"Lad's not good for much now," the first of the two sitting men said, a veteran with a barrel-like chest and sandy, short-cropped hair. " Without the rest of his five, he'll have to be assigned to a new manus."

The other, his superior officer, was a redheaded fellow with a stolid, doughy, face. He wore the dress tunic of a tribune, with a gold flash at the shoulders, and an expensive leather belt. There was a streak of grease on his left hand and a smudge by his left ear. Watery blue eyes hid behind twin circles of glass, held in a fragileseeming metal frame.

"He can't be assigned to an existing manus, one lacking a digit? There were losses at Kerenos that have not been replaced."

The tribune looked Dwyrin upand down, measuring him for the market. The Hibernian ignored him, staring dolefully over the heads of his superior officers. Since Odenathus and Zoe had left, he had been at loose ends. There was no one to practice with- all of the other thaumaturges in the cohort were at least a dozen years his senior and far beyond his skills. He had tried to keep up the daily drill, but too much of it depended on having the rest of your five in hand. The Legions taught cooperative tactics in battle thaumaturgy. In the end, all that he had been able to do was practice fire-casting, which came easily to him, anyway, and the most basic wards and signs.

Blanco frowned, considering the tribune's words. He had already thought of moving the boy into one of the empty slots in the other fives. Unfortunately, every five-leader he had approached had angrily rejected the idea. It took too long for a battle-mage group, whether of three men or five, to learn to battlecast together. No one wanted to start over with a boy of little training. Slowly, and with regret, the centurion shook his head no.

"Tribune Quintus, he will have to go to a new-formed manus with other fresh recruits."

The tribune sighed, though it was obvious that he was not concerned about the issue. He had rosters to fill out and men to shuffle about. If this boy could fill one of his tally-slots, then so much the better!

"Very well, keep an eye out for him and keep him out of trouble, Centurion. He'll be reassigned once he gets to Constantinople."

Dwyrin felt his heart sink even further. Now he truly had no place here. It would be pleasant, he thought, to smash in that cowlike face and its bland indifference to my pain. But he could not. Surely not with Blanco glowering at him, and beyond that? A soldier striking a superior officer got more than the lash, that was a surety. The thought of marching all the way back to the capital, alone and friendless, was a crushing weight.

"Dismissed," the tribune said, turning away to consider his paperwork.

Dwyrin sat alone, in darkness, under a clear night sky. The wagon had been «appropriated» by one of the other units, leaving him with only a blanket and ground cloth for shelter. He could, he supposed, get a bunk in one of the legionary tents that lined the streets of the great camp. There seemed little point in that, not with an endless succession of clear, cloudless, days and nights marking their time in the valley of the Orontes. The moon had not yet risen, letting the vast wash of stars shine in full glory above. The night wind hissed off the desert, too, as he lay on his back, the blanket rolled under his head.

He could hear men on the watch as they passed along the camp-street, complaining about the nip in the wind. That brought half a smile to his lips, even through the deep funk that had gripped him. He was a poor student of the defensive arts that so intrigued the thaumaturges, but he could control fire and heat and warmth. Even enough to summon the latent heat from the rocks that littered the field and wrapit around himself as an invisible blanket. Once, in the high mountains of Albania, he had cursed the other mages for this skill, but it had come easily to him, once he put his thought to it.

Bats wheeled and chittered overhead, hunting in the night. Their voices were indistinct, but they tugged him toward a kind of peace. Bats sounded much the same in his distant home, when they blurred over the fields of wheat and rye. For a moment he wondered why that life seemed so distant. But, in the end, it did not matter. He was sworn to the Legion and owed them twenty years of his young life. I will be in the Legion until I die. It was a mournful thought, but it felt true as he thought it.

"MacDonald?" Blanco's voice was unexpected, coming from the darkness. Dwyrin could hear the crunch of boots on the dirt and gravel. "I see you're still awake."

Dwyrin sat up, his forearms on his knees. He was tired, but could not sleep. "Ave, Centurion. What brings you out at this late hour?"

Blanco sat, brushing a scorpion out of his way. In Dwyrin's mage sight, it glowed a faint blue as it scuttled away between the rocks. " You," Blanco said in a resigned voice. "I seem to remember tasking someone else with you and your troubles, but she has bunkered off, which means I must deal with these things myself."

"Centurion, you needn't do anything." Dwyrin's voice was resigned, but he had considered this as well as he had sat listlessly in the shade of one of the wagons for the past three days. Like the rest of his unit, he had received three day-pass chits to go into the city. He still had them. The thought of smiling, cheerful people, their faces flushed with wine and dancing, made his stomach roil and brought the taste of bile to his mouth. As long as there was a daily ration of wine and something to eat, he would live. At the moment, beyond that, he had little care. "I'll do my best to stay out of the tribune's sight," he continued, waving a hand. "I'll be no trouble."

Blanco grunted and tapped his fingers on his belt. "That," the centurion said, "is not what I want. You're a soldier in my cohort. You need to learn the skills that the others know, to master your focus and power. You'll ever be behind if you do not:. This is my responsibility, to see you trained and equipped and ready for battle."

"Who will train me?" Dwyrin spread his hands wide in disgust. "I hadn't quite caught upwith Zoe and Odenathus before they left. Now I'm years behind the next journeyman! I see the regard the other thaumaturges hold for me- not as high as for a trained mouse!"

"This is true," Blanco grated, cutting off Dwyrin's next protest. "No other five will take you. Therefore, you will have to make do with me."

Dwyrin stopped, considering. The centurion was a grizzled veteran, quick with the baton or a mind-whip, never shy about using pain and fear to gain his ends- obedience and instant response. He did not have the technical skill of the other sorcerers, but he had raw power enough and years of experience.

"If you say so, Centurion:."

"I do," Blanco growled, standing up and brushing off his legs. "I'll show you what I can, when I can. It's up to you to make it work."

The Crypts of Alamut

Khadames, his face a mask of tension and control, descended a long stair. Thousands of steps, hewn from the living stone of the mountain, receded behind him. Three of the sixteen followed him, their dark masks ill-lit by the fires that roared up from below. The stair turned, reaching a landing jutting out from the rock wall. Fumes rose from the floor of a vast chamber, where great crucibles burned with liquid iron. The air was filled with the din of forges and hammers falling on ruddy metal. Khadames stepped down, his breath growing short as the air became thick with noxious vapors. Behind him, the three of the sixteen marched on, tireless, each carrying twice the burden of a strong man.

The Persian lord crossed the wide floor, wending his way between great levered hammers and gangs of men in dirty loincloths, sweating and cursing the huge machines. Great chains ran up into the smokefogged darkness above, constantly moving, ratcheting up and up and up. Even deeper beneath the tunnels and hidden storehouses of Damawand, a river surged in a black abyss. There, great iron wheels turned, driven by the snowmelt, that power flowing up through the sinews of the mountain. It drove forging hammers and bellows, pushing fresh air through the miles of tunnel, fueling all the constant industry that throbbed in the heart of the mountain. Khadames reached another stairway, this one cut into the floor of the long hall. Pillars of brass rose up around the head of the stair, and a crowd of half-naked Uze squatted around it.