Shadow of Ararat

THE EGYPTIAN HOUSE

H

Hey! Hello!“ The shout echoed down the corridor, ringing off of the mossy stones. ”Anyone! Hey, you motherless bastards! Hello!“ Krista hung from the bars of the cell that she had woken in, feet on the bottom rung of the door, shouting at the top of her lungs. Her hair was a tangle of mud and dried blood, one arm was badly scratched, and the side of her head and face was very tender. The cell had some blankets and straw on the floor as well as two buckets.

“Let me out! Let me out or you’ll be in some deep shit!”

Disgusted and hoarse from shouting, she jumped down onto the floor again. Restless, she prowled around the little room. It was small and mean, and all too obviously a cell.

The old bastard can sure throw, she muttered to herself, seething with anger at having been caught. The mistress isn’t going to be very pleased with me.

Her jewelry and belt were gone, along with her sandals and the leather thongs she used to tie her hair up. Krista guessed that she had been thoroughly searched before being dumped like a sack of millet on the floor of the room.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway and she turned and curled up on the floor, facing the barred door. In a moment her breathing was even and steady and a soft snore escaped her lips. A haggard figured stopped at the entrance to the cell and leaned on the bars, exhausted.

“Ai, poor girl. What am I going to do with you?” The Prince’s voice was faint, burned out by exhaustion and terribly long hours of unremitting effort. He wore a heavy butcher’s apron, deeply stained by blood and crusted with dried gore. His leggings were spattered too, and there was a faint charnel stink around him like an invisible mist. Krista was horrified by his appearance, watching him from between almost closed eyelids. His hands, too, were dark with dried fluids.

“Let me go,” she whispered. Who knew where that old man was, or the little Orientals she had seen coming and going from the house? “I didn’t mean to spy, I was only curious…”

Maxian raised his head and, through a blur of exhaustion, could make out that she had raised her head, catlike, from the floor to look at him. A wave of relief swept through him, leaving him giddy, that she was all right and that his work on her head wound had not been in vain. He suddenly realized that he was tremendously tired and should sleep.

“That’s a good idea,” Krista said, for the Prince had spoken his thought aloud. “If you let me out, I’ll help you back upstairs. You need a bath too.”

Maxian looked down at himself and staggered a little to see how gruesome a sight he was. For a moment his mind spun in all directions, as he comprehended how much blood there was on him and how old some of the stains were. Memories began to crowd back into his waking mind, a hurried procession of subjects-some live, some dead, some near death-coming to the examination table. The grating vibration of a saw cutting into bone. The crack of a limb breaking open in the vise. First the buzz of the power in his hands, cleaving into the organs of a still-thrashing body, then the howl and the lightning as he split open the skull of a long-dead general and the power of the corpse flooded into him.

A terrible’howl of anguish tore out of him and filled the corridor. Krista clapped her hands over her ears and rolled up into a tiny ball at tha back of the cell, far from the shuddering thing that crouched at the door to her cell. Then it began to weep, its body racked with great heaving sobs. She crept forward and a lithe hand snaked out to lift a ring of keys from the back of the stiff apron. One of them fit the door and it swung inward. Krista stepped out, gazing down in pity at the man on all fours, grinding his head against the stones. The door at the end of the hallway was open.

“Please,” came from behind her as she slipped up the steps, “please don’t leave me…”

She half turned, looking back down the dark corridor.

Downhill from the bulk of the house, in a grove of cypress trees, there was a crude shrine to Jupiter. Maxian knelt in the brick building before a rude altar. Thick ivy covered the outside of the little building and filled the tiny windows.

The Prince had placed two tallow candles on the altar, one at each end. Once there had been a small statue of the god in the recess behind the altar, but it had long since vanished. He reached out, placing two pieces of tin on the grimy stones.

“O lord of justice, forgive me. I have defiled the bodies of two of your servants-these men, Aurus Antonios Sa-beinos and Julius Terentius-who served the state and the Emperor and did not do ill. I have desecrated their bodies and cut them up into pieces. I beg you to let them enter the peace of your afterlife and to ascend, whole, into your heaven to be rightly judged.”

The Prince’s hand trembled slightly as he spilled wine into a shallow ewer placed on the ground before the altar. He sprinkled crystallized honey and grain, taken from two. small bowls, into the ewer. His whole body hurt, savaged by the power he had drawn upon to examine the bodies dragged into his basement room. Odd whorls of light and shadow fluttered before his eyes. He would not have been able to reach the little building down the hill without Krista’s help.

“O Mithras, he who judges and assesses all that is man, forgive me for these acts. I seek to help the many, the People and the Senate, and for this, some few must die. I take this sin upon myself, I accept the responsibility, both now and in the time after life, for these actions.”

Maxian bent his head to the floor of the temple, pressing his forehead into the soft loamy soil. His mind, at least, was clear. After his collapse in the hallway in front of Krista’s cell, he had been bedridden for three days, barely able to feed himself. His body, pressed beyond its own limits, had finally revolted, refusing to support his demands. Also, he had realized that he had committed, in the fury of his work, dreadful crimes. He raised his head from the floor, tears dripping from his eyes. He struggled to put revulsion at his acts aside, hearing the cold calm voice of Gaius Julius in his mind: Lad, a good commander must be willing to spend the lives of a few to secure victory and the safety of all.

“O lord Mithras, accept my offering, please, please forgive me…” iaOMQM()M()MOM(M)HOM()M()W()H()M(MM)H()HOH(MM)HQHOMQg| LAKE THOSPITIS, PERSIAN ARMENIA

A pinpoint of sunlight, golden and warm, crept slowly along Thyatis’ cheekbone. Unmindful of the dirt and the thin tracks cut by tears, it danced along the line of her jaw and down across her clavicle. There it disappeared into the top of her ragged tunic along the line of her breast. But another came, lighting the tumble of curls that pillowed her face and drifted across her eyelid. She twitched a little and yawned. Dust clouded up from the tattered woolen cloak that lay over her and she sneezed. Coming fully awake, she lay still, feeling the rock of the boat and the brush of wind off the water. The regular slap-sluice sound of a single man rowing reached her. Gingerly she drew back the cloak.

Nikos, wearing her straw hat to shade his face, was sitting in the stern of the hide boat, his arms rising and falling as he dipped the blade-shaped paddle from side to side. The boat cruised through the deep-blue waters, foam hissing away from its sides. Seeing that she was awake, he smiled and nudged a woven straw bag toward her with his foot.

“A little food left,” he said, his voice weary, “and plenty of water.”

She levered herself up from the flexible floor of the boat. She looked around, seeing the lake as a broad sheet of tourmaline blue. Tiny waves rose and fell on its quiet surface, picked up by the wind. The sun was still rising in the heavens-it seemed to be about three hours after sunrise. Away to the northeast, she could make out the dull brown line of the shore and low hills rising behind it. To the north, dead ahead of the boat, she could see a vast blue line of mountains rising up out of the heat haze that marked the plain beyond the shore. She pointed.

“You’re making for the passes of the Ala?”

Nikos nodded, resting the paddle on his thighs for a moment. His arms felt like lead weights after rowing for the past twelve hours. He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling the skin dried and cracking under the relentless sunlight beating up at him off the water.

“Yes,” he croaked from a parched throat. He paused and took a long swallow from the waterskin that lay between his legs. “By the map you had, there’s a stream that comes down to the lake dead ahead. I figured we could get ashore there and maybe find something to eat before we strike north.”

Thyatis turned around, her hands busy in the straw bag. She found some cheese and strips of dried meat. There was no bread left. She found another waterskin as well and drank from it. The meat was hard and she tucked it into the corner of her mouth to soften. She did not eat any of the cheese yet. Her mouth was too dry.

“North? You figure that we’ll be far enough away from the Persians at Van?”

Nikos nodded. “By the map it’s nearly thirty miles from the city, so their patrols should be intermittent at best. We can follow the stream north to cut across this headland that we’re headed toward. Beyond the peninsula, we can make for the road that goes north across the Ala into the valley under the eaves of Ararat.”

Thyatis wiped her mouth clean and stoppered up the waterskin again. She squinted north, her hand shading her face, looking at the distant blue mountains. Going north to Mount Ararat and the valley of the Araxes was the second way across the great mountains to the east-they would come into the valley that contained Tauris from the north, rather than from the west on the main road. Fewer Persians, fewer questions, but a long delay. They would be weeks late getting to the city. She looked back at Nikos, who shrugged. He had thought of the same things.

She chewed on the tough meat. It would be a long way to go. She did not think of the dead men she had left behind on the shore, or the stranger in Van who would wait fruitlessly for them.

Thyatis crouched in the thorn bushes, her cloak held over her head to break up her outline. Only feet away, the hard pack of the road slashed across the hillside and then down into the little river valley they had spent the morning climbing up out of. The sun burned against the back of her neck-adding another layer of bronze to her already dusky skin. There was the faintest breath of a breeze and it turned again, bringing the clip-clop of horses to her ear. Nikos had heard it first as they had turned the switchback on the long tawny hill that led up toward the distant line of blue-green pine trees. Looking back, they had seen two riders on the road behind them, more than two miles away. In the still air, the sound of their passing over the ancient arched stone bridge that spanned the stream in the valley had just reached them. The two fugitives had faded off of the road then and now crouched on opposite sides of the track.

Nikos was behind two low trees bent over from the weather, about forty paces up the road, as it turned to double back on itself. Thyatis was lower down, with the steep slope of the hill dropping off behind her. The jingle of riding tackle and the voices of two men reached her. She tested her grip on her shortsword, wishing briefly for a long spear or another bow. No matter now, she thought as the first of the two riders trotted around the lower bend in the road. From their embroidered riding cloaks and swept-back hats, they were Persian dispatch riders. But not in a hurry, she wondered, her eyes bare slits in the frugal shade of her cloak.

They passed her and she slid the cloak off into the brush. She paused, waiting, one hand on the branch of thorn that she would have to push past to reach the road. Behind the screen of trees, Nikos pushed the bowstave away from him and sighted down the length of the black-fletched arrow at the jouncing shape of the rider on the horse with a splash of white on its face. He breathed out with an unheard huh! And the arrow leapt away from him to bury itself in the chest of the leading post rider.

The man was still gaping down at the three-foot shaft protruding from his torso, watching dark blood bubble out of his chest, when Thyatis sprinted up the road behind the second rider. The second man was still asking his friend what was wrong when Thyatis sprang up and snaked an arm around his neck. The bay-colored steed, quite startled, reared with an outraged whinny and the man was thrown back into the air. Thyatis twisted into the angle of the horse as he fell and put her shoulder into it. The post rider flew a dozen feet down the road and smashed into the ground with a cracking sound. Thyatis dodged aside from the horse, which had turned and snapped at her.

The other man had slumped over on his horse and it was prancing in a circle as his dead weight cut at its mouth with the bit. Nikos sidled up it, speaking softly to it. Thyatis circled the nervous bay.

“Nice horsy. Nice horsy. Horse want apple? Nice apple.”

Nikos collared the first one and tugged the bridle out of the dead man’s hand. A good push sent the post rider to the ground in a tumble of limbs. Nikos led the horse away, toward the little straggle of junipers on the side of the road. When he trotted back, Thyatis had calmed the other horse as well. . “Check him,” he said, taking the reins of the horse from her.

Thyatis nodded, she had not forgotten the second post rider. She slipped her shortsword back into its sheath and sidled up to the man lying sprawled in the dust and rocks of the road. He was still alive, though his eyes were glazed over with shock and blood was slowly oozing out of the corner of his mouth. She slapped him lightly on the cheek and his eyes wandered back into focus. She had turned up the hood of her cloak and the sky was bright behind her.

“Soldier, where are you going?” she asked in her poor Persian, voice sweet and deep.

“Ah!” He moaned and tried to turn over. Thyatis held him down, gently. By her guess, his neck was broken and he was bleeding inside. “We’re… to Dogubayazit… to the headman…”

He began coughing and his mouth filled with blood. Thyatis grimaced and drove a thin dagger into his eye-socket. Her sad face was the last thing he saw with one good eye. Afterward she wiped off the knife on his shirt and then, as Nikos was doing just up the road, stripped him of everything but the bloody shirt and his loincloth. They rolled the bodies into a crease in the side of the hill, no more than a place for water to run when it rained. Mounted, they continued on, to the north. Nikos watched the young woman out of the corner of his eye. There were still tiny spots of blood on her cheek, but she had not bothered to wipe them away.

Sun-bright snow gleamed off the top of the mountain, a spearhead of glittering white even at thirty miles distance. Thyatis shaded her eyes, looking across the gulf of the valley of Dogubayazit, through thin air, at the massive pyramid shape of Ararat. It rose, solitary, from the valley floor, first a dun brown on the lower slopes, then banded with the green of pines and spruces, then another band of gray rock, above the trees that ran into a mantle of snow. Clouds clung to the flanks of the mountain and crowned it. The bay post horse whickered at her and she patted its neck. It didn’t like standing in the snow. The horse picked its way down the snowy slope, back to the narrow track that they had followed up the granite slopes of Tend?r?k.

For two days they had ridden higher and higher into the mountains ringing the basin of Lake Thospitis, leaving the tiny mountain villages behind. In the last one they had passed through quickly, for they wore the cloaks and emblems of the Persian dispatch riders. The eyes of the village men had been on them constantly, dark and glittering in the afternoon light. Beyond that village, the road became a trail through flower-strewn alpine meadows and thick stands of spruce. The air was cool and becoming chill as they labored ever higher into the peaks.

Today, though, they had come up the last snowy reach and broken out in the pass under the snowy bulk of the mountain to their left. Lesser peaks fell away to the east, on their right, and Thyatis pointed that way now. Ragged ranges of bare stone and icefields receded before them to the horizon. Beyond the range that they had climbed, a great wall of mountains rose up to the southeast, behind them.

“Persia,” she said. “Beyond those mountains is Tauris.” She turned and pointed northeast; there the wall ended and plunged down into a broad valley, visible even from here, that cut between the blue wall and the pyramid of Ararat to the north. “The valley of the Zangmar; it will lead us into the highlands north of Tauris and then to the city.”

Nikos shivered. The wind bit at his exposed face, and he pulled up the cloth that in lesser elevations he had worn to keep the dust from his nose and mouth. Now it kept his nose from freezing off. Thyatis did not seem to feel it, though, and she rode with her face and hair exposed now that they were beyond the habitations of men. He followed her down the rocky trail that curled off of the pass and plunged into a steep canyon that wound toward the valley below Ararat.

“Are we going to go into the town?” he asked, once they were below the pass and the trail had widened a little.

Thyatis shook her head^‘TEven in this disguise, I will not risk it. The rider said that Tie was going to see the headman of Dogubayazit-not the garrison commander. I think that the valley ahead is free of either Roman or Persian troops. You saw the way the last village looked at us. We might receive a fine welcome, or we might not live past the night. We have supplies enough now with their rations, and we know which way to go.“

Nikos spurred ahead a little, so that they were even on the road.

“We’ve been out of touch for six days,” he essayed. “We should get some kind of news-anything at all might be helpful, the war might already have begun!”

She turned to look at him, and her gray eyes were cold like the sea. “We have only three more weeks before the Emperor is before Tauris. I will not be late.”

East of Dogubayazit, the old road turned away from the. river to the north and climbed up a hill onto a broad plateau studded with stands of trees and high grass. Nikos was in the lead since they had crossed the sluggish river that ran west toward the town. Thyatis rode behind, lost in thought, her cloak hood pulled up to cover the color of her hair and the broad hat nodding over her eyes. They had swung wide around the town, leaving the trail down from Tendur?k as soon as possible to cut across the foothills-through gorse bracken and myriad sharp ravines-to reach the river well east of habitation. Much of the previous day had been spent searching for a ford across the river, but they had not found one until early this morning. They had swum the horses across in the predawn darkness, hanging to their saddle straps.

Only two hours ago they had reached the road and turned onto it. By the rough map that Thyatis retained from the oilskin pouch, it ran east alongside the river to another plateau and thence to the Zangmar. It should be deserted for much of its length. Soon they would be past the last of the

• trees clinging to the fringe of the river and be in highland plain again. Nikos suddenly whistled and held up his hand. He was looking back down the road toward the town. She reined to a stop at his side.

“Look,” he said, pointing behind them to where a curve on the road rose up beyond the grass and trees. There was a line of mounted men descending the hill. The afternoon sun glinted off their spearpoints and flickered from helmets and mail. “It must be a Persian patrol.”

“Off the road,” Thyatis said, spurring her horse into the trees. “Let’s make for the next ravine and lay up until they pass.” She goosed the horse with her heels, and it broke into a trot through the high waving grass. Nikos* followed close behind, though he turned in the saddle to see if they had been spotted, letting his horse follow the one ahead.

They had crossed the grassy slope that slid down from the road and were urging their mounts up the far side of the streambed when horns sounded from the southeast.

“Hi-ya!” Thyatis shouted, and the horses bolted up the slope. Nikos turned and looked over his shoulder, rising up in the saddle. Behind them, on the road, scouts riding in advance of the main body of horsemen were winding their horns and pointing in their direction. One rose up in his saddle, a long horse bow drawn from the saddle scabbard.

“Weave!” he shouted at Thyatis as they topped the rise. The air thrummed as one shaft blurred past in the air, then another. “They’ve mounted bowmen!” She broke left and he right as they thundered down the far slope of the hill. It was thick with high brush and low trees. Nikos reached the next streambed and turned right, putting his heels to the horse. Minutes later he had reached the head of the little draw.

Behind him the first of the riders from the road had topped the hill in pursuit and was coaxing his horse down the nearer side, through the spiny bushes. Nikos slipped his own bow out of the saddle rest and strung it in one motion. All of his time spent with the Sarmatian brothers had not been wasted. He found a long-shafted flight arrow by touch in his quiver and fitted it to the bow. On the other slope, another rider had joined the first in following their trail. They were leaning over their saddle horns, examining the ground. The one on the right suddenly jerked and slipped forward off his horse. The arrow had punched right through him and out the other side into a tree. Nikos smiled, a shark’s smile, as he nudged the horse back into the cover of the brush.

Seconds later he stopped smiling as twenty or thirty armored riders topped the ridge. Horns sounded to his east and south as well. Hades’ infernal bollocks, he snarled to himself as he trotted the horse forward through deeper brush in the next ravine. It’s an entire bloody army!

The bay horse whickered softly at Thyatis and nudged her head with its nose. Despite the tension of the chase, she rubbed the soft rubbery snout that was checking her ear to see if there were any carrots in there. The horse quieted as the ravine echoed with the clatter of hooves on stone. Three of the Persian scouts appeared briefly in a break in the scrubby trees thaj clogged the downstream end of the ravine. Thyatis rose up a little, readying herself for action. She could hear them pushing their horses through the brush down the slope from her. She half drew the short horse bow that the ambushed post rider had slung in a lacquered wooden case at his saddle horn. Four short-shafted arrows with tan fletching were pegged, headfirst, into the ground in front of her. They were only hunting arrows, but she would make do with what she had.

She was shielded ahead and on the left side by a heavy gray-blue bush with spearpoint leaves and a sweet odor. To her right, the rocky course of the tiny stream that had gouged the ravine out of the lower slopes of Ararat wound down toward the distant plain of Dogubayazit. Thirty feet below her, where the Persians were crashing through the brush, the streambed kinked to the left side of the ravine and ran under an enormous thorn tree with a thick base. The walls of the ravine, cut from decayed lava and sediment, rose up nearly twenty feet and were crowned with long grass. A patch of blue sky, now interrupted by scudding clouds, made a roof of this little space.

The first scout crawled out from under the overhanging branches of the thorn tree and stood up, a spear ready to hand. He looked about with care. The ground before him was rocky and poor for tracks. There was some sand, but it was all disturbed, perhaps by animals passing along the ravine. Thyatis remained utterly still, and the bay, feeling her waiting tension, did so as well.

“Anything?” called one of the two scouts on the other side of the thorn tree. His accent was thick with the glottal sound of the eastern Persian highlands.

The lead scout sniffed the air and surveyed the ground once more.

“Nothing clear,” he called back. “I think they did go up this way, though. Let’s press on.”

The two on the other side agreed and the lead man began hacking at the thorn tree with his longsword to clear it enough to pass the horses through. After a moment, though, he found what Thyatis had found, that one flexible branch held back much of the brush on the. right side of the tree. Putting his shoulder to it, which earned him two long scratches and countless little ones, he bent it back. The other two men urged their horses through the gap.

When the last man was almost past the tree, Thyatis bent, plucked an arrow from the ground, fitted it to the bow, drew and let fly in one smooth motion. Another arrow was on the wing as well, even as the first sank nine inches deep into the exposed side of the lead scout’s head. Blood gouted from his mouth and filmed his eyes as the heavy-headed bolt punched through the side of his skull with a crack! right above the ear. He toppled and the heavy branch whipped back into its original position, lashing at the horse and the face of the third scout. Tangled, the man screamed in fear as hundreds of thorns cut and tore at him. The horse screamed too and shied away suddenly. The cut man wrestled to regain control but the horse, its own face and nose cut by the thorns, bolted.

The other arrow flashed past the face of the second scout, who had turned at the last moment to say something to the lead scout, and smashed itself against the dark wall of the ravine. He spun back and spurred his horse forward with a shout. Thyatis abandoned the bow and snatched up a hunting spear from its rest against the gray bush. The Persian rushed past her position, slashing down with a slightly curved longsword. She took the stroke on the spear-haft and the wood splintered but held the blow. Half of the spear hung limply, nearly cut through. She hurled it at the man’s face as he curvetted his horse around for a second try. He leaned nimbly to one side and the crude missile spun past him.

With a ringing “Ha!” he spurred forward again, his blade out and ready to strike. The longsword in the scabbard on the bay horse rasped as it slithered out into Thyatis’ hand. She crouched and then scuttled behind the nervous bay and into the clear space beyond the horse. The Persian turned as well, edging his horse forward with good knee work. The ravine was a tight fit for a man trying to fight on a horse, particularly with all of the brush to hand. Thyatis lashed out, cutting for the face of the horse. The Persian and the horse, moving as one, pranced aside, and she barely recovered her guard in time to fend off a ringing overhand blow.

Cursing, she skipped farther right, clearing away from the wall. Her right hand, free, clawed a long knife out of her belt scabbard.

The Persian rushed his horse forward a little while he slashed with the longsword, trying to pin her with the shoulder of the horse against the crumbling rock of the ravine wall. Steel rang loud in the enclosed space as she beat back his attack fiercely. In a half a breath, she lashed out with a boot against the horse’s leg and it shied away. In the moment of opening, she darted left past the head of the horse and the long knife slashed, glittering.

The Persian kneed the horse hard, trying to spin it around to follow her, but the saddle strap, cut through, gave way and he spilled himself and then the horse onto the gravel and stones of the ravine floor. Thyatis rushed in, weaving past the kicking horse, and the tip of her sword sank into the man’s throat. There was a fountain of dark red that covered his face and doublet. Thyatis staggered back, her blood afire with the rush of battle. The horse whinnied in distress and then managed to stand up. Thyatis spun, gravel spitting from under her boot.

The lead scout lay dead under the thorn tree, the arrow standing up from the side of his head like a gruesome signpost. The other scout, the one trapped behind the tree, was nowhere to be seen. The lead scout’s horse was nudging him with its nose, blowing softly. Thyatis grimaced and walked up carefully by the side of the horse and took it in hand. It was confused, but she led it back to her own horse and introduced them. Flies began to buzz about the bodies of the dead.

Thyatis mounted, feeling a twinge in her left arm. Wincing, she peeled back part of her shirt-there was a gash on her upper arm, running diagonally down from the shoulder. Blood curdled from it. How did I get that? she wondered. With the two other horses roped in behind her, she nudged the bay to a trot up the ravine. Somewhere ahead the ravine would reach a break in the ridge, she hoped, and she could cut across the slope of the mountain. Night was coming quickly.

Running on foot, Nikos crashed through a stand of cattails-at the edge of a pond. The call of horns echoed off the wooded hills to his left, up toward the slope of the mountain, and again to the rear. He splashed quickly along the edge of the pond, stirring up a roil of muddy water and torn seagrass. The sky was growing dark and the land under the mountain was falling into shadow. The horns came again, much closer, though farther up the slope. Nikos plunged into the deeper water of the pool and began to half wade, half swim toward the far bank.

Horses snorted close behind him and he slid soundlessly down into the water. The western sky was a boil of hot orange, violet, and deep blue-purple. Clouds had gathered in the late day over Tend?r?k and now the sun had plunged into them, filling the vault of heaven with all the blood of its passing. The pond lay in twilight shadow now, deep gray and muffled blue-black. Nikos lay back in the water, only eyes showing, and slowly moved backward toward the far bank. The shore he had abandoned he watched carefully. Two men, perhaps more, were moving there on horses. He could make out bare glints of their movement as they searched the shoreline.

Indistinct voices carried over the water to him; there were at least three men there now. A horn sounded in the woods behind them, clear and ringing in the twilight. Others answered it from the woods above and more men began to gather on the shore. Nikos cursed all the gods and the fates that had brought him to this point-particularly the one who had snatched the horse and all of his equipment from him two miles back along the trail. His hands found the hard-packed mud of the bank.

Someone struck a flint and a spark of light guttered among the men gathering under the eaves of the trees. A lantern was lit and helms and bright mail glinted in the warm light. Thirty or forty men had come.out of the forest now, faces lean and marked with narrow beards and mustaches. Some wore red tunics over their armor; others wore tall spangenhelms. A voice of command boomed among them and the crowd shifted, focusing on someone whom Nikos could not see over the confusion of men and horses. He slid beneath the jutting root of an ancient and gnarled tree.

The men on the far shore listened while the booming voice rose and fell, then they began to break up into smaller bands. Some mounted and rode off into the woods, others quartered the area around the shore, gathering firewood and unpacking baggage from the horses. A single figure remained standing by the pond, staring across it into darkness. In the light of the torches and lanterns, Nikos could see that the man was exceptionally broad of shoulder and possessed of a mighty beard. The Illyrian crawled carefully up the bank, keeping the old tree between him and the watching man, then he jogged away into the darkness.

Breath hissed from clenched teeth as Thyatis dragged a length of tattered cloth around her wounded arm. The bleeding had grown worse as she had pushed herself and the three horses to make distance across the flank of Ararat. Always, she had heard the horns of the Persians away and below her, but sometimes they grew nearer. Following the game trails across the mountainside was hard going. Rocky canyons cut the slope, forcing her into long detours. She had made only a few miles since she had left the ravine where she had killed the two men. She had come down a dizzying slope of loose shale and talus to reach the bottom of a broad canyon. For a little while she had made good time, but then the canyon had dropped away in a broad glassy lip of stone that spilled a trickle of water over a sixty-foot drop.

Full darkness had caught up with her, and beyond a sliver of moon, there was little light in the canyon. Attempting to find a way down around the cliffs was a useless effort at night, so she had denned up in an overhang upstream from the waterfall. A tiny fire guttered at her feet and the faces of the horses loomed at her out of the darkness. The horses had her water and the last of the grain from the saddlebags. Her fire was only twigs backed up against a small boulder. There was a bit of cast-up wood at the edge of the overhang as well.

She wrapped the length of cloth around her upper arm again and tied it off with one hand and her teeth. When she could see clearly again, it was a ragged edge of the night, stars peeking in around the overhang of the rock shelter. The fire was still flickering and the scant light picked out figures carved into the rock above her head- lions, gazelles, and a fat figure of a woman with a beehive. They glittered and sparkled in the darkness. Thyatis closed her eyes, all unaware that sleep had stolen up upon her.

Nikos jogged on, his legs still moving even though they seemed to drag through mud with each stride. His clothes, soaked by the trip through the pond, were dry again and rasped against his skin. The rocky plain, cut with odd mounds and sculpted towers of black stone, stretched ahead of him. His foot hit a rock and nearly turned his ankle. He stopped. Running on unknown ground under almost no moon was unwise. Stopping was a mistake, though, for his arms were leaden and he slumped against the nearest outcropping. The stone, brittle and spongelike with tiny razor edges and a crumbling nature, cut at his hand though it seemed to take a very long time for the pain to reach his consciousness. He staggered back, wiping the blood off on his leggings.

He walked on, picking his way through the eroded lava field with mindless care. Exhaustion crept up upon him, and when he started awake, he was lying, curled up, between two pitted stones in a tiny patch of sand. The boat of the moon had crossed most of the sky. He levered himself up and continued on.

A mile past the lavafield, he reached a shallow wadi, dry as a bone. He slid down the side of it, but found, once he had trudged across the sandy bottom, that he was too tired to climb up the farther bank. He began walking up the bottom of the wadi. The river of milk hung over his head, and in the starlight, the mountain loomed enormous ahead of him, gleaming pale white under the moon.

The ringing of clear bells woke Thyatis. Her eyes opened and she saw a roof of burnished dark cedarwood above her. Sunlight, filtered dim by golden curtains, fell at the edges of the platform that she rested on. A great murmur of people carried on the air to her. She felt strange; her hands and feet would not move to her will. The roof rocked back and forth, and she realized that she was on something that was rolling forward on an uneven road. Incense traced trails in the air and slowly drifted away behind her. A heavy cloth of soft silk lay over her, and a diadem of silver leaves was upon her brow.

Her eyes, at least, she could move, and from their corners she could make out pillars of gold placed around the platform that held her bed. The capitals of the pillars were worked into a deep flourish of leaves and carefully cut flowers. Rich paints anointed the carving with deep greens and yellow highlights. She could smell flowers too, and guessed that the bed of the great platform that she lay upon was deep with them. The bells rang again, tinkling silver, as the wagon stopped. The sound of the crowd rose, and there was the basso shouting of men.

Incense pooled in the still air under the roof beams. Voices rose and fell, though the sound of chanting halted- all-pervasive and unnoticeable until, as now, it was gone. The golden curtains to the left side of the bier parted, carefully brushed aside by a gloved hand. Thyatis struggled to rise, but her limbs, heavy, refused to move. The face of a man rose into view, looking down upon her with sad eyes. He was elderly, with short graying hair and an intelligent brow. He wore a rich burgundy cloak, bound with clasps of silver and gold over a linen shirt of deep purple. His beard was neat and short, shot through with veins of white hair. Gently the man placed a hand on Thyatis’ forehead and bowed his own.

Tears fell from his eyes, sparkling in the dusty sunlight. The old man’s shoulders shook slightly, and Thyatis blinked the salty water away, but he was trapped in his own grief and did not see the slight movement. When at last he looked up, he had composed himself. He leaned close, close enough for Thyatis to catch the smell of clean fabric and a muskiness of coriander and thyme. His lips brushed her forehead and then he stood fully. The shadow of the roof fell across his face. He was the king once more. “Good-bye, brother,” he said, his strong voice subdued. “I will take you to your true home and build you a monument to last a thousand years.” Then he turned and went out through the golden curtains. The voices raised, soldiers chanting a name, as he emerged into the sunlight. Thyatis strained to catch it, but now the world was receding into a dark funnel of rushing lights. The clamor of the people faded and sleep overcame her again.

The sound of a boot crunching on rock and gravel filtered into Nikos’ dreaming sleep. He lay still and opened on eye a bare fraction. A pair of heavy leather riding boots was within his field of view, standing on light sand and scattered rocks, and another pair beyond them. The snort of horses broke the silence. He continued to breathe evenly, though he was sure that the time for subterfuge was long past. Something sharp pricked his ear, and he twitched.

“You know,” came a voice in Persian, in a slow burr, “this fellow might be awake already.”

Two more sharp pinpricks came to rest between his shoulders. Nikos opened one eye and moved his head slightly. Three Persian cavalrymen were arrayed around him. The closest, kneeling, had a long dagger in his hand and its point rested lightly against the side of his head. The man, almost clean-shaven his beard was so closely cut, smiled down at him and traced the end of the knife across his cheek to rest against the skin of his throat. Nikos swallowed to moisten his tongue.

“I’ll not run,” he said. “Let me rise and you can take my weapons.”

“A reasonable fellow,” one of the other Persians commented. The two spears and the knife withdrew enough for him to stand, though the alertness of their wielders did not waver. Nikos climbed to his feet, the rush of adrenaline in his blood cutting through the muzziness of sleep broken too early. The cluster of brush that he had crawled into when the sun had begun to lighten the eastern sky seemed much smaller and sparser than it had in the night. Another Persian was on horseback, a distance from the litter of brush, a bow and notched arrow in his hands. Nikos turned slowly around, catching sight of the great bulk of the mountain to the northwest and another two horsemen. He clasped his hands on the top of his head. There was nothing to be done now.

The man with the dagger deftly removed the Illyrian’s shortsword, cooking knife, and the dagger he wore on his left leg. Quick fingers checked the folds of his shirt and his pants. Satisfied, the Persian handed the weapons off to one of his juniors and drew out a length of rope.

“Turn,” the sergeant said. “Hands behind your back.”

Nikos did as he was told. The sun was bright, cutting through banks of clouds. It might rain in the foothills of the mountains. He stared at the snowcap of Ararat.

Luck of the gods with you, girl, he thought.

After binding his hands, the Persians helped him onto the back of one of their remounts and then the whole band galloped away to the south, leaving a cloud of dry white dust to mark their passing. The tight cords bit into Nikos’ wrists. His hands were already becoming numb.

There was a weight on her chest when Thyatis woke. She shifted a little, off a rock lodged under her shoulder blade. A hiss stilled her, and then she felt muscular coils shifting between her breasts. She lay back, completely still, and slowly opened her eyes. A triangular head with beady black eyes stared back at her. A heavy, scaled body lay coiled across her chest and trailed down onto her belly. Thyatis barely breathed, testing her hands and feet. She could move them again. The head of the asp danced from side to side, its pale pink tongue tasting the air. It drew its tail in with a slithering rasp. It was under her tunic, close to her warm skin. She could feel the coolness along her cheek where its own head had lain against her neck.

Oddly, for she was in dreadful danger, she did not panic or scream. She watched the snake as it curled its muscular body up out of her shirt and down off of her shoulder. It was long-two or three feet in length-and its center was a tight bundle of muscle like the arm of a strong man. At last the tail tickled across the upper curve of her left breast and it was gone. She let out a long breath, still soundless, and turned her head to follow its passage.

It was gone. The dry dust of the overhang floor was unmarked, save for her own footprints. The three horses were cropping quietly at the leaves of the broad-leaf trees they were tethered to. She did feel as exhausted as she had expected, and sat up. The sun was high, shining down into the bottom of the canyon outside. A little tumble of ashy coals marked where her fire had been. Echoes of the strange dream were still ringing in her head. The man who had stared down at her seemed familiar to her-in a way, though he had not looked anything like him, he reminded her of her father. Thyatis shook her head wryly; there no sense in puzzling over it.

The horses were happy to see her, though she had no apples or biscuit to give them. She untied them, one by one, and led them down to the little stream to drink. The sun was high-it was nearly noon. She drank deeply from one of the rock pools in the stream and washed her face and hair. Looking in the shallow water, she grimaced at the peeling skin on her forehead and ears. The sun had never been her friend, her complexion was too pale, but her arms, legs, and stomach, at least, were tan enough to stand the sun.

Breakfast was hearty, culled from the rations in the riding packs of the two Persians she had killed the previous day. She sat on a broad, flat rock that jutted out over the stream near the overhang, in the shade of a broadleaf tree with white and tan bark. The personal belongings of the two dead men were spread out around her. Little amulets, knives, leather pouches of coin, wadded-up bits of cloth, flint, straw bound up in a knot, buckles, beads on a string, and last a crude map on poorly cured parchment. The map, compared to her own, showed the area around the city of Tauris. She wondered why scouts would have such a map.

They must, she thought, have been truly coming from the west rather than the east. The outriders of a larger force. An army, then, was making its way into the valley she sought, not from the south or east, as she would have expected, but from behind her, from the west. Some Persian force that had been harrying the plateaus of Anatolia, she guessed, called home. Nikos must have been right, the war has begun and the enemy is moving.

She finished chewing the strips of marinated lamb and drank most of the water in the skin. Then she refilled it. When her gear was repacked and the horses had their fill of the stream, she mounted again and gently kicked the bay into motion. If there was a good way out of this canyon, it was.upstream, not down. Tauris was still far away, and now she was alone.

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