Immortal (4 page)

After a long time, when the man had finally finished, Gamos said drily, “He thanks you.” Then he added, “And he says you stink.”

They had crossed a small stream during their excursion to find wood, and the next morning Gamos took Agios back there to bathe. The had reached a tentative understanding while Agios had worked on the howdah, so Gamos stood guard casually as Agios stripped and stepped into the waist-high water. However, Gamos still kept one hand on his spear and the other near the hilt of his dagger.

Agios didn't care. The cool water seemed to return him fully to himself. Grief was still a phantom that clung to his shoulders, but the wine was finally gone from his head. He wondered what it would be like to return to his mountain, to visit the graves, and the thought stabbed into him. He scooped up sand from the riverbed and used it to scrub his skin until it was red and raw. Then Agios dipped beneath the water and ran his hands through the tangle of his hair and his long beard.

They walked back to the caravan without speaking, but Agios sensed that Gamos was thinking carefully about something the entire way.

“Am I to be chained again?” Agios asked when they were near the road. He held out his arms as if welcoming the possibility, but Gamos took one look at his bloodied wrists and shook his head.

“If you run I'll hunt you down.”

“I won't run.”

“I know.”

The caravan was already on the move. They traveled until nearly sunset, when they camped again beside the track. Some erected tents, others spread blankets on the ground. Now that they didn't hang back from him, Agios saw that some women were among the men. “No prostitutes,” Gamos told him with a sad shake of his head. “These are wives. A caravan takes years to go, years to return. Sometimes children are born along the way. By the time they return home with their parents they can walk on their own.”

Agios tried to close his heart and his mind to the memory of Philos's birth. Those early years when his son was as fragile as a bird and just about as big. The day he first toddled across the cabin floor. How Philos would have loved to see the elephants!

Soon
, Agios thought as pain stabbed through him.
My son, I'll find death soon
.

Agios's father had taught him that after death, men's spirits lived on. He had never seen a spirit and did not much believe in them—but if he could see his son again, and his wife—

No, let me stop thinking
.

Gamos mistook Agios's solemnity for hunger and motioned for him to sit near a fire where a leg of mutton was turning slowly on a spit. “I'd starve you,” Gamos told him cheerfully, “but then you might not be able to complete your task.”

“And what is my task?”

“To gather the frankincense, of course.”

If I don't tell them where I gather it
, Agios thought,
they will keep me alive
. “Who wants it so badly?”

As Gamos considered the question, a woman came, carrying a flat board with the roasted mutton steaming on it. Gamos took out his dagger and cut off two pieces. He handed the smaller portion over slowly, as if he was still deciding whether Agios deserved food. “It's to be a gift,” he said finally, and for a moment Agios wasn't sure if he was talking about the mutton or the frankincense. “A gift for a king.”

“Can't a king buy his own frankincense?” Agios tore off a hunk of meat and tried to eat it slowly, even though his stomach was hollow and aching.

Gamos grinned and grease trickled into his beard. “Not this one. He is newly born. Or soon will be.”

Before he could say more, someone in camp shouted frantically. In an instant, Gamos sprang to his feet, dropping his share of mutton. “Bandits!”

He seized his spear, but Agios also leaped up and grabbed Gamos's arm roughly. “You can't leave me unarmed.”

Gamos gave Agios a hard look, reached into his belt, and yanked out the dagger, then handed it to Agios blade first. It was a warning, and as Agios reached past the glinting iron to grip the hilt, their hands touched in a silent covenant. Agios wouldn't run and Gamos knew it.

Throwing himself into the shadows, Agios stumbled over a fallen body. Six or eight men off in the darkness loosed arrows into the camp. One whiffed so close that Agios felt the wind of its flight. People from the caravan were massing to charge into the dark.

Agios realized that the archers were far too few to take on a caravan of thirty men. He saw the silhouette of Gamos against the torchlight and shouted, “This has to be a diversion! Don't let them be pulled away from the tents!”

Wasting no time, Gamos called out sharply in at least two languages. The caravan guards heard and fell back. A woman screamed from the far side of the camp. Agios raced there, leaping over a campfire, his heart pumping.

A tent had caught fire, and in the flaring light Agios saw a dozen or more men, wearing leather armor and armed with spears and short swords, hacking at the faltering defenders.

Roaring, Agios threw himself into the fight. A spearman, startled at his onslaught, spun as Agios knocked him down, grasped the spear, reversed it, and battered down another attacker, hitting him hard in the center of his chest. Still another swung a vicious sword, but Agios spun, got the spear haft between the swordsman's legs, and swept him off his feet. The man lost his weapon as he fell and flung out his hands, trying to catch himself.

Agios seized the sword. He dived low, hamstrung one bandit, tripped another, and clubbed him with the butt of the spear. People shouted. Agios heard men and women screaming. A huge brute of an attacker bore down on him, and Agios dropped backward, braced his spear, and caught him in the stomach. The dying man fell on him, a ponderous weight reeking of sweat. Agios grunted as he rolled him off, got back to his feet, and found the battle had ended.

Gamos shouted, others answered him. Torches flared, and bandits turned and fled in the sudden light. Agios heard the twang of bowstrings and saw two more of the robbers go down, struck from behind as they ran. Then the survivors had fled into darkness.

Two members of the caravan rushed to threaten Agios with spears. If they recognized him, they believed he belonged in chains. Agios dropped the curved sword and held up his hands. “Gamos!” he shouted.

The guard came at once, spoke severely to the spearmen, and then grasped Agios's arm as he loudly proclaimed something.

The spearmen bowed and murmured. “What did you tell them?” Agios asked.

“That you saved us all.”

“I didn't. I only helped.”

“Sometimes a little help is all one needs to be saved,” Gamos said, studying him thoughtfully. He seemed to decide something. “Come. We'll treat that wound.”

The pain had not hit him until then—Agios had not even felt the bite of the arrow that had pierced the meat of his left thigh. Gamos saw to it, warning Agios that he would feel even more pain. The arrow had almost but not quite made its way out again, and Gamos had to push it through the skin—that would cause less damage than trying to pull the barbs out through the muscle.

Agios lay on his side, watching as Gamos manipulated the arrow. The arrowhead made a tented shape under his skin, then came through with a bright burst of blood.

Gamos cut the shaft just behind the head and pulled it out—that felt worse than the other had.

“You have been a soldier,” Gamos murmured.

“No. Never.”

“Then you stand pain well.” Applying some poultice, Gamos bandaged the leg. “I think that will do,” he said. “It only caught the outside edge of your leg. Fortunately, the robbers around here do not poison their arrows.”

“Thank you. I wounded you,” Agios said. “And you healed me.”

Gamos laughed at that. “A lie. There were two of us and one of you. We subdued you easily, and a bruise is not a wound.” But the tight skin beneath his swollen eye glinted black in the firelight.

A man, one of the young guards, came up and said something to Gamos. He spoke back, the man nodded, and then the guard ran off again. “We lost one sentinel,” Gamos said. “We have five wounded, six counting you, though none serious enough to delay us. The bandits lost seven men. You wounded three more.”

“Badly?” Agios asked. He heard a scream.

“Not badly enough,” Gamos said.

Agios frowned. “You're having them killed?”

Gamos smiled grimly. “If a serpent struck at you, would you kill it?”

Agios had no answer for that.

A
gios knew the members of the caravan looked on him as an enigma, a drunken prisoner destined to be killed casually on the roadside who'd saved his own life by proving useful. They wondered about him but kept their distance—Gamos the guard was always at his side, and who knew when Agios might fall from favor again? As for Gamos, he had begun to treat Agios not with friendship, but with a kind of grudging respect, as if they were distant relatives in a squabbling family.

The elephants separated from the rest of the caravan, traveling eastward to the Mediterranean ports where the Roman trading fleets came to load precious cargo from the east, spices, silks, and exotic animals. The rest of the travelers, who had been heading north, now turned gradually toward the east. A day came when they skirted mountains that resembled those of Agios's homeland so much that they made him think of Philos.

“What is it?” Gamos asked as Agios stared into the distance.

“Nothing.”

“Why do these mountains fill you with sorrow?”

Agios didn't look at him. “Not the mountains. Memories.”

“Ah,” Gamos said. “You have lost someone. A brother? Parents? A woman?”

“It doesn't matter,” Agios said gruffly.

“I've lost good friends,” Gamos said. “In battle. It hurts. Talking might help.”

Agios remained silent for many strides.

Gamos eventually said, “Some religions teach that after we die our spirits live on in a kingdom underground. I have hopes of seeing my friends again.”

“I don't know about any of that,” Agios said heavily. “Maybe they do go on. Sometimes I see them in my dreams.”

He would say no more.

The journey to the northeast was a slow one, and the seasons began to change, the last of summer fading in dry heat. Half a year had passed since the ravine, and more months might go by before they reached their journey's end. Agios didn't care. The slow progress of the caravan kept his mind from other things. They passed far beyond the lands of desert and came to places lush with growing things.

And it was beautiful. The mountains were soft and green, for it was the end of the monsoon season and the earth burgeoned with growth. The road-weary travelers walked with more spring in their step.

Gamos said, “If my master is true to the rendezvous, we should meet him in a very few days.”

“And who is this master?” Agios asked.

“A ruler who is both powerful and wise. A man of thought as well as action. His name is Caspar, and he's a very well-known scholar. He speaks many languages, and reads them as well.”

The two guards and their commander, the man in the red robes, whose name was Mizha, left the caravan in a harbor city. They traveled inland for five more days before coming to a town. It did not seem to be a capital city, nor was the building they approached a palace, though it did look substantial and rich.

They entered a courtyard and then a room full of scrolls, where a dark man sat at a table. Agios noticed the bright fabric of his clothes, the rich dyes being a sign of wealth. The man stood as Gamos and the others bowed to him. Agios judged him to be forty-five or fifty, a lean, trim figure whose hair and beard were iron-gray. He asked Gamos a question in his native language—in the many weeks on the road, Agios had learned enough of it from Gamos to catch the gist: “Is this the man the messengers brought word of ?”

Mizha said, “Yes, my lord. He had this.”