he examined the ground.
'I've not your nose,' he muttered, rising to pace through the brush. 'But people were here—more than one.' The Latin paused, fingers gently working a scrap of beige cloth free from a thorn branch. 'Here—does this smell familiar?'
Vladimir took the scrap of cloth, eyes narrowing, and drank deep of the faint aroma clinging to the loose- weave fabric. The smell was tantalizing, then he remembered and a deep growl issued from the back of his throat. At the same time, the Walach rocked back on his heels, gritting his teeth against a sudden, hollow feeling. Nicholas watched his friend with dead eyes, quick mind having leapt ahead to the same inevitable conclusion.
'Thyatis,' Vladimir said dully, staring at the hole as if the woman were there herself, laughing at their slow, dull minds. His fingernails shredded the fabric, letting the threads drift away in the dawn breeze. 'She was here. With the others.'
'Which others? The Persians?' Nicholas squatted down, realizing he was silhouetted against the skyline. His face had grown very still, lips a harsh slash, eyes dark slits in a tanned face. 'How many?'
The Walach did not answer immediately, but crawled slowly around the hole, head low to the ground. Then he crept off into the brush and did not return for some time. When he did, a ghastly expression haunted his face. Nicholas was waiting, Brunhilde across his knees, chin in his hands.
'What did you find?'
Vladimir squatted beside the hole, digging his long fingers into the sand. 'Betia was here too, and three or four other women. There were camels hidden down there.' He pointed at the deserted, quiet village. 'They put the telecast on a camel and went away into the desert to the northeast.'
'On the pilgrim road?' Nicholas did not meet his friend's eyes, focusing on rubbing soot from the scabbard with his tunic sleeve.
'No. There is another trail following the line of ridges.'
Nicholas looked up, pale mauve eyes glittering in reflection of the spreading cloak of dawn. 'Our camels and water?'
Vladimir shook his head. 'Gone.' The beasts had fled wildly from the ambush on the temple mount and though he'd seen their tracks, they were long gone. 'We have nothing,' he said, biting his knuckles.
Nicholas rose into a crouch, fixing the Walach with a furious glance. 'Don't be a fool! We are alive and there is water in the oasis pools. These houses will be filled with food, water bags, everything we need.'
Vladimir nodded, but he looked to the north. Flat-topped mesas dotted the horizon, flattened as by the blows of giants, their sides crumbling and rocky with shale and chalk. Beyond them lay the open desert, wind- blown plains of rock and stone, and endless rolling sand beyond. 'How...'
'We walk,' Nicholas said, moving down the hill, still keeping low. 'First to Praetonium and then a ship to Cyrenaicea or Rome herself.'
Vladimir stared after him for a moment, then shook himself from head to toe, like a wet dog, and followed.
CHAPTER FORTY
The Nile Canal Gate, Alexandria
'It's your turn.' Frontius sat with his back against pitted old sandstone, squinting sideways at his friend. Both men were in a scrap of shade thrown by a merlon rising from the tower wall. The sun was a huge, brassy disk in the morning sky, its heat magnified by sodden delta air.
'I think not!' Sextus replied, between gulps of tepid brown water from a cup. A bucket sat beside him, wedged into the corner of a stone embrasure. Two more buckets filled with river sand completed the fire-brigade station. 'Who was cutting the cables on the Heliokonpolis bridge while the Jackal came on at us, thundering like the gods and spitting fire?'
'You,' Frontius allowed, closing his weak eye. Sweat oozed in a steady, slow stream down the side of his nose. 'And handily done too. But I took the last look-see. It's your turn now.'
Groaning, Sextus peered over the edge of the embrasure, helmet crammed down tight on his head, a sweat-dark leather strap biting into his stubbled chin. The sky growled and rumbled with muted, distant thunder, but there were no clouds on the horizon. Instead, a heavy grayish haze hung over the fields and canals facing the city. The engineer's armor clamped tight against his chest and upper arms, the metal burning with sweat. He blinked a trail of salt out of his eyes, searching the irregular, rumpled landscape for the enemy.
The irregular wind out of the north fluttered to a stop. A suffocating pressure began to build in the humid air.
All along the Roman lines, a sloping, packed earthen berm two miles long, faced with slabs of scavenged stone and brick, riddled with sharpened stakes, topped by a fighting platform reinforced with palm logs, mud-brick and irregularly placed towers, the Legions tensed. Every man crouched down, pressing himself into the muddy corduroy walkway. Sextus counted himself lucky, on one hand, for their position stood at the Nile Canal gate—a proper fortification of sandstone and cement, long predating the earthworks—and on the other, he was shivering with fear, for the exposed bastion of the gate towers were sure to draw the full attention of the enemy.
The engineer had seen the strength of the Persian sorcerers—more than once—and the rush of blood in his veins was loud in his ears. A half-mile of lumpy ground, denuded of vegetation, buildings and every scrap of brick, stone and wood faced the wall. Flocks of white birds pecked among the waving, knee-high grass. Sextus wiped sweat from his eyes, searching for the Persian lines, for the glint of watery sunlight on spears and helms...
The air twisted, a monstrous shape winging towards the Roman lines. The heat-haze rippled, bunching and roiling around a swift sparkling mote speeding like Apollo's arrow towards the gate. The birds spurted up from the ground in a panicked cloud of white feathers. Screeching in alarm, they darted away across the bobbing grass.
'Down!' Sextus screamed, kissing the stone. Every man in the tower did the same, eyes screwed shut against the expected flare of brilliance. A wild rushing sound ripped overhead, then a colossal
A furious black spark whirled and sputtered in the air. Curlicues of lightning danced around the edges, illuminating—just for a fraction of a grain—a queer distortion in the air. The shuddering pocket of flame flared, leaping across some invisible surface and the engineer gaped to see the ravening destruction unfold, spilling away from him, lighting the sky, the tower and the rampart for thousands of yards in either direction, but held in the air like a stone distending a taut cloth. A rumbling, deafening
In the blink of an eye, the blast was gone, leaving only sizzling earth and clouds of steam boiling up from damp fields. Sextus shook his head, trying to clear his mind, then he saw the previously empty plain surging with the enemy. The northerly wind resumed, stirring turgid air.
'Here they come!' The engineers leapt to their ballista. Frontius scrambled up on the far side of the machine, grasping hold of a metal-faced plate set in the firing port of the wall. Sextus took hold of a smooth wooden handle with his left hand, then seized hold of the firing lever with the other. Frontius, ducking, dragged the metal plate aide, revealing the fields and the road below.
Thousands of Persians and Greeks swarmed forward, shrieking war cries, running across the rumpled field towards the wall. Nearly every man, Sextus saw in the brief instant he spared to survey the attack, bore a shield and they came on in two distinct waves. The first ranks were men with climbing ladders, shields, axes, long spears—then the second were archers, already advancing in staggered line, some men lofting arrows towards the defense, the others drawing shaft to string as they jogged forward. The sky darkened with flights of shafts.
On the road itself, a three-story-high tower rumbled forward on massive wooden wheels. A huge crowd of Persians packed the road behind the siege engine, pushing for all they were worth. On the fighting top, a dozen men in glittering, head-to-toe armor crouched behind wicker and hide shields. Sextus cursed, dragging the heavy ballista up and around. A four-foot-long wooden shaft lay in the aiming groove, tipped by six inches of triangular iron. Wooden slats flared from the butt-end of the bolt.
