The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  The initial camp had doubled and then tripled in size, gaining a new ditch and palisade with each expansion. The Western Emperor, the army general staff, and Galen's personal guardsmen and servants now occupied the first, innermost camp. The three western Legions—the Sixth Gemina and Second Triana and the Third Augusta—that had landed with Galen occupied the next layer of the camp, and the barbarians the outermost ring. Outside of the outermost ditch, a great mustering yard of corrals, barns, and feedlots had been thrown up to hold the thousands of horses, mules, and donkeys destined to carry the logistical tail of the Roman army.

  More ships arrived each day, offloading supplies, materials, and men—in whole formations, in banda, and as singletons, like Dwyrin. The Western officers were furiously trying to match men to units and unsnarl the traffic jam that clogged the port from dawn to dusk.

  "Quite a commotion, isn't it?" Drago pulled Dwyrin roughly aside from the clatter of a heavy wagon laden with sheaves of arrows. Mud spattered on Dwyrin's legs. It hadn't rained recently, but the lowlands around Soli were very close to the water table. Drago sniffed at the muck that passed for streets in the camp. "Nothing like eastern mud—thick as tar and yellow as bile!"

  Dwyrin stared around in awe as they passed through the middle camp—thousands of canvas tents were arrayed in neat rows, each block marked by the standard of the Legion and maniple housed there. Hundreds of legionnaires hurried to and fro in the camp; work details were cutting the ditch lower and reinforcing the inner palisade. Others marched past in formation, dust caking their legs and armor. There was a tremendous sense of barely controlled chaos and energy in the air.

  "Huh." The Greek watched as a maniple of legionnaires entered the gate from the outer camp, heavy bags of water slung over their shoulders. "Keeping them busy, I see. Come on, we've still a ways to walk! Now, your chit says that you're for the Third C, in the thaumaturgic battalion—you get a standard kit; no armor, but a horse. I'll tell you now, you're not getting any kind of a good horse. All the good horseflesh is either in the field already with Prince Theo or being reserved for the Eastern army. They as are too good to set foot on common dirt, or walk!"

  Dwyrin was lugging a heavy bag of personal effects: cooking gear, a bedroll, and a bundled cloak. A leather harness hung, doubled, at his waist. A shortsword that, for him, was a heavy weight and a knife hung from it. He had passed on the javelins—his unit did not use them. Hardtack and dried meat with cheese and some rolls were in a cloth bag as well. A waterskin hung off his other shoulder. In all, nearly seventy pounds of gear—he could barely stand with it all on him. So he kept walking lest he fall down from the weight.

  A bridge of logs crossed to the outer camp, over a ditch filled with hundreds of men stripped to the waist digging with shovels and picks. Ramps of tamped earth led up to the outer rim to carry the dirt away. At the eastern end of the ditch a dam had been built to hold back the waters of the Efrenk River. The river cut close to the eastern side of the camp and, in previous days, had provided the town with water. Now it was going to be rerouted into the ditches to fill them.

  "Are the Persians going to attack us?" Dwyrin asked as they crossed the corduroy bridge into the clamor of the outer camp. This belt was a vast morass of mud, horsehair tents, and gangs of outlander auxillia. The road to the outer gate was straight and properly Roman, but the camps and enclaves of the foreigners were anything but. Long-haired Huns, Sarmatians in tattoos and ritual scars, red-haired Goths, Alans, blue-painted Celts, blond Scandians, black Africans from beyond Mauritania—the detritus of the frontier. All arguing, fighting, gambling, cleaning weapons, sleeping. All waiting for the order to move north.

  "No," Drago answered with a grimace. "The nearest Persian army is over two hundred miles away, on the other side of the bay of Issus." He pointed off to the southeast, across the broad blue waters of the Mare Internum. "The latest that I heard, from the captain of a coaster out of Cyprus, is that the great Prince Shahin commands that force and that he is preparing to march against Damascus in the south. All this effort that you see is to keep the men busy until the army is ready to move out. Most of the Western troops will be gone within the week, to march up to Tarsus and join the blessed Prince Theodore. In another month only a garrison will remain here."

  The Greek led Dwyrin out of the barbarian camp and then turned right. The corrals were lodged against the bank of the Efrenk to allow for easy watering of the animals. A troop of cavalry cantered past as they approached the tents at the gate of the maze of corrals. Dwyrin gazed after them; they were white men with long dark beards and cloaks of gold and brass. They held lances in leather cups at the sides of their saddles.

  Drago pushed aside the flap of the biggest tent and ducked inside. Dwyrin followed and blinked in the dim light. It was another room filled with little tables and annoyed men. Drago bantered with a thin-looking Sicilian at the end table. Dwyrin looked around and took the opportunity to shed his gear into a bare patch at the edge of the tent. The air was close and stuffy, but the break from the sun was welcome.

  The Greek tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a set of badly cured parchment papers. "Your travel orders, lad. They'll get you a nag to carry you. The latest report is that the Third left Tarsus in advance of Theodore and is on the road to the city of Samosata. That'll be the jumping off point for the whole army. He says"—Drago gestured idly at the man he had been talking to—"that the road is clear between here and wherever the Third is camped."

  Dwyrin tucked the papers into his tunic and clasped the Greek's shoulder in return. "Many thanks, Drago. I'll be on my way, then."

  —|—

  Though of poor color and given to fits of eye-rolling, the horse that Dwyrin rode out of Solis was no nag. It was a stout little steppe pony that had been gathered up in the sweep for suitable horses in the province. Dwyrin named it Macha in hopes that the spirit of the goddess would fill it and give its stocky legs more speed. It was a fruitless hope—the pony clopped along at a steady pace for hour after hour, but it refused to canter, much less break into a gallop. Still, it had a mild nature and rarely bit.

  The road from the port to the inland city of Tarsus was crowded with legionnaires moving in both directions as well as trains of heavily laden mules and wagons. Tarsus, a sprawl of red brick buildings and dusty-tan edifices of poor-quality marble, was swarming with Eastern officers and cavalrymen. Dwyrin slept in a barn on the eastern side of the city; no lodgings were to be had in the town with the press of army billeting. He ate a sparse breakfast and watered Macha at a well on the eastern edge of the city. The citizens, drawing water for their homes, held forth that Prince Theodore was preparing to advance east into Persian lands without the support of the rest of the army, which was still held up unloading at Solis. The great triple-spanned bridge across the river beyond Tarsus was blocked when Dwyrin reached it. He waited for an hour behind a press of Gothic horsemen and bands of Cyrenaican archers.

  At the far end of the span, a wagon had lost an axle. The northern horsemen were hooting and laughing at the efforts of a troop of Roman engineers to clear the wagon, but it had been loaded with baskets of lead shot and heavy, precut timbers. The Cyrene troops were squatting in a long line along the side of the bridge, talking in low tones. Their patterned tan cloaks and dark, burnished skin stood out in stark contrast to the sunburned faces of the Goths and their heavy, grease-slicked blond and red hair. Dwyrin managed to edge his pony around the upstream side of the wreck, drawing the curses of the centurion in charge of the gang trying to move the wagon. It was overloaded and too heavy to push. The engineers began shouting at one another.

  Dwyrin rode on, now that the road was clear. Another smaller camp had been thrown up on the far bank of the river. The garrison troops, a clean-shaven lot of dark-haired Celts, looked on with amusement as the Hibernian rode past, almost swallowed in his red cloak and gear.

  "Don't be home late for dinner!" they shouted after him, laughing.

  He waved and
rode onward. Before him, the flat plain of Adana stretched out, a fertile valley of olive groves, vineyards, whitewashed mud-brick houses, stands of cedar and spruce trees. Beyond it, a low range of mountains rose in the east, running from the sea north to the vast escarpment of the Taurus Mountains. Even through the humid air, Dwyrin could see the snow-crowned peaks off to his left glitter in the afternoon sun. Clouds were gathering among them, but for now the sun was bright and the air clear. Tiny red birds sang in the trees along the road. It was quiet and peaceful, the clamor of the army left far behind.

  He urged Macha to go faster; it was a long road to Samosata.

  —|—

  Cold wind howled out of the north, driving a fine spray of grit and dust against the Hibernian. Dwyrin leaned into the gusts, his cloak, now pale with dust, wrapped tight around his head and shoulders. Gravel, whipped by the wind, stung at his legs as he struggled forward through the wind. Macha, her head low, trudged along behind him at the end of the bridle. The pleasant valleys that drew up to the coast were well behind him now, and he had crossed a bleak range of rocky hills and barren mountains to come out onto an endless plain of dried mud and broad dry streambeds. The Tauruses still towered on the northern horizon, cool and distant, but the old Roman road that he was following slashed almost due east across the headwaters of an enormous river plain.

  Every ten miles a waymarker rose from the barren soil to mark the road, most of which was covered with blown drifts of dirt and sand. The stele, once deeply graven with the sigil of Rome and the Emperors who had raised them, were worn and chipped by the weather. The road ran straight, but the stones at its verge were tumbled and broken. Off the road, in the distance, he could sometimes see villages, or perhaps the ruins of villages. Short grass peeked from between the stones at the edge of the road, but the low hills were dry and yellow, barren of trees or cultivation. Even the Legion night camps, dug out of the baked mud only weeks before, seemed empty for long years, already half filled with windblown sand and fallen-in walls.

  The wind had struck him as soon as he had come out of the hills above the abandoned city of Gaziantep four days ago. It did not let up, even in the night when the temperature of the plain—hot as a baker's oven in the day—plunged to near freezing. His eyes were nearly glued shut with grime and dust. His hair and nose were coated with a thick layer of yellow matter. Still, he kept trudging east, keeping to the road, sleeping in the bare hollows of the land where there was some respite from the wind. Every third waymarker, there was a house of stone or brick built at the side of the road. In the shelter of these crumbling dwellings, cisterns had been cut into the earth and lined with stones. Usually there was water at the bottom of the shallow pits. He kept on, though most days the sun was only a brassy disk in the sky, burning down through heavy air.

  He had begun to get nervous. Though his othersight no longer overwhelmed him as it had on the voyage on the Father of Rivers, little things still leaked through to his consciousness. The endless flat plain seemed to affect his mind, emptying it of trivial things, paring down his thoughts until they were little more than the desire to put one foot in front of the other. The drone of flies was constant. The power was very deep in the earth here, hidden and dim. Sometimes as he crossed one of the shallow valleys, he could feel the water in the ground, running cold and distant, but it did not come near the surface. Other things trickled around the edge of sight. Voices seemed to call in the darkness, and the land felt watched and angry. One night, as he lay sleeping in the lee of an ancient masonry wall, he woke to see the figures of four men standing beyond the pale ring of his campfire. Macha was sleeping, leaning against the wall, her breathing heavy and slow. The pale men stared down at him with shadowed faces. They were dressed in long robes, worked with crosshatched patterns and flat-topped helmets of fluted brass. Their beards were curled and painted, but they were so dim that he could see the gleam of stars in the pits of their eyes. He moved to rise, and they faded, but the echoes of their anger and hatred lingered. That night he broke camp before dawn and pressed on in the darkness, eager to leave that place.

  —|—

  Four days onto the plain, he topped a rise that he had not even noticed climbing, so gentle was its slope, and looked down onto a ribbon of pale green and the broad surface of a great river. The road turned and ran down the slope below him, to a small village and a great bridge of stone pilings and a wooden truss. In the distance, he could see men in red cloaks standing watch on the circular stone towers at either end of the span. The river was easily two hundred paces across and a deep blue, rushing swift under the sandstone pilings of the bridge. Macha whinnied, smelling the water and the greenery. Dwyrin smiled and urged her down the slope with his knees.

  A dead man lay in the shadow of one of the outlying buildings. Dwyrin rode up the road slowly and stopped thirty feet from the entrance to the village. The place was quiet, the only sound the idle rattle of a shutter in the wind. He could smell the dead man from the road and see that the outthrust arm was puffy and discolored. Scratching his chin, he shrugged the Legion cloak back, off his arms, and rode slowly forward. In his mind, a flurry of thoughts scattered and a point of calm formed, oil on the waters, and he extended his perception out to the sun-heated walls and the cool shadows of the doorways.

  At the center of the village, there was a square of bare earth fronting a dilapidated temple with four pillars of brick, faced with carved wooden slats painted to approximate marble. Other buildings crowded the plaza, their doors dark and empty. Dwyrin skirted the center of the space, angling to the left, toward the towers by the bridge. As he passed opposite the temple, he could see the bare legs of two bodies—man or woman, he could not tell—lying on the portico. Flies buzzed in the still air at the center of the village. A door rattled, but he had felt the wind move against it, and he was not distracted.

  Dwyrin muttered to himself, raising the first defense, the shield of Athena, around him. To his partially opened othersight, he could see the wan blue veil fall between him and the sun. The power of the river was close, a rolling green wave, and he reached out to tap into the eddy of it as it broke and curled against the bridge supports. A hot spark began to flicker in the back of his mind. Macha moseyed on, never in a hurry, past the dead Square and into the lane beyond.

  Here the houses were a little better built—fieldstone with plaster facings. Down the street, on his left, a garden wall jutted out from a house, ornamented by a trailing vine sporting little blue-and-white flowers. Dwyrin became uneasy; a sense of cold and hunger was seeping in around the edges of the shield. He loosened the shortsword in its scabbard on his right hip. The street was empty as he rode on, the echoes of hooves sounding thin to his ear. Past the houses, there was a bank of palms and part of a garden field. As he rode by the last house—tightly shuttered with a painted door in muted red—he twitched, looking to the right, into the field. Something...

  A crack like thunder knocked him off the horse and slammed him into the ground. The Shield of Athena blazed into full strength as he rolled away on the ground. Macha wailed in pain and toppled over, most of her hindquarters burned away. Dwyrin was partially blinded, the etched zigzag of a bright blue-white light searing his retinas. The hot spark in his mind exploded and his hands danced in the Invocation of Geb, the stone of the earth. Through a blur of tears, he saw men rushing forward out of the palms on the left side of the road. Facing them, he stabbed his hand out, loosing the dammed up power that he had drawn from the earth and the river.

  A bolt of scarlet flame ripped across the road and slashed through the gang of running men. The lead two men, clad in desert robes and light chain mail, flashed to ash in the torrent of fire. The men behind them screamed in horror as the wall of flame washed over them, clawing at their clothes with bright fingers. Dwyrin staggered forward, a halo of blazing white flame roaring around him. The remains of the faithful horse smoked and then burst alight, filling the air with greasy smoke. Nine men howled in despair on the g
round, their muscle and fat sizzling away in the heat of the fire that he had summoned. Contorted limbs thrashed, as they crisped to a reddish black and finally lay still.

  The Hibernian, sick, finished the last man off with his sword. The twisted features, eyeless and locked in an endless scream, mocked him from the ashy ground. The palm trees were ablaze as well, sending pillars of white smoke into the air. Dwyrin turned around, stunned at the devastation that he had wrought. The field was burning too, and the nearest houses were black with smoke. Flames licked at the eaves. The othersight surged in his mind and the physical world was washed away in a torrent of colors and living sound. He fell to his knees, clawing at his face. His mouth was open, gasping for air, but he could not scream.

  —|—

  Smoke, faintly lit by fire, smudged the night sky. It drifted in long streamers across the arc of heaven, obscuring the stars and the fattening moon. Beyond the smoke and the dim red light of the fires, it was dark as pitch. Dwyrin groaned and blinked. His eyes were gritty. He sat up, and a thin layer of ash flaked off him to settle to the ground around him in a white cloud. The world was solid again, the earth firm under his feet instead of an infinite abyss of minuscule fires and strobing adamantine forces. The sky was close and filled with the comfortable light of stars, not a dizzying unguessable depth congested with millions of whirling spherical fires, packed so closely that they left no room between them.