The Dance of Time: Chapter Three

The Euphrates
Autumn, 533 A.D.

    They had approached Elafonisos from the south, because Calopodius had thought Anna might enjoy the sight of the great ridge which overlooked the harbor, with its tower perched atop it like a hawk. And she had seemed to enjoy it well enough, although, as he was coming to recognize, she took most of her pleasure from the sea itself. As did he, for that matter.

    She even smiled, once or twice.

    The trip across to the island, however, was the high point of the expedition. Their overnight stay in the small tavern in the port had been... almost unpleasant. Anna had not objected to the dinginess of the provincial tavern, nor had she complained about the poor fare offered for their evening meal. But she had retreated into an even more distant silence—almost sullen and hostile—as soon as they set foot on land.

    That night, as always since the night of their wedding, she performed her duties without resistance. But also with as much energy and enthusiasm as she might have given to reading a particularly dull piece of hagiography. Calopodius found it all quite frustrating, the more so since his wife’s naked body was something which aroused him greatly. As he had suspected in the days before the marriage, his wife was quite lovely once she could be seen. And felt.

    So he performed his own duty in a perfunctory manner. Afterward, in another time, he might have spent the occasion idly considering the qualities he would look for in a courtesan—now that he had a wife against whose tedium he could measure the problem. But he had already decided to join Belisarius’ expedition to the Indus. So, before falling asleep, his thoughts were entirely given over to matters of martial glory. And, of course, the fears and uncertainties which any man his age would feel on the eve of plunging into the maelstrom of war.

    When trouble finally arrived, it was Anna’s husband who saved her. The knowledge only increased her fury.

    Stupid, really, and some part of her mind understood it perfectly well. But she still couldn’t stop hating him.

    Stupid. The men on the barge who were clambering eagerly onto the small pier where her own little river craft was tied up were making no attempt to hide their leers. Eight of them there were, their half-clad bodies sweaty from the toil of working their clumsy vessel up the Euphrates.

    A little desperately, Anna looked about. She saw nothing beyond the Euphrates itself; reed marshes on the other bank, and a desert on her own. There was not a town or a village in sight. She had stopped at this little pier simply because the two sailors she had hired to carry her down to Charax had insisted they needed to take on fresh water. There was a well here, which was the only reason for the pier’s existence. After taking a taste of the muddy water of the Euphrates, Anna couldn’t find herself in disagreement.

    She wished, now, that she’d insisted on continuing. Not that her insistence would have probably done much good. The sailors had been civil enough, since she employed them at a small town in the headwaters of the Euphrates. But they were obviously not overawed by a nineteen-year-old girl, even if she did come from the famous family of the Melisseni.

    She glanced appealingly at the sailors, still working the well. They avoided her gaze, acting as if they hadn’t even noticed the men climbing out of the barge. Both sailors were rather elderly, and it was clear enough they had no intention of getting into a fracas with eight rivermen much younger than themselves—all of whom were carrying knives, to boot.

    The men from the barge were close to her, and beginning to spread out. One of them was fingering the knife in a scabbard attached to his waist. All of them were smiling in a manner which even a sheltered young noblewoman understood was predatory.

    Now in sheer desperation, her eyes moved to the only other men on the pier. Three soldiers, judging from their weapons and gear. They had already been on the pier when Anna’s boat drew up, and their presence had almost been enough to cause the sailors to pass by entirely. A rather vicious-looking trio, they were. Two Isaurians and a third one whom Anna thought was probably an Arab. Isaurians were not much better than barbarians; Arabs might or might not be, depending on where they came from. Anna suspected this one was an outright bedouin.

    The soldiers were lounging in the shade of a small pavilion they had erected. For a moment, as she had when she first caught sight of them, Anna found herself wondering how they had gotten there in the first place. They had no boat, nor any horses or camels—yet they possessed too much in the way of goods in sacks to have lugged them on their own shoulders. Not through this arid country, with their armor and weapons. She decided they had probably traveled with a caravan, and then parted company for some reason.

    But this was no time for idle speculation. The rivermen were very close now. The soldiers returned Anna’s beseeching eyes with nothing more than indifference. It was clear enough they had no more intention of intervening than her own sailors.

    Still—they could, in a way that two elderly sailors couldn’t.

    Pay them.

    Moving as quickly as she could in her elaborate clothing—and cursing herself silently, again, for having been so stupid as to make this insane journey without giving a thought to her apparel—Anna walked over to them. She could only hope they understood Greek. She knew no other language.

    “I need help,” she hissed.

    The soldier in the center of the little group, one of the Isaurians, glanced at the eight rivermen and chuckled.

    “I’d say so. You’ll be lucky if they don’t kill you after they rob and rape you.”

    His Greek was fluent, if heavily accented. As he proceeded to demonstrate further. “Stupid noblewoman. Brains like a chicken. Are you some kind of idiot, traveling alone down this part of Mesopotamia? The difference between a riverman here and a pirate—”

    He turned his head and spit casually over the leg of the other Isaurian. His brother, judging from the close resemblance.

    “I’ll pay you,” she said.

    The two brothers exchanged glances. The one on the side, who seemed to be the younger one, shrugged. “We can use her boat to take us out of Mesopotamia. Beats walking, and the chance of another caravan... But nothing fancy,” he muttered. “We’re almost home.”

    His older brother grunted agreement and turned his head to look at the Arab. The Arab’s shrug expressed the same tepid enthusiasm. “Nothing fancy,” he echoed. “It’s too hot.”

    The Isaurian in the middle lazed to his feet. He wasn’t much taller than Anna, but his stocky and muscular build made him seem to loom over her.

    “All right. Here’s the way it is. You give us half your money and whatever other valuables you’ve got.” He tapped the jeweled necklace around her throat. “The rivermen can take the rest of it. They’ll settle for that, just to avoid a brawl.”

    She almost wailed. Not quite. “I can’t. I need the money to get to—”

    The soldier scowled. “Idiot! We’ll keep them from taking your boat, we’ll leave you enough—just enough—to get back to your family, and we’ll escort you into Anatolia.”

    He glanced again at the rivermen. They were standing some few yards away, hesitant now. “You’ve no business here, girl,” he growled quietly. “Just be thankful you’ll get out of this with your life.”

    His brother had gotten to his feet also. He snorted sarcastically. “Not to mention keeping your precious hymen intact. That ought to be worth a lot, once you get back to your family.”

    The fury which had filled Anna for months boiled to the surface. “I don’t have a hymen,” she snarled. “My husband did for that, the bastard, before he went off to war.”

    Now the Arab was on his feet. Hearing her words, he laughed aloud. “God save us! An abandoned little wife, no less.”

    The rivermen were beginning to get surly, judging from the scowls which had replaced the previous leers. One of them barked something in a language which Anna didn’t recognize. One of the Aramaic dialects, probably. The Isaurian who seemed to be the leader of the three soldiers gave them another glance and an idle little wave of his hand. The gesture more or less indicated: relax, relax—you’ll get a cut.

    That done, his eyes came back to Anna. “Idiot,” he repeated. The word was spoken with no heat, just lazy derision. “Think you’re the first woman got abandoned by a husband looking to make his fortune in war?”

    “He already has a fortune,” hissed Anna. “He went looking for fame. Found it too, damn him.”

    The Arab laughed again. “Fame, is it? Maybe in your circles! And what is the name of this paragon of martial virtue? Anthony the Illustrious Courier?”

    The other three soldiers shared in the little laugh. For a moment, Anna was distracted by the oddity of such flowery phrases coming out of the mouth of a common soldier. She remembered, vaguely, that her husband had once told her of the poetic prowess of Arabs. But she had paid little attention, at the time, and the memory simply heightened her anger.

    “He is famous,” Anna insisted. A certain innate honesty forced her to add: “At least in Constantinople, after Belisarius’ letter was read to the Senate. And his own dispatches.”

    The name Belisarius brought a sudden little stillness to the group of soldiers. The Isaurian leader’s eyes narrowed.

    “Belisarius? What’s the general got to do with your husband?”

    “And what’s his name?” added the Arab.

    Anna tightened her jaws. “Calopodius. Calopodius Saronites.”

    The stillness turned into frozen rigidity. All three soldiers’ eyes were now almost slits.

    The Isaurian leader drew a deep breath. “Are you trying to tell us that you are the wife of Calopodius the Blind?”

    For a moment, a spike of anguish drove through the anger. She didn’t really understand where it came from. Calopodius had always seemed blind to her, in his own way. But...

    Her own deep breath was a shaky thing. “They say he is blind now, yes. Belisarius’ letter to the Senate said so. He says it himself, in fact, in his letters. I—I guess it’s true. I haven’t seen him in many months. When he left...”

    One of the rivermen began to say something, in a surly tone of voice. The gaze which the Isaurian now turned on him was nothing casual. It was a flat, flat gaze. As cold as a snake’s and just as deadly. Even a girl as sheltered as Anna had been all her life understood the sheer physical menace in it. The rivermen all seemed to shuffle back a step or two.

    He turned his eyes back to Anna. The same cold and flat gleam was in them. “If you are lying...”

    “Why would I lie?” she demanded angrily. “And how do you expect me to prove it, anyway?”

    Belatedly, a thought came to her. “Unless...” She glanced at the little sailing craft which had brought her here, still piled high with her belongings. “If you can read Greek, I have several of his letters to me.”

    The Arab sighed softly. “As you say, ‘why would you lie?’” His dark eyes examined her face carefully. “God help us. You really don’t even understand, do you?”

    She shook her head, confused. “Understand what? Do you know him yourself?”

    The Isaurian leader’s sigh was a more heartfelt thing. “No, lass, we didn’t. We were so rich, after Charax, that we left the general’s service. We”—he gestured at his brother—“I’m Illus, by the way, and he’s Cottomenes—had more than enough to buy us a big farm back home. And Abdul decided to go in with us.”

    “I’m sick of the desert,” muttered the Arab. “Sick of camels, too. Never did like the damn beasts.”

    The Arab was of the same height as the two Isaurian brothers—about average—but much less stocky in his frame. Still, in his light half-armor and with a spatha scabbarded to his waist, he seemed no less deadly.

    “Come to think of it,” he added, almost idly, “I’m sick of thieves, too.”

    The violence which erupted shocked Anna more than anything in her life. She collapsed in a squat, gripping her knees with shaking hands, almost moaning with fear.

    There had been no sign; nothing, at least, which she had seen. The Isaurian leader simply drew his spatha—so quick, so quick!—took three peculiar little half steps and cleaved the skull of one of the rivermen before the man even had time to do more than widen his eyes. A second or two later, the same spatha tore open another’s throat. In the same amount of time, his brother and the Arab gutted two other rivermen.

    Then—

    She closed her eyes. The four surviving rivermen were desperately trying to reach their barge. From the sounds—clear enough, even to a young woman who had never seen a man killed before—they weren’t going to make it. Not even close. The sounds, wetly horrid, were those of a pack of wolves in a sheep pen.

    Some time later, she heard the Isaurian’s voice. “Open your eyes, girl. It’s over.”

    She opened her eyes. Catching sight of the pool of blood soaking into the planks of the pier, she averted her gaze. Her eyes fell on the two sailors, cowering behind the well. She almost giggled, the sight was so ridiculous.

    The Isaurian must have followed her gaze, because he began chuckling himself. “Silly looking, aren’t they? As if they could hide behind that little well.”

    He raised his voice. “Don’t be stupid! If nothing else, we need you to sail the boat. Besides—” He gestured at the barge. “You’ll want to loot it, if there’s anything in that tub worth looting. We’ll burn whatever’s left.”

    He reached down a hand. Anna took it and came shakily to her feet.

    Bodies everywhere. She started to close her eyes again.

    “Get used to it, girl,” the Isaurian said harshly. “You’ll see plenty more of that where you’re going. Especially if you make it to the island.”

    Her head felt muzzy. “Island? What island?”

    “The island, idiot. ‘The Iron Triangle,’ they call it. Where your husband is, along with the general. Right in the mouth of the Malwa.”

    “I didn’t know it was an island,” she said softly. Again, honesty surfaced. “I’m not really even sure where it is, except somewhere in India.”

    The Arab had come up in time to hear her last words. He was wiping his blade clean with a piece of cloth. “God save us,” he half-chuckled. “It’s not really an island. Not exactly. But it’ll do, seeing as how the general’s facing about a hundred thousand Malwa.”

    He studied her for a moment, while he finished wiping the blood off the sword. Then, sighed again. “Let’s hope you learn something, by the time we get to Charax. After that, you’ll be on your own again. At least—”

    He gave the Isaurian an odd little look. The Isaurian shrugged. “We were just telling ourselves yesterday how stupid we’d been, missing out on the loot of Malwa itself. What the hell, we may as well take her the whole way.”

    His brother was now there. “Hell, yes!” he boomed. He bestowed on Anna a very cheerful grin. “I assume you’ll recommend us to the general? Not that we deserted or anything, but I’d really prefer a better assignment this time than being on the front lines. A bit dicey, that, when the general’s running the show. Not that he isn’t the shrewdest bastard in the world, mind you, but he does insist on fighting.”

    The other two soldiers seemed to share in the humor. Anna didn’t really understand it, but for the first time since she’d heard the name of Calopodius—spoken by her father, when he announced to her an unwanted and unforeseen marriage—she didn’t find it hateful.

    Rather the opposite, in fact. She didn’t know much about the military—nothing, really—but she suspected...

    “I imagine my husband needs a bodyguard,” she said hesitantly. “A bigger one than whatever he has,” she added hastily. “And he’s certainly rich enough to pay for it.”

    “Done,” said the Isaurian leader instantly. “Done!”

    Not long afterward, as their ship sailed down the river, Anna looked back. The barge was burning fiercely now. By the time the fire burned out, there would be nothing left but a hulk carrying what was left of a not-very-valuable cargo and eight charred skeletons.

    The Isaurian leader—Illus—misunderstood her frown. “Don’t worry about it, girl. In this part of Mesopotamia, no one will care what happened to the bastards.”

    She shook her head. “I’m not worrying about that. It’s just—”

    She fell silent. There was no way to explain, and one glance at Illus’ face was enough to tell her that he’d never understand.

    Calopodius hadn’t, after all.

    “So why the frown?”

    She shrugged. “Never mind. I’m not used to violence, I guess.”

    That seemed to satisfy him, to Anna’s relief. Under the circumstances, she could hardly explain to her rescuers how much she hated her husband. Much less why, since she didn’t really understand it that well herself.

    Still, she wondered. Something important had happened on that pier, something unforeseen, and she was not too consumed by her own anger not to understand that much. For the first time in her life, a husband had done something other than crush her like an insect.

    She studied the surrounding countryside. So bleak and dangerous, compared to the luxurious surroundings in which she had spent her entire life. She found herself wondering what Calopodius had thought when he first saw it. Wondered what he had thought, and felt, the first time he saw blood spreading like a pool. Wondered if he had been terrified, when he first went into a battle.

    Wondered what he thought now, and felt, with his face a mangled ruin.

    Another odd pang of anguish came to her, then. Calopodius had been a handsome boy, even if she had taken no pleasure in the fact.

    The Isaurian’s voice came again, interrupting her musings. “Weird world, it is. What a woman will go through to find her husband.”

    She felt another flare of anger. But there was no way to explain; in truth, she could not have found the words herself. So all she said was: “Yes.”

    The next day, as they sailed back to the mainland, he informed Anna of his decision. And for the first time since he met the girl, she came to life. All distance and ennui vanished, replaced by a cold and spiteful fury which completely astonished him. She did not say much, but what she said was as venomous as a serpent’s bite.

    Why? he wondered. He would have thought, coming from a family whose fame derived from ancient exploits more than modern wealth, she would have been pleased.

    He tried to discover the source of her anger. But after her initial spate of hostile words, Anna fell silent and refused to answer any of his questions. Soon enough, he gave up the attempt. It was not as if, after all, he had ever really expected any intimacy in his marriage. For that, if he survived the war, he would find a courtesan.