The Blood Star by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online Page B

ground will rub
the respectability off any man.
    No one welcomed us—no one even spoke—but
neither did any among them hint at offering to attack us. None of
them, it appeared, wished to take the responsibility for attempting
either. They seemed merely perplexed to find us among them. We
stayed on our horses while the impasse dragged on, waiting through
several heavy moments of silence.
    And then, at last, a tent flap opened and
another of them stepped out into the cold morning sunlight. It was
easy to see, from the manner in which the others glanced at him,
with that mingling of relief and dread I had seen so often in the
eyes of my own officers and men, that this one was the leader
here.
    I could well believe it. He was not a tall
man, but he had a way of carrying himself that made him seem as
wide and solid as a wall. His narrow, smiling eyes and pointed
beard suggested that this was one for whom life held no more
unpleasant surprises. He stood with his head cocked a little to one
side, seeming to mock at all the world
    “Whose camp is this?” shouted Kephalos,
wisely seizing the initiative. “What route do you follow, and to
what destination?”
    “The camp and all within it are mine—Hiram of
Latakia,” the caravan leader answered, in the most villainous
Akkadian I had ever heard. He crossed his arms over his chest in a
way that implied the mere sound of his name should strike terror
into our hearts. “We carry metal to Babylon, which the new king of
these lands, who does not care how much treasure he spends, is
rebuilding to appease the Lord Marduk. I expect to make good profit
out of the god’s wrath. I have finished ingots of copper and iron.
And now, what of you?”
    “I. . ?”
    Kephalos, that master of self-presentation,
dismounted his horse with all the dignity of a great general taking
possession of a conquered city. He looked about him, surveying the
tents and the wretched, slat-sided pack horses and the men
themselves as if he had been offered the whole lot in payment of a
debt and was sure he was being swindled. At last he fixed his gaze
on Hiram of Latakia and smiled a tight, not-quite-disdainful
smile.
    “I am Hugieia of Naxos—physician and
adventurer, scholar and man of affairs, counselor to the great of
many nations, sometime trader, sometime shareholder in the trading
schemes of others, presently the victim of a cowardly attack by
bandits that has left me. . . as you see. I would be grateful for
the opportunity of traveling with you some distance along your way,
since two men alone are seen as all the world’s natural prey, and I
am not without means of manifesting my gratitude.”
    The expression on Hiram of Latakia’s face as
he listened to all this was not one to inspire much trust. He
seemed very pleased with us, the way a cat is pleased with the bird
under its paw.
    “As you say,” he began, “two men alone—”
    The words caught in his throat when he saw
that I had drawn one of the javelins from their quiver and was
balancing it in my hand in a way that suggested it might not stay
there forever. It was a moment in which no man’s intentions were
clear, which was perhaps just as well, since caution has saved more
lives than strength and daring put together. After a while he
switched his glance to Kephalos, who merely smiled a trifle
broader.
    “Yes—my servant.” The daring and formidable
Hugieia of Naxos—just then I could almost myself believe there was
such a person—shrugged his heavy shoulders, as if at the
intricacies of life. “He speaks no language except his own, which
makes him suspicious in foreign lands. And, it must be granted,
recent experience has confirmed him in his distrust. As a friend I
would advise you to tell your men that they had best tread
carefully around him.”
    Suddenly the crisis, if such it had been, was
passed. There would be no blood spilled this day. The rule of
civilization, that delicate counterbalancing of fear against
violence and