Byzantium's Crown (13 page)

A band of cataphracts rode through the market. Right in the path of the oncoming riders, Nicephorus, unseeing and uncaring, knelt and tried to shift the injured child free of a weight far beyond his strength.

Marric swore. The market was in chaos, he had a god-given chance to escape, and Nicephorus had to go and endanger himself for a bastard beggar-brat!

In his last battle on the steppes, a man had leapt forward and died with a spear through him. It had been meant for Marric. Wasn't this a battle, too?

Wasn't it?

For an instant Marric hated himself, Nicephorus, and all misbegotten bazaar urchins. Then Nico looked up. As he saw the oncoming troops, his face tightened with fear. His lips moved—summoning magic? But then he shook his head and bent over his hopeless task of freeing the injured boy.

Damn you, Nicephorus, save yourself!

Marric hurled himself through the crowd. He was glad to see that the hag who had accused the boy went sprawling into the muck. Dust and outrage soon stifled her. He glanced at the rubble that covered the child, seized a long board, and wedged it into the heap.

"When I tell you, Nico, pull him free."

With supreme disregard for the people they should have protected, the troops rode at a canter through the marketplace. Surely most of them would be able to rein in. But even a few horses could trample them to death—as Ctesiphon had died. His death screams had sounded even through the gag they had put on him.

Marric strained against his improvised lever. A hot trickle down his back warned him that the fragile new skin had broken in at least one place. Both Nicephorus and the boy held still. The child bit one fist to keep from crying out. Marric was curiously touched by that gesture.

"Good lad," he heard himself say with surprise. "Steady now. Brace yourself!"

Nicephorus took the boy into his arms, hiding his face from the plunging horses.

"Now!" Marric exerted his full strength. Boxes and stall toppled. As the first horseman reined his screaming mount aside, Nicephorus pulled the child free, then laid him flat to inspect his leg.

"Just as I thought," he said. "Broken." He reached for a long, straight stick. "Mor?"

"Crocodiles eat your livers! Your damned brat almost cost me my horse!"

"We're from Lady Heptephras' villa," Nicephorus spoke fast. "Master, the boy directed me to the granaries, and I gave him a coin. I couldn't let him be trampled for helping me."

Bent almost double, Marric still leaned against a stall. He breathed in great gulps, and his tunic was stained with sweat and fresh blood. Nicephorus sat him down, then tore strips from his own tunic to bind the boy's leg to his improvised splint.

"Lady Heptephras' slaves, eh? I have kin ties there myself. I should check on your story." He turned from Nicephorus to Marric.

"Set take you, man! Did you know you could have been trampled?" the captain shouted.

Marric lowering his head, silenced by exhaustion and a vast frustration, If he were a proper ruler, he would let others suffer in his place, preserving himself for his realm.

I could not, Marric told himself. His father had not been ruthless or even exceptionally harsh; he had not needed to be.

The officer stood over Marric. He wore a klibanion of lamellar scales, but had left off his helmet and greaves because of the heat. Freshly blazoned on his gear was the insignia of a commander of fifty. He was very young for the rank. Had he purchased it?

"Did you hear me, slave?"

A cuff brought Marric's attention back from the circling, brilliant mote in the sky.

"I heard you," Marric said dully. There was a shriek of victory. The mote dropped toward him and took shape as a great golden hawk.

"By all the gods!" cried the young officer. "What's that?"

"The hawk perched near Marric's hand. It belled once and commanded his full attention. Behind him onlookers gasped and made signs against magic. Some fumbled after amulets.

"Give the man room to breathe! What if that bird turns on him?" That was Nicephorus. But he didn't believe the bird would strike, even if the soldiers did. One man swung a spear, clearing a space between the hawk and the crowd.

I know you, Marric thought at the hawk. His eyes were fixed to its fierce, steady gaze. The night I almost died, I saw you. He was flawed, imperfect. Why had the hawk chosen now to come to him?

He stretched out a fist to the bird so that it could walk up his arm and perch on his shoulder. Its savage talons barely pricked his skin.

Tell me.

The bird mantled its great wings, then flew over Marric's head. With a shriek it climbed higher in the sky, heading for the portico of the Temple of Osiris.

Well, I did ask for a sign, Marric thought wryly. Shall I go to that self-righteous priest and ask for help? Might as well sell sand in the Sinai.

The shaven-skull had refused to buy Marric before. And yet, the priest had fathomed his mind. And the hawk was Horus, his proper guide.

Like the priest it had forbidden him to escape. Why? Interesting: beneath all his carefully nurtured skepticism lay a core of belief, after all. Whether he wished to or not, he would have to walk the path the hawk chose for him.

"What was that?" the officer asked again. He grew restless.

"That," Marric answered, "was a hawk. Why it landed here, only Horus knows." It galled him to call this stripling "master," though he would have to. "The hawk guides us well. Master, the lad is injured. There will be doctors at that temple, so I will bear him there, by your leave."

"A local healer might do better," suggested the officer.

"If you permit, sir, I think it better for Mor to follow the hawk," said Nicephorus. "But, sir, if my fellow takes the boy to the temple, I am left to buy and load my household's grain alone. If you are kin to the mistress, can you aid me?"

Go, he wished Marric silently. Before he thinks of a reason to forbid you.

"This will hurt, lad," said Marric. "So I'll make it quick." He lifted the boy so swiftly that he had time for only one sharp outcry.

"Be a soldier," Marric urged him. "Like the master there in his fine armor. Would you greet the priests with tears?"

The lad had not enough muscle to match his gangling limbs. Marric wondered if he ever would. This is my son, he thought, moved by the lad's trust. He forgot that the child had cost him a chance to escape.

The boy let his head loll against Marric's chest, giving his confidence utterly to a stranger.

The temple's main gate was shut. But a side gate used by temple servants in their daily errands was open. Marric climbed the slight rise to the gate and entered. Above him the hawk screamed.

Priests, novices, scribes, and servants stood astonished. A bloody man and a battered boy. When will they call the watch?

"He broke his leg in the market," explained Marric. "Can a healer examine him?"

"That way." An acolyte pointed.

As Marric walked toward the physician's quarters, a low chant and the rattle of a sistrums sounded from the sanctuary. In the clean little cell he laid the boy down. "Rest now. And, as I told you, be a soldier. This good doctor must set your leg, and it will hurt. But unless he sets it, you will be like one of the bazaar cripples, fit only to beg."

"That's all I can do now," the boy answered sullenly.

"Not so. Right now I am a slave, but that doesn't mean it's all I am—or will ever be."

The boy's eyes widened. He had not connected Marric with slavery. "I will leave you here. Be well," Marric wished him.

"But man, you're hurt, too!" protested the healer.

"Some old cuts opened," Marric said absently. "I will heal."

He had to escape the sight of the boy, for whom he could do nothing more. That was the worst of slavery: he had nothing to give. And when he had not been enslaved, had had the power to give, he had not done so. The punishment was just. Since he had not given before, now he could not defend Stephana, provide this child with a future, return Nicephorus to his home. There must be a pattern, he thought, in which all these losses added up—not just the largesse of a prince rescuing one or two souls from the gutter.

"He has no home," Marric told the healer. "He is a strong lad. If you could put him to some use . . . ?"

"So many of these children need homes. Rest assured that a lad who comes to us under the hawk's wings will be cared for."

"My thanks, master." Marric did not begrudge the physician the title. He walked down the corridor toward the gate. His back hurt and he was very tired. He would have to return and help load the grain. The stonework made the hall delightfully cool, but even this unexpected comfort enervated him.

Now what? he asked the hawk silently. You didn't bring me here simply to aid a beggar, did you?

Ahead of him lay the inner courtyard. Incense drifted through it in gray spirals. Marric turned aside and drew close to listen to the chant he had heard earlier. Ahead of him lay the shrine, the place that represented the horizon, a place on the earth but not of it. Tiny against the great inscribed pillars was the Semty or celebrant. He wore a leopard skin draped over his back. Facing him was the holder of the rolls.

Before the altar lay a statue of Osiris made out of linen. The semty poured water upon it and chanted:

 
"I am the plant of life
which comes forth from Osiris,
which grows upon the ribs of Osiris
which allows the people to live."
 

The figure was beginning already to send forth green shoots.

 
"I live as corn," responded the holder of the rolls.
"The love of me is in the sky, on earth, on the water, and in the fields."
"Isis is content for her son Horus," chanted the Semty.
"She is jubilant in him, her Horus, her god.
I am life appearing from Osiris—"

Light flared. Coils of sweet incense smoke flattened as the hawk flew into the shrine. Again it screamed and mantled its wings. Then it was aloft, flying back to Marric.

He had heard these rites many times as a very young prince standing beside his father. Now they—and the hawk's gaze—compelled him
forward, his hands outstretched to take into them an empire and a power he had always longed for but never dared think he might fully possess. When the Semty noticed the bloody figure at the door to the shrine, he came forward.

The priest from the slave market! Marric's opened cuts stung where his tunic stuck to them. He glared at the man.

"Did you think I would die because you refused to help me?"

"Not if you were fit to live."

"Master of no man, least of all myself, you called me." Marric padded closer to the priest, looming over him. It would be so easy: one swift blow to avenge that he had received, to make the priest share at least part of his suffering. Marric breathed deeply. "I have often thought of your words."

And, I daresay, hated me for them."

"Aye."

"Well enough. Have you mastered yourself yet? Judging from the blood on you, not very well. Pray come with me, Prince."

The title seemed unfamiliar to Marric. So did the priest's courteous esture that Marric precede him from the shrine to his quarters. There he compelled Marric to remove his tunic and sit while he himself examined him. "Well enough, except for the bleeding," he said finally. "Tell me what has befallen you."

It was an order. As the priest anointed Marric's back and sides with oil and cleaned the open wounds with fiery palm spirit, Marric spoke. He felt less anger than he would have thought possible: only grief at the deaths along the way.

"And now," he concluded, "the armies withdraw from Alexandria, leaving this city defenseless. Let the Berbers test it once, and all the Delta will fall before them."

"Dress yourself, Prince," said the priest. "Who had the tending of you? This druid you mentioned or the slave woman?"

"Taran and Stephana both."

"You want them given their proper respect, do you, and called by their right names? What do you call yourself now? Alexander, after your father?"

"Marric. And recently, Mor the slave."

"Marric. The name of a warrior from the Isles of the Mists. Fighting man. It describes you."

Marric bowed his head. Fighting man he might be, but he had not killed the Gepid, had not fought Sutekh, had not fled to the wars at the cost of a friend's life.

"You learn. But you are tempted; your first thought is always a fight. Look at today. I know you planned to escape." The priest looked up. His eyes were gelid, and icy gray that drew attention from his lean face with its shaven poll and hollowed temples to the power of his spirit.

"I am under obedience, but still I can tell you that if you had run, you would have been utterly defeated. Captured, killed—and what of your empire then? Or the boy you brought in, or your friends?"

"What becomes of them in any case?" Marric made his question a challenge. A goblet stood at his hand and the drank: not wine but barley water with something else added. "I did not escape. And you refuse to buy me free." Marric sighed heavily. Whatever was in that drink made him think very clearly, and he wasn't sure he cared for the clarity of his reasoning. "I must free myself before I free anyone else, I know. What then? Shall I involve my friends in my own dangers?"

"You might let them choose."

"I won't let them choose death!" Stephana's voice the night he almost died, "Doubtless you will be the death of me, but not, I think, right now," rang in his ears. Already she was very close to release from a brutal life, from the Wheel itself. Could Marric take the burden of shortening her time upon himself?

"Already you are too much involved in their lives to cut free."

Marric sprang up. There was no room for him to pace. He wanted to leave, but he sensed that to walk out of the priest's quarters now would deprive him forever of desperately needed information.

The priest stood too. Marric thought he had somehow displeased him. So it is over. Even before I could ask for help, I ruined this chance too.