The Dark Lord (73 page)

"Yes, my lord." Scortius nodded. "We'll do what we can."

A column of legionaries tramped past, heads bent in exhaustion, the setting sun throwing a hot glare in their faces. The air was so muggy their passage didn't even raise a pall of dust from the road. Instead, their hobnailed sandals squelched wetly in a slurry of watery mud. Aurelian squatted in the shade of a farmhouse gate, a courier's pouch opened on the ground in front of him. His guardsmen were sound asleep under the eaves of an abandoned stable, their boots lying out on a bricked patio, drying in the last remnant of the day.

The prince brushed flies away from face, reading the dispatches with a steadily sinking heart. The governor of Lower Egypt was in a panic, urgently requesting troops from Aurelian to police the port and streets of Alexandria. So many citizens had fled, crowding any ship sailing west or north, that refugees flooding in from the countryside had begun looting the abandoned shops and houses. Squatting and larceny was the order of the day. Civil order, in the opinion of the governor, was close to collapse. Crushing the papyrus sheet into a crumpled ball, Aurelian pitched the letter aside.
There will be order aplenty, when we're forced back to the city,
he thought savagely.
I'll deal with this fool of a governor then, if he's still there. And any looters.

The other dispatches revealed more by their lack than their words—no fresh Legions to bolster his shrinking, battered army. The Imperial fleet was nowhere to be found. Civilian shipping left the Portus Magnus in a constant stream but did not return. He rubbed his face, looking at the straw pallets with longing. There was only one dispatch left—a crumpled, stained packet bound with red twine. He picked it up with thumb and forefinger, feeling a chill steal over him.

A letter from my brother,
he realized.
What now?
Aurelian leaned back against the wall and cut the binding away with a sharp slash of his hand knife. Despite the poor condition of the missive, the wax seal was intact and the prince doubted anyone had dared read the contents. Unfolding the parchment, he frowned—this wasn't his brother's neat, economical printing. Instead, the letter was penned in a graceful, flowing hand, though there were abrupt amendments and several struck-out words.

"Why did Helena write this?" he grumbled, scanning the closely set lines. As he read, his frown deepened. The letter, rambling and obviously dictated in haste, contained no orders, no privy news, in fact nothing of a military nature. Aurelian flicked a green-blue bottle fly away from his nose, puzzled. This read like the correspondence of two patrician landowners with absolutely nothing to say to one another. Even the opening was odd—beginning with their boyhood nickname rather than a formal salutation.
Horse,
he read, starting over.
The weather is very fine, with rains and sun and clear...
A strikeout interrupted the sentence.

A wagon rumbled past—portions of the farm road were footed with brick, making them passable even during the wet season. The prince looked up, raising a hand in salute to the latest detachment of soldiers passing by. These men were covered with mud, spades canted over their shoulders. They stumbled past, barely raising their heads to greet the prince. At the end of the column, two weary figures trailed behind a huge-wheeled wagon, dozens of empty dirt hods hanging from leather straps on a pole between them. One of the men squinted at Aurelian as he passed.

The prince saluted the two engineers, but his mind was so dulled he couldn't muster the breath to speak their names aloud. Neither Frontius nor Sextus answered, though they did nod in response. Aurelian looked back to the paper. Something—a memory? A clear thought?—was trying to force its way into his consciousness. Thoughts of sleep and a hot bath battled for his attention, but there was no chance of rest, or leisure, not while the Persians harried his army so closely.

Tomorrow, there would be another—not a battle, but a running skirmish—as the Persian vanguard tried to overwhelm his rear guard. The easterners were tenacious and their generals were taking far too much delight in the slow, methodical destruction of the Roman army. Like boys torturing a fly, or a spider caught in a loft, or a lame dog that couldn't run away.

The elusive memory surfaced, buoyed up by a brief vision of a very young Galen painstakingly writing out a school lesson, sitting at the big, wide table in their mother's kitchen. Aurelian picked up the letter again, feeling the warmth of fond memory fade away.
Hawk made a secret language for us,
the prince remembered.
The first letter of each word making a new word. A strikeout or correction making a space between...

He squinted at the page, trying to formulate the hidden sentence in his mind. After a moment, he gave up and began scratching the translation in the dirt of the farmyard. Grains dribbled past and Aurelian found himself staring at the ground, a dead sense of despair rising from his brother's terse, hasty message:
Eque, tres menses mihi eme. Nullus post te est. Accipiter.

"'Horse,'" he read aloud, "'buy me three months. There is no one behind you. Hawk.'"

Aurelian put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. The stabbing pain in his stomach grew worse and he thought he would throw up. Helena, in her meticulous way, had dated the letter. A month had passed between the packet leaving Rome and reaching him here, in this abandoned farmyard.
Two months... we'll be forced back into the city in another week, or no more than two. And no reinforcements.

The prince considered the effort he had invested in the massive, expensive fortifications at Pelusium and across the peninsula holding Alexandria. Sixty thousand men had moved heaven and earth to erect the barriers—the greatest set of fieldworks the Roman army had ever created. A harsh laugh escaped Aurelian, driven from his gut.
Caesar himself could not have done better,
he thought bitterly.
All useless. The Persians have changed the geometry of war.

Dreadful experience had taught him how to survive where sorcerers rained death upon from the sky, or shattered stone and brick and wood with a thought.
Hide. Maneuver constantly. Fight in loose order. Close quickly with the enemy, to deny their magi a clear target. Ambush them in confined spaces. Counterattack whenever possible.
Aurelian realized all too well his own penchant for monuments and clever engineering had thrown away those advantages, leaving his soldiers to bear the result of his folly.
I let them scout and prepare unhindered and then stood up and took the axe in the neck, just like a Roman pig... Two months! How can I hold Alexandria for two more months?

He needed thaumaturges far more powerful than Rome had ever produced to meet the Persian and Arab priests on even terms.
I need the gods, or ancient heroes, at my side. But I will get nothing.

The prince looked around. There were no gods in evidence, only a rambling farmhouse filled with men sleeping like the dead, worn down past endurance by an endless succession of losing battles. His mind was still grappling with the enormity of his brother's decision. Aurelian had never expected Galen to make the "Emperor's choice" with
his
life! The roiling pain in his stomach faded, overshadowed by a vast emptiness in his chest.

"Two months, then." Aurelian pushed himself upright. He felt dizzy. The road was empty, the last of the First Minerva's cohorts having marched past to take up positions down the road. "Sixty days."

His mouth was dry, but Aurelian went looking for the cooks to see if they'd managed to get a fire going in the kitchen grate. The prospect of hot food—even only barley gruel—was enough to keep him awake and moving and alive.

Under a twilit sky, a lone pillar rose from the sand, three faces worn smooth by the wind. The fourth side, facing the north, retained shallow outlines of hawk-headed men and cranes and kilted servants bowing down before a sun-crowned king. Thyatis roused herself as her camel ambled past, dragging the corner of her
kaffiyeh
away from a parched mouth. Her lips were dry and cracked, mouth foul with the taste of salt and week-old grime. At least the sun had set, releasing them from the torment of its blazing furnace. The night wind was rising and cooler air pricked her to alertness.

"Quietly now," she called to the others riding behind her. The camels snorted in response, but the rest of the Roman party was too thirsty and exhausted to speak. Thyatis slipped a leather cord from the crossbar of her
spatha
freeing the long blade for a swift draw. Her armor was tied in a bundle to the high-cantled saddle behind her. Riding without close-fitting mail heavy on her shoulders and chest felt strange, but the heat in the open desert was only bearable in loose robes.

The camel plodded on. The string of riders approached a thick line of palms and scrubby, dark brush. Thyatis' head raised in surprise as she smelled open water. Everything under the palms was dark—the light of the moon, an arc of dusky red high in the sky, failed to penetrate the foliage—but she swung down, heedless of any possible danger. Her legs were stiff and sore, but the Roman woman pushed through the branches and stumbled into a shallow pond.

Thyatis slid to a halt, the water unexpectedly cold against her legs. Mud oozed into her sandals.

"Wait," she hissed, furious at herself for rushing ahead, as Vladimir slid through the hanging branches. The Walach froze at the edge of the pond, hand halfway dipped to the quicksilver surface. "Smell first, my friend. We don't know who might have been here before us."

Thyatis drew her sword slowly, oiled metal sliding free without a sound. She could feel Betia and Nicholas and the others waiting in the darkness. Everyone's discipline had broken at the heady, irresistible smell. Vladimir withdrew his hand slowly, watching her with huge eyes, then audibly tasted the air, canting his head to one side. He bent low over the water, then dipped his hand again, long tongue flicking over the back of his hand.

"Water," he whispered. "Mud. Dates. Camels. Men. Women."

"Poison?" Thyatis coughed quietly, clearing a dry, dusty throat.

Vladimir shook his head.

"Drink then," she said, "but take your time." She forced herself to stand, alert to any disturbance in the night, while he drank. When the Walach had finished, he slipped back into the brush and Thyatis waded quietly to the edge of the pond. Betia came next, gliding between the palms like a ghost. The Roman woman continued to listen, nerves on edge, suppressing a start every time one of the camels honked or grumbled.

"Why is it so still?" Nicholas squatted beside her, wiping his face with a damp rag. Thyatis sipped slowly from one of the waterbags. She had washed her face, hands and arms in the pond, but longed for a real bath.
Everything sticks together in this heat...
The pilgrim road from the coast south to Siwa crossed nearly a hundred miles of lifeless, sun-blasted desert. Endless miles of rocky flats interspersed with acres of gravely lowlands. Thyatis had expected a desert filled with sand, like the lands around Lake Mareotis. But here in the western reach, there were no springs, no water and no shelter to speak of. Only wells built a day's march apart along the trail allowed passage from the coast. The last of those cisterns, cut into a shallow canyon twenty miles north of the oasis, had been bone dry.

"I don't know," Thyatis said, keeping her voice low. Stands of palms and scrawny trees stretched away to the south, forming the main body of the oasis. In the fading sun, as they had descended the flank of a flattened, rocky ridge, Thyatis had seen whitewashed houses and sand-colored temples at the center of the depression. The glittering expanse of a dry lake blazed beyond the green fields. People—priests, shepherds, artisans—were supposed to live here, drawing life from the bubbling pools and the fields the springs allowed. Flat-topped mesas surrounded the valley of Siwa, though they were nothing more than barren white stone and chalky gravel. "There must be someone here."

She pointed into the darkness. "There is a hill at the center—you saw it from the ridge? The temple of Amon-Ra is there, and the Oracle, and the quarters of the priests."

"I saw." Nicholas shifted in the moonlight, nodding. Thyatis felt Vladimir and Betia stir. The others were resting farther back in the grove. Everyone was worn down by the punishing heat. They had pushed hard from the coast. Thyatis' thighs and back simmered with dull, constant pain. Camels had a strange, loping gait and she'd felt nauseated for five days while they ambled south. She longed not just to be clean again—preferably via hours spent soaking in blisteringly hot water—but a masseuse afterwards, iron-hard hands kneading her tortured muscles into welcome oblivion.

"What did your bird say? Where do we go now?"

Nicholas rose, grimacing as abused muscles complained. Thyatis didn't think he was used to riding so much either.
He was happy at sea,
she remembered.
A Roman sailor, how funny!
He cracked his knuckles.

"She said—if we can believe her more than we could our poetic Cypriot—to enter the Mystery itself, the nave. The god looks down on a pit, from which bitter fumes rise. If we descend the pit, there is a stair and a chamber below." Thyatis could see the Latin's teeth shine in dappled moonlight. "The priests of the Oracle store the offerings there."

"And among those gifts, offered up so long ago, is one of Nemathapi's legendary telecasts?" Thyatis forced disbelief into her voice, though she prayed silently for the Daughters to have been and away with their prize. She had watched carefully as they came south, looking for the signs of another party on camels coming and then going. She had seen nothing.

"She had good reason to speak true," Nicholas answered. "I saw the papyrus myself—the signs and devices—one clearly described a telecast, given as tribute to the Oracle by the pharaoh Djoser in thanks 'for his salvation.' And if the librarian lied?" He laughed. "She'll still be in our cage when we return."