“We surrender!” he screeched. “We surrender! Spare us!”
Everyone froze for an instant. Harkan, up on my horse, pointed his sword at the guard who faced him on foot. The man took a step back, looked around and saw that no one was fighting any more, and threw his sword on the ground in disgust. He was a tall, rangy man with black skin, half naked, obviously roused from his sleep. But there was blood on his sword and fire in his eye.
“Spare us, spare us,” the fat merchant was blubbering. “Take what you want, take everything, but spare our lives.”
Harkan did that. He sent the merchant and the few servants he had left alive off on some of the donkeys, into the drizzling night, leaving all their goods behind. And their slain.
Six of the guards still lived, after Harkan’s men had given their wounded mercy killings. They too were professional soldiers turned mercenaries in the turmoil of the Great King’s accession to the throne.
“You can go with your former employer or you can join us,” Harkan offered them.
The tall black man said, “What do we gain by joining you?” His voice was a deep rich baritone.
Harkan grinned viciously in the firelight. “An equal share of all we take. A price on your head. And the joy of following my orders at all times.”
“I don’t speak for the others,” said the black man, “but I would rather take what fat merchants own than guard it for them.”
“Good! What’s your name? Where are you from?”
“Batu. From far away, the land beyond Egypt where the forest goes on forever.”
The five other erstwhile guards also agreed to join Harkan’s band, but grudgingly, I thought, without the unfettered enthusiasm of Batu.
By morning it was raining hard and Harkan’s leg was blue and swollen from hip to mid-calf. He sat beneath the canvas shelter we had fashioned amid the trees back up on the ridge with his bruised leg stretched out straight and raised up off the damp ground by resting his heel on an overturned helmet.
“It isn’t broken,” he told me. “I’ve had bones broken before. It’s only a bruise.”
A sizeable bruise, I thought. But I had other thoughts in my mind.
“We lost four men last night, but gained six new ones.”
“Batu is the only one I’d trust,” Harkan muttered.
“Still, you’ll have one man more than when I first met you.”
He looked up at me. I was squatting on my haunches beneath his dripping canvas shelter.
“You’re leaving?”
“Lake Van is in sight. I only have a few days left to make it to Ararat.”
“You’ll never cover the distance in a few days, pilgrim.”
“I must try.”
He made a snorting sigh. “If I could stand up I’d try to stop you from leaving. You’re a valuable man.”
“Only if I’m willing. I’ve got to leave, and the only way you could stop me would be to kill me. I would take a few of you with me if you tried that.”
He grumbled but nodded. “Well, go then, pilgrim. Get on your way.”
“I’ll take four of the horses.”
“Four?”
“You have more than you can use now.”
“I could sell them in the next town we come to.”
“I need four,” I repeated.
“Four,” he agreed sourly. But as I got up and started out into the driving rain he added, “Good luck, pilgrim. I hope your goddess is waiting for you up there.”
“Me too,” I said.
CHAPTER 23
Through the rain, and the sunshine that followed it, and the next rainstorm a few days later I galloped, driving my horses without stop. I changed them frequently but still they began to limp and fail beneath me. Two of them died before I came to a village. I stole two more, killing six men in a furious fight before I could break loose. I was bleeding and hungry, but I had four fresh horses with me as I continued my grim dash to Mount Ararat.
The rain turned to freezing sleet and then snow. The ground rose steadily. Again I drove the horses to their deaths, not caring about anything except reaching the summit of the mountain in time.