lower portion of the fleece had been polished to the leather by the shoulders of every man and beast to turn the corner sharply. Even the upper part was black with the grime of ages. The fleece was mottled for the same reason that the family of the inn proprietors were countrymen of Sestius: historically, that had been the case.
Perennius' party had entered Tarsus through the Jewish quarter. It was a street of sailmakers who sat in their shops, whole families in order of age. They pushed their needles through heavy canvas while they chattered to one another in Hebrew. They would deal with customers in Common Greek, but the present holiday crowds were only objects and a hindrance to trade. Adjoining the Jewish quarter was apparently a quarter of native Cilicians. Elsewhere in the city there would be Greek communities, and Armenians, and a score of others: Kurds and Scyths and Italians. Some of the groups would be no more than a dozen or two souls, and yet they would still look to the welfare of their own national community before troubling about the welfare of the city. Even so, Tarsus ranked far higher in their minds than did an abstraction like 'the Empire,' though it was from that Empire that the peace and safety of them all depended.
It was daily realizations like that which drove Perennius to wild frustration or the narrow focus of a knife edge. The impending disaster itself was beginning to weld the disparate strands into a unity which no deliberate policy had been able to create. But that disaster would have to be delayed longer than the agent believed possible, or the Empire would run its course before the unifying process could.
For now, the knife edge. Perennius gave the centurion's mount a judicious kick in the ribs. The animal bolted through the archway. Perennius' own donkey followed, without urging and so abruptly that the agent had to jump out of the way. Perennius' fingers were touching the handle of the sling he had retrieved from the gear jumbled in the pirate camp.
The courtyard they had entered through the arch gave onto the inn's stables. The area was already crowded with beasts and men. An ostler saw the newcomers and began waving them back angrily. Someone should have barred the archway, but that had been neglected in the confusion. Sestius ignored the directions. Sabellia was leading her mount through the narrow opening with the other two behind her, so the centurion could not have left even if he had intended to do so. Sestius began talking to the ostler with a series of sweeping gestures. The other man's face cleared. He embraced Sestius, both of them gabbling in a conversation which seemed to consist primarily of proper names and relationships.
At last the centurion broke off. He waved his companions to a flight of stone steps into the three-story building. 'In here,' he cried. 'Zenophanes'll take care of our animals and baggage.'
Perennius let Sabellia precede him up the stairs. Gold
was a good general key, he thought, but the networks of families and nations which riddled the Empire were themselves a better entree for those who could tap in on them.
'My god, Quintus,' a white-haired man was crying to Sestius in the hallway. 'They quarter eight soldiers on us - Arabs, can you believe it? - and now you come home. What we'll do, I can't imagine, but we'll manage. But my boy - aren't you supposed to be lined up already for the parade? The others left hours ago!'
'Ah, I'm - ' the centurion began. He caught Perennius' eye and went on, 'I've been discharged, Cleiton. My friends and I have some business in the area, and then my wife and I'll be settling down.'
'Oh, well, then you'll want to watch the parade,' the innkeeper determined aloud. 'Come on, quickly, up to the roof with you or you'll miss the start.'
Sestius looked at the agent. Perennius in turn looked at Calvus and then shrugged. They obviously would not accomplish a great deal more in the present confusion. 'Why not?' the Illyrian agreed. He began climbing the ladder that served as access to the inn's upper floors.
The roof already held a number of family members and other guests of the inn. There was a low parapet, less for safety than to collect rain water draining down the shallow, tiled incline toward the front of the building. Drains at either corner then sucked the water into cisterns. Roman administration had brought aqueducts and public water supplies to Tarsus; but the cisterns continued to work and to be used.
A blare of horns demonstrated that Cleiton was correct about the parade starting. The agent found a spot at the parapet and sat on his folded ankles. He forced his right leg to comply with the posture. The street below was so crowded with onlookers that the marchers had virtually to clear a path for themselves as they advanced.
Probably for that reason, the front ranks of the parade were infantry marching four files across. All the men wore dress armor. The feather plumes were fitted into their helmet slots. On the leather-faced shields were designs freshly picked out in gilt. Perennius catalogued the represented units reflexively. Elements of the Fifth, the Twelfth ... Imperial line formations, as befitted Odenath in his capacity of Restorer of the East. Hobnails clashed in unison on the cobblestones. Then the cornicines with their curved bronze horns and the trumpeters blew a salute. The crowd cheered. Some of the onlookers cheered Odenath as Emperor.
Two pairs of heavy cavalrymen followed, restricted by the narrow front. They were cataphracts: horses and men both were armored with great scales of bronze which had been polished for the occasion. Instead of combat headgear, the men wore helmets with anthropomorphic face-pieces of silvered bronze. The masks glared stiffly at the crowd. One thought of the mounted figures as statues until a head turned or nodded. The effect was one which Perennius had always found to be disconcerting. Now it reminded him of the stiff-carapaced Guardian he had killed unknowing . . . and the five more like it he had come so far to face. But the armor also made him think -
'Aulus!' Gaius whispered. He tugged on the agent's arm. 'I heard people shouting - '
Perennius touched the younger man's lips to hush him gently. In the past, the agent's patience had extended only to the actions of enemies. Clumsy execution by an ally, ill-timed interruptions by friends, would set Perennius off in a blast of rage. He was changing, and he looked in puzzlement at Calvus on his other side before whispering, 'I know what they're cheering, Gaius. We're not in that business right now, and this might not be a healthy place to suggest otherwise. Hey? Sit and watch the parade.' The agent's hand moved from Gaius' face to his shoulder. He guided the young courier down to sit.
Calvus looked at the two men. Perennius wondered if she too had noted the change in his temper. Well, he always handled himself better when he was on assignment than when he viewed the world with only his own eyes.
The parade involved only token units from Odenath's forces. If the officer at the gate was correct, similar displays were going on all over Cilicia today, so the small scale was inevitable. The troops following the four cata-
phracts were also cavalry - of a sort. They were Arabs in flowing robes and burnooses, carrying long lances and mounted on dromedaries. Though the Palmyrene horses ahead of them must have been used to camels, the odor still made them skittish. Perennius could well imagine the havoc in Persian columns when their cavalry boiled away from the Palmyrene lancers. Now - snorting, aggressive and hesitant by degrees - half a dozen of the big animals straggled down the street. Their dark-skinned riders studied the crowds without affection. The Arabs fingered their weapons as they watched the packed city-dwellers. The troopers managed to give the impression of housewives, testing the edges of knives in a chickenyard.
Following the cavalry were more foot-soldiers escorting wagons. The wagons carried a selection of loot from Odenath's victories in past years, along with prisoners and beasts intended for the Games which were to be a part of the celebration. In a traditional Roman triumph, the troops would have worn tunics and wreaths. This was neither Rome nor a triumph. Odenath obviously felt that his own propaganda purposes were better served by men in full armor, their weapons glittering in a hedge about the wagons. Persian prisoners were tied facing outward from stakes in the center of the wagons carrying them. Some of them might have been among the men who had sacked Tarsus before Odenath's forces harried them back across the frontier.
Suits of gilded chain mail. Tiny steel bucklers whose surfaces were silvered or parcel gilt. Long curved swords whose watermarked blades impressed Perennius more than did the precious stones with which some of the hilts were inlaid. Peaked, chain-veiled helmets ... Two full wagons of such military hardware. Then came loads of silk garments, dyed crimson or purple and shot with gold wire, to demonstrate that the Palmyrenes had captured some of Shapur's personal baggage. That was a useful datum to file mentally and to check against Odenath's official account of his victories.
But Perennius was tired, and he was not really interested even in the paraphernalia of battle and victory. The agent was almost dozing when the animals for the beast show were rolled by next in their cages. A dozen gazelles leaped nervously and clacked their horns against the bars. Wild, straight-horned bulls followed. Each was tethered between a yoke of draft oxen which dragged the intended victims along despite their efforts to break loose and gore. Two russet, angry lions snarled past in iron cages. Their manes were torn short by the scrub of northern
