaran answered immediately, spurring his gray horse ahead. His long spear—different from those used in Pars, fitted with a crossguard at the center—thrust straight toward Dariun.
The two riders crossed like twin bolts of lightning. The Lusitanian’s spear grazed Dariun’s helmet and flew wide. Dariun’s spear punched through the man’s throat and burst out the back of his neck. The knight crashed to the ground with the weapon still skewering him.
By then, Dariun already had his longsword drawn. The blade flashed white, like the first rays of sunlight in a winter dawn.
A heartbeat later, another Lusitanian knight’s head flew into the air, helmet and all, trailing blood behind it.
“Don’t move, Qaran!”
Dariun cut down a third knight, then reversed his swing and swept a fourth from the saddle in a spray of blood. The Lusitanian knights who had reduced the Kingdom of Maryam to ashes looked as helpless as children before his swordsmanship. Riderless horses bolted wildly into the fog.
“You betrayed His Majesty and deceived me. I will make you answer for both crimes!”
As if answering its rider’s fury, the black horse let out a sharp neigh and lunged straight toward Qaran.
The surviving Lusitanian knights threw themselves into Dariun’s path to stop his charge. That courage deserved praise. But it cost them their lives.
Dariun never slowed. Swords flashed before Qaran’s eyes. Steel shrieked against steel. Fresh blood splashed across the earth.
Then suddenly there was no one left between them. Qaran saw it clearly—the bloodstained longsword rising high above Dariun’s head, aimed straight for him.
Qaran himself was no stranger to battle. He was a seasoned warrior. But Dariun’s ferocity had gone beyond anything he expected, and perhaps the weight of his own betrayal shook him as well.
He yanked his horse around and fled. Dariun’s blade cut only empty air.
The two riders tore through the swirling fog. One still held the rank of Marzban after betraying his king. The other had lost that rank despite remaining loyal. They raced across the plain like tangled threads.
Even while fleeing, Qaran fought back. Their swords clashed nearly ten times. No one else in the battle had endured Dariun’s blows for so long.
Then Qaran’s horse suddenly buckled at the front legs and threw its rider hard to the ground. His sword flew from his hand.
Qaran scrambled up and raised both arms to shield his head. “Wait, Dariun!” he shrilled. “Listen to me!”
“What is there left to say?”
“If you knew the truth, even you wouldn’t condemn me for this. Just listen!”
Dariun snapped his sword sideways. Not to strike Qaran. To knock aside the arrows flying toward him.
A brief but savage rain of arrows swept past. When it ended, Dariun saw Qaran running toward a line of Lusitanian archers. There were perhaps fifty of them, already advancing with fresh arrows nocked.
Dariun gave up the chase and turned his horse away. “I can kill him anytime,” he told himself.
He still carried the duty his uncle had entrusted to him. He had to find Prince Arslan in the chaos of battle and bring him safely back to Ecbatana. He could not afford to die here in a moment of blind rage.
Dozens of arrows flew after him as he rode off, but none struck home. The Lusitanian archers had already fulfilled their task the moment they pulled Qaran from the avenger’s grasp.
Unlike the shah, Eran Vahriz knew what defeat felt like.
The aged warrior whispered to Andragoras, “Your Majesty, this battle is lost. You must withdraw.”
The king glared at him and roared in anger. He was the shah of Pars, protector of the Continental Highway. How could he possibly flee in disgrace? He was a warrior. He knew what shame meant.
“Have you forgotten, Your Majesty?” Vahriz pressed on. “When the great army of Misr invaded years ago, it was the walls of Ecbatana that finally turned them back. Endure today’s humiliation so you may win another day.”
There were still 20,000 cavalry and 45,000 infantry in the capital. Across the rest of the kingdom, another 20,000 cavalry and more than 120,000 infantry were stationed. If they gathered the survivors and reorganized, they could still fight the Lusitanian army.
Andragoras understood those calculations well enough himself. But he was more than just the ruler of a nation. He was also the proud protector of the Continental Highway.
The Continental Highway stretched 800 farsangs east and west from Pars, linking the far edges of the vast continent. The trade caravans that crossed it traveled under the protection of the shah of Pars, paid taxes to his throne, and supported the kingdom’s prosperity. But none of that was possible without the strength of an invincible army.
The old general continued trying to persuade him. What finally broke the shah’s resistance was the mention of Queen Tahmineh.
What would become of the queen guarding the capital? Would he leave her to the enemy?
Upon hearing those words, the shah decided to fall back and ordered a retreat. But not for the entire army.
“The shah has fled! Andragoras the Third has fled!”
Amid blood and chaos, the cry swept across the battlefield like a gale. Men under Qaran’s command had been watching the shah’s movements. The morale of the struggling Parsian army visibly collapsed.
“While we’re fighting with our lives on the line, the king leading the army is fleeing. The banner of Pars has fallen into the mud. There’s no recovering from this.” Marzban Shapur tore off his blood- and mud-stained helmet and hurled it to the ground.
Even so, he did not lose respect for the shah. Others expressed their outrage far more openly.
“That’s it. We’re done here!” The one-eyed Qobad swung his greatsword, flinging blood from the blade as he shouted at his soldiers. His men exchanged uneasy looks. “What are we even fighting for now? I won’t throw my life away for a ruler who abandons his own men and runs.”
“Qobad, what are you saying?!” Shapur shouted as he rode over. “How can you, a marzban, urge the soldiers to stop fighting? The shah has his own duty, and we have ours.”
“The duty to protect the kingdom lies first and foremost with the shah,” Qobad shot back. “That duty is what gives a king his authority. If the shah no longer fulfills his duties, why should the rest of us? Even you threw down your helmet in anger just now.”
“That was rash of me. I believe the shah did not flee. He withdrew to Ecbatana to prepare for another battle. But if you continue shaming him like this, then even as comrades-in-arms, I will show no mercy.”
“Oh?” Qobad narrowed his single eye. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
Among the marzbans, Qobad was one of the youngest, second only to Dariun and Keshvad. He was thirty-one. His chiseled features and ruined left eye left a strong impression. Needless to say, he was a fierce and skilled warrior, yet part of the royal court disliked him despite all his achievements.
The reason was simple: Qobad loved tall tales.
According to him, he lost his left eye fighting an azhdaha[1] that lived in Mount Qaf. He also claimed that in return he blinded one eye in each of the dragon’s three heads.
“It went from being a three-headed dragon to a three-eyed dragon,” he liked to say.
Some people, lacking any sense of humor, frowned at such stories and called them improper.
Shapur, thirty-six years old, was Qobad’s complete opposite—a painfully rigid man. Rumor claimed that whenever the twelve marzbans stood in formation, the two deliberately took opposite ends.
Whatever the truth, two of the greatest warriors in Pars now stood glaring at each other with hands resting on their sword hilts.
The Parsian cavalry stared in shock. Just before the tension snapped into violence, cries of “Enemy attack!” rang out.
A group of Lusitanian knights was approaching. Qobad jerked his horse around toward them.
“You planning to run, Qobad?”
The one-eyed marzban clicked his tongue. “I’d love to,” he said, “but unless we drive those bastards back first, we won’t even have a path to retreat on. Let’s deal with them, then we can sit down and have a nice long talk about a vassal’s duty.”
“Fine. Just don’t pretend you forgot this conversation later.” Shapur shot him a sharp glare, then spurred his horse away to rally his men.
“I won’t forget. Assuming there is a later,” Qobad muttered, half joking, half serious. He turned back to his own troops. “Well then, we still have a thousand riders left. That ought to be enough to manage something. Anyone crazy enough can follow me.”
1. Parsian term for a three-headed dragon. Based on the mythical creature in Iranian mythology. ↩