The Shadow of Ararat (52 page)

The road turned and plunged down the side of a hill, angling toward thicker stands of cypress clustered along the banks of the river. A broad field of high grass and brilliant yellow flowers lay between the hill and the riverbank. As she descended the hill, Thyatis caught sight of a band of mounted men cantering out of the trees into the field; their lance tips sparkled in the sun, and there was a flutter of blue and red banners among them.

Thyatis cursed evilly, turned her horse off the road, and cut across the face of the hill through heavy brush. A hundred feet from the road, she stopped and slid off the bay. She tied her mount to the nearest tree and hurriedly pulled its feedbag from the packhorse. A handful of grain quieted the horse. Thyatis untied a hunting spear from the back of the bay and slipped off into the brush in the direction of the road.

Thirty or forty feet off the road, the side of the hill boasted a thick stand of juniper. Thyatis had noticed them as she had come down the hill—they offered good cover in full view of the road—and now she crept down to them from uphill. She could hear the jangle of bit and bridle on the approaching horsemen. They would turn the corner of the road and begin climbing the hill within moments. She sprinted the last fifteen feet into the stand of juniper and threw herself down behind the bole of the largest tree she could see. Cautiously she peered around the trunk.

Three horsemen cantered around the bend: tall men dressed in russet and tan riding leathers and tunics. They rode past swiftly, shouting at one another.

Must be racing to the top of the hill,
she thought.

The rest of the band followed more sedately, thirty in number. They were well armed and richly attired and equipped. Thyatis counted spears, bows, long curved swords among their armament. But they had no water bags and no signs of heavier equipment, or anything to make a camp.
A patrol,
she thought.
The city must be close.

At the end of the column, riding a little back, was a heavyset man with a large full black beard. Slung over his left shoulder was a round shield painted with the face of a tusked boar in brown and black and white. His horse ambled along, taking its time up the hill. The Persian's eyes seemed heavy with sleep, idle in the late-afternoon sun. Thyatis stilled herself, slowing even her breathing, and did her best to settle all the way into the leaf-strewn soil. The Persian rode with his bow athwart the shoulders of the horse, an arrow laid across it. Thyatis waited a long time after the Persians had passed away over the hill before she relaxed and rolled over to put her back against the trunk of the big juniper.

"He's a quiet one, isn't he?"

Thyatis froze, her ears twitching at the quiet voice. The brush and leaves to her left and right rustled slightly and she started—inwardly—in astonishment as three men in motley brown, tan, and green cloaks appeared around her. They wore half masks of wood carved in the appearance of men with short beards and slanting eyes. The two on the left bore long knives with handles of bone and iron-headed spears, while the man on the right, who had spoken, was armed with a long bow of yellow wood with a counter-curve at the top and bottom. The bowman settled to his haunches and laid the weapon down on the leafy ground.

"Greetings," he said in oddly accented Greek. "My friends and I are hospitable."

Thyatis drew her feet up under her, her ears straining for any noise that indicated more men in the band of woods than these three. She could hear nothing, yet she had not heard these men either, even when they were only feet away from her.

"Who are you?" she asked in her own rather poor Greek. One of the men to the left hissed in surprise. It was difficult to keep them all in view at once, so she stared straight ahead, keeping each in her peripheral vision. The man on the right raised a gloved hand for silence.

"I am Dahvos. These are my brothers, Jusuf and Sahul." His voice was low and muffled by the mask, and did not carry much past Thyatis. "Well met, fellow traveler."

Thyatis watched them in silence. The masks were odd; they must be difficult to see out of in these woods. Their boots were made for riding, so horses must lie hidden nearby. They wore light-colored shirts with intricate embroidery on the sleeves and at the neck. One of the men on the left had a heavy silver bracelet wrapped around his forearm. They remained quiet, waiting for her to respond.

At length, she said, "I am Thyatis. Greetings."

The men looked at each other and nodded. The one on the right, who seemed to be their leader, took off his wooden mask with a sigh and stowed it away in a cloth bag at his side. Behind it, he was young and fair-skinned, with blue eyes and regular clean-shaven features. He pulled back the hood of his cloak, showing long braids of red hair tied with strips of colored cloth. Thyatis tilted her head to one side, seeing out of the corner of her eye that the other two had taken off their masks as well. It struck her odd that none of the three wore beards, though the eldest of the three was showing signs of stubble. He was shorter and stouter than the other two men, with streaks of gray in his sandy blond hair, and watchful watery blue eyes. Thyatis could make out a familial resemblance between the two younger men, but this one, he was much older and had a markedly different facial structure.

"You are odd-looking fellows," she said, glancing around at the trees and thick brush. "Why did you shave your beards?"

The young leader with bright blue eyes smiled a little, his gaze flickering over the other two.

"Because," he said, "we are Romans. It is well known that Romans go clean-shaven."

Thyatis snorted in barely repressed laughter.

"You," she said, "are the sorriest looking set of Romans I've ever seen."

"And you would know?" shot back the blue-eyed one.

Thyatis grinned, showing fine white teeth.

"My acquaintance with Rome is a long and profitable one," she retorted. "Better yet, I am a Roman, my fine barbarian friends, so my experience is unquestioned. You see, I have no beard at all. Now, why are you sneaking around avoiding Persian patrols pretending to be Romans with no beards?"

It was the older man's turn to snort in laughter, and he picked up the knife that he had laid down at the beginning of the parley with a flip and faded off into the brush. The other brother, the one with brown eyes, shrugged and settled back against a tree. With his cloak wrapped around him and a preternatural stillness, he seemed to fade into the mottled bark and leaves.

Dahvos grimaced and toyed with the handle of his knife. "We've come down from the north, just to see what there is to see."

Thyatis quirked up an eyebrow—she began to remember some of the long-ago briefing in Constantinople. She smiled a little at the barbarian.

"You," she said slowly, "are Khazar nomads, scouts belike, come down the valley of the Araxes from the steppes in advance of the army of the
Khagan
Ziebil."

"We are not Khazars!" Dahvos hissed in disgust. "We are Bulgars of the Onoghundur! We are twice as brave as a Khazar, we father three times the sons! Our arrows fly farther, our lances are keener! Bah! The Khazars are our children."

Thyatis spared a glance at the other man, Jusuf she guessed. He was rolling his eyes.

"Pleased to meet you, brave Bulgars who serve a Khazar lord. How long have you been in the valley? How many Persians have you seen? Have you touched the wood of the gate of the city to prove your bravery?"

Dahvos bristled at the implication of cowardice. "We have, Roman. We—and others—have been here for a hand and a half of days. We have seen..." He paused to think. "Twenty hundreds of Iron Hats on the road, and many more in the city. They are all riding south to the city. Jusuf has been to the city, for he speaks their language, while I do not. They are busy there, like a hive of bees poked with a spear."

Thyatis considered this, then picked up a little stick and cleared off some of the dirt in the space between them. She scratched an oblong on one side, then a winding line running away from it.

"You have seen the lake?" she said, pointing at the oblong. The two men nodded. Jusuf inched closer so that he could see clearly. "This squiggle is the Talkeh River, which feeds into the lake. This square is the city of Tauris, to our south." A box joined the picture a little distance up the river from the lake. "Have you been south of the city?"

"No," Dahvos said, looking to his brother for confirmation, "there are great marshes between the city and the lake—impassable to horses and wagons. The road skirts them and runs right through the city over a bridge of red bricks. On the other side of the city are cliffs, very rough and bad for the hooves." He picked his own stick and drew a curving line behind the box of the city, showing the escarpment.

"The
Khagan
," he continued, "will come from the north on this road and reach the city. But there are many Iron Hats there, and the walls are strong. The people will not be able to cross the river if the Iron Hats are in the city."

Thyatis nodded; that was as she had been told. Well, it was her business to make it easier for the Roman army to meet up with its allies, so that she would do. These seemed likely fellows for what she had in mind. She smiled at each of them in turn.

"My liege lord, the Emperor of the Romans, is coming here too. I have sworn to my chief that I will ensure that the city of the Iron Hats falls easily to him when he comes before its walls. This is why I am here. If you desire to do a brave thing, come with me to the south. I am going to sneak into the city without the Iron Hats noticing. Are you that brave?"

The two brothers looked at each other, then back at her.

Dahvos was the first to answer, his grin bright in the shade of the junipers. "Milady—I will gladly go with you. You will see that Bulgars are the bravest of men!"

Jusuf stared at his brother and shook his head in silent dismay, then he too nodded, but his face was long with worry. Thyatis looked over her shoulder to make sure that the road was clear, then got up and dusted off her breeches. Dahvos sprang to his feet and slung his bow over his back. Thyatis looked down at Jusuf, who was still sitting with his back to the tree, and offered him a hand up. He took it, though he eyed her as if she were a snake.

"Then," she said, "let's be about it."

Clouds had come up after sunset, covering the moon and the stars. Well after midnight, Thyatis and Sahul returned to the tiny dry camp the Bulgar scouts had made in the hills behind the city. In the complete darkness, even Sahul had gotten lost and they had spent the better part of an hour stumbling around in a maze of fields and irrigation canals before reaching the hills. Thyatis was sore and tired, but she ducked into the little felt tent that the scouts had put up with a determined look on her face. Inside, Dahvos and Jusuf squeezed aside to let their older brother and the Roman woman in.

A single tallow candle was suspended in a little copper holder near the apex of the tent. A circular hole, edged with leather stitches, let the smoke out the top. In the dim, flickering light Thyatis surveyed the faces of her companions. In the darkness outside, another six Bulgars were sleeping.

So,
she thought,
I command men again.

It was odd, though she had never really marked it before, that these men would accept her leadership with so little qualm. She supposed that she was like a spirit suddenly come among them. The thought of a woman skilled in war, so far from her home and family, was already so incredible that the thought of her command was equally acceptable.

"Sahul and I went to the walls by the river. We saw a sizable camp of horsemen—tents and stake lines for the horses—on the plain to the north of the city. The city is strong. Its walls are new and well reinforced. Many men were on the walls, and we saw three patrols while we were making our way back along the water."

While she talked, she arranged some twigs and leaves into a map on the rug that made a floor of the tent. The men leaned close, filling her nostrils with the smell of horses, sweat, and leather. Sahul grunted and made a downward gesture with his hand.

"Yes," she said, "we saw one other thing. The banner that flies above the gates of the city is the same blazon as I saw on the shield of the horseman two days ago. I believe that it is the mark of the Persian general Shahr-Baraz—he who is called the King's Boar. If this is so, then the city will be very difficult to take. Shahr-Baraz commands the Immortals of the King of Kings, their finest warriors."

Dahvos coughed and tapped a grass stem on the little map of the city. "Do we run away, then?"

Thyatis grunted in turn, sharing a wry glance with Sahul.
Young men!
she thought.
They'll be the death of me yet.
Sahul shrugged, his face impassive. His eyes glinted with merriment, though.

"No, we will have to be very careful. The first thing that we need to do is find a local who is willing to help us—we have to find out something about the layout of the city. Then we get inside and then we see about bringing about the ruin of the Boar."

The discussion continued for a little while and then Sahul excused himself. Thyatis blinked when he was gone. The oldest brother moved like a ghost. Dahvos yawned hugely and made a show of leaving, but dallied for at least ten grains before Jusuf pushed him out the tent. The middle brother bowed as he closed up the door. Thyatis sat alone in the dimness, feeling the quiet close around her. The tent had been a gift of Sahul's on the first night she had spent with the Bulgars in the valley of Tauris. The nomad never said anything, even in the guttural language of the steppes, but his meaning was clear—if a woman traveled with them, then she would be treated well.

Thyatis was in no mood to dispute him. The trip from Ararat had been grueling without a companion to watch her back. Sleeping again among men who could stand watch in the darkness was a relief, though she never slept deeply. A wind began to pick up outside, blowing from the east before the rising, still invisible sun. Thyatis snuffed the candle out and lay down, her head on a rolled blanket. The Bulgars amused her; for scouts in hostile land, they carried an inordinate amount of baggage. Still, they were the finest woodsmen and trackers she had ever met. Even better than Nikos or the Sarmatians.