The Shadow of Ararat (56 page)

"When it fills to the marker stone"—he gasped—"open the sluice gate so that the baths fill."

Then he fell backward on the mosaic floor of the caldarium, his limbs trembling with the closeness of death. Through the raised floor, he could feel the rush of water into the well like a stampede of bulls.
Close, very close,
he thought, and then rolled over on the sea-green tiles and got up.

Torches guttered in the hallways of the
principia
, the headquarters of the camp, filling the air with the sharp smell of juniper resin. Ahmet limped into the atrium that lay before the offices of the camp commander. Zenobia's guardsmen, a crew of fierce-looking Bactrians with high turbans, hooked noses, and beards plaited into two jutting points, stopped him and looked him over. The Bactrians were only one group out of thousands of mercenaries that the Silk Empress had summoned to her standard. The camp outside was filled with more of them—Blemmyenite archers, Axumite spearmen, Arabic light horse, Indians, Sogdian horse archers and swordsmen, the masses of the Tanukh, and even Persian heavy horse, or
cataphracti
, drawn by the lure of the Queen's gold. Among them, the Nabatean cavalry and heavy infantry seemed out of place, too well ordered to fit in well with the riot of the other tribes. Satisfied that he was inoffensive, the Bactrians allowed Ahmet to enter the tribune's offices.

Zenobia looked up from behind a heavy marble bench she was using as a desk and smiled. Her hair was braided back out of the way. Her secretaries and scribes sat at small portable desks along the walls of the chamber, and two of the maidens who served her were sitting on cushions, sewing. The Queen had shed the heavy silk robes that she favored for riding and wore a simple cotton tunic with linen leggings. The heavy torque of gold that she wore as the symbol of her rule was laid aside as well. There was a smudge of ink on her left cheek. Ahmet bowed and noticed that his kilt was torn and muddy.

"It should not be proper," she said with a lilting amusement in her voice, "for a mere priest to bathe before a Queen." The timbre of her voice shifted. "Did you escape injury?"

"Yes," he said, brushing at the clods of mud that had somehow affixed themselves to his tunic. "The hospital is occupied and nearly ready. The baths are hot, and there is water in the cisterns. The Romans had blocked up the end of the aqueduct. It was little trouble to remove the stones."

Zenobia nodded, her head tilted to one side. Her dark eyes were grave as she looked him over. Then she shook her head and pushed a pair of papyrus scrolls across the bench toward him. The rings, too, were gone from her fingers—delicate settings of lapis and emerald. Her nails were short, but trimmed, for she often rode with gloves.

"It would please me if you read these dispatches over—I understand that you know Latin as well as Greek and Egyptian. I believe that I understand them well enough, but I would like to be sure. Come back when you are done, but no sooner than the second watch change. I have much to do before then."

Ahmet felt one of his eyebrows raise; the second watch was near midnight. Regardless, he bowed and took his leave. Despite her jest, he thought that he would avail himself of the baths and a good scraping now that they had hot water.

After the bell that sounded the change of the second watch, Ahmet came again to the offices of the commander of the camp. Only two of the Bactrians were on guard, but they let him pass without qualm, standing quiet and watchful in the shadows of the entranceway. The clerks and scribes were gone too, leaving the Queen sitting alone at her desk, the only sound the scratching of her pen on the rough paper.

Save for the watchmen, the camp slept heavily, exhausted from the hard march north from Damascus. The army had been slow to move with each contingent stopping and starting at its own schedule. Three days forth from the city, Zenobia had launched into a whirlwind of reorganization that had delayed them again. Now the army was divided into four main
banda
, as the Eastern Empire would name them—the light horse, regardless of their tribe or affiliation, was under the command of ibn'Adi, and Mohammed was his chief lieutenant. The
cataphracts
and
clibanari
, those noblemen with heavy armor for themselves and their mounts, armed with lances, maces, and long swords, were led by the queen's cousin, Zabda of the house of Odenathus. The masses of foot archers, spearmen and slingers were the command of Akhimos Galerius, a Syrian Prince who had served in the armies of the Eastern Empire. The Nabateans remained the sole sore point—Aretas had utterly refused to give up his personal guardsmen, who numbered no less than two thousand heavy horse in full armor. Zenobia had, perforce, made him commander of the reserve, which also consisted of her personal household troops and a contingent of Persian knights from the far southeast of Iran. Another of Zenobia's cousins, Zabbai, was custodian of the baggage train and the hospital.

Ahmet sat quietly, placing the two scrolls in front of him, and waited for the Queen's notice.

She wrote quickly in a strong hand with neat letters. In profile, her face was strong. Her brow was high and traced by the delicate arch of her eyebrows. Her neck, cast in partial shadow by the candles that lighted the desk, was smooth and supple. Tiny gold earrings with ruby centerpieces hung from her ears. Her upper arms were adorned with gold circlets fashioned in the shape of asps. Their eyes were sparks of jet. Something tickled in the back of Ahmet's memory, seeing that and how her hair was arranged in a golden net. When he focused on it, it escaped him.

At last she finished the document and sprinkled fine sand over its surface. Looking up, she smiled at him briefly while she rolled the blotter across the surface. Her seal in purple wax completed the document.

"Done," she said, sighing in weariness. "You have read the dispatches?"

Ahmet nodded.

She stood, bracing herself against him as he stepped to assist her. She shook her left foot, trying to restore circulation. "Behind this room is a stairway that leads to the roof. Let us go there."

She picked up a lantern that had been set by the end of the bench, along with a smoldering taper. Bending down, she lit the oil wick and then raised it to her shoulder. The Queen drew aside a drape that hung in a doorway at the back of the office. In the hallway beyond, a narrow staircase rose up to the right side, and after a moment of climbing worn stone steps they came to the roof. A triangular vault capped each of the rooms below, and these made valleys in the rooftop. Zenobia walked forward carefully, picking her way along the tops of the walls, avoiding the slate roofs or the expanses of curved red tile. At last they came to the side of the
principia
that faced the baths. A narrow, dark alleyway divided the two buildings. From this vantage, few of the lights in the camp could be made out. It was dark and the sky seemed crowded with stars.

Zenobia sat and leaned against the sloping wall behind her.

"Sit," she said, and pinched out the wick of the lantern. Ahmet settled beside her in the dark and found, to his surprise, that a thick woolen blanket had been laid there. A breeze drifted in from the hills, and he could smell the spices and perfume in her hair. The Queen drew another blanket around herself and the priest, settling in close to him. Seemingly of its own will Ahmet's arm circled her waist and drew her closer. She sighed softly and laid her head on his chest. Her own hand, small and delicate, found his.

After a time, when he had thought that she had fallen asleep and the moon had ridden up over the barren hills, she stirred and squeezed his hand.

"Did you read the dispatches?" she said in a sleepy voice.

"Yes." His own voice was husky. Her warmth was disconcerting in the chill of evening.

"What do you think?"

It was his turn to sigh. The reports sent by Palmyrene merchants in the ports of Alexandria, Tyre, Sidon, and—most damning—Caesarea Maritima told the same grim story. Though at first he had scarcely dared credit it, now it seemed undeniable.

"I think that your man in Caesarea has the right of it. The three Legions that the Empire withdrew to the coast are not returning. The two Legions that the Emperors promised your man Adathus are nowhere to be found. We are alone, with Shahin's army at Antioch ready to overwhelm the whole coast. Are you going to press on into the north?"

Zenobia shifted in his arms, sliding into his lap. For a moment, his brain turned off entirely, but when it worked again she was leaning back against his chest with his arms crossed over her breasts, her hair tickling his nose.

"Almost four hundred years ago, a King of Palmyra faced worse odds. He smashed the Persians in open battle at Nicephorum when the Empire was divided in civil war. Emperor Gallienus rewarded him with the titles of
dux Romanorum
and
restitutor totius Orientis
. Since those days the Kings and Queens of Palmyra have stood by the Empire as a shield against Persia. My namesake, the first Queen Zenobia, married Emperor Aurelian, giving up her throne to a cousin, Timolaus. It is my duty to protect these lands from the invaders."

"Even," Ahmet said into the soft cloud of her hair, "when Rome does not stand with you?"

She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. "Rome assumes, but it does not ensure. Because we have always stood at the side of the Empire, they think that we will always stand by them. Aretas reminds me of this with each new sun. Yet... Heraclius is a wise king, and cunning. If he has withdrawn his forces from Syria, it must be to gather them for some other strategy. I
know
that he will not abandon these provinces. If nothing else, he is Roman, and the taxes are too rich to give up! We have some part, unrevealed, to play in that stratagem. If we can play it out to our favor, then things will go well indeed."

"Your chiefs seem to fear battle with Persia," Ahmet said slowly. "They are unsure, they waver. If they knew that Rome was not coming, then they would flee into the desert."

Zenobia snorted in disgust. "I know them. They are weak. They talk among themselves of grand dreams and great plans, yet when the hounds corner the stag, they balk and fall back from the kill. I will have to drive the spear into its heart, even in the face of sharp horns! If I lead, they will follow—for what better moves a man than his pride? If I, a woman, will dare the Tiger of Persia, how can they say that they were any less brave? I will go north, and they will follow. Shahin's army is great, but the Boar is not with him, and I am Shahin's master."

Ahmet laughed and squeezed her close. She turned, smiling up at him.

"Thou conquerest, Empress, thou conquerest."

She wrinkled her pert nose at him but lay back again, weary.

"You are making fun of me," she said. "I shall have your head cut off for it."

Ahmet made as to shudder, then said: "And who would sing you to sleep then, Princess of the Sand?"

"No one." Her voice was sad. "I would be alone again."

They sat in silence for a long time, watching the stars wheel overhead. The moon began to set at last. The night was passing. A colder wind began to blow off of the desert.

"Do not take it amiss, lady, but why have you favored me so? I am neither the handsomest of men nor rich. My birth is poor and my vocation obscure. The favor you show me must plague you in this volatile mix of tribes and chieftains you have assembled. Aretas, for one, rarely looks at me with less than venom in his eyes."

Zenobia laughed, and her small hand snaked out of the blankets to pinch his nose. "What a man you are! You are the most insecure of creatures. All these things are points in your favor, silly man. No one, even the dour Aretas, considers you more than a summer dalliance for me—the mysterious Egyptian priest, caught in the toils of a cunning woman. They say, when they speak of it around their campfires, that I curry the favor of the old gods to consort with you. The Princes and lords sniff and make catty comments about my low taste in men. None of them consider you the least impediment in their plans for me."

Ahmet frowned. "How can you exist amid such a state?"

"I was born to it," she answered calmly, "it has always been so for me. The sole daughter of the house of Septimus Palmyrene is either a prize above all others or the victor who takes the prize herself. My earliest memory is of two of my aunts fighting over their position in my mother's funeral procession. So it has been, so it shall be. I favor you because you have a good heart and know little of me. In you there is some hope that I can be solely myself—not the Queen, not the schemer, not the pivot that the fate of Empires turn upon—but Zenobia, the woman. The failed poet. The scholar."

Ahmet nodded, thinking that he understood.

"There is only one thing that I ask of you, Ahmet. It grates on me to do so, but I see no alternative." She shifted around to face him and her face was grave. "Soon there will be battle and I will lead my men into the thick of it. When that day comes, if you could be at my side to protect me, I would count it a great favor."

"Protect you? I am no warrior!" He stared back at her, puzzled.

She gave him a sad half smile. "Yes you are, my friend. The most precious kind. Persia will come against us with more than their fighting men; they will come with sorcery and dreadful summonings. That is what I need desperately from you, to hold back whatever dark arts they bring to bear upon me."

"But," he said, "I thought that Aretas..."

Zenobia shook her head and placed a finger on his lips. "If I were to fall in battle, Aretas would command. He and his sorcerers are to protect the army as a whole and I believe that they will, but the Persians are not fools, they know whom they face. I will be the focus of all the might they can array against me. Please, stand by my side."

The pleading look in her face was too much for what resolve remained to him.

"Of course," he said, "I will stand by you."

The lost student was forgotten.

Four days after Zenobia's army had occupied Denaba, Ahmet and Mohammed were sitting in the quarters in the
principia
that they had taken for themselves, playing a game that the priest had been given as a gift by one of the Indian officers. Mohammed advanced one of his horsemen along the right-hand side of the board. Ahmet frowned; the Arab played very aggressively, and Ahmet was still trying to divine the patterns of movement the pieces made among the red and black squares of the board. He moved an elephant to the right, to close off the lane of attack that the horseman represented.