The Lord Dahak inclined his head, smiling at the rage swirling in the mind of the King of Kings. He tucked his hands into the folds of his robe and stood at ease.
Chrosoes turned to his ally. “Could you transport a single man the length of the Empire in a day?”
“Of course, my King. Is it not the least of my talents?”
The King glanced out into the darkened garden, then back to the Lord Dahak.
“Find the Boar at Tauris; he is to send his Immortals south to meet me and the army that Gundarnasp is raising. Tell him to place the defense of the city in able hands-it must withstand the Romans for at least a month! Take him, then, to Shahin in the south. The Boar must find the army of the desert tribes and destroy it. Then he must return to me in all haste. Shahin’s army must press on Egypt as soon as possible once the whore Queen is dead. Aid him if you can, to a swift conclusion.“
Dahak bowed again, his features calm and composed. “As. you say, my King, it will be done.”
The green fire faded from the map, and the shadows slithered out of the room as Dahak glided down the steps and out into the darkness under the arches. Siroes ventured to peer over the edge of the couch in time to see the pitch-black night in the garden shift and fold around the wizard before it lifted and the sound of mammoth wings echoed from the tiles. The moon shone through then and gleamed from the marble floor. The Prince slumped back down, breathing at last. On the platform, Chrosoes looked one last time upon the disk of the world and then walked out, his boots making a hollow sound on the floor.
THE ROAD TO TAURIS
Dwyrin drank thirstily from the waterskin, his parched throat eager to drain every last drop from the sweating leather bag. When he wiped his lips, his hand came away caked with yellow dust. He spat and handed the bag off to Eric, who was sitting on the tumbled pile of stones below him. The German was almost unrecognizable under a thick coating of the same clinging yellow dust that afflicted Dwyrin. Eric nodded his thanks from under a broad-brimmed hat and turned the skin up to drink from it as well. Dwyrin rubbed his nose, red and peeling again from the unrelenting sun.
Below the cairn of rocks upon which they sat, the road up the valley of the Rawanduz echoed to the tramp of tens of thousands of booted feet. From his vantage, Dwyrin could see the long glittering steel snake that wound up the side of the valley, stretching back-it seemed-to the broad plain of dried mud and grass that had deposited so much of itself on the two boys. Dwyrin had heard that the combined armies of the two Empires numbered sixty thousand men, a number larger than he could conceive. They seemed endless, a constant stream of cohorts and banda and alae that tramped past below the outcropping and its stacked flat stones. A Legion century swung past, their shields and packs slung over their backs, their helmets hanging from straps, feet moving in unison like a steel millipede.
“Oh, there was a birdie with a yellow bill,” they sang in deep voices as they marched past, “it sat upon my win-dowsill…”
These men were clean-shaven and their gear was in good order, their shirts of mail glittering in the hot sun. Nearly all wore the same kind of woven hat that Eric always carried with him, to give a little shade. The spears they carried on their shoulders danced past, a forest of iron reeds. Their hobnailed boots clattered against the flinty stones of the roadway. A stocky man with short white hair paced them at the rear, his bull-roar of a voice carrying over even the massed noise of a hundred men. He glared at Dwyrin and Eric as he passed but made no move to disturb them.
Wagons followed the Western troops, towed by oxen and mules, filled with rolls of canvas and lengths of wood. The drovers walked at the head of the lead teams, the grade too steep to put‘ any more weight in the bed of the wagons. Above the road, a long tumbled slope of sandstone scree rose up, merging with the vast bulk of the mountain that towered over the valley. Dwyrin turned, shading his eyes against the fierce sun. The road continued up, into a vast wall of mountains capped with snow and ice. Beyond those peaks, he knew, lay Persia itself.
A fist rapped his ear and he cursed at the sharp pain. Zoe‘ stood over him, staring down at the two boys with slitted dark eyes. “Get up, you lazy brats. We’re to move forward to the next station.”
Dwyrin squinted up at her; she was only a dark shape silhouetted against the sun. The Syrian girl continued to ride him hard, though she no longer showed him the fierce anger she had before. She was only a year older than he was at the most, but he did not dare question her authority. Her fists and lightning-quick reflexes in the hidden world were more than a match for his. Too, she had been taking more pains with him of late, showing him the weave and the other exercises that she and Eric and Odenathus took for granted.
He had realized, to his dismay, that his training at the school had been cut short drastically, leaving him with only the rudiments of the necessary education. In its place he had a scattering of meditations and invocations that must be, had to be, the province of more experienced masters of the art. Dwyrin felt a hollowness in his chest; the skills he did possess were tremendously dangerous, as his period of hallucinations had shown.
“Come on, barbarian.” She held out her hand, brown and strong. He took it and she grunted, pulling him up onto the top of the cairn. Eric scrambled up behind him, puffing at the effort. Weeks of hard labor and constant physical abuse had not improved the pudgy German’s physique. Odenathus, who was uncoiling himself from a seated position on the rocks, Zoe, and Dwyrin had all become wiry and stronger than Dwyrin had expected. He slapped his thigh, feeling it hard and corded like a carved log. He could barely recall the softness of his life at the school.
Dwyrin followed Zoe down the slope, his eyes drawn to the sway of her long hair, braided into three dark ropes that lay back over her bag and bedroll. There was a fierce beauty about the girl that reminded him very much of his sisters back home. He tripped on a slab of rock and skidded down the slope. Luckily he crashed into a solid boulder within feet of falling. He got up, brushing more dirt off of him. Zoe had stopped and was staring at him.
“I’m fine,” he said, picking up his hat.
“Good,” she said, “you go first. And run-we have to take up the next watch in twenty grains.” She did not smile, but Dwyrin flushed-he knew that she knew he had been paying more attention to the shape of her ankles than where he was going. He slid the rest of the way down to the edge of the road. A mass of archers in pale-yellow cloaks and copper arm bracelets were marching past, the tramp of their feet raising a cloud of more dust around them. Dwyrin shrugged his pack tighter on his back and then jogged up the road, keeping to the outer edge where there was a little clear space. His calves reminded him that he had run the day before, but he ignored it. Zoe was right behind him.
At night they crowded around a tiny fire, barely kindling smoking down to coals. Eric had gone down to where the cooks had made fires in iron baskets and come back with fresh bread. Dwyrin tore into the partially burned loaf with strong teeth. Until they had set out on this march, he had not realized how good bread could taste when you only got it every three days. Clouds had come up, covering the stars and it was cold. Zoe, wedged in next to him and Odenathus, poked at a battered iron pot sitting in the embers with a stick.
“Not ready yet,” Odenathus muttered, his face half covered with a woolen scarf. “Those yellow beans need to cook for at least two glasses. Otherwise you’ll get no sleep.”