Shadin nodded sharply and moved back down the line of men, whispering commands. At the corner, Jalal drew out his bow and strung it, keeping one eye on the Hashim. Very faintly he could hear the sounds of men shouting in the house. Perhaps there was still some resistance. No matter, he thought, if there is no one left alive, then the captain's funeral pyre will be lit by a mound of foreskins. Jalal grinned unpleasantly at the thought. Shadin returned to his side with a group of men close behind him.
More shouting came from within the great house, and the men at the gate turned to look inside. Jalal chopped his hand down and jerked it forward. The bowmen fanned out past him into the street. Shadin was hard on their heels, and the Tanukh split into two horns, rushing silently forward. Jalal drew his bow in a smooth, violent movement and sent the first arrow hissing away.
The night suddenly filled with the flashing passage of arrows, and the first man at the gate was gasping in pain, clutching at the sharp sensation in his back, then his neck, before anyone had even turned at the sound of running feet. The Tanukh flooded past Jalal as he fired and fired again. Half the men at the gate were thrashing on the ground before Shadin leapt through the gateway, his huge longsword whirling around his head. Screams pierced the air from within, and the clash of steel on steel followed.
Jalal swung his bow over his shoulder and drew his saber. "On!" he growled at the other bowmen. "This will be sword work now."
– |Mohammed spun sideways, his saber catching the downstroke of a Hashim blade. The shock rang up his arm like a hammer on an anvil. He ignored it. The blood fire was burning in his veins, and the whole world had shrunk down to a gray tunnel filled with the angry faces of his cousins. Blows rang against his guard, and he pushed his muscles to greater and greater speed. A tickling began at the back of his mind, creeping along his spine as three and then four of the Hashim came against him. Their swords flickered and rang harshly, and he parried, spun, and struck again and again. He drove pommel to pommel with one, then threw the man backward with a powerful surge. The other three piled in, raining cuts and thrusts, but his hand was a blur and his old sword slipped two strokes and then blocked the other with the flat. His riposte tore one man's arm open from wrist to elbow, and the Hashim fell away, gasping with pain.
Very faintly, through the enormous sound of blood hammering in his ears, he could hear someone shouting at him from behind. But the Hashim came on again, more men pushing through the doorway to get at him. The floor was slick with blood, and the delicate cushions and silk draperies of his daughter's bedroom were torn and scattered. He had picked up a dagger for his left hand somewhere and when the Hashim came at him again, he blocked one blade into the floor with it, then circle-parried to the right, tangling a man's weapon. The man fell back, freeing his weapon, but Mohammed jumped into the break in the line, taking two blades on his own, and slashed the dagger across the throat of the first Hashim warrior. Blood blinded the other man, and Mohammed gutted him without thinking.
The gray tunnel filled the world, and Mohammed spun and parried and danced at the center of a whirl of steel and blood. More Hashim came at him, screaming curses and oaths, and he chopped them down, or shattered kneecaps with his iron-shod boots, or left their faces a bleeding ruin.
The shouting came again, and this time it registered. His daughter was screaming at him from the hole in the roof, begging him to follow them out. He beat aside the weakening attack of a Hashim spearman, chopped the spear haft in twain, and sank his saber into the man's armpit. Wrenching it out, he leapt backward and swung up onto the great pile of furniture that led to the rudely hewn exit in the roof. Above him he could see Roxane's face and her arm reaching down at him.
A chair toppled away under him, and he grasped at the edge of the opening. Roxane grabbed onto his shoulder, her long nails digging into the torn shirt. Her face contorted as she strained to pull him up. Mohammed's feet scrambled for purchase, and he caught the edge of the other chair, boosting himself up. Roxane managed to catch his belt and heaved, pulling him halfway into the opening. For a moment he was blinded, his head caught in her gown.
There was a sharp twang sound, and the sound of something heavy slapping into meat.
Mohammed got out both arms out of the hole and levered himself out onto the roof by main force, carrying Roxane on his shoulders. There was a chill on his back and he rolled over, catching her limp body. The night was lit with great clouds of smoke, glowing sullen red and orange. He rolled Roxane over, and her sightless eyes stared up at him. An arcuballista bolt had taken her in the side of the neck as she had dragged him out of the opening. Below her pale perfect face was a ruin of white bone and red tattered flesh. Mohammed stood slowly, heedless of the screams and shouts that rose from the ragged gaping hole in the roof. Ashes drifted out of the sky, settling in his silver-streaked hair and on his face. He stared down into the room below, seeing his Tanukh-come at last-hewing their way through the trapped ranks of the Bani Hashim. In his eyes, the fires of the city gleamed.
CHAPTER NINE
The Island of Thira, Somewhere in the Kyklades
Thyatis, her long golden red hair tied back behind her neck, slowly descended a flight of sandstone steps. Her gait was stately, her head held high. She was dressed only in a short cotton chit on and a pair of beaten copper bracelets on her left arm. She stepped down onto a floor of marble blocks covered with fine white sand. A great room opened out around her, vaulted above with a huge dome. The walls were lost in shadow, showing only the feet of massive pillars set at regular intervals. Sunlight, dim and diffuse, filtered from a circular opening in the ceiling high above. Within a shaft of light falling from the oculus the slight figure of Mikele stood waiting. As before, she was dressed in long plain white pantaloons of soft cotton, with a tunic of subtle yellow and a round collar. A second, tighter fitting shirt with long dark sleeves that came to her wrists was worn underneath the tunic. Her hair was tied up into a tight bun at the back of her head.
Thyatis stopped at the edge of the circle of light and bowed deeply, her hands pressed together in front of her. Behind her, at the top of the curving set of stairs that ran down the side of the room, Shirin waited in a long loose gown that covered her whole body. Her hair, too, was tied up and bound back behind her head, out of the way. At the edge of the circle, Thyatis looked up and met the little woman's eyes.
"Sifu, I bring a candidate who wishes to learn the Way of the Open Hand."
Mikele did not stir, but her voice echoed off the hidden pillars and the dark spaces in the room. "If there is a student, a teacher will appear. Is there a student here?"
"Yes, sifu."
Thyatis bowed again and stood aside, stepping to the base of one of the great grooved pillars that ringed the central space of the room. Shirin descended the steps, the light pit-pat of her feet audible in the quiet room. At the edge of the circle of light, she stopped and bowed, even as Thyatis had done. "I am a student," she said in a clear high voice. "Is there a teacher here?"
"Yes," Mikele said, still unmoving. "Show yourself in the circle of light."
Thyatis bit back a soft hiss as Shirin shrugged off the loose gown and stepped into the circle. Under the pale light, her skin seemed to gleam with health; a rich dark olive. Her full breasts were bound with a strophium of fine Egyptian cotton, and she wore a slight loincloth to cover herself. The months of training on the decks of ships in Arabian and Egyptian waters had trimmed away the baby fat that had accumulated in four years of soft, palatial life in Ctesiphon. She seemed to float in the air, poised and ready. Thyatis swallowed, seeing her exposed in the pale light as if for the first time.
"I am a teacher," Mikele said, and she moved slightly, making a soft bow, no more than an incline of her head. "Do you wish to learn?"
"Yes," Shirin answered, taking a step forward into the center of the circle of light and bowing. "I wish to learn."
Mikele regarded her gravely for a moment, then a flash of a brilliant smile crossed her face. "Then you shall lea
rn."
Thyatis sighed and turned away, quietly making her way up the curving flight of stairs. Behind her, the other students of the Way, who had been sitting quietly in the shadows, came out, their voices and laughter filling the old domed temple that was the center of their school. At the top of the stairs, Thyatis looked down, her face sad, to see Shirin talking earnestly with the other girls. At the edge of their throng, Mikele was looking back at her, her high-boned face calm and serene. The Roman woman turned and left. She felt excluded from the life of her friend, though she had intended this all along. It hurt.
– |A wooden man stood at the side of a room with a wooden floor. The floor was worn and rubbed smooth by the scuff and passage of many feet. The wooden man, his stiff arms held out before him, was polished, too, though the patterns were uneven. His neck and face, his elbows, his crotch and knees were all grooved with wear. Once there had been features painted on the face-a fierce red beard and bushy eyebrows-but they had vanished long ago.
Thyatis, stripped down to her loincloth and strophium, stalked sideways, poised on the balls of her feet. Her arms were up, ready, muscles tensed. She drifted forward, then exploded into motion, sweat flying away from her hair and face. The wooden man shuddered as sidekicks and sharp, fast hand strikes rained against him. Thyatis pushed herself, going through the long series of punches, kicks, and blocks with increasing speed. Her muscles burned with the effort. Suddenly, spinning away, she shouted in fury and lashed out with a flying side-kick that cracked the wooden head. There was a splintering sound, and the round globe of old oak flew away, clattering off the wall of the training room. Thyatis landed on her feet, her breath hissing between bared, clenched teeth. Sweat ran off of her in tiny rivers. The cotton kilt around her waist clung, sopping wet, to her thighs.
She shouted again and her fists blurred, cracking sharply against the elbows of the wooden man. The worn grooves in the wood took her strike like they had taken tens of thousands of blows before. She spun away, her wrists and fists snapping through the blocking patterns at the end of the practice movements. Then she squatted heavily on the floor, holding her head in her hands. Her whole body felt like it had been beaten with a butcher's hammer.
"Ah, dear," a quiet voice came from the doorway, "you mustn't break the appliances. That poor man takes enough abuse as it is."
Thyatis rose, scowling, but then saw the Matron standing in the doorway, her elegant gown falling almost to her feet. The elderly woman's white hair was down, falling around her shoulders, and she held a folding fan in one hand. The Matron stepped into the room, her movements carefully controlled and showing echoes of the grace she had owned in youth. She sat on one of the benches along the wall, her head silhouetted against a deep-set window. Far beyond her, the line of the horizon was an azure slash in a field of white. The fan moved languidly, stirring the air.
Thyatis shook her head and stood up, going to the corner of the room where the broken head had come to rest. She picked it up, making a wry grimace at it, and put it back on its stump. It lolled to one side. "I should make a new one," she said, not looking at the Matron.
"Hmm. That might do your body some good; diving to one of the wrecks on the Teeth and recovering the wood to make it. But it will not settle your mind, my dear. Exhaustion will only gain you a short respite. Though… there are many stones to be quarried and carved for the new Temple of Atargatis…"
Thyatis turned to glare at the old woman, but the sight of her calm face and that slight smile that always hovered around her mouth, a dove waiting to unfurl its wings, stopped her. The Roman woman shook her head, sending tiny droplets of sweat sparkling across the room. "I am troubled," she said, gritting her teeth at the words. "I am unhappy. This is what I wanted-and now I feel distraught over it! This is what I wanted and not… what I want. Oh, Goddess, I feel directionless now, suddenly. I hate that. There is nothing to do!"
The Matron nodded, her eyes sparkling.
Thyatis paced around the room, filled with nervous energy. "Do you think I did the right thing?" Thyatis turned and stared at the Matron with an expression of deep concern on her face. "Bringing Shirin here, I mean. I asked no one's leave… it seemed the best course…"
"Your instincts have always been superlative," said the Matron slowly, her head cocked to one side like a curious hawk, watching the young woman pace. "Why do you doubt them now?"
"This is… this is higher than I have reached before. This is the Duchess's game, not mine. Mine is dark alleyways or deserted roads late at night. The quiet use of steel and wire and murder. But this… kidnapping and hiding princesses-oh, that is not a game I've played before. It would be so much easier if I had just followed the Emperor's command!"
The Matron smiled and nodded. She patted the bench beside her with a thin, wrinkled old hand. "Sit, my dear. You have made a serious decision, to contravene the orders of your commander. To go against the will, I suppose, of your mistress, the Duchess. Why do you suppose you did that?"
Thyatis groaned, sitting, and buried her head in her hands again. Through her fingers, her words were muffled, but audible. "I don't know! I thought the Duchess could better use the Princess alive, in Rome, than dead in Ctesiphon. Ayyy… but if the Emperor ever finds out! My head and hers will roll for it…"
The Matron laid a gentle hand on the young woman's shoulder. "I think not, dear. The gossip of the markets reaches even here, to our quiet little island. The Emperor of the East-oh, he is beside himself with rage that such a succulent prize escaped him. Yes, that bear of a man wanted your friend as a wedding gift for his brother. But your master? This Emperor Galen? He is quietly pleased, though he would never say so."
"Why?" Thyatis frowned, watching the smiling face of her old teacher intently. "He bade me go into the city of his enemies and be ready and I failed him. I was not there when his soldiers stormed the gates-I was lost in the maze of the Palace of the Swan, trying to find…" Her voice faltered.
"Trying to find whom?" The Matron cocked her head again, her fine white hair falling to one side. "You were trying to find your friend, who was in danger of her life. You were trying to devise an escape from the sack and ruin of that great ancient city for not only yourself, but for your men and the family of your friend. Against this, you weigh the guessed-at desire of an emperor?"
The Matron stood and walked slowly to the western wall of the room, leaning a little on the balustrade under the deep-set windows. Beyond the window the sun blazed down on the island, throwing the aquamarine sea into sharp relief against the dark cliffs. She pursed her lips, looking out at the empty horizon. "This business of guessing at the intent and the desire of emperors is dangerous. Their concerns are not yours, or of any man or woman who does not wield such power. Their responsibilities color the world a different shade than do mine or yours. Emperors forget friends and family, or even those who have done them a good turn. They can never be trusted, you know."
Thyatis looked up. The Matron's voice had fallen low, and she seemed lost in memory.
"The concern of an emperor," continued the Matron in a very soft voice, "is the cruel business of Empire. I think, my dear student, that in this matter-of following your heart and helping your friend-the scales balance in your favor."
"Then I did the right thing?" Thyatis stood, nervously rubbing her hands on her thighs.
The Matron laughed and turned from the window. "No one can say that," she said, her old face creased by a wide smile. "But tell me this, O impetuous one, if you had left your dear Shirin in the ruin of that palace, and she now was the captive wife of a prince of the Eastern Empire, would you account that you had done the right thing?"
Thyatis stopped cold. An image of the Eastern Prince Theodore flashed in her mind, and Shirin was kneeling at his feet, her face bruised and streaked with tears, her pale yellow silk gown torn. The Prince was laughing, his broad red face flushed. A thin trickle of sweat crept down from his hairline. Without thinking, her lips contorted in a snarl and her fist
s clenched.
The Matron frowned, her eyes narrowing. "You see?" she said sharply, bringing Thyatis' attention back to her. "You could not bear it. So does your heart weigh the balance."
"Yes," Thyatis said, troubled again, "I suppose it is so."
– |Shirin leaned back against the cold stone of the wall in the changing room. Wearily, she raised one knee up and began stripping the padding from her shin. Each movement of her fingers as she unwrapped the cloth was filled with pain. Her fingers trembled as she picked at the knots. After a moment she realized she had been fumbling at one knot for an unknown amount of time. It had pulled tight in the exertion of the long endless day of training. Her hand flopped back down into her lap. Slowly, though she tried to fight against it, she slid sideways, unable to muster the energy to stay upright. The bench was carved slate, quarried from the depths of the island. It was cold and hard, but it held her up. Her eyes closed, and her breath ran fast in little short gasps.
She dreamed, and it was a dream of constant motion and pain.
A light touch came at her shoulder, and she sat up, her eyes blinking furiously.
A face appeared at the center of her vision, a delicate oval dominated by enormous dark eyes.
"Sifu…" she wheezed, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to fall asleep!"
"No matter, little bird," came the calm voice with its lilting undertone. "Let me help you up."
Fine-boned hands slipped under her arms and raised her up, though Shirin thought she would faint from the flush of pain that flooded her brutalized muscles. The months of training on the ships that had carried her and her family out of the Sinus Persicus, into the deep green waters of the Mare Ethyraeum, and finally to Egypt had toned her some, but nothing compared to the first day of her training here. Mikele carried her down a flight of steps into air thick with steam.
Hot water lapped at Shirin's feet and she gasped in relief to feel the warmth flow up her ankles.
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