“Ai, poor girl. What am I going to do with you?” The Prince’s voice was faint, burned out by exhaustion and terribly long hours of unremitting effort. He wore a heavy butcher’s apron, deeply stained by blood and crusted with dried gore. His leggings were spattered too, and there was a faint charnel stink around him like an invisible mist. Krista was horrified by his appearance, watching him from between almost closed eyelids. His hands, too, were dark with dried fluids.

“Let me go,” she whispered. Who knew where that old man was, or the little Orientals she had seen coming and going from the house? “I didn’t mean to spy, I was only curious…”

Maxian raised his head and, through a blur of exhaustion, could make out that she had raised her head, catlike, from the floor to look at him. A wave of relief swept through him, leaving him giddy, that she was all right and that his work on her head wound had not been in vain. He suddenly realized that he was tremendously tired and should sleep.

“That’s a good idea,” Krista said, for the Prince had spoken his thought aloud. “If you let me out, I’ll help you back upstairs. You need a bath too.”

Maxian looked down at himself and staggered a little to see how gruesome a sight he was. For a moment his mind spun in all directions, as he comprehended how much blood there was on him and how old some of the stains were. Memories began to crowd back into his waking mind, a hurried procession of subjects-some live, some dead, some near death-coming to the examination table. The grating vibration of a saw cutting into bone. The crack of a limb breaking open in the vise. First the buzz of the power in his hands, cleaving into the organs of a still-thrashing body, then the howl and the lightning as he split open the skull of a long-dead general and the power of the corpse flooded into him.

A terrible’howl of anguish tore out of him and filled the corridor. Krista clapped her hands over her ears and rolled up into a tiny ball at tha back of the cell, far from the shuddering thing that crouched at the door to her cell. Then it began to weep, its body racked with great heaving sobs. She crept forward and a lithe hand snaked out to lift a ring of keys from the back of the stiff apron. One of them fit the door and it swung inward. Krista stepped out, gazing down in pity at the man on all fours, grinding his head against the stones. The door at the end of the hallway was open.

“Please,” came from behind her as she slipped up the steps, “please don’t leave me…”

She half turned, looking back down the dark corridor.

Downhill from the bulk of the house, in a grove of cypress trees, there was a crude shrine to Jupiter. Maxian knelt in the brick building before a rude altar. Thick ivy covered the outside of the little building and filled the tiny windows.

The Prince had placed two tallow candles on the altar, one at each end. Once there had been a small statue of the god in the recess behind the altar, but it had long since vanished. He reached out, placing two pieces of tin on the grimy stones.

“O lord of justice, forgive me. I have defiled the bodies of two of your servants-these men, Aurus Antonios Sa-beinos and Julius Terentius-who served the state and the Emperor and did not do ill. I have desecrated their bodies and cut them up into pieces. I beg you to let them enter the peace of your afterlife and to ascend, whole, into your heaven to be rightly judged.”

The Prince’s hand trembled slightly as he spilled wine into a shallow ewer placed on the ground before the altar. He sprinkled crystallized honey and grain, taken from two. small bowls, into the ewer. His whole body hurt, savaged by the power he had drawn upon to examine the bodies dragged into his basement room. Odd whorls of light and shadow fluttered before his eyes. He would not have been able to reach the little building down the hill without Krista’s help.

“O Mithras, he who judges and assesses all that is man, forgive me for these acts. I seek to help the many, the People and the Senate, and for this, some few must die. I take this sin upon myself, I accept the responsibility, both now and in the time after life, for these actions.”

Maxian bent his head to the floor of the temple, pressing his forehead into the soft loamy soil. His mind, at least, was clear. After his collapse in the hallway in front of Krista’s cell, he had been bedridden for three days, barely able to feed himself. His body, pressed beyond its own limits, had finally revolted, refusing to support his demands. Also, he had realized that he had committed, in the fury of his work, dreadful crimes. He raised his head from the floor, tears dripping from his eyes. He struggled to put revulsion at his acts aside, hearing the cold calm voice of Gaius Julius in his mind: Lad, a good commander must be willing to spend the lives of a few to secure victory and the safety of all.

“O lord Mithras, accept my offering, please, please forgive me…” iaOMQM()M()MOM(M)HOM()M()W()H()M(MM)H()HOH(MM)HQHOMQg| LAKE THOSPITIS, PERSIAN ARMENIA

A pinpoint of sunlight, golden and warm, crept slowly along Thyatis’ cheekbone. Unmindful of the dirt and the thin tracks cut by tears, it danced along the line of her jaw and down across her clavicle. There it disappeared into the top of her ragged tunic along the line of her breast. But another came, lighting the tumble of curls that pillowed her face and drifted across her eyelid. She twitched a little and yawned. Dust clouded up from the tattered woolen cloak that lay over her and she sneezed. Coming fully awake, she lay still, feeling the rock of the boat and the brush of wind off the water. The regular slap-sluice sound of a single man rowing reached her. Gingerly she drew back the cloak.

Nikos, wearing her straw hat to shade his face, was sitting in the stern of the hide boat, his arms rising and falling as he dipped the blade-shaped paddle from side to side. The boat cruised through the deep-blue waters, foam hissing away from its sides. Seeing that she was awake, he smiled and nudged a woven straw bag toward her with his foot.

“A little food left,” he said, his voice weary, “and plenty of water.”

She levered herself up from the flexible floor of the boat. She looked around, seeing the lake as a broad sheet of tourmaline blue. Tiny waves rose and fell on its quiet surface, picked up by the wind. The sun was still rising in the heavens-it seemed to be about three hours after sunrise. Away to the northeast, she could make out the dull brown line of the shore and low hills rising behind it. To the north, dead ahead of the boat, she could see a vast blue line of mountains rising up out of the heat haze that marked the plain beyond the shore. She pointed.

“You’re making for the passes of the Ala?”

Nikos nodded, resting the paddle on his thighs for a moment. His arms felt like lead weights after rowing for the past twelve hours. He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling the skin dried and cracking under the relentless sunlight beating up at him off the water.

“Yes,” he croaked from a parched throat. He paused and took a long swallow from the waterskin that lay between his legs. “By the map you had, there’s a stream that comes down to the lake dead ahead. I figured we could get ashore there and maybe find something to eat before we strike north.”

Thyatis turned around, her hands busy in the straw bag. She found some cheese and strips of dried meat. There was no bread left. She found another waterskin as well and drank from it. The meat was hard and she tucked it into the corner of her mouth to soften. She did not eat any of the cheese yet. Her mouth was too dry.

“North? You figure that we’ll be far enough away from the Persians at Van?”

Nikos nodded. “By the map it’s nearly thirty miles from the city, so their patrols should be intermittent at best. We can follow the stream north to cut across this headland that we’re headed toward. Beyond the peninsula, we can make for the road that goes north across the Ala into the valley under the eaves of Ararat.”