Ahmet glanced back; Mohammed’s voice was verging into bitter anger. “Do you hate Rome, then? Have these things happened to your family?”
Mohammed blinked, apparently unaware of his tone. “Hate Rome? No, I do not hate the Empire. It is as it is. I hate those that oppress the weak, those that drive out the less favored, but the Empire is like a boulder on a mountainside. If it is urged to motion, it cares not what it crushes in passing. The nature of a boulder is to ignore the things that are insignificant to it. A man like you, or I, is immaterial to the boulder. We are too small to harm it. But I do not love Rome either. How can I? It does not love me.“
Ahead of them, ibn’Adi and his men stopped at the bottom of a set of steps that led up to a broad veranda. Guardsmen stood in the shadows between pools of warm light cast by lanterns hung from iron sconces bolted to the wall. The sheykh turned and motioned to Mohammed, who moved forward and made a small half bow. Ahmet leaned closer as well.
“Remember, my new friends, that I speak none of these barbarian tongues favored by our hosts.” Ibn’Adi’s voice was deep and very strong, like a high wind on the desert. Ahmet could understand him well, though Aramaic was not his best language. “Al’Quraysh, you will speak for me, while your Egyptian friend will translate what others say. Speak softly, priest; I hear well and I know that others of the chieftains will not have this small advantage that the Lord of the Sky has given me. Let us not give away rams for free, eh? Also, keep your weapons handy. There are those who may cause trouble, and if such comes, we must be ready. But do not draw steel unless I command it!”
Mohammed and Ahmet both bowed. The sheykh looked them over, lingering a long time on Mohammed, who assumed a pleasant and inoffensive expression. The old man smiled at last and turned to go inside. As he mounted the steps, he seemed to shrink, one leg seemingly weaker than the other, and he leaned more heavily on his staff. Mohammed caught Ahmet’s eye and winked.
Within the wooden house was a high-vaulted room with wooden beams supporting a roof of slate tiles. Fifty or sixty men had already gathered in the room, where many couches and divans had been arranged in a rough circle. Tables had been pushed back against the walls, clearing this space. At the far end of the room from the door a raised dais stood ith an altar of light-colored stone upon it. Behind it, on wall, was the cast image of a bull in corroded greenish bronze. Two rows of fluted wooden columns ran the length of the room. The old chieftain, rather than pushing forward through the men clustered at the center of the room, moved through the crowd to the right, taking up his position in front of one of the pillars with Mohammed just in front of him and Ahmet to his left. The three guards settled in behind the pillar.
Lanterns were hung along the beams overhead and there were tapers in copper holders on the pillars. The vaulted space above the beams was already filling with dim smoke, but high above Ahmet saw that there were openings covered with latticework to let the smoke out. Men continued to enter the chamber, and now noise rose from the center of the room as men jostled for position among the couches. Ahmet remained still, for the sheykh was apparently at complete ease leaning against the pillar. Mohammed too was content with his view.
Between the men standing in front of him, Ahmet could make out that at the end of the circle of couches away from the door, three divans-more ornate than the rest-were still unoccupied. He was about to ask Mohammed who the assembly was waiting for when there was a commotion at the door. Men’s heads turned and they fell silent.
A party of men in very dark-red clothing entered-long capes with deep hoods and glittering silver bracelets and necklaces. Four such men, with narrow, hawklike faces, entered in a wedge, and the desert chieftains and their retainers parted before them like the tide off a rocky shore. Between them walked a man of middling height with dark-olive skin and a neatly trimmed beard. His cheekbones were sharp and he wore very little jewelry, only a ring of gold on each hand and a thin circlet of fine silver metal at his brow. He wore a simple tunic of pale rose-colored silk, bound with a black belt. As they passed, Ahmet felt a wave of controlled power roll over him like a soft breeze. A sorcerer, he thought, his other senses pricking fully awake for the first time in many days.
He centered and allowed his vision to expand slightly. The four men in the hoods smoldered with purple-black flame, like the fire that danced at the edge of a hot forge. Ahmet shuddered a little, realizing that each man-obviously the servants of the man in rose-had a spirit bound to it, some hellish imp drawn from the cracks and crevices that sometimes disgorged tormented and dreadful beings into the realm of man. At the center, the man in rose gleamed with concealed strength, like a strong light beheld through a colored glass or through ice. He turned at the couch on the left of the three and took his ease there. The four hooded men arranged themselves behind him, making no sound. Ahmet wondered if they could sense him as well.
“This is Aretas, the ninth of his noble line,” ibn’Adi said from behind the Egyptian in a quiet voice. “He is the Prince of the city of Petra in the south. He styles himself the King of the Nabateans, though they are more rightly the subjects of the Governor of the Roman province of Arabia Minimis. He is a vain and dangerous man.”
The Petran had seated himself and accepted a cut crystal cup of wine, when the doors to the room opened again and all of the men turned again to see who had entered. Beside the restrained menace of the Nabatean and his minions, the man who entered struck Ahmet as an inoffensive clerk late to a business meeting of his master. He was tall and thin, balding, with a hooked nose, and his white tunic-though richly hemmed-hung from his frame like a sheet. Four of the red-haired guardsmen flanked him, however, and when he took the center couch, Ahmet knew that he must be the governor of the province of Phoenicia.
“The Roman Lucius Ulpius Sulpicius, as dry a man as ever birthed by the loins of the Roman wolf. Though his seat of rule is at Tyre on the coast, Damascus is his re sponsibility.“ Ibn’Adi’s voice was tinged with wry respect for the gawky man that now settled, uncomfortably, onto the center couch. His Germans cleared a broad space around him, pushing aside some of the Arabs who had been edging closer to where Aretas was sitting.
Lucius cleared his throat and then rapped on the arm of his couch with a bony hand. “Friends, our company is gathered, all but one, but it already grows late and there is much to discuss, so we will begin. I will be brief and blunt-the Empire thanks you for your friendship, shown so well by coming here today and gathering those men you command to the standard. It will be rewarded and the Empire will mark those who came when called and who did not.”
Mohammed turned the slightest bit and whispered to Ahmet, “Ah, Constantinople will remember those who came to lick its hands and kiss its boot when called, like dogs…” Ibn’Adi stilled the younger man with a fierce scowl. Ahmet finished his translation of the governor’s Latin and ibn’Adi nodded.
“An invasion is upon us,” the governor continued, “one that will bring sure disaster to us all if it is not stopped, and stopped well short of Damascus or Tyre. The enemy is strong. The latest report from the north counts his number at nearly sixty thousand men.”
A current of whispering rushed around the room, and Ahmet saw that many of the men around him were startled by the size of the Persian army. He wondered how many lances the chieftains in this room commanded. The sheykh did not seem concerned, however, when Ahmet related this to him. Rather the old man seemed to be more interested in the reactions of the other captains and warlords.