Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

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 Walach 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.

She would have to make a decision soon, to go or to stay. To fulfill her duty or to hang on, seeing what more she could learn. A soft giggle distracted her, and she drew her legs up, folding them under her. Two shapes moved in the darkness under the shoulder of the engine. White skin flashed in the dim moonlight, and a deeper voice answered. Krista curled her lip in disgust. For a dead man, the old Roman had not lost any taste for the pleasures of flesh.

And Alais is all too willing, seeking some advantage of it.

The dynamic of the small group had changed markedly with the introduction of the Walach girl and her "friends" to the circle. The other Walach, pale and quiet, had proved invaluable in the completion of the engine. They were tireless once Maxian had graced them with the elixir, and the dreadful haunted look that had filled their eyes was gone. Some, like the boy Anatol, were even kind in their own way. He had spent hours stitching the rich image of a curling serpent that adorned the back of her half-tunic. But Alais? She was poison.

Krista smiled, caressing the shape of the spring-gun snugly tied to her left arm. Someday something would happen in some confused moment, and the Walach woman and her soft full breasts, overgrown like some lush flower left in the dark for too long, would be a corpse. Laughter filtered through the trees. The old Roman and the woman had gone through the brush and up the hill. Moonlight fell in long slats in the passages of the wood. Krista stood, shrugging the half-tunic into place. A little ways away, she could see them.