from them?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Hiram of Latakia
keeps none but toothless dogs. He is the only one here with the
courage to knife a man in his sleep—if it were otherwise he would
be dead already himself.”
We lay there in the darkness, neither of us
speaking, the leather walls of the tent enclosing us like a grave
vault.
“He will wait a while,” Kephalos murmured at
last, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I told him I have
money with the merchants of Borsippa, implying that the sums ran to
many hundreds of shekels of silver—I was far gone in drink, you
understand, and inclined to brag, yet I am convinced he believed
me. A sum like that would set up such a man for his lifetime, so he
wants to believe me. He will ponder for a few days how best to rob
me of it.”
“Nevertheless, one of us had best keep awake
through the night.”
“As you will, Lord.” Kephalos yawned
violently, for, indeed, he had drunk a good deal that night. “An
attitude of caution is perhaps the wisest thing. Let us do nothing
rashly.”
“In that case, if you think it best, I will
delay killing him until tomorrow.”
My former slave laughed softly, perhaps
imagining that I was in jest.
“I am glad you agree,” I said, keeping my
voice cold that he might understand I took the matter seriously.
“In the morning, then—as soon as he is up. I will make a public act
of it, that his men may understand we are not to be picked over
like a corpse.”
“By the gods, Master. . .” He sat up and
leaned toward me in the darkness, his head almost touching the peak
of the tent. “What has become of you that you show so little pity
and so little sense? Would you really kill him, just like that,
between rising and breakfast? No, Lord, it would never serve.”
“What would you suggest? The man plans to. .
.”
“What the man plans is beside the point! It
is better to have one enemy at our throats than many. I can control
Hiram of Latakia, and, should it prove necessary, you can always
kill him later. The fact remains that we are safer traveling in a
large party than we would be on our own.”
He took a deep breath—I could hear it in the
darkness, like the wind over ice.
“My Lord,” he went on at last, and in a
calmer voice, “I submit to you that if we leave this caravan, there
is no shortage of brigands between here and the borders of your
brother’s realm, most of them worse than Hiram because they have
not heard my tales of the wealth I have waiting in Borsippa. We are
better as we are, with a known evil. Leave this rapacious villain
to me, for I understand the baser passions better than a noble soul
like yourself. It will be well—after all, even a viper is harmless
enough if you know to stay away from the sharp end.”
I had long since learned the wisdom of
submitting of Kephalos’ judgment in these matters, so I rolled over
and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. In fact, I did not sleep.
I stayed awake all the night, listening to the worthy physician’s
contented snoring and waiting for the sound of the footfall in the
darkness that would mean Hiram’s greed had overcome his
patience.
But it never came. The camp was quiet until
dawn. It seemed that Kephalos, once more, had seen more clearly
than I and that we were safe enough, for the moment.
For three days we followed the wanderings of
the Tartar River until at last it disappeared into a tangle of
irrigation canals in which the slow water glistened heavily under
the pale spring sunlight. We were traveling through farmland now,
and almost every hour we met some peasant on his way to the fields,
his naked legs covered to the knees with mud.
On the evening of the fourth day we camped
near a village, a circle of mud huts some distance from the closest
water—these were folk who spent their whole lives within sight of a
single river and knew better than to trust it in the season of
flooding—and Kephalos and I, as it had been some time since we
“No.” I shook my head. “Hiram of Latakia
keeps none but toothless dogs. He is the only one here with the
courage to knife a man in his sleep—if it were otherwise he would
be dead already himself.”
We lay there in the darkness, neither of us
speaking, the leather walls of the tent enclosing us like a grave
vault.
“He will wait a while,” Kephalos murmured at
last, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I told him I have
money with the merchants of Borsippa, implying that the sums ran to
many hundreds of shekels of silver—I was far gone in drink, you
understand, and inclined to brag, yet I am convinced he believed
me. A sum like that would set up such a man for his lifetime, so he
wants to believe me. He will ponder for a few days how best to rob
me of it.”
“Nevertheless, one of us had best keep awake
through the night.”
“As you will, Lord.” Kephalos yawned
violently, for, indeed, he had drunk a good deal that night. “An
attitude of caution is perhaps the wisest thing. Let us do nothing
rashly.”
“In that case, if you think it best, I will
delay killing him until tomorrow.”
My former slave laughed softly, perhaps
imagining that I was in jest.
“I am glad you agree,” I said, keeping my
voice cold that he might understand I took the matter seriously.
“In the morning, then—as soon as he is up. I will make a public act
of it, that his men may understand we are not to be picked over
like a corpse.”
“By the gods, Master. . .” He sat up and
leaned toward me in the darkness, his head almost touching the peak
of the tent. “What has become of you that you show so little pity
and so little sense? Would you really kill him, just like that,
between rising and breakfast? No, Lord, it would never serve.”
“What would you suggest? The man plans to. .
.”
“What the man plans is beside the point! It
is better to have one enemy at our throats than many. I can control
Hiram of Latakia, and, should it prove necessary, you can always
kill him later. The fact remains that we are safer traveling in a
large party than we would be on our own.”
He took a deep breath—I could hear it in the
darkness, like the wind over ice.
“My Lord,” he went on at last, and in a
calmer voice, “I submit to you that if we leave this caravan, there
is no shortage of brigands between here and the borders of your
brother’s realm, most of them worse than Hiram because they have
not heard my tales of the wealth I have waiting in Borsippa. We are
better as we are, with a known evil. Leave this rapacious villain
to me, for I understand the baser passions better than a noble soul
like yourself. It will be well—after all, even a viper is harmless
enough if you know to stay away from the sharp end.”
I had long since learned the wisdom of
submitting of Kephalos’ judgment in these matters, so I rolled over
and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. In fact, I did not sleep.
I stayed awake all the night, listening to the worthy physician’s
contented snoring and waiting for the sound of the footfall in the
darkness that would mean Hiram’s greed had overcome his
patience.
But it never came. The camp was quiet until
dawn. It seemed that Kephalos, once more, had seen more clearly
than I and that we were safe enough, for the moment.
For three days we followed the wanderings of
the Tartar River until at last it disappeared into a tangle of
irrigation canals in which the slow water glistened heavily under
the pale spring sunlight. We were traveling through farmland now,
and almost every hour we met some peasant on his way to the fields,
his naked legs covered to the knees with mud.
On the evening of the fourth day we camped
near a village, a circle of mud huts some distance from the closest
water—these were folk who spent their whole lives within sight of a
single river and knew better than to trust it in the season of
flooding—and Kephalos and I, as it had been some time since we
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