“Take off your tunic,” he said, his voice level. Dwyrin obeyed. The centurion stood over hirn. Dwyrin stared at the floor, wondering what the oath entailed.
“You are Dwyrin MacDonald, of the house MacDonald. Son of Aeren.”
“I am,” the boy answered.
“You pledge yourself to the service, in war, of the people and the Senate and the Emperor of the city of Rome?”
“I do,” Dwyrin answered.
“Do you swear to uphold the state with your very life, under the auspices of the gods?”
“I do,” Dwyrin said. Now an odd feeling stole over him, a prickling along his skin. For a moment he was tempted to assume the entrance of Hermes and see if some fey power had entered the room,‘all invisible. But he did not. The centurion continued to speak, his voice rising.
“I so swear,” Dwyrin finished. The centurion pulled the wooden-handled rod out of the fire in the brazier. Before Dwyrin could flinch away, the two servants seized his arms and bent them back. The centurion, his eyes glinting in the reflection of the fire, pressed the white-hot brand against the pale white shoulder of the boy.
At the top of the steps at the far end of the corridor that led away from the quartermaster’s offices, Timur heard the echoing wail of pain. He smoothed his mustaches and his hand slid into the light shirt he wore. His fingers ran lightly over the ritual scarring that decorated his chest and abdomen. He smiled and then made his way down the stairs. They were narrow and steep and well worn by the passage of thousands of feet. llPMOMQMQMQHOHQMQHOMOHOWOHQMOMOWQMOMQMQHQHOMQl^i] THE SUBURA DISTRICT, ROME
Gods, what a pit!“ The dead man sneered, his leathery face twisted into a grimace. He and Abdmachus rode down a narrow way behind the Forum. The alley was choked with garbage, broken furniture, and the rotting corpses of dead animals. The little Persian led, while the dead man had the young Prince thrown over the front of his saddle. A gray cape had been added to the clothes Abdmachus had given him in the tomb. The motheaten hood was pulled forward, shading the man’s extremely pale complexion. The Persian nudged his horse right and they turned into a little courtyard behind the brick edifice of a four-story insula. The dead man looked around carefully, his face a mask, while the Persian swung off his horse and made his way up a flight of broken steps to bang on the door at the back of the block of flats.
A sound rose, echoing from the pale brick faces of the buildings, a great murmur like the sea against a steep shore. The dead man turned around on his horse, looking for the source of the noise. Off to the south he saw a great cliff of marble rising over the red tile roofs. A forest of banners and pennons surmounted it. Smoke rose around it, curdling against the soaring wall and collecting in the arched openings that ringed the top of the edifice. He scratched his nose, then held his hand up in the morning light. It seemed odd for it to be so bleached and pale, very like the belly of a fish.
A man in a dirty yellow smock opened the door and nodded to the Persian. Abdmachus stumbled down the steps and came up to his horse.
“What is that?” The dead man pointed at the building looming over the rooftops.
Abdmachus turned, his fingers busy untying the straps that held the Prince to the horse. He squinted into the sun.
“Oh,” the Persian said, “it’s the Colosseum. There must be games today.”
They had entered the city through the Porta Ostiensis gate, by the river, at dawn. A great throng of merchants and draymen had already clogged the artery leading into the city from the southwest. The Persian had shown his papers to the overworked guards at the gate, and they had entered without incident. The dead man was, by turns, troubled at the- wan pallor evident on the faces of the people and stunned by the vast size of the city and the crumbling monuments therein. Cutting across the city toward the bowl of the Subura, they had passed through ancient gates, triumphal ways, and skirted the palace-clogged magnificence of the Palatine. As they rode through the thronging crowds, the Persian could hear the dead man muttering to himself.
The Prince owned an insulae on the southern side of the Subura, and the Persian and the dead man carried his body up the steps, down a rank hallway, and through a stout wooden door into a bare apartment. Only a few sticks of furniture were about, but there was a bed made of pine boards and crisscrossed leather straps. They lay him there and the Persian bustled off to find water and make an infusion. The dead man crossed the bare dusty room to the windows set into the south wall and, putting his shoulder to them, opened the shutters. Brilliant sunlight flooded the room, cutting long sparkling trails through the dusty air.
“Ai, no strength in these limbs,” the dead man mused to himself. He clenched his fists and frowned at the sound of muscles cracking.
Beyond the windows, the temples and pillars of the Forum rose up over the tiled roofs of the buildings across the street. The way below was crowded with morning shoppers. The little door fronts were crammed with goods: fruits, slabs of meat, bushels of grain, carefully bundled feathers. The noise from the street echoed off the roof in the apartment. The dead man half closed the shutters. Abdmachus returned to the room with a steaming pot of water. The sharp smell of mint and sage rose from it.
“What is that great cylinder?” the dead man asked, pointing out the window.
Abdmachus glanced up, then said, “The triumph of Trajan. A long bas-relief depicts his conquest of the Dacians.”
The dead man snorted and rubbed the side of his long face. Dust and grit came off under his fingers. He smiled.
“Dacia… always troublesome. How long was I in the ground, Persian?”
Abdmachus tipped the lip of the pot to Maxian’s lips and spilled a little of the brew. The young man twitched and the Persian managed to get more of the brew down him. The Prince groaned and his eyelids fluttered.
“Over six centuries,” the Persian answered absently, his attention focused on the pulse and color of the Prince.
“Six centuries and the Republic winds up looking like a pigsty?” The dead man came to the other side of the bed and gazed down on the long-limbed youth who lay between them. “Six centuries and the city is a crumbling ruin, filled with plague victims and lepers? Is there no order? I see that the administrative skills of the Senate have not improved…”
Abdmachus looked up briefly but said nothing. The Prince stirred, his eyes opening.
“Are we in the city?” Maxian’s voice was faint.
The Persian rolled back each of the young man’s eyelids and pursed his lips in concern. “Lie still, lad, you’re still shaken up. The effects of the spell were rather stronger than I expected.”
Maxian smiled weakly. “Feels like my skin has been scrubbed off and then put back on, wet.”
With a great effort he turned his head to look at the dead man. “Welcome back to the land of living.”
The dead man scowled and looked over his shoulder at the partial view of the city from the window. “Not much to see. How many have died from the plague?”
The Persian and the Prince exchanged puzzled glances. Abdmachus cleared his throat. “My lord, this is twice you’ve referred to the plague. We don’t understand.”
The dead man stared at each of them in turn, his face a picture of incredulity.
“Out there”-he pointed out the window-“the people on the street. They look ghastly… the only time I’ve seen such deprivation in an unbesieged city was during the outbreak of the plague in Thapsos when I was a young man.”
Maxian coughed, then managed to clear his throat. “It is no plague, my friend, it is the common state of the Roman citizen in these days. Those men and women are as healthy as they’re liable to get.”