“We’d best move away, Aulus Perennius,” Calvus shouted over the voice of the fire.
The agent looked up at her. She extended a hand to lift him from his splay-legged seat on the ground. Perennius stared past the woman to the church. The outer cylinder had begun to act as a chimney, drawing air through the slits and the part-blocked door to feed the Hell within.
Everything must be ablaze by now. Not only roof members but clothing and furniture, paint from the walls 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.”