When he'd returned from the training fields and entered the house, the servants informed him that she refused to come out to see him. She had remained in her room all day, not even coming out to eat, having her meals sent in. He tried to figure out what he'd done to upset her, giving it up as one of the mysteries of the female species. He wondered if women were truly of the same origin as men; they sure as hell didn't act like it at times.
He was relaxing on the divan, sipping white wine from Parnessius, letting his mind go.
The day had been a real bitch and he was worn out. For the past three weeks he had been trying to instill some semblance of discipline into a batch of raw recruits from the provinces and tribute states. About the only thing that the recruits had in common was a mutual hatred of one another and of their instructors. It had been necessary to have two of them given twenty strokes of thebastinado to make them see reason and obey. He winced at the remembrance of his own experiences of the thin whipping rods striking the soles of his feet while imprisoned in Jerusalem. Merely having the feet whipped didn't sound too bad, but the pain was unbelievable. More than fifty strokes and a man would probably never be able to walk again without limping. Unpleasant thoughts; he pushed them from his mind and took another sip of the clear white squeezings of the grape. Masuul's words of Anobia came again to his mind.
'Ahhhhhh shit!' It was bad enough to come home after a hard day and try to relax, let alone having to worry about what your damned woman might be up to. There was never any way of pleasing a woman. But, by the gods, when they wanted to be sweet there was nothing in the world like them to ease the pain in a man's mind and bring satisfaction to his soul. As far as he was concerned, women were both the blessing and the curse of man's existence.
A slight rustling sound interrupted his thought process.
Anobia had entered the room quietly. The reason for her strange behavior in the past weeks was now suddenly clear to him. She evidently had been preparing herself for this moment.
Casca had just taken a mouthful of wine when he'd turned to look and it had damned near went down the wrong pipe at the sight of her. Anobia had been spending her time not in a fit of temper, but preparing herself to please him.
Her hair was dressed in dark, oily, shimmering curls that dangled almost to her waist. Her eyes were accented with Kohl. The soles of her feet and the palms of her hands were reddened with henna. Gold and silver bracelets hung from her neck, wrists, and ankles; most of them set with tiny bells that tinkled softly as she walked.
She was wearing a costume that seemed vaguely familiar to Casca-scarves of fine colored gauze and silk draped in layers over her figure; a veil covering her face to the nose so that her eyes seemed too large for the face.
She moved her hands above her head; on the fingers were tiny brass cymbals. Gracefully, shestruck them once, letting their chimes die away, then struck them again. Casca was spellbound. A thin piping came to him from outside, then was quickly joined by the sound of flutes and the tambour, accompanied by a sambar that twanged strange, almost melancholy, trills. The cymbals on her fingers had acted as a signal for the musicians on the patio to begin.
Anobia moved, her body twisting slowly, beginning now to dance. Casca gulped down half a mug of wine. This looked as if it was going to be one helluva show.
One of her veils came off, then another. She whirled by the incense brazier and dropped a dark, doughy ball of matter into the brass bowl. It immediately began to smoke.
He couldn't speak, his throat had suddenly contracted to the point of closure. He'd always considered her beautiful, but he'd never dreamed of her looking like this. He poured more wine in his mug.
The scarves, one by one, were removed. Emerald green, translucent and glowing, followed next by one of sky blue; each revealing a little more of her body as she danced to the Oriental strains of the music from the patio. She danced, slowly at first, then gaining in tempo until musky sweat glistened on her now half-bared breasts.
The smoke from the brazier, not unpleasant at all, was seeking its way into Casca's lungs, causing him to lose all perspective. Anobia was the only thing that was real now and she was dancing for him, giving herself to him in the only way she knew how. His mind moved with the music and the rhythm of her body. Another scarf dropped to thefloor, to be kicked away by the tinkling bells at her ankle.
She dropped to her knees before him, swaying her upper torso back and forth, the sweat beginning to run freely down the valley of her breasts. Eyes closed, she made love to him. He reached to touch her but she was gone. The time was not now.
The fumes from the incense brazier filled his mind, distorting his surroundings, giving everything a surrealistic flavor. It was all unreal, but evidently… Casca was stoned out of his gourd!
As the last scarf fell to the floor, the chiming of the bells and the cymbal movement of her fingers ceased. Anobia was naked. Her body sweating, her breasts heaving from the effort of dance, she stood before her man for a moment, thighs quivering nervously.
The music stopped, the silence broken only by the beating of their hearts and the pounding of pulses in their temples.
Anobia came to him and they joined, a joining that took Casca to what he believed to be the paradise that the eastern mystics called Nirvana.
It was later on that night, as she lay next to him in sleep, that the memory came back to him. Salome! Anobia had performed the dance of the veils.
There were some months of leisure for him after the Battle of the Five Thousand, and he made the most of it, spending every hour he could steal with Anobia. But Shapur hadn't let him stay idle for long periods. There were always men to be trained and tactics and politics to be discussed.
Shapur had a healthy respect for Casca's mind and used him as a counterpoint to many of his advisors who only told him what they thought he'd want to hear.
Casca, it seemed to Shapur, had more balls than the rest and would tell it like it was, regardless of the outcome.
There were months of campaigning for the King. The borders of Persia were surrounded by hostile elements and Shapur made good use of Casca's experience, subduing one tribe after another.
Shapur had accompanied him once on a campaign all the way to the Indus River, where they'd faced elephants in battle for the first time. He had seen some of the monsters previously in the arenas of Rome, trained to execute prisoners condemned to die, either by picking them up in their trunks and bashing their victim's brains out, or by kneeling on them. The most popular method with the crowds was when the huge animals would impale their victims on their tusks and toss them high in the air.
Casca had heard that they only killed in one manner, and that was in the first method taught. If it was true, he didn't know, but it made very little difference anyway, the end result was still the same. Death…
The beasts were frightening in combat, though. The warriors from the Indus Valley painted their elephants in various colors and mounted small fortresses on their backs where archers and spearmen were cached in relative safety. But once you got used to the big ugly mammoths they weren't nearly as dangerous as they looked and could easily bespooked by fire or smoke. They would turn on their own riders and trample them underfoot in their haste to escape.
That particular trip had also afforded him the opportunity of watching Shapur in action. The man was fearless, but in Casca's opinion, not foolhardy, and his sword was as good as any he'd seen, even among the professionals of the Arena. Shapur was a craftsman, and Casca had his doubts about whether he could hold his own with this King of Kings. He was certain, however, that if the fight lasted for any length of time his reserves of strength would eventually give him an edge on Shapur, but he still wouldn't relish facing him one-on-one.
While others around him killed in rage or passion, Shapur went about the act like a man cutting off the heads of chickens for his dinner. He was nothing but pure business. Casca wondered! What did give the King pleasure?
Shapur had only gone on the trip to allow his men to see him in action and know that he was a fit and able king; that, and to keep an eye on Casca in person. He'd heard too many reports of the Roman's growing popularity. Not that he considered Casca any real threat to his throne, but there were events about to take place that could give the Roman the opportunity to make a certain degree of trouble for him if he wished, and the wise general always had plans laid for any contingency.
