Chapter 50: Volume 2 - CH 4.7

By the time Dariun and Farangis, after running into countless rounds of enemies, found Fort Peshawar lying right before their eyes, it was already the twelfth day of the twelfth month. In the mountains, their breath came out white, and the cold air battered their faces without pity.

“You villains have no hope for rescue. So why don’t you behave yourselves and dismount. Then beg for mercy!”

The captain of the enemies who had half-surrounded the two of them announced this with utmost confidence, but it was because he opened his mouth too wide that the man lost his life. The arrow Farangis loosed flew straight into that mouth of his, thus silencing him for eternity.

“I mislike talkative men,” Farangis declared with not so much as a smile.

After a moment’s hesitation, their enemies flooded forward. It would be quite natural to assume that they numbered something around a hundred to two.

However, Dariun and Farangis masterfully advanced to greet them upon a mountain path that should not have allowed for the passage of two riders abreast.

With every swing of Dariun’s longsword, an enemy horse lost its rider, and with emptied saddle fled back to its companions.

Around ten riders’ worth of blood glazed Dariun’s longsword; this naturally disconcerted their remaining enemies, but out of the blue a new troop arrived on scene.

“That bastard’s mine!”

That thundering voice was quite familiar.

It was just as Dariun and Farangis thought. As they watched the enemy soldiers part to either side to make way, the figure of Zandeh son of Qaran appeared before them for a second time. And it was that figure alone who now came howling at them like a tempest.

Farangis shook her head as if in exasperation. Her long, thick raven hair billowed in the wind.

“What remarkable persistence. Although it must be a bit tiring for the ones following him.”

“I’ll take him. The Lady Kahina can remain spectator.”

Dariun had just nudged his black horse a single step forward when in a single breath Zandeh made his onslaught, greatsword ramming straight toward the knight in black.

“Today, I shall take your damned head and make an offering of it to my father in heaven!”

“How filial of you. Though on my part, I’ve no particular desire to fight you.”

“You’re my father’s sworn enemy, you bastard!”

“I do not deny that. But your good father and I fought and settled things fair and square.” Dariun continued, “Besides, it was your father who, as a Marzban of Pars, chose to become a pawn of the Lusitanians and sell out his own country in the first place. As his son, have you no shame for his folly?”

“My father, a pawn of those damned Lusitanians?” roared Zandeh. “Both Father and I only temporarily bent the knee to the Lustianians, on purpose, all for the sake of restoring the rightful throne of Pars. Someday, when the time comes, who between you and I has served the royal family true shall become clear to all!”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘rightful throne’?”

“You wanna know?”

Zandeh unexpectedly began to laugh, baring a set of strong white teeth. He knew the true identity of the silver mask, while Dariun did not. It was out of that sense of superiority that he laughed.

“If you want to know, then fight me. If you manage to beat me, I’ll tell you everything you want to know!”

“In that case, I won’t hold back.”

Dariun’s longsword, which had just sucked out the blood of ten riders, swept out. It glinted like frost in the sunlight.

In that very moment, Zandeh charged, flogging his mount forward.

It was but a single exchange.

After receiving a ferocious knock to his helm, the one who was blown off his horse was Zandeh. The cracked helm, half of it smashed in, went flying through the air, and his horse clip-clopped away in a panic.

Zandeh sat in the gravel dumbfounded. Just the other day he had been able to overwhelm Dariun, yet today he’d been unhorsed in a single exchange.

Dariun called out in a voice of cool composure. “It’s indeed impressive, bringing to bear the full force of your fighting spirit on a mere fraction of actual strength. But don’t think it’ll work a second time.”

“Fuck you!”

Zandeh heedlessly went berserk. He swung his greatsword in a horizontal arc in attempt to chop off the black horse’s forelegs. But as Dariun pulled his black steed into a rear, the giant blade met naught but air.

“This is unseemly of you, Zandeh! Have you forgotten all your previous talk?”

“Shut up!”

Just as Zandeh was about to swing his greatsword again, Farangis drew her bow taut.

The arrow hit right on target, sinking into Zandeh’s right wrist, and the greatsword fell to the ground with a clatter.

“Now, would you be so kind as to explain your earlier declaration?”

Scowling at Dariun’s face all the while, Zandeh plucked the arrow from his wrist. Abruptly, he threw that very same arrow at Dariun’s face. As the knight in black dodged, Zandeh made a run for it.

Farangis nocked a second arrow and sent it streaking like a shooting star toward Zandeh’s back.

Though his armor blocked it, taking such a strong strike from behind his heart caused Zandeh’s breath to seize for a brief instant. He staggered, thrown off balance, and then, dragged down by the weight of his armor, completely lost his step.

With a great howl trailing behind him, Zandeh’s massive body vanished beyond the edge of the cliff. Tumbling down the steep slope, he fell in a tangle of shrubbery and was gone.

Farangis urged her horse forward and peered down the cliff.

“Is he dead, I wonder?”

“Who knows.” Dariun shrugged his broad shoulders. “Why not ask those jinn friends of yours?”

“The jinn wake not ’til the sun has begun to set. Besides…” Farangis’s green eyes glittered with irony. “The jinn also do not care for associating with that kind of boisterous man. In any case, that man is no longer a worthy foe for you. Leave him be, we should go.”

“Very well.”

Zandeh’s subordinates scattered until there was neither hide nor hair of them. Dariun and Farangis, deftly handling their horses’ reins, continued galloping down the mountain trail to Peshawar. However, in Dariun’s mind the unpleasant echo of Zandeh’s words lingered.

The rightful Shah — what on earth could it mean?

.

At this time, no more than half a farsang1 away as the crow flies, Arslan, Giv, and Elam were galloping down a different mountain trail in the same direction as Dariun and Farangis.

Arslan often struck up conversations with Elam; little by little, Elam also seemed to open his heart. The two of them were beginning to show signs of fostering something that could more or less be considered friendship, Giv thought. As proof of that, was it not Elam who had spoken up first just now?

“To the southwest of Pars…” Elam’s black eyes gazed out at some imaginary distant horizon. “The vast sands of the Empty Quarter, Ar-Rub al-Khali, stretch over three hundred farsangs in every direction. The legendary City of Brass, Madinah, and Graha of the Pillars are said to lie within its bounds. Lord Narses told me about them some years ago. I’d like to visit them when I grow up, I think. Then I can pass down all those forgotten legends and lost history to even more people.”

“Will you teach me as well about all the history and legends you discover?”

“If Your Highness wishes.”

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“Then it’s a promise.”

“Understood.”

Elam had just confided his own dreams of the future. Arslan was most delighted about it. To gain a good friend in the midst of such a difficult and dangerous journey was truly worth celebrating.

Giv the “chaperone”, on the other hand, was having a bad time of it. While muttering “Why me?” to himself, he’d come all this way figuring out sleeping arrangements and searching for provisions, all while fighting off enemies in order to protect the two boys. Looking back at it all, half of him was deeply moved and the other half marveled at how ridiculous it was.

He was just wracking his brain for what to do about their victuals for the day when he discovered a chestnut horse grazing in a certain mountain field. Giv clapped his hands together. If they managed to get their hands on horsemeat, they’d be set for days. Giv informed the prince and Elam of this.

“Only problem is, however you look at it, it seems like somebody else’s mount.”

“Is it not a wild horse?”

“That ain’t it, Your Highness.” Giv shook his head. “No such thing as a wild horse with a lateral gait, see. Sure, it doesn’t have a saddle or a bridle, but that is definitely one trained horse.”

What he meant by lateral gait was the type of running movement where a horse moved its right foreleg and right hind leg forward together, then followed with its left foreleg and left hind leg at the same time, instead of alternating legs diagonally. Compared to the regular running gait, this gait added stability to a horse’s posture and increased its speed, while greatly minimizing fatigue for both horse and rider. However, as this was not a gait that came naturally to horses, it required considerable training and quality of rider and horse alike.

“It’d sure be a pity to use it for meat,” Giv thought, as one would expect of a top-notch horseman. In that case, what should they do? They could probably catch the horse and exchange it for provisions. At any rate, as Giv had generously dumped all his dinars and drachms to the ground just a few days ago, he had nothing but a handful of mithqals left. They weren’t all that far from Fort Peshawar anymore, but if they starved to death before they got there, it’d be, as they said, a damn shame.

“Probably removed the saddle and bridle to let it rest, but ain’t nothing good will come out of being that careless.”

Having spoken thus, Giv began making preparations to realize what he’d referred to as “nothing good”, first of all concealing himself within a patch of tall grass. He approached, circling around from downwind. In his hands he held a lasso he had made from a leather thong.

For a while, he bided his time amid the tall grass.

Before long, there was the sound of hooves trampling the grass, and Giv, aiming carefully, tossed out the leather lasso.

His hands felt a tug. With a neigh, the horse pulled the rope taut.

“Gotcha!” thought Giv. In the very next moment, he splendidly tumbled over. Somebody had sliced through the lasso midair. Giv rolled away and sprang to his feet as he drew his sword. For he had sensed the approach of a deadly blade.

“You’ve sure got guts, trying to steal someone’s horse in broad daylight.”

The voice was instantly recognizable.

“Dariun!”

“Giv, is it?”

Two swords came to a halt right before they clashed.

Amid the grass, the figure of yet another individual and yet another blade appeared. If Giv’s target had been Dariun’s black steed, he probably would have realized it, but what he’d targeted turned out to be Farangis’s horse. Moreover, it was not the horse she had started out with. It was the horse she had stolen from another soldier when Zandeh killed her own.

“What, so it’s you. Nothing happened?”

“Lady Farangis, I see. I’m most obliged. Your concern touches me deeply.”

“One hardly needs worry over the likes of you. You, after all, are a man who would find a way to survive even if you deceived every last god in the heavens. His Highness Arslan should be well, yes? Should it be the contrary, I’m afraid you are the one whose well-being is no longer assured.”

Giv shrugged at the beauty threatening him and whistled for the two boys to come over.

Thus were five of the six-member party at length pieced back together. However, there was still Narses, who could be said to be their strategist, with whom they had yet to be reunited. For a while they joked around about the way Giv’s failure in stealing Farangis’s horse had led to their unconventional reunion, but Arslan grew worried over their single remaining companion.

“I suppose Narses is all right?”

“There is no need for worry. As far as his blade is concerned, there are only but few who surpass Narses in its use.”

Although Dariun’s assertion was indeed the truth, he grew uneasy when considering the man who wore the silver mask. That man was the strongest enemy he had encountered since the younger brother of the Turanian king and the pair of heroes he had met in Serica.

Arslan, on seeing Dariun’s expression, spoke with a voice of determination.

“Are we six not meant as one? I do not wish us separated ever again. Let us go search for Narses.”

“Although the sentiment is appreciated…” Impressed as he was by the prince’s display of sympathy, Dariun nonetheless shook his head. “However, I do not believe it was Narses’s original intent to have Your Highness take such risky action. Elam here and I shall search and bring him back, so you, Your Highness, should go ahead to Peshawar first.”

As both Farangis and Giv approved of Dariun’s suggestion, Arslan had no choice but to consent. The prince was aware that his own movements would be followed closely from behind by their pursuit.

Dariun and Elam bid their farewells once more, and Arslan turned his horse back east with Giv and Farangis standing guard on either side of him. It was then that he noticed to his left, that is to say, to the north, a mass of jet black highlands.

Encircled by symmetrical snowcapped peaks, those highlands were graced with impossibly steep slopes and a shroud of dark clouds, bequeathing an ominous impression for both Arslan’s eyes and heart.

“What is that mountain called?”

“That is Mount Damavand, Your Highness,” Farangis replied.

“So that is Mount Damavand…”

Arslan gulped. Damavand was the name of the mountain in which it was said Hero King Kai Khosrow had sealed Serpent King Zahhak for eternity, more than three hundred years ago. Even in broad daylight, corpse-eating ghul and half-men shiqq prowled about; miasma rose from the swamps, and from the crags seeped toxic smoke. It was enshrouded constantly by black clouds, from which lightning struck endlessly during the summer, and blizzards stormed during the winter. Fierce winds raged, avalanches battered the earth, venomous snakes and scorpions squirmed about: it was a land filled with sorcery.

“Even to this day the Serpent King slumbers deep within the cavern, dreaming of the day he returns to the earth above…”

That was what had been passed down in legend. It was said that the pealing thunder was the screaming of the Serpent King as he cursed Pars, and the black clouds were the breath he spewed. Even Kai Khosrow, who had overthrown the evil dominion of the Serpent King, had been unable to kill the Serpent King for good. He had imprisoned him in a cavern deep beneath the ground, bound his entire body in bulky chains, cut the tendons of his arms and legs, and stacked twenty thick slabs of rock on top of him to obstruct his path to the surface. And then, after dedicating a prayer to all the myriad gods, he buried his own precious sword to serve as a seal.

Suddenly, Giv began to sing. His beautiful voice carried a flowing melody through the air.

“His prized sword Ruknabad cleaved even iron in twain, as if forged from a shard of the sun…”

What Giv had just sung was a stanza from “The Chronicles of Kai Khosrow.”

After burying the invaluable Ruknabad to seal away Serpent King Zahhak, Hero King Kai Khosrow was not particularly blessed with fortune.

As a king, he was known to be both wise and just, one who governed his country well and suffered no foreign invasions, and yet was betrayed by his own son. It began as a sibling dispute; the younger brother killed his older brother, then set his sights on his father’s royal authority. And thus, upon the fields of Mazandaran, the very same land where the Serpent King Zahhak had formerly been captured in mortal combat, father and son crossed spears.

He who had raised armies to overthrow Serpent King Zahhak at the age of eighteen, and had unified the entirety of Pars and claimed the throne by the age of twenty-five, Kai Khosrow, now passed away at forty-five years of age. According to his will, his body was interred in full armor. It was said that the invaluable Ruknabad was dug out from Damavand at that time and moved to the hero-king’s coffin in his honor. When the sword was dug up, from beyond the twenty stone slabs a ghastly voice echoed, proclaiming, “One slab in fifteen years! Twenty slabs in three hundred!” — or so the legend went, but it was hard to say how much of it was true.

“Who with sword in hand shall assume his divine mandate? …”

As Giv finished singing, he stared at the profile of the prince, whose eyes were fixed upon the mountain of legend as if he were enthralled. Giv’s own gaze seemed to be not so much one of simple curiosity, but perhaps more so one of instigation.

“Let us hence, Your Highness. The jinn clamor to warn us. They say it is dangerous to linger near that mountain.”

As if Farangis’s words had awoken him from a dream, Arslan nodded and rode on.

Under the darkening skies, the uncanny silhouette of Mount Damavand faded into the distance.

1 ~2.5 km

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