and gases driven from corpses that were being reduced to calcined ash. There could be no screaming now, not that voices could have been heard over the roar.
'Right,' Perennius said. He accepted the offered hand and rose slowly. As they walked away from the funnel of fire, he said, 'I wonder if they drained the bath. I'd really like to get clean.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
'All right, let's see your papers,' demanded the commander of the detachment at the west gate of Tarsus. 'Dis-mount, dammit.'
'Hey, you're not checking them,' said Gaius. He waved toward the stream of traffic into the city.
Sestius was already off his donkey. He grimaced, only partly at his stiffness from the ride. It was for Perennius to say, 'Gaius, let me handle this.' He walked over to the officer. The agent's hand was in his purse.
The ride on a donkey's narrow back had left Sestius with a limp. Perennius could imagine what similar punishment would have done to him. Instead of riding, the agent had walked, leading his donkey. The miles had left his wound afire, but they had also worked his thigh to suppleness again. It had been a punishing two days, but now the agent did not limp. Under other circumstances, he might have ridden anyway so as not to delay his companions. Because of Calvus, that question had not arisen.
Gaius rode splendidly and loved it. His only objection was that a donkey was not a fit mount for a cavalry decurion. Donkeys were what was available in the valley they had depopulated, however. The small-holdings they passed later had nothing better, so Gaius had made do. Sabellia, like Perennius himself when the agent was healthy, had no great affection for riding, but she did it adequately when the need arose. Sestius was scarcely adequate - he had fallen several times and under unexpected circumstances - but he was too much a soldier to put any weight on his own feet that could go on others'.
Calvus had been awkward the first few days on shipboard. Mounted, she was a disaster. When she made an effort to cling to the donkey with her knees, the animal stumbled and fell from the crushing grip. When Calvus attempted to mitigate that vise, she inevitably fell off. There could be no question of the traveller's strength, but she did not have the instinctive control needed for some very ordinary tasks until she had practiced them for days.
They did not have days to spend on this. Calvus walked.
'Yeah, sonny,' said the guard commander, 'it could be that we do let local people through without checking them. What's it to you?' He tapped his baton on his left palm as he walked toward Gaius.
The gateway thrust out from the wall. Pillars supported a groined vault over the intersection of the road that Perennius and his troupe were on and the north-south road along the outside of the city wall. The guards were a detachment of heavy infantry, Syrian Greeks by the look of them. Even an argument between their commander and a traveller left them disinterested.
'Of course you're right to question us, sir,' Perennius said. 'Gaius, get off that donkey! Sir, we're travelling in cotton. Other fabrics as well, but I'm told this is the time and place to make a market in Cilician cotton.' The agent slipped his right hand palm-down over the commander's upturned left. The baton hesitated. 'A terrible thing, this disruption,' Perennius continued smoothly. 'But of course that means profits for a man who's willing to take a few risks ... and profits for men who do their duty as well. I trust our papers are in order? And do forgive my bodyguard, you know, he's young.'
The fact of the coin did not surprise the officer of the guard. The light weight did, especially after he spread his own enfolding fingers and saw the sun wink on gold, not silver-washed bronze. The pirates' loot had more than made up for losing the bank drafts with the expedition's gear aboard the Eagle. 'Hermes!' the commander muttered. He covered the aureus again as quickly as he had exposed it. 'Yes sir,' he said. 'Well. I'm sure a gentleman
of your experience can imagine how careful we need to be, what with the Games and all the talk of portents - dragons in the countryside! And they say the Borani have been raiding near Ephesus again.'
Sestius started to say something, but he managed to restrain himself. It was very difficult not to make yourself a center of attention by blurting out facts that everyone nearby would want to hear. At the moment, however, Perennius needed to gather information rather than to give it out. And the gods knew, it did not matter in the least to these folk if they were about to be raided by Germans rather than by Scyths.
The agent nodded toward the stream of people still making their way into the city. Whole families were travelling together, but without the impedimenta that would suggest a panicked flight from the countryside. In families wealthy enough to have slaves, the latter preceded the father to clear the way. The children were strung out behind their father in descending order of age. Then came any older members of the extended family; and last, the wife and mother. Submissive womanhood was by no means a virtue universally accepted among the Cilicians. It was noticeable that in families which owned a single mule or donkey, the wife was as likely to be mounted as the husband was. The women wore their finery under travelling shawls. Coiled earrings dangled nearly to their shoulders. The jewelry was gold if they could afford it, silver or brass if they could not. Sabellia, aware of her own battered appearance, glared back at the bold-eyed women as they passed.
'All the traffic's for the Games, then?' Perennius said to the officer. 'Who's giving them?'
'Our lord Odenath,' the commander replied proudly. 'Holding a day of supplication all over the province in thanks for his victory last year over the Persians. His latest victory. You know - ' the men had not been speaking loudly, but now the officer bent closer to Perennius and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper - 'there's those who say a dragon appearing here means the same thing among princes. The one in Rome replaced by one from the East. I don't know about that .. . but between you, me, and the bedpost, I wouldn't mind if they were right.' The officer straightened and swept his hand out. 'Who's helped us while other folks loll around, screwing their way through all the titled sluts in Rome?'
The agent nodded in false agreement. Blazes, he'd heard worse. It was not Gallienus to whom Perennius' loyalty was given, whatever that current holder of the office might believe. Besides, the last gibe amused the agent. The Autarch of Palmyra had his virtues, to be sure; but there was nothing in the scores of beautiful women entering Odenath's seraglio to suggest that one of those virtues was chastity.
'You'll have Hell's own time finding lodgings today,' the commander called after them as they entered the gate. Perennius waved back with a smile. He knew from experience that gold would get them food and lodging as quickly as it had gotten them entry to Tarsus. Money was never necessary. Its effective use, like that of violence, involved more subtleties than many folk realized. But money smoothed most paths if one were willing to use it.
Tarsus was an ancient foundation. It had grown under the direction of various peoples, all of whom found the Roman fascination with straight streets to be unaesthetic and dangerous. Why go out of your way to make the key points of your city accessible to an invader? Let every branching be a potential cul-de-sac to trap him under the fire of rooftops on three sides. Let his spears if leveled jam in narrow turnings and if vertical catch in the second-story overhangs. And besides, who ever saw a straight line in nature?
The maze did not concern Sestius, nor was it intended to do so. It was local knowledge of the convoluted street-scape which made the maze so useful. The centurion had not been in Tarsus for five years or more, but the pattern of alleys and 'boulevards' scarcely wider might not have changed significantly in five millenia.
Because of the crowd, all five of the group had to lead their donkeys as Calvus and Perennius had done during the whole journey. Even with training, most animals will not try to force their way through a mass of humans,
though they could do so easily. If the crowd parts for their bulk and sharp hooves, well and good. But infantry with shields locked and spear-points advanced is proof against the finest cavalry in the world - proof even against elephants, unless the beasts are already blind and maddened by previous wounds. Sestius, in the lead, made better time with his own shoulders and elbows than the keel-like breastbone of his donkey would have done if the centurion insisted on riding.
Sestius stopped at an archway. He began trying to pull his mount through the narrow opening into the side of a building. Perennius, further back by the donkey's length, had just passed a doorway into the same structure. The entrance was gorgeously tiled. The interior of the building exhaled echoes and steam. The agent dropped the reins of his animal. It had nowhere to wander to in the crowd anyway. The Illyrian squeezed forward to Sestius and asked, 'A bath? We're staying in a bath?'
'The front of the building's an inn,' the centurion said. He waved the hand which was not tugging at his recalcitrant donkey. 'The Mottled Fleece. Run by a family from my district since, oh, well . . . forever.'
Perennius nodded. There was a fleece hanging at the far corner of the building where the street they were following debouched into a broader one. There was no way of telling what color the wool had been originally. The
