Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

Jusuf spread his hands, shaking his head. "I don't know. We attacked the gate, and then it was dark and we were fighting… I can't get anything out of the Armenians either. Bagratuni just shakes his head and says it's the fate of battle."

Thyatis gripped the young man by the shoulder and met his gaze. "Jusuf, I will believe that Sahul is dead when you bring his corpse before me, cold and stiff. Until then, at least in my mind, he lives and will be with us. He probably met some girl…"

The Khazar nodded, staring at the ground. Thyatis cuffed lightly him on the side of the head and pinched his ear.

"Go," she said. "Find any of the rest of our band of brothers and make sure they're at our tents in a glass. I'm off to see the quartermaster about horses and equipment. Oh, and if you see a messenger from the Augustus, send him on after me."

She stared after him as he made his way along the muddy path between the tents. She thought of her own brothers, but then pushed the memory away. That was too painful. She sighed and snugged the weapons belt around her waist and made sure that nothing was loose. Around her, the camp was gray and the trees seemed shrunken with the onset of winter.

– |"Centurion. Please, sit." It was well past midnight, and Marcus Galen Atreus had finally put aside the piles of wax tablets and papyrus scrolls that filled his days. Thyatis looked around and, at the nod of the Emperor, cleared off a winged wooden stool and sat down. She had changed into a plainer tunic and had carefully restrained all of her hair. Galen looked her over; the girl he had sent out from Constantinople on a wild throw of the dice had come back to him leaner and grimmer.

Almost a woman, he thought, but one out of legend… a Roman Boudicca, standing triumphant in the back of a war chariot, her armor flashing in the sun.

Still, even knowing that she was his tool, a dart to be thrown at the heart of the enemy, he still felt a queasy reluctance to use her. It seemed dreadfully foreign to assign a woman the rights of men-to bear arms in the service of the state-even, to use a damning word-oriental.

"This Prince of the city, he speaks well of you. He was surprised to see a woman in arms for the Empire. He calls you-what is it?-ah, he calls you Diana the Huntress."

Thyatis smiled politely. The harried general she had last seen in the drafty palace room in Constantinople was gone, replaced by a languid man in pale robes, at ease in his tent. Something about Galen had changed, she thought. He seemed more Imperial somehow, a sense of power was apparent around him. Odd, that it would be so, here in the back end of the world, but perhaps victory brought such changes. She only felt drained and worn out.

"That was very good work that you did. Heraclius did not believe that it could be done-it cost his purse ten thousand denarii on a foolish bet! A pity that so many of your Romans were killed. But… you seem to have found new men to replace them. These Bulgars-fierce as Sarmatians, they say. Do you trust them?"

Thyatis' eyes narrowed. The Emperor was fishing for something. "I have trusted them with my life, Augustus Caesar. They did not fail me, and they paid in blood for that service. Yes, I trust them."

Galen nodded and idly rubbed his ear. He thought for a while, staring off into one corner of the field tent he was living in. He turned back to her, and the Imperial presence was gone. "Can you do it again?" His voice was honest, without the echo of a disputation in the Forum. "Can you take a band of men into hostile lands again and do what you have done here?"

Thyatis stiffened in her chair, and her head turned a little to the side as her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, Augustus Caesar? You have more work for me?"

Galen nodded ruefully.

"There will always be work for you," he said with a wan smile. "You are a rare leader, even among men. If I have you in my quiver, should I not put you to the bow and loose? The Easterners are still astounded at my daring and at your success. Do you know, they still think you are a man? It surpasses their comprehension for you to be a woman! Fools."

Thyatis grinned a little. Then she frowned, considering what he had said. "Augustus Caesar, I am a soldier, you are my commander. Command me. It is my honor to obey. Those men who followed me from Rome will follow me still-the others? I cannot say. I will put it to them, but whether they come or go? That is their decision."

Galen pursed his lips in consideration, but then rose and walked to the worktable he inflicted upon his household servants to carry from Rome to the Eastern capital to Tarsus to here. It disassembled into manageable pieces and was cunningly fitted together with wooden pegs. He ran a finger across the worn varnish on the top. Once it had been in his father's study, in Narbo, when he had been a child. When Galen had left Hispania with his Legions to fight against the pretenders and to claim the purple for himself, it had traveled with him. For the last decade, the office in the Palatine had housed it, and now it was here. He pushed aside a pile of tablets and dragged a parchment map up from under the other debris on the table.

"See here, Centurion, we are at Tauris, in these mountains…" His finger began to trace a path on the map. Thyatis came to his shoulder and leaned over the table herself, listening to him speak, following the finger. "And here, here is Persia proper. Our intent now is to move north into the valley of the Kerenos River, which runs from these mountains down to the Khazar Sea-the Mare Caspium-and join the army of the Great Khan Ziebil."

The Mare Caspium was a large oblong of blue, slanting from north west to south east. The map showed a rampart of mountains rising at its southern end.

"There is a pass," Galen continued, his forefinger resting among those mountains, "through what the Persians call the El'Burz, and beyond it the highlands of Parthia. These lands are rich beyond counting-the heartland of the Sassanid realm. With our combined army-Roman and Khazar-we will wreak great havoc upon those lands."

Thyatis looked up, seeing a grim smile on the face of the Emperor.

"No Roman army has ever penetrated into Parthia itself," he said, answering her unspoken question. "It has always been their surety, their fortress we could not breach. It is the purpose of this campaign, but the prize-ah, the prize-is Ctesiphon."

His hand drew her eye back west, and south, across the mountains that bounded the land of the Two Rivers and the sweep of the plain of Mesopotamia. Hundreds of small notations marked cities, canals, roads. At the south, where the Euphrates and the Tigris drew together, almost touching, was a golden symbol.

"The capital of Persia. The residence of Chrosoes, King of Kings, regnum parthorum. The heart of his realm. A city of nearly a million people, housing all the mechanism and artifice of government. This is your target, if I am to draw you to the bow again."

Thyatis measured the distances on the map. It was a long way to the enemy capital. "And you desire that I deliver it to you, a neat package wrapped with twine?"

"No," Galen said, shaking his head, his eyes dark with worry. "For all its importance, Ctesiphon is not well defended. Rome has higher walls and it is nothing to match the defiance of Constantinople. It is a city that can be defended only by a field army. If we reach it, it will be ours. I want you there, within the city, in secret, when our armies arrive-as insurance."

He paused, his gaze settling upon her. Thyatis straightened up. There was some odd emotion behind the eyes of the Emperor. After a time he sighed and looked down at the map again. "You are well capable of seizing an opportunity, should it present itself. You cannot do that if you do not know what an opportunity is. This is little known, centurion, but the first wife of the King of Kings, Chrosoes, was a Roman princess-Maria, daughter of Emperor Maurice of the East. Yes, Maurice who was murdered by the usurper Phocas, whom Heraclius then slew. The sons of Chrosoes are claimants to the throne of the Eastern Empire. Indeed"-the Emperor of the West stopped and drew a breath-"with a better claim than Heraclius himself, should the matter be argued in the court of law."