"We can only wash clothes, not work miracles" grinned Nicolo, staggering to the side as Skiouros landed a punch - only half-playfully - to his upper arm, deadening the muscle.
"I may be a monk on the outside, but I'm a severely aggravated swordsman underneath. Stop pissing me off."
The party descended the last stretch to the encampment laughing and shouting, three men poking fun at the fourth and eliciting the most impressive series of spiteful reactions. The Berbers strolled alongside them, grinning at this display of humour from their new travelling companions.
Passing the animal pens, the cart came to a halt. The lady dismounted and held a brief, friendly discussion with the brothers from the city. The pair bowed and then turned, grasping the donkeys by their reins and hauling the vehicle back towards the city.
"I assumed they'd be coming with us" Parmenio noted. "Not that it really matters who it is we can't converse with. And the lady's a sight prettier than that pair."
Nicolo rolled his shoulders and smiled. "Can't argue with that."
One of the Berbers entered into a deep discussion with Cesare, using hand gestures and signs, pointing somewhere ahead. Skiouros watched with interest. The pair seemed to come to an understanding, though the whole thing looked thoroughly arcane from outside.
"We're staying the night in their tent group" Cesare announced when the conversation had ended, turning back to his friends. "Apparently, they're called the Tuareg, I think, and they move in some sort of family or clan. It sounds like we're going to be on the move before the sun rises in the morning, but it seems they have some sort of celebration first tonight. We're to follow them to our tent, where they've got clothes for us all."
"Excellent."
"With the exception of yourself, of course, Brother Skiouros. On the bright side, I think they're offering to wash your vestments for you. At least, the man held his nose and pointed at you."
"Wonderful" Skiouros grumbled. "Thank the good lord that priests are allowed to drink wine. I need enough right now to drown myself in."
The other three laughed, and the friends breathed easy, free air for the first time in many days as they made for the heart of the trade camp.
Chapter Fourteen - Of fallen empires and dangerous men
Skiouros straightened and brushed out the creases and kinks in his vestments, looking around the dim interior of his temporary lodging. The small, stone room which was perhaps a dozen feet across consisted of ruined ancient walls that reached up to Skiouros' head height and the Tuareg - as they were apparently called - had used a wooden pole and a patchwork tent cover of tanned goat skin to form a roof, adding a large carpet on the floor and a colourful hanging-rug door to complete the enclosure. In all, it was surprisingly warm and homely once he had placed his sleeping pallet and traveling gear inside and he had spent the first hour since they arrived lying back on his bed and relaxing.
It was certainly a step up on the first night of their journey, when they had camped in open farmland and the four travellers had shared a tent with two Tuareg, who Nicolo had quickly named 'Honker' and 'Farter'.
As the sun had begun its descent toward its bed in the western hills on the second day, the four had looked upon their stopping place with interest and wonder while the Tuareg made their plans on the approach.
Skiouros had had a mental image of the terrain their journey would take them through, born of childhood tales of deserts and the accounts of odd travellers who had regaled him in Crete with their experiences of Africa. Mountainous dunes of sand, rippling heat that distorted the horizon, occasional mirages and other devilish troubles, but mostly endless sand and rock, stretching to infinity around them, punctuated hundreds of miles apart by oases of green water and palm trees.
So far, he could not have been less accurate in his imaginings.
As the caravan had moved away from the coast and southwest into the hills, it had soon become apparent that at least this region of the Emir's lands was far from desert, consisting mostly of fertile farmland tended by weathered villagers and green hillsides roamed by herds of cattle, sheep and goats. Occasional olive groves added regularity to a landscape that undulated with verdant, rolling hills.
They had passed the fractured jagged fangs of stone and brick which marked the ruins of cities that had already begun their decline when Constantinople was little more than a provincial town, the Tuareg barely paying any attention. Indeed, the blue-veiled men had laughed at their passengers when they took enough of an interest to move off to the side of the trade caravan, exploring ruins of temples, fortresses, churches and homes.
But nothing they had passed in the first two days could hold a candle to their second night's stop.
Tugga, as the Tuareg called the place, was a vast sprawl of ruins scattered across a hillside, its summit and the plain below, with great edifices - temples, arches, colonnades and the like - standing almost as if their occupants had simply left them this morning and not yet returned.
As the caravan moved up from the low street, through an elaborate grey arch inscribed with Latin, and along streets of irregular paving that twisted and curved, always climbing the side of the hill, Skiouros had noted with interest other groups - presumably of Berber traders - camped among the ruins. It appeared 'Tugga' was a stopover for many traders on the road to Tunis.
It would be a wondrous place to explore at leisure, he was sure, though he knew the traders would be up and gone before dawn, and he would have little chance to look around.
Still, it was nice just to rest here.
Skiouros looked down at his priestly form. His robes had been washed and were relatively clean and black, scented with some strange, exotic, almost-nutty oil. He looked truly pious and serene, though the effect was somewhat spoiled by his strange bandy-legged stance and lurching walk.
Despite his wound, which had been re-stitched by one of the Tuareg that first evening amid the cries and hisses of the agonised patient, Skiouros had discovered that the pleasant cart-ride he had expected was as far from the truth as his visions of sandy dunes.
No carts or donkeys. They were used by the city dwellers. Out here on the trails, the traders used strings of camels tied together, loaded down with goods. Most of the trade group walked alongside the pack animals for hours on end, and only the womenfolk were given mounts. Indeed, even Parmenio, Nicolo and Cesare had found themselves trudging along on foot beside the caravan. In deference perhaps to his priestly profession, or perhaps to his wound, Skiouros had been given one of the few spare camels as a mount.
After the first half day, he had seriously considered giving up the mount and walking the six weeks to Ceuta. It was hard to imagine there could possibly be a less comfortable mode of travel and he was beginning to reassess the apparently favoured position of women in Tuareg society. Perhaps they were not so revered if they were made to ride these beasts that resembled nothing so much as a collection of broken tool handles tightly crammed in a rough, hairy skin sack. There was quite simply nowhere on the creature's awful hide where a human being could rest without something angular jabbing into his nethers.
Slowly and painfully, grunting with each move, Skiouros stepped to the rug door and lifted it aside, hissing at the pain in his side the movement caused. His guts had been so jumbled up and tossed around on the camel ride that he was beginning to wonder if he before long would have to eat with his backside and crap out of his face.
Evening had descended on Tugga - a balmy, warm evening with an indigo sky glittering with the first shining of the stars. The purpled hills stretched away before him beyond the ruins, and the hum and buzz of insects that filled each day had been replaced with a calm silence broken only by the braying of an insomniac goat somewhere nearby and the muted sounds of socialising from the trader camps spread wide enough apart for privacy among the remains.
Immediately outside the door, he looked around. A wide square surrounded by the stubs of broken columns sat before him, a low wall enclosing the plaza on
either side. The northern edge, where his accommodation lay, was formed of five such small enclosures, and four had been turned into rooms for the traders' guests.
The room next to his own reverberated with the ripping snores of Parmenio, who had announced upon arrival that he would be lucky if he managed to undress before sleep took him. A less sharp but more insistent snore came from further along, where Nicolo matched his captain rasp for rasp, and Skiouros smiled warmly in the direction of his slumbering friends. No noise issued from Orsini's room, but that was no surprise - the man seemed to sleep absolutely silently.
At the far - southern - side of the columned square, a low ruined wall was split in the middle with a doorway and Skiouros strode quietly towards it. The rest of the traders, he knew, had pitched their tents off to the left some distance away and higher up the slope, where much of the ruined city was low and covered with grass, and he could just hear them laughing and talking, but he felt the need more for peace and solitude than revelry, especially revelry among those with whom he could not communicate.
At the doorway, he looked down. Each new corner or threshold in this place revealed fresh wonders. From the gap, old steps led down to what appeared to be an ancient theatre. Row upon row of stepped seats in a gentle arc sat as silent, empty witness to a flat orchestra backed by a chest-height wall and a series of six decorative columns. Beyond that wall, the hillside must drop away sharply to the sprawling ruins among the fields.
And at the wall the figure of Cesare Orsini stood, his elbows resting on the stonework, gazing out over the city and the hills beyond. That sleepless goat bleated forlornly off somewhere to the left, stirring its dozing companions to life in a short frenzy of warbling, wavering noises.
Orsini looked around at the animal commotion and spotted the black-robed monkish figure lurching bow-legged down the steps towards him. With a smile, he returned to his leaning. Carefully negotiating the fractured broken area of seating towards the bottom, Skiouros stepped out onto the flagged auditorium floor and across to the wall, where he placed his folded elbows atop it, mirroring his friend.
"Blissful night" Cesare said with a sigh. His eye had now opened once more and the swelling was receding, though the colour of his bruises had intensified.
"Better than a corsair galley or a Hafsid slave market, for certain."
The Italian nobleman gave a light chuckle.
"I think you could probably have safely left your robes in the room tonight. No one is going to question you out here. Unless you're starting to believe your own fiction?"
"I hardly think that the divine creator would take me into his priesthood willingly. When my time on this mortal plane is up, I think I'll have to sneak into heaven unnoticed!"
"He might consider taking you on now that you no longer smell like the alley behind a tavern at throwing out time."
"Thanks."
The pair fell silent, looking out across the ruins which stretched across the grassland, scattered with arches, walls, columns and a strange tall needle-like monument, before giving way to the farmland which stretched across the valley and up the slopes beyond.
"This place is amazing" Skiouros said quietly, his eyes tracing out the twining streets and alleyways. "I mean, I went and saw some of the ancient places near Candia that people enthused about, but this place is ten times the size, and some of it might as well still be a living city."
"Rome fought across here with her legions when she was just a small republic" Orsini said in a matter-of-fact tutor's voice. "This land was Carthage's empire then, until Rome crushed her utterly. Rome always wins. Even now, long after the days of the Empire and under the rule of that scurrilous creature Innocent the Eighth, may God rot his bones. Glorious Genoa, ophidian Venezia, Pisa, Milano, even Napoli and Sicilia may claim to be independent, but those who do not owe their power to the Papacy manoeuvre and ally purely to prevent that happening. And the east languishes under the Turk only because the Pope will not call a crusade, such is his power. Such is the power of Rome. When that decrepit wall-eyed monster 'Innocent' finally descends to Hell and the role falls to a true Christian, you might find the Grand Turk ejected from your homeland once more. Imagine that, master Skiouros? Being able to go home."
"I could go home," Skiouros conceded, "if I were truly sure where home was any more."
He turned to Orsini.
"Do not write off the Turk so easily, though - the Ottoman army is the best in the world. They rolled over the lands of the Byzantine Emperors hardly pausing for breath. My grandfather died on the walls of Constantinople when Mehmet came and my father told me the stories of those early days. The Empire is there to stay, Cesare, and rather I think your so-hated usurious Pope will be the one to have to look to his defences. Even Sultan Bayezid, who is just and reasonable and no hater of Christians, harbours further designs on the Greek lands and Venetian territory, or so it's said."
Orsini narrowed his eyes.
"Why is it that you sound almost proud of them, despite what you have been through?"
Skiouros took a deep breath and sagged on the wall. "You don't know what I've been through, Cesare. And to be quite honest, I am sort of proud of them. Don't forget, I grew up in the Empire and, for all my faith and my tongue, I am a son of the Ottoman world. Do not judge the Turk by the yardstick of Etci Hassan, for it's an unfair comparison."
"I can imagine that is so."
Cesare turned to him, a curious look across his face, and adjusted the knight's sword that he wore slung at his waist.
"Will you tell me what happened to you?"
"I thought you were more interested in where I was bound."
"I am almost certain the two are bound up together. How far do I have to go before you will place your trust in me?"
Skiouros smiled weakly. "It's not you, Cesare. I… I tell no one. Not even Parmenio and Nicolo, who are the closest thing I've ever had to friends. There is too much pain and danger tied up in it, for me and for any audience I choose. There was once a man I could have told."
"Lykaion?"
Skiouros frowned. "How did you…?"
"You spoke the name a few times in your fevered sleep when you were first wounded. I helped the priest clean you up in his church. Lykaion was your brother?"
"Yes."
"Dead?"
"Yes. Partially through my inquisitiveness and selfishness, but mainly through the designs of a group of wicked men, almost all of whom are now themselves dead."
He blinked. He had really not meant to impart any information at all, let alone so much.
"I think I've said enough."
"So do I", Cesare smiled, returning his gaze to the hills opposite. "'Almost all', eh? And the ones who live remain your enemy? Vengeance is hollow victory, Skiouros, and as oft destroys its perpetrator as its target."
Skiouros clenched his teeth. The honesty and sympathy in the words surprised him almost as much as the fact that Cesare had directly addressed him by name, without 'master' for, as far as he could remember, the first time.
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"When you do, seek me out. I owe you more than one life-debt, Skiouros. We may be from different worlds, you and I, but continual and shared peril creates bonds that cannot easily be severed. And remember that a danger sought is no less troublesome than that which falls on one unexpected."
Again, the pair fell silent for a moment, with only the bleating of irritable goats as an aural backdrop.
"What is it with those creatures?" Skiouros smiled. "I thought they slept at night."
Orsini turned to him, a look of deep thoughtfulness on his noble features. His eyes passed across Skiouros and then over the slope where the goats, somewhere unseen, continued their gentle cacophony.
Pain lanced through Skiouros' wounded side as Orsini grasped his shoulder and threw him none-too-gently to the floor.
Scrabbling around in panic, Skiouros felt below his ribs, certain several of the stitches had popped once again
. He looked up and began to rise, but Cesare pushed him back down as he ducked to one side himself.
A cracking noise resounded through the evening air and Skiouros stared at the two-foot long black shaft, falcon-feather fletching slightly ruffled, reverberating as it stuck from the stone wall where Skiouros had been leaning.
"What?"
Cesare reached down, grabbing Skiouros by the shoulder and hauling him back toward the stairs, only to pause again. Skiouros scanned around in something of a panic to spot three figures stalking slowly down the steps like purple phantoms in the indigo night. They were dressed in much the same manner as the Tuareg traders, though their faces were unveiled. Skiouros had only spent two days with this enigmatic people so far, but it was already clear to him that all menfolk after puberty wore the veil, and none removed it in public. And that meant that, regardless of their mode of dress, these figures were not Tuareg.
The veils had likely been removed for ease of combat, as blades glinted in the hands of all three as they descended. Another chorus of bleating - that and Cesare's sharp mind had been all that had saved Skiouros' life - gave way to a rushing sound as another arrow clattered against the wall, its passage close enough to ruffled Cesare's hair.
"Hellfire" the Italian snapped, looking up at the figures cutting off their escape route back towards their escort. The arrows were coming in from the side from where the goat noises issued. "Parmenio!" Orsini bellowed a warning. "Nicolo!"
With no apparent regard for Skiouros' wound, the young nobleman then yanked him back across the auditorium and to the wall at its rear, behind the fractured columns. The three robed figures advanced cautiously, spreading out to cover the wide arc of the stepped seats as they descended. A fresh chorus from the goats indicated further activity from the unseen archer.
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