Oh, Timur, she thought, you were far too right for your own good!
She waded back into the lake until only her nose and eyes were above the water. Then she began paddling slowly, keeping her arms underwater, back in the direction Nikos had been with the boat. On the shore, men with lanterns and torches were beginning to spread out, searching the waterline.
Nikos, you half-Greek, half-Illyrian, who-knows-what-else bastard, you'd better not have run out on me...
—|—
The boat, low in the water with its burden, rocked gently from side to side. Nikos lay in the bottom, a partially drawn bow with arrow to hand across him. Over the water he could hear the cussing of Persian sergeants as they ordered their men to spread out and quarter the beach. Too, there was the splashing of men entering the water with lanterns and spears. With the trickiness of sound over water, he could not tell if they were close by or far away. For the moment he did not dare risk looking over the side at the beach lest he betray some reflection.
Instead, he whistled, the long cry of a night-jar. Forty heartbeats later, he whistled again.
There was a sudden shout up the beach, the cry of men on the hunt catching sight of their prey. Officers' whistles cut the night and the light on the shore began to run north.
In the boat, Nikos half sat up, forgetting his earlier vow. The clusters of running torches seemed like fireflies across the water. Now there was shouting again, and the rasping sound of steel on iron. The torches bunched and men shouted angrily. Nikos sat up farther, but he could see nothing more. His heart was filled with agony—if not his commander, that was at least one of his men, brought to bay.
The boat rocked fiercely, and a voice thickened by exhaustion said: "Idiot! Get down and balance the boat before you fall out."
Nikos sat down on the opposite side of the boat and grasped Thyatis' wrist as she hauled herself over the side. She was soaked through and still wore the light iron mail shirt she had donned when they first came into sight of the embattled city. Gasping for breath, she lay in the bottom of the boat in a pool of water.
"Row," she snarled, her voice filled with anger and loss. "Get us out of here."
On the shore, the sound of fighting halted and there was a commotion among the hunters. Nikos dipped the paddle into the dark waters and stroked away. The little hide boat began to move through the night. Thyatis, utterly drained, lay in the bottom of the boat, quietly weeping.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The Egyptian House
"Hey! Hello!" The shout echoed down the corridor, ringing off of the mossy stones. "Anyone! Hey, you motherless bastards! Hello!" Krista hung from the bars of the cell that she had woken in, feet on the bottom rung of the door, shouting at the top of her lungs. Her hair was a tangle of mud and dried blood, one arm was badly scratched, and the side of her head and face was very tender. The cell had some blankets and straw on the floor as well as two buckets.
"Let me out! Let me out or you'll be in some deep shit!"
Disgusted and hoarse from shouting, she jumped down onto the floor again. Restless, she prowled around the little room. It was small and mean, and all too obviously a cell.
The old bastard can sure throw, she muttered to herself, seething with anger at having been caught. The mistress isn't going to be very pleased with me.
Her jewelry and belt were gone, along with her sandals and the leather thongs she used to tie her hair up. Krista guessed that she had been thoroughly searched before being dumped like a sack of millet on the floor of the room.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway and she turned and curled up on the floor, facing the barred door. In a moment her breathing was even and steady and a soft snore escaped her lips. A haggard figured stopped at the entrance to the cell and leaned on the bars, exhausted.
"Ai, poor girl. What am I going to do with you?" The Prince's voice was faint, burned out by exhaustion and terribly long hours of unremitting effort. He wore a heavy butcher's apron, deeply stained by blood and crusted with dried gore. His leggings were spattered too, and there was a faint charnel stink around him like an invisible mist. Krista was horrified by his appearance, watching him from between almost closed eyelids. His hands, too, were dark with dried fluids.
"Let me go," she whispered. Who knew where that old man was, or the little Orientals she had seen coming and going from the house? "I didn't mean to spy, I was only curious..."
Maxian raised his head and, through a blur of exhaustion, could make out that she had raised her head, catlike, from the floor to look at him. A wave of relief swept through him, leaving him giddy, that she was all right and that his work on her head wound had not been in vain. He suddenly realized that he was tremendously tired and should sleep.
"That's a good idea," Krista said, for the Prince had spoken his thought aloud. "If you let me out, I'll help you back upstairs. You need a bath too."
Maxian looked down at himself and staggered a little to see how gruesome a sight he was. For a moment his mind spun in all directions, as he comprehended how much blood there was on him and how old some of the stains were. Memories began to crowd back into his waking mind, a hurried procession of subjects—some live, some dead, some near death—coming to the examination table. The grating vibration of a saw cutting into bone. The crack of a limb breaking open in the vise. First the buzz of the power in his hands, cleaving into the organs of a still-thrashing body, then the howl and the lightning as he split open the skull of a long-dead general and the power of the corpse flooded into him.
A terrible howl of anguish tore out of him and filled the corridor. Krista clapped her hands over her ears and rolled up into a tiny ball at the back of the cell, far from the shuddering thing that crouched at the door to her cell. Then it began to weep, its body racked with great heaving sobs. She crept forward and a lithe hand snaked out to lift a ring of keys from the back of the stiff apron. One of them fit the door and it swung inward. Krista stepped out, gazing down in pity at the man on all fours, grinding his head against the stones. The door at the end of the hallway was open.
"Please," came from behind her as she slipped up the steps, "please don't leave me..."
She half turned, looking back down the dark corridor.
—|—
Downhill from the bulk of the house, in a grove of cypress trees, there was a crude shrine to Jupiter. Maxian knelt in the brick building before a rude altar. Thick ivy covered the outside of the little building and filled the tiny windows.
The Prince had placed two tallow candles on the altar, one at each end. Once there had been a small statue of the god in the recess behind the altar, but it had long since vanished. He reached out, placing two pieces of tin on the grimy stones.
"O lord of justice, forgive me. I have defiled the bodies of two of your servants—these men, Aurus Antonios Sabeinos and Julius Terentius—who served the state and the Emperor and did not do ill. I have desecrated their bodies and cut them up into pieces. I beg you to let them enter the peace of your afterlife and to ascend, whole, into your heaven to be rightly judged."
The Prince's hand trembled slightly as he spilled wine into a shallow ewer placed on the ground before the altar. He sprinkled crystallized honey and grain, taken from two small bowls, into the ewer. His whole body hurt, savaged by the power he had drawn upon to examine the bodies dragged into his basement room. Odd whorls of light and shadow fluttered before his eyes. He would not have been able to reach the little building down the hill without Krista's help.
"O Mithras, he who judges and assesses all that is man, forgive me for these acts. I seek to help the many, the People and the Senate, and for this, some few must die. I take this sin upon myself, I accept the responsibility, both now and in the time after life, for these actions."
Maxian bent his head to the floor of the temple, pressing his forehead into the soft loamy soil. His mind, at least, was clear. After his collapse in the hallway in front of Krista's cell, he had been bedridden for three days, barel
y able to feed himself. His body, pressed beyond its own limits, had finally revolted, refusing to support his demands. Also, he had realized that he had committed, in the fury of his work, dreadful crimes. He raised his head from the floor, tears dripping from his eyes. He struggled to put revulsion at his acts aside, hearing the cold calm voice of Gaius Julius in his mind: Lad, a good commander must be willing to spend the lives of a few to secure victory and the safety of all.
"O lord Mithras, accept my offering, please, please forgive me..."
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Lake Thospitis, Persian Armenia
A pinpoint of sunlight, golden and warm, crept slowly along Thyatis' cheekbone. Unmindful of the dirt and the thin tracks cut by tears, it danced along the line of her jaw and down across her clavicle. There it disappeared into the top of her ragged tunic along the line of her breast. But another came, lighting the tumble of curls that pillowed her face and drifted across her eyelid. She twitched a little and yawned. Dust clouded up from the tattered woolen cloak that lay over her and she sneezed. Coming fully awake, she lay still, feeling the rock of the boat and the brush of wind off the water. The regular slap-sluice sound of a single man rowing reached her. Gingerly she drew back the cloak.
Nikos, wearing her straw hat to shade his face, was sitting in the stern of the hide boat, his arms rising and falling as he dipped the blade-shaped paddle from side to side. The boat cruised through the deep-blue waters, foam hissing away from its sides. Seeing that she was awake, he smiled and nudged a woven straw bag toward her with his foot.
"A little food left," he said, his voice weary, "and plenty of water."
She levered herself up from the flexible floor of the boat. She looked around, seeing the lake as a broad sheet of tourmaline blue. Tiny waves rose and fell on its quiet surface, picked up by the wind. The sun was still rising in the heavens—it seemed to be about three hours after sunrise. Away to the northeast, she could make out the dull brown line of the shore and low hills rising behind it. To the north, dead ahead of the boat, she could see a vast blue line of mountains rising up out of the heat haze that marked the plain beyond the shore. She pointed.
"You're making for the passes of the Ala?"
Nikos nodded, resting the paddle on his thighs for a moment. His arms felt like lead weights after rowing for the past twelve hours. He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling the skin dried and cracking under the relentless sunlight beating up at him off the water.
"Yes," he croaked from a parched throat. He paused and took a long swallow from the waterskin that lay between his legs. "By the map you had, there's a stream that comes down to the lake dead ahead. I figured we could get ashore there and maybe find something to eat before we strike north."
Thyatis turned around, her hands busy in the straw bag. She found some cheese and strips of dried meat. There was no bread left. She found another waterskin as well and drank from it. The meat was hard and she tucked it into the corner of her mouth to soften. She did not eat any of the cheese yet. Her mouth was too dry.
"North? You figure that we'll be far enough away from the Persians at Van?"
Nikos nodded. "By the map it's nearly thirty miles from the city, so their patrols should be intermittent at best. We can follow the stream north to cut across this headland that we're headed toward. Beyond the peninsula, we can make for the road that goes north across the Ala into the valley under the eaves of Ararat."
Thyatis wiped her mouth clean and stoppered up the waterskin again. She squinted north, her hand shading her face, looking at the distant blue mountains. Going north to Mount Ararat and the valley of the Araxes was the second way across the great mountains to the east—they would come into the valley that contained Tauris from the north, rather than from the west on the main road. Fewer Persians, fewer questions, but a long delay. They would be weeks late getting to the city. She looked back at Nikos, who shrugged. He had thought of the same things.
She chewed on the tough meat. It would be a long way to go. She did not think of the dead men she had left behind on the shore, or the stranger in Van who would wait fruitlessly for them.
—|—
Thyatis crouched in the thorn bushes, her cloak held over her head to break up her outline. Only feet away, the hard pack of the road slashed across the hillside and then down into the little river valley they had spent the morning climbing up out of. The sun burned against the back of her neck—adding another layer of bronze to her already dusky skin. There was the faintest breath of a breeze and it turned again, bringing the clip-clop of horses to her ear. Nikos had heard it first as they had turned the switchback on the long tawny hill that led up toward the distant line of blue-green pine trees. Looking back, they had seen two riders on the road behind them, more than two miles away. In the still air, the sound of their passing over the ancient arched stone bridge that spanned the stream in the valley had just reached them. The two fugitives had faded off of the road then and now crouched on opposite sides of the track.
Nikos was behind two low trees bent over from the weather, about forty paces up the road, as it turned to double back on itself. Thyatis was lower down, with the steep slope of the hill dropping off behind her. The jingle of riding tackle and the voices of two men reached her. She tested her grip on her shortsword, wishing briefly for a long spear or another bow. No matter now, she thought as the first of the two riders trotted around the lower bend in the road. From their embroidered riding cloaks and swept-back hats, they were Persian dispatch riders. But not in a hurry, she wondered, her eyes bare slits in the frugal shade of her cloak.
They passed her and she slid the cloak off into the brush. She paused, waiting, one hand on the branch of thorn that she would have to push past to reach the road. Behind the screen of trees, Nikos pushed the bowstave away from him and sighted down the length of the black-fletched arrow at the jouncing shape of the rider on the horse with a splash of white on its face. He breathed out with an unheard huh! And the arrow leapt away from him to bury itself in the chest of the leading post rider.
The man was still gaping down at the three-foot shaft protruding from his torso, watching dark blood bubble out of his chest, when Thyatis sprinted up the road behind the second rider. The second man was still asking his friend what was wrong when Thyatis sprang up and snaked an arm around his neck. The bay-colored steed, quite startled, reared with an outraged whinny and the man was thrown back into the air. Thyatis twisted into the angle of the horse as he fell and put her shoulder into it. The post rider flew a dozen feet down the road and smashed into the ground with a cracking sound. Thyatis dodged aside from the horse, which had turned and snapped at her.
The other man had slumped over on his horse and it was prancing in a circle as his dead weight cut at its mouth with the bit. Nikos sidled up it, speaking softly to it. Thyatis circled the nervous bay.
"Nice horsy. Nice horsy. Horse want apple? Nice apple."
Nikos collared the first one and tugged the bridle out of the dead man's hand. A good push sent the post rider to the ground in a tumble of limbs. Nikos led the horse away, toward the little straggle of junipers on the side of the road. When he trotted back, Thyatis had calmed the other horse as well.
"Check him," he said, taking the reins of the horse from her.
Thyatis nodded, she had not forgotten the second post rider. She slipped her shortsword back into its sheath and sidled up to the man lying sprawled in the dust and rocks of the road. He was still alive, though his eyes were glazed over with shock and blood was slowly oozing out of the corner of his mouth. She slapped him lightly on the cheek and his eyes wandered back into focus. She had turned up the hood of her cloak and the sky was bright behind her.
"Soldier, where are you going?" she asked in her poor Persian, voice sweet and deep.
"Ah!" He moaned and tried to turn over. Thyatis held him down, gently. By her guess, his neck was broken and he was bleeding inside. "We're... to Dogubayazit... to the headman..."
He
began coughing and his mouth filled with blood. Thyatis grimaced and drove a thin dagger into his eye-socket. Her sad face was the last thing he saw with one good eye. Afterward she wiped off the knife on his shirt and then, as Nikos was doing just up the road, stripped him of everything but the bloody shirt and his loincloth. They rolled the bodies into a crease in the side of the hill, no more than a place for water to run when it rained. Mounted, they continued on, to the north. Nikos watched the young woman out of the corner of his eye. There were still tiny spots of blood on her cheek, but she had not bothered to wipe them away.
—|—
Sun-bright snow gleamed off the top of the mountain, a spearhead of glittering white even at thirty miles distance. Thyatis shaded her eyes, looking across the gulf of the valley of Dogubayazit, through thin air, at the massive pyramid shape of Ararat. It rose, solitary, from the valley floor, first a dun brown on the lower slopes, then banded with the green of pines and spruces, then another band of gray rock, above the trees that ran into a mantle of snow. Clouds clung to the flanks of the mountain and crowned it. The bay post horse whickered at her and she patted its neck. It didn't like standing in the snow. The horse picked its way down the snowy slope, back to the narrow track that they had followed up the granite slopes of Tendürük.
For two days they had ridden higher and higher into the mountains ringing the basin of Lake Thospitis, leaving the tiny mountain villages behind. In the last one they had passed through quickly, for they wore the cloaks and emblems of the Persian dispatch riders. The eyes of the village men had been on them constantly, dark and glittering in the afternoon light. Beyond that village, the road became a trail through flower-strewn alpine meadows and thick stands of spruce. The air was cool and becoming chill as they labored ever higher into the peaks.
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