The Shadow of Ararat (48 page)

Within the wooden house was a high-vaulted room with wooden beams supporting a roof of slate tiles. Fifty or sixty men had already gathered in the room, where many couches and divans had been arranged in a rough circle. Tables had been pushed back against the walls, clearing this space. At the far end of the room from the door a raised dais stood with an altar of light-colored stone upon it. Behind it, on wall, was the cast image of a bull in corroded greenish bronze. Two rows of fluted wooden columns ran the length of the room. The old chieftain, rather than pushing forward through the men clustered at the center of the room, moved through the crowd to the right, taking up his position in front of one of the pillars with Mohammed just in front of him and Ahmet to his left. The three guards settled in behind the pillar.

Lanterns were hung along the beams overhead and there were tapers in copper holders on the pillars. The vaulted space above the beams was already filling with dim smoke, but high above Ahmet saw that there were openings covered with latticework to let the smoke out. Men continued to enter the chamber, and now noise rose from the center of the room as men jostled for position among the couches. Ahmet remained still, for the
sheykh
was apparently at complete ease leaning against the pillar. Mohammed too was content with his view.

Between the men standing in front of him, Ahmet could make out that at the end of the circle of couches away from the door, three divans—more ornate than the rest—were still unoccupied. He was about to ask Mohammed who the assembly was waiting for when there was a commotion at the door. Men's heads turned and they fell silent.

A party of men in very dark-red clothing entered—long capes with deep hoods and glittering silver bracelets and necklaces. Four such men, with narrow, hawklike faces, entered in a wedge, and the desert chieftains and their retainers parted before them like the tide off a rocky shore. Between them walked a man of middling height with dark-olive skin and a neatly trimmed beard. His cheekbones were sharp and he wore very little jewelry, only a ring of gold on each hand and a thin circlet of fine silver metal at his brow. He wore a simple tunic of pale rose-colored silk, bound with a black belt. As they passed, Ahmet felt a wave of controlled power roll over him like a soft breeze.
A sorcerer,
he thought, his other senses pricking fully awake for the first time in many days.

He centered and allowed his vision to expand slightly. The four men in the hoods smoldered with purple-black flame, like the fire that danced at the edge of a hot forge. Ahmet shuddered a little, realizing that each man—obviously the servants of the man in rose—had a spirit bound to it, some hellish imp drawn from the cracks and crevices that sometimes disgorged tormented and dreadful beings into the realm of man. At the center, the man in rose gleamed with concealed strength, like a strong light beheld through a colored glass or through ice. He turned at the couch on the left of the three and took his ease there. The four hooded men arranged themselves behind him, making no sound. Ahmet wondered if they could sense him as well.

"This is Aretas, the ninth of his noble line," ibn'Adi said from behind the Egyptian in a quiet voice. "He is the Prince of the city of Petra in the south. He styles himself the King of the Nabateans, though they are more rightly the subjects of the Governor of the Roman province of Arabia Minimis. He is a vain and dangerous man."

The Petran had seated himself and accepted a cut crystal cup of wine, when the doors to the room opened again and all of the men turned again to see who had entered. Beside the restrained menace of the Nabatean and his minions, the man who entered struck Ahmet as an inoffensive clerk late to a business meeting of his master. He was tall and thin, balding, with a hooked nose, and his white tunic—though richly hemmed—hung from his frame like a sheet. Four of the red-haired guardsmen flanked him, however, and when he took the center couch, Ahmet knew that he must be the governor of the province of Phoenicia.

"The Roman Lucius Ulpius Sulpicius, as dry a man as ever birthed by the loins of the Roman wolf. Though his seat of rule is at Tyre on the coast, Damascus is his responsibility." Ibn'Adi's voice was tinged with wry respect for the gawky man that now settled, uncomfortably, onto the center couch. His Germans cleared a broad space around him, pushing aside some of the Arabs who had been edging closer to where Aretas was sitting.

Lucius cleared his throat and then rapped on the arm of his couch with a bony hand. "Friends, our company is gathered, all but one, but it already grows late and there is much to discuss, so we will begin. I will be brief and blunt—the Empire thanks you for your friendship, shown so well by coming here today and gathering those men you command to the standard. It will be rewarded and the Empire will mark those who came when called and who did not."

Mohammed turned the slightest bit and whispered to Ahmet, "Ah, Constantinople will remember those who came to lick its hands and kiss its boot when called, like dogs..." Ibn'Adi stilled the younger man with a fierce scowl. Ahmet finished his translation of the governor's Latin and ibn'Adi nodded.

"An invasion is upon us," the governor continued, "one that will bring sure disaster to us all if it is not stopped, and stopped well short of Damascus or Tyre. The enemy is strong. The latest report from the north counts his number at nearly sixty thousand men."

A current of whispering rushed around the room, and Ahmet saw that many of the men around him were startled by the size of the Persian army. He wondered how many lances the chieftains in this room commanded. The
sheykh
did not seem concerned, however, when Ahmet related this to him. Rather the old man seemed to be more interested in the reactions of the other captains and warlords.

"Do not be alarmed," the governor said, pressing on through the murmur of his audience. "The count of our own army is equal to that, or greater. Within three days the rest of our forces will have completed the muster here and we shall march north across the mountains to Emesa to meet the invaders. Our will is strong and we will defeat the Persians, driving them back beyond the Euphrates,"

"With what?" One of the chiefs, dressed in a heavy brocade robe and bare-headed, stood from his couch. He sported a thick dark beard that had been carefully braided at the ends, with small jewels bound into it. "I see many brave men here, but the forces we can put to the field are lancers and bowmen on horseback. I hear fine words from Constantinople, but I see no Roman soldiers here. Where are the Legions? My men and I rode six days from Gerasa and I saw none upon the road. My cousins tell me that the Legion camps at Bostra and Lejjun are empty. I see no Legions here either. Where is Rome? Where is the Emperor of the East?"

Lucius remained seated, his face calm. "The Legions have been sent to the coast, to Tyre, to receive reinforcements from Egypt and the Western Empire. They will meet us at Emesa, having marched up the coastal road. Three legions—the Third Cyrenaicea, the Second Triana, and the Sixth Ferrata—will join us there. With those men, and the
auxillia
they command, our army will number no less than eighty thousand men to stand against the Persians."

"I do not believe you!" the Gerasan chief shouted, his face reddening with anger. "When the Iron Hats come at us, there will be no Romans there, only us, with our light mail and bows to stop them. This is a bootless venture! Any man who goes north"—the Gerasan turned about, his gaze challenging the crowd—"will be a dead man."

"This is not so!" Lucius stood at last, his pale face dark with rage. "Rome will not abandon you. The honor of the Empire stands with you, as will its soldiers on the field!"

"Lies!" the Gerasan shouted back, shaking his fist at the governor. "Rome whores us like it does its daughters on the steps of the Forum!" His men began shouting too, and the German guardsmen rushed forward to stand between the Southerners and their patron. The room filled with noise, and the men in front of Ahmet pressed forward to see if there would be a fight. Ahmet stepped back, out of the way, and hurriedly related the lurid insults that the Gerasan was defaming the governor with. The edge of ibn'Adi's lip twitched a little, almost into a smile. His guardsmen closed up, hands on their weapons.

It was impossible to see over the heads of the shouting and gesticulating men in front of them and Ahmet stepped back, running into someone standing behind him. He turned, an apology on his lips, and stopped, unable to speak.

A woman stood behind him, her hand on his shoulder. At first, all that he was aware of were her eyes—a cobalt bluer than the open sky—with heavy dark lashes in a delicate oval face. They smiled at him and he felt the shock of that personality all the way to his stomach. She pressed him gently aside with a murmured "Your pardon, holy one," and he had a blurred impression of a cloud of lustrous black curls ornamenting a graceful alabaster neck. Then a very solid-looking breastplate of bronze workings on steel interposed itself and Ahmet could feel the hands of Mohammed and the
sheykh
holding him up from behind. A phalanx of ebony-skinned men clad in solid armor and heavy links of mail from head to toe pressed through the crowd behind the spear point of the woman. Belatedly Ahmet remembered to breathe.

"And I say," the Gerasan roared over the tumult of the crowd, "that I shall not lead my men north to battle unless the Turtlebacks stand with us! No matter your honor, Lucius Ulpius, my duty is to my people, not to the tax coffers of Constantinople and Rome! I do not come so cheap!"

"Your father swore to stand with the Empire in the test," the governor hissed back, his fists clenched, "and so did you, when I stood with you beside his funeral bier. Are you renouncing that oath, then? Do you turn your back on your father? Your honor?"

The Gerasan snarled something unintelligible and the sound of steel rasping from a copper sheath cut across the pandemonium in the room. In the crowded space between the ring of couches, the factions of men formed up behind the governor and the Prince of Jerash froze. Everyone held his breath as the prince's blade flashed in the air in front of him. Lucius Ulpius' face drained of color, his eyes fixed on the point of the knife, dancing only a foot from his sternum. The Gerasan, his face flushed, stepped forward and his dagger lurched into the creamy white chest of the woman with the mane of raven hair as she stepped in front of the governor. A tiny pinpoint of blood sprang up where the razor-sharp tip cut into her skin.

"You would murder me, Zamanes?" Her voice cut across the room, reaching every man, though its tone was private, even intimate. "Would you murder the trust between the Empire and the cities of the Decapolis?"

The Gerasan Prince, his eyes wide in utter shock, stepped back, his dagger falling away to one side. One of his servants lifted it from his nerveless fingers and tucked it away in his robes. The woman turned, ignoring the governor, who had also stepped back into the safety of his guardsmen, and stepped up onto the couch next to him.

Ahmet, at the back of the room, forgot to breathe again as she rose up above the heads of the men crowded into the hall. She was slightly built but tall for a woman, about five and a half feet high, and in her presence all other things seemed diminished. The blue lightning spark of her eyes, even across the hall, struck Ahmet like a blow. Her hair, a cascade of heavy curls, swept across her bare white shoulders and down her back. A net of gold wire and pearls held it back away from her smooth forehead and face. She was clad in a deep-purple gown with embroidered traceries of minute roses and lilies along the hems. She was not a heavily endowed woman, but the curve of her breasts against the silk seemed the most perfect shape imaginable to the Egyptian. The tiny spot of blood remained, like a ruby set between them. Her voice was the purr of a languid cat, but it was strong, strong enough to reach clear to the back of the room.

"Rome called us," she said, her voice ringing like a bell, "but we did not come here for Rome. We came because we are all threatened. We came because, at last, this is our time. The Empire has suffered too grievously to stand alone as our shield against the Persians any longer. It is time for us, the peoples of the Decapolis, of Petra and of Palmyra, to stand apart from our parent and defend ourselves as adults. I will stand against the mad King, Chrosoes. Alone, if need be, as did my namesake. Will you stand with me?"

Ahmet turned and stared into the face of ibn'Adi, who was smiling a long, slow smile like a hunting lion that prepares to feast well.

"Who...?" he whispered.

"Our Queen," the old chieftain proudly answered. "Zenobia of Palmyra. The Silk Empress."

Pale-gold dawn was creeping across the eastern sky when, at last, the conclave of the chiefs broke up. Ahmet, who had spent most of the night in meditation, came fully awake. The desert men were filing out, speaking in low tones among themselves. The lanterns had guttered down to only a dim flame at most, and some had gone out entirely. The tapers and the tallow candles that had replaced them were done as well. The Egyptian rose from his place by the wall, out of the way, and walked amid the couches, strewn with emptied jugs and dirty plates. The air was still heavy with smoke and the tang of many men in an enclosed space. Mohammed, who had stayed up, in the thick of the discussion, sat on the edge of the couch that the Roman governor had occupied, holding his head in his hands.

Ahmet paused, standing at his shoulder, and gently tugged the Southerner's ear. Mohammed looked up, his face drawn with weariness. The Egyptian smiled down at him and placed fingers on either temple. In his mind he chanted a little lullaby that his mother had once sung over the wicker cradle he had slept in as a baby. Mohammed's eyelids flickered and then closed. He fell backward with a snore escaping his lips. Ahmet arranged him on the couch. "Can you work such magic for me as well, holy one?" Her voice was no longer so clear and strong, now it was immensely tired and rough, barely audible. Ahmet turned and settled by her on one knee. Her gown was creased and spattered at the lower hem with food and stains of wine. Her hair had escaped most of the delicate net of gold and now was simply tucked back in a single braid behind her head. The luminous face was still, quiet in extreme exhaustion. Her eyes still held him, though, even in weariness. He met them without freezing, so in a way he had the better of it.