“In particular, Great Prince, this tent and all that is in it must stay. Not one item may be removed, nor will the tents of your companions and confidants be taken north.”
Shahin sputtered in rage but fell silent when Baraz raised a broad hand.
“You have led an army of the Empire into a dire place, Great Prince. Now you must pay amends for that recklessness. Go, you lead those horsemen who Khadames’ trusted officer did command.“
Shahin looked around, but the faces of his captains and their lieutenants held no support for him. At last, with an angry snarl, he strode out, his robes fluttering behind him. With him gone, Baraz sighed in relief. There was business to be done, and quickly.
“You, lad. What is your name?”
One of the couriers who had been attached to Shahin’s staff stepped forward nervously. He was very young, barely sixteen and with the look of one of the desert tribes. For a moment Baraz wondered what had brought him into the service of the King of Kings. No matter, he thought, and pushed the distraction away.
“Khalid, Lord General.”
“Khalid, three things I need of you, right away-first, Shahin’s horse. Secure it for me and bring it here. If the stablemen give you trouble tell them that the Boar demands it. Second, the Great Prince’s banner and tabard. These too I need. Third, despite what I just said, we will take one wagon north with us-a well-sprung one, with high clearance and enclosed. This is for my friend, who cannot walk at present.”
Khalid looked over his shoulder, to where Dahak was sitting quietly, observing the bustle of men going about a hurried business, and swallowed. “Yes, Lord General! I will see to it immediately!” The boy sprinted out of the tent.
“You others, tell me of the condition and organization of the men…”
Dahak idly watched the boy run out. Though he seemed sleepy to those around him, he had already settled within his mind to a calm center. While the camp was aboil with activity, with thousands of men rushing about to gather up their gear and arms, the sorcerer stretched out his will and covered the encampment with a seeming of peace and nighted sleep. To the Tanukh watchers who lay hid on the hillsides above the camp, all seemed as it had been before. It was difficult work, and Dahak fell into a light trance as his full attention was devoted to this deception.
THE ARMENIAN QUARTER, TAURIS
There, mistress, it is as I said.“ Thyatis ignored the wiry little man with the pox-scarred face. She crept around the corner of the dome and peered over the lip of the ornamented roof. The red tiles under her hands were hot from the noonday sun. A narrow street was thirty feet or more below her. On the other side of the street a white wall of stuccoed brick rose up a good twenty feet. It was unbroken, save by a battlement at its top, pierced by arrow slits and a fighting embrasure. From where she lay she could see down into the hanging garden behind that wall. The garden had been built on the roof of the massive building that had once served as the residence of the governor of the city. It was filled with small fruit trees, rosebushes, and a hundred kinds of flowers. A small fountain trickled at one side of the open space.
The Roman ignored the ornamental flowers and the garden. Beyond the rosebushes, a second wall rose, just a few feet high, below which lay the central courtyard of the building. It was a barren area, paved with the omnipresent red bricks. All of the walls around it were bare, though the outlines of arches and windows on the first two floors could be made out. They were bricked in now and plastered over. Only a single door could be seen, leading into the courtyard. A man was standing next to the door, his head in the shade of the building roof, with his hands held in front of him. Metal links glinted between his hands.
“Nikos!” she breathed. She had not believed Bagratuni’s cousin when he had come to them with this story of a Roman prisoner in the Old Residence. But there he was. She watched for twenty or thirty grains, until two guardsmen came out of the doorway and led the man back inside. Thyatis crawled back away from the edge of the roof then and scuttled across the barren roof to the airshaft. She had climbed up from the cellar to reach the dome on the Temple of the Lord of Light. The little Armenian crept along after her.
At the airshaft, she tugged twice on the rope that snaked down into the darkness. Even with the sun nearly overhead, the angle of the shaft kept it dark and cold. An answering tug came and she motioned for the poxy-faced man to climb down. He was quick to slither down the rope and Thyatis waited, sweating, until another tug came. She could hear the chanting of the priests of Ahura-Mazda coming from the windows of the temple. It was her great hope that the acolytes did not take their ease from chores on the deserted roof of the building. She rolled over the edge of the airshaft and then braced her feet on the inner brickwork. She leaned back against the rope and then walked her way down the wall.
Above, the sky became a square of blue that shrank and then disappeared as she descended below the ground level of the temple. Damp darkness surrounded her and the sound of sluggish water reached up with a foul smell. Her boots splashed into a rivulet of water and she stood in a small space surrounded by moldy brick walls. She crouched down and duckwalked along a low tunnel with a triangular apse. At its end, she gagged at the smell, but crawled out through a place broken in the wall of a larger tunnel. Strong hands assisted her out of the narrow crevice.
She patted Jusuf on the arm and hand-signed that he should lead. The Bulgar nodded and crept off down the tunnel along a narrow ledge. The main body of the tunnel was filled with a gurgling stream of dark water, its surface clogged with a thick crust. The smell was truly horrible here, but Thyatis closed her nostrils and followed Jusuf. Soon she would be able to breathe easily again.
Her Bulgars crowded into the little attic that Thyatis had been living in for the past week. The house was a big one. The lower floors were crammed with the Boar’s Immortals, who had been billeted in the Armenian quarter. The owners had been forced to move upstairs into a partially completed floor and the attic. The Persians downstairs spent most of their time drinking and carousing, so the gradual disappearance of the original family and their replacement by Thyatis, the Bulgars, and Bagratuni’s cousins had gone unremarked. There was a new entrance, broken through a wall of stiff-fired bricks, from the rooftop into the attic. Thyatis and her men moved mostly by night, save for the activities of the nominal owners.
The ceiling was low, and crossed with beams made from unfinished logs. Thyatis squatted at one end, near a small circular window that allowed some breath of air to enter the stifling room. Outside, the sun was setting and the Bulgars were rousing themselves for the night’s work.
Thyatis scratched a map in the dust of the floor. “… the prisoner is in the building on the other side of the garden. I intend to get him out, alive, before anything happens to him. Unfortunately, he is privy to my Emperor’s wishes, and if they break him, then the jig will be up for all of us.”
Jusuf sighed and leaned a little toward his brother Dah-vos, who was squeezed in beside him. “See?” the taciturn Bulgar said in a wry tone. “She will get us all killed…”
Sahul spared a short glare for his brother, then spread his hands to Thyatis.
“So,” Thyatis continued, “I have a plan to get him out, alive, without-if the gods smile on us-anyone noticing.”
Thyatis laughed at the sour expression on Jusuf’s face.
She expected disbelief from them. She had conceived the plan during the hours she spent lying on the rooftop opposite the old palace. It had a very low chance of complete success, but she repressed her dreadful urge to attack the palace from the square and slaughter everyone within. By Bagratuni’s latest count, there were nearly two thousand Immortals in the city, and she counted only twelve men to her hand.