The Shadow of Ararat (81 page)

"
Domina
," he said, his voice concerned, "are you all right? Should I call your servants?"

"No!" she said, though she was short of breath. "They cosset me to death. Here it is, a gorgeous late-summer day—the sky like the sea, the air freshened by wind. I refuse to sit inside and listen to the natterings of my maids. We are in uncharted lands, filled with savages and Persian spies—I should like to see something of the land I travel through."

Dwyrin nodded sympathetically, though the thought of being cosseted by white-limbed maids with golden hair was distracting. Still, it was far better to be out and about than stuck in some sweltering hide tent, in the dark, wondering what was going on. "True words, my lady, though in your condition you should take care."

"Feh." She snorted. "My condition is held up to me as a fine example of all the things that I should not do. I am tired of it. Tell me, young man, where are you from and where did you learn to beguile fish so?"

She smiled at him, her green eyes merry, her perfect complexion like lustrous pearl. Dwyrin felt a little faint, but somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that she was barely older than he was. A young woman, being carted around by some rich husband—doubtless one of the grandees of the Eastern army—well with child. Distantly, the great brass gong of the school sounded in his head. He looked around furtively.

"Ah, my lady, shouldn't you have a chaperone, or a maid, or someone with you? Your fair skin and soft hands mark you for a noble's wife! I'm only a soldier in the Legion—I'm not supposed to traffic with the likes of you. No disrespect meant!"

The lady sighed and looked around as well. The line of her neck did not match the classical beauty of the Greek sculptors, and her nose was too pert and rounded for the image of Athena, but her good humor and ready wit had already captured Dwyrin's heart. She made a moue and pouted, putting her hands on her cheeks. "Oh, I hate a chaperone! And look at you, a soldier, brave in the face of the enemy, doubtless noted for your daring and courage—looking like a schoolboy caught with an extra pastry! I will be driven mad by this... I am sure of it."

Dwyrin forbore telling her that he was, in fact, a schoolboy.

"I should go," he said, mumbling and trying not to look at her. She frowned and patted a rock next to her.

"Sit," she said with asperity, "and tell me of your life in the Legion. I see so many soldiers, but I never know what they are doing! If you do not, then I shall cry out, making a scene, and you will be punished!"

"I will be killed!" he blurted, then covered his mouth. The lady smiled sweetly at him and patted the rock again. He sat down, though he was not in the least pleased by it.

"Now," she said, pulling a waxed tablet out of a pocket sewn into the inside of her cloak, "tell me about the life of a soldier in the army of Rome. Spare no detail—the sun is still high."

Dwyrin sighed and arranged himself cross-legged on the rock, the hooked fish carefully laid in the stream. They twitched, trying to escape the line through their gills, but could not. He felt much the same.

Well after nightfall, Dwyrin trudged up the hill, through stands of birch and cedar, to the edge of a meadow where his five had made camp the day before. He scratched at his shoulders, sunburned again, and muttered darkly to himself about the nosy nature of young Greek ladies. He had retained the fish, at least, and that would make dinner far more palatable than the hardtack and salt pork they had lived on in the mountains. He passed through a sentry line, giving the password of the day to two long-bearded Armenians leaning on their spears. The tents of his five were couched under tall red-barked trees, and a little fire was going in front of them.

Zoë looked up with a murderous expression as he shuffled into camp and flopped down next to the fire. Odenathus looked guiltily at him too, making him surmise that the five-leader had been holding forth upon his unprofessional behavior and the extent to which it merited punishment. He smiled weakly at them.

"I found some fish," he said, mumbling. A cooking stick was near the coals in the fire and he began gutting his catch. "A noble lady saw me in the stream and called me over—then she pestered me with questions all day! I couldn't leave, it wouldn't have been polite..."

Zoë, her expression thunderous, toyed with a knife, one of the several that she carried in her belt or thrust into the uppers of her boots. The side of the blade caught the glow of the fire, shimmering with red and orange.

"A noble lady..." The scorn in her voice cut at him. "A poor lie. A penny-hatiera in the baggage train, more like. Did you bring her fish too, to pay for her time? Was it worth it?"

Dwyrin stiffened at the vitriol in the five-leader's voice. Unconsciously he sat up straighter, his eyes narrowing. "She was a noble lady, well mannered and she could write. She asked me all about our lives in the service of the Emperor—what we eat, how we march, who carries the axes to fell trees, everything in the world, it seemed! In my country," he finished, glaring back to Zoë, "we are polite to strangers and accord them honor."

Zoë half sat up, her face stilling at the implied insult, the knife in her hand sliding forward toward him. Dwyrin felt the air chill, but he did nothing, keeping his balance—though it was hard! Part of him, some thing that lived in his gut, wanted to jump up and smash the Palmyrene's face with his fist or call fire to burn her. But he did nothing. He knew that he was telling the truth.

Zoë breathed out, calming herself, and sat back down.

"I suppose that she was very beautiful," she said, her voice weary and bitter.

"Well, no," Dwyrin replied, accepting the olive branch—if that is what it was. "Very pregnant, though! My mother would guess only a few weeks before she births, I imagine."

Zoë's eyebrow crept up at this, a procession of unreadable, but marked emotions crossing her face. She slid the knife back into its sheath and put it away in the back of her belt.

"Pregnant?" she asked, her voice a study of innocence. "A noble lady, you say?"

"Yes," Dwyrin said, now suspicious that she believed him. "Richly dressed, though the paints not overdone, with green eyes, long brown hair, and soft skin."

Odenathus hissed in delight, leaning over the fire, eager to catch every word.

"Did you touch her?" His voice was touched with a lurid amusement. "What else happened?"

"Nothing, Macha be praised!" Dwyrin said, making a sign for good luck. "We talked by the stream is all."

Zoë curled her arms around her knees, watching Dwyrin over the light of the fire. "Your noble lady, did she have a name? A house perhaps? A bevy of maids? A glowering chaperone? Bands of guardsmen?"

"No." Dwyrin sighed. "More's the pity—if she had, I would have made my escape much easier and been back here hours ago. Why should anyone care how the spearmen lace up their boots, or that we have sour wine one day in three?"

"Well," Odenathus said slowly, unable to contain himself, "did you kiss her?"

Dwyrin turned a freezing glare upon the Palmyrene boy, which made Odenathus sniff and poke industriously at the fire.

"I think," said Odenathus said, when Dwyrin said nothing, "that our barbarian friend was too polite to take such advantage—among his people it is not done, or so I surmise... this is why there are so few of them!" He laughed, but Dwyrin laughed with him too. It was good to sit all around the fire like this, sharing the events of the day.

"And, you say, this noble lady was pregnant too." Zoë's voice cut in from the side. "You did not say whether she had a name or not?"

"Oh," Dwyrin said, scratching his head, trying to remember if he had managed to get a question in amid the flurry of hers. "Yes, Martina—if my memory serves. Her husband is an officer from Africa—from Carthage, I think. I'm not a bard or druid, you know, to remember every little thing that happens..."

Zoë shook her head, then stood, staring up at the stars peeking through the crown of the trees above. She hooked her thumbs into her belt and turned, warming the backs of her legs at the fire. The nights were growing colder, even down here, out of the mountains. "I suppose that you
were
polite to her."

"I was on my honor," he snapped back, bridling at the implication of poor behavior in her tone. "I treated her as one of my aunts, or my mother—though she is neither or young nor so nosy as that one."

"Good," Zoë said, looking over her shoulder for a moment. "The penalty for such familiarity, you know, is blinding, I believe, or perhaps just torture and death. But still, I suppose that the tribune will understand. He is a caring and forgiving soul."

"Do you think trouble will come of it?" Odenathus tapped a long stick on the rocks at the edge of the fire, watching Zoë carefully. "I have heard that she is rather wise, even for her young age. Surely she saw what a lack-wit our Hibernian friend is..."

Zoë cut him off with a motion of her hand, turning back to the fire. Dwyrin looked from one to the other, a damp chill percolating in his stomach.

"The Empress is not my concern," Zoë grated, "but rather the temper of her husband."

"Empress?" Dwyrin squeaked, feeling dizzy and faint. "What Empress?"

Without sparing him a look, Zoë continued: "The Emperor of the East once had a man cut to bits and fed to swine for insulting her. Granted, he was an enemy of her house and a lying fool, but still... Or the matter of the usurper Phocas—there was a grisly death! He is a man, with a man's rages. He loves her too much, I think, to be as good an Emperor as he might be..." Zoë's voice trailed off.

"Lady Martina is an Empress?" Dwyrin laid down on the cold pine needles. He felt quite faint.

"Yes," Odenathus said, sighing as he removed the trout, now crisping in the heat of the coals, and slid them off the stick onto a wooden platter he had stolen from the ruin of Tauris. "I fear so. The only pregnant noble lady in this army would be Empress Martina, the young and scandalous wife of the Emperor of the East, Heraclius of Carthage."

"Scandalous?" Dwyrin perked up, leaving off from nervously chewing on the end of his thumb. "I didn't hear! What did she do? Did she cavort with stableboys? With gladiators, shining with oil?"
Maybe she talks to young barbarians all the time!

Odenathus cuffed the Hibernian gently on the head. "No, you idiot... she is his niece. These Greeks are beside themselves with outrage that the Emperor should follow his heart—it is said that he loves her, and no less because they have known each other for years. Some odd concept that they should spread their seed afar..."

"That," Zoë said, her voice serious, "is not the issue. The problem is that fisher-boy here has poked his nose into a political hornet's nest. We are more likely to be screwed by something political than killed by the Persians. You"—she stabbed a finger at Dwyrin, still lying on the ground, feeling overcome—"are not going anywhere without someone to watch you." She grimaced. "Me, I suppose."

Well,
Dwyrin thought, watching the moon slide across the sky,
it was a good day after all.

Zenobia stood on the battlement of the Damascus gate. Above her the sun blazed, a giant brass disk in a bone-white sky. The valley was filled with terrible heat, raising shimmering waves from the stones and sand. The Queen was garbed in thin silk robes that fluttered around her in the forge-hot breeze, clinging to the curve of her body. Her hair was loose, a dark cloud cascading around her shoulders. She had forgone the heavy crown of the city in favor of a thin band of silver set with a single ruby the size of her thumb. She looked down upon the Persian embassy with narrowed eyes.

"I am the Queen," she said, "if you would speak to the city, you speak to me."

The Persian herald, a thin brown man with a long nose, returned her gaze amiably. He was comfortable in tan and white desert robes and
kaffieh
, though the men behind him were red-faced and dressed in heavy, ornamental robes and armor. Zenobia guessed that at least one of them would faint from dehydration and the sun if she kept them there long enough. She looked forward to that with a small malicious pleasure.

"My master," the herald said, "bade me bring you his best wishes on this day. He inquires if you would consider yielding the city to the might of Persia and receiving his clemency and gratitude."

Zenobia sneered, her full lips—outlined with dark henna—twisting into a semblance of a smile. "Give your master my condolences for his imminent death. Assure him that after the buzzards and vultures have picked his bones clean, I will see that his widow receives the remains in a fine burlap sack. I will give honor to his family and grind the bones to powder myself! The city does not desire the clemency of bandits and thieves. Tell your master that we will not bow our necks to him. He, however, may come to me and beg forgiveness of his trespasses. My mercy is well known throughout the whole of the world."

The herald nodded, taking a moment to fix her words in his memory.

"My master," he replied, "the great General Shahr-Baraz, he who is known as the Royal Boar, the favorite of the great King Chrosoes, the King of Kings, is well known for his mercy, O Queen, and for his honorable word."

Zenobia cocked her head to one side, staring down at the brown man. "And what, pray tell, does his honor have to do with murdering my people and looting the tombs of the fathers of the city?"

Overnight there had been odd cracking and thudding sounds from west of the city. Mohammed's men, having slipped out of the city at dusk, returned before dawn with news that the Persians had been looting the tower tombs and carrying off their contents to the Persian camp in the hills. Zenobia had been forced to isolate the scouts in the basement of the palace to keep the word from spreading. If the people of the city learned that the honored ancestors were being violated in such a way, they would have thrown the gates wide and charged out themselves with kitchen knives to take revenge upon the Persian army.