Fortune's stroke

long way back-only two women in that line had died in childbirth. That was better than average, for the day.

Her history lesson concluded, with all the solemnity of a Roman official, the Alexandria street urchin returned.

'So piss on you from a dizzy height, old fart.'

'Well said,' came Ousanas' whisper. The former dawazz-he still had no official title-was standing right behind them, on a higher step.

Antonina cocked her head a quarter turn. 'You're not worried?' she whispered over her shoulder. Sourly: 'I expected every man within fifty miles to be crabbing at me about it.'

Ousanas' gleaming grin made a brief appearance. 'Such nonsense. It comes from too much exposure to civilization and its decadent ways. My own folk, proper barbarians, never fret over the matter. Women drop babies in the fields, just like elands and lions.'

Garmat, still tight-faced, began to mutter again. He was giving his own lecture, now, on natural history. Explaining, to a bird-brained Roman woman and an ignorant Bantu savage, the difference between passing a large human skull through a narrow pelvic passage and the effortless ease with which mindless animals-

He fell silent, stiffening with formal rigidity. The King of Kings was finally entering the square before the palace, where his bride and her party were waiting.

It was quite an entrance. Antonina, even after her years of exposure to Roman imperial pomp, was impressed. Axumites, as a rule, were not given to formality. But, when occasion demanded, they threw themselves into it with the wild abandonment of a people shaped by Africa's splendor.

Eon was preceded by dancers, leaping and capering to the rhythm of great drums. The dancers were garbed in leopard skins and cloaks of ostrich feathers. The drummers were clothed less flamboyantly. They wore shammas, the multilayered togas which were the usual costume worn by Ethiopians in the highlands. But these shammas were for ceremonial occasions. The linen was richly dyed, and adorned with ivory and tortoiseshell studs.

Behind the dancers and drummers came Eon's ceremonial guard. This body consisted of the officers of his regiment, and was much larger than normal. Eon had been adopted by three regiments, not the customary one, and all of them were present. Wahsi, Aphilas and Saizana, as commanders of the Dakuen, Lazen and the Hadefan sarawit, led the procession.

Here, Axum's more typical practicality made its reappearance. True, the soldiers were wearing ostrich-plume headdresses which were far larger and more elaborate than anything they would have worn in battle. But the weapons and light armor were the same practical and utilitarian implements with which the Ethiopian army went to the field of slaughter.

The soldiers were there, not so much to protect their king from assassins, as to remind the huge crowd packing the square of a simple truth. Axum rules by the spear, when all is said and done. Do not forget it.

Studying the crowd, however, Antonina could detect no signs of resentment in the sea of mostly Arab faces. The people of the desert, for all their love of poetry, were not given to flights of fancy when it came to politics. That rulers will rule, was a given. That being so, best to have a strong rule, and a firm one. That makes possible-possible-a fair rule as well.

Antonina decided she was reading the crowd properly. All the faces she could see were filled with no expressions beyond satisfaction and the pleasure of people enjoying a great spectacle. The measures which Eon had taken, the concessions which he had given the Hijaz even more than his leniency toward the bedouin rebels, had gone a long way to mollify southern Arabia to Ethiopian rule. The marriage about to take place, she thought, would finish the job. Arabs were as famous for their trading ability as they were for their poetry and their incessant political bickering. They knew a good bargain when they saw one.

Eon entered the square, now, and splendiferous royal pomp soared to the heavens.

'Good God,' whispered Antonina, 'is that thing solid gold?'

Garmat smiled. His usual good humor was back. 'Of course not, Antonina,' he whispered in return. 'A chariot made of solid gold would collapse of its own weight. The wheels and axle, anyway.'

Garmat bestowed a look of admiration on the vehicle lumbering into the square. 'But there's plenty of gold on it, believe me. Enough gold plate to make it seem solid, even on the undercarriage.' He made a little pointing gesture with his beard. 'Those elephants aren't there just for show. The beasts have their work cut out for them, hauling the thing.'

'Not to mention their own costumes,' murmured Antonina. The four elephants drawing the chariot were cloaked in a pachyderm version of ceremonial shammas, not battle armor, but Antonina didn't even want to guess at the weight of ivory and tortoiseshell decorations.

Eon was riding alone in the open-backed, two-wheeled chariot. The chariot itself was patterned after the ancient war chariots of Egypt, which were designed for two men-one to control the horses, while the other served as an archer. But Eon did not require assistance. He had no reins to hold. The elephants were controlled by four mahouts. Those men, Antonina was relieved to see, were wearing nothing beyond their usual practical gear. The four elephants drawing Eon's chariot were war elephants, with the temperament to match. God help the crowd if the mahouts lost control of them.

Eon's own costume, to Antonina's eye, was a bit odd at first, until she realized she was seeing the usual Axumite combination of splendor and practicality. On the one hand, his tunic was made of simple, undyed linen. A Roman emperor-any Roman nobleman, for that matter, above the level of an equestrian-would have worn silk. But the utilitarian cloth was positively festooned with pearls and beads of red coral, and the threads which held the garment together were inlaid with gold.

His tiara, unlike the grandiose crowns of Roman or Persian emperors, was nothing more than a silver band studded with carnelian. The simplicity of the design, Antonina suspected, was to emphasize the importance of the four-streamered headdress which the tiara held in place. That was called a phakhiolin, by Ethiopians, and it was the traditional symbol of Axum's King of Kings.

She thought there was a subtle message in that headgear. Eon had already announced, the day before, that the capital of Axum was being moved to Adulis. The Arab notables gathered in the palace had reacted to the announcement with undisguised satisfaction. The decision to move the capital, those shrewd men knew, was the surest sign that their new ruler intended to weld them into his empire. The center of Axum, from now on, would be the Red Sea rather than the highlands-a center which was shared by Arabia along with Africa.

Today, gently, Eon was reminding them of something else. He still had the highlands, after all, and the breed of disciplined spearmen forged in those mountains. Their symbol, still, rode on the top of the negusa nagast's head.

His staff of office carried the same message. The shaft of the great spear was sheathed in gold, as was the Christian cross surmounting it. Sheathed in gold, and decorated with pearls. But the blade itself-the great, savage, leaf of destruction-was plain steel, and razor sharp.

The slow-moving chariot finally reached the center of the square. The mahouts brought the elephants to a halt, and Eon dismounted. In a few quick strides, he took his place next to his bride, and the wedding ceremony began.

The first part of the ceremony, and by far the longest, consisted of Rukaiya's conversion to Christianity. That went on for two hours. Long before it was over, Antonina, sweltering in her robes, was cursing every priest who ever lived.

In fairness, she admitted, the fault lay not principally with the priests. True, they were their usual long- winded selves, the more so when they basked in the warmth of such a gigantic crowd's attention. But most of the problem came from the sheer number of conversions.

Rukaiya was not converting alone. Everyone had known, of course, that the new Queen of Ethiopia would have to become a Christian (if she was not one already, as many Arabs were). Her own father, the day after Rukaiya's selection was publicly declared, had made his own announcement. He-and all his family-would convert also.

That had been a week ago. By the day of the wedding, well over half of the Beni Hashim had made the same decision, and a goodly portion of the other clans of the Quraysh as well. There were hundreds of people in the square-well over a thousand, by Antonina's guess-who were undergoing the rite alongside their new queen.