"What happened... are you unimpaired otherwise?"
Chrosoes' voice held an edge, the sound of a man that is faced with an unexpected flaw in a well-used tool. Unbidden the Great King's hand rose to his own face.
Lord Dahak bowed, his long hair falling over his shoulder like a wave of ink. "My power is, as ever, yours to command. Fear not, dear King, I will suffice for your efforts. I can still pay my debts."
"Good." The King's voice ground like a stone. "Your debt to me is heavy and still not paid in full."
"Do I not know this, O King? You reproach me with your smile, but my sin is my own. Command me and I will move the earth to please you."
Chrosoes grunted and toyed with the frozen golden curls of his mask. The dark man stood before him, quiescent, though to Siroes' eye, he seemed only an instant from frightful motion.
"Your swiftness is necessary now," Chrosoes said. "The Romans come at us from three directions and I have but one Boar to toss them on his tusks." He paused, seeing a flicker of motion on the sorcerer's face. "What?"
Lord Dahak had climbed the steps to the platform, and now he too gazed up at the disk of the world. From where he crouched, the sight of this terrible thing and his father, standing side by side, struck Siroes with foreboding. Though the King of Kings was taller and broader than the slight night visitor, there was a sense of familiarity between them that bade ill.
"My King, there are but two armies that face you. I took some small time, while I made my slow way back from Constantinople, to look upon the doings of your enemies. The movement of the Roman fleet to Trabzon on the Sea of Darkness is but a feint. The whole of the enemies' strength is thrown from Tarsus..."
The tiny depiction of a town on the plain of Cilicia, at the join of the Levantine and Asian coast, burst into a green flame.
"...east, to Tauris, in the passes of Albania." The green flame licked right, eastward, across the northern fringe of the plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates, through high mountains and north, curling, into a broad valley dominated by a lake of blue and white.
"He strikes against Tauris and the Boar is already there. Baraz will have great joy of that meeting..."
Chrosoes stared up at the disk of the world, now lit by the line of flickering green flame.
"The Roman does not seek battle," the King of Kings growled, "he seeks to break into the highlands of Media and destroy the lands that have always been the backbone of the Empire. Wretched Roman! He fights us like a tax collector. A base man, an honorless man..."
Lord Dahak inclined his head, smiling at the rage swirling in the mind of the King of Kings. He tucked his hands into the folds of his robe and stood at ease.
Chrosoes turned to his ally. "Could you transport a single man the length of the Empire in a day?"
"Of course, my King. Is it not the least of my talents?"
The King glanced out into the darkened garden, then back to Lord Dahak.
"Find the Boar at Tauris; he is to send his Immortals south to meet me and the army that Gundarnasp is raising. Tell him to place the defense of the city in able hands—it must withstand the Romans for at least a month! Take him, then, to Shahin in the south. The Boar must find the army of the desert tribes and destroy it. Then he must return to me in all haste. Shahin's army must press on Egypt as soon as possible once the whore Queen is dead. Aid him if you can, to a swift conclusion."
Dahak bowed again, his features calm and composed. "As you say, my King, it will be done."
The green fire faded from the map, and the shadows slithered out of the room as Dahak glided down the steps and out into the darkness under the arches. Siroes ventured to peer over the edge of the couch just in time to see the pitch-black night in the garden shift and fold around the wizard before it lifted and the sound of mammoth wings echoed from the tiles. The moon shone through then and gleamed from the marble floor. The Prince slumped back down, breathing at last. On the platform, Chrosoes looked one last time upon the disk of the world and then walked out, his boots making a hollow sound on the floor.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The Road to Tauris
Dwyrin drank thirstily from the waterskin, his parched throat eager to drain every last drop from the sweating leather bag. When he wiped his lips, his hand came away caked with yellow dust. He spat and handed the bag off to Eric, who was sitting on the tumbled pile of stones below him. The German was almost unrecognizable under a thick coating of the same clinging yellow dust that afflicted Dwyrin. Eric nodded his thanks from under a broad-brimmed hat and turned the skin up to drink from it as well. Dwyrin rubbed his nose, red and peeling again from the unrelenting sun.
Below the cairn of rocks upon which they sat, the road up the valley of the Rawanduz echoed to the tramp of tens of thousands of booted feet. From his vantage, Dwyrin could see the long glittering steel snake that wound up the side of the valley, stretching back—it seemed—to the broad plain of dried mud and grass that had deposited so much of itself on the two boys. Dwyrin had heard that the combined armies of the two Empires numbered sixty thousand men, a number larger than he could conceive. They seemed endless, a constant stream of cohorts and banda and alae that tramped past below the outcropping and its stacked flat stones. A Legion century swung past, their shields and packs slung over their backs, their helmets hanging from straps, feet moving in unison like a steel millipede.
"Oh, there was a birdie with a yellow bill," they sang in deep voices as they marched past, "it sat upon my windowsill..."
These men were clean-shaven and their gear was in good order, their shirts of mail glittering in the hot sun. Nearly all wore the same kind of woven hat that Eric always carried with him, to give a little shade. The spears they carried on their shoulders danced past, a forest of iron reeds. Their hobnailed boots clattered against the flinty stones of the roadway. A stocky man with short white hair paced them at the rear, his bull-roar of a voice carrying over even the massed noise of a hundred men. He glared at Dwyrin and Eric as he passed but made no move to disturb them.
Wagons followed the Western troops, towed by oxen and mules, filled with rolls of canvas and lengths of wood. The drovers walked at the head of the lead teams, the grade too steep to put any more weight in the bed of the wagons. Above the road, a long tumbled slope of sandstone scree rose up, merging with the vast bulk of the mountain that towered over the valley. Dwyrin turned, shading his eyes against the fierce sun. The road continued up, into a vast wall of mountains capped with snow and ice. Beyond those peaks, he knew, lay Persia itself.
A fist rapped his ear and he cursed at the sharp pain. Zoë stood over him, staring down at the two boys with slitted dark eyes. "Get up, you lazy brats. We're to move forward to the next station."
Dwyrin squinted up at her; she was only a dark shape silhouetted against the sun. The Syrian girl continued to ride him hard, though she no longer showed him the fierce anger she had before. She was only a year older than he was at the most, but he did not dare question her authority. Her fists and lightning-quick reflexes in the hidden world were more than a match for his. Too, she had been taking more pains with him of late, showing him the weave and the other exercises that she and Eric and Odenathus took for granted.
He had realized, to his dismay, that his training at the school had been cut short drastically, leaving him with only the rudiments of the necessary education. In its place he had a scattering of meditations and invocations that must be, had to be, the province of more experienced masters of the art. Dwyrin felt a hollowness in his chest; the skills he did possess were tremendously dangerous, as his period of hallucinations had shown.
"Come on, barbarian." She held out her hand, brown and strong. He took it and she grunted, pulling him up onto the top of the cairn. Eric scrambled up behind him, puffing at the effort. Weeks of hard labor and constant physical abuse had not improved the pudgy German's physique. Odenathus, who was uncoiling himself from a seated position on the rocks, Zoë, and Dwyrin had all become wiry and st
ronger than Dwyrin had expected. He slapped his thigh, feeling it hard and corded like a carved log. He could barely recall the softness of his life at the school.
Dwyrin followed Zoë down the slope, his eyes drawn to the sway of her long hair, braided into three dark ropes that lay back over her bag and bedroll. There was a fierce beauty about the girl that reminded him very much of his sisters back home. He tripped on a slab of rock and skidded down the slope. Luckily he crashed into a solid boulder within feet of falling. He got up, brushing more dirt off of him. Zoë had stopped and was staring at him.
"I'm fine," he said, picking up his hat.
"Good," she said, "you go first. And run—we have to take up the next watch in twenty grains." She did not smile, but Dwyrin flushed—he knew that she knew he had been paying more attention to the shape of her ankles than where he was going. He slid the rest of the way down to the edge of the road. A mass of archers in pale-yellow cloaks and copper arm bracelets were marching past, the tramp of their feet raising a cloud of more dust around them. Dwyrin shrugged his pack tighter on his back and then jogged up the road, keeping to the outer edge where there was a little clear space. His calves reminded him that he had run the day before, but he ignored it. Zoë was right behind him.
—|—
At night they crowded around a tiny fire, barely kindling smoking down to coals. Eric had gone down to where the cooks had made fires in iron baskets and come back with fresh bread. Dwyrin tore into the partially burned loaf with strong teeth. Until they had set out on this march, he had not realized how good bread could taste when you only got it every three days. Clouds had come up, covering the stars and it was cold. Zoë, wedged in next to him and Odenathus, poked at a battered iron pot sitting in the embers with a stick.
"Not ready yet," Odenathus muttered, his face half covered with a woolen scarf. "Those yellow beans need to cook for at least two glasses. Otherwise you'll get no sleep."
Zoë ignored him and continued to stir the beans. When the army had halted an hour before sunset, she had told off Dwyrin and Eric to find some spot out of the way of the mass of the other regiments and pitch their tents. Then she had taken her bow and jogged off into the mountain canyons. The army was sprawled along a narrow tongue of rising land in a barren valley. In the next days they would cross the high pass and enter Persia. But now, above the last scraggly trees, they rested in a wasteland of huge boulders and cracked stone. Snow lay in the shadow of the larger stones and the mountain peaks that ringed the valley held eternal caps of ice.
Dwyrin and Eric had scavenged for heavy stones to hold down the ropes of the tent and had looked for a sheltered spot between the two monoliths. The rest of the army, particularly the cohorts of the Western Emperor, had taken the flatter ground by the sides of the narrow track. The sun was setting as the legionnaires began cutting a shallow ditch in the hard ground and raising the rough outline of a travel camp.
Shaking his head, Dwyrin had climbed among the boulders and slabs of stone until he found an alcove with fire markings on the southern wall. He, Eric, and Odenathus had dragged their gear from the wagons up there and set up camp. The looming rocks, brittle and worn by the caress of winter, made a fine windbreak. The army of the Eastern Emperor was still staggering into the valley and falling asleep wherever they found themselves.
"What do you think will happen when we come to battle?" Dwyrin said, after washing the grit of the bread from his mouth with a draft of sour wine. "It seems like we are two different armies, cast together by mischance."
Zoë snorted, peering at the wild onions and dried apricots she had mixed in with the yellow beans. She looked up, catching his eye, her own reflecting the red gleam of the coals. "If you can learn to work with us in the hidden world, barbarian, then the two armies can fight as one."
Eric choked with laughter and Odenathus leaned over to thump him hard on his back. Dwyrin made a face at him and passed the acetum over. The Northerner took two long swallows and breathed easier.
"Five-leader, I'm serious!" Dwyrin spread his hand in dismay. "You see how they march—a shambling disaster. Stopping and starting as they please, fouling the water of any river we cross, a mob of disorganized bands and personal retinues."
"They do lack discipline," Odenathus said from the other side of the fire. "But they are here, and they will fight. The Legions of the West are the core, though. If they stand firm, we will have victory."
"Nicely quoted." Zoë sniffed. "I think these beans are done. Give me your bowls."
A glass after dark, Zoë had appeared at the edge of their camp, a sour look on her face. The sky behind her was lit by the fitful glow of the encamped army. She still had her bow, but no game, only some gathered herbs and onions. She had been pleased that Dwyrin had found kindling, for they had not had a chance to gather wood on the lower slopes. Her quiet word of thanks had lifted his spirits tremendously, though it was no stretch for him to ferret out the hidden stockpile left by whomever had been using the alcove as a camp. Any shepherd at home would have done the same.
The beans were sour and tough, but to Dwyrin they tasted divine after a long day of trudging up the steep road. Salt pork and mutton also paled after weeks on the march. He crushed an onion and felt its sting on his tongue. It felt good to be here, with his companions, around the fire under the dark sky with weary feet.
"The first battle will be the test," Zoë said, cleaning out her bowl with a long finger. "If someone panics and runs, or we lose the barbarians to a stratagem, that will put paid to us. But if we can win one with this circus, we'll be invincible."
Eric rattled the pot, looking for more scraps. It was empty. He frowned and put it down. "What will we do? I mean—we're the weakest five in the Ars Magica—will they have us do anything? I don't want to hold horses again..."
"No," Zoë said, "we'll be in front. Colonna tipped me off yesterday. The tribune has decided to put us up with the skirmishers. We run forward with the slingers and archers and harass the enemy lines while they deploy. He thinks that we can spook the enemy while they're still getting their thumbs out. Oh, we look for elephants too." Dwyrin stole a glance at Odenathus, who had turned quite grim at this news. Zoë did not seem happy either, staring moodily into the fire. Ramifications tumbled around in Dwyrin's thoughts until some of them slid queasily together. "Ah," he said tentatively, "that would mean that we'd draw the attention of the other side's heavy hitters first, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," Zoë said, her full lips twisted into a grimace something like a smile. "We're bait for the big fish. As a condolence, if they slam us down, the tribune promises to make them pay a heavy man-price for us."
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The Skies Over Syria Magna
Shahr-Baraz shouted aloud in joy, though his words were instantly torn away by shrieking wind. He strained against the heavy leather straps that bound him to the back of the byakhee, leaning forward into the wall of wind that howled around him. Ahead of him, also strapped into a web of leather and metal clasps, Lord Dahak grimaced at the foolishness of men. The sorcerer leaned to the left and blue-black light flickered around his hands, driving the vast creature to wing over and sweep at tremendous speed across the face of the world.
Baraz looked down as the creature tilted, its bifurcated wings a blur under the light of the moon. Vast expanses of empty desert rushed past below them, though he could see, to the north, a dim cluster of lights that must be the cities of men. The land far below was marked by long sinuous silver trails, like the backs of thousands of snakes. They passed over a wide expanse of mottled black hills, then a scattering of tiny lights.
We land soon, echoed the bone-brittle voice of the sorcerer in his mind. The valley of the Orontes lies just ahead.
Baraz peered forward, leaning close over the shoulders of Lord Dahak. Suddenly they passed over a city—no more than a crowd of moth-lights under the moon and the glint of a lake lay off to the southwest. Baraz scanned the rushing countryside under them, looking for
any sign...
There! He exulted at the sight—a great camp of men, lit by hundreds of fires. Tents glowed from lanterns and long lines of torches marked the streets of the encampment. Then the creature rushed on and the camp fell away behind them and they passed over another range of hills, dark and brooding in the night. Baraz stared back, over the long snakelike tail and maneuvering wings.
What? Shouldn't we have landed?
He turned to look forward again and the creature spread its great wings and slewed into a corkscrew dive. The barren top of a tall hill lay below them. There was a blast of air that scattered leaves and dust in a wide pall, and it landed delicately on long thin feet. The vast creature danced a little to the side, folding mountainous wings back against its rugose, tentacular body.
Lord Dahak relaxed a little in the harness and looked back over his shoulder at his companion. Baraz was already unfastening the buckles that held him into the framework. The big man threw a heavy bag over his shoulder and tossed down two more wicker baskets that had been secured behind him. The sorcerer followed suit, though with less eagerness, his hands shaking a little with exhaustion. The big man slid down the hairy flank and thumped heavily to the ground. Then he reached up and dragged down a bundle of weapons that he had been sitting on. Baraz paused.
"Lord Dahak, why are you unbelting yourself?" His voice was puzzled.
Lord Dahak sighed and rose up to stand on the enormous shoulder of the beast. Under him, it quivered slightly, feeling the lessening of his control. He was weary from the effort of maintaining his mastery over the promethean thing and resigned himself to climbing down to the ground, even as Baraz had done.
"Get back," he snapped at the Persian. "It will make a great wind when it goes."
The mammoth wings unfurled and blotted out the stars and the moon. A wind rose, like a gale, and lashed the two men with small stones and twigs from the trees that surrounded the top of the hill. The thing gave a mournful call, like an unguessably vast hound, and vaulted into the air. The hilltop shook with the pressure of its flight, and then it was gone, swallowed by the darkness between the stars. Baraz picked himself up off the ground and spat out a mouthful of sand.
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