Gallus held the man’s gaze until he and his two comrades wandered off into the shade. A cry from Carbo and a whoosh of air by his ear snapped him from the trance. He spun and threw up his wooden sword to parry the chopping blow of the nearest swordsman. Splinters flew from the blow. At once, all thoughts dissolved and he leapt forward in riposte.
Tamur disguised a scowl as the bout carried on before him. The thought came to him again: the thing the aged warrior in his ranks had told him as they brought the captured Romans back through the desert. I fought alongside your father. Cyrus was iron-willed and noble. But something changed in him in his last years. He became embittered. He was not himself. Some said it was as if he had been possessed by a demon.
Just then, Ramak shot to his feet, applauding a stealthy lunge from one swordsman.
Tamur looked to the archimagus, then thought of the news he had heard that morning. Two new gunds of cataphractii had been commissioned. Two thousand riders that would be recruited using silver from the House of Aspaphet. Yet he as ruler of these lands had given no such order. A question stung on his chest and demanded to be asked. ‘Tell me again how it was agreed to raise the new cavalry division?’
Ramak turned away from the fight and sat again, his top lip twitching almost imperceptibly. ‘You would search for a smudge in the bluest of skies, Spahbad. I gave the word so you did not have to. I am paving the road to your destiny.’
Tamur’s anger cooled a fraction at this. The archimagus was always swift to answer his questions and allay his fears like this.
‘Remember, Spahbad. We are on the cusp of greatness,’ Ramak continued. ‘Do not let doubts muddy your thoughts. Your father’s greatest strength was his determination.’
Tamur felt a surge of emotion at this, his eyes stinging. All his thoughts fell away.
‘I see much of him in you,’ Ramak smiled.
Chapter 14
Izodora shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted ahead. The sea of dunes ended there. The flats and the oasis waited just over the last sandy ridge. She clicked her tongue and the twelve riders with her picked up the pace. Their patrol had been swift and uneventful, and her thoughts were now on bathing in the cool, shady pool amidst the palms. One rider galloped ahead, then slowed suddenly atop the sandy ridge. She frowned when he held up a hand, noticing the smattering of dark carrion birds in the air beyond.
She squeezed her mare’s flanks and the beast cantered up beside the other rider. What lay before her turned her stomach. The golden, dusty flats were plastered in patches of russet blood, dried to a crisp and reeking. Punctuating this gruesome carpet were mutilated bodies, flecked with battered armour. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Twisted chunks of meat and severed limbs, white bone poking through chewed flesh. Swarms of gnats and mosquitoes buzzed over this carnage.
She rode down onto the flat, her lips taut. The hollow eye sockets of one Roman corpse gawped at her – the rest of the body near stripped clear of flesh. The intercisa helm had been punctured at the temple. ‘Clibanarius lance,’ she spoke solemnly as her fellow riders clustered nearby. Many other corpses lay with Persian arrows lodged in their iron vests and the bones underneath. She clicked her fingers. ‘Check the oasis; be sure it is unpolluted before we drink. If it is clean, we take our fill and move on at haste.’
The riders nearby nodded their assent and trotted towards the cluster of palms.
Izodora led her mare around the massacre at a gentle walk. She beheld the Roman corpses and heard a hissing, primal voice inside snarl in delight at the sight. This disgusted her even more. ‘These were fathers, brothers, sons,’ she chided herself. Then her gaze fell upon one intercisa helm lying upside down. Beside it lay a discarded spear. Trapped under this was a strip of red silk.
Pavo.
‘You didn’t deserve to die, Roman. Some of your kind are dark-hearted, but there are others like you,’ she thought of those legionaries who had saved her people on the night of the burnings.
Just then, a rider trotted back from the oasis. ‘The water is uncontaminated. But there is more. We found tracks. The Savaran did this as you suspected,’ he pointed to the massacre. ‘And they took prisoners, back in the direction of the Persis Satrapy.’
She looked south-east. So some of the Romans would have reached their destination after all, but in chains. She had heard of the blackheart archimagus who had harnessed the spahbad of that southern satrapy, and pitied the Romans who would be brought before him. If the young legionary, Pavo, was one of those in chains, then the noble quest for the scroll would be the last thing on his mind. Or perhaps not, she thought with a mirthless smile, remembering the legionary’s pluck.