Conflict of Empires (2010) (21 page)

F
or Orodes, the next few days passed quickly, and he scarcely remembered all the events that took place following his talk with Trella. Once they left the Compound, Tooraj clasped his hand on Orodes’s shoulder and kept it there, as if to insure that Orodes didn’t bolt and run. The soldier might be missing an eye, but his hand felt as if it could crush Orodes’s shoulder to splinters without effort.

At the docks, he found five soldiers and a woman waiting for them. Every soldier carried a bow and a quiver of arrows, and wore a sword belted at the waist. Horses were available for everyone, and two others served as pack animals. So many horses meant a serious expedition, Orodes noted.

“My tools … I’ll need my tools at the site.”

“Already taken from your father’s house and loaded,” Tooraj said. “Can you ride?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve ridden –”

“Good. Get him moving.”

Tooraj directed his last words to one of his soldiers, who handed Orodes a halter. Within moments, they moved onto the ferry. It took two trips to get all of them and their animals across the Tigris. As soon as the second vessel discharged its contents on the western bank, Tooraj told everyone to mount up, and the little caravan started moving north.

The one-eyed soldier apparently preferred not to waste time talking, and he said nothing else to Orodes for the rest of the day. Tooraj, a competent horsemen, rode at the head of the party, with the woman, Calla,
at his side. Orodes decided that she was the one who knew where they were going. Either the rest of the party didn’t know their destination, or more likely, didn’t care. Except for their leader, all the soldiers appeared less at ease on horseback. Like Orodes, they probably rode infrequently, and needed to pay close attention to their mounts.

They made good progress. The horses, while no doubt not up to Tooraj’s idea of good horseflesh, were sound enough, and they plodded along without much urging.

They camped as soon as it grew dark. Tooraj ordered Orodes to gather firewood along with the rest of the soldiers. Calla prepared the fire pit while the men foraged for wood, animal dung, or anything else that would burn. Fortunately, this close to the river, they didn’t have to wander far from the campsite to find water.

They ate in silence. One of the soldiers produced a wine skin, which was passed around to everyone except Orodes. Even Calla took a long swig, before passing the skin across Orodes’s body to one of the soldiers. Orodes looked at it longingly, but didn’t bother asking for a portion. Tooraj obviously had his orders about giving wine to a man found drunk and passed out in Akkad’s lanes.

Still, the smell of the raw date wine made the skin on Orodes’s hands and arms crawl with longing.

“You’re the guide?” Orodes decided he might as well talk to Calla, since it didn’t seem likely he’d have much to say to the soldiers. Besides, any conversation would take his mind off the now empty wineskin. Her hair had a few streaks of gray in it, and he guessed her age at about thirty seasons, too old to consider as a bedmate, at least not this early in the journey.

“Yes. My husband and his kin found the place with the gold a few months ago.”

She told him about the mine, her family, and what evil had overtaken them all. Orodes asked her about the gold, its quality, how they’d extract it, but Calla knew little about such things. Mostly she had cooked the food, and stitched the leather skins into sacks to hold the gold the men gathered.

Frustrated by her lack of useful knowledge, Orodes put his feet toward the fire and went to sleep, ignoring the still-talking soldiers and Tooraj.

In the morning, Orodes felt better. A long drink from the Tigris refreshed him, and he splashed water over his face and neck. He hadn’t
slept very well in Akkad since his return, and certainly not during the night before, when he lay down drunk in the lane. Orodes shook his head in embarrassment at the recollection.

Breakfast consisted of bread and dates, and everyone climbed back on the horses just as the sun cleared the horizon.

The rest of the day and night was uneventful. But by mid-morning of the third day, Calla began to point out landmarks. For someone who had known almost nothing about the gold, she certainly seemed to know her away around this part of the countryside. Orodes wondered if her family might have been bandits themselves.

For two days they’d kept the river in sight, but now Tooraj, following Calla’s lead, turned the party westward, and they soon moved into the low hills that overlooked the river.

Orodes frowned as they rode west. His father and his father before him had explored this part of the country many times. None of these hills had ever produced any significant amounts of gold or anything else useful. By midday they’d left the Tigris several miles behind. Orodes decided Calla had led them on a fool’s errand, when she gestured to a barely noticeable opening between two hills. They followed a twisting track of rock-hard ground that led deeper into the hills. Soon enough Orodes looked up to see a steep cliff blocking their way. A blind trail, as anyone could see.

Calla continued toward it, and as they rounded a large boulder, Orodes saw where the cliff face had collapsed, revealing a narrow defile that twisted its way through the heart of the cliffs, until, several hundred paces later, the pathway opened up and revealed a good-sized valley nestled between the hills.

Orodes, riding alone just behind Calla and Tooraj, felt his jaw drop at the sight that awaited them. A stream meandered its way through the center, appearing from one side of the valley and disappearing into the other. Orodes didn’t see any other entrances or exits to this hidden canyon, one full of large boulders scattered about that towered over horse and rider.

He scarcely noticed the ground before him. Instead, he stared at the rocks and jagged cliffs surrounding him. The land had changed completely. The soft hills with their occasional boulders had vanished, replaced by more rugged limestone deposits.

“By the gods,” he muttered, as he looked around. He could almost
smell the copper and lead his instincts told him lay buried beneath the surface. Orodes had never seen such a place. Some cataclysm had ripped the earth apart, and thrust these hills upwards, carrying with them all the ores once hidden deep within their depths. It had to be an earthquake, he decided. Only a massive earthquake could shake these hills, and lift the earth in such a fashion. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it existed, not in these lands.

The party reached the center of the valley, and Calla called out that this was where her family had camped. Orodes ignored her and the soldiers. He rode to the far end of the valley, near where the bubbling water issued from the ground. He slid from the horse and knelt beside the stream. He ran his fingers into the moving water, ignoring the chill. A glint of gold caught the sunlight. Reaching down, he picked up a nugget the size of his thumb, washed clean and pure by the running water.

He tossed it aside, and moved away from the stream. Orodes knelt again, and began digging into the earth, letting the dirt settle through his fingers. He could almost feel the ores, just out of reach. Gold and silver lay buried here, he felt certain, waiting to be taken. But there might be more, much more.

Rising, he slapped the dirt from his hands. Calla and Tooraj and the others stood about two hundred paces away, in the middle of the vale, unloading the horses. Orodes cupped his hands to his mouth. “Tooraj! Come here! Bring my tools!”

His horse had wandered off, not that Orodes cared. He moved toward the base of the hills, where the stream had broken through the rock walls and begun its journey through the little valley. A pool had formed at the water’s entrance, and he splashed through it, ignoring the biting cold on his feet. The sharp chill told him the water came from deep within the earth, forced upwards when the underground river struck the once buried cliffs.

The stream had pierced the limestone wall long ago, breaking off chunks of stone and dumping them into the pool. The rocky fragments had all vanished by now, washed away by the flowing water, but he knew they’d left behind nuggets of lead, copper, iron, and gold, buried not far beneath the silt at the bottom of the pool.

Orodes didn’t bother searching. He knew the ores were here, felt it in his bones. Instead, he concentrated on the rock wall. While working for his uncle, Orodes had often descended deep into the mountain mine,
scrambling down the treacherous shafts, going down gallery by gallery, following the threads of ore. He’d stood deep underground while he examined the interior of the mine by the flickering torchlight, following the veins of ore created when the earth and rock were crushed together, often separated by thin, horizontal lines.

Now, studying the rock face before him, those usual horizontal layer lines were gone. Instead, he saw the threads pointed almost directly up to the sky. This once flat earth from deep underground had not only been shoved to the surface, but it had been turned on its side.

The ground beneath his feet might once have been hundreds of paces beneath the earth’s surface, deeper than any miner had ever delved. Orodes realized he might be standing at the bottom of a mine, instead of the top. No miner had ever seen such a sight, at least none that he’d ever heard of.

“What do you want?” Tooraj rode up and dumped the large sack that contained Orodes’s tools onto the ground. “I’m not some servant to come when you call.”

Orodes ignored him. He untied the sack and removed a hammer and chisel. “Set up the camp here, but not too close to the pool.”

“We’re setting up camp in the middle of –”

“Shut up, and do what I say. I want the camp set up here. And tell your men to bring shovels and join me. There’s work to be done now, before it gets too dark.”

Without waiting for a reply, Orodes moved back to the limestone wall beside the stream and began attacking the rock. In moments, the sounds of his bronze hammer striking the bronze chisel began to echo through the valley.

Tooraj, stunned into silence, stared at Orodes. Then he shook his head and rode back to where Calla and the others waited.

Orodes worked without ceasing, his movements quick and sure with his implements. Rock chips flew from the wall, many striking his face and arms. Dust flew into his eyes, but he knew how to lessen that by keeping his eyes half-closed. He forgot about the other members of the party, ignored everything until someone called his name. He turned to find two of the soldiers standing before him.

“You wanted shovels?”

“Where are the rest of the soldiers? I want everyone in the party digging.”

“On guard duty or setting up the camp. Tooraj says we’re all you can have for now.”

He would deal with Tooraj later. Orodes set the two men to work a dozen paces away, after giving them orders to dig down from the base of the wall, until they reached solid rock. Then he returned to his own chipping, digging his way into the face of the rock. He worked steadily, ignoring the weariness in his arms, pausing only to wipe the sweat and dust from his eyes, or to examine some interesting bit of rock. Some of these he tossed aside, but others he deposited on the ground behind him. As he worked, a small pile of gold nuggets and irregular pieces of ore began to accumulate.

“Orodes! It’s getting dark.”

Calla stood beside him. The two soldiers had disappeared, and he realized he hadn’t noticed them leave.

“It’s time to eat,” Calla said. “You need to rest. And Tooraj wants to talk to you.”

Breathing hard from his exertions, Orodes glanced up at the sky. The sun had dipped behind the hills, and already most of the light had gone. He’d worked without ceasing for almost the entire afternoon.

“I’ll come.” His voice sounded hoarse, and he paused to take a long drink from the stream, washing the dust from his throat and careless of the chilly water that streamed over his face and chest. After he’d gotten rid of most of the dirt, Orodes dumped the rest of his tools on the ground, and filled the sack with the nuggets and samples he’d marked for further study.

When he tried to lift it, he could barely swing the sack up over his shoulder. Hunched over, he followed Calla back to the campfire.

“I thought you were going to dig all through the night,” Tooraj remarked as Orodes let the heavy sack fall to the ground near the fire.

The smell of meat cooking in a copper pot assailed Orodes. He hadn’t eaten anything since they’d set out this morning. Calla filled a bowl with stew and handed it to him. He clasped his hands around it, letting the warmth flow through his fingers for a moment, then began eating.

“What orders did Lady Trella give you, Tooraj?” He got the words out between mouthfuls.

The soldier looked at him closely. This wasn’t the drunken youth picked up from Akkad’s lanes, or even the sullen and quiet young man who had ridden north the last two days. Blood spatter marked his upper arm and tunic, and one of his fingers had taken a nasty cut, but Orodes
didn’t seem to notice. He had changed the moment he’d arrived at this place. Something in Orodes’s voice now commanded respect. The soldiers noticed it, too, and their conversation ceased as they watched to see how their leader reacted.

“I’m to stay with you a few days, until you’ve had a chance to examine the site and settle in. Then I’ll ride back to Akkad and report to Lady Trella, collect anything else we may need, and return.”

Orodes shook his head and gulped another mouthful from the nearly empty bowl. He’d forgotten the first rule of camping, the last one to take his supper received the smallest portion.

“There’s no need to wait. I already have all I need.” He poked at the sack with his foot. “You and I will return tomorrow, and I’ll give my report to Trella.”

Tooraj frowned at Orodes’s failure to use Lady Trella’s title, but the young man was too busy licking the remains of the bowl to notice.

“But we’ve only arrived. I thought it would take many days before you –”

“I thought so, too. But I was wrong. This place has already told me all I need to know. Now it’s time to return to Akkad, so we can come back here as soon as possible and start mining. If we leave right after dawn, you and I can be in Akkad well before dark on the following day.” He stood and dropped the empty bowl in front of Calla. “Wake me before dawn. I want to be on the move at first light.”