The Dark Lord

'Kagan Dahvos,' the Macedonian replied without looking up.

The Khazar expressed no obvious reaction at the slight, though the angry gleam in his eyes deepened. Instead, he drew a parchment packet from his belt and laid the cream-colored paper on the table. 'These... orders... arrived in my encampment last night. You sent them?'

Alexandros glanced up, raised an eyebrow, then returned his attention to the maps. 'Yes.'

A faint, wintry smile glanced across Dahvos' lips, then vanished again. 'The Roman army has completed preparations for a campaign across the Propontis? You have sufficient supplies? Enough shipping, wagons, pack animals, servants?'

Alexandros nodded, finally looking up from the letter he had been reading, eyes flickering around the circle of men waiting at the edge of the light. 'So the orders said, kagan.'

Dahvos folded back the first page of the packet with his finger. ''You command my... auxillia... to cross in advance of your main body,'' he read, ''to secure the opposite shore and disperse any Persian resistance in the neighborhood of Chalcedon. The Roman army will follow the subsequent day.'' The Khazar looked up, lips thinning in a humorless smile.

Alexandros nodded in agreement. 'That is correct.'

'Ships are mentioned—merchant ships and barges—which will provide transport for the crossing. Many are named, as are their captains.' Dahvos' forefinger transfixed a second sheet in the packet.

'Yes.' Alexandros stood up straight, his face filled with weary resignation. 'They were.'

Dahvos met his eyes and Alexandros blinked, all too aware of the furious anger boiling behind the Khazar's bland, controlled expression. The kagan bared his teeth in a tight smile. 'These ships you mention, comes, are in my direct employ. They were—they are—hired to provide my army with supplies, hospital and transport.' Dahvos' voice began to rise, a sharp tone coloring his words. 'My men, my cataphracts, lancers, bowmen, scouts, sutlers, blacksmiths... they are my men. Under my command.'

Alexandros raised a hand in a sharp motion. 'Kagan Dahvos, I under—'

'My nation,' Dahvos snapped, overriding the Macedonian, 'is a Roman ally, not a subject.' He looked around at the officers and captains watching with wide eyes, then back to Alexandros with a long-toothed grin. 'We are not sworn to the Emperor, we are not feodus. We came to fight beside our friends, against the Persians.' The Khazar picked up the packet with the tips of his thumb and forefinger, dangling the papers in the air. 'Allies are consulted, not ordered. Allies are equals, not servants.'

The packet fell, clattering on the tabletop, papers spilling awry among the cups and inkstones.

Alexandros stiffened, hand brushing a wayward lock of hair from his high forehead, eyes narrowing. His jaw tightened for a moment, then anger receded, driven down by an almost visible effort of will. 'Then I will ask, Kagan Dahvos—will you cross the Propontis, to clear the way into Asia?'

Dahvos said nothing, watching the Macedonian from shadowed eyes. Alexandros stared back, at perfect ease. The moment stretched, grains tumbling from an invisible clock. At last, Dahvos stirred, saying: 'I will cross the strait with my fleet and my army. If there are Persians lurking among the summer houses and villas, we will drive them out. This much, we will do for the memory of Heraclius, who was my uncle's friend.'

Pursing his lips, Alexandros considered the kagan. He waited, but there were no further words. 'Your... fleet... will not return?'

Dahvos shook his head slowly; face mask-like in the slanting sunlight. 'On the second day and after, we will press on, into the east. The army of Khazaria will make its way home along the shore of the Sea of Darkness, through Paphlagonia and Colchis. If the Persians or their servants bar our way, we will strike them down.' He paused, looking around the circle. 'But we will not do your bidding. You can find your own way across the Propontis.'

With a barely polite nod, Dahvos turned away and strode away across the vast floor. He did not look back, though his keen ears heard a scuffle, men muttering and a sharp, commanding voice call for quiet. At the doorway, Dahvos paused, running a hand along the marble frame. Panels of tiny figures surrounded the portal, showing men and women at daily tasks, marvelous in their diverse array. He bit his lip, took a heavy breath and then went out, clattering down the steps with a steadily lifting mood. He wiped soot-blackened fingers on his riding trousers.

By the time he reached the plaza he was smiling. Jusuf was waiting astride a slate-colored mare, her mane twined with ribbons and feathers, holding Dahvos' own mount. A troop of his own lancers stood ready, their gear and armor packed, lances polished, bows securely cased in painted leather cases, quivers packed with newly fletched arrows.

'We're going home,' the kagan said, swinging up onto his horse. The dappled gray snorted, pawing the ground. She wanted grass and raw earth under her hooves, not streets of painful cobblestones and cracked marble. 'To the camps, then to the port.'

The city sprawled untidily around them as they rode west, towards the shattered towers of the Charisian Gate, mile after mile of blackened, brick-faced buildings crowding the avenue. In many places, the buildings had been completely consumed by fire, reduced to shattered piles of rubble. Solitary arches of an aqueduct loomed against the sky, the watercourse fallen in ruin. The sound of hooves on stone rang and echoed from empty doorways and gaping windows. They trotted past work gangs digging in the destruction, clearing the entrances to the baths and public cisterns.

Life was returning the city, in fits and starts. The arrival of Alexandros' army had drawn some survivors from their hiding places, but not all. Strange rumors circulated in the camps—mysterious cook fires had been found, littered with cracked bone—haggard shapes glimpsed at night by patrols, flitting from shadow to shadow, or eyes gleaming from the darkness beyond the watch fires. Dahvos would be glad to leave this place.

—|—

'No,' Alexandros said, shaking his head at Chlothar's angry suggestion. 'Let him go.'

'But, my lord! The Persians have scattered, we can—'

The Macedonian raised an eyebrow at the Frank's outburst and the big man closed his mouth with a snap. Alexandros looked down at the table again, allowing himself a heartfelt sigh. A letter—delivered only the hour before—lay unfolded atop a map of the city and the strait, new parchment covered with a swift, sure hand in blue-black ink. He read the terse directive again, then set the paper aside. The maps of Asia taunted him, showing a monstrous network of roads—good roads too, he thought, well-drained and surfaced, which do not mire with mud or rain, or become impassible with the winter snow—and thriving cities. Rome had been busy all the long centuries while he slept.

Once, he had led an army across these lands—through wilderness and trackless ways, on paths marked by no more than piled stones—and even then his advance had been a bolt of lightning, a thunderstoke... He traced a path on the map with his fingertips, reading tiny names inked beside carefully drawn cities. Nicomedia, he read. Germa, Tyana, Antioch... then the door to Persia and Babylon. An empire... my empire.

Longing stabbed in his gut, a tight fist twisting his entrails. Alexandros bit the inside of his lip and closed his eyes. After a moment, the spasm passed. 'Chlothar...'

'My lord?' The Frank was watching him, worry etched on his long face.

'We have received new orders,' Alexandros said, tasting bile at the back of his mouth. 'Let the Khazars go—they will do us no harm and they will keep the Persians across the water occupied.' He gestured for his officers to gather around the table. 'The trouble in Egypt has grown worse. The King of Kings Shahr-Baraz is there, with a powerful army. The Caesar Aurelian is hard-pressed. By now, he may be besieged in Alexandria itself.'

The officers, Goth and Roman alike, blanched at the Macedonian's even, emotionless words.

'The Emperor Galen bids us take ship for Egypt with all speed, with every man we can put aboard.' Alexandros flashed the men a cheerful smile. 'Of course, there is no fleet to take us to Egypt. Not yet. My latest report relates the Western fleet is at Tarentum in southern Italia, refitting and being reinforced by squadrons from Gaul and Britannia.' The smile shaded into a half-grin and the Macedonian tugged ruefully at his chin. 'The quartermasters will be pleased, I'm sure, to learn our hard-won levy of wagons and draft animals and fodder will now go for naught.'