The Dance of Time b-6

by Eric Flint

  She would have liked to have Rukaiya's father remain. Under the circumstances, however, that might give rise to certain resentments.

  Ezana stayed, also. He'd begun to leave, but even before Antonina could signal him to stay, Ousanas ordered him to do so.

  Ordered him, outright. The first time he'd ever done so, in the many years the two men had known each other and worked closely together training and nurturing and protecting a young prince named Eon.

  To Antonina's relief, Ezana had not seemed to bridle at all. In fact, he seemed a bit relieved himself.

  In the short time that it took to clear the chamber, Antonina studied Ousanas. The man had seemed majestic to her for several years. Never more so than now.

  By God, this will work.

  * * *

  Once the room was empty except for the five key people-six, counting the infant-Ousanas smiled ruefully.

  "I will admit-again-that you are a genius, Antonina. This will work, I think. But. ."

  He looked at Rukaiya. She, back at him. There was sadness in both faces.

  "I am not ready for this. Not yet. Neither is she."

  There were definitely tears in Rukaiya's eyes, now. She shook her head. "No, I am not. I have. . no objection, as I said. Sooner or later, I would have had to marry again, and I can think of no one I'd prefer. But Eon is still too close."

  Ezana cleared his throat. "Yes. Of course. But I think he would be pleased, Rukaiya. And I knew him as well as any man."

  She smiled, slightly. "Oh, yes. His ghost will be pleased-but not yet."

  "It doesn't matter," Antonina said firmly. "We need to hold the wedding soon, but there is no reason you need to consummate the marriage immediately. In fact-"

  Garmat picked up the cue, seamlessly. "It would be a bad idea," he said firmly. "We will need children from this union-many children, to be blunt, to give Wahsi a host of half-brothers and sisters to help him rule, since he will have no full ones. But we don't need them right now. No one will even start thinking about opposition for at least two years."

  "More likely five-or ten," Ezana grunted. The smile that followed was a very cold sort of thing. "I can guarantee that much."

  Garmat nodded. "Actually, the danger would be for you to have a child too soon. Enough time must elapse for it to have been impossible for Eon to have been the father. Impossible. That means waiting at least a year after his death last summer."

  The relief on the faces of both Rukaiya and Ousanas was almost comical.

  "Of course," Ousanas said. "Stupid of me not to have seen it instantly. Or else-three generations from now-some over-ambitious and small-brained great-grandson of mine might start claiming he was actually the great-grandson of Eon."

  Smiling very gently now, he stepped forward and placed his hand on the baby's head. "In my safe-keeping, also."

  He straightened. "We should do more, I think. Make it impossible the other way, also. And do so in a way that is publicly obvious, even to bedouin."

  Clearly enough, his brain was back to working as well as always.

  "Yes," she said firmly. This was something that Antonina and Garmat had already decided upon. "There is no need for me to remain here, and I would very much like to see my husband again. Ousanas should go with me to India, leading whatever military force Axum can add to the war."

  She gave a quick glance at Ezana. "Except the three royal regiments, of course."

  "We'll leave two regiments in Arabia also," said Garmat. "That will be enough. The Arabs will have no problem with Antonina's decrees on the succession."

  "That will be enough," Ezana agreed. "The kingdom will be stable, and Ousanas can squeeze whatever advantage he can get for Axum from our deepened participation in the war. By the time he gets back, at least a year will have elapsed from Eon's death."

  "Rukaiya?" Antonina asked.

  "Yes. I agree." She also smiled gently. "And I will be ready, by then, for another husband."

  "Done!" Ezana boomed. He did, however-just barely-manage to restrain himself from slamming the ferrule on the stones.

  Ousanas scowled. "And, now-for the details! We'll have at least a week to squabble-more likely, two-before a suitable wedding can be organized. The first thing I want clearly established is that the royal regiments-not the otherwise-soon-to-be-impoverished mendicant family of the downtrodden angabo-have to pay for all the damage done to the floors by heavy-handed commanders."

  "Ridiculous!" boomed Ezana. "The maintenance of the palace should clearly be paid for out of the angabo's coffers."

  The spearbutt slammed the floor.

  Chapter 11

  Chabahari, in the Straits of Hormuz

  Chabahari seemed like a nightmare to Anna. When she first arrived in the town-city, now-she was mainly struck by the chaos in the place. Not so long ago, Chabahari had been a sleepy fishing village. Since the great Roman-Persian expedition led by Belisarius to invade the Malwa homeland through the Indus valley had begun, Chabahari had been transformed almost overnight into a great military staging depot. The original fishing village was now buried somewhere within a sprawling and disorganized mass of tents, pavilions, jury-rigged shacks-and, of course, the beginnings of the inevitable grandiose palaces the Persians insisted on putting anywhere that their grandees resided.

  Her first day was spent entirely in a search for the authorities in charge of the town. She had promised Dryopus she would report to those authorities as soon as she arrived.

  But the search was futile. She found the official headquarters easily enough-one of the half-built palaces being erected by the Persians. But the interior of the edifice was nothing but confusion, a mass of workmen swarming all over, being overseen by a handful of harassed-looking supervisors. Not an official was to be found anywhere, neither Persian nor Roman.

  "Try the docks," suggested the one foreman who spoke Greek and was prepared to give her a few minutes of his time. "The noble sirs complain about the noise here, and the smell everywhere else."

  The smell was atrocious. Except in the immediate vicinity of the docks-which had their own none-too-savory aroma-the entire city seemed to be immersed in a miasma made up of the combined stench of excrement, urine, sweat, food-half of it seemingly rotten-and, perhaps most of all, blood and corrupting flesh. In addition to being a staging area for the invasion, Chabahari was also a depot where badly injured soldiers were being evacuated back to their homelands.

  Those of them who survive this horrid place, Anna thought angrily, as she stalked out of the "headquarters." Illus and Cottomenes trailed behind her. Once she passed through the aivan onto the street beyond-insofar as the term "street" could be used at all for a simple space between buildings and shacks, teeming with people-she spent a moment or so looking south toward the docks.

  "What's the point?" asked Illus, echoing her thoughts. "We didn't find anyone there when we disembarked." He cast a glance at the small mound of Anna's luggage piled up next to the building. The wharf boys whom Anna had hired to carry her belongings were lounging nearby, under Abdul's watchful eye.

  "Besides," Illus continued, "it'll be almost impossible to keep your stuff from being stolen, in that madhouse down there."

  Anna sighed. She looked down at her long dress, grimacing ruefully. The lowest few inches of the once-fine fabric, already ill-used by her journey from Constantinople, was now completely ruined. And the rest of it was well on its way-as much from her own sweat as anything else. The elaborate garments of a Greek noblewoman, designed for salons in the Roman Empire's capital, were torture in this climate.

  A glimpse of passing color caught her eye. For a moment, she studied the figure of a young woman moving down the street. Some sort of Indian girl, apparently. Since the war had erupted into the Indian subcontinent, the inevitable human turbulence had thrown people of different lands into the new cauldrons of such cities as Chabahari. Mixing them up like grain caught in a thresher. Anna had noticed several Indians even in Charax.

  Mainly,
she just envied the woman's clothing, which was infinitely better suited for the climate than her own. By her senatorial family standards, of course, it was shockingly immodest. But she spent a few seconds just imagining what her bare midriff would feel like, if it didn't feel like a mass of spongy, sweaty flesh.

  Illus chuckled. "You'd peel like a grape, girl. With your fair skin?"

  Anna had long since stopped taking offense at her "servant's" familiarity with her. That, too, would have outraged her family. But Anna herself took an odd little comfort in it. Much to her surprise, she had discovered over the weeks of travel that she was at ease in the company of Illus and his companions.

  "Damn you, too," she muttered, not without some humor of her own. "I'd toughen up soon enough. And I wouldn't mind shedding some skin, anyway. What I've got right now feels like it's gangrenous."

  It was Illus' turn to grimace. "Don't even think it, girl. Until you've seen real gangrene. ."

  A stray waft of breeze from the northwest illustrated his point. That was the direction of the great military "hospital" that the Roman army had set up on the outskirts of the city. The smell almost made Anna gag.

  The gag brought up a reflex of anger, and, with it, a sudden decision.

  "Let's go there," she said.

  "Why?" demanded Illus.

  Anna shrugged. "Maybe there'll be an official there. If nothing else, I need to find where the telegraph office is located."

  Illus' face made his disagreement clear enough. Still-for all that she allowed familiarity, Anna had also established over the past weeks that she was his master.

  "Let's go," she repeated firmly. "If nothing else, that's probably the only part of this city where we'd find some empty lodgings."

  "True enough," said Illus, sighing. "They'll be dying like flies, over there." He hesitated, then began to speak. But Anna cut him off before he got out more than three words.

  "I'm not insane, damn you. If there's an epidemic, we'll leave. But I doubt it. Not in this climate, this time of year. At least. . not if they've been following the sanitary regulations."

  Illus' face creased in a puzzled frown. "What's that got to do with anything? What regulations?"

  Anna snorted and began to walk off to the northwest. "Don't you read anything besides those damned Dispatches?"

  Cottomenes spoke up. "No one does," he said. Cheerfully, as usual. "No soldier, anyway. Your husband's got a way with words, he does. Have you ever tried to read official regulations?"

  Those words, too, brought a reflex of anger. But, as she forced her way through the mob toward the military hospital, Anna found herself thinking about them. And eventually came to realize two things.

  One. Although she was a voracious reader, she hadn't ever read any official regulations. Not those of the army, at any rate. But she suspected they were every bit as turgid as the regulations that officials in Constantinople spun out like spiders spinning webs.

  Two. Calopodius did have a way with words. On their way down the Euphrates-and then again, as they sailed from Charax to Chabahari-the latest Dispatches and the newest chapters from his History of Belisarius and the War had been available constantly. Belisarius, Anna had noted, seemed to be as adamant about strewing printing presses behind his army's passage as he was about arms depots.

  The chapters of the History had been merely perused on occasion by her soldier companions. Anna could appreciate the literary skill involved, but the constant allusions in those pages were meaningless to Illus and his brother, much less the illiterate Abdul. Yet they pored over each and every Dispatch, often enough in the company of a dozen other soldiers, one of them reading it aloud, while the others listened with rapt attention.

  As always, her husband's fame caused some part of Anna to seethe with fury. But, this time, she also thought about it. And if, at the end, her thoughts caused her anger to swell, it was a much cleaner kind of anger. One which did not coil in her stomach like a worm, but simply filled her with determination.

  The hospital was even worse than she'd imagined. But she did, not surprisingly, find an unused tent in which she and her companions could make their quarters. And she did discover the location of the telegraph office-which, as it happened, was situated right next to the sprawling grounds of the "hospital."

  The second discovery, however, did her little good. The official in charge, once she awakened him from his afternoon nap, yawned and explained that the telegraph line from Barbaricum to Chabahari was still at least a month away from completion.

  "That'll mean a few weeks here," muttered Illus. "It'll take at least that long for couriers to bring your husband's reply."

  Instead of the pure rage those words would have brought to her once, the Isaurian's sour remark simply caused Anna's angry determination to harden into something like iron.

  "Good," she pronounced. "We'll put the time to good use."

  "How?" he demanded.

  "Give me tonight to figure it out."

  * * *

  It didn't take her all night. Just four hours. The first hour she spent sitting in her screened-off portion of the tent, with her knees hugged closely to her chest, listening to the moans and shrieks of the maimed and dying soldiers who surrounded it. The remaining three, studying the books she had brought with her-especially her favorite, Irene Macrembolitissa's Commentaries on the Talisman of God, which had been published just a few months before Anna's precipitous decision to leave Constantinople in search of her husband.

  Irene Macrembolitissa was Anna's private idol. Not that the sheltered daughter of the Melisseni had ever thought to emulate the woman's adventurous life, except intellectually. The admiration had simply been an emotional thing, the heroine-worship of a frustrated girl for a woman who had done so many things she could only dream about. But now, carefully studying those pages in which Macrembolitissa explained certain features of natural philosophy as given to mankind through Belisarius by the Talisman of God, she came to understand the hard practical core which lay beneath the great woman's flowery prose and ease with classical and biblical allusions. And, with that understanding, came a hardening of her own soul.

  Fate, against her will and her wishes, had condemned her to be a wife. So be it. She would begin with that practical core; with concrete truth, not abstraction. She would steel the bitterness of a wife into the driving will of the wife. The wife of Calopodius the Blind, Calopodius of the Saronites.

  The next morning, very early, she presented her proposition.

  "Do any of you have a problem with working in trade?"

  The three soldiers stared at her, stared at each other, broke into soft laughter.

  "We're not senators, girl," chuckled Illus.

  Anna nodded. "Fine. You'll have to work on speculation, though. I'll need the money I have left to pay the others."

  "What 'others'?"

  Anna smiled grimly. "I think you call it 'the muscle.' "

  Cottomenes frowned. "I thought we were 'the muscle.' "

  "Not any more," said Anna. "You're promoted. All three of you are now officers in the hospital service."

  "What 'hospital service'?"

  Anna realized she hadn't considered the name of the thing. For a moment, the old anger flared. But she suppressed it easily enough. This was no time for pettiness, after all.

  "We'll call it Calopodius' Wife's Service. How's that?"

  The three soldiers shook their heads. Clearly enough, they had no understanding of what she was talking about.

  "You'll see," she predicted.

  It didn't take them long. Illus' glare was enough to cow the official "commander" of the hospital, who was as sorry-looking a specimen of "officer" as Anna could imagine. And if the man might have wondered at the oddness of such glorious ranks being borne by such as Illus and his two companions-Abdul looked as far removed from a tribune as could be imagined-he was wise enough to keep his doubts to himself.

  The dozen or so soldiers whom Anna recruited into the Service in
the next hour-"the muscle"-had no trouble at all believing that Illus and Cottomenes and Abdul were, respectively, the chiliarch and two tribunes of a new army "service" they'd never heard of. First, because they were all veterans of the war and could recognize others-and knew, as well, that Belisarius promoted with no regard for personal origin. Second-more importantly-because they were wounded soldiers cast adrift in a chaotic "military hospital" in the middle of nowhere. Anna-Illus, actually, following her directions-selected only those soldiers whose wounds were healing well. Men who could move around and exert themselves. Still, even for such men, the prospect of regular pay meant a much increased chance at survival.

  Anna wondered, a bit, whether walking-wounded "muscle" would serve the purpose. But her reservations were settled within the next hour after four of the new "muscle," at Illus' command, beat the first surgeon into a bloody pulp when the man responded to Anna's command to start boiling his instruments with a sneer and a derogatory remark about meddling women.

  By the end of the first day, eight other surgeons were sporting cuts and bruises. But, at least when it came to the medical staff, there were no longer any doubts-none at all, in point of fact-as to whether this bizarre new "Calopodius' Wife's Service" had any actual authority.

  Two of the surgeons complained to the hospital's commandant, but that worthy chose to remain inside his headquarters' tent. That night, Illus and three of his new "muscle" beat the two complaining surgeons into a still bloodier pulp, and all complaints to the commandant ceased thereafter.

  Complaints from the medical staff, at least. A body of perhaps twenty soldiers complained to the hospital commandant the next day, hobbling to the HQ as best they could. But, again, the commandant chose to remain inside; and, again, Illus-this time using his entire corps of "muscle," which had now swollen to thirty men-thrashed the complainers senseless afterward.