The Gate of fire ooe-2

by Thomas Harlan

  "Leader-of-five? You, ah, you going somewhere?"

  Zoe spared Dwyrin a short, pointed glare and lifted her hat, a battered straw thing with a long woven tail that lay down over her neck, off a hook twisted into the side of the wagon. "I," she said, "am going into the city to find us lodging and food. You two are staying here, with the wagon and our gear. And I do mean stay with the wagon. Do not leave the wagon by the side of the road-not even for a moment-to be stolen by drunken Sarmatian mercenaries… like last time."

  "Wait a grain." Dwyrin was frowning. "Won't the army be pitching camp here? Why do we have to find our own rooms?"

  Odenathus laughed, a short barking sound like a dog with a bone caught in its throat. "At Antioch? The luxurious, sybaritic, legendary Antioch? At the end of such a victorious campaign? Oh, my fine Hibernian friend, the Emperor would not retain his red boots with such an act! This is the first fruit of victory for these legionnaires-this city by the languid waters of the Orontes, this city of green bowers and fine wine and beautiful women under the cedar-covered slopes of Mount Silpius."

  Dwyrin frowned again, this time at Odenathus. "You wax eloquent, O Buzzard. You've been thinking about it too much, I think. Then it will be a free-for-all in the city-that would drive the centurions insane trying to keep everyone in line! How can the Roman army move without a camp at the end of each day?"

  Zoe shook her head and rolled her eyes in despair, hands on her slim hips. "Oh, there is a camp all right, a permanent one, the Campus Martius west of the city on the far bank of the river. And there everyone will-in all regulation-pitch their tents and count heads. But for another week or two, the army will spend all this loot and coin that we've dragged back from Ctesiphon in the brothels and tavernas and gambling dens of the city… which, as you can see, has put my dear cousin into a frenzy at the thought that he might not be able to sate his animal lusts." She tossed her head in the direction of the crowded road and the waiting soldiers. "It will take a day or more to sort them all out and get everyone a pass to go into the city. By then all of the good inns and hostels will be filled with officers and the common soldiers will be sleeping in the seats of the circus or back in the campus, on cold ground. I want a bath and I know what to do to get one. But the two of you have to stay with the wagon while I take care of it."

  Odenathus' bushy black eyebrows narrowed, and he regarded his cousin with a suspicious air. "But you won't be forgetting us while we're dragging this monster wagon around the narrow streets of the city to get to the campus and enduring the foul voices of the centurions, will you? You wouldn't mind sneaking off and finding lodgings at the villa of the Palmyrene consul all by yourself? That would offer some fine lounging about in baths and steam rooms, with servants to brush your hair and trim your nails. Even, dare I say it, a handsome young slave or two to oil your back…"

  Zoe raised one razor-sharp eyebrow at Odenathus, then made a clicking sound with her teeth. "I was planning on securing lodging for all three of us, if not in the consul's domus then in one of the inns that the city owns here. However, if you would prefer to deal with such matters yourself, feel free."

  Odenathus raised his hands in surrender at the icy tone in her voice.

  Zoe nodded and brushed a lock of fine black hair out of her eyes. "Get the wagon to the campus. I'll find you if you don't get lost and fall in the river and drown."

  Dwyrin smiled, watching the young woman as she strode away up the road. She seemed to have grown into herself in the year that he had known her-though she was still impatient, quick to anger, and filled with suspicion, she seemed to have found some kind of balance in the exercise of their common art. Command suited her, too, it seemed, and he was glad the burden had fallen on her. He leaned back against the slats that made up the sides of the wagon, and closed his eyes. His thoughts turned, as they often did in this dry and barren land, to memories of his youth and rich green of Hibernia and the cold dew on the leaves in the morning.

  – |"That is a fine sound," Dwyrin said, motioning with his cup into the firelit darkness. "Those voices were made for singing under an open sky like this."

  Odenathus, leaning back on his bedroll, nodded. In the light of the little oil lamp hanging on the back of the wagon, Dwyrin could just make out the motion of the other man's head. Across the camp, now filled with the wagons of the army and thousands of tents and pavilions, clear, strong voices were raised in song. The night seemed hushed around the sound. It rose toward the vault of heaven, where the stars shone brightly in the clear desert night. Dwyrin could not make out any words, but their cant was that of great deeds done in war and the hunt.

  "They are called Blemmye," Odenathus said as he refilled his own cup from the amphora of wine that they were sharing. "They come from the black kingdoms at the source of the Nile-Meroe and Axum. Many of them serve the city as caravan guards or mercenaries if there is a war. There are few men fiercer or braver in battle. I think they dislike our cities, though it is said that their homelands have great metropolei, as large and prosperous as Alexandria or Constantinople."

  "What are they singing about?"

  Odenathus shook his head. "I don't know. They sing in battle, too, to give their limbs strength and drive fear into the hearts of their enemies. My grandfather once said that they account themselves in paradise if they die with a song on their lips. He valued their service greatly."

  Dwyrin put down his cup and stood, stretching his sore back. It had been a long day, though thankfully the army had not passed through the middle of Antioch. A pontoon bridge had been put across the river just above the first of the islands that marked the urban center. That had allowed the Legions to cross to the western bank and take a road through fields and past little farms to the great Campus Martius that was maintained for the army stationed at Antioch in times of peace. Still, getting the heavy wagon across the bridge-all twisting under their feet as the great planks shifted with the weight of a dozen wagons and hundreds of men-had been some work. His upper arms and the backs of his legs were still burning with the memory. But here they were, in their allotted space, with their tents pitched and a warm dinner digesting.

  Around them the camp was oddly quiet, even with the distant singing. Each cohort had pitched their tents in the regular avenues of a traditional Roman camp, but the lively bustle that usually marked the army at rest was missing. Dwyrin could hear snores echoing from the nearest tents, so he guessed that everyone had turned in early. Tomorrow, or so the centurion had said, a quarter of the men would get passes to go into the city, while the others would rest or refit the wagons. Within the week, or so rumor ran, cohorts would begin marching down the military road to the coast and the port of Seleucia, where the fleet waited to take them home.

  Dwyrin was not sure what to think of that. He had come into the army in such haste-the fruit of a last-minute levy upon the thaumaturgic schools of Egypt-that he had no sense of a home other than the tiny academy of Pthames. Before that, he had been only a child, barely aware of the world around him, living in contented ignorance in Hibernia. His birth-home seemed impossibly distant now, months of sea travel away at the far end of the Empire, or even beyond, really. The fierce tribes of his home island had never bowed to Rome, nor had Rome cared. Britannia was the edge of the world as far as the senators were concerned. Now he would return with the Wizard's cohort to Constantinople and find himself in a new home-a vast city only briefly glimpsed in his time there before-among hundreds of sorcerers and magicians that served the state and the Emperor.

  "Do you miss your home?" Dwyrin tried to keep the sadness he felt from his voice.

  "The City?" Odenathus looked up, his long, lean face half in shadow from the lamp. "Her golden walls and bright gardens filled with hyacinth and bougainvillea? Her long arched passages and arcades, her broad, wide streets of paving stones, and the glory of her sunsets? Yes-I do. I miss my family, too, all of them. My sisters and their squalling brats, my gruff old father… I miss all of them."

 
The Palmyrene youth paused, looking off into the darkness. He seemed pensive. He turned his wine cup over and over in his hands.

  "Zoe wants to stay, you know, here-in the army. Our term of service was just for this one campaign-a gift of the city to the Empire, but I think she has found something here she lacks at home. A sense of place and purpose. In the city, what could she be? A wife? Do you think that would suit her? Do you feel this is your home now? I know you were thrown into this, too."

  Dwyrin squatted, his own face pensive now. "I don't know. The witch finders took me away from my family when I was very young and then sold me to the Empire. The School was my home for a long time, but I cannot go back there, either." He turned his arm and rolled up the sleeve of his tunic. The small, dark mark of the Legion enlistment brand was plain against his naturally pale skin. "Now I have this, and an enlistment to complete. There is really no place else to go. I will miss you two, if you leave. We had some good times, this campaign. We didn't die, for one! We lived and came home rich-if we don't spend it all here in a brothel."

  Odenathus half smiled and scratched his head. He stowed his wine cup. "I know what you mean, barbarian. Don't you think she should be back by now?"

  "Yes, she should."

  Dwyrin stood again and looked out into the darkness. Across the river, the walls of the city were marked with hundreds of lanterns and torches; long lines of jewels hung against the night. "Well, we haven't a pass between us-I suppose we shall have to sneak out of the camp and search all over the city to find her. No telling what kind of low or depraved places we might be forced to endure before we find her."

  "Hmmm…" Odenathus said, staggering to his feet. The amount of wine he had swilled was telling a little. "Wouldn't do if we were caught missing. Best to leave a note for the centurion."

  "Yes," Dwyrin said, smiling, "we should leave something behind." He pinched out the wick of the little lamp, and it became very dark around their wagon. He found his cloak by feel and could hear Odenathus doing the same. The Palmyrene youth crouched by the entrance to their tent for a moment, and there was a soft, muted flash of light. When he stood, the dissonant rattle of a snore echoed from the canvas. Dwyrin smiled in the darkness, looking up, seeing a vast abyss of velvet night and winking stars. The River of Milk stood out very clearly in this thin desert air.

  "Let's go," whispered Odenathus, and they crept away through the neatly lined streets of the camp.

  – |Even with the streets liberally supplied with oil lamps at the corners, it was dark in the district behind the Daphne Gate at the southern end of the city. Dwyrin stumbled on a missing paving stone, then skipped ahead. Odenathus was walking slowly, carefully surveying the porticoes of the town houses. This was an upscale merchant district-the streets were clear of both rubbish and drunken Roman officers-though it was so late that everyone must be sound asleep. The Palmyrene stopped, staring up at an elegant house with four graceful pillars arrayed across its front. He stepped up to the door, which was dark. The common lamp in the recessed doorway had gone out. Odenathus put his hand against the portal and cocked his head, listening.

  Dwyrin stood in the street, looking at the other houses. Each showed little traces of light and habitation; plants on the upper balconies, the muted gleam of a candle or lantern in the entrance hallway. They seemed to breathe in the cold night air; even sleeping, they showed some trace of habitation. This house, the one that they had stopped before, seemed empty and cold, abandoned.

  "Are you sure this is the place?"

  Odenathus frowned in the darkness, his hand brushing against the carved pillars at the sides of the doorway.

  "These are the traditional signs of the city; two palms placed at each entrance. I have been here once before, with my grandfather, and thought this was the street. But this house feels empty, which is very odd. I am sure that Zoe would have come here first, to find the consul. If she did, and everyone was out, I don't know where she would have gone…"

  Dwyrin decided, pulling his cloak around him a little tighter. It was getting cold in the deep of night.

  "Let's go find someone to ask where they went. Perhaps they moved to a bigger place."

  "Wait," Odenathus said as the Hibernian turned to walk away. "We've had far too much wine this evening. We're not thinking clearly." He fumbled in the big leather carryall that he wore, like Dwyrin, strapped to his thigh. After a moment he pulled out a triangle of ceramic tile. "Ah," he breathed in satisfaction. "Do you still have yours?"

  Dwyrin nodded. His was buried, too, down at the bottom of the carryall. But he found it by touch, just the way their old teacher Colonna had taught them. The piece of tile was notched on one side, chipped a little, but he held it out and Odenathus' piece slid into place like a long-lost mate.

  "Do you remember the memory chant?"

  Dwyrin bobbed his head, the feel of the smooth tile in his hand had already brought it back to him. He slowed his breathing and let his mind fall quiet. For a moment, as he approached the state of waiting and nothingness that his old teachers had called the Entrance of Hermes, he felt the muzziness of the wine lap around his consciousness, but then it was gone. Once he was centered, he let his sight unfold, focused around the two pieces of tile in their hands. The darkness fell away, replaced by glittering light where the broken pieces of tile met, then deep violet-and-blue patterns that rippled and flowed along the bricks of the street and the fronts of the houses. Odenathus stood out, a burning flame coiling and twisting where he stood. Dwyrin knew that his own hand, his own arm and body, were the same-rivers of fire tracing the beat of his heart and the surge of blood through his veins.

  All this, as he must, he pushed away from his consciousness. An old voice, raspy with years of shouting commands over the din of battle, echoed in his memory: The second enemy of the sorcerer is too much sight, which drowns the mind in confusion and destroys your focus. The broken tile remained, though now joined by two ghostly cousins, one brighter and one darker. In all, the four made a square; a common flooring tile of fired clay, smooth on one side with a dull blue glaze.

  "See," Odenathus whispered, "Eric's is lost, but our leader-of-five still carries hers. Lead us on, O thoughtful hound!"

  Dwyrin drew his tile away, slowly, as did Odenathus. The two ghostly fragments hung in the air for a moment, then the fourth-that which had died with poor Eric in the dark cold of a river before the Persian city of Tauris-vanished, and the third: It spun in the air and then darted away. The Hibernian laughed, for they would have to run to catch it. Behind him, Odenathus cursed vilely. He hated running.

  – |A dim flicker of dawn was showing in the east and it was cold on the docks, but the broad-shouldered man seemed impervious to the chill. A cutting spring wind came out of the mountains behind the port, but even with bare arms and shins the man remained on the pier. His guardsman loitered a dozen paces behind him. Wrapped in their own furs and armor, they doubtless thought the cold spring predawn to be refreshing, but then they were Scandians and Rus to a man and used to far worse than this. Beyond the end of the stone pier the massive shape of an Imperial galley pulled slowly away. Its great sail was still furled, and a dozen longboats crowded around it. Hawsers stretched from the backs of the longboats, and the rattle of their oars and the rhythmic chanting of the rowers carried easily over the open water. The quinquireme Juno Claudius would take almost two hours to make it out of the harbor to the open sea. Its decks were awash with light from sea lanterns, too, and the man on the dock could make out a small figure on the rear deck.

  The man raised a hand in farewell, his stern face creased for a moment by a smile. He waved, and the small figure on the deck waved back, her pale white face showing for a moment. On the distant ship she moved and held up a warmly wrapped bundle so that he could look upon the face, tiny and indistinct, of his child again. His hand dropped, and he tugged the hood of the cloak over his head and its blond curls. He turned, hearing the rattle of boots on the dock behind him.

  "Ro
yal brother! The Empress is safely away?"

  Heraclius, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Avtokrator and Augustus of the Greeks and Romans, turned to face his younger brother. The open, guileless smile was gone, and now his face was stern, the face of the ruler of half the known world. He raised his hand and clasped his younger brother's fist in his own.

  "Greetings, Prince of Persia. Yes, Martina and my son are safely away. They will reach Constantinople and the luxurious refuge of the Imperial Court within a week. While we, dear brother, will still be here sorting out men and cargo and loot and assignment…"

  Theodore smiled broadly at the sound of the loot, his teeth gleaming white in the thicket of his red beard. Where Heraclius was tall and broad, his younger brother was thick and stout, but each showed an echo of their father's pugnacious nose and blunt personality. The Prince was clad, as was his wont, in cavalryman's leather and half-armor, with a long blade slung over his back and riding boots. While the Emperor's cloak was a thick red woolen with purple thread and ermine edging around the hood, the Prince affected a shorter, Oriental-style cloak with a fur lining and a silk outer layer. Heraclius had considered mentioning to his sib that though Theodore was Prince of Persia in name, he need not ape its fashion-but he had held his tongue.

  "Have you eaten yet? My servants are already up and making breakfast…"

  Heraclius shook his head, no, and began walking along the pier. His brother fell in beside him, as he had done for twenty years, and the guardsmen shook themselves out into a loose cordon around the two. Some of the hulking Northerners went ahead, while others trailed behind. Their cold blue eyes watched everything, even the dark water, and their hands rested easily on the hilts of their swords.