The Port of Soli, Theme of Cilicia, The Eastern Empire
"Third Cyrenaicea, Fourth Maniple? That's a mounted unit. Drago! Where's that lackwit?" The centurion had a shout like a boar in heat. His voice boomed over the tumult of the port of Soli. Close to sixty men were crowded into the stifling tent, pressed up against a flimsy wooden divider. A granite-faced quartermaster centurion sat on a triangular camp stool next to the folding table behind the barrier. Soldiers in half mail with arms like tree trunks held back the press of men. The legionnaires shouted and shoved, trying to get to the front of the tent.
"Drago!" The senior centurion scowled. A flap at the back of the tent opened, spilling in a white-hot glare of Mare Internum sun. A Greek with a bad complexion stuck his head in the opening. "Where the Hades have you been, you insufferable catamite?"
The Greek grinned.
"This boy," the quartermaster said, pointing a stubby finger at Dwyrin, who was standing in the tiny free space between the press of hot, angry men and the table. "This boy needs a horse and kit so he can catch up with his unit. They already pushed off for Samosata three weeks ago. Take him over to the stables and get him whatever they can spare, then get your backside back over here!"
Hundreds of tents surrounded them in a classic Legion encampment grown monstrously out of control. The port of Soli, where the combined armies of the Eastern and Western empires were busily unloading from the Imperial fleet, had been a sleepy fishing village before Emperor Galen and his advance elements had landed four weeks ago. A half-moon of shallow bay, barely enough to allow a ship to reach the rickety wooden quay, on an open shore had marked it. The village behind the quay was composed of mud-brick buildings and flimsy wooden structures.
Galen had landed two thousand infantrymen in the surf of the beach and seized the town. The villagers had mostly fled when the black fleet had appeared offshore. Those who had failed to flee, or had come back for personal belongings, had been taken and impressed into work gangs. Three hundred engineers, stonemasons, and craftsmen had come ashore in longboats at the wharf. Within two days they had torn down the village and extended the quay by fifty feet using the brick, wood and fieldstone from the buildings. Galen had come ashore then, with five hundred Sarmatian light horse and his bodyguard. The Sarmatians, under the command of Prince Theodore, had pushed inland to secure the nominally Roman city of Tarsus, eighteen miles to the northeast.
By the time Dwyrin's ship had reached the port, after a twelve-day voyage from Constantinople, the Western Emperor had put ashore the fifteen thousand men who had sailed with the initial fleet. Theodore and his light horse had secured Tarsus and all of the drayage that they could lay their hands on. Bands of auxillia roamed the countryside, confiscating horses, mules, wagons-all that and every bit of portable food and fodder they could lay their hands on. The one quay in the old harbor had been joined by two more-one composed of purposely sunken merchantmen, the other of brick and soil carved out of the hill behind the town.
The initial camp had doubled and then tripled in size, gaining a new ditch and palisade with each expansion. The Western Emperor, the army general staff, and Galen's personal guardsmen and servants now occupied the first, innermost camp. The three western Legions-the Sixth Gemina and Second Triana and the Third Augusta-that had landed with Galen occupied the next layer of the camp, and the barbarians the outermost ring. Outside of the outermost ditch, a great mustering yard of corrals, barns, and feedlots had been thrown up to hold the thousands of horses, mules, and donkeys destined to carry the logistical tail of the Roman army.
More ships arrived each day, offloading supplies, materials, and men-in whole formations, in banda, and as singletons, like Dwyrin. The Western officers were furiously trying to match men to units and unsnarl the traffic jam that clogged the port from dawn to dusk.
"Quite a commotion, isn't it?" Drago pulled Dwyrin roughly aside from the clatter of a heavy wagon laden with sheaves of arrows. Mud spattered on Dwyrin's legs. It hadn't rained recently, but the lowlands around Soli were very close to the water table. Drago sniffed at the muck that passed for streets in the camp. "Nothing like eastern mud-thick as tar and yellow as bile!"
Dwyrin stared around in awe as they passed through the middle camp-thousands of canvas tents were arrayed in neat rows, each block marked by the standard of the Legion and maniple housed there. Hundreds of legionnaires hurried to and fro in the camp; work details were cutting the ditch lower and reinforcing the inner palisade. Others marched past in formation, dust caking their legs and armor. There was a tremendous sense of barely controlled chaos and energy in the air.
"Huh." The Greek watched as a maniple of legionnaires entered the gate from the outer camp, heavy bags of water slung over their shoulders. "Keeping them busy, I see. Come on, we've still a ways to walk! Now, your chit says that you're for the Third C, in the thaumaturgic battalion-you get a standard kit; no armor, but a horse. I'll tell you now, you're not getting any kind of a good horse. All the good horseflesh is either in the field already with Prince Theo or being reserved for the Eastern army. They as are too good to set foot on common dirt, or walk!"
Dwyrin was lugging a heavy bag of personal effects: cooking gear, a bedroll, and a bundled cloak. A leather harness hung, doubled, at his waist. A shortsword that, for him, was a heavy weight and a knife hung from it. He had passed on the javelins-his unit did not use them. Hardtack and dried meat with cheese and some rolls were in a cloth bag as well. A waterskin hung off his other shoulder. In all, nearly seventy pounds of gear-he could barely stand with it all on him. So he kept walking lest he fall down from the weight.
A bridge of logs crossed to the outer camp, over a ditch filled with hundreds of men stripped to the waist digging with shovels and picks. Ramps of tamped earth led up to the outer rim to carry the dirt away. At the eastern end of the ditch a dam had been built to hold back the waters of the Efrenk River. The river cut close to the eastern side of the camp and, in previous days, had provided the town with water. Now it was going to be rerouted into the ditches to fill them.
"Are the Persians going to attack us?" Dwyrin asked as they crossed the corduroy bridge into the clamor of the outer camp. This belt was a vast morass of mud, horsehair tents, and gangs of outlander auxillia. The road to the outer gate was straight and properly Roman, but the camps and enclaves of the foreigners were anything but. Long-haired Huns, Sarmatians in tattoos and ritual scars, red-haired Goths, Alans, blue-painted Celts, blond Scandians, black Africans from beyond Mauritania-the detritus of the frontier. All arguing, fighting, gambling, cleaning weapons, sleeping. All waiting for the order to move north.
"No," Drago answered with a grimace. "The nearest Persian army is over two hundred miles away, on the other side of the bay of Issus." He pointed off to the southeast, across the broad blue waters of the Mare Internum. "The latest that I heard, from the captain of a coaster out of Cyprus, is that the great Prince Shahin commands that force and that he is preparing to march against Damascus in the south. All this effort that you see is to keep the men busy until the army is ready to move out. Most of the Western troops will be gone within the week, to march up to Tarsus and join the blessed Prince Theodore. In another month only a garrison will remain here."
The Greek led Dwyrin out of the barbarian camp and then turned right. The corrals were lodged against the bank of the Efrenk to allow for easy watering of the animals. A troop of cavalry cantered past as they approached the tents at the gate of the maze of corrals. Dwyrin gazed after them; they were white men with long dark beards and cloaks of gold and brass. They held lances in leather cups at the sides of their saddles.
Drago pushed aside the flap of the biggest tent and ducked inside. Dwyrin followed and blinked in the dim light. It was another room filled with little tables and annoyed men. Drago bantered with a thin-looking Sicilian at the end table. Dwyrin looked around and took the opportunity to shed his gear into a bare patch at the edge of the tent. The air was close and stuffy, but the break from the sun was welcome.
The Greek tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a set of badly cured parchment papers. "Your travel orders, lad. They'll get you a nag to carry you. The latest report is that the Third left Tarsus in advance of Theodore and is on the road to the city of Samosata. That'll be the jumping off point for the whole army. He says"-Drago gestured idly at the man he had been talking to-"that the road is clear between here and wherever the Third is camped."
Dwyrin tucked the papers into his tunic and clasped the Greek's shoulder in return. "Many thanks, Drago. I'll be on my way, then."
– |Though of poor color and given to fits of eye-rolling, the horse that Dwyrin rode out of Solis was no nag. It was a stout little steppe pony that had been gathered up in the sweep for suitable horses in the province. Dwyrin named it Macha in hopes that the spirit of the goddess would fill it and give its stocky legs more speed. It was a fruitless hope-the pony clopped along at a steady pace for hour after hour, but it refused to canter, much less break into a gallop. Still, it had a mild nature and rarely bit.
The road from the port to the inland city of Tarsus was crowded with legionnaires moving in both directions as well as trains of heavily laden mules and wagons. Tarsus, a sprawl of red brick buildings and dusty-tan edifices of poor-quality marble, was swarming with Eastern officers and cavalrymen. Dwyrin slept in a barn on the eastern side of the city; no lodgings were to be had in the town with the press of army billeting. He ate a sparse breakfast and watered Macha at a well on the eastern edge of the city. The citizens, drawing water for their homes, held forth that Prince Theodore was preparing to advance east into Persian lands without the support of the rest of the army, which was still held up unloading at Solis. The great triple-spanned bridge across the river beyond Tarsus was blocked when Dwyrin reached it. He waited for an hour behind a press of Gothic horsemen and bands of Cyrenaican archers.
At the far end of the span, a wagon had lost an axle. The northern horsemen were hooting and laughing at the efforts of a troop of Roman engineers to clear the wagon, but it had been loaded with baskets of lead shot and heavy, precut timbers. The Cyrene troops were squatting in a long line along the side of the bridge, talking in low tones. Their patterned tan cloaks and dark, burnished skin stood out in stark contrast to the sunburned faces of the Goths and their heavy, grease-slicked blond and red hair. Dwyrin managed to edge his pony around the upstream side of the wreck, drawing the curses of the centurion in charge of the gang trying to move the wagon. It was overloaded and too heavy to push. The engineers began shouting at one another.
Dwyrin rode on, now that the road was clear. Another smaller camp had been thrown up on the far bank of the river. The garrison troops, a clean-shaven lot of dark-haired Celts, looked on with amusement as the Hibernian rode past, almost swallowed in his red cloak and gear.
"Don't be home late for dinner!" they shouted after him, laughing.
He waved and rode onward. Before him, the flat plain of Adana stretched out, a fertile valley of olive groves, vineyards, whitewashed mud-brick houses, stands of cedar and spruce trees. Beyond it, a low range of mountains rose in the east, running from the sea north to the vast escarpment of the Taurus Mountains. Even through the humid air, Dwyrin could see the snow-crowned peaks off to his left glitter in the afternoon sun. Clouds were gathering among them, but for now the sun was bright and the air clear. Tiny red birds sang in the trees along the road. It was quiet and peaceful, the clamor of the army left far behind.
He urged Macha to go faster; it was a long road to Samosata.
– |Cold wind howled out of the north, driving a fine spray of grit and dust against the Hibernian. Dwyrin leaned into the gusts, his cloak, now pale with dust, wrapped tight around his head and shoulders. Gravel, whipped by the wind, stung at his legs as he struggled forward through the wind. Macha, her head low, trudged along behind him at the end of the bridle. The pleasant valleys that drew up to the coast were well behind him now, and he had crossed a bleak range of rocky hills and barren mountains to come out onto an endless plain of dried mud and broad dry streambeds. The Tauruses still towered on the northern horizon, cool and distant, but the old Roman road that he was following slashed almost due east across the headwaters of an enormous river plain.
Every ten miles a waymarker rose from the barren soil to mark the road, most of which was covered with blown drifts of dirt and sand. The stele, once deeply graven with the sigil of Rome and the Emperors who had raised them, were worn and chipped by the weather. The road ran straight, but the stones at its verge were tumbled and broken. Off the road, in the distance, he could sometimes see villages, or perhaps the ruins of villages. Short grass peeked from between the stones at the edge of the road, but the low hills were dry and yellow, barren of trees or cultivation. Even the Legion night camps, dug out of the baked mud only weeks before, seemed empty for long years, already half filled with windblown sand and fallen-in walls.
The wind had struck him as soon as he had come out of the hills above the abandoned city of Gaziantep four days ago. It did not let up, even in the night when the temperature of the plain-hot as a baker's oven in the day-plunged to near freezing. His eyes were nearly glued shut with grime and dust. His hair and nose were coated with a thick layer of yellow matter. Still, he kept trudging east, keeping to the road, sleeping in the bare hollows of the land where there was some respite from the wind. Every third waymarker, there was a house of stone or brick built at the side of the road. In the shelter of these crumbling dwellings, cisterns had been cut into the earth and lined with stones. Usually there was water at the bottom of the shallow pits. He kept on, though most days the sun was only a brassy disk in the sky, burning down through heavy air.
He had begun to get nervous. Though his othersight no longer overwhelmed him as it had on the voyage on the Father of Rivers, little things still leaked through to his consciousness. The endless flat plain seemed to affect his mind, emptying it of trivial things, paring down his thoughts until they were little more than the desire to put one foot in front of the other. The drone of flies was constant. The power was very deep in the earth here, hidden and dim. Sometimes as he crossed one of the shallow valleys, he could feel the water in the ground, running cold and distant, but it did not come near the surface. Other things trickled around the edge of sight. Voices seemed to call in the darkness, and the land felt watched and angry. One night, as he lay sleeping in the lee of an ancient masonry wall, he woke to see the figures of four men standing beyond the pale ring of his campfire. Macha was sleeping, leaning against the wall, her breathing heavy and slow. The pale men stared down at him with shadowed faces. They were dressed in long robes, worked with crosshatched patterns and flat-topped helmets of fluted brass. Their beards were curled and painted, but they were so dim that he could see the gleam of stars in the pits of their eyes. He moved to rise, and they faded, but the echoes of their anger and hatred lingered. That night he broke camp before dawn and pressed on in the darkness, eager to leave that place.
– |Four days onto the plain, he topped a rise that he had not even noticed climbing, so gentle was its slope, and looked down onto a ribbon of pale green and the broad surface of a great river. The road turned and ran down the slope below him, to a small village and a great bridge of stone pilings and a wooden truss. In the distance, he could see men in red cloaks standing watch on the circular stone towers at either end of the span. The river was easily two hundred paces across and a deep blue, rushing swift under the sandstone pilings of the bridge. Macha whinnied, smelling the water and the greenery. Dwyrin smiled and urged her down the slope with his knees.
A dead man lay in the shadow of one of the outlying buildings. Dwyrin rode up the road slowly and stopped thirty feet from the entrance to the village. The place was quiet, the only sound the idle rattle of a shutter in the wind. He could smell the dead man from the road and see that the outthrust arm was puffy and discolored. Scratching his chin, he shrugged the Legion cloak back, off his arms, and rode slowly forward. In his mind, a flurry of thoughts scattered and a point of calm formed, oil on the waters, and he extended his perception out to the sun-heated walls and the cool shadows of the doorways.
At the center of the village, there was a square of bare earth fronting a dilapidated temple with four pillars of brick, faced with carved wooden slats painted to approximate marble. Other buildings crowded the plaza, their doors dark and empty. Dwyrin skirted the center of the space, angling to the left, toward the towers by the bridge. As he passed opposite the temple, he could see the bare legs of two bodies-man or woman, he could not tell-lying on the portico. Flies buzzed in the still air at the center of the village. A door rattled, but he had felt the wind move against it, and he was not distracted.
Dwyrin muttered to himself, raising the first defense, the shield of Athena, around him. To his partially opened othersight, he could see the wan blue veil fall between him and the sun. The power of the river was close, a rolling green wave, and he reached out to tap into the eddy of it as it broke and curled against the bridge supports. A hot spark began to flicker in the back of his mind. Macha moseyed on, never in a hurry, past the dead Square and into the lane beyond.
Here the houses were a little better built-fieldstone with plaster facings. Down the street, on his left, a garden wall jutted out from a house, ornamented by a trailing vine sporting little blue-and-white flowers. Dwyrin became uneasy; a sense of cold and hunger was seeping in around the edges of the shield. He loosened the shortsword in its scabbard on his right hip. The street was empty as he rode on, the echoes of hooves sounding thin to his ear. Past the houses, there was a bank of palms and part of a garden field. As he rode by the last house-tightly shuttered with a painted door in muted red-he twitched, looking to the right, into the field. Something…
A crack like thunder knocked him off the horse and slammed him into the ground. The Shield of Athena blazed into full strength as he rolled away on the ground. Macha wailed in pain and toppled over, most of her hindquarters burned away. Dwyrin was partially blinded, the etched zigzag of a bright blue-white light searing his retinas. The hot spark in his mind exploded and his hands danced in the Invocation of Geb, the stone of the earth. Through a blur of tears, he saw men rushing forward out of the palms on the left side of the road. Facing them, he stabbed his hand out, loosing the dammed up power that he had drawn from the earth and the river.
A bolt of scarlet flame ripped across the road and slashed through the gang of running men. The lead two men, clad in desert robes and light chain mail, flashed to ash in the torrent of fire. The men behind them screamed in horror as the wall of flame washed over them, clawing at their clothes with bright fingers. Dwyrin staggered forward, a halo of blazing white flame roaring around him. The remains of the faithful horse smoked and then burst alight, filling the air with greasy smoke. Nine men howled in despair on the ground, their muscle and fat sizzling away in the heat of the fire that he had summoned. Contorted limbs thrashed, as they crisped to a reddish black and finally lay still.
The Hibernian, sick, finished the last man off with his sword. The twisted features, eyeless and locked in an endless scream, mocked him from the ashy ground. The palm trees were ablaze as well, sending pillars of white smoke into the air. Dwyrin turned around, stunned at the devastation that he had wrought. The field was burning too, and the nearest houses were black with smoke. Flames licked at the eaves. The othersight surged in his mind and the physical world was washed away in a torrent of colors and living sound. He fell to his knees, clawing at his face. His mouth was open, gasping for air, but he could not scream.
– |Smoke, faintly lit by fire, smudged the night sky. It drifted in long streamers across the arc of heaven, obscuring the stars and the fattening moon. Beyond the smoke and the dim red light of the fires, it was dark as pitch. Dwyrin groaned and blinked. His eyes were gritty. He sat up, and a thin layer of ash flaked off him to settle to the ground around him in a white cloud. The world was solid again, the earth firm under his feet instead of an infinite abyss of minuscule fires and strobing adamantine forces. The sky was close and filled with the comfortable light of stars, not a dizzying unguessable depth congested with millions of whirling spherical fires, packed so closely that they left no room between them.
The grove of palms had burned down to the ground, and the nearest houses sagged, roofs gone, windows black scars with trails of smoke along the whitewash. The bodies of the dead still lay around him, along with the poor horse. There were scuttling sounds in the night as scorpions and other scavengers retreated from his movement. He stood, though he felt weak, and tiredly brushed the ash off himself. All of his kit on the horse was gone. He checked his belt and cursed aloud.
"Mother of storms! Grave robbers…"
While he had lain unconscious, someone had crept up and lifted his pouch, his knife, his sword, everything but the woolen shirt, his leggings, the cloak he had lain upon, and, thankfully, his boots. He checked the pouch on a thong around his neck and was vastly relieved to find that his orders and identification disk were still there. He rubbed the tin disk and felt better, knowing that as soon as he reached some kind of Legion outpost, he would be home again, of a sort. He bent over the body of the horse and chanted soft words. After he had made the prayer of the dead, he cupped his hands and blew into them. A little white spark guttered there after a moment and then it became a pale cold light. He set it in the air before him, where it bobbed and weaved, lighting his path. Then he walked on, heading for the bridge over the river. If his eyes had not deceived him, there had been Roman soldiers there.
– |The bridge was deserted. The remains of a camp lay at the end toward the village, but the soldiers were gone. The coals in the cook-pit were cold and Dwyrin searched fruitlessly in the tents for any personal effects that he might use. He did find a spear behind one of the tents, which he took to use as a walking stick. The tiny mite of glowing light attracted itself to the head of the spear and, after fluttering around it, came to rest. The river gurgled softly to itself under the bridge as he crossed. When he reached the other end, he stopped.
The air was silent. The wind had died down. He looked back across the long span of the bridge, gleaming palely under the light of the moon. Something had attacked him in the village with a storm-power. Only his aegis had saved him. He could feel nothing in the ether of the night. The land was sleeping; only the river was still awake, running green and quiet in its bed. He turned away and walked down onto the hard road. At the edge of his vision, there was a flicker of hidden warmth. Ignoring it, he continued along the road, though he turned his head slightly to see if he could catch sight of it out of the corner of his eye.
A man was crouched in the shadow of the last support of the bridge on the eastern bank. Only a muffled outline marked him, though now that he was aware and focused, Dwyrin could see the patterns of heat that rippled in his blood and bones. The boy turned, facing the man, and leaned on the spear.
"I'll not bite," he said, his voice squeaking unexpectedly. Dwyrin paused, disgusted with himself. He had meant to sound strong and assured, adult. Instead he was certain that he sounded like a tired sixteen-year-old boy. "Come out. Are you a Roman?"
The figure shifted and then stood up. A dark cloak fell away from a naked blade, but that vanished with a scraping sound into a scabbard. A man stepped gingerly out of the darkness to the edge of the pale cold light that shone from the spearpoint. He was older, with a stubby beard and lank brown hair. His face was creased with furrows cut by years under sun and wind. His eyes were deep-set and glittered in the dim light. He wore the cloak of a Roman soldier, with a mail shirt of heavy round links and hard leather straps. A battered leather bag was slung over his shoulder, and the shortsword was accompanied by two long knives and a short stabbing spear. The man cautiously slid sideways, putting himself away from the bridge.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice deep and rough with hard use. "Did you come out of the village?"
Dwyrin nodded wearily. He did not move; the man was ready to bolt into the night at any provocation.
"I came over the hill this afternoon, but someone attacked me in the village and I had to defend myself. I was overcome, though, and… well I fainted, I think. When I woke up, it was dark. Were you stationed in the camp?"
The man nodded, but he did not relax. He shifted the spear in his hand, passing it to his right.
"I'm Colonna," said the man. "Ouragos for the Fourth Lochaghai of the Sixth Banda of the Third Cyrene. What's your name?"
"Dwyrin MacDonald," said Dwyrin, "I'm a recruit for the Ars Magica of the Third. I was late getting to Constantinople and I've been trying to catch up ever since."
Colonna snorted and swung the spear over his shoulder in an easy manner. He stepped closer and looked Dwyrin over closely. "A wonder-worker? You seem mighty damned young to be a hell-caster."
Dwyrin stared back, his face set. His ears were burning though. The man had moved from cautious fear to insolence in record time. The ill-hidden sneer on the man's face was far too familiar to Dwyrin-the bullies in the village were no different from this fellow.
"What happened here?" Now Dwyrin's voice was steady.
Colonna shrugged. "Bandits attacked the village yesterday. Fifty or sixty of them on horses and camels. There was a fight among the houses and the lochaghos decided that we should fall back to the bridge. Most everyone was killed on the bridge, but the bandits were pretty badly beat up. I fell in the river and took my time getting back. Everyone else was dead by then. I hid out down by the edge of the fields, keeping an eye on things."
The soldier pointed back across the bridge.
"Today they set up shop in the village, with some of them on the bridge in the cloaks of the dead men. I moved up under the bridge to listen-most of them left about noon with the people from the village. Raiders down from the north, looking for easy pickings now that the war has started. I lifted what was left of my gear from the camp when the big show started in the village."
Dwyrin quirked an eyebrow up. "Big show?"
"Yeah, the thunderbolts and pillars of fire. Flattened most of the village, so I decided I should cross the river and keep an eye on things from the far bank. Quieted down quick, though. The last of the bandits scattered right after, but it didn't seem too safe to go back. I figured that I'd wait a day and see what turned up. And I got you…"
"You got me," Dwyrin answered. "Unless you've got some horses hidden around somewhere, we should go. How far is Samosata?"
Colonna flipped the spear around the back of his head, shoulder to shoulder, considering the boy. Then he swung it down and tapped the butt against the stones of the road. Dwyrin waited with weary patience. Finally the soldier shrugged again and adjusted the bag on his back.
"It's about three days, kid. On foot. You sure you don't want to wait it out here? Another supply convoy or column will be through pretty quick. This is some empty country, traveling all alone."
"No." Dwyrin started walking. He had no stomach to remain in this place.
– |"This is dangerous land," Colonna said, as they topped a rise and began hiking down a long grade toward, at last, a valley littered with green orchards and fields. Both the older man and the youth wore hats of plaited reed and grass, gathered from the banks of the last dry watercourse they had crossed. Dwyrin ignored the muttering of the Sicilian. After three days of traveling with the ouragos, he spent more and more time in his own head, wondering what the teachers at the school were doing. The lessons that they had tried so hard to drum into his unreceptive mind were filtering back up now, but whole in some way, complete. He practiced them while they walked.
"The sun will roast a man in his breastplate. The natives are of an evil disposition and will murder the man found alone, away from his unit. The nights are cold enough to freeze. The water is poor and will give you the runs."
Colonna went on and on, his voice grating against Dwyrin's ears with an endless litany of complaints. In some sense, Dwyrin thought, the old soldier was trying to help him by unburdening himself of observations made in decades of service. It made Dwyrin's head hurt. He hoped that the city ahead was Samosata and they would, at last, part company.
"Poison asps crawl under the rocks and will creep into your bedroll while you sleep. You wake to the feel of their fangs piercing your skin. The fodder for horses is sparse and bitter-those animals not raised here will soon sicken and some will perish. The land hates men, so long has it…"
Dwyrin shut out the voice. He felt cold, despite the burning heat of the day. There was something in the dead rocks and parched soil around them that disturbed him. The city seemed far away, shimmering in the heat haze of the middle day. He stopped in the middle of the road and turned around, staring back up the road that wound out of the hills. He felt uneasy, a prickling sensation rippled along his arms. Something was watching them from the ridge behind.
Colonna had stopped too and was leaning on his walking stick. The soldier seemed old and weary. Dwyrin completed his slow circuit of the horizon. There was nothing.
"Funny feeling?" the older man asked.
"Yes, like hidden eyes watching us."
Colonna nodded. "I feel that way most of the time. They are watching up there somewhere in the rocks. Remember, the land hates us, and so do the people who live here. They only wait for a chance to murder us without cost to themselves."
They continued onward, though now Dwyrin looked out on the barren tablelands and sparse vegetation crouched in the folds and crevices of the land as if he were adrift in a hostile sea. Dark intent slid along under the surface, waiting for a chance to rise out of the depths with crushing teeth. The sun, unrelenting, filled the brassy white bowl of the sky with fire. At the edges of his othersight, dim greens and sullen red crept in at the edges of the road. In the flat, between fields of dusty tan plantings, they passed a broken building. White pillars, cracked and worn by the wind, leaned drunkenly, broken teeth in the raw red gums of the soil. Dwyrin shuddered as they passed the temple, moving to the far side of the road and keeping Colonna between him and the well of despair collected among the scattered bricks.
Colonna stopped talking.
– |Samosata was a sullen maze of empty streets. Native guardsmen passed them in through the western gate of the city without a word. The local men were wrapped in long turbans that covered their faces, leaving only dark crevices for their eyes. They had long spears and curved swords hung from jeweled harness and scabbard. Even their hands were covered with wrappings. No one could be seen on the streets. The houses were blank, gray-white walls with shuttered rose-red windows. There was a close, hot feeling to the squares that they crossed.
They stopped at the far edge of the city, having seen no one, but edgy with the sense of anticipation that had slowly filled the air around them like water seeping through a pinhole into a bladder. A plaza, barely thirty feet across, butted up to the eastern wall of the city. Three-story buildings of heavily plastered mud brick pressed against the open space. A gate with two square towers cut the wall. There were no guardsmen to be seen on the wall or in the shadow of the gate embrasure itself. Colonna stopped at a well in the southeast corner of the square. Dwyrin stood behind him while the soldier drew up the bucket, facing back toward the narrow alley they had come out of.
Only the scrape and jangle of the bucket and the rope that secured it broke the empty silence in the square. Dwyrin leaned against his staff, hood drawn over most of his face. His eyes were closed and within the quiet of his mind, he felt the hidden air around them trembling with violence. The hot spark that always seemed to glow at the back of his mind sputtered and flame licked against the tinder of his fear.
"Keep easy, lad," came Colonna's voice in a whisper. The so-familiar nasal whine was gone, his voice quiet and professional. "I feel it too. Just wait." The bucket rattled on the edge of the stone wall that cupped the well. Colonna thumbed the top off his waterskin and carefully poured the cold water into the grimy mouth. When he had filled the skin and stoppered it again, he raised the bucket and drank thirstily from it. Water spilled around the corners of his mouth, soaking the front of his cloak and pattering to the ground. Done, he passed the bucket to Dwyrin.
The boy took it, a heavy wooden thing, with a bent copper handle and bolts. It was almost empty, but he drank from it, heedless of the mud swirling at the bottom. The air leached any moisture from man or beast, making the taste of water an elixir. He put the bucket down. Two figures had appeared in the mouth of a street across the square. Dwyrin turned to face them.
Like the citizens of the city, they were completely covered by long desert robes-though these were pale baize and white. They bore no open weapons, but a sense of menace flowed forward from them like a fog. Dwyrin felt Colonna slide in behind him, and there was a tink of sound as the soldier swung his spear up. The desert men stepped out of the street, into the square, and stood aside from the opening. There was a sense of darkness there, filling the street. Dwyrin hissed in surprise.
"What is it?" Colonna whispered. "There's something there?"
Dwyrin raised a hand. There was something in the shadow of the street. Something lame and crippled but filled with bile and a seething, dark power. A hint of the smell of burned flesh reached the two Romans, even across the length of the square.
"Aiii… that doesn't smell good." Colonna shifted his stance, raising the spear into a throwing position. Dwyrin angled his own walking stick downward toward the flagstones of the square. Brittle red-black power trickled among the stones, and there was more in the deep blue-green of the well at his back. Using the staff as a focus, he began teasing the stones to yield to his will. It would not be much, but more than nothing.
The something in the street crept closer, its hate beating against Dwyrin like the heat from a bonfire. More of the desert men appeared. The power in the stones and the air and the water suddenly shifted its pattern, bending toward the mouth of the street like filings to a lodestone. Dwyrin began to sweat. The thing coming along the shadows of the street was very, very, strong. He prepared to let go the fire-spark that had swollen to an incandescent fury in his heart.
"Get ready," he croaked at Colonna. "Cover your eyes and hide behind me."
The rattle of a heavy chain falling, link by link, through a brass housing broke the tense silence in the square. The gate between the towers creaked and began to open. City men in dusky brown robes came out of the dark openings at the base of the towers and dragged the massive wooden doors apart. Dwyrin's eyes twitched back to the opening to the shadowed street. The desert men had faded back and were disappearing at a trot into the other byways opening onto the square. The bitter hatred of the lamed creature receded as well. There was the clatter of hooves on flagstones.
"Mithras bless us!" Colonna breathed, making the sign of the bull. A troop of Roman cavalry in short red cloaks and leather armor cantered into the square through the open gate. They were Eastern troops, with light bows at their backs and long spears set into leather holsters at their feet. The lead officer, a swarthy fellow with a bushy black beard, reined his horse in before the well. Dwyrin looked up at him, face pale and drained. For a moment the fire in his mind threatened to leap out and consume the officer staring down at him with a puzzled look on his face, but then, with an audible groan, the boy swallowed the whirlpool of flame and sagged to his knees in exhaustion.
Colonna grabbed his shoulder as he fell and propped him up. He smiled broadly at the officer and saluted. "Not used to the heat, sir, he'll be right with some more water."