The system of choosing administrators for the Empire was fair enough, to the extent that anything in life is fair. Perennius refused to become involved with it simply because he saw the process as the greatest and most ineluctable threat which the Empire faced.
There had been threats to the borders ever since Rome was a hilltop settlement of bandits. The Germans, the Moors, the glittering host of the Persians ... all could be turned back or slaughtered by the Imperial forces - if the latter were intelligently marshalled, competently led, and supplied in accordance with their needs and the Empire's abilities. Venal officials were a problem as old as government. The damage they did was inevitable; and, like that of caterpillars in a fruit tree, was supportable under all but the most extreme situations.
What was far more dangerous than graft was the increasing number of administrative documents which were unintelligible even to the men who drafted them. Archaic
words; neologisms; technical terms borrowed for effect from other disciplines and then misused in a number of different fashions - all of these horrors were becoming staples of the tax laws and the criminal code, of reports on barley production and the extent of flood-damage on the Pyramos. Civil servants were affecting Tacitean variation without the brevity Tacitus had prized equally; fullness beyond that of Cicero without Cicero's precision.
And not a damned one of them could add his own household accounts, much less figure the income of a province. Slaves did both, and both badly.
But Perennius' mind that saw the Empire talking itself in declining circles toward destruction was by that the more fiercely determined that Gaius would succeed. The darker the shadows over the general future, the greater Perennius' need to emphasize his closest approximation to personal continuance. Thus the tutors he had not suggested but rather forced on his protege. Even now, listening to a series of glosses on Homer and Hesiod which were as impressive as they were pointless, the agent could not wish that Gaius had been apprenticed to a mule driver.
The younger Illyrian paused. Sestius, in the shade further along the wall, said, 'Around here, we always said Typhon came out of the earth in Cilicia.' When Calvus turned, the centurion made a languid east-west gesture. 'All along the Taurus here, there's straight-walled valleys, hundreds of feet deep . .. and sometimes a mile across.'
The tall woman nodded in understanding. 'Sinkholes,' she said. 'Your rocks are limestone. When the water eats them away under the surface, there's enough volcanic activity to collapse the shell covering the holes.'
Sestius shrugged. Beside him, Sabellia appeared to be more interested in the sounds their hobbled donkeys made foraging on the other side of the wall. All members of the party were too tired to act animated. 'Whatever,' the centurion said. 'Anyway, some of the gorges have caves at one end. The one that's called Typhon's Cavern, the one you need to go to - ' Sestius had not been told the full purpose of their mission, but he had seen the tentacled thing from the balcony and must have had suspicions - 'is . . . well, nobody knows how far that cave goes. There's a path into the gorge along one of the walls. I mean, the place is big, there's trees and sometimes they pasture sheep down in it. And you can get into the cave itself easy, it's got a mouth like a funnel and it just keeps going down, getting a little tighter and a little slicker each step of the way.'
The Cilician paused and shrugged again. 'Some people think it leads all the way to Hell, sure. There's a chapel built at the throat of it, of stone and real old. And I suppose some people even believe that Typhon crawled up out of the cave. But though the place has never had a good reputation, this latest stuff about a dragon is new. And it isn't a myth.'
'Your Guardians?' Perennius asked with his eyes closed against the shimmering road.
'I doubt it,' Calvus replied. Her voice drifted out of the tawny blur. 'More likely it's another result of my arrival. We hadn't any experience with the process before my sibs and I were sent here. The side effects of the process - ' the catch in the tall woman's voice might have resulted from nothing more than a dry throat - 'were not things that had been foreseen. At least, not things that we were warned to expect.'
'Would you have come anyway?' the agent asked the world beyond his eyelids.
'Yes.' The word seemed too flat to convey a loss of siblings which was more traumatic than a multiple amputation. 'But I'm not sure they knew that we would come. I'm not sure the technicians realized how well they had raised us.'
'Well, if we've got dragons as well as Guardians to deal with,' Perennius said, 'we'll deal with them. At least the bastards don't seem to be able to track you down while we're moving.'
The appearance of another variable did not distress the agent. Rather the contrary, and Perennius knew himself well enough to guess why. The agent was practical and experienced enough to make all the preparations possible under the circumstances. He could never be comfortable risking failure because of his own laziness. That would
have been as unthinkable as refusing to take a useful action because it might involve his own injury or death.
But when it was impossible to plan, when Aulus Perennius had to react to what the moment brought . . . when success or failure balanced on his wits and a sword's edge - that was when life became worthwhile for its own sake. If the mission were entering the mists of chance more deeply as they approached their goal, then so be it. They would deal with what came. He would deal with what came.
'Time we got moving again,' the agent said aloud. 'According to the itinerary, there's an inn some five miles farther on.'
'It may be abandoned,' the centurion suggested. 'Cleiton said there isn't any traffic past the gorge any more.'
'There'll be somebody there to serve us,' Perennius said unconcernedly, 'or we'll make do with what they left behind.' The agent began to stand. He used his hands in the chinks of the wall behind him to support his weight until he was willing to ease it back onto his legs. The spear wound was warm to the touch, but it seemed to have caused less swelling than even a bruise usually would. Again he wondered whether Calvus could influence muscles as well as minds.
'And tonight,' the agent went on, 'we'll talk about what we're going to do when we get there. When we get to Typhon's Cavern.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
'Well, there's somebody home,' Perennius commented as he watched the thread of smoke. Because the inn was half-way down the slope to the ford, the party had a view of the stables within the far sidewall of the courtyard. There were no immediate signs of activity there, but three of the stable doors were closed as if they were occupied. The smoke was from a flue of the vaulted common room to the rear. The structure could easily sleep a hundred men on straw pallets, but the evidence of the single fire suggested the handful whose beasts might be in the stable.
'Part of the estate,' Sestius said. There was a low tower on one corner of the common room. The bath and the gatehouse, on opposite sides of the gate in the front wall, looked as if they were adapted for defense also. The centurion added morosely, 'They may have got a caretaker to stay on when Kamilides and his crew lit out.'
Gaius had bent to tie his donkey's reins to a bush. He straightened with a puzzled expression. There was a piece of bone in his hand. 'Aulus, look at this,' he said, stepping closer to the older man.
Perennius glanced at the bone. 'Part of an ox thigh,' he remarked. 'What about it?'
'Camel, I'd guess,' said Sestius, peering at the courier's find. 'Ox would be - '
Gaius ignored the technical discussion. 'Not what it is, but look at it,' he said. 'Here, at the break.'
The thigh had been worried by dogs or jackals, then nibbled by rodents who had hollowed out the narrow cavity completely. There was deeper scarring on the dense bone than either of those causes could account for. 'Chisels,' the agent said with a frown. He rotated the bone. 'Somebody cracked it with pointed chisels to get the marrow out.' At the broken end, among the jagged points left when the bone snapped, were cleanly-sheared surfaces reaching over an inch into the bone from either side.
Sabellia had noticed something which the men had not. As they talked, the Gallic woman picked up an object a foot or two from where the thigh-bone had lain. Perennius glanced over at her and saw what she held. He swore softly.
'Here,' she said, handing the object to the agent. 'I think it'll fit.'
The object was a triangular tooth three inches long. Both its cutting edges were lightly serrated. The tooth fit the 'chisel marks' in the thigh bone perfectly. Perennius tossed the bone away. He handed the tooth back to Sabellia. 'I think,' he said as he unhitched his donkey's reins, 'that I'd as soon be inside walls for a while - ' he
