The Shadow of Ararat (39 page)

Abdmachus sighed and returned to his chair. He was growing weary of the strain of all this. He devoutly wished that he could slip away and find a ship to take him back home. It was nearly a decade since he had last seen the green hills of his homeland or ridden under night skies familiar from boyhood. He had trouble understanding merchants from home now, and he continually caught himself thinking in Latin. Sadly, he put those thoughts away and wrote down the latest conclusions in short-stroked characters on the wax tablet that he always carried with him.

"My lord," he said when he had finished, "this is a strong spell to maintain such durability. I've been a sorcerer for nearly all my life, and the thought of constructing such a thing makes me feel a little ill. There are two kinds of things I can think of that would make such a thing work; first, that a sacrifice of blood be made when the working was done. Second, that the subject be permanently marked or forced to ingest something that fixed the pattern to them. These things make me think that perhaps... perhaps it is a religious ceremony. Something that each citizen undergoes upon coming of age? I am not familiar with those kinds of customs among your people..."

Gaius Julius shook his head, grimacing. "No, there's the little ceremony when you come of age—but that's just wine and grain on the family altar and a party. I suppose excessive drinking might cause it... that would explain much of the last six centuries. But then it must be past my time, since I don't show its effects... What?"

Maxian was staring at the dead man.

"Show me your arms," the Prince said.

Gaius Julius stared at the Prince for a moment, then shrugged out of his tunic. He showed first one arm and then the other, front and back sides. Maxian grunted and turned away, lost in thought.

"Well?" the dead man asked as he pulled the tunic back on. "You want to explain that?"

"You served in the Legions?"

"Yes, though from the reading I've been doing, not the Legions that you have now! My troops were either my personal followers or citizens called up when the city was threatened. No, let me take that back. My men were professionals—I suppose the last of the citizen-soldiers were in my grandfather's time. What of it?"

"You don't have a brand, or mark, on your arm."

Gaius Julius laughed; a sharp bark of amusement. "No, boy, I was a political officer! The brands are for the men who enlisted or were levied—they had to serve a long term—six to twenty years—and you don't want them to desert, now do you? I would never be branded, nor would any officer of the
equites
. We served out of choice, to further our political careers. This Augustus, this 'son' of mine, seems to have reorganized the Legions and instituted new programs—the branding, the issuance of a certificate of enlistment, an identity badge stamped from tin." He paused. "So much changed after I died."

The dead man looked old suddenly; truly old, not just his appearance, but his spirit and will, for a moment, seemed to be as ancient as his body. Enough of his new world was the same, or similar, that the things that had changed—like the wine, or the size of the city, or the abject poverty of the poor and the rampant excesses of the rich—struck him hard. Maxian looked at him with sympathy just for an instant and then forced his mind to remember that the old man was
dead
and a tool, little more. A lever, perhaps, to move a mountain.

Abdmachus had been shuffling through the notes that he and Maxian had made, and he pulled out a parchment book, complete with a leather binding. He opened it and turned to the third or fourth page. Clearing his throat, he read aloud in a carrying voice: "To the Republic of Rome, to the Senate, to the People and to the Law of the City of Rome, I swear that I will serve faithfully, to obey my officers, to follow commands, to keep ranks and to stand when others may flee. Upon my honor, the honor of my family and my blood I do so swear."

He put down the book and nodded his head slightly, paging forward through the chapter of the
Annals Militatum
. Maxian frowned.

"This is the oath," the Persian said, "that Augustus instituted during his reorganization of the army in the sixteenth year of his reign as
princeps
of the Republic. The previous oath, by my notes here, was taken to an individual Legion and hence to the commander of that Legion. With this change and oath, made before the standard of the Legion as tutelary representative of the city and the state, Augustus attempted to impress upon the troops that their responsibility was to the Republic, to the Senate, and to the Emperor rather than their own commanders."

"Did it work?" Gaius Julius asked in an envious voice. Abdmachus shrugged, saying "I have not read the military histories of the Empire, but the discipline and élan of the Roman army is known throughout the whole world. In battle they stand fast against terrible odds. They have rarely mutinied and they do not pillage or rape their own lands." Maxian spoke, his voice thoughtful. "The oath is followed by the branding—it might be enough to fix the ritual upon the mind and body of the soldier. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Roman citizens must have taken the oath throughout the history of the Empire. Many are given grants of land, spreading them willy-nilly throughout the Empire. They have children, and their children must carry the oath-binding down through the generations as well..."

Abdmachus flipped to another set of pages and read: "The sons of the man who has completed his service, and accepted either the grant of land or the payment of cash monies to begin business for himself, are compelled as well to take service with the Army of the Republic after the passing of their sixteenth birthday. To those who complete their service as well, these same benefits and exemptions will accrue."

The Persian closed the book, his fingers tapping on the binding.

"Many generations might take the oath, then," he said, "with each one becoming more firmly fixed than the one before. Over hundreds of years, the minuscule talent for the power that lies in each man and woman bound by this oath, would accumulate and feed into the thing that we know today. Each stone that they laid, each cloak that they weave, even the wine that they ferment—all are touched by a little bit of the power and it grows, it grows monstrous..."

Maxian sat down heavily in the chair. His mind whirled to accommodate the prospect of a pattern of sorcery grown, man by man, woman by woman, over six hundred years. Millions of citizens living and dying, each adding to its power. Growing like a fungus in the darkness under the shade of the state, until it swallowed the world.
My gods, the raw strength inherent in such a structure of forms!
A voice in the back of his mind gibbered in fear—there was no way that he could overturn such a power!

He shook his head sharply and stood. "Bring me more bodies—these ones alive. I would know the strength of this thing."

On the cold table, Krista moaned slightly and turned over, away from the Prince.

Maxian ignored her. "Gaius Julius, I need soldiers, both those newly inducted—if there are any left in the city, and those who have served their term as well. The sooner the better."

"Ah, bugger the lot of them." Thyatis slid the long-glass back into the leather case it rode in and slid off of the crest of the rocky slope. Nikos and Timur, who were lying up under the shade of a boulder at the bottom of the dry streambed, looked up as she crawled into their little shelter. She fit herself into the last free bit of shade under the overhang. Nikos passed her a wineskin filled with brackish water from the last well. She drank deeply, spilling a little water on her chin and chest. Wiping it away left a trail of tan mud.

"Pah!" She snarled and rubbed the mud away. "A desolate country. Well, my loyal followers, there's too much to see and too little to do about it. There must be five or six thousand Persians between us and the gates of the city. Either of you have any suggestions about how we're supposed to get in there?"

Timur laid back against the cool stone and closed his eyes. He was only a scout; this was a matter for the commanders to hash out. The wind whistled through the high chalky walls of the streambed and cooled them a little with its hot breath as they sat in the shade. Timur was filled with a sense of homecoming, though he knew that it was false. This high plain, dry and desolate save around the fringes of the great lake that crouched at its center, was only enough like his homeland to inspire memory, not to reveal to opened eyes the towering peaks of the Altai or the Khir Sâhr. His leg ached, another sign that he was not home. If his leg had been good, would he be here?

"Are you sure that we have to meet this fellow in the city?"

Thyatis nodded, her face filled with disgust. "Yes, I've only the passcode to identify myself to him, not to his contacts in Tauris. Without him, we'll have to try to get into Tauris by ourselves without any local assistance. We need to get in there and find this man. If he's already dead, or fled from the city, then we can break off and head south to meet the army, but if the chance remains, we take it."

Nikos nodded. "How do we get in, then? This is some barren countryside—we won't be able to sneak up close to the walls. We haven't even seen a local, so there's no one to take a message inside or show us some secret way into the city. We know nothing about the Persian commanders, so unless you're willing to take the time to scout them out, we can't try faking our way past their patrols to get within a throw of the city."

"True... I do love your optimistic nature, Nikos. Timur, open your eyes and answer me some questions. You were out for hours last night—what did you find?"

Timur's dark eyelashes fluttered and he blinked a little.

"
Beki jegun
, there are two
wadi
," he said, "dry stream-beds like this one—that run down from the hills to the lakeshore on either side of the town. The southern one is larger and deeper. It seems to run close to the south wall of the city, so—perhaps—some few of us could make our way down it to the point closest to the walls. From there a brave man might be able to make it to the wall and over, if the city men do not spear you as you attempt to climb the rampart."

"That's not a very good chance," Nikos said. "There might be a commotion and we don't want either the defenders of the city or the Persians to know that we're here. We have to get in, and out, quietly with this guy. If no one knows we were here, I'll call it successful."

Timur shook his head. "
Beki arban
, that is a fool's hope. The land is dry and the sky clear. Eventually the Persian scouts will cross our path and see the wagon tracks. Then they'll know we were here. Then they will hunt for us."

Thyatis slapped her thigh, causing a cloud of dust to puff up. "Both of you are fools and so am I. There's a perfect way into the city—sitting right there, bright and blue as the sky. The lake. We can take a boat into the lakeside part of the town after full darkness."

"A boat?" Nikos sputtered. "Where are we going to get a boat in this wasteland? The townspeople won't be leaving them around for the Persians to use for day picnics. There's neither wood nor time to build one."

Thyatis laughed and crawled out of the overhang into the sun. It was on its downward course but still high in the sky. She squinted at it and estimated the time to dark before fitting the broad flat-brimmed straw hat back on her head. She strode off down the
wadi
at a brisk pace. Behind her Timur groaned and slowly crawled out of the shade. The ache in his leg was killing him these days. Nikos ran off to catch up with the centurion. Timur looked after the two of them with concern—it wasn't a good idea to run around in the heat when it was like this.

The sky above was a blue-white bowl. Not even the wisp of a cloud marred its perfection.

"Is this why we've been dragging this thrice-damned wagon all over creation?" Nikos was whispering in the darkness and Thyatis had trouble picking out his voice from the soft slap of the lake water on the rocky shore. Each of them had hold of one side of the collapsible hide boat that the Sarmatians had been carrying in their gear in the wagon. A change of clothes and their weapons rode in the bottom. Carefully they picked their way down the beach to the water's edge. The waves of Lake Thospitis were a bare ripple compared to the tides on the Sea of Darkness, but they had scoured off a bit of a strand. Uphill, in the cluster of trees that sheltered the wagon and the other men, there was the long-drawn-out hoot of a nesting owl. Immediately Thyatis and Nikos went to ground, carefully touching the boat down so as not to make a noise. Around them the night air was quiet, filled only with the sound of the water slapping against the shore and the nearly inaudible squeak of bats.

Thyatis rolled over so that she could see up the beach in either direction. There were no lights, or the clatter of horses' hooves on stone. Ten or twenty grains passed and she began to feel better, but there was still no all-clear signal. The moon had not risen yet, so the shore was black as pitch. She could hear Nikos breathing.

A cry of pain suddenly cut the night and there was the unmistakable ring of steel on steel from the copse of trees. A fire shot up, lighting the treetops, and against it Thyatis could see running men. There was shouting and she stood, frozen with indecision. An arrow whickered through the air and plunged into the lake behind them.

"Ai, come on," Nikos hissed, and began dragging the boat toward the water as fast as he could. "It's too late now to do ought but get away!" Another arrow came out of the night and slapped into the rear bowsprit of the boat. Thyatis woke up and spun to dash after Nikos, who was in the water and pushing the boat farther out. She splashed into the water, high-stepping, and then darted sideways at a faint sound behind her.

A spear clove into the water with a hiss, and a man cursed within feet of her. In the darkness, now only feebly lit by the fire raging in the crown of the dry trees, she could barely make out the shape of a hulking figure. The gleam of firelight off the man's longsword, that she could see. He stepped in, slashing overhand with the blade, and her arm rang to the joint as she slapped the blade away on the flat. She jumped up out of the water, furious with herself for leaving her own blade in the boat, and kicked at the weaving head of her assailant. There was a ringing
crack
as the iron hobnails on her boot caught the edge of the man's helmet.