The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  "Prepare the others," she said to Jusuf, handing him the bag of iron rods and the mallet. "If you think about it, my fine Bulgar friend, we can use these pylons for more than just this one purpose."

  Jusuf stared at her in something verging on horror. "We're going to move them again after this?" His whisper climbed near to a shout.

  Thyatis gave him a look that could have melted bronze and pointed off down the sewer.

  He shrugged and splashed away into the fetid darkness to prepare the other nine logs that had been pushed in darkness across the river and dragged by the Bulgars up through the water gate of the city and into the sewers. The creaking sound continued to echo above, and Thyatis began to worry that the sound of the pulleys could be heard in the temple. Her fingers itched for the hilt of her sword, but it was in a bundle with her other clothes up at the top of the shaft.

  There was a noise above her, and she suddenly skipped out of the way as a cloth bag filled with sand dropped out of the darkness and splashed into the water. Thyatis cursed and wiped slime off her face.

  "Quick on the hook," she said, reaching up to grab the rope. It quivered under her fingers, still stretched taut. "Wait for it!" The other two men had splashed forward and grabbed the top of the bag, where a hook was snagged into the rope bag that surrounded the cloth. "There!"

  The tension slackened on the rope and the two men were quick to slip the hook out. They immediately dragged the bag, which was soaking with water at a terrific rate, upstream. With the hook gone, the end of the bag spilled open and sand poured out to vanish in the current of the tunnel. Thyatis felt the sand brush against her ankles as it whipped past.

  Better than rats gnawing, she thought. She let go of the rope and hoped that Bagratuni's man at the top thought to let the rope with the collar down slowly, or she'd be brained as it fell sixty feet down the shaft. A moment later it descended jerkily and she grabbed it.

  "Bring the next," she whispered. Another log, already sporting the cross of iron rods, appeared out of the darkness on the shoulders of the next three men. "Closer," she said, holding out the collar. The numbness in her feet crept higher into her thighs.

  —|—

  "Any sign?" Thyatis spoke softly, though the black veil wrapped around her face muffled her voice. Sahul, who was crouching next to her on the rooftop, shook his head. The Roman woman grimaced and eased back from the lip. The street below was quiet and deserted. Two of Bagratuni's nephews had run down it a few minutes before and had doused the lanterns halfway down the street. Most of the street was pitch black. Thyatis sighed and squared her shoulders. She beckoned across the dark rooftop for Jusuf and Bagratuni. They crawled quietly over to her and Sahul.

  There was no moon, and the sky was clear, showing only a vast expanse of glittering diamonds and twinkling emeralds. On the rooftop it was almost impossible to see the men crouched on it, dressed in dark clothing and their faces wrapped in dark gauze. Only their hands betrayed them, pale blobs in the darkness. The Armenians had smeared soot on their hands as well.

  It was very quiet on the rooftop, and Thyatis could hear the chanting from the ceremonies in the Temple of the Flame clearly. Earlier she had watched nearly two hundred Persian notables and their wives, concubines, and children file into the temple. The snap and roar of the great fire on the altar at the center of the temple echoed out of the little windows set high into the walls of the church. Her squad leaders crouched in a circle in front of her, only their eyes showing.

  "Anagathios," she whispered, "has not returned from his foray into the old palace. There has been no sign that he has been discovered, so either the Persians are cleverer than I think or something has happened to hold him up. Tonight is our best chance, so we're going to go ahead."

  Jusuf shook his head in dismay, but stopped when Thyatis glared at him.

  She turned to Sahul. "Is the first pylon complete?"

  The elderly Bulgar nodded and rolled up onto the balls of his feet, his fingertips resting on the roof tiles.

  "Good," she said, "send it forward."

  Sahul scuttled away across the rooftop, keeping to the trail of blankets that had been laid out to muffle the sounds of men moving on the plaster roof. He reached the men at the first log and signed that they should move forward. At the edge of the roof, two men who had been waiting patiently for the "go" signal swung up a heavy frame of wood with a half circle cut out of the top. The man on the left reached into a waxed leather bucket at his side and scooped a huge glob of grease out. He smeared this around the inner part of the half circle. While he prepared the guide, a team of twelve men had lifted up the first pylon from the rooftop. Sahul moved along the thirty-foot length of the pylon, checking to see that the iron rods securely fastened each joint.

  The pylon had been hauled up from the sewers in eight-foot-long sections and then slotted together on the rooftop only minutes before. Each cross-section had been cut in such a way that it slotted into the cross-section on another log. The rods had then been driven into the socket holes with padded mallets, forming a joining cross-brace. Thyatis swore that the logs, cut of average-quality cedar, would hold the weight of a man. Sahul was not so sure, but then he didn't think that they could have hauled ten logs into a hostile city and assembled them on the roof of a fire-temple without discovery either.

  The lead end of the pylon slid into the brace guide and slithered across the grease. At the back of the pylon, a metal ring had been screwed into the end of the last pole. Sahul held his hand up to halt the forward movement of the pylon while two of the Bulgars tied two heavy ropes to the ring. The ropes ran down from the end of the pylon to another heavier ring that had been drilled into the plaster of the rooftop.

  This, from Thyatis' viewpoint, had been the most dangerous part of the operation. The heavy ring was screwed into a foot-thick roof beam under the plaster. It had taken two nights of careful work to bore into the beam and set it without alerting the priests in the temple below. Still, without the anchor, maintaining control over the pylon would be impossible. Sahul, seeing that the ropes were secured and all personnel on the rooftop, who were not already holding up the pylon or manning the guide, were in position on the anchor ropes, signed to begin running the pylon out.

  The man at the wooden guide raised his hand, and the pylon slid out through it three feet. He dropped his hand and the pylon halted. The second man reached down into a large wicker basket by his side and took out an eleven-inch-long wooden peg with his left hand. His right hand already held another mallet, this one with a very well padded head on it. He slid the peg into a hole bored in the side of the log and drove it home with one sharp rap of the mallet.

  The first man scanned the street below, and everyone paused, listening. The chanting from the fire temple continued, rising and falling in pitch. No one moved in the old palace or on the street. The guide man raised his hand and opened his fist. The men on the pylon spun the pylon a half turn. The man with the mallet drove a second peg in, offset six inches from the first.

  Pegs were driven into the pylon at two-foot intervals. From her position at the end of the pylon, with half an ear cocked for the sound of discovery, Thyatis worried the grains of sand in the hourglass away. The pylon was thirty feet long, needing thirty pegs. It took a half-grain to rotate the pylon, drive a peg, rotate it back, and advance it another three feet. Fifteen grains dripped past with infinite slowness. She had thought at first to have the guide frame possess a slot, to allow the pegs to be driven in during the assembly of the pylon. Efforts to build a frame strong enough had failed, so she sweated out the fifteen grains. It seemed to take forever.

  As the pylon slid out over the street, each man carrying it trotted back on the trail of blankets to the anchor ropes as his section disappeared through the guide. Ten feet of the back of the pylon would remain on the higher roof end, just long enough to allow the anchor ropes to guide it down. Thyatis moved to the front of the roof, next to the guide. The pylon had begun to wobble as it reac
hed farther and farther out over the street. The end of the pylon began to flex back and forth in a semicircle. Thyatis held her breath. Behind her, nearly all of the men were dug in on the anchor ropes, trying to keep the pylon steady. Seeing its wobble, Thyatis realized too late that she should have had anchor ropes on the sides of the pylon as well as the back end. Too late now, she thought. The pylon slithered to one side and the guide frame gave an alarmingly loud creak as it took the pressure.

  "Drop the pylon." She hissed at the men on the anchor ropes. "Slowly!"

  The men on the rope began to release it, an inch at a time, and the pylon dipped toward the roof garden across the street. The pylon was out far enough now that it was actually above the garden. It trembled lower and Thyatis hissed in alarm as the end suddenly angled to one side and slewed through an immature orange tree with a crash. She and the lookout stared each direction in the street in alarm. Thyatis whirled, motioning for the anchormen to lower the pylon the rest of the way.

  The pylon settled to the rooftop with a crunching sound as it crushed the little tree into kindling. Thyatis checked her sword, which was securely strapped across her back, and knelt to check the lacings on her boots. They were tight.

  "Sahul! Jusuf! Follow me with the bag." The two Bulgars trotted forward with a large hemp bag, easily big enough for a man, over their shoulders. The bag was securely wrapped with ropes, but it twitched feebly regardless. Thyatis stepped up onto the edge of the roof and waited for a moment, poised over the thirty-foot drop while the two men at the guide lashed the last set of pegs to the frame. Thyatis swallowed to clear her throat and then took a deep breath.

  She stepped out onto the pylon, her left boot on one of the pegs. The pylon tried to twist away under her, but the lashings stopped it. Her leg trembled as she balanced, but the pylon stopped turning. She hopped up, her right boot landing on a second peg, two feet ahead of the first. Behind her she heard Sahul and Jusuf hold their breath and a low exclamation from one of the men on the guide frame. Thyatis smiled, her blood afire with adrenaline. The moment of balance passed and she ran down the pylon, her feet skipping from one peg to the next. Wind rushed in her hair and then, suddenly, she stumbled off the end and had to tuck herself into a ball as she rolled up from the rooftop. The garden was alive with the smell of oranges and jasmine. Her sword rasped out of the scabbard over her back.

  On the roof of the fire temple, Sahul grunted as Jusuf strapped the bag onto his back. It was heavy, but he was strong enough to carry it. With it secured, he backed out onto the pylon and began descending it to the garden, using the pegs as hand and footholds. He prayed to his god that the pegs would not snap or the pylon give way. He would not admit it to the Roman lady, but he was squeamish where heights were concerned. His forearms and calves burned with the effort of supporting over two hundred extra pounds of weight.

  In the garden, Thyatis had run lightly to the inner wall and had peered down into the courtyard. It was a black well, unlit, seemingly bottomless. She listened carefully. No one seemed to have heard the crash of the falling pylon. She ran back to the end of the pylon in time to help Sahul and his burden off. Then she unwound a rope from her waist, tied it around the lowest pair of pegs, and strung it out as she walked backward to the inner wall. Checking the courtyard one more time, she dropped the rope over the side. It made a rustling sound as it hit below. A grain later she had swung over the side and crabbed down the inner wall. Sahul followed immediately down the rope, and then Jusuf, who had also run—cursing under his breath—down the pylon to get to the garden faster.

  On the roof of the fire temple, Bagratuni breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief. The crazy Romans had done it! When the Roman woman—Bagratuni had begun to think of her as Diana the Huntress in his private thoughts—had proposed this mad scheme, he had been utterly sure that they would all be discovered and slain within hours of beginning the attempt. Even finding the cedars and getting them into the city was a feat to boast of around the hearth fire for a generation! This, this was even bolder. He smiled in the darkness and shooed his men back to their positions on the ropes. The Bulgars had taken up watch all around them. All they had to do was wait, and hope that no priest or noble decided to take a turn under the stars on the roof of the temple.

  Thyatis crept up to the door in the far wall of the courtyard and carefully pressed her ear to it. There was a faint murmur from the heavy oaken panels, but it did not seem to be very close. Sahul and Jusuf arrived and paused, panting faintly from the effort of the last minutes. She scratched her nose and then pulled a thin, flat piece of steel out of her belt. The door was secured by what from a distance had seemed to be a heavy lock. Now she fished around in the keyhole, trying to find the mechanism. To her disgust, it had none. She pressed against the panel of the door with her shoulder and felt it give a little before stopping.

  "There's a bar on the inside," she whispered into Sahul's ear. "Be ready. If I can get it up, there will be a noise." She began probing with the steel rod at the edges of the door and in the panel, looking for a crevice. There was nothing. Thyatis cursed mentally. This was very bad. She tested the strength of the door. It was stout and they did not have time to cut the lock away.

  "Jusuf, we're not getting through this door," she said softly. "Step out and see if you can spy one of the windows on the upper floor. Maybe we can get in through one of those..." She paused, thinking she heard something, and then froze as the door rattled slightly. Sahul and Jusuf faded back, away from the door, disappearing into the gloom. Thyatis flattened herself against the wall, feeling the cold plaster surface tickle at her neck. There was a scraping sound from beyond the door and then a latch clicked. Thyatis slid the sword in her hand quietly back into its sheath and then drew a long knife.

  The door opened, spilling a pale-yellow light into the courtyard. A shadow obscured the light and then a woman in a tattered gown and headdress peered out, blinking, into the darkness. Thyatis swallowed a breath and then darted around the corner of the door. Her knife was at the woman's throat in an instant and a gloved hand over her mouth. Pretty brown eyes, edged with kohl and glittering sapphire dust, widened and the woman raised hands with long, delicate nails in surrender. Behind her Sahul and Jusuf had slid past into the room on the other side, knives in hand. The room was empty, more a hallway filled with big pottery jars than anything else. Thyatis walked forward and hooked the door closed with her foot.

  "So," she breathed, "I see you're having a fine time in the lap of luxury."

  Sahul and Jusuf turned and saw Thyatis sheath her knife. The woman shrugged and dug her fingers under the back of her hair, peeling off the heavy brown tresses with a popping sound. Anagathios shook his own hair out and stuffed the wig into a bag under his dress. Jusuf gave a soundless whistle.

  "A better-looking woman than a man," he said, his lip half curled.

  Thyatis ignored him and signed to the actor. Have you found Nikos?

  Yes, Anagathios answered. There is a cellar, with holding cells for the prisoners of the garrison commander. He's down there, but he's not alone.

  What do you mean? she answered, but the Syrian shook his head with a rueful smile.

  You'll see. What's in the bag?

  Thyatis smirked back at him. Take us to the cellar and you'll see.

  —|—

  "The gods have cursed me." Thyatis grunted as she peered around the corner of the cellar hallway. "Cells, with thirty or forty people in them. At least they're asleep—for the moment." She turned and grimaced wryly at Sahul, who was still carrying the heavy bag. "Why did the Boar have to take so many 'special' prisoners?" Jusuf refused to look at her, but Sahul swung the bag off of his back with a grateful sigh and rubbed his shoulders.

  Anagathios, she signed at the actor, who was crouched right behind her. Who are all these people?

  Locals, he gestured back, mostly hostages for the good behavior of the headmen of the town and the surrounding villages. What are we going to do?

&n
bsp; "Victory," she said aloud, "is to the bold. Forget the original plan. Jusuf, Sahul, go back up the stairs and block all of the doorways that lead into this hall or our route back to the courtyard. Then, Jusuf, you go all the way back to the fire-temple roof and tell Bagratuni that we're going to try to bring all of his relatives out. Tell him to pull the pylon back and break it down into the logs and send it down into the sewer. We're not going out that way now. Tell him that in about twenty grains, we're going to need a diversion on the other side of town, something noisy.

  "Sahul—go back to the garden and drop more ropes into the courtyard and tie them securely. Then we need more ropes for the outer wall—but not yet, not until we need them! We'll try taking everyone out that way. Anagathios, start tearing your dress into strips, each one about two feet long."

  Thyatis stood up and hitched up her belt. Sahul and Jusuf stared at her for a moment, standing there in the glow of the torches that lit the corridor, her face partially in shadow. Then they sketched a hurried bow and ran back the way they had come, their sandals slapping on the stones of the floor. Anagathios stripped down and started tearing the ragged gown into pieces.

  Thyatis crept forward, hoping against hope that no one would wake up before she was ready. The men were in a set of ceils on the left, while the women and children were opposite them on the right. Each cell was no more than a big room carved out of the thick river clay that underlaid the whole city. They were partially bricked in, with stout doors of oak with windows covered by bronze bars at each entrance. From the door, the entirety of each cell could be seen. Thyatis glided like a ghost along the front of the cells holding the men.

  Nikos was in the third cell, leaning against the wall, asleep. Thyatis snarled silently. He was really asleep, not just shamming. She knelt and cut off the tip of one of the leather thongs that bound her boots to her calf. It was a hard little nub of well-cured leather. She flicked it through the bars, and it hit Nikos in the right eye. He started and his eyes flickered open. A piece of sharpened copper was in his right hand. Warily he looked around, his eyes widening in utter surprise when he caught sight of Thyatis peering in the window. She put a finger to her lips. He nodded.