Tom Holland

He knows what's going on.

And that is what enables him in the summer of 522, when the dynasty of Cyrus abruptly implodes, to have a very good idea of what is going on and to know how to respond.

So tell us what happens next.

So Bardia has been killed on the orders of Cambyses, who is still kind of whooping it up in Egypt, which he's just conquered.

The twist is that Bardia is now replaced in the eastern provinces by someone who looks exactly like Bardia, but isn't.

So the Magi are the kind of the Persian equivalent of the Brahmins.

They're like a kind of priestly caste.

And this kind of fake Magus, I mean, by amazing coincidence, he exactly resembles Bardiya.

And this fake Bardiya then stages a rebellion against Cambyses.

The news is brought to Cambyses in Egypt.

He's furious, of course.

He leaps on his horse, leads an expedition out of Egypt through Syria.

And in Syria, he pauses, has some food, and then he's climbing up onto his horse and his sword accidentally slips and he stabs himself in the thigh with it.

And this wound then goes septic and he dies very shortly afterwards.

So that's Cambyses out of the way.

And at this point, the false Magus, the kind of the pretend Bardia, declares that he is now king of kings.

And the only people who know the truth that this isn't really Bardiya is Darius and six other noblemen.

And they get together a posse and they gallop from Syria across the kind of the parched flatlands of Mesopotamia up the Khorasan Highway, which is the road that sneaks up through the Zagros Mountains up towards the great plateau of Iran.

And they arrive at a place called Sikia Vautish, which is up in the heights of the Zagros Mountains, surrounded by rich fields.

There are famous horses from these fields.