“I have to nursemaid some milk-sucking boy back to the Araxes? What if he soils himself, do I clean him up?” He grinned evilly at the Armenian, who half stood, his young face pale in anger.
“Save it,” Thyatis snapped, her face serious. “The boy knows the trails between here and there; you can scare off anyone that you meet. Just make sure that the word gets to the Augustus Galen as soon as possible. Go, get ready.”
After the two men had left, Thyatis motioned for Jusuf and Nikos to come sit by her. When they had, she spoke softly: “We leave right away, and we don’t continue southeast. If there is a Persian army in the field, we want to avoid stumbling on it. We’re going to cut back to the west and make for the land between the Two Rivers.”
Nikos made to protest, but Thyatis raised a finger, stopping him. “The Emperors expected to spend the spring wrecking these highland villages and the farmlands to the east, with the help of our eyes and ears. I wonder if they will grow bold after they face this army. We are going to Ctesiphon as quick as we can. There is something in the air. Chrosoes is taking a risk to try to smash our army so late in the year. He is weak.”
Nikos shrugged. Thyatis’ feelings and hunches were her own and had rarely turned wrong. He slapped Jusuf on the shoulder and went to roust the others. The Bulgar remained squatting by the Roman woman, his expression pensive.
“What is it?” Thyatis said, her voice low and soft. “Are you thinking of Sahul?”
An odd, guilty look flitted over Jusuf’s fine-boned face. He shook his head. “No… I was thinking of Dahvos and his command. There will be a great battle and he will be in the thick of it without me to stand by him. I fear for him.”
“Do you regret coming south with us?”
Jusuf looked at Thyatis, his face a rigid mask. “With you? No, I never regret that. How could I do anything else?”
He stood up, angry with himself, and left the room quickly. Thyatis considered his words and then stood herself, scratching the tip of her nose in thought. Men! pl(M)M(M)MQMOMQM(MSMM^
THE ROMAN CAMP, ALBANIA, THE MARE CASPIUM SHORE
A thin wash of clouds covered the face of the moon. They were rushing to the west, trailing long gowns of white and gray. A shepherd sat on a high mountainside, his back to the comforting bulk of a slab of granite bigger than the Temple of Zeus in his village. Two black and white dogs slept at his feet, their dreams filled with running prey.
One of the dogs twitched in its sleep and growled. The man looked out, over the sleeping sheep, and saw nothing. He listened, stilling himself. He heard it then, a high thin scream, like a baby roasting on a spit over a hot fire. Looking up, he caught a glimpse of something, huge and winged like a titanic bat, rushing through the higher air, obscuring the face of the moon.
Then a shriek of sound came from above, piercing down from the heavens, and the man, who had leapt to his feet in alarm, cowered on the ground in fear. A long wail echoed off of the rocks, and there was a booming sound that reverberated through the air, passing away into the east. The dogs whimpered at his feet and the man stared, seeing demons in the dark. The sheep turned their faces to him, frozen with dread, their eyes reflecting the pale light of the fire.
It is strange, thought Maxian, to hear the rough dialect of my city under these foreign stars.
He stood in the shadow of a copse of trees, looking down a grassy slope toward the fires of a great camp. He could hear laughter and singing. There was a familiar tang in the air; the wind out of the east was bringing the smell of a salt sea. The night air was cool but not chilly, and he had thrown back the heavy cowl of. the cloak he wore. Firelight gleamed on his cheekbones and in his eyes. Four legionnaires passed by, coming within feet of him, on patrol. The Prince smiled in the darkness, feeling his strength subtly filling the air and ground around him. No one could see him if he did not wish to be seen.
He walked down the hill, smelling the thick aroma of flowers and fresh grass. Winter threatened in the mountains, but here, on the flat plains by the shallow sea, summer lingered. The night was heavy with the smell of orange blossoms and jasmine. Even the stars seemed kind, twinkling down with a cheerful fire. He came to the ditch around the camp and stopped. Brush had been cleared hastily away from the verge, and sharp stakes, carried by the legionnaires for such a purpose, were driven into the soft earth at the bottom of the trench. Beyond it, a palisade of logs had been raised.
He brought the woman Alais to mind, a vision of strong white legs flitting across a rooftop in the Eastern capital. Frowning in concentration, he sprang forward. His boots slapped hard against the top of the log wall and he swayed, teetering over the trench behind him. Then he calmed his racing heart and stood upright, finding his balance. The camp lay spread out before him, hundreds of canvas tents in neat rows glowing with the light of lanterns and candles. He could hear a dim murmur of voices now, coming from thousands of conversations. From the height where he stood, a slim black shape melting into a dark sky, he could see that a great tent, well lit, had been raised at the. center of the camp.
He dropped silently to the ground within the walls. A sentry walked past, on the ledge built up behind the wall of logs. Maxian wrapped his cloak around him and moved off between the tents.
Martius Galen Atreus, Augustus Caesar of the West, sat at his folding desk in a pool of yellow light. Beeswax candles, taken from the nearest village by one of the foraging patrols, burned brightly at the edges of the worktable. Neat piles of wax tablets and stacks of papyrus scrolls covered the tabletop. The Emperor leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He was very tired, but then he did not remember a time when he had not been exhausted, or buried in detail, since leaving the Eternal City. It was late and he had sent his secretaries to their bedrolls thirty grains before. He reached forward to pick up a tablet bearing a roster of the lamed and injured horses in the army. His eye caught a thin dark shape standing just inside the doorway of his tent.
Galen looked up, surprised that someone would be admitted without his guards announcing him, then stopped, his eyes widening, the tablet frozen in midair.
“Brother.” Maxian’s voice was raspy and thick.
Galen rose, his lean face filling with a slow glad smile. “Maxian!” Then the Emperor paused, seeing the dreadful pallor of his brother’s face, grasping his utterly unexpected presence. “What is it?”
The Emperor leaned forward on the table for support. His mind was a cataclysm of fears. “Aurelian? The city? What has happened?” His voice was tight in anticipation of disaster.
Maxian stepped forward, his black robes furling around him, and slid his thin body into one of the camp stools in front of the desk. The Prince shook his head, a half smile dancing on his lips. “Oh, fear not, brother. The city stands. The Empire stands. Aurelian, when last I saw him, was well.”
Galen sat down heavily in the chair, sighing in relief. His brows furrowed and he glared at his younger brother. “Good… You gave me a fright, barging in all unexpected, looking like a shade out of Hades. You’re the last person I’d ever expect to see here. What is it? You must have left Rome only weeks behind us to get here now-you didn’t travel alone, did you? Ah, of course you did! Why should a healer fear in this dark world…”
Maxian looked up, seeing the concern in his brother’s face. He realized that he had missed his brother tremendously, difficult and judgmental as he was. Both of his brothers. Of late, in the pressure of building the engine and making haste to come here, he had begun to think of Krista and Alais and the others as his family. Now, sitting in the warm confines of a campaign tent in the light of plain candles, he remembered a thousand other times when he would sit in the back of just such a tent while his brothers plotted and planned their quest for Empire.