First chapter

1. The Black Scorpion 

The wind from the east was starting to freshen. The stranger in the dark blue hooded cloak squinted, feeling breeze-blown dust pecking at his face.

Here, in this scrub-land on the edge of the plains, only a few palm-trees and prickly bushes eked out a frugal living. To the north, the land rose sharply toward the summit of a wide sand-dune. Beyond this were the mountains, their peaks covered with snow no matter the season in the lowlands.

The stranger began walking to the south, his hooded cloak concealing his features except for his thoughtful dark brown eyes.

Presently he came to a road that was little more than a dirt track. As he reached it, he noticed a black desert scorpion scuttling across. A few moments later he heard the roar of an approaching car.

The stranger stepped out into the road, stooped and picked up the scorpion, holding it firmly just under its lethal sting.

The car, a patched-up faded green Mercedes, screeched to a halt. An unshaven driver wound down the window and started swearing.

The stranger, his face still obscured, only walked off the road in his own good time. He ignored the driver’s shouts.

The car raced past, spewing black smoke and curses whipped by the gathering wind.

When the stranger was some way from the road, he laid the black scorpion onto the sandy ground and watched it dart away. He knew the scorpion was even more poisonous than the desert cobra, but it had held no fear for him.

For a few seconds the stranger stood in complete silence and stillness, trying to remember, as if a moment of the past had caught up with him. Features of the surrounding landscape… how familiar they suddenly were!

Finally he headed toward the nearby town, using for his guides the rough road… and a memory, slowly becoming more substantial within himself, that he couldn’t understand… let alone explain.

2. In the Marketplace

Even now, no-one but the stranger appeared aware of the approaching sandstorm. Rusty cars, donkey carts, old bicycles and dilapidated motorbikes competed for the narrow dusty roads leading to the marketplace. There, stalls offered spices, fruits, freshly-cooked kebabs, desserts dusted with icing sugar, bright silks, intricate carpets, exotic costume jewelry, knives, daggers, even firearms.

Children scampered among the crowd. One, a boy of about six or seven, suddenly crashed into the stranger.

The boy fell to the ground. For a few moments he was silenced by shock, then burst into tears.

The stranger kneeled down and helped the boy to his feet. The child’s cries redoubled. But the boy’s eyes caught the kindness in the stranger’s mystical gaze.

For a moment, it was as if the boy and the stranger were held in a brief communion of their own. The boy felt, though he could not have articulated, the stranger’s inexplicable power.

The man gently wiped the boy’s tears with the fabric of his cloak. A rip in the dark blue cloak had been neatly sewn up some time ago, and the cloak was faintly stained with what might have been blood-marks,

The boy did not move, yet felt no fear, even though the stranger’s face was still obscured.

A few moments later, the stranger smiled at the boy, patted him gently on his head, and muttered a blessing in an ancient language.

It was a tongue not even the most polyglot of stall-owners could have understood.

3. The Bell

The instant the stranger stepped inside the shop, the noise and bustle of the marketplace vanished.

It was one of those stores, fragrant with incense, found in almost any Middle Eastern bazaar, that gives the impression of selling anything a heart can desire. Tapestries and carpets hung on every wall. Glass-fronted cabinets boasted bottles of unguents, perfumes, oils and ointments. There were wicker baskets, teak chairs and well-varnished tables. Other cabinets displayed gold and silver jewelry.

The proprietor, a fat man with skin the colour of strong coffee, was sitting in a wicker chair beside a glass counter. He stood up, rubbed his hands, and bowed to the stranger, whose hood still made his face impossible to see.

‘Khosh uomadin, befarmayin!’ the shopkeeper exclaimed. ‘My wise and good friend, greetings!’

The stranger made no reply, but just looked calmly and dispassionately at the shopkeeper.

The master of the emporium found it curious that the stranger was keeping his face obscured, but… a customer was a customer. ‘Congratulations, my friend, on entering the finest emporium in our beautiful city! Welcome to heaven on Earth! All you could wish for is here. The finest hand-woven silks for one of your beautiful ladies? Persian carpets stitched by our finest craftsmen? Knives of the sharpest and best quality Zanyan steel? What is it you desire?’

The stranger remained still for several moments. He said nothing, then abruptly nodded toward a shelf on the right.

The proprietor’s expression at once became a study of excitement and greed. Clambering up a wooden step-ladder with surprising nimbleness for one so stout, he brought down a display of jewelry and other valuable – or at least expensive – objects on a black lacquered tray. He spread the merchandise on the glass counter next to an antiquated  manual cash register, then took a step backward.

‘Please, sir, come closer!’ he exclaimed. ‘Note the workmanship of these items! They are worth a king’s ransom, but here in my shop, I sell them at a foolishly low price, for I am regarded as a man of ridiculous generosity by my friends and competitors!’

The stranger paid no attention to the shopkeeper’s prattle. He peered down at the jewel-encrusted knives, precious rings and coins, seeing at a glance that most of the items were worth little or nothing.

Then something on the lacquered tray caught his attention.

He reached out and picked up a small bronze bell.

The bell was only about two inches high. The stranger held it by a little hooped handle at the top.

As he did, there sprang into the stranger’s mind a memory of face of the agonized face of a man, a great man, the greatest man of his day, dying from a dreadful wound caused by a spear that had transfixed him.

The jolt of memory was so sudden, and struck the stranger so deep, that for that moment he could think of nothing else.

Involuntarily, he found himself remembering more.

‘Ah, that wondrous old bell!’ the shopkeeper exclaimed, cutting into the stranger’s thoughts. ‘An admirable choice! It is a most rare item, and five hundred years old! The only one of its kind that still survives. My beloved daughter, who has the eyes of a hawk, found it amongst rocks in the desert. Regrettably, it does not ring any more, for its ringer is rusted. But it is most fine and extremely precious!’

The man in the hooded cloak looked toward the proprietor, yet still did not show his face. The stranger knew that the proprietor was lying, or just plain ignorant, for the bell was far older than five hundred years.

The stranger turned to the proprietor for the first time. At once, the proprietor fell silent. A moment passed. All you could hear was the shop door starting to creak gently from the wind of the approaching storm.

The stranger lifted the bell to his ear and gave it a gentle tap. Nothing happened. He tapped a little harder and now, as if from a distant land, a single ringing note hung in the room. The stranger tilted the bell. The ringing sounded again.

He closed his eyes. The ringing grew louder.

4. The Immortals

The bell was still ringing, but now it was hanging from a piece of twine round the neck of a goat, one of a dozen that a great king, in a dream, was watching a young goat-herd round up in the scrub-land on the edge of the desert.

The king was being visited by the dream only a few months after the bell had first been cast.

It was a time when the silent mysteries of the stars were seen as speaking eloquently of the god the Persians called Ahura-Mazda, the great Creator of all things: the god the people of Media called Mithra.

It was a time when the notion of hours did not exist, but only the morning, the afternoon, the evening, the night – from when the first star appeared in the sky to midnight – and late night, from midnight to when the stars disappeared.

It was a time when the sun was believed to travel around the Earth.

All the goats had bells about their necks. The king, in his dream, saw the boy who was herding them flick the goats’ tails with a stick. The dreaming king heard the boy shout at his charges, until a sudden sound of hooves beating against sand made the boy glance round in alarm.

Now, the king, in his dream, saw a horseman riding a black steed that had appeared from above the broad ridge of the sand-dune to the north.

The apparition had materialized so suddenly, it seemed to the dreaming king that the horseman had come out of nowhere.

The warrior on horseback was in full armour. He sported a bronze helmet with a plume of white feathers. The armour and plume showed the horseman to be a Scythian, and a general.

Scores of other Scythian horsemen now appeared over the ridge.

Suddenly, from over the summit of the sand-dune, an entire mounted army started to appear.

The dreaming king watched the boy flee for his life. Suddenly, the ringing of the goats’ bells was obliterated by the sound of a rhythmic chorus of thousands of other ringers.

Now, the dreaming king saw a great throng of mounted warriors, all on black steeds, and all with bells ringing in their long hair, heading above the first wave of Scythian cavalry like a raging tide.

The king, in his dream, saw horsemen he had never seen before, or ever imagined could exist. He knew from their uniforms that they were Persian, yet he saw in his dream something he had never seen in real life: that they were each wearing dozens of small bronze bells woven into their long, matted, uncut hair, every bell representing an enemy they had killed. The armour of the horsemen and the sheen of their spears shimmered like sunlight striking the sea’s wavetops.

And then the dreaming king saw that the warriors were being led by a mighty horseman mounted on a magnificent white stallion.

The mounted warrior leading the charge wore a breast-plate of bronze, armoured breeches, boots of leather and a bronze helmet gilded with gold. He rode his horse as if it were part of his own body and he a centaur.

He held an iron spear in his right hand, and the reins of the white charger in his left. His shoulders were bare. The dreaming king now found himself looking at the mighty horseman from close by. The armour on the horseman’s arm did not quite reach up to his shoulder, and now the dreaming king saw the warrior’s right shoulder carried a strange purple birthmark, which seemed to the king’s horrified dreaming mind to resemble… in his sleep the realisation seemed even greater than it would have been had he been awake… the paw-print of a lion.

The great host of mounted horsemen swept into the Scythian army. The might warrior on the white steed caught up with the Scythian general in a swelter of sweat, clash of swords, stench of horseflesh, and sheen of armour.

The dreaming king saw the Scythian try his utmost to fight off the warrior, but the Scythian was hopelessly outmanoeuvred and outwitted. Finally, exhausted, the Scythian made a desperate effort to lunge at the mounted warrior with his sword, but the warrior was too fast for him and dodged the lunge, wheeled his horse with lightning speed, drew back his own sword, and cleaved the Scythian in two from one side of his chest to the other, with just one sweep of his sword.

As the general’s torso toppled away from the bloodied stump that was the rest of his body, the Scythian had was just enough air left in his shattered lungs for one final, earth-rending scream…

The king heard the scream as if it had been uttered by Mithra, the god of the Medians, himself.

‘Cyrus!’

The moment the dreaming king heard the scream, he knew at once that Cyrus was the name of the mounted warrior on the magnificent white horse.

The name echoed again through the dreaming king’s mind.

‘CYRUS!’

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