Sweat beaded his brow and he turned a few feet from the boards and faced the end of the archery throw. At the far end, Blanco raised a simple short bow, no more than a curved stave bound with gut and sinew.
“Hai!” the centurion called, and drew a raven-fletched arrow to his cheek. Dwyrin stood still by the butts, eyes unfocused. Two days now, the four had watched the flight of arrows for hours. Flicker-quick, the arrow snapped from
Blanco’s hand, hissing a foot past Dwyrin’s ear. The Hibernian expanded his sight, seeing all things with equal acuity, and felt the shining trail of presence that the arrow left behind.
Blanco drew back another shaft to his bearded cheek. Dwyrin could feel the tension in the string, the clenching muscles in the centurion’s hand. He backed off, seeing, feeling less. The centurion’s voice echoed behind his ear. Seeing everything is worse than seeing nothing, you must only see that which is important. The hand released and copper-headed death blurred into enormity. Dwyrin flicked it aside with a brush of curling cyan, hot morning air given shape and power from the swirling currents of smoldering power in the air and stones.
Odenathus clapped his hand on his shoulder at the far end of the range. Blanco drew again and loosed. The arrow blurred in the air, but Dwyrin could catch the fletching spinning as the shaft leapt toward him. Again Dwyrin flexed the rivers of power that spun between him and the arrow, driving it into the soil four feet away. He grinned, and flinched back as Blanco drew and fired four in quick succession.
The Hibernian skipped aside, cursing, as three of the four whipped through the space he had occupied. One lone shaft he had deflected into the posts of the guard tower at his right. He was sweating worse now.
“Again,” Blanco called from the shooting stand, “and Eric will stand with you.”
At night, one of the Hippocrat? bound their wounds and patched the nicks and cuts drawn during the day’s training. The tribune and Blanco, by turns, drilled them on the myriad details of the Legion. Dwyrin fell asleep each’night exhausted and worn. Around him a growing host of tens of thousands of men also fell into their cots and blankets blind with fatigue. The two Emperors were not letting idleness dull the edge of the gathering army.
NEARBY THE HOUSE OF THE BYGAR DRACUL, CONSTANTINOPLE
Smoke still curled up from fires hidden deep in the rubble. A wasteland had been cleared around the ruined building, the fire-damaged insulae torn down and the entrances to adjoining buildings bricked up. Gray clouds hung low over the city, sending down a fine mist of rain. The wind from the north was chill and blew the trails of smoke away. Three hooded figures in long dark woolen cloaks climbed over the rubble, careful to test their weight on any new footing. Behind them a few civil guardsmen looked on momentarily but soon lost interest and passed away into the narrow alleys of the city. The lead figure, shorter than the others, halted and stared down into a stairway choked with fallen beams and ash.
“Here! I feel something below, some pattern out of joint.”
The other two scrambled across the cracked brick and tortured stone. A great heat had crushed the concrete pillars that had supported the house to grainy white ash. The footing was treacherous, but they reached the side of the first figure without incident. The second figure knelt by the side of the pit and ground the gravel of the flooring between gloved fingers. The edge of a blue and green mosaic peeked out at him, but when he touched one of the tiles, it disintegrated into powder. Another edge of the floor was warped and translucent, almost like glass.
“Find workers who will not tell any stories,” the kneeling man said to the third figure. “Excavate this stairway. There are tunnels and rooms underneath that may have escaped the destruction. I trust you will be as discreet as you can.“
The third figure nodded and turned away. The two at the stairhead watched hirrugo. When he was out of earshot, the second man turned back the cowl of his robe and looked up into the gray, troubled sky. Rain spattered on his face and he welcomed it. The cool rain was a blessing. Water trickled through his short beard, newly grown in. He wiped it from his eyes.
“You have done well,” he said to the first figure, which bowed deeply. “My servants tell me that you and your people can be discreet. I have great need of discreet men to help me. Also, they have explained your precarious situation to me. If you are loyal, this too can be alleviated.”
The first figure bowed, folding his gloved hands before him. “These are fine words, Prince. If they are true, we will be greatly in your debt. Forgive my bluntness, but our history is filled with betrayal and treachery. We do not trust easily.”
The Prince nodded; he had expected no less. He reached into the pouch at his belt and drew out a gold coin pierced by a chain. He held it out in his open palm. “Trust must be earned by both sides. Give me an opportunity to earn it of your people and I will not disappoint you. Tell this to your elders.”
The first figure nodded again. Its gloved hand passed over the Prince’s palm and the coin and the brass chain were gone.
“If they wish it, I shall come to your lodgings and bring you news. If they do not, you will not see me again.”
The Prince made a half bow and the hooded figure climbed off over the ruins, its step light on the tumbled piles of rubble. After the figure was gone, Maxian drew his hood back over his head. He was tired and the rain was beginning to chill. He sat down on a nearby block of scarred marble. In the air around him he could feel the incredible rage and the staggering efflorescence of fire that had destroyed the house. Something mighty had walked here, albeit momentarily, and wreaked great destruction. His fingers twitched at the thought of that kind of power. Then he sighed. A vaster power was arrayed against him; the thing that had transpired here had been the conflict of men, not the doings of something so enormous it might as well be a god. He buried his head in his hands. He was so weary.
Krista crushed a handful of shiny leaves, green on the top and gray on the bottom, in the bowl of a mortar. A sharp aromatic odor rose from the bowl. Satisfied that they were well bruised, she spilled them into a pot of hot water that was hissing at the edge of the fire. The smell bloomed in the boiling water and filled the little kitchen. She smiled at it; it reminded her of Thira on a cold morning. She assembled a platter of fresh heavy bread and soft cheese while the leaves steeped in the bubbling water. Outside, a cold r’ain continued to fall, filling the central garden of the house with pools of water.
Maxian was in the back room, christened the “study,” for it was filled with spoils from the ruined house across the street. Renting the whole building had been easy, since the disastrous fire and the strange doings that had preceded it, the entire neighborhood had fallen under a pall. Many of the local people had moved on, leaving an unanticipated windfall of cheap housing for the secretive band of Westerners who had moved in.
Of all the things that Maxian had commanded of the little Persian, the excavations of the smashed house of the Valach merchant pleased Abdmachus the most. Once given a free hand, he had fallen to it with a will, showing off skills learned as a boy in the ghoul-haunted canyons of Petra. Even now, in the rain, he was down in the tunnels under the ruin, driving his men onward. A steady stream of messengers trickled back across the street at odd hours, bringing blackened crates, boxes, and unidentifiable scraps to be piled in the ground-floor rooms. Tiny old women-Krista knew not where Abdmachus had found them-picked through the detritus, gently prizing apart melted glass and burned paper.