Wild Goose Chase (fiction, Chapter 17)

Posted on November 24, 2008

Artax troops were leisurely wandering in the Mongol steppes heading east and still hoping to link up with the troops of Iskander who was now on the run.  The most common of news, and the most dreaded, reached Artax:  A successful coup d’etat by one of a more “legitimate” cousin of his.  That renegade cousin claimed the title of “Khosro the Magnificent, the eldest Son-God Incarnate”.   

In his guts, Artax foresaw this kind of turn of events and had hypothetically pondered Khosro immediate reactions on receiving such news, supposing that he was not poisoned or murdered before the reversal of fortune.

As long as the troops believed that Artax was the legitimate Monarch, which means his treasure chest was plenty, then there was hope to prioritize His dreams and desires.

Artax was faced with a serious dilemma. Would he resume discovering new lands and new people or focus on his people?  What are the alternatives?  

If he gathered his army and marched on his cousin then he would be obeying a natural reaction from any monarch and the reaction would agree to his traditional troops.

The Monarch was analyzing a typical reaction that was labeled centuries later “Pavlov Reaction”, but which intrinsically was targeted toward animal reactions after extensive training to a certain behavior.

His army would urge him to march on his cousin anyway; otherwise, he might lose the confidence of his officers and soldiers to his legitimacy.  

Artax decides to keep both options.  

He reasoned that the first angry reactions were beneath a wise and forward thinking monarch.  He will then resume the exploration with a much smaller army: These wastelands up North cannot afford a large expedition anyway. 

He will also regain his throne by other means than direct and frontal assault by armies.  He doesn’t desire to mire his country in a textbook civil war.  

He opts to bifurcate south to any region that is flourishing, fertile and close to His Estate Afghanistan, and settle and refill his treasure chest and lay the ground works for a new Constitution and a Bill of Rights for the Persian Empire.  

We didn’t have GPS locators at the time to offer precise coordinates but Artax troops headed toward what is called now Islamabad.

Most probably Artax had named it Azarabad or the City of the Sun God Azar.  Azarabad was on the Indus River and close to impregnable mountain chains with easily defensible passages.