The Shadow of Ararat (63 page)

"Any man who does not stand with us on that field will be base, stripped of honor. He shall be driven from his house and his wives taken from him. His lands will be given to those who have honor, those who shall stand with us against Rome. Let this word be known! Persia's honor will not be tarnished by cowardice."

Siroes sat down heavily on the couch and gestured weakly for another goblet of wine. A servant, head bowed low, crept up to him, the cup trembling in his hands. The King of Kings remained on the platform, staring up at the great disk of the world, his back turned to the nobles. They stood quietly for a time, then slowly realized that the Great King was done with them. Gundarnasp moved among them, smiling like a shark in a school of minnows. Many of the nobles crept out, hoping to go unnoticed by the guardsman. In time, all of them were gone, even Gundarnasp, and Siroes was alone with his father.

The torches had burned out, and even the four great braziers that surrounded the platform and lighted the disk of the world were ebbing when Siroes woke suddenly. His father had ignored him, and the Prince had drifted into a nervous sleep filled with strange dreams. Now he came fully awake, his hands and feet touched by an unexpected chill. Cautiously he rolled over.

His father still stood on the platform, his hands clasped behind his back, but he no longer studied the disk. Instead, he looked out into the darkness of the garden. Siroes peered that way too, into the gloom. Though the moon should have risen over the ornamental pools and cast a silvery light upon the fruit trees and acres of flowers, the space beyond the arches was black as pitch. The braziers suddenly flared, casting his father's shadow huge and swollen across the face of the world, and then died. Only a single flame burned in the brazier farthest from the arches. A chittering came from outside, and the light sound of boots on marble tile. Siroes lay utterly still, for a cold draft now blew over him and rustled the curtains behind him.

"Lord Dahak." Chrosoes voice rumbled low, seeming distant and faint.

"My King..." came the answering whisper, and a figure resolved itself out of the darkness that pooled between the fluted columns in the garden. A tall thin man glided forward, his pale skin glowing in the faint light. A loose robe of dark silk fell around his thin shoulders, revealing a white hairless chest mottled with a tracery of shining skin, puckered and twisted over terrible wounds. His face was sharp, though it too was horribly marked by a spiderweb of scar tissue and glassy flesh. Chrosoes hissed in alarm at the sight, a strange whistling sound from beneath his mask.

"Oh, yes, my King. I emulate you too well now. My visit to the city of the Eastern Romans had an abrupt and rather unfortunate end." The thin lips curled in a sardonic smile, revealing fine white teeth. A long thin finger traced the scars along the dark man's neck and chest. "Some presents are best left unopened."

"What happened... are you unimpaired otherwise?"

Chrosoes' voice held an edge, the sound of a man that is faced with an unexpected flaw in a well-used tool. Unbidden the Great King's hand rose to his own face.

Lord Dahak bowed, his long hair falling over his shoulder like a wave of ink. "My power is, as ever, yours to command. Fear not, dear King, I will suffice for your efforts. I can still pay my debts."

"Good." The King's voice ground like a stone. "Your debt to me is heavy and still not paid in full."

"Do I not know this, O King? You reproach me with your smile, but my sin is my own. Command me and I will move the earth to please you."

Chrosoes grunted and toyed with the frozen golden curls of his mask. The dark man stood before him, quiescent, though to Siroes' eye, he seemed only an instant from frightful motion.

"Your swiftness is necessary now," Chrosoes said. "The Romans come at us from three directions and I have but one Boar to toss them on his tusks." He paused, seeing a flicker of motion on the sorcerer's face. "What?"

Lord Dahak had climbed the steps to the platform, and now he too gazed up at the disk of the world. From where he crouched, the sight of this terrible thing and his father, standing side by side, struck Siroes with foreboding. Though the King of Kings was taller and broader than the slight night visitor, there was a sense of familiarity between them that bade ill.

"My King, there are but two armies that face you. I took some small time, while I made my slow way back from Constantinople, to look upon the doings of your enemies. The movement of the Roman fleet to Trabzon on the Sea of Darkness is but a feint. The whole of the enemies' strength is thrown from Tarsus..."

The tiny depiction of a town on the plain of Cilicia, at the join of the Levantine and Asian coast, burst into a green flame.

"...east, to Tauris, in the passes of Albania." The green flame licked right, eastward, across the northern fringe of the plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates, through high mountains and north, curling, into a broad valley dominated by a lake of blue and white.

"He strikes against Tauris and the Boar is already there. Baraz will have great joy of that meeting..."

Chrosoes stared up at the disk of the world, now lit by the line of flickering green flame.

"The Roman does not seek battle," the King of Kings growled, "he seeks to break into the highlands of Media and destroy the lands that have always been the backbone of the Empire. Wretched Roman! He fights us like a tax collector. A base man, an honorless man..."

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 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 just 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.

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 windowsill..."

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. Zoë 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, Zoë, 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 Zoë 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. Zoë 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. Zoë 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. Zoë, 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."

Zoë ignored him and continued to stir the beans. When the army had halted an hour before sunset, she had told off Dwyrin and Eric to find some spot out of the way of the mass of the other regiments and pitch their tents. Then she had taken her bow and jogged off into the mountain canyons. The army was sprawled along a narrow tongue of rising land in a barren valley. In the next days they would cross the high pass and enter Persia. But now, above the last scraggly trees, they rested in a wasteland of huge boulders and cracked stone. Snow lay in the shadow of the larger stones and the mountain peaks that ringed the valley held eternal caps of ice.

Dwyrin and Eric had scavenged for heavy stones to hold down the ropes of the tent and had looked for a sheltered spot between the two monoliths. The rest of the army, particularly the cohorts of the Western Emperor, had taken the flatter ground by the sides of the narrow track. The sun was setting as the legionnaires began cutting a shallow ditch in the hard ground and raising the rough outline of a travel camp.