“I am pleased that she… satisfies you, my lord.” The sheet crept out of Anastasia’s hand, inch by inch. Maxian swung his right leg up onto the bed and the movement made the last bit of fabric slip out of the Duchess’s hand. She hissed softly at the touch of cold air.

“I cannot say,” Maxian said, leaning closer to Anastasia, “that I have ever had anything but complete satisfaction in my dealings with the House de’Orelio. Indeed, the thought moves me to a proposition.”

“Really?” Duchess the purred, turning her face toward him. Her right hand fell to rest on his. thigh. “What do you desire of the House de’Orelio tonight?”

“I would like to keep this servant, my lady. A well-run household is worth a great deal to me. What will you take for her, coin or trade?” Maxian gathered the edge of the fallen sheet in his hand, feeling the silk slide over her skin as he covered her stomach and breast again. She was very warm under his palm.

“Oh, trade will do, my lord. But at such an hour, you will have to offer a great deal to make it worth my while.”

His mouth covered hers and she fell back, her fingernails digging into his shoulder.

f

Third Cyrenaicea, Fourth Maniple? That’s a mounted unit. Drago! Where’s that lackwit?“ The centurion had a shout like a boar in heat. His voice boomed over the tumult of the port of Soli. Close to sixty men were crowded into the stifling tent, pressed up against a” flimsy wooden divider. A granite-faced quartermaster centurion sat on a triangular camp stool next to the folding table behind the barrier. Soldiers in half mail with arms like tree trunks held back the press of men. The legionnaires shouted and shoved, trying to get to the front of the tent.

“Drago!” The senior centurion scowled. A flap at the back of the tent opened, spilling in a white-hot glare of Mare Internum sun. A Greek with a bad complexion stuck his head in the opening. “Where the Hades have you been, you insufferable catamite?” The Greek grinned.

“This boy,” the quartermaster said, pointing a stubby finger at Dwyrin, who was standing in the tiny free space between the press of hot, angry men and the table. “This boy needs a horse and kit so he can catch up with his unit. They already pushed off for Samosata three weeks ago. Take him over to the stables and get him whatever they can spare, then get your backside back over here!“

Hundreds of tents surrounded them in a classic Legion encampment grown monstrously out of control. The port of Soli, where the combined armies of the Eastern and Western empires were busily unloading from the Imperial fleet, had been a sleepy fishing village before the Emperor Galen and his advance elements had landed four weeks ago. A half-moon of shallow bay, barely enough to allow a ship to reach the rickety wooden quay, on an open shore had marked it. The village behind the quay was composed of mud-brick buildings and flimsy wooden structures.

Galen had landed two thousand infantrymen in the surf of the beach and seized the town. The villagers had mostly fled when the black fleet had appeared offshore. Those who had failed to flee, or had come back for personal belongings, had been taken and impressed into work gangs. Three hundred engineers, stonemasons, and craftsmen had come ashore in longboats at the wharf. Within two days they had torn down the village and extended the quay by fifty feet using the brick, wood and fieldstone from the buildings. Galen had come ashore then, with five hundred Sarmatian light horse and his bodyguard. The Sarmatians, under the command of Prince Theodore, had pushed inland to secure the nominally Roman city of Tarsus, eighteen miles to the northeast.

By the time Dwyrin’s ship had reached the port, after a twelve-day voyage from Constantinople, the Western Emperor had put ashore the fifteen thousand men who had sailed with the initial fleet. Theodore and his light horse had secured Tarsus and all of the drayage that they could lay their hands on. Bands of auxillia roamed the countryside, confiscating horses, mules, wagons-all that and every bit of portable food and fodder they could lay their hands on. The one quay in the old harbor had been joined by two more-one composed of purposely sunken merchantmen, the other of brick and soil carved out of the hill behind the town.

The initial camp had doubled and then tripled in size, gaining a new ditch and palisade with each expansion. The Western Emperor, the army general staff, and Galen’s personal guardsmen and servants now occupied the first, innermost camp. The three western Legions-the Sixth Gemina and Second Triana and the Third Augusta-that had landed with Galen occupied the next layer of the camp, and the barbarians the outermost ring. Outside of the outermost ditch, a great mustering yard of corrals, barns, and feedlots had been thrown up to hold the thousands of horses, mules, and donkeys destined to carry the logistical tail of the Roman army.

More ships arrived each day, offloading supplies, materials, and men-in whole formations, in banda, and as singletons, like Dwyrin. The Western officers were furiously trying to* match men to units and unsnarl the traffic jam that clogged the port from dawn to dusk.

“Quite a commotion, isn’t it?” Drago pulled Dwyrin roughly aside from the clatter of a heavy wagon laden with sheaves of arrows. Mud spattered on Dwyrin’s legs. It hadn’t rained recently, but the lowlands around Soli were very close to the water table. Drago sniffed at the muck that passed for streets in the camp. “Nothing like eastern mud-thick as tar and yellow as bile!”

Dwyrin stared around in awe as they passed through the middle camp-thousands of canvas tents were arrayed in neat rows, each block marked by the standard of the Legion and maniple housed there. Hundreds of legionnaires hurried to and fro in the camp; work details were cutting the ditch lower and reinforcing the inner palisade. Others marched past in formation, dust caking their legs and armor. There was a tremendous sense of barely controlled chaos and energy in the air.

“Huh.” The Greek watched as a maniple of legionnaires entered the gate from the outer camp, heavy bags of water slung over their shoulders. “Keeping them busy, I see. Come on, we’ve still a ways to walk! Now, your chit says that you’re for the Third C, in the thaumaturgic battalion- you get a standard kit; no armor, but a horse. I’ll tell you now, you’re not getting any kind of a good horse. All the good horseflesh is either in the field already with Prince Theo or being reserved for the Eastern army. They as are too good to set foot on common dirt, or walk!“

Dwyrin was lugging a heavy bag of personal effects: cooking gear, a bedroll, and a bundled cloak. A leather harness hung, doubled, at his waist. A shortsword that, for him, was a heavy weight and a knife hung from it. He had passed on the javelins-his unit did not use them. Hardtack and dried meat with cheese and some rolls were in a cloth bag as well. A waterskin hung off his other shoulder. In all, nearly seventy pounds of gear-he could barely stand with it all on him. So he kept walking lest he fall down from the weight.

A bridge of logs crossed to the outer camp, over a ditch filled with hundreds of men stripped to the waist digging with shovels and picks. Ramps of tamped earth led up to the outer rim to carry the dirt away. At the eastern end of the ditch a dam had been built to hold back the waters of the Efrenk River. The river cut close to the eastern side of the camp and, in previous days, had provided the town with water. Now it was going to be rerouted into the ditches to fill them.

“Are the Persians going to attack us?” Dwyrin asked as they crossed the corduroy bridge into the clamor of the outer camp. This belt was a vast morass of mud, horsehair tents, and gangs of outlander auxillia. The road to the outer gate was straight and properly Roman, but the camps and enclaves of the foreigners were anything but. Long-haired Huns, Sarmatians in tattoos and ritual scars, red-haired Goths, Alans, blue-painted Celts, blond Scandians, black Africans from beyond Mauritania-the detritus “of the frontier. All arguing, fighting, gambling, cleaning weapons, sleeping. All waiting for the order to move north.