Shadow of Ararat

THE SCHOOL OF PTHAMES

Even as Ra slid down through the thick smoke haze over Alexandria, turning the holy disk a ruddy brass, the last rays of the beneficent god crawled slowly down the whitewashed white wall in Ahmet’s quarters, far to the south. The young master lay on his narrow cot, feet up on the wooden rail at the bottom. In the dimming light of Ra, his chiseled face was troubled. Liquid dark-brown eyes followed creeping bars of gold down the irregular surface of the wall, but the subtle beauty did nothing to lighten his heavy mood. At last, unable to shake the sensation of tremendous weight that lay on him, he rose.

This used to mean something, he thought to himself, looking around the room. / used to enjoy this.

He stood at the window, his hand on the dark old wood of the sill. Ra was now behind the western hills, leaving a splendor of deep purples and reds in the thin clouds and the darkening sky. A few dim stars began to glitter in the darkness. Wind, rising from the desert, brought sweet smell of marjoram and olives to him. Below, in the compound, there was the familiar clatter of the kitchens, and the boys, now released from their studies, ran past in the courtyard to the dining hall.

Ahmet looked down, seeing them flitter past in the deep-blue dimness, the white shapes of their tunics gleaming.

The pale-gold light of the tapers in the dining hall met them as they went in. He stood thus for a long time, until the god had entirely passed into the underworld of night and the murmur of the students and masters at dinner indicated that all were within the hall. His thoughts, which had been so troubled, smoothed away and an inevitable conclusion forced itself upon him. After a long time he accepted it, and his mind fell quiet. The young master turned away, into the darkness of his room. Needing no light, his fingers found the chest of ce-darwood his village had sent him when he made the third circle. The knurled bronze clasp came up in his fingers and he began removing the items within. His breathing was even now, and the weight on his shoulders had began to lift. junction of the military and civil canals was a fortified gate housing the legion detachment tasked with checking the traffic into the military harbor. The boy could most conveniently be left there with his orders, and they would see him to wherever the guard captain saw fit to send him. Now the dhow captain peered forward through the smoky haze that overlaid the canal and thought he espied the bright torches of the water gate. Indeed, as the dhow eased around a barge moored at the side of the canal, the twin towers and high wall of the gate rose up before him, brightly lit with torches and a brazier set on the dock beside it. The gate itself was now shut, its oiled iron portcullis closed. “ ‘Ware the dock,” the mate shouted to the pole men. The other crewmen bent to the backing oars, straining against the weight of the dhow. There was a grinding crunch as it struck the fore end of the dock with a glancing blow, and then the pole men steadied the craft. The captain stepped to the gunwale and then off onto the mossy corroded stones of the dock. Beyond the brazier and a little open space some ten feet long stood a guardhouse jutting from the massive plinth of the eastern tower. Two legionnaires, their maroon cloaks cast aside, sat upon three-legged stools under one of the brighter torches. They looked up, eyes hooded in the guttering light, their beards full and twisted into long braids. The leftmost one rose as the dhow captain approached and loomed massive in the flickering light. His arms were like the pillars of a temple, massive and sharply defined. The legionarius stood forward a step and grunted a challenge.

“Greetings, noble legionnaire,” the dhow captain answered in his best Greek. The legionnaire grunted again and cocked his head to one side. The dhow captain swore under his breath. Couldn’t the Empire post soldiers to Alexandria who at least spoke some kind of civilized tongue? A long passage – of hand waving, pantomime and, finally, shouting passed before the guards got the idea that the dhow captain had something in his boat for them.

The mate, meanwhile, had gone through Dwyrin’s cloak and traveling bag, stealing the food therein and anything else of value. This crucial task accomplished, he bundled the boy up in the blanket and carried him up on to the dock. By this time the dhow captain was at his wits end. The two blond giants were laughing and shouting back at him. The mate came up with the boy and the captain handed him off to the larger of the two, waving the packet of travel orders in their faces.

Saemund, ouragos of the II Triana Legion, stared in surprise at the backs of the two little dark men who had come from the boat. At first he had thought that they were native merchants trying to sell him something, but they had not understood his plain speaking when he told them that he had lost all of his money at dice the night before. He shook his shaggy head in amazement and unwrapped the large, clumsy bundle they had given him. At his side, Throfgar, his battle brother, turned the papyrus sheets this way and that, trying to make head or tail of the spindly runes marked on them.

“Ach, brother,” Saemund exclaimed as he turned back the motheaten blanket to expose Dwyrin’s flushed and sweating face, “they’ve left us a foundling!”

Throfgar stared over in surprise, for the long red-gold braid of the youth marked him as a northerner like himself. He scratched the fleas in his beard in thought.

“Could he be the son of one of the other fighters?” he ventured.

“None that I have seen,” Saemund answered as he carried the sick boy into the guardroom. There he gently placed the boy onto the duty cot at the back of the small, smoke-blackened room. He turned the blanket out and laid it over the boy, tucking it in under his feet. Then he turned to Throfgar with a puzzled expression, cracking his large knuckles.

“We should report this to the tetrarchos,” he said. “I’ll stand the watch here, you go and tell Tapezos what has happened.”

Throfgar nodded in agreement and tossed the packet of papyrus sheets into the kindling box next to the small, narrow fireplace. He went to the back of the guardroom, where a narrow passageway led up a flight of steps to a stout wooden door. He pounded on the thick striated panels for a moment. Then a narrow metal cover turned back from a slit in the door at eye level.

“Ho, Tapezos,” Throfgar rumbled, “tell the tetrarchos that we’ve got a visitor for him.”

Tapezos muttered something on the other side of the door and slammed the viewport closed. Throfgar shrugged and ambled back down the stairs. Saemund had returned to his post on the dockside. Throfgar checked the boy, who moaned slightly as the German turned back his eyelids, and then joined his battle brother on the watch.

A few moments later there was- a clattering sound as the inner door opened and Michel Pelos stumbled out, yawning, and walked out onto the quayside. Throfgar and Saemund grinned broadly at the Greek, who had drunk overmuch for his stomach the night before. Michel rubbed one side of his lean, scarred, face and hitched his sword-belt up.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two grinning idiots?” he snarled in poor Latin.

Saemund pointed back into the little watch-room. “There’s a package for you,” he said.

Michel grimaced at the two Scandians. He went back inside, then they heard him cursing. He came back out. He was not amused. “A funny joke. I may be Greek, but that does not mean that I like little boys.”

Throfgar laughed again, braying like a camel. Saemund smiled too, though he had noticed that the tetrarchos was becoming an odd reddish color in the face. He hit his battle brother in the arm to. shut him up and told the tetrarchos what had happened.

“Huh.” Michel pondered the situation. “A foundling, but probably not a citizen. And sick to boot. Well, there isn’t much we can do for him here. I’ll send a runner to the centurion and see what he wants to do.”

Several hours later two camp physicians came and carried the boy away. He was still flushed and sweating, his eyes unseeing. Saemund and Throfgar had finished their watch by then and did not see him go. The next pair of guardsmen on duty lit a fire in the little oven with the papyrus sheets.