“I heard.”
He paused; she was not well pleased. He decided to be blunter than he preferred.
“I owe you my life,” he said, “and I want to reward you, but those gifts that I can give are lacking. I have thought of purchasing you from the Duchess and freeing you, but since you know what we are about and what has happened, that would be freedom in name only. Until the contagion can be defeated, there is no freedom for any of us. You are bound to me, or to Abdmachus, until this is done.”
Krista’s eyes narrowed. She had already come to the same conclusions.
“So I come with you to the East,” she said in an angry voice, “and what am I? Still a slave? Half a free woman? I think-I am still a slave and will always be one.” You did not have to tell me anything about what you were doing here. You could have sent me away or let me escape. You didn’t. It’s my duty to be obliging. I’m here because you fancy my company, in bed and out. Your gratitude means nothing to a slave, for it’s the gratitude of an owner to a dog that has done well in the hunt-forgotten in the morning.“
Maxian’s nostrils flared, but he did not otherwise react. Instead, he sighed and looked away. “True. I do want your company. I do not trust the old man or the Persian. Gaius Julius would have me his slave in an instant if he thought that he could maneuver such a thing. Abdmachus-well, before tonight he thought that he was the master of the situation; now he is my creature. I desperately need someone to talk to, to trust. I.hope that would be you, if you will still come with me.”
“I have no choice,” Krista said in a resigned voice. “Outside of the barrier that you and the Persian provide, I’m dead. I want to live, so, yes; I will come with you. I don’t think that you will ever think of me as a free woman, but life is better than death.”
Inside, Maxian felt a sharp pain at her rejection. Why didn’t she understand that he wanted to help her? He just couldn’t. Not right now. But soon he would!
He turned away and climbed into the bed himself, careful to avoid the little black cat. Krista closed the fire grate part way and then disrobed. The house was silent, the only noise a patter of rain on the slate roof.
THE HILLS ABOVE TAURIS, THE PERSIAN FRONTIER
A bay mare walked along a dirt road shaded by cypresses. Her rider dozed in the saddle, a broad-brimmed straw hat pulled low over her eyes and a disreputable gray cloak thrown over a muddy brown tunic and leggings. Only a stray curl of reddish-gold hair betrayed anything amiss. Another horse followed close behind on a lead. The road wound down in a lazy path from the foothills of the great mountains behind, heading into a broad valley filled with streams, vineyards, farms, and the distant sparkle of a.river. Beyond the river rust-red cliffs rose up in an escarpment backed by great volcanic cones. The horse kept to the left side of the road, for there it was shadier and much of the center of the track had been badly torn up by the passage of many horses and wagons.
The road turned and plunged down the side of a hill, angling toward thicker stands of cypress clustered along the banks of the river. A broad field of high grass and brilliant yellow flowers lay between the hill and the riverbank. As she descended the hill, Thyatis caught sight of a band of mounted men cantering out of the trees into the field; their lance tips sparkled in the sun, and there was a flutter of blue and red banners among them.
Thyatis cursed evilly, turned her horse off the road, and cut across the face of the hill through heavy brush. A hundred feet from the road, she stopped and slid off the bay. She tied her mount to the nearest tree and hurriedly pulled its feedbag from the packhorse. A handful of grain quieted the horse. Thyatis untied a hunting spear from the back of the bay and slipped off into the brush in the direction of the road.
Thirty or forty feet off the road, the side of the hill boasted a thick stand of juniper. Thyatis had noticed them as she had come down the hill-they offered good cover in full view of the road-and now she crept down to them from uphill. She could hear the jangle of bit and bridle on the approaching horsemen. They would turn the corner of the road and begin climbing the hill within moments. She sprinted the last fifteen feet into the stand of juniper and threw herself down behind the bole of the largest tree she could see. Cautiously she peered around the trunk.
Three horsemen cantered around the bend: tall men dressed in russet and tan riding leathers and tunics. They rode past swiftly, shouting at one another.
Must be racing to the top of the hill, she thought.
The rest of the band followed more sedately, thirty in number. They were well armed and richly attired and equipped. Thyatis counted spears, bows, long curved swords among their armament. But they had no water bags and no signs of heavier equipment, or anything to make a camp. A patrol, she thought. The city must be close.
At the end of the column, riding a little back, was a heavyset man with a large full black beard. Slung over his left shoulder was a round shield painted with the face of a tusked boar in brown and black and white. His horse ambled along, taking its time up the hill. The Persian’s eyes seemed heavy with sleep, idle in the late-afternoon sun. Thyatis stilled herself, slowing even her breathing, and did her best to settle all the way into the leaf-strewn soil. The Persian rode with his bow athwart the shoulders of the horse, an arrow laid across it. Thyatis waited a long time after the Persians had passed away over the hill before she relaxed and rolled over to put her back against the trunk of the big juniper.
“He’s a quiet one, isn’t he?”
Thyatis froze, her ears twitching at the quiet voice. The brush and leaves to her left and right rustled slightly and she started-inwardly-in astonishment as three men in motley brown, tan, and green cloaks appeared around her. They wore half masks of wood carved in the appearance of men with short beards and slanting eyes. The two on the left bore long knives with handles of bone and iron-headed spears, while the man on the right, who had spoken, was armed with a long bow of yellow wood with a countercurve at the top and bottom. The bowman settled to his haunches and laid the weapon down on the leafy ground.
“Greetings,” he said in oddly accented Greek. “My friends and I are hospitable.”
Thyatis drew her feet up under her, her ears straining for any noise that indicated more men in the band of woods than these three. She could hear nothing, yet she had not heard these men either, even when they were only feet away from her.
“Who are you?” she asked in her own rather poor Greek. One of the men to the left hissed in surprise. It was difficult to keep them all in view at once, so she stared straight ahead, keeping each in her peripheral vision. The man on the right raised a gloved hand for silence. •
“I am Dahvos. These are my brothers, Jusuf and Sahul.” His voice was low and muffled by the mask, and did not carry much past Thyatis. “Well met, fellow traveler.”
Thyatis watched them in silence. The masks were odd; they must be difficult to see out of in these woods. Their boots were made for riding, so horses must lie hidden nearby. They wore light-colored shirts with intricate embroidery on the sleeves and at the neck. One of the men on the left had a heavy silver bracelet wrapped around his forearm. They remained quiet, waiting for her to respond.
At length, she said, “I am Thyatis. Greetings.”
The men looked at each other and nodded. The one on the right, who seemed to be their leader, took off his wooden mask with a sigh and stowed it away in a cloth bag at his side. Behind it, he was young and fair-skinned, with blue eyes and regular clean-shaven features. He pulled back the hood of his cloak, showing long braids of red hair tied with strips of colored cloth. Thyatis tilted her head to one side, seeing out of the corner of her eye that the other two had taken off their masks as well. It struck her odd that none of the three wore beards, though the eldest of the three was showing signs of stubble. He was shorter and stouter than the other two men, with streaks of gray in his sandy blond hair, and watchful watery blue eyes. Thyatis could make out a familial resemblance between the two younger men, but this one, he was much older and had a markedly different facial structure.