The Shadow of Ararat (33 page)

Thyatis stalked up the line of sun-bronzed sweating men. The tan linen tunic and kilt that she favored clung to her, soaked with perspiration. Her temper was foul, and had been for days since the disaster at the Valach's house. Nikos, Timur, and the other men hauled for all they were worth. The wagon, laden with supplies and heavy iron-bound chests, creaked slowly up the ramp onto the ship. Thyatis cracked her baton on the side of the wagon, inches from Jochi's head. The sharp sound galvanized the men.

They shouted. "Heave! Ho!"

The wagon advanced another inch.

"Pull, you mangy bitches! Pull!" Thyatis' voice cut the air like a whip.

"Heave! Ho!"

The wagon advanced again, two inches this time. The front wheel crunched into the lip of the ramp. The men shouted again, muscles bunching and straining.

"Ball-less priests! You are weak! Pull!"

"Heave!" came the answering shout. "Ho!"

The front wheel trembled against the lip of the ramp, then there was a groaning sound and it tipped up and over. The wagon rolled forward onto the deck. Men ran up and slid chocks under the front wheel to keep it from rolling forward into the gaping maw of the open hold. Thyatis stepped up onto a giant wooden block that formed part of the main mast. The rest of her detachment, now expanded to two tent parties, or twelve men, hustled onto the ship to secure the wagon. Only two more to go. She slapped her thigh with the heavy baton, ignoring the stab of pain.

The day after the debacle of the raid, she had been summoned to the personal quarters of the Western Emperor. She had sat in a low chair in the center of his study, back straight, eyes front. Though she was consumed with anger at the failure of her mission, her face was a carefully composed mask. This much, at least, the ladies in the House of de'Orelio had taught her. The Emperor, Galen, had met her privately, with only a young Eastern Empire officer in attendance. He was short, but broad-shouldered, with the look of a cavalryman about him. She remembered him from the staff meeting—Theodore was his name. The rest of the face clicked into place; he was the younger brother of the Eastern Emperor.

"So, Centurion, two of your men dead, four injured. A block of the city lost to fire, and the traitors, whoever they were, escaped. To balance this, you recovered an Imperial recruit who was being held captive in the house."

Thyatis flinched. The scorn in the Emperor's voice was clear. She cleared her throat. "We wounded the Persian sorcerer, sir."

Galen's eyes flashed. "You
think
that you wounded the sorcerer. But witnesses in the street observed him flying away to the east, out over the harbor. Further, he was carrying someone. This does not strike me as being particularly wounded."

"He was very strong, sir. He nearly killed all of us."

Galen nodded, his face a mask equal to hers. "And we know little more than we did before. We know that the Walach, Dracul, was negotiating with the Persians. We know that the traitors did go to his house that night. We know that a Persian sorcerer was in the city—even though none of the thaumaturges in the service of the Eastern or Western Emperors detected him. This went ill, Centurion. Our entire plan may be compromised."

"Yes sir."

Galen sat in thought, his face pensive. Thyatis fought hard against fidgeting. At last, the Emperor looked up again, his eyes troubled. "Not much time passed between the arrival of the traitors and the start of the fighting in the house. You rushed the men in the garden room within what, fifteen grains? of entering the house. It may be that they did not have time to meet and discuss what they had learned in the Palace. One of the servants that we questioned said that there were
two
Persians who had come to meet with Dracul. If this is so, then maybe the passenger the sorcerer was carrying was the other Persian and our plan is still safe."

He glowered at Thyatis. He stood up and stalked to the window, his anger palpable. Thyatis continued to stare straight ahead, though from the corner of her eye she could see that Prince Theodore had winked at her. Was he trying to reassure her? Galen drummed his fingers on the window ledge. When he turned back, he seemed to have reached a decision.

"You were lucky, Centurion. If the captive boy had not been a fire-caster, you and all of your men would have been dead. I do not hold the outcome against you, though it is in no way pleasing to me. The fleet is leaving within the next four days and we are now completely unsure as to the state of our enemies. More to the point, the failure of your mission has caused me a loss of respect in the eyes of the Eastern commanders. I was counting on your mission being carried off flawlessly."

Thyatis felt her stomach curl up and shrivel into something the size of a dried fig. This was going to be very bad. By sheer will, she kept her head up and her eyes clear.

The Emperor paced behind the desk. "I had intended to keep you close to hand and use you and your men on the campaign as scouts, couriers; whenever I needed something carried out quietly. Now I see no option but to accept the services of the Eastern scouts and to remove you from an obvious position on the playing board."

He stopped and leaned forward on the desk. His eyes bored into hers, fierce and still angry. "I am sending you into the East, ahead of the army. You get the short straw, Centurion. You and your men are being detached from my staff and the army as a whole."

He picked up an oilskin packet from the desk. She stood and accepted the heavy package. The Emperor regarded her for a long time. Then he said, "The packet contains orders for a mission into the high country beyond the old frontier. You are being sent by a roundabout way deep into Persian lands. There is a timetable for when and where we expect to meet you again. I hope that I will have the pleasure, Centurion. Dismissed."

She spun on her heel and walked out. Her stomach was fluttering around her ears now. They weren't going to be disbanded! She still had her command and what seemed to be a particularly desperate and dangerous mission. The clerks in the outer chambers stared after her in surprise, for she was grinning from ear to ear as she hustled out.

Full dark had settled over the city when the sound of men chanting and the creak of the great sweeping oars on the side of the ship woke Dwyrin. The lanterns that had hung from the mast and on iron hooks by the doors to the fore and aft cabins were dark. A thin sliver of moon gleamed above the eastern horizon, but it barely shed enough light to pick out the rigging. The ship was away from the dock and passing between the twin towers that guarded the entrance to the military harbor. He peered over the side of the ship, his blanket wrapped around him. Below, a sleek lateen-rigged coaster, not even half the size of the transport, was plowing through the waves at their side. Unlike the transport, it was lit with lanterns fore and aft.

Beyond the breakwater, the waters of the Propontis opened before them. The sailors scrambled aloft and began running up the great square sail. From his perspective on the foredeck, Dwyrin stared up in puzzlement. The sail was dark, almost as black as the sky. Still, no lanterns were lit, the sailors working in darkness. The coaster peeled away from their course as the prow of the ship bit into deeper waters. Still lit by its lanterns, it curved away to the northeast, heading for the Sea of Darkness. The merchantman, still running dark, headed south. Clouds gathered in the east, driven by winds off the distant steppes. The moon was soon obscured and utter darkness covered the waters. Behind them Dwyrin could see the lights of the city walls in the distance. Long trails of torches sparkled along the stone roads leading down from the city to the harbor. The army of the Empire continued to move, even in night.

Again Thyatis stood on the railing at the sharp beak of the
Mikitis
. Clouds swallowed the eastern horizon, a darker blot against the night sky. Above, cold stars gleamed down. A chill wind cut out of the north and filled the sails of the sleek ship. One hand was wrapped in a guy-line, the other steadying herself on the prow. Wind rushed past her and the ship seemed to soar across the waters. The hiss of the waves was loud. Before her, across the Sea of Darkness, lay Trapezus and the beginning of their mission. She smiled in the darkness. This was far more than she had ever dreamed of. She wondered how things were faring for the Duchess, so far away to the west.

The
Mikitis
rode onward, dark sails fresh with the wind. To the south, the Anatolian shore passed away in the night, only sparsely lit by the lights of farmhouses.

Ahmet walked back into the camp, his staff making a faint
tap-tap
sound on the cold ground. Night was upon the plain and the sky above was a vast dome of stars. The moon, narrow, rode over his left shoulder. One of the Bani Hashim guards stirred as he approached, then settled back into the velvet shadow of the boulder that he was leaning against. On the other side of the stones, the dim light of a fire barely illuminated the tents of the caravan guards. The priest picked his way among the tent ropes to where Mohammed sat on a folding canvas chair. The merchant looked up as he approached, putting aside the heavy scroll that he had been squinting at in the light of a candle stub.

The caravan had been traveling north for six days from the city in the hills. The dusty metropolises of Philadelphia and Gerasa were behind them. In each place the signs of the mobilization of the Nabatean state were apparent. They had passed two bands of infantrymen sitting by the side of the road outside of Gerasa the day before. This whole day they had climbed up a long rocky slope that led up from the valley of the stream called the Jerash. The sun had beaten at them like a smith in the forge. With the fall of night, there was a little relief from the heat, though the stones continued to be warm to the touch for hours after sunset.

Ahmet was a little awed by the open desolation of the countryside. Endless leagues of towering rocky hills and barren plains had passed as they rode north. Stinging winds cut at them from the deserts to the south and east. Intermittently, tribesmen appeared out of the heat haze with flocks of sheep or goats. Widely separated oases offered some hope of water and relief from the sun. When he had said as much to Mohammed, the Southerner sneered.

"This is easy land," he replied, his hand light on the reins of the chestnut mare he favored. "In the south, beyond the An'Nafud, the land is harsher. There my people live, on the edges of the great sand. There it takes skill to survive."

It was a long way from the fertile valley of the Father of Rivers. Ahmet had shaken his head and urged his camel onward. Night fell and they were still far from the nearest rest house. Mohammed led the caravan into a low saddle between two hills where the rise of the land offered a little shelter and had them make camp.

Ahmet sat down next to the merchant, folding his legs under him.

"What do you believe?" he asked the man sitting next to him.

The merchant stirred. "I do not know," he said. "My people believe in many gods. There are four goddesses who rule the heavens and the seasons. The god Hubal, who dwells in the stone house at the well of Zam-Zam, is said to be the first among these gods. I have seen his shrine, and it is unremarkable save for the black stone that is the altar there. The priests say that it fell from the sky, bearing the blessing of Hubal. There are other gods too, but I do not know all of their names."

"My homeland is possessed of ten thousand gods," Ahmet said. His voice showed the shadow of his homesickness for the green olive groves and palms of the school.

"What do you believe, priest? Do you believe in this Hermes Trismegistus?"

Ahmet laughed softly. "Hermes Trismegistus is not a god, my friend. He is a symbol of what man may accomplish. The doctrine of my faith is that though there are gods like Set and Apollo Ra and the others, the focus of man's existence is upon his own betterment. Hermes Trismegistus was the first teacher of our sect, a powerful sorcerer who first learned how to see beyond the world of the eye and the nose and the mouth."

Ahmet motioned to the stars, the tents, the camp. "All of these things that you see are only reflections of what the ancients call a true form. Like shadows on a wall. Even you and I are not what we appear to be. We are echoes of our true selves, what my people call the
ka
, or the Jews the soul."

Mohammed carefully rolled up the scroll and slid it back into the case. "I have been reading this book, the
torah
. It speaks of a pair of gods, one male and one female, who made the world and all of the things in it. It says that man is the final creation of these gods, who are not named. Does your Trismegistus believe that?"

Ahmet shook his head, though the motion was almost undetectable in the dim light of the fire. "No. Trismegistus teaches us that the totality of existence was created a very long time ago by a single force. There was a breath of creation that made all that is, but not in the forms that we see now, around us. This one force is the only true god, the creator. Every race of men knows that some power beyond them created the world and gave it shape and meaning. Trismegistus teaches that all of the gods that men worship are reflections of the ultimate form of this first, true creator. In my land we call the first creator Ptah. All other gods sprang from Ptah. Trismegistus would say that all other gods are reflections of the true god."

Mohammed grunted and combed his beard with his fingers. "How do you worship, then, this god without a face? Are there no idols to give it form?"

"No," Ahmet answered, "we do not believe in idols. The mind of man, we believe, is the temple of this god of creation. Of all creatures only man is blessed with the knowledge of god and the ability to apprehend the magnificence of the god. We live simple lives, we do not collect goods or riches. We give ourselves up, in a way, to the apprehension of god in all the works that it has formed."

"But where did man arise, then..."