MONEY CLINKED IN MARCUS’ PALM. “FOUR AND A HALF,” Tahmasp said. “One for your month with us, the rest your fair share of the pot.” Two of the goldpieces were Yezda, stamped with Yezd’s leaping panther and a legend in a script the tribune could not read. The rest came from Videssos. Even in Mashiz, imperial gold was good.
Gaius Philippus stepped up to take his pay. “We’d have earned more in time served if you’d not taken the southern route,” he said.
Tahmasp made a sour face. “More in profit, too.” The lands between the Tutub and the Tib would have given him twice the trade his desert-skirting track yielded, but a barbarian invasion had thrown the Hundred Cities into confusion.
The caravaneer folded each Roman in turn into a beefy embrace. “You bastards sure you won’t stick around till I set out again?”
“A couple of months from now?” Marcus shook his head. “Not likely.”
“Not that I care a flying fart what happens to you,” Tahmasp said, a frown giving his gruff words the lie, “but two men riding through the Yezda by themselves stand the same chance of coming out whole as two eggs about to be scrambled.”
“Actually, I think we may do better alone,” the tribune answered. “At least we won’t draw nomads the way your traveling madhouse does.” The Yezda had swarmed thick as flies the first two weeks out of Amorion. To ride away then would have been death, even without Tahmasp’s vow of destruction to deserters.
Later they might have escaped with ease, but by then the shared dangers of three desperate fights and endless hours of picket duty and talk around campfires had welded them indissolubly to the company. It was easy to abandon strangers; not so, friends. And so, Scaurus thought, here we are in the heart of Yezd, all for loyalty’s sake.
It seemed strange and not very fair.
Tahmasp pumped Gaius Philippus’ hand, slapped Marcus on the back. As always, he set himself; as always, he staggered. “You have the wits of a couple of sun-addled jackasses, but good luck to you. If you live—which I doubt—maybe we’ll meet again.” The caravaneer turned away. To him they were finished business.
They led their horses out of the fortified warehouse into the shadows of Mashiz’ afternoon. Marcus could look east and see the sun still shining brightly, but the peaks of Dilbat brought an early twilight to the city. In a way it was a blessing, for it cut the Yezda summer’s heat. Yezd made Videssos’ central plateau temperate by comparison.
“What now?” Gaius Philippus asked, his mind firmly on the problem of the moment. “Me, I’m for shagging out of here right away. Tahmasp is welcome to this place.”
Marcus nodded slowly. More shadows than the ones cast by the mountains of Dilbat hung over Mashiz. He looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of his unease. It was not the buildings; he was sure of that much. The eye grew used to thin towers topped by onion domes, to spiral ramps instead of stairways, to pointed arches wider than the doors beneath them, and to square columns covered with geometric mosaics. Mashiz seemed fantastically strange, but Makuraner architecture was only different, not sinister.
The Yezda, but two generations off the steppe, were not builders. They had put their mark on Mashiz all the same. The tribune wondered what the sack had been like when the city fell. Every other block, it seemed, had a wrecked building, and every other structure needed repair. That air of decay, of a slow falling into ruin, was part of the problem, Scaurus thought.
But only part. A disproportionate number of ravaged buildings had been shrines of the Four Prophets; the Yezda had been as savage toward Makuran’s national cult as they were to the worship of Phos. As the Romans headed for the city’s market, they passed only a couple of surviving shrines. Both were small buildings that had probably once been private homes, and mean ones at that.
Further west, toward the edge of Mashiz, stood another temple once dedicated to the Four: a marvelous red granite pyramid, no doubt the Makuraner counterpart to Phos’ High Temple in Videssos. The Yezda, though, had claimed it for their own. Scored into every side, brutally obliterating the reliefs that told the story of the Four Prophets, were Skotos’ twin lightningbolts. A cloud of thick brown smoke rose above the building. When the breeze shifted and sent a tag end of it their way, Marcus and Gaius Philippus both coughed at the stench.
“I know what meat that is,” the senior centurion said darkly.
The people of Mashiz, Scaurus reflected, lived with that cloud every day of their lives. No wonder they were furtive, sticking to the deeper shadows of buildings as they walked along the street, looking at strangers out of the corners of their eyes, and rarely talking above a whisper. No wonder a born swaggerer like Tahmasp spent most of his time on the road.
In Mashiz, the Yezda swaggered. Afoot or on horse, they came down the middle of the road with the arrogance of conquerors and expected everyone else to stay out of their way.
The Romans saw priests of Skotos for the first time; they seemed a ghastly parody of the clergy who served Phos. Their robes were the color of drying blood—to keep the gore of their sacrifices from showing, Marcus thought grimly. Their dark god’s sigil was blazoned in black on their chests; their hair was shorn into the double thunderbolt. The locals ducked aside whenever a pair of them came by; even the Yezda appeared nervous around them.
They did not speak to Scaurus, which suited him.
To his relief, something like normality reigned in the marketplace. The sights and sounds of commerce were the same wherever men gathered. He needed no knowledge of the guttural Makuraner tongue to understand that this customer thought a butcher was cheating him, or that that one was going to outhaggle a wool merchant if it took all night.
Marcus was afraid he would have to bargain by dumb show, but most of the venders knew a few words of Videssian: numbers, yes, no, and enough invective to add flavor to no. He bought hard cheese, coarse-ground flour, and a little griddle on which to cook wheatcakes. As a happy afterthought, he added a sackful of Vaspurakaner-style pastries, a rich mixture of flour, minced almonds, and ground dates, dusted with sugar.
“ ‘Princes’ balls,’ ” the baker said, chuckling, as he tied the neck of the sack. Marcus had heard the joke before, but his answering laugh got a couple of coppers knocked off the price.
“Anything else we need?” he asked Gaius Philippus.
“A new canteen,” the centurion said. “The solder’s come loose from the seam on this one, and it leaks. Maybe a patch’ll do, but something, anyway. The kind of country this is, losing water could kill you in a hurry.”
“Let’s find a tinker, then, or a coppersmith.” To Marcus’ surprise, there did not seem to be any tinkers wandering through the square, nor did the baker understand the Videssian word. “Not something they have here, I gather. Oh, well, a smith it is.”
The coppersmiths’ district was not far from the marketplace. The baker pointed the way. “Three blocks up, two over.”
The Romans heard a scuffle down a sidestreet. So did several locals, who paid no attention; if it was not happening to them, they did not want to know about it. But when Scaurus and Gaius Philippus came to the alleyway, they saw a single man, his back to a mud-brick wall, desperately wielding a cudgel against four attackers.
They looked at each other. “Shall we even up the odds?” Marcus asked. Without waiting for an answer, he sprang onto his horse. Gaius Philippus was already mounting. He had a better beast than the gray these days, a sturdy brown gelding with a white blaze between the eyes.
The robbers whirled as the drumroll of hoofbeats filled the narrow street. One fled. Another threw a dagger at the tribune, a hurried cast that went wild. Scaurus’ horse ran him down. The third bravo swung a mace at Gaius Philippus, who turned the stroke with his gladius and then thrust it through the fellow’s throat. The last of the robbers grappled with him and tried to pull him from the saddle, but their would-be victim sprang out to aid his unexpected rescuers. His club caved in the back of the bandit’s skull.
Marcus rode after the footpad who had run, but the fellow escaped, vanishing in a maze of twisting alleys the tribune did not know. When he got back, the man he had saved was bending over the trampled robber, who groaned and thrashed on the ground. Pulling out a penknife, he jerked the bandit’s head back and cut his throat.
Scaurus frowned at such rough-and-ready justice, but decided the robber was probably lucky not to fall into the hands of whatever passed for a constabulary among the Yezda.
The man rose, bowing low to one Roman and then to the other. He was about Marcus’ age and nearly as tall as the tribune, but with a much leaner frame. His face was long and gaunt, with hollows below the cheekbones. His eyes, somber and dark, also looked out from hollows.
He bowed again, saying something in the Makuraner language. Marcus had picked up just enough of it to be able to answer that he did not understand. Without much hope, he asked, “Do you speak Videssian?”
“Yes, indeed I do.” The fellow’s accent was thicker than Tahmasp’s, but also more cultured. “May I ask my rescuers’ names?”
The Romans looked at each other, shrugged, and gave them.
“I am in your debt, sirs. I am Tabari.” He said that as if they ought to know who Tabari was. Marcus tried to seem suitably impressed. Gaius Philippus grunted.
Just then, a squad of archers came dashing round the corner. Someone finally must have let the watch know a fight was going on. The leader of the Yezda saw the robber’s body lying on the ground in a pool of blood and growled something to his men. They turned their bows on the Romans and Tabari.
Scaurus and Gaius Philippus froze, careful not to do anything threatening with the swords they still held. Tabari strode forward confidently. He spoke a couple of sentences in the Yezda tongue. The city guards lowered their weapons so fast that one dropped an arrow. Their commander bowed low.
“As I said, I am Tabari,” said the man the Romans had rescued, turning back to them, “minister of justice to my lord the great khagan Wulghash.” Suddenly his eyes no longer looked somber to Marcus. They looked dangerous. Justice, these days, meant prison to the tribune, and he had seen more of prison than he ever wanted to.
Tabari went on, “As a small token of my gratitude, let me present you at the court banquet this evening. Surely my lord Wulghash will take notice of your courage and generosity and reward you as you deserve. My own resources, I fear, are too small for that, but know you have my undying gratitude.”
“Wulghash? Oh, bloody wonderful!” Gaius Philippus said in Latin.
“Surely you do us too much honor,” Marcus said to Tabari, doing his best to frame a polite refusal. “We know nothing of courts or fancy manners—”
“My lord Wulghash does not insist on them, and I tell you he will be delighted to show favor to the men who saved his minister of justice, even if,” Tabari’s voice held irony, “they were unaware of his rank.” He spoke to the Yezda underofficer, who bowed again. “Rhadzat here will take you to the palace. I would escort you myself, but I fear I have pressing business this dead dog of a robber and his confederates interrupted. I shall see you there this evening. Until then, my friends.”
“Until then.” Marcus and Gaius Philippus echoed him with a singular lack of enthusiasm.
Unlike the rambling Videssian palace complex, the court at Mashiz was housed in a single building. The great stone blocks from which it was built looked as if they had been ripped from the mountains’ heart. Studying the smoothly weathered outwalls, Marcus guessed the palace had been a citadel before Mashiz was a city.
Once inside the outwalls, a couple of Yezda from Rhadzat’s squad peeled off to lead the Romans’ horses to the stables. Knowing the care the Yezda lavished on their own beasts, Scaurus was sure his would get fine treatment from them. It did nothing to ease his mind. Being away from their mounts would only make flight harder for the Romans.
Rhadzat conducted the tribune and senior centurion to the palace entrance, where a steward eyed him and them with distaste. The servitor was of Makuraner blood, slim, dark, and elegant, wearing a brocaded caftan and sandals with golden clasps. His haughty air vanished when the Yezda officer explained why they had come. Graceful as a cat, he bowed to the Romans.
He called into the palace for another servant. When the man arrived, the steward spoke to the Romans in his own tongue. Marcus shrugged and spread his hands. A ghost of the doorman’s sneer returned. “You please to follow him,” he said, his Videssian slow and rusty but clear enough.
Their guide knew only Makuraner and the Yezda speech. He chattered on, not caring whether they understood, as he led them up a ramp of green marble polished till it reflected the light of the torches that hung in gilded sconces every few feet along the wall. His soft-soled slippers did better on the smooth surface than the Romans’ caligae; he giggled out loud when Gaius Philippus skidded and almost fell.
The couches in the waiting room were stuffed with down and upholstered in soft suede. The sweetmeats that the palace servitors brought came on silver trays and filled the mouth with delicate perfume. Watching shadows move across the ornate wall hangings, Marcus felt like a fly gently but irresistibly trapped in spider silk.
The room was in twilight by the time the court official returned to take the Romans away. At the entrance to the throne room he surrendered his charges to another chamberlain, an elderly Makuraner eunuch whose caftan was of almost transparent silk.
He had some Videssian. “No need for proskynesis when you present yourself before Khagan Wulghash,” he said, sniffing in disapproval at his master’s barbarous informality. “A bow will do. He keeps his grandfather’s ways—as if a lizard-eating nomad’s customs were valid.” Another sniff. “He even allows his primary wife a seat beside him.” A third sniff, louder than the other two.
Marcus did not pay much attention. The throne room was long and narrow; the tribune felt his shoes sinking into the thick wool of the carpet as he walked toward the distant pair of high ivory seats ahead. Without turning his head too much, he tried to spot Tabari. In the flickering torchlight, one man looked like the next.
With its moving shadows, the light of the torches did a better job showing up the reliefs on the walls behind the nobility of Yezd. Like the defaced ones on the temple that now belonged to Skotos, they were carved in a florid style that owed nothing to Videssian severity. One was a hunting scene, with some long-forgotten Makuraner king slaying a lion with a sword. The other—Marcus’ eyes went wide as he recognized the regalia of the man shown kneeling before another king on horseback. Only an Avtokrator wore such garb.
Beside him, Gaius Philippus gave a tiny chuckle. “I wonder what the imperials have to say about that in their histories,” he whispered.
A herald was coming forward from the thrones as the Romans approached them. He raised their hands above their heads—no easy feat; he was several inches shorter than Gaius Philippus—and cried out in the Makuraner and Yezda tongues. Scaurus caught his own name and the centurion’s.
Applause washed over the Romans. A couple of Makuraner lords, seeing they were foreigners, cried out “Well done!” in Videssian. The tribune finally spotted Tabari, sitting close to the front. He and the other Makuraners cheered louder and longer than their Yezda counterparts. It was a heady moment, though Marcus wondered how many of the clapping men had led armies into the Empire.
The herald led them toward the thrones. The khagan sat on the right-hand one, which was higher than the other. Wulghash wore a headdress like those of the Makuraner kings remembered on the throne room walls, a high, conical crown of stiff white felt, with earflaps reaching nearly to his shoulders. A vertical row of gems ran up from edge to peak; a double band of horsehair made a diadem across the khagan’s forehead.
Marcus sized Wulghash up—he had never wanted to meet the ruler of Yezd, but would not waste what chance had set before him. The khagan was swarthy, about fifty. His thick beard, cut square at the bottom, was salt-and-pepper, with salt gaining. His square features had a hard cast partly offset by tired, intelligent eyes. He was wide shouldered and well made, his middle only beginning to thicken.
“Careful,” Gaius Philippus said. “He’s not one to mess with.” Scaurus gave a small nod; that fit his view exactly.
The herald stopped the Romans just past the end of the carpet, at a stone smoothed by thousands of feet over the centuries. They made their bows, to fresh applause. It grew even louder when Wulghash came down to clasp their hands—his own was hard, dry, and callused, more like a soldier’s than a bureaucrat’s—and embrace them.
“You have saved a valued member of my court, and have my friendship for it,” Wulghash said. His Videssian was polished as any courtier of Thorisin’s. “Allow me to present you to my senior queen, Atossa.” He nodded to the woman on the lower throne.
Studying Wulghash so, the tribune had hardly noticed her. She was about the khagan’s age and handsome still. She smiled and spoke in the Makuraner tongue. “She apologizes for being unable to thank you in a language you know,” Wulghash translated.
Marcus returned the first compliment that popped into his mind: “Tell her she is as kind as she is beautiful.” Atossa regally inclined her head. He nodded back, thoughts whirling. Here with a friendly hand on his shoulder stood Videssos’ sworn enemy, the man Avshar named master. If he jerked his dagger from his belt, thrust—
He did not move. To violate Wulghash’s generosity so was not in him. What point in fighting Avshar if he fell to his methods? That thought brought him closer to understanding Videssos’ dualism than he had ever come.
A pipe’s clear whistle cut through the court chatter. Everyone brightened. “The feast is ready,” Wulghash explained, “and about time, too.” He handed Atossa down from her throne; she took his arm. The Romans fell in line behind the royal couple.
The banquet hall, though merely a palace chamber, was nearly as large as the Hall of the Nineteen Couches in Videssos. Torchlight sparkled off the blue crystal and gold and silver foil of the abstract mosaic patterns on the walls. As guests of honor, Scaurus sat at Wulghash’s right while Gaius Philippus was on Atossa’s left.
The khagan rose to toast them. He drank wine, as did the nobles Marcus had picked as Makurani. Most of the Yezda chieftains preferred their traditional kavass. When a skin of the fermented mares’ milk reached the tribune, he slurped for politeness’ sake and passed it to Wulghash. The khagan wrinkled his fleshy nose and sent it on without drinking.
“There is also date wine, if you care for it,” he told the Roman. Marcus declined with a shudder. He had sampled the stuff on the journey with Tahmasp. It was so sweet and syrupy as to make the cloying Videssian wine seem pleasantly dry.
Some of the food was simple nomad fare: wheatcakes, yogurt, and plain roast meat. Again, though, Wulghash liked Makuraner ways better than those of his ancestors. Enjoying grape leaves stuffed with goat and olives, an assortment of roasted songbirds, steamed and sauteed vegetables, and mutton baked in a sauce of mustard, raisins, and wine, Scaurus decided he could not fault the khagan’s taste. And at sizzling rice soup he positively beamed; he had met it in a Makuraner cafe in Videssos that first magic winter night with Alypia Gavra.
The thought of her made the celebration strange and somehow unreal. After fighting the Yezda for years, what was he doing here making polite small talk with a prince whose people were destroying the land he had taken for his own? And what was Wulghash doing as that prince? He seemed anything but the monster Scaurus had pictured, and no ravening barbarian either. Plainly a capable ruler, he was as much influenced by Makuran’s civilization as the great count Drax was under Videssos’ spell. His presiding over the devastation the Yezda worked posed a riddle the tribune could not solve.
He got his first clue when a dispatch rider, still sweaty from his travels, brought the khagan a sheaf of messages. Wulghash read rapidly through them, growing angrier with each sheet. He growled out a stream of commands.
When the messenger interrupted with some objection or question, the khagan clapped an exasperated hand to his forehead. He wrote on the back of one of the dispatches with quick, furious strokes. Then he wet the signet ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand in mustard sauce and stamped a smeary, yellow-brown seal on his orders. Goggling, the messenger saluted, took the parchment, and hurried away.
Wulghash, still fuming, drained his ivory rhyton at a gulp. He turned to Marcus. “I have days I think all my captains idiots, the way they panic at shadows. They’ve been raiding Erzerum since my grandfather’s time—is it any wonder the hillmen strike back? I know the cure for that, though. Hit them three ways at once so their army breaks into all its little separate groups and they’re nothing much. We’ve already started that; all we have to do is keep on with it. And the heads have started going up into their valleys. They’ll think a long time before they stir out again.”
“Heads?” the tribune echoed.
“Killed in battle, prisoners, what does it matter?” Wulghash said with ruthless unconcern. “So long as the Erzrumi recognize most of them, they serve their purpose.”
The khagan slammed his fist down on the table; Atossa touched his left arm, trying to soothe him. He shook her off. “This is my land,” he proudly declared to Scaurus, “and I intend to pass it on to my son greater than it was when I received it from my father. I have beaten Videssos; shall I let a pack of fourth-rate mountain rats get the better of me?”
“No,” Marcus said, but he felt a chill of fear. Wulghash’s wish was irreproachable, but the khagan did not care what steps he took to reach it. The man on that path, the tribune thought, walks at the edge of the abyss. To cover his unease, he asked, “Your son?”
As any father might, Wulghash swelled with pride. “Khobin is a fine lad—no, I cannot call him that now. He has a man’s years on him, and a little son of his own. Where does the time go? He watches the northwest for me, making sure the stinking Arshaum stay on their side of the Degird. There will be trouble with them; the embassy I sent last year won no success.”
Scaurus concealed the excitement that coursed through him. If the Yezda embassy had failed, perhaps the Videssian mission to the steppe tribes was faring well. He wondered how Viridovix and Gorgidas were and even spared a moment’s thought for Pikridios Goudeles. The pen-pusher was a rogue, but a slick one.
Only a few drops of wine came from the silver ewer when Wulghash lifted it to refill his drinking-horn. “I need more, Harshad,” he called, absentmindedly still using Videssian. A Yezda at the foot of the table looked up when he heard his name. Seeing him scratch his head, the khagan realized his mistake and repeated the request in his own language.
Grinning now, Harshad muttered a few words into his beard and moved his fingers in a quick, intricate pattern over the wine jar in front of him. It rose smoothly until it was a couple of feet above the table, then drifted toward Wulghash. Gaius Philippus had been cutting the meat from a pork rib; he looked up just as the jar floated past him. He dropped his knife.
None of the Yezda or Makuraner nobles took any special notice of the magic. A small smile on his lips, Wulghash said, “A little sorcery, that one.” He pointed at Gaius Philippus’ cup and spoke in a language Marcus almost thought he knew. The cup lifted, glided over to the floating ewer. The wine jar tipped and poured, then straightened as the cup was full. Wulghash gestured again. The cup returned to Gaius Philippus; the wine jar settled to the table. The khagan filled his rhyton the ordinary way.
Gaius Philippus was staring at his cup as if he expected it to get up and shoot dice with him. “Merely wine,” Wulghash assured him, tasting his own. “Better than what we had, in fact. You are not very familiar with wizardry, are you?”
“More than I want to be,” the veteran answered. He picked up the cup in both hands and emptied it at a gulp. “That is good. Could you pass me the jar for more?” He managed to laugh when Wulghash lifted the ewer with the same exaggerated care he had given the cup.
The khagan turned back to Marcus who had done his best not to show surprise at the magic. That best, apparently, was not good enough, for Wulghash said, “How is it sorcery seems so strange to you? You must have seen magecraft enough among the Videssians.” His gaze was suddenly sharp; the tribune remembered he had thought the khagan’s eyes intelligent the moment he saw him. Now they probed at the Roman. “But then, you have an accent I do not know and you talk with your comrade in a tongue I do not recognize—and I know a good many.”
He saw the Roman’s face turn wary, and said, “I do not mean to frighten you. You are my friends, I have promised you that. By all the gods and prophets, were you the Avtokrator of the Videssians you could leave my table in safety if you had that pledge.” He sounded angry at himself and Scaurus both; more than anything, that made the tribune believe him.
The khagan went on, “As a friend, though, you make me wonder at you, all the more when magic startles you despite the blade you carry.” This time Marcus could not help jumping. Wulghash’s chuckle was dry as boots scuffing through dead leaves. “Am I a blind man, to miss the moon in the sky? Tell me of yourself, if you will, as one friend does for another.”
Marcus hesitated, wondering what Wulghash might have heard of Romans from Avshar or from the spies the khagan had to have in Videssos. The story he decided on was a drastically edited version of the truth. Saying nothing of the rest of the legionaries, he gave out that he and Gaius Philippus were from a land beyond the eastern ocean, forced to flee to these strange shores by a quarrel with a chieftain. After serving as mercenaries for Videssos, they had to flee again when Scaurus fell foul of the Emperor—he did not say how. Tahmasp’s caravan, he finished truthfully, had brought them to Mashiz.
“That scoundrel,” Wulghash said without rancor. “Who knows how much trade tax and customs revenue he cheats me out of every year?” He studied the tribune. “So Gavras outlawed you, did he? With his temper, you should be thankful you’re still breathing.”
“I know,” Scaurus said, so feelingly the khagan gave that dry chuckle again.
“You have poor luck with nobles, it appears,” Wulghash remarked. “Why is that?”
The tribune sensed danger in the question. As he cast about for a safe answer, Gaius Philippus came to his rescue. “Because we have a bad habit—we speak our minds. If one highborn sod’s greedy as a pig at the swill trough or the next is a liverish son of a whore, we say so. Aye, it gets us in trouble, but it beats licking spit.”
“Liverish, eh? Not bad,” Wulghash said. As Gaius Philippus had intended, he took it to refer to Thorisin. He seemed reassured—the centurion’s raspy voice and blunt features were made for candor.
The khagan looked musingly from one Roman to the other. “I know nothing of the countries beyond the eastern sea,” he said. “Past Namdalen and the barbarous lands on the southern shore of the Sailors’ Sea, our maps are blank. You could teach me a great deal.” He went on, as his smile exposed strong yellow teeth, “And you were officers with Videssos. No doubt you will be able to tell me quite a lot about your sojourn there as well. Shall I have an apartment prepared for you here in the palace? That would be most convenient; I think we will be spending a good deal of time together over the next couple of weeks.”
“We would be honored,” Marcus said, and knew he had told Wulghash another lie.
To the Romans’ dismay, the khagan was good as his word. He was full of questions, yet did not really subject them to a serious interrogation, asking almost as much about their homeland as about Videssos and its armies. Those questions Scaurus answered honestly, after the initial deception about the eastern ocean. Sometimes he and Gaius Philippus disagreed sharply; he came from the urban upper class, while the centurion was a product of farm and legion.
Wulghash was that rarity, a good listener. His queries always moved arguments along and convinced Scaurus afresh of his brain. His secretary Pushram, who wrote down the Romans’ replies, asked no questions. He made a point of seeming bored about everything outside the khagan’s court. It was a mischievous sort of boredom, for he was a skinny little brown man with outsized ears and amazingly flexible features.
Well into the second week of the Romans’ presence at court, a servant came by with a tray of eggplant slices cooked in cheese and oregano. Wulghash took one. “That’s excellent,” he exclaimed. “Much better than usual. Here, fellow, give my friends some, too.”
“Very nice,” Marcus said politely, though in fact he found the eggplant bland and its sauce too sharp. Gaius Philippus, no timeserver, left his slice half-eaten.
Pushram, however, screwed up his face into a blissful expression. “Most glorious eggplant! Handsome to look upon, delicate on the tongue, full of flavor and of pleasing texture, a comestible to be esteemed for all the multifarious ways it may be prepared, each more delicious than the next. Truly a prince—no, let me say more: a khagan—among vegetables!”
Scaurus had heard fulsome flattery at the Videssian court, but nothing close to this sycophancy. “Who would want to be a king and have to put up with such tripe?” Gaius Philippus said in Latin.
After a while Wulghash rolled his eyes and went back to questioning the Romans. Pushram’s paean of praise never slowed, even while he was recording Marcus’ answers. Trying to find some way to shut him up, the khagan took another piece of eggplant, wrinkled his lip, and said, “I have changed my mind. This is vile.”
Pushram assumed a look of loathing with a speed that amazed Scaurus. He plucked the eggplant slice from Wulghash’s hand and threw it to the floor. “What a foul, noxious weed eggplant is!” he cried. “Not only is it of a bilious color, it brings no more nourishment to mankind than so much grass. Moreover, it makes me burp.”
And he was off again, as ready to continue in that vein as to shower the vegetable with compliments. Marcus listened, open-mouthed. Wulghash gave Pushram a look that should have chilled any man’s marrow, but the secretary’s stream of abuse never faltered. “Enough!” Wulghash finally growled. “Were you not praising eggplant to the skies not two minutes ago, instead of cursing it?”
“Certainly.”
“Well?” The word hung in the air like doom.
But Pushram was unruffled. “Well, what?” he said cheerfully. “I am your courtier, not the eggplant’s. I have to say what pleases you, not what pleases the eggplant.”
“Get out!” Wulghash roared, but he was laughing. Pushram scurried away anyhow. The khagan shook his head. “Makurani,” he said, more to himself than to the Romans. “Sometimes they make me wish my grandfather had stayed on the steppe.”
Marcus pointed to the plate of eggplant. “Yet you have taken on many Makuraner ways. If your grandfather was a nomad, he never would have cared for such a dish.”
“My grandfather ate beetles, when he could catch them,” the khagan said, and then sighed. “Too many of my chiefs think any change from the old customs wrong simply because it is change. Some of the plains ways have their point. What sense does it make to lock away women? Are they not people, too? But on the whole we were barbarians then, and for all their oiliness and foolishness the Makurani have worked out many better ways of living—and of ruling—than we ever knew. Try and tell that to an old nomad who has no thoughts past his flocks, though. Try and make him listen, or obey.”
For a moment Scaurus understood him perfectly; he had lived with that feeling of being trapped between two cultures ever since the legionaries came to Videssos.
There was some sort of commotion outside the throne room. Marcus heard shouts of anger, then of fear. Nobles’ heads turned as they looked to see what was wrong. A couple of eunuchs trotted toward the door. Wulghash’s guards still stood impassive, but the tribune saw arm muscles bunch as hands tightened on sabers.
“Let me by, or regret it evermore!” At the sound of that voice, Marcus and Gaius Philippus were both on their feet and reaching for their swords. Crying out in alarm, the nearest guardsmen broke freeze and sprang at them.
“Stand!” Wulghash shouted, halting the Romans and his own soldiers alike. “What idiocy are you playing at?”
Scaurus was saved the trouble of finding an answer. Back at the entrance to the throne room, the last palace servitors were retreating in dread. Avshar strode down the carpet toward the twin thrones. Despite the thick, soft wool, every bootfall echoed. The muffled thuds were the only sounds in the hall, growing ever louder as he drew close.
No longer were the wizard-prince’s robes an immaculate white. They swirled in filthy, dusty tatters round him. As protocol demanded, he stopped just past the edge of the carpet; his head turned from one Roman to the other. “Well, well,” he said with horrible good humor, “what have we here?”
He ignored Wulghash, who said sharply, “We have a servant who does not know his master, it seems. Did you forget the respect you owe me, or is this merely more of your natural rudeness?”
Marcus looked at the khagan in surprised admiration. Wulghash showed none of the fear that paralyzed Avshar’s friend and foe alike, the fear whose full weight the tribune was feeling now.
The wizard-prince stiffened angrily and gave Wulghash a long measure of his chilling stare, all the worse because his eyes were unseen. The khagan met it, something few men could have done. Fairly bursting with rage, Avshar bent in a bow whose very depth was an insult. “I pray your pardon, your Majesty,” he said, but his voice held no apology. He went on, “My surprise betrayed me—seeing these two rogues here, I thought me for a moment I was back in cursed Videssos again, at the damned Avtokrator’s court. Tell me, did you capture them in battle or were they taken spying?”
“Neither,” Wulghash said, but his eyes slid to the Romans. He asked Avshar, “How is it you claim to have met a couple of no-account mercenaries at the Videssian court? What were they doing there, guard duty?” He still did not sound as if he believed the wizard-prince.
“No-account mercenaries? Guard duty?” Avshar threw back his head and laughed, a horrid sound that sent the nobles closest to him scrambling back in dismay. Its echoes came back cold and spectral from the high-arched roof; a nightjar perched near the top of the throne room wall woke to terror and flapped away. “Is that what they told you?” Avshar laughed again, then gave a colored but largely accurate account of Scaurus’ career in Videssos, finishing, “And this other one, the short one, is his chief henchman.”
“Bugger yourself,” Gaius Philippus said. He stood balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to throw himself at Avshar.
Wulghash ignored the senior centurion. “Is this true?” he asked Marcus in a voice like iron.
Avshar hissed, a serpent on the point of striking. “Have a care what thou dost, Wulghash. Thou couldst yet try me too far, seeking the word of this miscreant espier to weigh it against mine own.”
“Be thou still. I act as I list, with or without thy let.” The khagan was as fluent as Avshar in the archaic Videssian dialect the wizard-prince often used. Maybe, Marcus thought, Avshar had taught it to him.
Wulghash asked the tribune again, “Is what he says true?”
“Most of it,” Scaurus sighed. With Avshar standing there to give him away, what use in lying?
Avshar laughed once more, this time in triumph. “From his own mouth he stands convicted. Give them over to me, Wulghash. The debt I owe them is larger and older than yours. I pledge you, the insult they offered with their base falsehoods shall be requited—oh, yes, a thousand times over.” He was all but purring in anticipation. At his gesture, the palace guards edged forward, expecting the khagan’s order to seize the Romans.
Wulghash stopped them. “I have told you once, wizard—aye, and times enough before this—that I command here, yet always you seem to forget. Whatever story these men told, before they said a word to me they saved my minister’s life. I have made them my friends.”
“And so?” Avshar’s whisper crawled with menace.
“A favor for a favor. I give them back their lives in exchange for Tabari’s.” Wulghash turned to Scaurus and Gaius Philippus. “Get your horses. You may leave. No one will pursue you, I vow. I have called you my friends and I do not go back on my word—but you should have trusted me in full. I am no longer happy with you, friends or not. Go on; get out.”
Hardly daring believe his ears, Marcus searched the khagan’s face. It was stormy with disappointed anger, but he read no deceit. As Wulghash had said of himself, he was as determined in friendship as he was in enmity. “You are a man of honor,” the tribune said softly.
“You do well to remind me, for I am tempted to forget.” Wulghash waved brusquely for them to be gone.
“Thou dung-headed fool!” Avshar roared before the Romans could move. They froze again; any exit would take them straight past the wizard-prince.
But Avshar had nearly forgotten them in his rage. He screamed abuse at the khagan: “Thou dolt, thou clodpoll, thou idiot puling mousling with fantasies of manhood! Reeking filthy louse-bearded barbarous bastard son of a camel turd, thinkest thou to gainsay me? These sneaking spies are mine; get thee down on thy wormish belly and grovel in thanksgiving that I do not serve thee worse than them for thine insolence!”
White about the lips, Wulghash snapped an order in the Yezda tongue to his guards. They drew their weapons and advanced on the wizard-prince.
“Thou’lt not find it so simple to be shut of me as that,” Avshar sneered. “Am I as stupid as thyself, to take no precautions against thy childish thoughts of treachery?” He spoke a single word, in Videssian or some darker speech, the trigger to a spell long prepared against this time. The khagan’s guards came to a ragged halt. All at once they were looking at Avshar with the devotion a lap dog gives its mistress. “How now, O clever booby?” he chuckled.
Wulghash, though, was wise in the ways of Makuran for reasons stronger than antiquarianism. He knew why the Makuraner kings of old had ordained that men seeking audience with them should halt at a certain spot. His hand darted to a spring cunningly concealed in the arm of his throne. A six-foot slab of stone fell away beneath Avshar’s feet.
But the wizard-prince did not drop into the pit below. An abrupt pass let him bestride the empty air like polished marble. Wulghash’s nobles moaned; some covered their faces. The khagan’s guards—no, Avshar’s now—smiled at the new proof of their master’s might. Those smiles made Scaurus shudder. Only the soldiers’ lips moved. Their eyes stayed bright and blank.
“This farce wearies me,” Avshar said. “Let there be an end to it. Look now, Wulghash, on the power thou hadst thought to oppose.” Still standing easily on nothing, the wizard-prince threw back the mantlings that always veiled his face.
Even Gaius Philippus, calloused by more than half a lifetime of hard soldiering, could not hold back a groan. His cry was lost in the chorus of horror that swelled and swelled as Avshar turned toward the nobility of Yezd.
Two thoughts raced across Scaurus’ mind. The first was that he had gone mad. He wished it were true. And the second was of the myth of Aurora’s lover Tithonus. The goddess had begged immortality for him from Jupiter, but forgot to ask that he not grow old.
In his decrepitude, Tithonus had been turned by Jove into a grasshopper. No god had shown Avshar such kindness. Staring—he could not help but stare—the tribune tried to guess how many years had rolled over the sorcerer. He gave up; as well try to reckon how many goldpieces had gone into Phos’ High Temple. Imagining such age would have been enough to make the skin prickle into gooseflesh. Seeing it, and seeing it combined with Avshar’s undoubted vigor, was infinitely worse.
“Well?” Avshar said into vast silence. “I own eight and a half centuries. Eight hundred years have passed since I learned in the ruins of Skopentzana where true power lay. Which of you puny mayfly men will stand against me now?” There was no answer; there could be no answer. Smiling a lich’s smile, the wizard-prince gestured to the guardsmen he had ensorceled. “I rule here. Kill me that lump of offal fouling my throne.”
He spoke Videssian, but they understood. They surged toward Wulghash, sabers clenched in their fists.
The khagan was perhaps the only man in the room not paralyzed by dismay. He did not need Avshar’s unmasking to know what had served him. No small wizard himself, he had divined that long ago. In his ambition he thought to use the other to exalt himself, to ride to greatness on Avshar’s back. For all that arrogance, though, he always remembered tool and user might one day be reversed. And so he pressed another stud mounted on his throne. A hidden doorway swung open behind it. He darted into the tunnel it had concealed.
Avshar howled in fury; the door was secret even to him. “After him, you bunglers,” he screamed to the guards, though the blunder had not been theirs.
Pushram sprang up and grappled with the leading guardsman. He was scrawny and carried nothing more deadly than a stylus, but he bought his master a few seconds with his life.
His sacrifice jerked the Romans from their daze. They both seemed to have the same thought at once—better to die fighting than in Avshar’s clutches. They tore their swords free and hurled themselves at the wizard-prince’s soldiers.
Avshar understood immediately. “Take them alive!” he shouted. “Their end shall not be as easy as they wish.”
Sword in hand, a Makuraner noble dashed toward the thrones, rushing to the Romans’ aid and to the defense of the khagan. Avshar cursed and moved his guantleted hands in savage passes. The nobleman crashed to the floor, writhing in torment. “More?” the wizard asked. There were none.
By weight of numbers, the guards forced Scaurus and Gaius Philippus away from the doorway down which Wulghash had vanished. Several rushed after the khagan. The tribune laid about him desperately, but a cleverly aimed slash caught his sword just above the hilt. It flew from his numbed fingers. Knowing how little good it would do, he snatched out his dagger and stabbed at the nearest guardsman. He felt the blade bite and heard a grunt of pain.
Avshar’s order hampered his men, who took losses because of it and passed up several sure killing strokes. The Romans battled ferociously, trying to make their foes finish them. Then a guardsman sent his fist clubbing down on the back of Marcus’ neck. The tribune toppled. He did not see the Yezda swarm over Gaius Philippus and finally bring him down.
An echoing shout from the secret tunnel’s opening returned Scaurus to blurry consciousness. Someone screamed, then silence fell once more. A couple of minutes later, a broad-shouldered guard, staggering under the weight, came out of the doorway with a corpse on his back. It wore royal robes. Marcus had a glimpse of fleshy nose, square-cut gray beard, eyes gone set and staring—no way now to see if intelligence had been there.
Avshar’s terrible grin grew wide. “Well done,” he said. “Thou’lt be a captain for this day’s work. What end did he make?”
As usual, the sorcerer spoke in Videssian, but the guardsman had no trouble with it. He answered in his own tongue. Avshar grimaced impatiently. “What care I that your stupid comrade fell? Incompetence punishes itself, as always. Here, give the body to these others to fling on the midden; hie yourself off to the officers’ chambers, to deck yourself with something finer than those rags you wear.”
The soldier said something that sounded like a protest of unworthiness. Avshar made his harsh voice as genial as he could, answering, “Nay, thou hast earned it. Hyazdat, Gandutav, take him along and fit him out.” Pounding the trooper on the back, the two guards officers led him away.
More guardsmen carried off the corpse that had won him his promotion. Save for those still grasping the tribune and Gaius Philippus, only a couple were left in the throne room.
Avshar did not need them. By himself he cowed the nobility of Yezd, bold haughty Makurani and fierce Yezda alike. Men stared at their shoes, at each other, at the walls, anything to keep from meeting his eyes. He snarled at them. They went to their knees and then to their bellies in proskynesis before him. Some, mostly Makurani, performed the prostration with grace, others were slow and clumsy. But all knelt.
“And thou,” Avshar said to Marcus. “I have heard thou wouldst not bend the knee before the Avtokrators. I am greater than they, for I am at once priest and lord, patriarch and Emperor. They shall know my power, and my god’s—as shalt thou.”
He gave the tribune no chance to refuse; at his command, the guards cast Scaurus at his feet. His boot, still smelling of lathered horse, ground cruelly into the Roman’s shoulder. He suddenly asked, “What didst thou with the head of Mavrikios Gavras, when I gave it thee?”
“Buried it,” Marcus answered, too startled not to respond.
“A pity; now when I take Thorisin’s, the set will remain broken. Perhaps thine shall serve in its stead. Such decisions should not be frivolously made, but then I now enjoy the leisure to choose among the interesting possibilities.”
Avshar strode over to the tribune’s sword, which still lay where it had fallen. The wizard-prince stooped to pick up the prize, but paused before his hand closed on the hilt—that blade had shown itself dangerous to his spells too many times for him to be easy about touching it. But he did not stay baffled long. He pointed to a noble. “Tabari, come you forward.”
“Aye, my lord,” the man the Romans had rescued said eagerly. He prostrated himself before the wizard. His face to the floor, he went on, “I am privileged to see you raised at last to your proper estate. Your followers here have waited long for this day.”
“As have I,” Avshar said. “As have I.” The pain behind Marcus’ eyes was not the only thing to sicken him now. Bad enough to have saved a Yezda minister. To have preserved one of Avshar’s creatures and fallen into the wizard-prince’s hand because of it mortified him past bearing.
He hardly noticed when two of the ensorceled guards hauled him to his feet. Another pair did the same with Gaius Philippus, who had also been cast down. The senior centurion struggled in their grasp, but could not break free.
Avshar was saying, “Carry this piece of rusty iron down to my workroom in the dungeons. As minister of justice, you doubtless know them well enough to find the place without difficulty.”
Tabari’s laugh was not pleasant, except to Avshar. “Oh, indeed, my lord.”
“Excellent,” he said. “I thought as much. And while you are about it, guide the guards holding these wretches—”A thumb jabbed toward the Romans—“to the block of cells adjacent. Perhaps the blade will yield up its secrets to me when housed in their flesh.”
“What a pleasant prospect,” Tabari said, killing any lingering hope Scaurus had for the permanence of his gratitude. Tabari gestured to the tribune’s captors. They dragged him away. He heard Gaius Philippus, still swearing, forced along behind him.
Avshar’s voice pursued them: “Enjoy this respite while you may, for you shall have none other, ever again.”
Tabari waved the guards down a narrow spiral ramp cut into the living rock just outside the throne room. As they descended into the bowels of the palace, a woman’s shriek rang out far above. Atossa, Marcus thought dully, must have come into the court. The scream was abruptly silenced.
Gaius Philippus also recognized the cry. “Wulghash has a son,” he said.
“What of it? What chance has he, when Wulghash couldn’t stand against Avshar in his own palace?”
“Damn little,” the veteran sighed. “For a minute, I thought he’d get away—he was ready for anything. Did you hear Avshar howl when that passage opened up? He hadn’t a clue it was there.”
The guards gave little doglike grunts of devotion to hear their master’s name. Otherwise they did not seem to care if their prisoners talked. Wondering whether Avshar’s spell had taken more of their wits than that, Marcus tensed to try to break free. Their grip tightened. Nothing wrong with their physical reactions, he saw ruefully.
They did not mind his turning his head this way and that. Several tunnels had already branched off from the ramp. Some held storerooms; from another came the rhythmic clang of a smith’s hammer on hot iron. Down and down they went. More than once, they passed workers replacing burned-out torches. Even far underground, the brands burned steadily and did not fill the passageway with smoke. The Makuraner kings, Marcus thought as a puff of cool air touched his cheek, had worked out a better ventilation system than the Videssians used in their prison. He wondered how many men had compared the two.
Gaius Philippus barked laughter when he muttered that under his breath. “It’s nothing to brag of.” Scaurus’ nod made fresh pain flare in his head.
The tribune’s ears clicked before the guards finally turned down a still, lonely side corridor. “Yes, gentlemen, we are almost there,” Tabari said. He had been very quiet on the long trip down, nor had the Romans cared to speak to him.
Now at last, though, Marcus turned his head to plead with Wulghash’s—no, Avshar’s—minister. He did not beg for his life; he had lost hope for it. Instead he said, “Take my sword and strike us down. You owe us that much, if nothing else.”
“I am the judge of my debts; no one else.” Tabari hefted the Gallic blade. Without warning, he drove it into the back of one of Gaius Philippus’ guards. The Yezda groaned and crumpled.
Gaius Philippus acted as if he had been waiting for the blow. He spun and grappled with his other captor, giving Tabari the moment he needed to wrench out the sword.
Scaurus’ guards hesitated a fatal instant. Had they shoved him away at once, they might have quickly overwhelmed Tabari and then wheeled round to retake him. As it was, he managed to thrust out a foot and trip one of them. He sprang on the fellow’s back, grabbing for his knife wrist.
The Yezda was strong as a bull. They thrashed on the ground. The tribune felt his grip failing. The guard tore his hand free. His dagger slashed along Scaurus’ ribs. Gasping, the tribune tried to seize his arm again, all the while waiting for the thrust that would end it. I made them kill me, he thought with something like triumph.
The guard snorted, as if in disdain. The weight pressing on Marcus suddenly grew heavier. He groaned and shoved desperately at the Yezda. The guard slid off, knife clattering to the floor as it slipped from his fingers. Another dagger stood in his back. Gaius Philippus pulled it out. Marcus’ nose caught the death stench of suddenly loosed bowels.
The other guards were down, too. The one Gaius Philippus had fought lay unmoving. “Bastard had a hard head, but not as hard as a stone floor,” the senior centurion said. And Tabari knelt by the last one, wiping the Gallic sword clean on the fellow’s caftan.
“You are hurt,” the Yezda minister said, pointing to the spreading red stain on Marcus’ chest. He helped the tribune shed his tunic, tore rags to try to dress the long cut that ran down from just outside Scaurus’ left nipple. The bleeding slowed but did not stop; the rough bandages began to grow soggy with blood.
“That was all an act, you cheering Avshar on up there?” Gaius Philippus demanded. He did not sound as though he believed it, and held his dagger in a knife-fighter’s crouch.
“No, not all of it,” Tabari said.
Gaius Philippus was poised to hurl himself at the minister. “Hear him out,” Marcus said quickly.
Calmly, Tabari went on, “I’ve long favored Avshar over Wulghash; he will make Yezd mighty. But I have already said once that I judge my debts.” He handed Marcus the Gallic sword. The tribune snatched at it; without it, he felt more than half unmanned.
As Scaurus struggled to his feet, Gaius Philippus snapped at Tabari, “Are you crazy, man? When that walking corpse finds out you’ve let us go, you’ll envy what he had planned for us.”
“That thought had occurred to me.” One of Tabari’s dark eyebrows quirked upward. “I will ask you, then, to lay me out roughly—I hope without permanent damage. If I am stunned and battered when found, everyone will think I put up the best fight I could.”
“What do we do then?” Marcus said.
“Can you walk?”
Scaurus tried it. The effort it took dismayed him; he could feel blood trickling down his belly. But he said, “If I have to, I can. I’d try flying to keep out of Avshar’s hands.”
“Then go into the maze of tunnels down here.” Tabari pointed to an opening in the rock wall. “They run farther than any man knows these days, except perhaps Wulghash, and he is dead. Maybe you will find a way free. I have no better hope to offer you.”
“I think I’d sooner fly,” Gaius Philippus muttered mistrustfully, eyeing the blank black hole. But there was no help for it; he realized that as fast as Marcus.
Tabari drew himself up to stiff attention. “At your service,” he said, and waited.
Gaius Philippus approached him, thumped him on the shoulder. “I’ve never done this as a favor before,” he said. In the middle of the sentence, he slammed his left fist into Tabari’s belly. As the minister folded, Gaius Philippus’ right hand crashed against his jaw. He slumped to the floor.
Rubbing bruised knuckles, the senior centurion opened the unconscious man’s tunic and used the dagger to make a bloody scratch on his chest. “Now they’ll figure we thought he was dead.”
“Don’t forget to cut the tunic, too,” Marcus said. Gaius Philippus swore at himself and attended to it. Marcus took canteens from the dead guards—no telling how long the Romans might wander this labyrinth. He wished the Yezda had food with them. When he was finished, he saw Gaius Philippus pulling torches from the sconces set in the tunnel wall. “Why do that? All these ways should have lights ready for us to take.”
“Aye, but if we do, whoever comes after us will be able to track us by it,” the veteran said, and it was Scaurus’ turn for chagrin. Gaius Philippus went on, “Eventually we’ll have to start using the torches we come on, but by then we should be lost enough that it won’t matter.” The centurion’s chuckle held no mirth. He strode toward the lightless tunnel entrance. Marcus reluctantly followed. The two Romans plunged in together.
The circle of light behind them shrank, then abruptly vanished as the tunnel veered to the right. Before and behind the flickering glow of the torch was impenetrable black.
Gaius Philippus led, holding the brand high. Marcus did his best to keep up. The cut along his ribs began to stiffen. He did not think he was bleeding any more, but the wound made him slow and weak. In spite of himself, he would fall behind, into the darkness.
When he did, he saw the druids’ marks on his sword glowing faintly—magic somewhere, he thought. As long as the gleam stayed dim, he refused to let it worry him.
The way branched every hundred paces or so. The Romans went now left, now right at random. At every turning they put three pebbles by the way they chose. “They’ll keep us from doubling back on ourselves,” Scaurus said.
“Unless we miss ’em, of course.”
“Cheerful, aren’t you?” Marcus thought they were deeper underground; his ears had popped again. There was no sign of pursuit behind them. They would have heard it a long way off; but for their own breathing and the faint sound of their feet on stone, the silence was absolute as the darkness.
After a while they paused to rest. They drank a couple of swallows of water. Then, feeling like ants lost in a strange burrow, they wandered on. Once, far off, they saw a lighted corridor and shied away as if it were Avshar in person.
“What’s that?” Gaius Philippus said—something was scratched into the side of the tunnel.
“It’s in the Videssian script,” Marcus said in surprise. “Bring the light close. No, hold it to one side so shadow fills the letters. There, better.” He read: “ ‘I, Hesaios Stenes of Resaina, dug this tunnel and wrote these words. Sharbaraz of Makuran took me in the ninth year of the Avtokrator Genesios. Phos guard the Avtokrator and me.’ ”
“Poor sod,” Gaius Philippus said. “I wonder when this Emperor Genesios lived.”
“I couldn’t tell you. Alypia would know.” Her name sent a wave of loneliness washing over Scaurus.
“I hope you get the chance to ask her, not that it looks likely.” Gaius Philippus shook a canteen. The tribune did not need the slosh to remind him they only had so much water. A couple of days after that was gone and it would not matter whether Avshar tracked them down or not.
They pressed on. They no longer needed to mark a path. This deep in the maze, long-undisturbed dust held their footprints.
Hesaios’ graffito went back to the night that had enfolded it for centuries.
The Romans’ only pastime in the tunnels was talk, and they used it till they grew hoarse. Gaius Philippus’ stories reached back to the days when Scaurus was a child. The veteran had first campaigned under Gaius Marius, against the Italians in the Social War and then against Sulla. “Marius was old and half-crazy by then, but even in the wreck of him you could see what a soldier he’d been. Some of his centurions had been with him in every fight since Jugurtha; they worshipped him. Of course he made most of them—till his day, landless men couldn’t serve in the legions.”
“I wonder if that’s better,” Marcus said. “With no land of their own, they’re always beholden to their general, and a danger to the state.”
“So say you, who grew up landed,” Gaius Philippus retorted, the gut response of a man born poor. “If he can get ’em land, more power to him. What would they do without the army? Starve in the city like that Apokavkos you rescued in Videssos—and not many as bad at thieving as him.”
Only women ranked with war and politics for hashing over. Despite his earlier try at sympathy, Gaius Philippus could not understand Marcus’ devotion first to Helvis and then to Alypia. “Why buy a sheep if all you want is wool?”
“What do you know? You married the legions.” The tribune intended that for a joke, but saw it was true. It gave him pause; he went on carefully, “A good woman halves sorrows and doubles joys.” But he had the feeling he was explaining poetry to a deaf man.
He was right. Gaius Philippus said, “Doubles sorrow and halves joy, you ask me. Leaving Helvis out of the bargain—”
“Good idea,” Scaurus said quickly. The abandonment was fresh enough still to ache in him every time he thought of it.
“All right. What has Alypia given you, then, that you couldn’t have for silver from some tavern wench? I take it you weren’t bedding her for ambition’s sake?”
“Et tu? You sound like Thorisin.” From anyone else, the blunt questions would have angered Marcus, but he knew the centurion’s manner. He answered seriously. “What has she given me? Besides honest affection, which silver won’t buy, her courage outdoes any man’s I know of, to hold herself together through all she’s endured. She’s clever, and kind, and gives everything she has—wisdom, wit, heart—for those she cares about. I only hope to be able to do as much. When I’m with her, I’m at peace.”
“You should write paeans,” Gaius Philippus grunted. “At peace, is it? Seems to me she’s brought you enough trouble for four men, let alone one.”
“She’s saved me some, too. If not for her, who knows what Thorisin would have done after—” He hesitated; here came the hurt again—“after the Namdaleni got away.”
“Oh, aye. Kept you out of jail a few extra months—and made sure you’d be in hotter water when you did land there.”
“That’s not the fault of who she is; it’s the fault of who she was born.”
Marcus had hardly noticed the druids’ marks stamped into his blade gleaming brighter, but now they were outshining Gaius Philippus’ torch. “Hold up,” he told the veteran. “There’s magic somewhere close.” They peered into the darkness, hands tight on their weapons, sure sorcery could only mean Avshar.
But there was no sign of the wizard-prince. Scratching his head, Scaurus took a few steps back the way he had come. The druids’ marks grew fainter. “In front, then. Give me the lead, Gaius. The sword will turn magic from me.”
They traded places. The tribune slowly moved forward, sword held before him like a shield. The glow from it grew steadily brighter, until the tunnel that had never known daylight was lit bright as noon.
In that golden light the pit ahead remained a patch of blackness. It was three times the length of a man; only a narrow stone ledge allowed passage on either side. Scaurus held his sword over the edge of the pit and looked down. The bottom was wickedly spiked; two points thrust up through the rib cage of a skeleton sprawled in ungainly death.
Gaius Philippus tapped Marcus on the shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”
“Very funny. One more step and I’ll keep that fellow down there company.” The tribune pointed to what was left of the victim in the pit.
Or so he thought. The senior centurion gave him a puzzled look. “What fellow? Down where? All I see is a lot of dusty floor.”
“No pit? No spears set in the bottom of it? No skeleton? One of us has lost his wits.” Scaurus had an inspiration. “Here—take my sword.”
They both exclaimed then, Marcus because as the sword left his fingers the pit disappeared, leaving what lay ahead no different to the eye from the rest of the tunnel, Gaius Philippus for exactly the opposite reason as he took the blade. “Is it real?” he asked.
“Do you care to find out? Three steps forward and you’ll know.”
“Hmm. The ledge’ll do fine, thanks. We see that with or without.” He held out the blade to Scaurus. “You take it in your left hand, I’ll hold it in my right, and we’ll sidle by crab-fashion, our backs to the wall. We’ll both be able to see what we’re doing that way—I hope.”
As the tribune touched the sword hilt, the pit jumped into visibility again. The ledge was wide enough for the Romans’ feet and not much more. Some of the spikes below still gleamed brightly, reflecting the light of the sword; others had rusty points and dark-stained shafts that told their own story.
The Romans were about two thirds of the way across when Marcus stumbled. His foot slipped off the edge, toes curling on emptiness. Gaius Philippus slammed him back against the tunnel wall with a strong forearm. The jar sent anguish through him. When he could speak again, he wheezed, “Thanks. It’s real, all right.”
“Thought so. Here, have a swig.” Even with his sudden sideways leap to save Scaurus, the veteran had not spilled a drop of precious water. Marcus’ stomach twisted at the thought of impalement.
The druids’ stamps dimmed once more as the Romans put distance between themselves and the pit. Gaius Philippus returned to the lead, his torch a better light than the tribune’s blade.
As the sword faded, though, excitement flared in Scaurus. He said, “The Makurani wouldn’t have dug that mantrap if it didn’t guard the way to something important—the escape route?”
“Maybe.” With ingrained pessimism, Gaius Philippus added, “I wonder what else they used to keep unwelcome guests out.”
Hope revived brought fresh anxiety. Every branching of the tunnel became a crisis; the wrong choice might mean throwing freedom away. For a while the Romans agonized over each decision. At last Gaius Philippus said, “A pox on it. The dithering doesn’t help. One way or the other, we just go.” That helped, some.
Scaurus lifted his head like a hunted animal tasting the wind. “Stand still,” he whispered. Gaius Philippus froze. The tribune listened, then grimaced at what he heard. The corridors behind them were silent no more. Echoing strangely in the distance, now strong, now faint, came the cries of soldiers and, like the murmur of surf, the sound of trotting feet. Avshar had awakened to his loss.
The Romans did their best to make haste but, battered as they were, could not match the speed of fresh men. The noise of the pursuit grew louder with terrible speed. The Yezda were not searching haphazardly; they must have come across the fugitives’ trail in the dust. Perhaps Avshar’s magic had led them to it. Marcus wasted a breath cursing him.
But the wizard-prince was not master of all the secrets of the maze below the palace he now held, nor had he readied his minions for them. A dreadful scream reverberated through the tunnels, followed a moment later by two more. One of them went on and on.
The wizard-prince’s minions must have probed round the edges of the pit and found at last the narrow ways by the trap. That was how Scaurus read the silence behind the Romans, a silence broken by a terrified shriek as another Yezda stepped onto deceitfully empty air and fell to his doom.
The tribune shuddered. “They’re no cowards, to dare those ledges without being able to tell them from the pit.”
“When they’re after me, I’d sooner they were cravens. But they’ve had enough for now, sounds like.” The loss of that fourth trooper must have dismayed the Yezda past the breaking point. They came no further; soon the only sounds in the tunnels were the groans of the dying men in the pit.
Neither Marcus nor Gaius Philippus said what they both feared, that their respite would not last long. Either their pursuers would find a route that dodged the mantrap, or Avshar would reveal it with his magic so they could get safely past.
When the druids’ marks sparked again, the tribune at first thought that had happened and that his sword was reacting to the backwash of the wizard-prince’s spell. But the light from the stamping brightened as he went farther and farther from the pit.
“What now?” Gaius Philippus grunted.
“Who knows? It started when that side tunnel joined this one, I think.” Scaurus took back the lead, trying to look every way at once. It might not be a pit this time, but vitriol from a spigot in the ceiling, or a blast of fire, or … anything.
The uncertainty ate at him, made him start at the shift of his own shadow as he walked. He paused to rest a moment, letting his sword drag in the dust.
Light fountained from the blade, so brilliant the tribune flung up his arms to shield his eyes. The dazzling burst lasted only an instant. Marcus leaped backward, wondering what snare he had tripped. Then he saw the line of footprints stretching out ahead in the dust.
They were invisible to Gaius Philippus until he touched the hilt of the Gallic longsword. “So someone’s covering his tracks by magic, is he?” the veteran said. He made a menacing motion with his dagger. “Can’t you just guess who?”
“Who else but Avshar?” Marcus said bitterly. How had the wizard-prince got ahead of them? No matter, the tribune thought grimly; there he was. The Romans could not retreat, not with the Yezda in the corridors behind them. No choice but to go on. “He won’t take us unawares.”
“Or need to.” But Gaius Philippus was already moving forward. “We’ll stalk him for a change.”
As it did all through the tunnel system, the dust went thick and thin by turns, now rising in choking clouds when the Romans scuffed through it, now only a film. The light of Scaurus’ sword, though, picked out the sorcerously concealed trail even at its most indistinct.
“Branching up ahead,” Gaius Philippus said. “Which direction did the bastard go?” He spoke in a whisper; in these twisting passages, sound carried further than light.
“Left,” Marcus answered confidently. But after continuing for about another fifteen feet, the trail disappeared, Gallic magic or no. “What the—” the tribune said. He heard a sudden rush of steps behind him. Knowing he had been tricked again, he whirled with Gaius Philippus for a last round of hopeless combat.
He would remember the tableau forever—three men with upraised weapons, each motionless in astonishment. “You!” they all cried at once, and, like puppets on the same string, lowered their blades together.
“I saw you dead,” Marcus said, almost with anger in his voice.
“It was not me you saw,” Wulghash replied. The deposed khagan of Yezd wore an officer’s silk surcoat over a boiled-leather cuirass, and trousers of fine suede. Trousers and coat were filthy, as was he, but he still bore himself like a king. He went on, “I put my seeming—and my robes—on one of the traitors I slew and took his image for myself when I carried him out. In his arrogance, Avshar did not look past the surface.” The khagan spoke matter-of-factly of his sorcery; Scaurus could only imagine his haste and desperation as he had worked, not knowing whether more of the wizard-prince’s guards would fall on him before his spells were done. But Wulghash was looking at the Romans with like amazement. “How is it you walk free? I saw you taken by Avshar in truth, not seeming. You have no magic save your sword, and you had already lost that to him.”
Marcus hid the blade behind his body before he answered. Wulghash’s eyes were watering; he had known little light in the tunnels. The tribune said, “There was no magic to it.” He explained what Tabari had done.
“Gratitude is a stronger magic than most of the ones I know.” Wulghash grunted. “You conjured more of it from Tabari than I, it seems, if he obeys Avshar now.” Scaurus thought the minister of justice lucky he was nowhere near his khagan at that moment.
With characteristic practicality, Gaius Philippus demanded of Wulghash, “So why didn’t you flee, once you were wearing another man’s face?”
“I would have, but Avshar, his own Skotos eat him, saw fit to promote me for murdering myself, and to give me these gauds.” The khagan patted his draggled finery. “That meant I was in his henchmen’s company and could hardly up and go. Besides, the glamour I had cast was a weak one. I had no time for better, but it could have worn off at any moment. That would have killed me, did it happen while I was still in the palace for his slaves to spot. So when I was finally alone a moment, the best I could think of was to take to the tunnels.”
He waved. “Here I am safe enough. I know these ways better than most. They must be learned on foot; masking spells hide much of them—and many traps—from sorcerous prying. Some go back to the Makuraner kings, others I set myself against an evil day; if you ride the snake, watch his fangs. And if you know where to search, there are cisterns and caches of Makuraner bread baked hard as rock to keep forever. Not fare I relish, but I can live on it.”
The Romans looked at each other and at their canteens, which held a couple of swallows apiece now. How many times had they missed chances to fill them? Tone roughened by chagrin, Gaius Philippus said, “All right, you escaped Avshar. But this moles’ nest must have its ways out. Why didn’t you use one?”
Pride rang in Wulghash’s answer: “Because I aim to take back what is mine. Aye, I know Avshar has been pickling in his own malice like a gherkin in vinegar these many hundred years, but I am no mean loremaster either. Let me but catch him unawares, and I can best him.”
Marcus and Gaius Philippus glanced at each other again. “You do not believe me,” the khagan said. “As may be, but with no hope at all I would still be here.” His voice, his entire aspect, softened. “Whom else has Atossa to rely on?”
The Romans could not help starting. Wulghash did not miss it. “What do you know? Tell me.” He hefted his saber as if to rip the answer from them.
“I fear she is dead,” Scaurus said, and told of the shriek from the court room that had been so suddenly cut off.
Wulghash raised the saber again. Before the tribune could lift his own blade for self-defense, the khagan slashed his own cheeks in the mourning ritual of the steppe. Blood ran into his beard and dripped in the dust at his feet.
He paid it no attention. Pushing past the Romans, he started down the corridor from which he had come. Now he made no effort to conceal his tracks; he cared nothing for magic any more. The sword in his hand was all that mattered to him. “Avshar!” he roared. “I am coming for you!”
Near mad with grief and rage, he could not have stood against the wizard-prince for an instant. Gaius Philippus realized at once the only course that might stay him. He taunted the khagan: “Aye, go on, throw yourself away, too. Then when you meet your woman in the next world you can tell her how you avenged her by getting yourself killed to no purpose.”
The jeer served where Marcus’ more reasoned tone would have failed. Wulghash whirled with catlike grace. He was close to Gaius Philippus’s age, but hardly less a warrior. “What better time to take the spider unawares in the palace than when everything is topsy-turvy after your escape?” He spat the words at the veteran, but that he argued at all showed reason still held him, if narrowly.
“Who’ll take whom unawares?” the senior centurion said with a scornful laugh. “The palace, is it? My guess is the son of a whore’s not five tunnels behind us, and his guards with him, magicking their way past the spiked pit back there.”
That reached Wulghash, though not for the reason Gaius Philippus had expected. “You came this way past the pit?” he demanded in disbelief. “How, without wizardry? That is the deadliest snare in all the tunnels.”
“We have this,” Scaurus reminded him, motioning with his sword. “It bared the trap before we fell into it—the same way it showed your footprints,” he added.
Wulghash’s jaw muscles jumped. “Strong sorcery,” he said. “Strong enough to draw Avshar were he blind as a cave-fish.” He scowled at Gaius Philippus. “You have reason, damn you. With Avshar close by and his magic primed and ready, I cannot hope to beat him now. Best we flee, though saying so gags me.”
Still scowling, he turned back to Marcus. “What point in flying, if you carry a lantern calling the huntsmen after you? Leave the sword here.”
“No,” the tribune said. “When he took me, Avshar feared to touch it. I will not abandon the best weapon I have, or let him put it to the test at his leisure.”
“Ill was the day I met you,” Wulghash said balefully, “and I would I had never named you friend.”
“Cut the horseshit,” Gaius Philippus snapped. “If you’d never met us, you’d be dead yourself, and Avshar running your stinking country anyway.”
“So forward a tongue is ripe for the cropping.”
The hue and cry from the Roman’s pursuers gave a sudden surge. “The wizard’s men are past the pit,” Marcus said to Wulghash. “You talk like Avshar; maybe you’re thinking like him, too, and hoping to buy your own life from them with ours.”
“By whatever gods may be, I will never deal in peace with him or his, so long as breath is in me.” The khagan paused to think. He set down his saber. His hands flashed through passes; he muttered in the same archaic Videssian dialect Avshar used.
“Your magic will not touch me or my blade,” Scaurus reminded him.
“I know,” Wulghash said when he could speak normally. “But I can set a spell round you and it both, to befog one seeking it through sorcery. The magic does not touch you, you see; if it did, it would perish. But because of that it only befogs. It will not blind. So, my friends” he said, his tone making it an accusation to flinch from, “can you run with me, since you have proven running the greater wisdom?”
They ran.