The Gate of Fire (61 page)

"No!" Khalid looked hurt at the implication. "These are spoils of war—and fairly gained, too. We captured them in port at Muza. They were just sitting there, and everyone was so eager to meet you... I decided that you needed a fleet. Here it is!"

Mohammed turned the youth around and gestured at the ships that had come into the harbor. All of them had found a place to tie up, and more men were debarking from each one. The ships seemed to be packed to the railings with men, hobbled camels, bundles of goods, and barrels. "I sent you south with two thousand men—both yours and mine—to scout a position of the enemy. You seem to have come back with rather more than that..."

Khalid clapped the older man on the shoulder, still grinning widely. "Come, let's get in out of the sun and I'll tell you all about it."

Mohammed shook his head—more troubles were sure to come of this. He signaled to Shadin, and the mercenary moved to join them.

"Shadin, incorporate these men immediately. Separate them out, one or two to each
qaitaba
. All save Khalid's own men—put them with the other
muqaddama
scouts."

Shadin nodded sharply. They had already gone through all of this before, during the ride north.

"...and so I told them that you had foretold a great war, one that would drive the demons from the earth and cast down Rome and Persia both. I told them of your visions and the Light that touched us all at Ka'ba. I tell you, Lord Mohammed, it was like a spark in grain dust—there were four thousand men pledging themselves to the Straight Path before I could blink."

Khalid leaned back on the couch, scratching at his closely cropped beard and smiling at the memory. He, Mohammed, Shadin, Jalal, and Uri were sitting in the upper room of the governor's house. Platters that had held bulgur wheat in paprika sauce and roast lamb and hummus were scattered on a low table between them. The Quraysh was seated at the head of the little gathering, his back to the window, facing the door. Outside, warm night lay on the port and the town, broken only by the lights of watch fires on the crumbling walls and the murmur of men going about their business after dark. Mohammed looked around, gauging the mood of the other men.

Jalal and Shadin were as solid as ever, their weatherworn, scarred faces at rest. The brothers had seen armies come and go, fighting in a hundred wars around the rim of the world. He supposed they had been born in some dusty frontier town—Rome's frontier? Persia's?—it did not matter. They had sworn themselves to him in the ruin of Palmyra and had not left his side since. Jalal looked back, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a hidden smile. The bowman had never been a general before and found that it suited him. Shadin nodded, too. The hulking swordsman would do whatever the situation demanded.

Uri was another matter. The Ben-Sarid had always found Mekkah a hostile place because they lived apart with their own traditions, laws, and God. It must grate upon the proud chief to see his tribesmen subsumed into the Army of the Companions. The lean, dark man had the bearing of a prince. Was Mohammed his king, then? Mohammed lifted his chin in question, catching his boyhood friend's eyes. Uri shrugged and then nodded. Mohammed made a mental note to talk to Uri later, alone, to see what troubled his mind.

The Quraysh turned back to Khalid and nodded slightly himself. The addition of five thousand fresh troops was welcome, even though most of the men who had followed the youth from the south were sailors. Then there was the matter of horses or camels for them—they had brought only a few hundred in their ships. The rest would have to walk. The Lord of the Wasteland had blessed them, though, for the capture of the Persian armory in San'a had netted them a full hundred suits of the lamellar mail favored by the Sassanid knights. The Sahaba now counted nearly eight hundred fully armored horsemen among their number.

"Well met, then, young Al'Walid. We had been waiting for the next merchant convoy to come into the trap, but now that you are here, we will move north."

Mohammed unrolled a map inked on a scroll of parchment. It had been part of the spoils of the governor's house. Spidery lines and crabbed little writing in the Imperial script showed the land between Leuke Kome at the southern end of the map all the way to the highlands of Nabatea and beyond, up into the Decapolis on the east and Judaea on the west. Mohammed traced a line overland from the port along the narrow arm of the sea that ran up to Aelana. "Our first march must be to follow the garrison road to the Roman port of Aelana, here at the southern end of Wadi Arabah. My intent is this, to make a strong raid into the Nabatean heartland, here beyond their capital at Petra, and see what forces have returned to the area."

He looked up, his face grim. The singing voice that had first come to him on the mountaintop urged him to all speed, but he knew that he had to temper that with caution. He did not have an army of
jinn
at his disposal.

"All of the Imperial Legions were stripped out of the entire Judean coast last year and sent into the far north to fight the Persians. The armies of Nabatea, Palmyra, and the cities of the Decapolis were smashed at Emesa and then ground to bits in the siege of Palmyra. If luck holds, there will be little to prevent us from ranging far and wide, unhindered."

Jalal raised an eyebrow, his own eyes straying over the map.

"And our destination, Lord Mohammed? We can strike as we please with this force, but the changes you have made and the training we undertake at your direction—these things indicate that you have more in mind than a simple raid."

Mohammed smiled grimly. If the singing voice in his mind did not fill him with surety, he would have turned aside from his course as a sure road to death and bleached bones beside some desert road.

"Our first destination is here." His forefinger marked the distance from the symbol that represented Petra to the north and east, to a square marked in red squatting at the center of the Decapolis. "The great Legion encampment at Lejjun. If memory serves, there is a great armory there and, more to my liking, a store of heavy siege equipment: rams, disassembled towers, ballistae, all kinds of artillery. Enough for two full Legions."

The Arab generals raised their heads at this. The use of such equipment was known to all of them, but it was not the way of the tribes to spend effort against the walls of cities and fortresses. That was Rome's game, and its great strength. The desert peoples came and went like the wind, taking what they would and then retiring in the face of the plodding Legion. A siege? That was not in their blood.

"What city?" Khalid leaned forward, his face filled with eagerness.

"You will see," Mohammed muttered, looking down at the map. It was a long way to go to reach the great Legion camp, and anything could happen between here and there. "But there is little time..."

"Mylord, if that is so, then let me take our fleet and some reliable men." Khalid's eyes were ablaze with his eagerness. His thin, well-manicured finger stabbed at the map. "While you advance along the coastal road, let me land at Aelana—even as I planned to land here today. By the time the Sahaba reach the port, it will be in our hands."

Mohammed grimaced and opened his mouth to refute the boy's plan, but Jalal was leaning over the map, too, and there was a gleam in his eye.

"Mylord," the thick-shouldered Tanukh said, "we can send the infantry by sea with all of the heavy supplies in the ships. Then we won't have to drag them across a hundred miles of desert and badlands. Wagons, too, if there is space in these fat-bellied coasters..."

Then Mohammed did smile.

Groaning in pain, her limbs loose with exhaustion and trembling, Shirin flopped down on the bare cot that served as her bed. A thin cotton blanket lay across the pallet, and it possessed a prickly straw mattress that never failed to stab her in the back when she was trying to sleep. The dormitories for the
ephebe
of the Temple of the Huntress were neither gracious nor comfortable. One of the older sisters had mentioned in passing that the dormitory was one of the original caverns hewn from the rock of the island by the first Sisters. To Shirin's eye, they had not been improved since that time. She knew from experience that the higher chambers, cut into the cliffs above the lagoon, were both inviting and well furnished. The student dormitories, however, were not. She lay on her back, a little twisted to the side to avoid the worst of the prickles, and stared at the rough, gray ceiling in a daze.

It was the end of another day of the backbreaking torture that comprised their physical conditioning. Unfortunately for her bruised and tortured muscles it was not the classical Persian gymnasium, filled with a lot of baths, massages, light sparring with a blunted spear or sword, recitations of epic lays by notable poets, or even ignoble lays conducted by sweaty would-be playwrights in the back of the towel room. It was hard work, harder than the late fall hunt or the exercises that Thyatis had put her through on the long trip by sea around Arabia. Shirin lay still, trying to keep the muscles on the insides of her thighs from seizing up due to sheer fatigue. Worse, the Princess had thought that she had been in good shape when she had arrived on the island.

Someone touched the bottom of her foot, and she blinked awake. She had not realized that she had fallen asleep. The dim radiance from the high circular windows in the roof of the hall had gone, leaving only the pale guttering flame of a torch by the door. Her cot flexed as someone sat down next to her.

Shirin's nostrils flared, and she knew that it was the Gothic girl, Claudia. Even in the spare confines of the dormitory, the willowy blonde managed to find some kind of sweet scent for her hair. It might be jasmine or juniper rosin. There was a touch on her arm.

"Shi? Are you awake?"

"Yes," hissed the Princess, suddenly feeling the throb of her upper arms and the insides of her wrists. A four-hour stint with the wooden man left the muscles of her arms like jelly. "What time is it?"

"After dinner," Claudia answered with a smile in her voice. "I brought you some. Cook was not pleased, but I told her you were studying extra hard in the
bibliotheca,
and she relented."

Shirin levered herself up and wedged her back against the smooth stone wall of the cavern. Claudia put a wooden bowl in her hands—it was still warm and smelled faintly of fish. Shirin wrinkled up her nose. The diet of everyone on the island was, not surprisingly, mostly fish. The dark blue seas around Thira yielded an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes of fish—but it was all still fish. Shirin had never really liked fish. She took the cover off the bowl and put it aside. The warm, tart smell of fish stew assailed her nostrils and she sighed, picking up the spoon. At least there was a pickle.

After she was done, Claudia took the bowl and spoon away. The Gothic girl had sat quietly on the end of Shirin's bed the whole time, which Shirin thought was a little odd, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to the barbarian woman. Shirin flexed her fingers, feeling the tremor in her muscles. It was a bad day, she thought sourly, when even your fingertips were sore.

"Shi? Is it true what they say about you?"

Shirin folded her legs under her as she had seen Lady Mikele do. It was more comfortable for sitting than squatting was. "What is true? And who are
they
?" Inwardly Shirin shook her head in dismay. The gossip in the Palace of Birds in Ctesiphon had flown faster than a shrike; why should the temple be any different?

"The older girls—the ones who are about to go out into the world—they say that you are a princess, that you were married to an emperor. Is that true?" The Gothic girl's voice was tinged with a little awe and a little envy.

Unseen in the dark, Shirin rolled her dark brown eyes. Oh dear, she thought, some things never change... "I will answer your question," she said with asperity, "if you will answer some of mine."

"Oh, of course!" Claudia clapped her hands together in delight. Shirin gritted her teeth.

"Very well," the Khazar woman said, "I was a princess and I was married to an emperor and I did live in a great palace in a rich and lovely city far away. It was like a dream, but eventually I woke up."

"Oh, no... did something bad happen?"

Shirin nodded in the darkness, though she wasn't sure that the Gothic girl could see her. "Ah, now, it's my turn to ask a question. You've been here longer than I—when can we leave this place?"

Shirin took two paces, her back stiff with repressed rage, turned, and then took two more back. The cell was not large, only big enough for a woven reed mat on the floor, a bed no larger than Shirin's own cot, and a folding screen made of pale white paper painted with delicate images of birds and a mountain shrouded in clouds. An oil lamp made from a ceramic bowl and a wick provided a wan yellow light.

"This is insane. I will not stay
here
on this fish-stinking island for another four
years
before I am allowed to see my children." The Khazar woman's voice slid unerringly upward in scale, trembling toward a scream of rage.

"That is the rule and the law that binds the
ephebe
once they have sworn themselves to the service of the Goddess." Mikele's voice was quiet and calm, with only a hint of the lilting accent that normally colored her speech. "You have sworn yourself to her service—before the Matron, no less."

Shirin spun savagely on her heel. She wanted very much to smash her fist into the calm, round face of her teacher, but raw animal instinct held her back. Her training had progressed well, but there was no way that she could face the supple skill of the master with her mind clouded with rage. The result would be painful and quick. "I will not abandon my children," she bit out between clenched teeth. "I will not come back to them after four years denned on this island to find them fully grown and looking upon me with strangers' eyes."

Mikele nodded her head, letting the long wave of her unbound black hair fall over her shoulder. She had been combing her hair when Shirin had barged into her room. The Chin woman was sitting on the bed, her legs crossed under her, with a mother-of-pearl comb in one hand. Her hair was very long, reaching well past her waist. During the day, on the training floor of the gymnasium, she kept it bound up and held in place by long silver pins.