Shadow of Ararat

THE ARMENIAN QUARTER, TAURIS

There, mistress, it is as I said.“ Thyatis ignored the wiry little man with the pox-scarred face. She crept around the corner of the dome and peered over the lip of the ornamented roof. The red tiles under her hands were hot from the noonday sun. A narrow street was thirty feet or more below her. On the other side of the street a white wall of stuccoed brick rose up a good twenty feet. It was unbroken, save by a battlement at its top, pierced by arrow slits and a fighting embrasure. From where she lay she could see down into the hanging garden behind that wall. The garden had been built on the roof of the massive building that had once served as the residence of the governor of the city. It was filled with small fruit trees, rosebushes, and a hundred kinds of flowers. A small fountain trickled at one side of the open space.

The Roman ignored the ornamental flowers and the garden. Beyond the rosebushes, a second wall rose, just a few feet high, below which lay the central courtyard of the building. It was a barren area, paved with the omnipresent red bricks. All of the walls around it were bare, though the outlines of arches and windows on the first two floors could be made out. They were bricked in now and plastered over. Only a single door could be seen, leading into the courtyard. A man was standing next to the door, his head in the shade of the building roof, with his hands held in front of him. Metal links glinted between his hands.

“Nikos!” she breathed. She had not believed Bagratuni’s cousin when he had come to them with this story of a Roman prisoner in the Old Residence. But there he was. She watched for twenty or thirty grains, until two guardsmen came out of the doorway and led the man back inside. Thyatis crawled back away from the edge of the roof then and scuttled across the barren roof to the airshaft. She had climbed up from the cellar to reach the dome on the Temple of the Lord of Light. The little Armenian crept along after her.

At the airshaft, she tugged twice on the rope that snaked down into the darkness. Even with the sun nearly overhead, the angle of the shaft kept it dark and cold. An answering tug came and she motioned for the poxy-faced man to climb down. He was quick to slither down the rope and Thyatis waited, sweating, until another tug came. She could hear the chanting of the priests of Ahura-Mazda coming from the windows of the temple. It was her great hope that the acolytes did not take their ease from chores on the deserted roof of the building. She rolled over the edge of the airshaft and then braced her feet on the inner brickwork. She leaned back against the rope and then walked her way down the wall.

Above, the sky became a square of blue that shrank and then disappeared as she descended below the ground level of the temple. Damp darkness surrounded her and the sound of sluggish water reached up with a foul smell. Her boots splashed into a rivulet of water and she stood in a small space surrounded by moldy brick walls. She crouched down and duckwalked along a low tunnel with a triangular apse. At its end, she gagged at the smell, but crawled out through a place broken in the wall of a larger tunnel. Strong hands assisted her out of the narrow crevice.

She patted Jusuf on the arm and hand-signed that he should lead. The Bulgar nodded and crept off down the tunnel along a narrow ledge. The main body of the tunnel was filled with a gurgling stream of dark water, its surface clogged with a thick crust. The smell was truly horrible here, but Thyatis closed her nostrils and followed Jusuf. Soon she would be able to breathe easily again.

Her Bulgars crowded into the little attic that Thyatis had been living in for the past week. The house was a big one. The lower floors were crammed with the Boar’s Immortals, who had been billeted in the Armenian quarter. The owners had been forced to move upstairs into a partially completed floor and the attic. The Persians downstairs spent most of their time drinking and carousing, so the gradual disappearance of the original family and their replacement by Thyatis, the Bulgars, and Bagratuni’s cousins had gone unremarked. There was a new entrance, broken through a wall of stiff-fired bricks, from the rooftop into the attic. Thyatis and her men moved mostly by night, save for the activities of the nominal owners.

The ceiling was low, and crossed with beams made from unfinished logs. Thyatis squatted at one end, near a small circular window that allowed some breath of air to enter the stifling room. Outside, the sun was setting and the Bulgars were rousing themselves for the night’s work.

Thyatis scratched a map in the dust of the floor. “… the prisoner is in the building on the other side of the garden. I intend to get him out, alive, before anything happens to him. Unfortunately, he is privy to my Emperor’s wishes, and if they break him, then the jig will be up for all of us.”

Jusuf sighed and leaned a little toward his brother Dah-vos, who was squeezed in beside him. “See?” the taciturn Bulgar said in a wry tone. “She will get us all killed…”

Sahul spared a short glare for his brother, then spread his hands to Thyatis.

“So,” Thyatis continued, “I have a plan to get him out, alive, without-if the gods smile on us-anyone noticing.”

Thyatis laughed at the sour expression on Jusuf’s face.

She expected disbelief from them. She had conceived the plan during the hours she spent lying on the rooftop opposite the old palace. It had a very low chance of complete success, but she repressed her dreadful urge to attack the palace from the square and slaughter everyone within. By Bagratuni’s latest count, there were nearly two thousand Immortals in the city, and she counted only twelve men to her hand.

“There are three things that we need to make this work, however, and all three will be difficult to acquire. First, we need to know the layout of the inner building. Bagratuni?”

The dapper little Armenian shrugged and then scratched his nose in sorrow. “Lady Roman, my cousin’s sister’s daughter risked plenty to bring us word that a Roman was held in prison! If we ask her for more, her nerve will fail. She is young and not as strong-willed as my cousin’s sister.” He paused, thinking.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “we could find a guard or servant, and bribe or threaten them?…”

Thyatis shook her head. “No, there isn’t enough time to find one who is weak enough to take a bribe and malleable enough to keep from getting greedy or betraying us to his superiors. We need to move within the next four days.” She sighed. Without some idea of the guards and rooms, the chance of success dwindled to almost nothing.

“How tall,” she said, “is your cousin’s sister’s daughter? Does she wear a veil when she is in the building?”

Bagratuni smiled lopsidedly and shook his head in negation. “She is almost a foot shorter than you, Roman lady. Her hair is brown and she wears a veil. You are not her!”

Thyatis rapped her knife on the floorboards in frustration.

“If only Anagathios were here,” she muttered. “No matter! Speak with your niece, Bagratuni, and gently, gently, see if she would help us just one more time…”

“Who is Anagathios?” Jusuf’s voice was quiet, but Thyatis snapped her head up at the tone. Jusuf stared back at her with hooded eyes. Inwardly Thyatis groaned-all she needed now was suspicious jealousy on the part of her confederates.

“A friend,” she said, her voice clipped. “A mute Syrian with a talent for the theater. He was short enough, and slim enough, to pass for a girl with the proper paints. He died on the road here. Satisfied?” • Jusuf bowed his head and did not meet her eye.

Sahul tapped on the dusty floor for attention. His face was quizzical“.

Thyatis stared at him. “What is it, Sahul?”

The Bulgar signed to his brothers, though only Dahvos was paying attention. Thyatis watched his fingers flit into foreign patterns; she had been trying to decipher the signs that Sahul used for days.

The youngest brother looked puzzled and then a smile flickered over his face like sun through the clouds. “My brother says, Lady Thyatis, that he has seen a mute actor in the marketplace by the northern gate. He juggles and does tricks. He never speaks but is quite accomplished. He says that this fellow is a foreigner and only came to the city within the last nine days. Sahul says”-there was a pause while Dahvos followed the flickering procession of hand-signs-“he says that the fellow is very pretty and could pass for a girl.”

Thyatis whistled, a long soprano note. Could it be? No, that would be too much to ask. But perhaps this foreigner could act the part as well as her friend… “Find this actor and bring him to me. Bagratuni, take your cousins out for a walk.”

The little Armenian grinned, his teeth flashing in the dim room, and then crawled off to the trapdoor that led down into the living quarters on the unfinished floor.

Thyatis motioned for the three brothers to close up the space around her. “Sahul, you have the most critical’task. You will have to go out of the city and as far away from here as practicable. I need a…”

Each brother was entrusted with a task, and Sahul in particular gave her a long look before shaking his head and leaving through the entrance onto the roof. Dahvos was equally puzzled with his assignment, but he went willingly anyway. Jusuf was the only one inclined to argue.

‘This won’t work,“ he said. ”To put it mildly, you’re insane to think they won’t notice. Chances are exceptionally good that every man you take into the old palace will die or be taken captive, and then the rest of us will follow.“

Thyatis smiled at him and gestured out the window with the twig she had used to draw on the floor with.

“In five days,” she said, “the moon will be fully dark. According to Bagratuni, the fire priests of the Persian god have a great ceremony then. All of the important men in the city and the garrison will be in the temple. The guard on the prisoners will be lax, without the commanders to keep them on their toes. It is our best chance. If it works, and I believe it will, then we will have greatly improved our situation in the city.”

“And you,” he shot back, “will have gotten your friend back! How much is he worth to you? Is he that good?” Jusuf’s face was flushed.

Thyatis’ lip curled in anger at his insinuation. “Nikos has been my second for almost two years. He’s like a member of my family. If it were Dahvos or Sahul in that cage, what •would you do? Hmm? Would you let the Persians put Dahvos on the rack, or put red-hot irons to the soles of his feet? If that happened, you would be here, now, in this attic, tearing your guts out with worry that delaying four days might mean his life.”

She slid forward on the floor and was nose to nose with the Bulgar. He had a sharp, musky smell about him, redolent of horses and sweat and iron and blood. He matched her gaze, tremendously angry himself. Thyatis’ hand snaked out and grabbed his hair, turning his face from her.

“Would you let your brother,” she softly whispered in his ear, “die in that square under the axe to preserve your precious skin?” He shuddered at her closeness and pushed her away. Thyatis rolled back on her heels and laughed bitterly. The Bulgar turned, his face a mask, and crawled away to the trapdoor. Thyatis drummed her fingers on the boards, staring after him, and then squeezed out the opening onto the. roof. The sun had vanished over the mountains to the west, leaving only long streaks of orange and purple in the sky and a gleam on the ice that capped the peaks.

Clad from head to toe in a layered black gown, headdress, and veil, Thyatis stood in a recessed doorway on a side street near the northern market of Tauris. It was cool and dim, for much of the street was blocked from the sun by hundreds of wash lines strung between the buildings. Ba-gratuni, dressed in the pantaloons, shirt, and vest of a lower-class Armenian, sat on the steps at the entrance to the building, a blanket covered with cheap copper trinkets laid over his knees.

“Well?” she said, her voice muffled by the heavy garment.

“It’s not such a good view from here, you know-a bad location! I can only see down the street when there are no people in the way.” His voice raised. “Bracelets! The finest to be had! Bracelets!” A pair of Armenian women bustled by, their laughter echoing down the close walls of the little street.

“Ah!” he continued, “I see now. He acts a play of some kind-now he is a seaman, or so I’d say from the roll in his walk; now a maiden on the blush of womanhood. Say, my lady, this fellow is rather good! The seaman is giving the girl some kind of bracelet. Ah! He is quick to toss the bracelet to himself like that! I don’t see either of my cousins, though… Ho, some kind of a miser has made an appearance, he wants the girl to come with him!”

Thyatis tapped her foot impatiently. The play, much slowed by the actor having to play all of the parts, dragged on. Bagratuni kept up a running commentary throughout. His cousins did not make an appearance.

“If this is Anagathios, I’ll skin him myself…” Thyatis’ patience was wearing thin. All she needed now was for some nosy aedile to come snooping around and find her in this getup in an alleyway. She’d be locked up for prostitution for sure…

“Roman” lady, I think that he’s done. Yes, the people watching are giving him a few coins. He bows, he does a flip, he bows… there are my cousins. Oop! He’s a quick one all right, but they have him by both arms. Here they come.“

Bagratuni slid to one side of the step, keeping the blanket on his lap.

“Which play do you suppose it was?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Thyatis.

“Eyes front! Sounds like the Girl from Miletus, which is about right for Anagathios. Just the kind of play to get him thrown in jail by some straitlaced Persian garrison on the edge of nowhere.”

The actor was hustled into the doorway by Bagratuni’s two cousins, who bounced him gently off the right wall a few times to settle him down. The actor, free of the arms of the two heavily built men, brushed off his tattered motley and produced, with a flourish, a knife with a serrated edge. Thyatis stepped forward and raised a hand. The man in front of her crouched down and found the wall behind him with the heel of his foot. At the entrance to the doorway, Bagratuni moved back into the middle of the steps.

“So, actor, do you have anything to say to your critics?”

The man’s head jerked up, showing a dusky olive skin, a fine-boned nose, high cheekbones, and liquid brown eyes with long eyelashes. The knife wavered in his hand. Thyatis unhooked the veil and demurely drew it from her face. The Syrian’s face split with a huge grin and he bowed his head to the flagstones without bending his legs. The knife disappeared into a sleeve in the process. Thyatis wrapped him a huge hug.

“Hello, old friend,” she said in a warm voice as she sat him down. “I was afraid that you were dead.” Anagathios shook his head no, but his eyes were sad. His ringers sketched in the air and Thyatis sighed. I was separated from the others and hid in the bushes unfit the soldiers were gone. I did not see them take any prisoners. Sorry.

No matter, she signed back. Time is short. I have work for you to do.

The Syrian smiled again, his perfect face glowing. Thyatis grinned back.

Stripped down to only a loincloth with a cotton bandeau twisted tight around her chest, Thyatis stood thigh deep in the rush of the sewage tunnel. Jusuf and two of the other Bulgars, clad only in short kilts, were just downstream of her, a stout log slung on their shoulders. A flickering light illuminated them from a lantern hung on a hook set into the ceiling. Thyatis caught the end of the log with her right hand, halting them. Sahul peered around his arm, then turned and gave a sharp whistle. Behind him, in the long tunnel from the river, the whistle was repeated.

The sound of thirty men moving in the tunnel was drowned by the rushing passage of foul water down the sewer. With the logs stopped, Thyatis reached above her head and found, by touch, a heavy leather collar that was dangling at the end of a long rope.

Sloshing through the muck that swirled around her legs, which left-them coated with grease, she dragged the collar down to the level of the log. She knew that up above, in the clerestory of the temple, Bagratuni and his cousins were anxiously watching the upper end of the rope slither through the pulleys that they had embedded in a heavy wooden framework at the top of the shaft. A heavy leather bag slapped at her waist, filled with iron rods. Reaching the log, she dragged the collar over the end of it, which had been cut out into a cross shape by a hand axe and adze.

“Isn’t this a bit much?” Jusuf wheezed, his muscular shoulder straining under the weight of the log. “A ladder over the wall would do as well to get us in.“

“A ladder in the street would be seen by a passerby,” she said, shaking her head. “This way gets us in and out unseen. With your brother’s package safely delivered, it could be days or weeks before the prison guards realize that anything is amiss.”

Once the collar was past the cutout, she fumbled in the bag and drew out an iron rod. One end was bluntly pointed, while the other was flattened into a mushroomlike cap. She pushed the blunt point into one of a pair of matching holes drilled through the cross-section of the end of the log. It stuck partway through, and she cursed under her breath at the delay. She tapped Jusuf twice on his shoulder and stepped back to the little ledge on the edge of the sewer tunnel. The water was cold, even with the steaming offal that drifted past, and her legs were beginning to go numb.

“You don’t believe in keeping it simple, do you? Really, just a plain old ladder…”

Thyatis ignored him and picked up a mallet with a cotton cloth wrapped around one end and returned to the log. The three men carrying the log braced their feet against the wall of the tunnel, and she used the mallet to tap the rod through the hole until the cap end was three or four knuckle bones from the wood. The blunt end stuck out about the same distance on the other side of the log. Once done, she stepped under the log and drove the other rod the same distance through the cross-section at right angles to the first. She tugged at the rope and high above her Bagratuni unshielded a lantern over the edge of the airshaft. Thyatis saw the light flash twice up in the darkness.

“Ready!” She hissed at the three men and they walked forward a bit, until she stopped them, just as the log was about to pass beyond the opening in the ceiling of the sewer. She tugged on the rope again, three times, and then felt it go taut.

“Lay it down,” she called over the sound of the rushing water to the three men. Jusuf motioned to the two others and they laid the end of the log down into the water. The rope and the collar drew snug against the bolts driven through the end of the log and the rope kept the one end high, while the other end was now in the water. Far above Thyatis thought she heard a creaking sound, and she leaned forward, both hands on the log to guide it. The rope groaned a little as it took the full weight of the log, and then the log began to rise. Thyatis and the three men guided it into the center of the shaft and watched as it rose up into the darkness.

“Prepare the others,” she said to Jusuf, handing him the bag of iron rods and the mallet. “If you think about it, my fine Bulgar friend, we can use these pylons for more than just this one purpose.”

Jusuf stared at her in something verging on horror. “We’re going to move them again after this?” His whisper climbed near to a shout.

Thyatis gave him a look that could have melted bronze and pointed off down the sewer.

He shrugged and splashed away into the fetid darkness to prepare the other nine logs that had been pushed in darkness across the river and dragged by the Bulgars up through the water gate of the city and into the sewers. The creaking sound continued to echo above, and Thyatis began to worry that the sound of the pulleys could be heard in the temple. Her fingers itched for the hilt of her sword, but it was in a bundle with her other clothes up at the top of the shaft.

There was a noise above her, and she suddenly skipped out of the way as a cloth bag filled with sand dropped out of the darkness and splashed into the water. Thyatis cursed and wiped slime off her face.

“Quick on the hook,” she said, reaching up to grab the rope. It quivered under her fingers, still stretched taut. “Wait for it!” The other two men had splashed forward and grabbed the top of the bag, where a hook was snagged into the rope bag that surrounded the cloth. “There!”

The tension slackened on the rope and the two men were quick to slip the hook out. They immediately dragged the bag, which was soaking with water at a terrific rate, upstream. With the hook gone, the end of the bag spilled open and sand poured out to vanish in the current of the tunnel. Thyatis felt the sand brush against her ankles as it whipped past.

Better than rats gnawing, she thought. She let go of the rope and hoped that Bagratuni’s man at the top thought to let the rope with the collar down slowly, or she’d be brained as it fell sixty feet down the shaft. A moment later it descended jerkily and she grabbed it.

“Bring the next,” she whispered. Another log, already sporting the cross of iron rods, appeared out of the darkness on the shoulders of the next three men. “Closer,” she said, holding out the collar. The numbness in her feet crept higher, into her thighs.

“Any sign?” Thyatis spoke softly, though the black veil wrapped around her face muffled her voice. Sahul, who was crouching next to her on the rooftop, shook his head. The Roman woman grimaced and eased back from the lip. The street below was quiet and deserted. Two of Bagratuni’s nephews had run down it a few minutes before and had doused the lanterns halfway down the street. Most of the street was pitch black. Thyatis sighed and squared her shoulders. She beckoned across the dark rooftop for Jusuf and Bagratuni. They crawled quietly over to her and Sahul.

There was no moon, and the sky was clear, showing only a vast expanse of glittering diamonds and twinkling emeralds. On the rooftop it was almost impossible to see the men crouched on it, dressed in dark clothing and their faces wrapped in dark gauze. Only their hands betrayed them, pale blobs in the darkness. The Armenians had smeared soot on their hands as well.

It was very quiet on the rooftop, and Thyatis could hear the chanting from the ceremonies in the Temple of the Flame clearly. Earlier she had watched nearly two hundred

Persian notables and their wives, concubines, and children file into the temple. The snap and roar of the great fire on the altar at the center of the temple echoed out of the little windows set high into the walls of the church. Her squad leaders crouched in a circle in front of her, only their eyes showing.

“Anagathios,” she whispered, “has not returned from his foray into the old palace. There has been no sign that he has been discovered, so either the Persians are cleverer than I think or something has happened to hold him up. Tonight is our best chance, so we’re going to go ahead.”

Jusuf shook his head in dismay, but stopped when Thya-tis glared at him.

She turned to Sahul. “Is the first pylon complete?”

The elderly Bulgar nodded and rolled up onto the balls of his feet, his fingertips resting on the roof tiles.

“Good,” she said, “send it forward.”

Sahul scuttled away across the rooftop, keeping to the trail of blankets that had been laid out to muffle the sounds of men moving on the plaster roof. He reached the men at the first log and signed that they should move forward. At the edge of the roof, two men who had been waiting patiently for the “go” signal swung up a heavy frame of wood with a half circle cut out of the top. The man on the left reached into a waxed leather bucket at his side and scooped a huge glob of grease out. He smeared this around the inner part of the half circle. While he prepared the guide, a team of twelve men had lifted up the first pylon from the rooftop. Sahul moved along the thirty-foot length of the pylon, checking to see that the iron rods securely fastened each joint.

The pylon had been hauled up from the sewers in eight-foot-long sections and then slotted together on the rooftop only minutes before. Each cross-section had been cut in such a way that it slotted into the cross-section on another log. The rods had then been driven into the socket holes with padded mallets, forming a joining cross-brace. Thyatis swore that the logs, cut of average-quality cedar, would hold the weight of a man. Sahul was not so sure, but then he didn’t think that they could have hauled ten logs into a hostile city and assembled them on the roof of a fire-temple without discovery either.

The lead end of the pylon slid into the brace guide and slithered across the grease. At the back of the pylon, a metal ring had been screwed into the end of the last pole. Sahul held his hand up to halt the forward movement of the pylon while two of the Bulgars tied two heavy ropes to the ring. The ropes ran down from the end of the pylon to another, heavier ring that been drilled into the plaster of the rooftop.

This, from Thyatis’ viewpoint, had been the most dangerous part of the operation. The heavy ring was screwed into a foot-thick roof beam under the plaster. It had taken two nights of careful work to bore into the beam and set it without alerting the priests in the temple below. Still, without the anchor, maintaining control of the pylon would be impossible. Sahul, seeing that the ropes were, secured and all personnel on the rooftop who were not already holding up the pylon or manning the guide were in position on the anchor ropes, signed to begin running the pylon out.

The man at the wooden guide raised his hand, and the pylon slid out through it three feet. He dropped his hand and the pylon halted. The second man reached down into a large wicker basket by his side and took out an eleven-inch-long wooden peg with his left hand. His right hand already held another mallet, this one with a very well padded head on it. He slid the peg into a hole bored in the side of the log and drove it home with one sharp rap of the mallet.

The first man scanned the street below, and everyone paused, listening. The chanting from the fire temple continued, rising and falling in pitch. No one moved in the old palace or on the street. The guide man raised his hand and opened his fist. The men on the pylon spun the pylon a

Thomas Harcan half turn. The man with the mallet drove a second peg in, offset six inches from the first.

Pegs were driven into the pylon-at two-foot intervals. From her position at the end of the pylon, with half an ear cocked for the sound of discovery, Thyatis worried the grains of sand in the hourglass away. The pylon was thirty feet long, needing thirty pegs. It took a half-grain to rotate the pylon, drive a peg, rotate it back, and advance it another three feet. Fifteen grains dripped past with infinite slowness. She had thought at first to have the guide frame possess a slot, to allow the pegs to be driven in during the assembly of the pylon. Efforts to build a frame strong enough had failed, so she sweated out the fifteen grains. It seemed to take forever.

As the pylon slid out over the street, each man carrying it trotted back on the trail of blankets to the anchor ropes as his section disappeared through the guide. Ten feet of the back of the pylon would remain on the higher roof end, just long enough to allow the anchor ropes to guide it down. Thyatis moved to the front of the roof, next to the guide. The pylon had begun to wobble as it reached farther and farther out over the street. The end of the pylon began to flex back and forth in a semicircle. Thyatis held her breath. Behind her, nearly all of the men were dug in on the anchor ropes, trying to keep the pylon steady. Seeing its wobble, Thyatis realized too late that she should have had anchor ropes on the sides of the pylon as well as the back end. Too late now, she thought. The pylon slithered to one side and the guide frame gave an alarmingly loud creak as it took the pressure.

“Drop the pylon.” She hissed at the men on the anchor ropes. “Slowly!”

The men on the rope began to release it, an inch at a time, and the pylon dipped toward the roof garden across the street. The pylon was out far enough now that it was actually above the garden. It trembled lower and Thyatis hissed in alarm as the end suddenly angled to one side and slewed through an immature orange tree with a crash. She and the lookout stared each direction in the street in alarm. Thyatis whirled, motioning for the anchormen to lower the pylon the rest of the way.

The pylon settled to the rooftop with a crunching sound as it crushed the little tree into kindling. Thyatis checked her sword, which was securely strapped across her back, and knelt to check the lacings on her boots. They were tight.

“Sahul! Jusuf! Follow me with the bag.” The two Bul-gars trotted forward with a large hemp bag, easily big enough for a man, over their shoulders. The bag was securely wrapped with ropes, but it twitched feebly regardless. Thyatis stepped up onto the edge of the roof and waited for a moment, poised over the thirty-foot drop while the two men at the guide lashed the last set of pegs to the frame. Thyatis swallowed to clear her throat and then took a deep breath.

She stepped out onto the pylon, her left boot on one of the pegs. The pylon tried to twist away under her, but the lashings stopped it. Her leg trembled as she balanced, but the pylon stopped turning. She hopped up, her right boot landing on a second peg, two feet ahead of the first. Behind her she heard Sahul and Jusuf hold their breath and a low exclamation from one of the men on the guide frame. Thyatis smiled, her blood afire with adrenaline. The moment of balance passed and she ran down the pylon, her feet skipping from one peg to the next. Wind rushed in her hair and then, suddenly, she stumbled off the end and had to tuck herself into a ball as she rolled up from the rooftop. The garden was alive with the smell of oranges and jasmine. Her sword rasped out of the scabbard over her back.

On the roof of the fire temple, Sahul grunted as Jusuf strapped the bag onto his back. It was heavy, but he was strong enough to carry it. With it secured, he backed out onto the pylon and began descending it to the garden, using the pegs as hand and footholds. He prayed to his god that the pegs would not snap or the pylon give way. He would not admit it to the Roman lady, but he was squeamish where heights were concerned. His forearms and calves burned with the effort of supporting over two hundred extra pounds of weight.

In the garden, Thyatis had run lightly to the inner wall and had peered down into the courtyard. It was a black well, unlit, seemingly bottomless. She listened carefully. No one seemed to have heard the crash of the falling pylon. She ran back to the end of the pylon in time to help Sahul and his burden off. Then she unwound a rope from her waist, tied it around the lowest pair of pegs, and strung it out as she walked backward to the inner wall. Checking the courtyard one more time, she dropped the rope over the side. It made a rustling sound as it hit below. A grain later she had swung over the side and crabbed down the inner wall. Sahul followed immediately down the rope, and then Jusuf, who had also run-cursing under his breath-down the pylon to get to the garden faster.

On the roof of the fire temple, Bagratuni breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief. The crazy Romans had done it! When the Roman woman-Bagratuni had begun to think of her as Diana the Huntress in his private thoughts-had proposed this mad scheme, he had been utterly sure that they would all be discovered and slain within hours of beginning the attempt. Even finding the cedars and getting them into the city was a feat to boast of around the hearth fire for a generation! This, this was even bolder. He smiled in the darkness and shooed his men back to their positions on the ropes. The Bulgars had taken up watch all around them. All they had to do was wait, and hope that no priest or noble decided to take a turn under the stars on the roof of the temple.

Thyatis crept up to the door in the far wall of the courtyard and carefully pressed her ear to it. There was a faint murmur from the heavy oaken panels, but it did not seem to be very close. Sahul and Jusuf arrived and paused, pant ing faintly from the effort of the last minutes. She scratched her nose and then pulled a thin, flat piece of steel out of her belt. The door was secured by what from a distance had seemed to be a heavy lock. Now she fished around in the keyhole, trying to find the mechanism. To her disgust, it had none. She pressed against the panel of the door with her shoulder and felt it give a little before stopping.

“There’s a bar on the inside,” she whispered into Sahul’s ear. “Be ready. If I can get it up, there will be a noise.” She began probing with the steel rod at the edges of the door and in the panel, looking for a crevice. There was nothing. Thyatis cursed mentally. This was very bad. She tested the strength of the door. It was stout and they did not have time to cut the lock away.

“Jusuf, we’re not getting through this door,” she said softly. “Step out and see if you can spy one of the windows on the upper floor. Maybe we can get in through one of those…” She paused, thinking she heard something, and then froze as the door rattled slightly. Sahul and Jusuf faded back, away from the door, disappearing into the gloom. Thyatis flattened herself against the wall, feeling the cold plaster surface tickle at her neck. There was a scraping sound from beyond the door and then a latch clicked. Thyatis slid the sword in her hand quietly back into its sheath and then drew a long knife.

The door opened, spilling a pale-yellow light into the courtyard. A shadow obscured the light and then a woman in a tattered gown and headdress peered out, blinking, into the darkness. Thyatis swallowed a breath and then darted around the corner of the door. Her knife was at the woman’s throat in an instant and a gloved hand over her mouth. Pretty brown eyes, edged with kohl and glittering sapphire dust, widened and the woman raised hands with long, delicate nails in surrender. Behind her Sahul and Jusuf had slid past into the room on the other side, knives in hand. The room was empty, more a hallway filled with big pottery jars than anything else. Thyatis walked forward and hooked the door closed with her foot.

“So,” she breathed, “I see you’re having a fine time in the lap of luxury.”

Sahul and Jusuf turned and saw Thyatis sheath her knife. The woman shrugged and dug her fingers under the back of her hair, peeling off the heavy brown tresses with a popping sound. Anagathios shook his own hair out and stuffed the wig into a bag under his dress. Jusuf gave a soundless whistle.

“A better-looking woman than a man,” he said, his lip half curled.

Thyatis ignored him and signed to the actor. Have you found Nikos?

Yes, Anagathios answered. There is a cellar, with holding cells for the prisoners of the garrison commander. He’s down there, but he’s not alone.

What do you mean? she answered, but the Syrian shook his head with a rueful smile.

You’ll see. What’s in the bag?

Thyatis smirked back at him. Take us to the cellar and you’ll see.

‘The gods have cursed me.“ Thyatis grunted as she peered around the corner of the cellar hallway. ”Cells, with thirty or forty people in them. At least they’re asleep-for the moment.“ She turned and grimaced wryly at Sahul, who was still carrying the heavy bag. ”Why did the Boar have to take so many ’special‘ prisoners?“ Jusuf refused to look at her, but Sahul swung the bag off of his back with a grateful sigh and rubbed his shoulders.

Anagathios, she signed at the actor, who was crouched right behind her. Who are all these people?

Locals, he gestured back, mostly hostages for the good behavior of the headmen of the town and the surrounding villages. What are we going to do?

“Victory,” she said aloud, “is to the bold. Forget the orig inal plan. Jusuf, Sahul, go back up the stairs and block all of the doorways that lead into this hall or our route back to the courtyard. Then, Jusuf, you go all the way back to the fire-temple roof and tell Bagratuni that we’re going to try to bring all of his relatives out. Tell him to pull the pylon back and break it down into the logs and send it down into the sewer. We’re not going out that way now. Tell him that in about twenty grains, we’re going to need a diversion on the other side of town, something noisy.

“Sahul-go back to the garden and drop more ropes into the courtyard and tie them securely. Then we need more ropes for the outer wall-but not yet, not until we need them! We’ll try taking everyone out that way. Anagathios, start tearing your dress into strips, each one about two feet long.”

Thyatis stood up and hitched up her belt. Sahul and Jusuf stared at her for a moment, standing there in the glow of the torches that lit the corridor, her face partially in shadow. Then they sketched a hurried bow and ran back the way they had come, their sandals slapping on the stones of the floor. Anagathios stripped down and started tearing the ragged gown into pieces.

Thyatis crept forward, hoping against hope that no one would wake up before she was ready. The men were in a set of ceils on the left, while the women and children were opposite them on the right. Each cell was no more than a big room carved out of the thick river clay that underlaid the whole city. They were partially bricked in, with stout doors of oak with windows covered by bronze bars at each entrance. From the door, the entirety of each cell could be seen. Thyatis glided like a ghost along the front of the cells holding the men.

Nikos was in the third cell, leaning against the wall, asleep. Thyatis snarled silently. He was really asleep, not just shamming. She knelt and cut off the tip of one of the leather thongs that bound her boots to her calf. It was a hard little nub of well-cured leather. She flicked it through the bars, and it hit Nikos in the right eye. He started and his eyes flickered open. A piece of sharpened copper was in his right hand. Warily he looked around, his eyes widening in utter surprise when he caught sight of Thyatis peering in the window. She put a finger to her lips. He nodded.

Gently she raised the bar on the outside the door, easing up the slip-latch that held it down. Once it was off, she laid it flat oathe floor next to the door and slowly eased the heavy panel open. Nikos was waiting on the other side, having stepped lightly across the sleeping bodies of his fellow prisoners. Thyatis signed for him to step out. She closed the door behind him.

For a moment they stood staring at each other, and a parade of emotions passed over Nikos’ face like a triumph in the Forum. Thyatis just grinned hugely and then hugged him close to her hard enough to make him oof in surprise. He broke free and rubbed his arms in chagrin.

Which way is out? he signed.

A question, first, she replied. Do any of these others have level heads?

He looked at her dubiously, then his fingers danced, saying: What do you intend, foolish one?

She mugged an innocent face, then: We’re getting everyone out if we can. If we do, the local tribes will owe me a favor for every head. I need them to take the city for Caesar.

Nikos started to look sick. Then he noticed the bag on the floor behind her. What’s in the bag? He asked.

Oh, nothing… just your body.