The journey across the plateau country put all of Tahmasp’s gifts on display. He always knew which stream bed would be dry and which had water in it, which band of herdsmen would sell or trade a few head of cattle and which run them deep into the badlands at first sight of strangers.

  He also had a knack for knowing which routes would have Yezda on them and which would be clear. The Arshaum only had to fight once, and then briefly. A band of Yezda collided with Arigh’s vanguard and skirmished until the rest of the plainsmen came up to help their comrades, at which point their foes abruptly lost interest in the encounter and withdrew.

  Along with his other talents, the swashbuckling caravaneer was soon fluently profane in the Arshaum tongue. His huge voice and swaggering manner made the plainsmen smile, but before long they were obeying him as readily as they did Arigh, who shook his head in bemused respect. “This once I wish I could write like you do,” he remarked to Gorgidas one day. “I’d take notes, I really would.”

  For all Tahmasp’s skills, though, there was no escaping the fact the invaders were loose in the westlands. Broken bridges, the burned-out shell of a noble’s estate, unplanted cropland all told the same story. And once the Arshaum traversed a battlefield where, by the wreckage still lying about, both sides had been Yezda.

  As was his way, Gorgidas looked for larger meanings in what he saw. “That field shows Videssos’ hope,” he said when they camped for the evening. “It is the nature of evil to divide against itself, and that is its greatest weakness. Think of how Wulghash and Avshar fell out with each other instead of working together against their common enemy.”

  “Well said!” Lankinos Skylitzes exclaimed. “At the last great test, Phos will surely triumph.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Gorgidas answered tartly. Skylitzes’ generalizations were not the sort he was after.

  Gaius Philippus irritated both the Greek and the Videssian by objecting. “I wouldn’t lump Avshar and Wulghash together. You ask me, they’re different.”

  “How, when they both seek to destroy the Empire?” Skylitzes said.

  “So did the Namdaleni last year—and would again if they saw the chance. Wulghash, from what I saw of him, is more like that—an enemy, aye, but not wicked for wickedness’ sake, if you take my meaning. Avshar, now …” The senior centurion paused, shaking his head. “Avshar is something else again.”

  No one argued that.

  Marcus said, “I think there’s something wrong with your whole scheme, Gorgidas, not just with the detail of how evil Wulghash is—though I read him the same way Gaius does.”

  “Go on.” The prospect of a lively argument drew Gordigas more than criticism bothered him.

  Scaurus picked his words with care. “It strikes me that faction and mistrust are part of the nature of mankind, not of evil alone. Otherwise how would you explain the strife Videssos has seen the last few years, or for that matter, Rome, before we came here?”

  When the Greek hesitated, Skylitzes gave his own people’s answer: “It is Skotos, of course, seducing men toward the wrong.”

  That smug “of course” annoyed Gorgidas enough to make him forget for a moment how deeply the Videssians believed in their faith. He snapped, “Utter nonsense. The responsibility for evil lies in every man, not at the hand of some outside force. There would be no evil, unless men made it.”

  That Greek confidence in the importance of the individual was something Marcus also took for granted, but it shocked Skylitzes. Viridovix had been sitting quietly by without joining the discussion, but when he saw the imperial officer’s face grow stern he tossed in one of the mordant comments that came easily to his lips these days: “Have a care there, Gordigas dear; can you no see the pile o’ fagots he’s building for you in his mind?”

  On the steppe Skylitzes would have managed a sour smile and passed it off. Now he was back in his native land. His expression did not change. The discussion faltered and died. Sometimes, Marcus thought, the imperials were almost as uncomfortable to be around as their enemies—another argument against Gorgidas’ first thesis.

  The little spring bubbled out from between two rocks; a streamlet trickled away eastward. “Believe it or not, it’s the rising of the Ithome,” Tahmasp said. “You can follow it straight into Amorion from here.”

  “You’re not for town with us, then?” Viridovix asked disappointedly; the flamboyant caravaneer was a man after his own heart. “Where’s the sense in that, to be after coming so far and sheering off at the very end?”

  “You’d starve as a merchant,” Tahmasp answered. “No trader in his right mind will hit the same city twice in one year. I’ve kept the bargain I had forced on me; now it’s time to think of my own profit again. A panegyris is coming up in Doxon in about two weeks. If I push, I’ll make it.”

  Nothing anyone said would make him change his mind. When Arigh, who admired his resourcefulness, pressed him hard, he said, “Another thing is, I want out from under soldiers. Aye, your plainsmen have treated me better than I thought they would, but there’ll be a big army at Amorion, and I want no part of it. To a trader, soldiers are worse than bandits, because they have the law behind ’em. Why do you think I got out of Mashiz?” The Arshaum had no reply to that.

  Tahmasp pounded Gaius Philippus on the shoulder. “You’re all right.” He turned to Scaurus, saying, “As for you, I’m glad I don’t have to bargain against you—a high mucky-muck and never let on! Well, now that I’m shut of you, I wish you luck. I have the feeling you’ll need it.”

  “So do I,” the tribune said.

  He did not think Tahmasp even heard him. The caravan master was shouting orders to his guardsmen and the merchants with him. The guards, under the capable direction of Kamytzes and Muzaffar, smoothly took their places. When the merchants dawdled, Tahmasp bellowed, “Last one in line is my present to the Arshaum!” That got them moving. His big shaved head gleaming in the sun, Tahmasp burst into bawdy song as his caravan pulled away from the plainsmen, and never looked back.

  “There goes a free man,” Gaius Philippus said, following him with his eyes.

  “Maybe so, but how long will he stay that way if Avshar wins? It’s our job to keep him free,” Marcus answered.

  “Plenty of worse work, comes to that.”

  The Arshaum followed the Ithome east. It swiftly grew greater as one small tributary after another added their waters to it. By the end of their first day of travel, it was a river of respectable size, and the land through which it passed was beginning to seem familiar to the Romans.

  “At this rate, we’ll make Amorion in a couple of days,” Scaurus remarked as they camped by the side of the stream.

  “Aye, and Gavras bloody well better be glad to see us, too,” Gaius Philippus said. “Seeing as how he’s sitting there, he’ll have a time saying we didn’t get it back for him.”

  “I wonder.” Now that their goal was so close, the tribune found himself more and more apprehensive. Had the Avtokrator pledged him only nobility, he would have felt sure of his reward. But there had been more in the bargain than that.… He wondered how Alypia was.

  Viridovix did nothing to help his self-assurance, saying, “Sure and a king’s a bad one for keeping promises, for who’s to make him if he doesna care to?” Despite having heard from the Romans that Thorisin had put Komitta aside, he was also uncertain of the welcome the Emperor had waiting for him. Fretting over that took his mind off other concerns.

  Morning twilight roused the Arshaum with a jolt when their sentries caught sight of a squad of strange horsemen. “Careless buggers,” Gaius Philippus said, bolting down a wheatcake. “They stand out like whores at a wedding, silhouetted against the dawn that way. From any other direction, they’d be invisible.”

  The riders showed no sign of pulling back after they were discovered. “The cheek o’ them now, looking us over bold as you please,” Viridovix said. He set his Gallic helmet firmly on his head; its crest, a seven-spoked bronze wheel, glinted red as his hair in the light of the just-risen sun.

  Marcus shielded his eyes with his hand to study the horsemen, who still had not moved. “I don’t think that’s cheek,” he said at last. “I think it’s confidence. They have a big force somewhere behind them, unless I miss my guess.”

  Gorgidas was also squinting into the sun. As he was a bit farsighted while Scaurus was the reverse, he saw more than the tribune. “They’re nomads,” he said worriedly. “What are the Yezda doing in strength so close to a big imperial army?”

  Speculation ceased as they ran for their horses; most of the Arshaum were already mounted and hooted at them for their slowness. “Took you long enough,” Arigh sniffed when they were finally in the saddle. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”

  He led a hundred riders toward the strangers: in line, not column, but advancing slowly so as not to seem an open threat. Marcus could see the horsemen ahead reaching over their shoulders for arrows, but none of them raised a bow. Two or three were in corselets of boiled leather like those of the Arshaum, but most wore chain-mail shirts.

  With a raised hand, Arigh halted his men at the extreme edge of arrow range. He rode forward alone. After a few seconds, one of the waiting riders matched the gesture. When they were about eighty yards apart, the Arshaum chief shouted a Khamorth phrase he had memorized: “Who are you?” By his looks, the approaching horseman could have been a Yezda or off the Pardrayan plain.

  “Who are you?” The answer came back in oddly accented Videssian.

  Marcus had heard that lilt before. He dug his heels into his pony’s sides and rode toward Arigh at a fast trot. Several Arshaum shouted for him to get back in his place. His own shout, though, was louder than theirs: “Ho, Khatrisher! Where’s Pakhymer?”

  The stranger had set a hand to his saber when the Roman came toward him, but snatched it away at the hail. “He’s right where he belongs and nowhere else,” he yelled back. “Who wants to know?” The flip answer did not bother Scaurus; most Khatrishers were like that.

  “They’re friends,” he called to Arigh, then shouted his own name to the Khatrisher.

  “Why, you lying whoreson! He’s dead!”

  “Dead, am I?” The tribune rode past Arigh until he was close enough to see the Khatrisher clearly. As he’d hoped, the fellow was one of Laon Pakhymer’s minor officers. “Look me over—” What was the name? he had it! “—look me over, Konyos, and tell me I’m dead.”

  Konyos did, carefully. “Well, throw me in the chamberpot,” he said. “It is you. Is that other duck still with you, the ornery one?”

  “Gaius?” Marcus hid a smile. “He’s back there.”

  “He would be,” Konyos said darkly. He waved at the Arshaum. “Who are those beggars, anyway? If you’re with ’em, I don’t suppose they’re Yezda.”

  “No.” As Scaurus began to explain, the Arshaum and Khatrishers, seeing there would be no fighting, moved toward each other.

  Konyos eyed the men from Shaumkhiil with lively interest; their wide, almost beardless faces, snub noses, and slanted eyes were all new to him. “Funny-looking bastards,” he remarked without malice. “Can they fight?”

  “They’ve come through Pardraya and Yezd.”

  “They can fight.”

  The tribune introduced Konyos to Arigh, then nearly shouted the question that was burning in him: “What is Gavras doing in Amorion?”

  “You ought to know,” the Kharisher said. “It’s your fault.”

  “Huh?” That was the last answer Scaurus expected.

  “What else? When Senpat and Nevrat Sviodo gave Minucius the word you’d been shipped off to give Zemarkhos what for, wild horses couldn’t have held him back from piling in to help. Naturally, Pakhymer brought us along for the ride.”

  A lump rose in Marcus’ throat, despite Konyos’ breezy way with the story. More than anything else, it showed what his troops—and the Khatrishers, too—felt about him. “The legionaries are at Amorion, then?”

  “I just said so, didn’t I? Everything by the numbers, one-two—damn boring, if you ask me. Not that you did.”

  “Hmmp.” That was Gaius Philippus, crowding up with Viridovix and Gorgidas to hear the news.

  Konyos backtracked for them, then went on, grinning. “We had a rare old time, punching up the Arandos. We moved so hard and fast Yavlak still doesn’t know what hit him.”

  Gaius Philippus jabbed an accusing finger at the Khatrisher. “It was your bloody army—our own bloody army!—moving on Amorion all the time?”

  “Of course. Who did you think it was?”

  “Never mind,” the veteran said. “Oh, my aching head.” Marcus wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. He and Gaius Philippus had only gone west with Tahmasp’s caravan—had only ended up in Mashiz, and the tunnels under it—because they were sure that army had to be Yezda.

  Konyos turned to the tribune. “Oh, one more thing—Gagik Bagratouni has a bone to pick with you.”

  “Me? Why? I got rid of Zemarkhos for him.”

  “That’s just why. He wanted to do it himself, a little at a time, over days. Can’t say I blame him much, either, after things I’ve heard. But seeing as the bugger’s dead, I expect Bagratouni’ll forgive you this once.” The Khatrisher sobered for a moment. “We thought the two of you’d gone into a hole you’d never come out of, too. We tore Amorion apart looking for you and never found a trace.” He sounded a little indignant they had survived.

  “A hole we’d never come out of?” Scaurus said with a shudder of memory. “That’s too close to being true—there are worse places than Amorion.”

  The orderly rows of eight-man leather tents behind the square, palisaded earthwork made a striking contrast with the irregular arrangements all around them: here a noble’s silk pavilion; there a clump of yurts; further over, a whole forest of shelters clumped together at random, lean-to next to three or four small cotton tents next to a huge canvas arrangement that could have held a platoon.

  The sentry at the entrenched gate was a dark, stocky man wearing a sleeveless mail shirt. He peered over the edge of his big semicylindrical shield at the four approaching horsemen in nomad leathers. Hefting his heavy javelin, he called, “Halt and state your business.”

  “Hello, Pinarius. That’s not much of a good day,” Marcus said in Latin, and watched the Roman legionary drop his pilum.

  “Will you look at the puir gowk of a man, now?” Viridovix said, shaking his head sadly. “If he canna put names to the lot of us, sure and he’ll be useless for telling friend from foe.”

  Pinarius had been about to dash away into the camp, but when he recognized Gaius Philippus he did not dare break discipline by leaving his post. Instead he shouted, “By the gods, the tribune’s back, and everybody with him!” Snatching up his spear and reversing it with a flourish, he stood aside to let the newcomers enter.

  Discipline did suffer then, as Romans tumbled from their tents and came rushing from their drills with sword and spear. Marcus and his comrades scrambled down from their ponies before they were pulled off. The legionaries swarmed round them, reaching over each other to embrace them, clasp their hands, pound them on the back, simply touch them.

  “Och, ye didna gi’ me such a thrashing back in Gaul,” Viridovix complained in mock anger. The Romans hooted at him.

  For Gorgidas, who was particular about whom he touched, the tumultuous welcome was something of an ordeal. He was surprised to find Rakio at his side; the Yrmido had followed him when he left Arigh’s band, but at a distance. Someone noticed the stranger. “Who’s this?”

  “A friend,” the Greek answered.

  “Good enough.” From then on Rakio was pummeled with as much enthusiasm as any of the others. Unlike Gorgidas, he relished it.

  “Way there! Clear aside!” Sextus Minucius came pushing through the legionaries. He made slow going of it, for the crush was very tight, but at last he stood in front of the tribune. Months of command had matured the young soldier; there was a finished look to his broad, handsome face that Scaurus had not seen before.

  He snapped off a precise salute. “Returning your command to you, sir!”

  Marcus shook his head. “It’s not mine to take back. Gavras stripped me of it before he sent me out against Zemarkhos.”

  The legionaries cried out angrily. Minucius said, “We heard about that, sir. All I have to say is, we choose who leads us, and nobody else.” He saluted again.

  The Romans shouted again, this time in vociferous agreement. “Damn right!” “We don’t tell Gavras his business; let him stay out of ours!” “Weren’t for us, he’d still be sitting back in Videssos. We punched a hole in the Yezda a blind man could’ve walked through.” And a rising chorus: “Scaurus, Scaurus, Scaurus!” Moved past words, the tribune returned the salute.

  The cheers were deafening. Viridovix nudged Gaius Philippus. “You’ll be noticing there’s none of ’em making the welkin ring for you,” he chuckled.

  “There’d be something wrong if they were,” the veteran replied evenly. “I’m supposed to be the cantankerous blackguard who makes the boss look good.”

  Fed up with soft answers, the Gaul snapped, “Aye, well, you’re right for it,” and felt better for earning a scowl from the senior centurion.

  The non-Romans among the legionaries hung back at first to let Marcus’ countrymen greet him, but they soon joined the celebration, too. Burly Vaspurakaners folded him into bear hugs, shouting a welcome in vile Latin and almost equally thick Videssian.

  “So, you are safe after all,” Gagik Bagratouni boomed, crushing the breath from the tribune. With his proud, heavy-boned features, thick wavy hair, and black mat of beard, the nakharar always reminded Scaurus of a lion. “For all we tried, we did not get here enough quickly, and thought the cursed priest had killed you.”

  “I’m amazed you came so close,” Marcus said.

  “Good information,” Bagratouni said smugly. He turned, looked around, pointed. “Senpat, Nevrat—to me!”

  The two shoved their way up to the nakharar and Scaurus. Senpat Sviodo was the only man the tribune knew who could bring off wearing the Vaspurakaners’ traditional three-crowned tasseled cap; his good looks and zestful character let him get away with whatever he chose. He stamped a booted foot and shouted out the first three notes of a war song. “Hai, hai, hai! We thought we’d see you sooner, but rather late than not at all, as the old saw goes.”