"You are making fun of me," she said. "I shall have your head cut off for it."
Ahmet made as to shudder, then said: "And who would sing you to sleep then, Princess of the Sand?"
"No one." Her voice was sad. "I would be alone again."
They sat in silence for a long time, watching the stars wheel overhead. The moon began to set at last. The night was passing. A colder wind began to blow off of the desert.
"Do not take it amiss, lady, but why have you favored me so? I am neither the handsomest of men nor rich. My birth is poor and my vocation obscure. The favor you show me must plague you in this volatile mix of tribes and chieftains you have assembled. Aretas, for one, rarely looks at me with less than venom in his eyes."
Zenobia laughed, and her small hand snaked out of the blankets to pinch his nose. "What a man you are! You are the most insecure of creatures. All these things are points in your favor, silly man. No one, even the dour Aretas, considers you more than a summer dalliance for me—the mysterious Egyptian priest, caught in the toils of a cunning woman. They say, when they speak of it around their campfires, that I curry the favor of the old gods to consort with you. The Princes and lords sniff and make catty comments about my low taste in men. None of them consider you the least impediment in their plans for me."
Ahmet frowned. "How can you exist amid such a state?"
"I was born to it," she answered calmly, "it has always been so for me. The sole daughter of the house of Septimus Palmyrene is either a prize above all others or the victor who takes the prize herself. My earliest memory is of two of my aunts fighting over their position in my mother's funeral procession. So it has been, so it shall be. I favor you because you have a good heart and know little of me. In you there is some hope that I can be solely myself—not the Queen, not the schemer, not the pivot that the fate of Empires turn upon—but Zenobia, the woman. The failed poet. The scholar."
Ahmet nodded, thinking that he understood.
"There is only one thing that I ask of you, Ahmet. It grates on me to do so, but I see no alternative." She shifted around to face him and her face was grave. "Soon there will be battle and I will lead my men into the thick of it. When that day comes, if you could be at my side to protect me, I would count it a great favor."
"Protect you? I am no warrior!" He stared back at her, puzzled.
She gave him a sad half smile. "Yes you are, my friend. The most precious kind. Persia will come against us with more than their fighting men; they will come with sorcery and dreadful summonings. That is what I need desperately from you, to hold back whatever dark arts they bring to bear upon me."
"But," he said, "I thought that Aretas..."
Zenobia shook her head and placed a finger on his lips. "If I were to fall in battle, Aretas would command. He and his sorcerers are to protect the army as a whole and I believe that they will, but the Persians are not fools, they know whom they face. I will be the focus of all the might they can array against me. Please, stand by my side."
The pleading look in her face was too much for what resolve remained to him.
"Of course," he said, "I will stand by you."
The lost student was forgotten.
—|—
Four days after Zenobia's army had occupied Denaba, Ahmet and Mohammed were sitting in the quarters in the principia that they had taken for themselves, playing a game that the priest had been given as a gift by one of the Indian officers. Mohammed advanced one of his horsemen along the right-hand side of the board. Ahmet frowned; the Arab played very aggressively, and Ahmet was still trying to divine the patterns of movement the pieces made among the red and black squares of the board. He moved an elephant to the right, to close off the lane of attack that the horseman represented.
Mohammed was surveying the board when there was a sharp rapping sound at the door. Both men turned and one of the Tanukh scouts, still dusty from the road, fell to his knees and bent his head to the concrete tiles of the room. "Blessings and greetings!" the man barked, "I bring tidings from the north. The Persian army has been sighted crossing the Orontes at Arethusa."
Mohammed stood up, forgetting the game. "How many men? Is the Boar with them? Do they have any elephants?" The scout settled back on his heels. His face was flushed with the effort of his ride. "The relay rider said that there were sixty thousands Persians, under the banner of the great Princes Shahin and Rhazates. He saw no elephants."
"Excellent. Well done, Abu Kabir. See to your horse and tell no one else of what you have told me."
The Tanukh, flushed with pleasure that his captain remembered him, bowed again and left. Mohammed turned to Ahmet, who was still surveying the board with a puzzled look on his face.
"Arethusa is ninety miles north of here, my friend. The Queen's battle is very close. Shahin could be upon us within six days, less if he hurries."
Ahmet nodded, then shook his head in disgust. His position on the board was untenable. He stood and gathered his bag and staff. "You'll inform the Queen?"
Mohammed nodded; he was almost hopping from one foot to another in excitement.
"Good," Ahmet said. "You should send some of your riders out on the road to Palmyra and see if they can find Vorodes and his army. She will not want to give battle until we are reinforced."
The Arab paused at the door and looked sharply at his friend, who was buckling his belt around his waist. "So, you're a general now?"
Ahmet smiled, a brief thing, and shook his head in negation. "No, that's your gift. I have heard something of her thought. I go to see to the state of the hospital. You must see the Queen at once."
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Near the Hippodrome, Constantinople
"Your friend seems to have collected his last secret, Persian." Gaius Julius' voice was droll.
Abdmachus cursed, muttering under his breath, and scratched his thinning hair. The narrow street, crowded by insulae of flats on one side and warehouses on the other, suddenly widened. On the northern side there was a wide gap among the buildings. Smoke-blackened pillars of brick and mortar rose out of a great tumbled heap of masonry and charred wood. In the ruins of the house, local children were picking through the rubble for salvage. The overcast sky and the thin gray smoke that lay over the city heightened the sense of destruction.
"His library will have been buried or destroyed in the fire," Maxian said, his voice level. He held Krista close to his body, his arms crossed over her chest. Her hands curled around his forearms. He was wearing a broad leather hat that kept the drizzle off both of them. She was wearing a dark-green cloak over a russet tunic and laced-up boots. He had adopted a dark gray-and-black for himself, something that matched his mood.
"Perhaps not, Lord Prince," Abdmachus said in a low voice. "It will have been in the basement and well protected, both by stone and wood and by unseen forces."
"True." The Prince felt grim and determined. He had spent a long time thinking during the swift voyage from Ostia to the Eastern capital, and had come to some conclusions about his adversary and the strength he would need to overthrow it. Any concerns about the propriety of looting the cellars of a dead antiquarian were of little interest to him. "There are no guards set to keep scavengers off, so any family that might have inherited it must be absent, uncaring, or nonexistent. Gaius?"
"Yes?" the older Roman said, turning away from his survey of the nearby buildings.
"Ask around—see if the property is for sale and for how much. If we can afford it, purchase it. Also, we will need lodgings nearby. Secure these. Krista and I will return to the port and see about getting our baggage ashore and dealing with Captain Ziusudra."
—|—
Gaius Julius watched in interest as the two youngsters hiked off down the street, arm in arm. He put a finger alongside his nose and sighed, thinking of the lost days of his youth. Water continued to dribble out of the sky. The clouds, if anything, were growing darker.
"Huh," he said, turning to the little Persian, "that lea
ves you and me to do the dirty work. I expected no less..."
Abdmachus looked back up at him, his eyes filled with concern. "How will we acquire the building? If there are relatives, it might take months to resolve a court case."
Gaius Julius smiled, fingering a heavy bag of gold aureus strapped to his belt. "No matter, my friend. I once worked with a man who made his living off burned buildings. I think I remember a thing or two. Come along, my fine foreign friend, and I will show you how the city fathers of Rome dicker over the ruins of someone's dreams."
—|—
"A substantial sum was owed on the property," Gaius Julius said in a pedantic voice, "in taxes. Some six thousand aureus, to be precise."
Maxian, sitting in a backless chair in his cabin aboard the Nisir, flinched a little at the sum. The elder Atreus had taken great pains to impress a traditional Roman penuriousness upon his sons. As a result, Maxian was loath to spend money, particularly large sums of it.
"And so? Will we have to dig in secret then?"
"Not at all," Gaius Julius said with a grin, "I was able to purchase the entire property for only four thousand aureus, not counting, of course, a substantial gratuity to the secretary of the city records. It seems that the house had a poor reputation when occupied and is positively unsalable now that it was destroyed in such odd circumstances."
"Those being?" Maxian had also heard a little of the story from the customs' office at the port. "That a dragon woke underneath the house and burst forth, spitting flame in all directions before flying off to the east?"
Abdmachus coughed, then covered his face with his hand. He seemed to be laughing.
Gaius Julius glared at him and put a leather satchel on the edge of the table. "Not a dragon, my lord, but rather a wizard, I believe. I spoke with two young men who had been servants in the house, and they agree that a mysterious visitor from the East had been a guest of their master, this Bygar Dracul, right before the explosion and fire. I suspect that our Persian ally's friend had been negotiating with the enemy..."
Maxian stared at the roof of the cabin for a moment, collecting his thoughts. The little room was warm with the heat from an iron stove built into one wall. Krista had packed all their belongings and was just finishing folding all the blankets and quilts that made the bed built into the opposite wall. He was distracted for a moment, watching her fold and stow the bedding. Her hair was tied back and fell to the small of her back. Her hands were quick and sure. He realized that he did not feet the heavy pressure against his mental defenses that marked his time in Rome.
"These servants, where are they now? We will need to question them."
Gaius Julius smiled again and stepped to the door of the cabin. He rapped sharply on the frame. "I understand from them—they are foreigners and a little hard to follow, but I managed—that they sort of come with the property. So I told them that they have a new master. Really, they are quite happy about it, though not so happy as the land secretary. When I told him that a priest of Asklepius was moving into the house, he was ecstatic. I think he had put too much credence in all this talk of a curse."
The door opened, swinging out on polished brass hinges, and two young men entered the room, stooping to pass under the low frame. They were lean looking, with long stringy dark hair and bushy eyebrows. They wore dark tunics the color of freshly broken slate, with bracelets of silver on their left arms. The taller one, with deep-set dark brown eyes, stood a little forward. His fellow looked nervously around the cabin, hunching down a little, his pale white hands clasped in front of him.
"Master," the tall one said, kneeling on the deck and bowing his head to the floor, "we are overjoyed to enter your service."
Maxian sat up a little, a feeling tickling at the back of his head. The eyes of the two young men were marked with pain. He could feel, as he had felt the agony of men in a military hospital, some anguish upon them.
"Welcome," he said, standing from behind the desk. He walked to the side of the first servant and lightly touched the long shank of hair that fell down the man's back. "You are in pain?"
"Yes, master," both servants said, bowing to the decking, their breath a soft hiss.
"Perhaps I can ease it," the Prince said, feeling the eddy and current of their disease brush against his outstretched hand.
"What are your names," he asked, "and where do you come from?"
Krista finished packing the last of the blankets away and sat down on the bed, yawning.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The Great Camp, Samosata
Dust puffed from under his feet as Dwyrin settled himself a few yards from the archery butt. His skin was a deep brown under the peeling scraps that remained on his arms and neck. Six thin gashes lay on his back, still swollen a little. A constant itching ran at the back of his mind. Like Odenathus and Eric he wore a plain white cotton tunic, stitched only at the hems, and plain tan wool breeches. His hair, now pale rose-colored straw under the sun, was bound back at the base of his neck and held by a thin dark band of leather. He squinted against the wavering sky. Two weeks now had passed under the heavy sun of the alluvial plain. Of Zoë's "five," in truth there were only four.
War was in the wind, though no Persians had been sighted anywhere near the city or the camp. Dwyrin had not left the inner camp, but he had heard Blanco and the tribune discussing the extension of the great ditch that bounded the encampment and the raising of many new tents. The senior wizards' faces grew longer with each heat-filled day. Yet the trainees were told nothing. Instead Blanco had drilled them in minutiae.
Before light the four rose each day, and Blanco ran them for an hour around the inner camp in endless repetition. Each had to match the centurion's stride, no more or less.
Dwyrin's legs were barely long enough, but he knew that Zoë and Eric struggled to make the pace. Needless, Zoë never spoke of it, and always finished in her place as file-closer behind him. Her rasping breath she kept to herself. Eric moaned theatrically after each run and would often fall to his knees at the entry to the mess tent, begging for water. Blanco ignored him while he did not shirk but was quick with a fist or hobnailed boot for any who fell behind.
Days passed in stick drill; Blanco disallowed them bladed weapons.
"Swords are not for children," he would opine, smirking, and ignore the venomous glances coming from Zoë. "Better that you master the simple shepherd's staff than the gladius."
Regardless, Dwyrin fell into bed covered with bruises and aching to his bones. Colonna came by seldom, but when he did, his tongue was as sharp as ever. Here in the camp, he seemed to Dwyrin larger, less etched by fear, but the Hibernian's senses were dulled with fatigue and constant pain.
Blanco ordered them to the archery range set on the north side of the inner camp, just under the ramped embankment and palisade that marked the edge of the sorcerer's domain. Here a fifty-foot-long strip was cleared and marked at the eastern end by a mound of dirt and a stack of hay bales. Before each bale a stout wooden frame stood, banded with heavy wood. As Dwyrin had approached, he saw that the wood was deeply scored and riven. Glints of metal flashed at him from deep in the boards.
—|—
Sweat beaded his brow and he turned a few feet from the boards and faced the end of the archery throw. At the far end, Blanco raised a simple short bow, no more than a curved stave bound with gut and sinew.
"Hai!" the centurion called, and drew a raven-fletched arrow to his cheek. Dwyrin stood still by the butts, eyes unfocused. Two days now, the four had watched the flight of arrows for hours. Flicker-quick, the arrow snapped from Blanco's hand, hissing a foot past Dwyrin's ear. The Hibernian expanded his sight, seeing all things with equal acuity, and felt the shining trail of presence that the arrow left behind.
Blanco drew back another shaft to his bearded cheek. Dwyrin could feel the tension in the string, the clenching muscles in the centurion's hand. He backed off, seeing, feeling less. The centurion's voice echoed behind his ear. Seeing everything is
worse than seeing nothing, you must only see that which is important. The hand released and copper-headed death blurred into enormity. Dwyrin flicked it aside with a brush of curling cyan, hot morning air given shape and power from the swirling currents of smoldering power in the air and stones.
Odenathus clapped his hand on his shoulder at the far end of the range. Blanco drew again and loosed. The arrow blurred in the air, but Dwyrin could catch the fletching spinning as the shaft leapt toward him. Again Dwyrin flexed the rivers of power that spun between him and the arrow, driving it into the soil four feet away. He grinned, and flinched back as Blanco drew and fired four in quick succession.
The Hibernian skipped aside, cursing, as three of the four whipped through the space he had occupied. One lone shaft he had deflected into the posts of the guard tower at his right. He was sweating worse now.
"Again," Blanco called from the shooting stand, "and Eric will stand with you."
—|—
At night, one of the Hippocratii bound their wounds and patched the nicks and cuts drawn during the day's training. The tribune and Blanco, by turns, drilled them on the myriad details of the Legion. Dwyrin fell asleep each night exhausted and worn. Around him a growing host of tens of thousands of men also fell into their cots and blankets blind with fatigue. The two Emperors were not letting idleness dull the edge of the gathering army.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Nearby the House of Bygar Dracul, Constantinople
Smoke still curled up from fires hidden deep in the rubble. A wasteland had been cleared around the ruined building, the fire-damaged insulae torn down and the entrances to adjoining buildings bricked up. Gray clouds hung low over the city, sending down a fine mist of rain. The wind from the north was chill and blew the trails of smoke away. Three hooded figures in long dark woolen cloaks climbed over the rubble, careful to test their weight on any new footing. Behind them a few civil guardsmen looked on momentarily but soon lost interest and passed away into the narrow alleys of the city. The lead figure, shorter than the others, halted and stared down into a stairway choked with fallen beams and ash.
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