“Are we going to go into the town?” he asked, once they were below the pass and the trail had widened a little.

Thyatis shook her head^‘TEven in this disguise, I will not risk it. The rider said that Tie was going to see the headman of Dogubayazit-not the garrison commander. I think that the valley ahead is free of either Roman or Persian troops. You saw the way the last village looked at us. We might receive a fine welcome, or we might not live past the night. We have supplies enough now with their rations, and we know which way to go.“

Nikos spurred ahead a little, so that they were even on the road.

“We’ve been out of touch for six days,” he essayed. “We should get some kind of news-anything at all might be helpful, the war might already have begun!”

She turned to look at him, and her gray eyes were cold like the sea. “We have only three more weeks before the Emperor is before Tauris. I will not be late.”

East of Dogubayazit, the old road turned away from the. river to the north and climbed up a hill onto a broad plateau studded with stands of trees and high grass. Nikos was in the lead since they had crossed the sluggish river that ran west toward the town. Thyatis rode behind, lost in thought, her cloak hood pulled up to cover the color of her hair and the broad hat nodding over her eyes. They had swung wide around the town, leaving the trail down from Tendur?k as soon as possible to cut across the foothills-through gorse bracken and myriad sharp ravines-to reach the river well east of habitation. Much of the previous day had been spent searching for a ford across the river, but they had not found one until early this morning. They had swum the horses across in the predawn darkness, hanging to their saddle straps.

Only two hours ago they had reached the road and turned onto it. By the rough map that Thyatis retained from the oilskin pouch, it ran east alongside the river to another plateau and thence to the Zangmar. It should be deserted for much of its length. Soon they would be past the last of the

• trees clinging to the fringe of the river and be in highland plain again. Nikos suddenly whistled and held up his hand. He was looking back down the road toward the town. She reined to a stop at his side.

“Look,” he said, pointing behind them to where a curve on the road rose up beyond the grass and trees. There was a line of mounted men descending the hill. The afternoon sun glinted off their spearpoints and flickered from helmets and mail. “It must be a Persian patrol.”

“Off the road,” Thyatis said, spurring her horse into the trees. “Let’s make for the next ravine and lay up until they pass.” She goosed the horse with her heels, and it broke into a trot through the high waving grass. Nikos* followed close behind, though he turned in the saddle to see if they had been spotted, letting his horse follow the one ahead.

They had crossed the grassy slope that slid down from the road and were urging their mounts up the far side of the streambed when horns sounded from the southeast.

“Hi-ya!” Thyatis shouted, and the horses bolted up the slope. Nikos turned and looked over his shoulder, rising up in the saddle. Behind them, on the road, scouts riding in advance of the main body of horsemen were winding their horns and pointing in their direction. One rose up in his saddle, a long horse bow drawn from the saddle scabbard.

“Weave!” he shouted at Thyatis as they topped the rise. The air thrummed as one shaft blurred past in the air, then another. “They’ve mounted bowmen!” She broke left and he right as they thundered down the far slope of the hill. It was thick with high brush and low trees. Nikos reached the next streambed and turned right, putting his heels to the horse. Minutes later he had reached the head of the little draw.

Behind him the first of the riders from the road had topped the hill in pursuit and was coaxing his horse down the nearer side, through the spiny bushes. Nikos slipped his own bow out of the saddle rest and strung it in one motion. All of his time spent with the Sarmatian brothers had not been wasted. He found a long-shafted flight arrow by touch in his quiver and fitted it to the bow. On the other slope, another rider had joined the first in following their trail. They were leaning over their saddle horns, examining the ground. The one on the right suddenly jerked and slipped forward off his horse. The arrow had punched right through him and out the other side into a tree. Nikos smiled, a shark’s smile, as he nudged the horse back into the cover of the brush.

Seconds later he stopped smiling as twenty or thirty armored riders topped the ridge. Horns sounded to his east and south as well. Hades’ infernal bollocks, he snarled to himself as he trotted the horse forward through deeper brush in the next ravine. It’s an entire bloody army!

The bay horse whickered softly at Thyatis and nudged her head with its nose. Despite the tension of the chase, she rubbed the soft rubbery snout that was checking her ear to see if there were any carrots in there. The horse quieted as the ravine echoed with the clatter of hooves on stone. Three of the Persian scouts appeared briefly in a break in the scrubby trees thaj clogged the downstream end of the ravine. Thyatis rose up a little, readying herself for action. She could hear them pushing their horses through the brush down the slope from her. She half drew the short horse bow that the ambushed post rider had slung in a lacquered wooden case at his saddle horn. Four short-shafted arrows with tan fletching were pegged, headfirst, into the ground in front of her. They were only hunting arrows, but she would make do with what she had.

She was shielded ahead and on the left side by a heavy gray-blue bush with spearpoint leaves and a sweet odor. To her right, the rocky course of the tiny stream that had gouged the ravine out of the lower slopes of Ararat wound down toward the distant plain of Dogubayazit. Thirty feet below her, where the Persians were crashing through the brush, the streambed kinked to the left side of the ravine and ran under an enormous thorn tree with a thick base. The walls of the ravine, cut from decayed lava and sediment, rose up nearly twenty feet and were crowned with long grass. A patch of blue sky, now interrupted by scudding clouds, made a roof of this little space.

The first scout crawled out from under the overhanging branches of the thorn tree and stood up, a spear ready to hand. He looked about with care. The ground before him was rocky and poor for tracks. There was some sand, but it was all disturbed, perhaps by animals passing along the ravine. Thyatis remained utterly still, and the bay, feeling her waiting tension, did so as well.

“Anything?” called one of the two scouts on the other side of the thorn tree. His accent was thick with the glottal sound of the eastern Persian highlands.

The lead scout sniffed the air and surveyed the ground once more.

“Nothing clear,” he called back. “I think they did go up this way, though. Let’s press on.”

The two on the other side agreed and the lead man began hacking at the thorn tree with his longsword to clear it enough to pass the horses through. After a moment, though, he found what Thyatis had found, that one flexible branch held back much of the brush on the. right side of the tree. Putting his shoulder to it, which earned him two long scratches and countless little ones, he bent it back. The other two men urged their horses through the gap.

When the last man was almost past the tree, Thyatis bent, plucked an arrow from the ground, fitted it to the bow, drew and let fly in one smooth motion. Another arrow was on the wing as well, even as the first sank nine inches deep into the exposed side of the lead scout’s head. Blood gouted from his mouth and filmed his eyes as the heavy-headed bolt punched through the side of his skull with a crack! right above the ear. He toppled and the heavy branch whipped back into its original position, lashing at the horse and the face of the third scout. Tangled, the man screamed in fear as hundreds of thorns cut and tore at him. The horse screamed too and shied away suddenly. The cut man wrestled to regain control but the horse, its own face and nose cut by the thorns, bolted.