“Can I help you?” asked Thyatis, guessing that he had to be their guide into the city.
“Ah, well, perhaps… I’m looking for the centurion commanding this, ah, detachment. I have orders for him as well as quarters for his men.” He continued to peer past her, though she had moved to place herself directly in front of him. He suddenly turned to her, apparently seeing her for the first time. “Do you know which one he is? They all look kind of, well, scruffy.”
Thyatis smiled and pulled a leather orders pouch from one of the pockets on the inside of her cape. She handed it to him, flipping back the waxed cover. The sun flashed for a moment on the Imperial Seal and the smaller, though no less ornate, blazon of the house of Orelio.
“We all look scruffy* Optimate, it’s our job. I’m the centurion in command, Thyatis Julia Clodia.”
The optimate stared at her, the mill wheels in his head obviously jammed for the moment. His mouth opened, then closed. Then he shook his head and he made a short salute. “My pardon, lady, my brief did not include the gender of the commander. I apologize for any insult I may have given.”
Thyatis looked him up and down for a moment, theft shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for a duel today, and getting to quarters sounds pretty good. I’ve got twelve men instead of ten, will that be a problem?”
The optimate shook his head, relieved to have avoided a problem with the odd-looking Western officer. His tribune had taken great pains to impress upon him the necessity of keeping a steady ship with all the new crew aboard. Getting on the wrong side of a “special” unit was a quick way back to the farm with his head on a platter. He looked over the Western crew as they hauled what seemed to be an inordinate amount of kit up to the end of the dock. Their appearance did nothing to allay his sinking feeling that the junior officer had gotten the biggest hassle in this muster. None of the men was well kept at all; their beards were straggly or far too long. Their clothes were a jumble of rag pickings and armor, without any semblance of uniform. All of them had a villainous look, none more so than a quartet of short, bandy-legged men with long mustaches and slanting eyes. With a start the optimate realized that they were Huns, or at least Sarmatians.
Looking around, he realized that there was a serious problem. He turned partially away from the crew standing around behind the young woman, gesturing for her attention.
“Milady, I’m afraid that I was told that this was an infantry detachment-I didn’t think to bring any horse transport, or wagons, and your men have far too much to carry. Can I beg your indulgence to wait here for an hour or so while I round up something to carry your gear in?”
Thyatis tugged at one ear, glancing back over her shoulder at Nikos, who drifted toward them in his customary, silent manner.
“Well…” she said, dragging it out, “all this kit is awfully heavy to carry. I wouldn’t want to wear my men out, they have too much drinking and wenching to do later.”
She gently took the optimate by his elbow, her thumb digging into the pressure point behind it just enough to get his attention. Then she leaned close and whispered into his ear. “My men and I can carry this gear twenty miles in the hot sun without animals. Your city is barely two miles across. I think that we can make it. Now, if you’re too busy to give us directions, I’ll just let them follow their noses- they do have an instinct for finding someplace to stay, whether the locals like it or not.”
The optimate did not flinch, which bought him a point of favor with Nikos, who had come up on his other side. The Greek idly removed the orders from the waxed leather pouch at the young under-officer’s side and began leafing through them.
• “Ah… milady,” the optimate said, struggling to keep his voice even, “you misunderstand. My orders are to give you and your men all assistance in getting to your quarters and you to the staff meeting this evening. If you want to walk all the way to the…”
“… Palace of Justinian,” Nikos said, finishing his sentence. “The royal treatment, as it were.”
Thyatis grimaced at her second.
“What is it now,” she said, “a prison? Fallen down in ruins? They’re not going to put us up in a palace, for Hermes’ sake.” Nikos grinned and passed her the orders tablet. She read it over and shook her head in amazement, handing it back to him. The optimate sighed in relief as she let go of his elbo“w.
“We’d really better walk then,” Thyatis said with a resigned tone in her voice. “Best to get everyone settled down before they start breaking things.”
Martius Galen Atreus, Augustus Caesar Occidens, stood in the window embrasure of the suite of rooms that he occupied while in the Eastern capital. From the third floor of the Palace of Justinian, now commonly referred to as the “Other Palace,” he could see out over the rooftops of the Imperial precincts. The bulk of the “Great” Palace loomed almost due north, blotting out the skyline save for, beyond it in turn, the huge dome of the Temple of Sol Invictus. To the west the gardens filled the space between Justinian’s old brickwork palace and the rising wall of the Hippodrome. Beyond that the city, a vast teeming hive of people, three-, four-, and five-story apartment buildings, forums crowded with merchants, the great Mile Stone, and the rest of the sprawl of the Eastern capital. Leaning against the sill, Galen was stricken by an unaccustomed despair. By the count of his secretaries the precincts of the Constantinople held almost as many people as lived in Rome, Ostia, and their surrounding provinces. The plague had devastated Italy, but it seemed to have barely touched the East.
A polite cough behind him heralded the entrance of his aide. Galen turned, taking care to show a slight smile and betray nothing of the sadness that now filled him.
“Ave, Augustus,” Aetius said, bowing slightly. The boy was still a little stiff in his presence, a tendency made worse by the ritual of the Eastern court. Galen shook his head in dismay; had anyone ever been so young? Romulus Aetius Valens was the scion of one of the few patrician families left in Rome that still boasted numbers of sons. Nomerus Valens, the patriarch of the family, had been smugly pleased to obtain the appointment for his son, but from Galen’s point of view there had been a paltry number of suitable candidates put forward. Of them Aetius was the best, even if his instinct was to bow at any occasion.
“Aetius, I am only a man, not a god. You need not bow and scrape before me.” Galen’s voice was gentle and filled with wry amusement. Aetius looked up and saluted again.
“Stand at ease, lad, and tell me the news.”
Aetius saluted again, standing straight. His short brown hair was cropped in a severe line above his brows and his usually pale skin was beginning to brown in the Greek sun. He pulled two wax tablets from under his arm, placing them on the writing desk that stood between them. Galen sat down in his camp stool and perused the tablets. While he did so, Aetius reported:
“Augustus, the third and sixth cohorts of the Seventh Augusta, the equites of the Sixth Gemina, and four thousand Gothic auxillia have landed today at the harbor. With these men, the numbers of the Western vexillation here in the capital have grown to twenty-five thousand men. The quartermaster has requested that I inform you that we are out of places to put more troops. If, perhaps, you could discuss this with the Emperor Heraclius…”
Galen waved off the rest of the statement. His men could double or triple bunk for the short time that the army would be in the Eastern capital. Now that both he and the Eastern Emperor were in the same place and able to meet face to face, the coordination of the great expedition had vastly improved. The use of the telecast had been intermittent and tremendously tiring to the sorcerers maintaining the link. The ancient devices still tended to lose focus and drift to other scenes or faraway lands. Though they had shown great promise, they were not a reliable mechanism. Galen had been forced to dismiss them from his calculations save as a means of emergency communications. The trouble now was not on the part of the Western Empire, but rather the East, for Heraclius was engaged in a power struggle with the great landowners that supplied the majority of his fighting men.