The Blood Star Read Online Free PDF Page A

mouthful of stained teeth. He was a wizened
little creature, as old as the world, and his hands moved
tentatively about as if of their own volition, like spiders feeling
their way in the dark. Yet if he had made this, he understood his
craft.
    I rolled the shaft between my palms, watching
to see if the point would twist and betray a kink in the wood. It
did not.
    “No—I want them only for hunting. My master
and I travel the caravan routes, and a little fresh meat is a
blessing. I will take six of these, and a leather quiver for them.
And that sword over there, provided the blade is not hacked. How
much do you want for all that?”
    “Five silver shekels, if Your Honor
pleases?”
    The pouch Kephalos had given me bulged with
coins, and I was on the verge of paying the man what he asked until
I remembered that I was supposed to be the servant of a traveling
merchant, who would be expected to bargain.
    “I will give you two,” I said.
    “Your Honor beggars my wife and small
children. I could not sell so much for two silver shekels, for that
is a fine sword—an officer’s sword—and you will not find such
javelins even if you were to go to Nineveh for them. Yet I will
part with them for three silver shekels, although my children will
go hungry and my wife will curse me.”
    I let him wait for an answer. His eyes begged
pity of me.
    “Two silver shekels,” I answered at last.
“And six of copper.”
    “Your Honor is cruel to a poor man. Yet I
need money to buy food for my babies. Two silver shekels then, and
eight of copper.”
    I walked away, carrying my weapons with me,
wondering by how much the man had cheated me.
    In the town’s central square, in makeshift
stalls fashioned of hemp and reed mats, were the livestock that
were to be sold that day. There were some ten or fifteen horses,
most of them half dead, not even fit to limp along in front of a
plow, but I saw two I thought might serve: a pale brown gelding
with good legs, and a stallion, black as death, made nervous by the
crush of people—the man who held its halter looked as if he feared
to have his arm torn from its socket. I would buy those two and,
since our lives might depend on them, I did not care what I had to
pay.
    I feared it would be no small sum, for there
were others who were interested. One of them wore the uniform of a rab abru .
    I could not remember ever having seen Dinanu
before, although that meant nothing. It was possible we had been in
the same room together a dozen times, since in recent years
Esarhaddon and I had not been on such good terms that I would have
paid any great attention to the members of his entourage. Yet there
was no mistaking that this was he, sent down from Nineveh with the
king’s commission to assume command of the garrison and to visit a
shameful death upon Zerutu Bel. He seemed the type for such
work.
    He was standing with five or six of his
junior officers, a squat, thick, clumsy-looking man with heavy
eyebrows and a face that seemed to narrow to an edge like an ax
blade. His hand was on the black stallion’s fine arching neck,
attempting to calm it—without noticeable effect it seemed, since
the beast capered and snorted, as if it could hardly wait to
trample him into paste beneath its hooves. It would have been wiser
simply to withdraw, but that was not possible. I could tell, from
the way Dinanu looked at it, he meant to have this horse and no
other, and I could not allow such a thing. This animal did not like
him and would surely, one day, leave him with his neck broken. The
prospect did not disturb me very much, except that they cut the
throats of man-killers.
    “This one will serve very well,” the rab
abru said—in Aramaic, since he was treating with a foreigner.
“I will give you ten silver shekels for it. Have it sent around to
my headquarters by midday.”
    “My master will give you twelve silver
shekels—unless, of course, you have already closed your
bargain.”
    Dinanu glowered at me from