Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

He moved his white Parthian aside to let me pass, and turned in the saddle to watch me as I rode on. When Facilis passed him, he smiled again and fingered the neck of his coat-then gestured for his drummer to give the signal, and continued on.

“Have you quarreled with Lord Arshak, my lord?” Banadaspos asked me unhappily, when our party was through the long coils of the dragon and on the clear road behind it.

I looked at him. “You should not ask such questions, Banadaspos,” I said. “I don’t want dueling between his men and ours. Whatever is between him and myself is our own business.”

He was not satisfied with this reply. “It is our business to guard our prince,” he said sullenly. Then he added, in a whisper, “That story Arshak told of chasing a boar never made sense. But I don’t see how…” He stopped. He didn’t see how a quarrel with Arshak could end in a drowning and a lie.

“This affects my honor, not yours,” I said; and at this he fell reluctantly silent.

The rest of the journey to Eburacum was uneventful. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon of the fourth day after leaving Corstopitum.

Eburacum, which we had last visited early in the autumn, lies in green, fertile valley land upon a river, and just south of the Highlands of Brigantia. Besides being the home for the Sixth Legion, the city is the base for the civilian administration of the whole of the northern half of the province-which is run by the legionary legate, though he is officially subordinate to the provincial governor in Londinium. Being in a position of such importance, Eburacum has naturally prospered. The stone-based half-timbered buildings crowd unpleasantly close together, overshadowing the street, and the main market square seems in contrast very bright, surrounded by the white facades of the grand public buildings. The shops sell everything from hunting dogs to imported glassware.

The legionary fortress lies the other side of the river from the market square, a severe castle frowning upon its ostentatious neighbor. All forts are much alike. All have the same shape, rectangular with rounded corners; all have the same two main streets, the Via Principalis and the Via Principia, running from the four gates past the neat barrack blocks, and where those two streets meet, the headquarters building and the commanding officer’s house invariably face one another. I had always found the uniformity repellant before, and this time was unsettled to discover that it merely seemed convenient.

We were met at the fort gates and escorted first to the stable yard, where we were instructed to leave our horses and the wagons, and then to the places where we were supposed to sleep-a guesthouse for Facilis, the tribune’s house recently vacated by Arshak for myself, and barracks for the rest of the men. I did not argue, but I told my men, in Sarmatian, that they could stay in their wagons if they wanted to. We were hardly going to be pushed into the barracks by force, and the wagons could be parked as comfortably in the stable yard as anywhere else, so why quarrel over what can be ignored? I left the others to settle in, and, though it was late in the afternoon, took Eukairios and went at once to see the legate.

I was admitted immediately. Priscus seemed pleased to see me, and was happy to get down to business. He had chosen a number of farms for the horses, but he was perfectly happy to add River End to the list. Eukairios and I had a tentative list of mares to breed in the next season, and stallions to cover them, and the arrangements as to which farm would take how many horses were soon made. Priscus then turned to the “other business” he’d mentioned, and my apprehensions about it turned out to have been entirely misplaced. Another eight dragons of Sarmatian cavalry were expected to arrive in Britain between April and July, and the legate wanted my advice on how to accommodate them. I was surprised and delighted, particularly when it turned out that one of the companies was the fifth dragon, commanded by my elder sister Aryazate’s husband, Cotys, a friend as close as any I’d had in my life. These troops were wintering in various locations between the Danube and the ocean but would cross the Channel as soon as the weather permitted. I gave Priscus a great deal of advice on the spot, mostly to do with choosing sites that had enough grazing and allowing the troops the use of cattle to produce all the milk they’d need. Even when the legate had had enough for one day and dismissed me, I kept thinking of other things to tell him, and ordering Eukairios to write them down. Eukairios was impatient to stop work and go see his fellow Christians, and eventually said so.

“You’ll simply have to learn to write,” he told me, while I chewed on my lip in frustration. His eyes were glinting with amusement.

“But I have heard that writing is difficult, and one must learn very young, or not at all.”

He smiled, putting away his pen. “Now, if I were to assure you that writing’s easy, I might find myself in the same position as your men did when they promised me that riding a horse is the easiest thing in the world, and that human beings just naturally stay on-and then were unable to account for it when I fell off. I certainly don’t find writing difficult. But I did indeed learn it very young, if not quite as young as you Sarmatians learn riding, since you seem to sit on the saddle behind your mothers before you can even walk. All I can say is I think you’d be able to learn it and you’d undoubtedly find it useful if you did. But I must go speak to my friends as soon as possible, so that we can make arrangements for… if they agree.”

“Very well, very well!” I said, thinking of something else that I would now simply have to try to remember. “Meet me in the morning, and we will finish this then. I will sleep in my wagon tonight, but you may use the tribune’s house they allotted us, if you prefer-or stay with your friends.”

Between thinking of arrangements for the other eight dragons and worrying about Pervica, I had trouble getting to sleep that night. I tossed and turned in my wagon, and at last got up, pulled on my coat, and stepped outside. The night was clear and very cold and the moon was waning. It was about midnight and everything lay still, the stone of paving and walls white in the moonlight, the shadows very black. I limped slowly toward the stables to check on my horses. I was about halfway there when I heard the shouts, faint with distance, and smelled smoke. Then the trumpets sounded from the gates, and there was a sound of feet running. I ran back to the wagon, grabbed my sword and my bow case, and ran in the same direction as the feet, thinking wildly that the city was under attack.

But the alarm had been raised for a house on fire. I arrived at the row of tribunes’ houses on the Via Principalis to find flames pouring from the windows of one of them and half the Sixth Legion, in various states of undress, lining up with buckets to fetch water from the aqueduct. A centurion was shouting at some men to hurry up with an oak beam. I registered all this before I realized that the house was the one I myself had been allotted, and that Eukairios might be inside. I pushed past the legionaries and hurried toward it.

The stone walls of the house radiated heat like an open oven, and the slates of the roof were cracking like chestnuts in a fire and falling into the flames below. The buckets of water hurled by the legionaries hissed deafeningly on the flames, and clouds of smoke and steam billowed out to choke anyone who went near. The centurion bellowed at his men, striking them with his vine staff and pointing at the door; they raised the oak beam and struck with it, trying to batter down the door.

“Is anyone in there?” I shouted.