The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  Thyatis turned back to the Emperor of the West. He was smiling lopsidedly, his hair cropped shorter than she remembered. His armor was immaculate, the gilded eagle emblazoned on the front glittering in the sun. Germans with great swords and suspicious eyes crowded behind him. He reached out a gloved hand and wiped some of the grime from the side of her face.

  "I did not think to see you again, Clodia. I am sorry about your men. Get cleaned up and a messenger will come and fetch you to my tent. We have things to discuss."

  The Western Emperor surveyed Nikos and Jusuf and Dahvos. They looked worse than Thyatis, ground down and exhausted from fifteen hours of battle. Nikos had taken an arrow in the arm and was nursing a slowly clotting wound. The Bulgars looked like they had crawled out of a muddy sewer behind a butcher's shop. Dahvos looked particularly good; his right eye was oozing yellow pus from between crude stitches.

  "Centurion!" Galen shouted back through the hovering ranks of his guardsmen. "Take these men to the baths and then the healer. See that they are well treated."

  Thyatis sagged into the wall, and the Emperor was there, holding her up.

  "I am very proud," he said quietly to her. "I will not forget your service."

  The gruff-voiced centurion bustled up with several men in tow. Thyatis allowed herself to be led away, through the shattered gates and across the bridge. It was fouled with reddish-brown mud that clung to their boots, and fogs and mists still hung over the river. Behind her parts of the city were still burning, filling the sky with trails of black smoke.

  —|—

  Steam hissed out of a copper pipe, filling the wooden bathhouse with a delicious fog. Thyatis sank into the water with a groan of pure pleasure. A Greek manservant stood by, carrying a kettle filled with hot water. She motioned for him to add more to the tub. He tipped the kettle and very hot water joined the steaming water in the wooden-sided bath. She closed her eyes and submerged, luxuriating in the clean water. The manservant left the kettle and some soap behind, along with a curved bronze strigil. She spent an hour in the bath, scraping herself clean.

  There were towels too, though the cotton weave was a little bare. It did not matter to her; to be clean and have her hair free of grease for once was reward enough. She sat in the little wooden room for a long time, toying with the strigil and thinking of the dead. In the steaming room, no one could tell, should they enter, that she was crying.

  Finally there was a polite knock on the door and Thyatis looked up. She sniffled and blew her nose, then scrubbed her face vigorously with the towel.

  "Come in," she said, wrapping the towel around her thighs.

  Jusuf ducked into the room, then saw her, naked from the waist up, and blushed a bright red.

  "Pardon." He gasped and stepped back out hastily, closing the door. Outside he slumped back against the wall of the bath, his breath a white puff in the chilly air. He closed his eyes, still flushed with the sight of Thyatis almost naked, and then they snapped open again. He ground his fist into the wooden planks of the wall. Whenever he closed his eyes she was there, her breasts dewed with steam, rich red-gold hair tumbling around her pale freckled shoulders.

  "Well?" Thyatis' voice was querulous from inside the bathhouse. "What is it?"

  "I'm sorry, my lady, I had no idea you were naked. My apologies for barging in."

  Thyatis laughed and poked her head out of the door. Her hair, undone, fell in a long cascade almost to the ground. In the cold air, it began to steam and wisps of white vapor curled up around her. "I'm not naked," she said, still laughing, "I have a towel on."

  Jusuf looked away, out over the canvas awnings and tent poles. The trees the camp was set among were beginning to turn color. Soon snow would fill the mountain passes. "My lady, among my people it is customary for women to remain fully clothed unless in the presence of their husband. I meant no disrespect."

  Thyatis frowned and closed the door. Her good humor was fading slightly in the face of this barbarian's peculiar customs. "You'll have to wait, then, until I'm properly dressed. Tell me. Did they fix Dahvos' eye?"

  Jusuf swallowed and turned to face the wall, arms outstretched, palms flat against it.

  "Yes," he said, "they fixed his eye, he can see out of it again. He says that it's blurry, but he'll still be a whole man. He can still... he's fine. The others are gating now, and everyone we could find is fine. There's only one man still unaccounted for. My lady, I don't..."

  Thyatis stepped out of the bathhouse; her hair tied back with a green ribbon, in dark-gray leggings with laced-up leather boots and a heavy woolen shirt dyed a cobalt blue. Her belt, sword, sheath, and knife hung over one shoulder. She eyed him from under her bangs while she finished tying her Hair back. "Who is missing, Jusuf?"

  He turned, seeing her face set and grim. "Sahul is gone, my lady. I can't find him anywhere. No body, nothing. He always stays with us, save if he needs to go—then he would tell at least me! Or Dahvos—someone!"

  Thyatis nodded, her face a mask, but she was stunned. The thought of the quiet older brother gone was numbing. He was so reliable that she had begun to take him for granted. "He was with you at the northern gate? When did you see him last?"

  Jusuf spread his hands, shaking his head. "I don't know. We attacked the gate, and then it was dark and we were fighting... I can't get anything out of the Armenians either. Bagratuni just shakes his head and says it's the fate of battle."

  Thyatis gripped the young man by the shoulder and met his gaze. "Jusuf, I will believe that Sahul is dead when you bring his corpse before me, cold and stiff. Until then, at least in my mind, he lives and will be with us. He probably met some girl..."

  The Khazar nodded, staring at the ground. Thyatis cuffed lightly him on the side of the head and pinched his ear.

  "Go," she said. "Find any of the rest of our band of brothers and make sure they're at our tents in a glass. I'm off to see the quartermaster about horses and equipment. Oh, and if you see a messenger from the Augustus, send him on after me."

  She stared after him as he made his way along the muddy path between the tents. She thought of her own brothers, but then pushed the memory away. That was too painful. She sighed and snugged the weapons belt around her waist and made sure that nothing was loose. Around her, the camp was gray and the trees seemed shrunken with the onset of winter.

  —|—

  "Centurion. Please, sit." It was well past midnight, and Marcus Galen Atreus had finally put aside the piles of wax tablets and papyrus scrolls that filled his days. Thyatis looked around and, at the nod of the Emperor, cleared off a winged wooden stool and sat down. She had changed into a plainer tunic and had carefully restrained all of her hair. Galen looked her over; the girl he had sent out from Constantinople on a wild throw of the dice had come back to him leaner and grimmer.

  Almost a woman, he thought, but one out of legend... a Roman Boudicca, standing triumphant in the back of a war chariot, her armor flashing in the sun.

  Still, even knowing that she was his tool, a dart to be thrown at the heart of the enemy, he still felt a queasy reluctance to use her. It seemed dreadfully foreign to assign a woman the rights of men—to bear arms in the service of the state—even, to use a damning word—oriental.

  "This Prince of the city, he speaks well of you. He was surprised to see a woman in arms for the Empire. He calls you—what is it?—ah, he calls you Diana the Huntress."

  Thyatis smiled politely. The harried general she had last seen in the drafty palace room in Constantinople was gone, replaced by a languid man in pale robes, at ease in his tent. Something about Galen had changed, she thought. He seemed more Imperial somehow, a sense of power was apparent around him. Odd, that it would be so, here in the back end of the world, but perhaps victory brought such changes. She only felt drained and worn out.

  "That was very good work that you did. Heraclius did not believe that it could be done—it cost his purse ten thousand denarii on a foolish bet! A pity that so many of your Romans were kill
ed. But... you seem to have found new men to replace them. These Bulgars—fierce as Sarmatians, they say. Do you trust them?"

  Thyatis' eyes narrowed. The Emperor was fishing for something. "I have trusted them with my life, Augustus Caesar. They did not fail me, and they paid in blood for that service. Yes, I trust them."

  Galen nodded and idly rubbed his ear. He thought for a while, staring off into one corner of the field tent he was living in. He turned back to her, and the Imperial presence was gone. "Can you do it again?" His voice was honest, without the echo of a disputation in the Forum. "Can you take a band of men into hostile lands again and do what you have done here?"

  Thyatis stiffened in her chair, and her head turned a little to the side as her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, Augustus Caesar? You have more work for me?"

  Galen nodded ruefully.

  "There will always be work for you," he said with a wan smile. "You are a rare leader, even among men. If I have you in my quiver, should I not put you to the bow and loose? The Easterners are still astounded at my daring and at your success. Do you know, they still think you are a man? It surpasses their comprehension for you to be a woman! Fools."

  Thyatis grinned a little. Then she frowned, considering what he had said. "Augustus Caesar, I am a soldier, you are my commander. Command me. It is my honor to obey. Those men who followed me from Rome will follow me still—the others? I cannot say. I will put it to them, but whether they come or go? That is their decision."

  Galen pursed his lips in consideration, but then rose and walked to the worktable he inflicted upon his household servants to carry from Rome to the Eastern capital to Tarsus to here. It disassembled into manageable pieces and was cunningly fitted together with wooden pegs. He ran a finger across the worn varnish on the top. Once it had been in his father's study, in Narbo, when he had been a child. When Galen had left Hispania with his Legions to fight against the pretenders and to claim the purple for himself, it had traveled with him. For the last decade, the office in the Palatine had housed it, and now it was here. He pushed aside a pile of tablets and dragged a parchment map up from under the other debris on the table.

  "See here, Centurion, we are at Tauris, in these mountains..." His finger began to trace a path on the map. Thyatis came to his shoulder and leaned over the table herself, listening to him speak, following the finger. "And here, here is Persia proper. Our intent now is to move north into the valley of the Kerenos River, which runs from these mountains down to the Khazar Sea—the Mare Caspium—and join the army of the Great Khan Ziebil."

  The Mare Caspium was a large oblong of blue, slanting from north west to south east. The map showed a rampart of mountains rising at its southern end.

  "There is a pass," Galen continued, his forefinger resting among those mountains, "through what the Persians call the El'Burz, and beyond it the highlands of Parthia. These lands are rich beyond counting—the heartland of the Sassanid realm. With our combined army—Roman and Khazar—we will wreak great havoc upon those lands."

  Thyatis looked up, seeing a grim smile on the face of the Emperor.

  "No Roman army has ever penetrated into Parthia itself," he said, answering her unspoken question. "It has always been their surety, their fortress we could not breach. It is the purpose of this campaign, but the prize—ah, the prize—is Ctesiphon."

  His hand drew her eye back west, and south, across the mountains that bounded the land of the Two Rivers and the sweep of the plain of Mesopotamia. Hundreds of small notations marked cities, canals, roads. At the south, where the Euphrates and the Tigris drew together, almost touching, was a golden symbol.

  "The capital of Persia. The residence of Chrosoes, King of Kings, regnum parthorum. The heart of his realm. A city of nearly a million people, housing all the mechanism and artifice of government. This is your target, if I am to draw you to the bow again."

  Thyatis measured the distances on the map. It was a long way to the enemy capital. "And you desire that I deliver it to you, a neat package wrapped with twine?"

  "No," Galen said, shaking his head, his eyes dark with worry. "For all its importance, Ctesiphon is not well defended. Rome has higher walls and it is nothing to match the defiance of Constantinople. It is a city that can be defended only by a field army. If we reach it, it will be ours. I want you there, within the city, in secret, when our armies arrive—as insurance."

  He paused, his gaze settling upon her. Thyatis straightened up. There was some odd emotion behind the eyes of the Emperor. After a time he sighed and looked down at the map again. "You are well capable of seizing an opportunity, should it present itself. You cannot do that if you do not know what an opportunity is. This is little known, centurion, but the first wife of the King of Kings, Chrosoes, was a Roman princess—Maria, daughter of Emperor Maurice of the East. Yes, Maurice who was murdered by the usurper Phocas, whom Heraclius then slew. The sons of Chrosoes are claimants to the throne of the Eastern Empire. Indeed"—the Emperor of the West stopped and drew a breath—"with a better claim than Heraclius himself, should the matter be argued in the court of law."

  Thyatis let out a low, soft whistle. Then she clasped her hands behind her back and waited.

  Galen rolled the map back up and slid it into the tube of ivory. He met her eyes with a level gaze.

  "Law has nothing to do with this," he said. "This is a matter of strength and the contest between empires. We will win, because our victory means peace over the whole of the world. I want you, and your men, in Ctesiphon when our armies arrive. If fortune smiles, I want you to take any advantage offered to ensure that the children of the Princess Maria either"—he paused—"do not survive the fall of the city or come into my protection."

  Thyatis felt a chill pass over her. A reckless, political mission with almost no chance of success. Death seemed to hover at her shoulder, whispering in her ear. The Emperor looked away.

  "Ah... Augustus, do you mean that the children are not to fall into the hands of the Eastern Emperor or his agents?"

  "Yes," he said, still looking away. "In my hands, or none."

  "Very well." Her response was toneless and clipped short.

  Galen turned back to her, his eyes haunted.

  "We will reach Ctesiphon," he said in a low voice. "I will look for you in the ruins."

  —|—

  Thyatis sat on a boulder, huge and gray, half covered with dark-green lichen. Pale morning sunlight fell across her, making her red-gold hair glow. Below her, below the huge trees that surrounded the boulder and its clearing, there was a rumbling sound. The Roman army was crossing the bridge at Tauris, heading north with a long train of wagons. Between the giant boles of the trees, she could see regiments passing up the road to the Araxes and the north. The sun, even through the scudding clouds, sparkled on their spear points and gleamed from their helmets. Behind her a roan horse cropped contentedly on the little white and yellow flowers that grew in the clearing. Among the trees, uphill, Nikos and her men were sitting on a mossy slope, sharpening new weapons or repairing armor or mending clothes.

  She looked back down, to the valley. The outline of the great camp was still visible, but all of the tents were gone; even the bathhouse had been disassembled and the great copper kettles loaded up on to wagons. She picked at the lacing on her leather leggings. One of the laces made a corner, and she absently played with it, rubbing her forefinger over the sharp edge. The clip-clop sound of a horse came through the dim greenness under the trees. Dahvos, his eye still covered with a patch, rode up.

  The young Bulgar looked older, much older than the day Thyatis had found him and his brothers hiding in a thicket. His face was still drawn with the memory of pain, though the wound to his eye would not disfigure him. He seemed to have grown within himself. His armor, a shirt of iron scales chased with silver and cunningly worked to fit like a skin to his broad chest, sat easily on his shoulders. The horse followed his lead, and his eyes were wary, watching the forest.

  Thyatis sighed an
d raised her hand in greeting.

  Dahvos pulled up close, looking up at her perched on the boulder. He wore fine kid leather gloves and had acquired a heavy furred cape with a hood to go with the armor and the profusion of weapons slung on the saddle of his horse. His long legs were wrapped in dark-green woolen pants stitched with burgundy thread. He was wearing his hair in a long braid. His face was troubled. "My lady."

  "Lord Dahvos," Thyatis said, her expression sad. "Is there news of your brother?"

  Dahvos shook his head, looking away. Thyatis noted that his jaw was clenched.

  "And you? North with the army to meet the Khazars?"

  He looked back, his eyes filled with pain and an unexpected anger.

  "Yes, my lady." He sighed ruefully. "My people think that I've done well enough to command for 'real' with the host of the Khagan Ziebil. An umen of ten thousand lancers is my reward for seeing half of my friends die."

  He turned in the saddle and pointed down at the long lines of spearmen and archers and horsemen crossing the river. "We all go north, to the Araxes, and then down the white river to the land of Albania on the shores of the Mare Caspium. There Ziebil will be waiting and the armies of the People."

  He looked up at the sky, only a narrow strip of washed-out blue peeking through the green roof overhead. "Winter is close. Both armies may winter in rich Albania. In the spring, Rome and Khazar both can strike south, into the Persian highlands. A daring campaign..."

  Thyatis stood up, brushing her hands off on her woolen leggings. She stared down at the young man on his swift horse. "Command will suit you well, Dahvos. Be well. If, by chance, you should find your brother, tell him that he owes me for giving me such a fright as to think him dead. We must go too, and we will see you in the spring." Her lips quirked into half a smile.

  Dahvos smiled back. "Ha! By the time that we reach Ctesiphon, you will have torn down the Empire of Sassan and made yourself a Queen on Chrosoes' throne! Take care of my brother. I have only four left now and would begrudge another to the Crow Goddess."