Then a shriek of sound came from above, piercing down from the heavens, and the man, who had leapt to his feet in alarm, cowered on the ground in fear. A long wail echoed off of the rocks, and there was a booming sound that reverberated through the air, passing away into the east. The dogs whimpered at his feet and the man stared, seeing demons in the dark. The sheep turned their faces to him, frozen with dread, their eyes reflecting the pale light of the fire.
It is strange, thought Maxian, to hear the rough dialect of my city under these foreign stars.
He stood in the shadow of a copse of trees, looking down a grassy slope toward the fires of a great camp. He could hear laughter and singing. There was a familiar tang in the air; the wind out of the east was bringing the smell of a salt sea. The night air was cool but not chilly, and he had thrown back the heavy cowl of. the cloak he wore. Firelight gleamed on his cheekbones and in his eyes. Four legionnaires passed by, coming within feet of him, on patrol. The Prince smiled in the darkness, feeling his strength subtly filling the air and ground around him. No one could see him if he did not wish to be seen.
He walked down the hill, smelling the thick aroma of flowers and fresh grass. Winter threatened in the mountains, but here, on the flat plains by the shallow sea, summer lingered. The night was heavy with the smell of orange blossoms and jasmine. Even the stars seemed kind, twinkling down with a cheerful fire. He came to the ditch around the camp and stopped. Brush had been cleared hastily away from the verge, and sharp stakes, carried by the legionnaires for such a purpose, were driven into the soft earth at the bottom of the trench. Beyond it, a palisade of logs had been raised.
He brought the woman Alais to mind, a vision of strong white legs flitting across a rooftop in the Eastern capital. Frowning in concentration, he sprang forward. His boots slapped hard against the top of the log wall and he swayed, teetering over the trench behind him. Then he calmed his racing heart and stood upright, finding his balance. The camp lay spread out before him, hundreds of canvas tents in neat rows glowing with the light of lanterns and candles. He could hear a dim murmur of voices now, coming from thousands of conversations. From the height where he stood, a slim black shape melting into a dark sky, he could see that a great tent, well lit, had been raised at the. center of the camp.
He dropped silently to the ground within the walls. A sentry walked past, on the ledge built up behind the wall of logs. Maxian wrapped his cloak around him and moved off between the tents.
Martius Galen Atreus, Augustus Caesar of the West, sat at his folding desk in a pool of yellow light. Beeswax candles, taken from the nearest village by one of the foraging patrols, burned brightly at the edges of the worktable. Neat piles of wax tablets and stacks of papyrus scrolls covered the tabletop. The Emperor leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He was very tired, but then he did not remember a time when he had not been exhausted, or buried in detail, since leaving the Eternal City. It was late and he had sent his secretaries to their bedrolls thirty grains before. He reached forward to pick up a tablet bearing a roster of the lamed and injured horses in the army. His eye caught a thin dark shape standing just inside the doorway of his tent.
Galen looked up, surprised that someone would be admitted without his guards announcing him, then stopped, his eyes widening, the tablet frozen in midair.
“Brother.” Maxian’s voice was raspy and thick.
Galen rose, his lean face filling with a slow glad smile. “Maxian!” Then the Emperor paused, seeing the dreadful pallor of his brother’s face, grasping his utterly unexpected presence. “What is it?”
The Emperor leaned forward on the table for support. His mind was a cataclysm of fears. “Aurelian? The city? What has happened?” His voice was tight in anticipation of disaster.
Maxian stepped forward, his black robes furling around him, and slid his thin body into one of the camp stools in front of the desk. The Prince shook his head, a half smile dancing on his lips. “Oh, fear not, brother. The city stands. The Empire stands. Aurelian, when last I saw him, was well.”
Galen sat down heavily in the chair, sighing in relief. His brows furrowed and he glared at his younger brother. “Good… You gave me a fright, barging in all unexpected, looking like a shade out of Hades. You’re the last person I’d ever expect to see here. What is it? You must have left Rome only weeks behind us to get here now-you didn’t travel alone, did you? Ah, of course you did! Why should a healer fear in this dark world…”
Maxian looked up, seeing the concern in his brother’s face. He realized that he had missed his brother tremendously, difficult and judgmental as he was. Both of his brothers. Of late, in the pressure of building the engine and making haste to come here, he had begun to think of Krista and Alais and the others as his family. Now, sitting in the warm confines of a campaign tent in the light of plain candles, he remembered a thousand other times when he would sit in the back of just such a tent while his brothers plotted and planned their quest for Empire.
He missed that, the closeness, the days on the march, the tight community of the army. A sad look came into his face and the Prince looked away from his brother, feeling very lonely. Tears threatened to well up as he struggled against a flood of emotions. He treasured those days, now long gone. He thought of leaving; this was too painful.
“I traveled with friends, brother. It was very safe, safer than your journey.”
Galen nodded, his face marked with a wan smile. “What is it? Wait, you must be starving from the look of you. Eat first, then tell me.”
The Emperor rang a small bell that sat on the side of the table, and a moment later one of the household servants entered. The old man, a Greek, smiled to see Maxian and bowed deeply to the Emperor.
“My brother has had a long journey. Bring something hot to drink and whatever is left of the dinner. And warm too, not cold.”
The old-Greek scurried off, calling out to the other servants as soon as he left the tent. Galen stood and walked around the table to his brother. Maxian stared up at him, his eyes dull with fatigue. The Emperor reached out, clasped his brother’s hand, and drew him to his feet. Maxian stared at him, filled with an odd dread. His brother wrapped him in a fierce hug. Maxian looked away, blinking back tears.
“I missed you and Aurelian,” Galen whispered. “I…”
The servants bustled in, laden with platters and jugs and a bucket of coals. Maxian stepped aside from his brother and greeted the cook and the other house servants. He had known them for as long as he had lived. They laid out a feast: roast pheasant, lamb stew, grilled fish, hot rolls with butter, a thick gruel of chickpeas and spices. The cook pressed a mug of hot wine into his hand. Maxian drank deeply, feeling the heat flush through his body. He sat again and stared in amazement at the platter of food in front of him.
“Eat,” Galen said. “I’ll wait.”
The engine was quiescent, its fires banked, midnight wings folded in against the serpentine body. It crouched in a defile a mile or more from the Roman camp, hidden by evergreens and a thicket of gorse bushes and thorn. Krista sat on the huge head, feeling the heat of the metal under her, her legs on either side of the long pointed snout. She had adopted woolen leggings and a heavy shirt under a half-tunic of lambskin with fleece on the inside. One of the Valach who now served the Prince had shown her how to make it, his thin fingers quick with a heavy needle to stitch the fleece to the leather. It was warm, a little too warm now that they had come to this temperate land. But when the engine was in flight, high among the clouds, the wind bit with teeth of ice. She gazed mournfully off into the darkness in the direction of the Roman camp.