Byzantium's Crown Page 13

  "You! You're here to practice, not lounge about like a lovesick girl," Sutekh snapped at him. His blade looked like fine army issue. "You heard me. Jump to it!"

  "He's winded," Marric said. "I'll take him on again when he catches his breath." For a moment Marric forgot that Sutekh was the hateful overseer whom he wanted to kill. He saw him instead as a drillmaster, necessarily harsh in a harsh job.

  "Who conducts these drills, slave?" Sutekh shouted. "You or me? I say you fight. Right now!"

  Marric glanced about the practice area. All the other man were sparring and hacking more or less incompetently at one another. Slightly defiant, he folded his arms on his chest and looked meaningfully at Sutekh's blade.

  "Perhaps your memory fails you, slave. Shall I beat it back into you?"

  "With that sword, or your whip?" A vein pounded in Marric's temples: at last, at last.

  "Come on then, hero," said the overseer. He swung his whip about to clear room for them and motioned Marric forward.

  "Let's see how you do against a real man."

  From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white, saw several more following, and knew that Lady Heptephras was obeying her share of Thutmosis' instructions by sending the indoor slaves to do outdoor work while the men practiced. A filled jar poised against arm, Stephana watched dismayed while Marric and the overseer faced off. Marric nodded reassurance at her, then pointed with his chin: get away, get out of Sutekh's line of sight.

  "Come on, Mor! I thought you were our fire eater."

  Stephana disappeared, and Marric drew breath again. She was out of sight now, safe, in case he—he had no intention of losing this fight. Perhaps he could even make Sutekh's death look like an accident. But it had been long, too long since he rode with his army or met a real fighter blade to blade. If slavery had made him doubt he was a man, could he be sure he was still a warrior?

  As he had learned since recruit training, Marric brought his weapon up in salute. The other man simply raised his sword and grinned.

  "Pretty, pretty. Let's see if you know anything else."

  The other slaves gathered around. Once Marric had watched a pack of dogs circling its leader and the scrappy, younger challenger. The pack had helped the stronger dog by hamstringing its rival, then tearing out the loser's throat. Marric had broken up that fight. What about the slaves, though? Remembering Marric's fight with the Gepid, would they curry favor with Sutekh by tripping him up?

  He dared not think of that, or of anything but the movements of the overseer circling him, waiting for an opening. He was a big man but not a clever one. Marric could take him.

  And then what?

  "Ya illaha Allah!"

  War cries shrilled out as Berbers dropped over the wall into the courtyard. Leaving their horses behind, they had crept up on the household. Doubtless they planned to take villa after villa until they cleared a path to the very harbor of Alexandria itself. After that first shriek they fought in silence.

  Marric ducked under Sutekh's guard and gestured with his sword at the astounded slaves. "Get them!" he shouted. Horus grant that they fight like men, not property, heedless of who owns it. He started forward alone and was immediately engaged by a Berber. Marric countered automatically, and remembered that parrying a curved blade was different from parrying a straight sword, especially given the fine steel the Berbers used. Behind him he heard the screams that told him how quickly some of the other men in the courtyard had forgotten.

  Keep your distance!" he shouted. "Get out the kontoi!"

  The yard boiled into the confusion of a battlefield where screams, shouts, and the stinks of sweat and blood robbed men of their senses. The household, by sheer weight of numbers, might repel the attackers. Marric spitted one man, yanked his blade free, and pushed forward.

  The field worker next to him shrieked. Blood gouted from his face and off the curved blade that had sliced half of it away. Another man took his place.

  "Nico, get back!" Nicephorus had grabbed one of the kontoi and wielded it to deadly advantage.

  "Not me, brother," said the scholar. "The safest place to be is at your side!" The Berbers fell back before him. As Nicephorus' arm tired, he dropped the lance and caught up a sword. His size made him nimble.

  Marric laughed. All the indignities, the whippings, the enforced docility fell away from him in a shower of blood. Let Sutekh bellow: he could see that the slaves were following Marric's lead.

  Again Marric shouted and gestured for the slaves to charge. They obeyed, some waving swords, others forcing the raiders back against the retaining walls with long spears until the only Berbers left in the yard were dead or dying, their blood mingling with the blood of slaves in the thick dust.

  Ready to pursue the Berbers, Marric leapt at the wall. Nicephorus grabbed his arm. Marric caught himself before he struck him.

  "You can't," Nicephorus gasped. "Over there. Regroup."

  So the scholar was also a strategist? Marric breathed deeply to calm himself. A gash on one arm and scratches along his side began to sting.

  "The city—" he gasped.

  "Safe, for now."

  "No!" Marric's eyes kindled. Now, while the household was confused, while people were still sorting out the living from the dead and wounded, or the slaves who had broken and hidden, now the gods had granted them all a chance to escape. When you find your own way, come back, Imhotep the priest had said. Well, he had found it. Nicephorus was beside him. Stephana, he hoped, still was hiding in the stables.

  "What are you, Mor?" the scholar breathed. "Or who?"

  "Don't call me Mor." Marric spoke fast. "The name is Marric—as if you didn't know!"

  They ran for the stables. Marric slapped two house slaves on the shoulders as he passed. "Mount guard," he ordered. Most of the men simply had collapsed onto the ground among the wounded and the dead. They were too weary even to wipe their blades or feel pride in their victory.

  There were horses and harness in the stable. Strymon might as well blame their loss on the Berbers. Marric was saddling a horse whose sleek limbs and arched neck promised speed and unimpaired wind when he heard an evil chuckle behind him.

  "So the hero is simply a slave who would be a runaway. I think I like this, Mor. I like this much better than gutting you in a practice bout."

  Marric's hands undid the saddle girth. One heave, and Sutekh would have the saddle in his face.

  "Don't try it. Turn around. I want to see your face as you die. Move!"

  The sword point jabbed his back. Reluctantly Marric turned. Just when he thought that the gods had finally turned their eyes toward him, this was how it ended? Then he remembered the dagger he had honed and that he carried as a final weapon in his loincloth. Marric eyed the overseer narrowly. Could he dodge, draw, and come up under the big man's guard before Sutekh drove his point home? Marric calculated feverishly. Nicephorus must have gone to ground. Perhaps he would appear to distract Sutekh just long enough.

  "Don't you move."

  Stephana's voice was even softer than usual, and it quavered. But the grip of her hands on the shaft of the bloodstained kontos did not shake, and her glance was relentless blue fire. Now it was her turn to give the orders.

  Her enemy turned and laughed. "You always did keep at arm's distance from me, didn't you, girl? As if you were made of silver. Well, that's over now. Your friend here is an escaping slave and a thief. And you? You're an accomplice. You know what you can expect"—a pause and a suggestive laugh—"but there's no reason for you to die if—"

  Sutekh moved toward Stephana. She brought the lance up sharply toward his chest. Horror warred with determination in her face. Certainly she could kill the man, but then what? Stephana was too near release from the Wheel and far too precious to him to have bloodstains on her hands.

  Still Sutekh moved toward her. He had misjudged her utterly, taking her reluctance to kill for cowardice. Grinning, assured of his prey, Sutekh reached out to grasp Stephana's lance.

 
Light exploded from it, and Sutekh brought his hands up to his face.

  Marric leapt at him, dagger ready. He drove the knife home beneath Sutekh's ribs. His death shriek became a gurgle as blood filled his lungs. Then he collapsed. Marric pushed the overseer's body away, then straightened to face Stephana. Would the sight of death revolt her? Would he?

  "I would have killed him for you," Stephana whispered.

  "I thank you once more for my life," Marric reached out and broke the slender collar she wore on her neck. He hurled it aside. The soft metal rang as it hit the stable walls and disappeared.

  "Do we run now?"

  "Once we find Nicephorus. Nico?"

  "Here, Mor. What should we call you now? When I saw Stephana move in, I figured that the two of you could settle with Sutekh while I finished readying the horses."

  Nicephorus' calculations were riskier than Marric liked.

  "We should hide the body," Stephana pointed out. "And this." She buried the lance in fodder. Nicephorus began to tug bales down over the overseer's body.

  Rubbing her throat where the collar had rested, Stephana studied Marric and Nicephorus. "We will need clothes, medicines." She paused and an expression of distaste crossed her face. "Money. And Lady Heptephras trusts me."

  "Shall I go instead?' Nicephorus asked.

  "You can't." Stephana vanished before he could protest.

  Clean rags hung from a nail, and Marric used them to bandage his friend's injuries.

  "Just as well we were not severely hurt, my prince—"

  "Marric. Or Mor, if you feel more at ease with that name."

  "Where do we go next?"

  This was a problem. Out in the swamps were Berbers, angrier now and more desperate since they had lost their first fight. They were too dangerous for wounded, tired men and a woman with hair the color of silvered wood to encounter. And the roads were still patrolled. If the officers saw two men wearing slave collars—

  Taking hammer and chisel, Marric pried off Nicephorus' collar. "Now," he ordered, "don't let your hand slip unless you want to commit regicide before I'm even crowned."

  Nicephorus laughed too long at the feeble joke and bent to his work. "To think that we have been slaves together."

  "We are slaves no longer, brother."

  When his collar was off, Marric flung the thing into the pile of bales that hid Sutekh's body. The time when another man was Marric's master was past.

  Nicephorus held out the sword with which Sutekh had planned to slay Marric. The prince belted it on. Freedom, headier than any vintage from the imperial cellars, began to pound along his veins.

  "Nico, do you or Stephana know where the druid lives? Best we lie up until nightfall, then head for the city."

  "I also know where Taran lives." The unexpected voice spun them both around.

  "Strymon!" Nicephorus cried. Former slave and major-domo stared at one another.

  "Aye."

  "How long have you listened here?"

  "Long enough. I came into the stables to check for wounded. Instead I witnessed a fight. An execution, I might say. Being too old to be warlike, I hid."

  "Don't stop me now," Marric said. Even to his own ears, his words sounded more like a plea than a command. "I don't want to kill you—"

  "But you would. Or Nicephorus would. Even Stephana, who I used to think shivered at the sight of a bird flying across her shadow."

  "I was not seen," said Stephana. She came in with her arms laden. "I took no more than we will—" She broke off, and looked beseechingly at the major-domo. "I only took what we would need. Strymon, please, if you saw that fight and overheard, then you know that Mor—that Prince Marric must go free."

  Incongruously the old man laughed. "It's like a tale told in the taverns! If there were a ballad, I would applaud the singer."

  "And so?" asked Nicephorus.

  "This much I understand. There was a battle. Our brave overseer was gravely wounded. He crept here to die. In the confusion, one of the most rebellious slaves robbed the house and fled. He took with him his friend and his woman. In times like these, such things often happen."

  "You understand discretion too," said Stephana. "Isis' blessings he upon you, Strymon." She walked toward him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you. I shall never forget you."

  "If you are to reach Taran's before sunset, you must ride quickly, child."

  Marric led his horse outside. He lifted Stephana into the saddle, then mounted himself.

  "Can you ride?" he asked Nicephorus.

  "Ride? I could fly!"

  Stephana laughed, and Marric tightened his arms about her. Nicephorus mounted, and they pounded out of the gates, away from slavery into an uncertain future.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as they cleared the villa's gates and reached the twist in the road that protected them from watchful eyes, Marric turned off the road and stopped. He waved Nicephorus closer.

  "If we keep to the road, catching us will be like feeding a tame crocodile," he said. "Stephana, you may trust Strymon's good heart; myself, I think it's been too long devoted to good bookkeeping. Nico, can you find Taran's place by yourself?"

  "Certainly. I have slipped out to see him by night."

  "And yet you always returned." Marric was astounded.

  "Didn't you come back after you took that boy to the healers? I knew I had something here that needed doing. I never guessed that it was to help a prince regain his father's diadem." He laughed ironically.

  Stephana leaned forward. "Nico, ride now! They're less likely to see us if we split up."

  "You have not seen the city under Irene," Nicephorus told her. "I stay with my prince."

  Hoofbeats made both men reach for their swords.

  "Who's that?"

  "Does it matter," Stephana cried softly. "Into the swamp!"

  In the marshes insects chirped and fluttered about them and made them glad of the hooded cloaks Stephana had plundered, dark ones blending well with their surroundings. Whispered directions allowed Marric to make steady progress through the treacherous land.

  "This is the long way around," Stephana said. "We'll have to take the rest of it in the dark."

  "Nico," Marric ordered, "get moving. You can tell Taran to expect us." At least Nicephorus would get through safely.

  Stephana laughed. "The Berbers could search the area until the next flood and never find Taran unless he wanted to be found."

  Nicephorus nodded and was gone. His horse's footfalls died away. It galled Marric that Nico and Stephana shared knowledge of which he understood almost nothing. But after all, they were initiates into the Mysteries of which Imhotep had hinted. Most of Marric's life he had heard of some ritual or other, but he had not believed what little he had heard. Upon a time, he had been taught this much: his ancestors had ruled as more than men. Now the great Horus name that each emperor assumed was useful only for inscribing on triumphal arches and obelisks, or for curses. Marric had long ago decided he could dispense both with the symbolism and with any power that might linger about it. It was just possible that he had been mistaken.

  "You were," Stephana answered, though Marric hadn't thought he had spoken. "Once the ruler possessed the gods' powers to pass through flame, to read hearts, to fathom minds, and to bind men to his cause."

  Marric's arms tightened about his lover as if to bind her to him. She was a seeress, and he believed in her powers: why not wish for powers of his own? What would I do with them? Become another Irene? Even Alexander managed with only secular power.

  "Softly," he said, "sound travels in the damp."

  "Head south, Marric." Now the sun was a brazen disk that smoldered to extinction at the horizon. The horse picked its way along the driest path.

  "Are we far from Taran's"

  "That way." They rode on for a few minutes. "Now left," Stephana whispered. "Taran couldn't tell you about this place before because as long as you're uninitiate, you remain vulnerable—"

  "How muc
h risk do I place you in now?"

  "We have no other choice." Stephana, despite the dangers ahead, laughed. As Strymon said, the whole situation—escape from slavery, hiding from Berbers—seemed like a tale of Digenis the Borderer. The dangers seemed unreal, the creations of a singer's harp.

  "Power to pass through fire and water," Marric mused. "To read hearts and minds. To bind men. My father had such a power, yet I have never heard—"

  "Really, what could you hear until you were ready?" Stephana asked. "Do you know the children's game, 'What I tell you three times is true'? Have you ever just learned of a thing and then, the whole day long, heard of nothing else? It's just so with initiation."

  "Imhotep—the priest of Osiris in the city—said I was not ready."

  "Ah, but you will be. You will be. Already, can you not detect truth in a man—or the lie? Did you not bind Nicephorus to you, even when you were almost dead? And what about me?"

  Marric might have kissed her if he had not been intent on their path. Time was precious. Full night would render the marshes treacherous. Already the red and yellow flowering plants had dulled to gray, and the rhythmic chirp of swamp dwellers had intensified.

  "Have I bound you?" he asked. "Then I am content. My heart, I am prince of a line that cannot continue, even if it deserved survival. There were only two of us in direct descent. And Alexa is dead. We had employed the bearmaster from the north to aid us, but we could not even help ourselves."

  "Is the bearmaster a great lord?"

  "An Aescir, one of the men of the ash," Marric said. "He brings white bears to rulers. The bears never harm him. He calls them his children though"—he chuckled, then obeyed Stephana's instructions to turn at the hummock—"a cub did scratch Irene."

  "He wields power," Stephana decided. "The king rules beasts as well as men and land. He is the land. Why else do you think you turned from the power you already had to risk your life to gain Empire?"