But they were all under stress, even the ice-calm Calvus. If being catapulted into a community of fellow-believers put Sabellia off on some unforeseeable religious tangent, it might cost the party her services. It might cost Perennius her presence … and Perennius looked away from her, toward the man on the donkey, to avoid the direction his thoughts were taking.
The rider reined up noisily, ten feet short of Perennius’ party. The five of them had shifted instinctively into a ragged line abreast. All of them were looking determinedly non-violent. The agent had grounded his Gothic spear point-first in the soil. The shaft was taking much of his weight. His right thigh throbbed while he walked on it but when he stood still the feeling became agony if the limb had to support his body.
The man in the dark robe raised his cross. Most of his scalp had been shaven, though the hair surrounding the tonsure was black and bushy. “If you come in peace, travellers,” he said, “the blessings of the Annointed and of Dioscholias his servant be upon you.” Surprisingly, the man spoke in the local form of Syriac instead of the
Greek Perennius had expected even this far back in the hills.
Stumblingly, the agent answered in the same Cilician dialect. “We are peaceful travellers, sir. Traders who expect to pay well for the food and beasts of burden we hope to buy from you.” Sestius was Cilician, and the Illyrian was fairly certain that Calvus could speak the language with the same facility that she had shown with every other tongue they had encountered. Perennius did not trust them to carry on the negotiations, however; and he had learned never to use an interpreter if there were any possibility of avoiding it. At best, an interpreter added a third personality to the discussion in hand.
The villager slid from his donkey and knelt. He folded both his hands in front of him over the stem of the crucifix and prayed. “Thanks be to Jesus the Anointed, font of all blessings, and to his servant Dioscholias who first brought his teachings to our valley.” The man stood again and said in a more businesslike tone, “Strangers, I am Father Ramphion, a disciple of the blessed Dioscholias, and his successor when he was translated to the throne of God. The Lord has blessed us by sending you into our midst. Come, join us in the love feast that is being prepared in your honor and in God’s.” Ramphion gestured toward the huts.
“Father, we thank you,” the agent replied. “I am Aulus Perennius, and these are the companions of my journey.” He introduced the others, giving their real names – or in the case of Calvus, the false male name that was all Perennius knew her by. “We will be glad of your hospitality.” He smiled. “I had expected your fellows were engaged in another sort of preparations, after the warning gong.”
“Oh, here,” Father Ramphion said, offering Perennius the donkey’s reins. “You’re injured. You should not be walking.”
“Actually, I think it’s better for the leg that I do use it,” the agent said. “But perhaps Sabellia … ?”
The discussion degenerated at once into multiple refusals of the offer. The donkey, unconcerned, tugged from Ramphion’s hand to the roadside to crop grass growing between the track and the wheat beyond. Abruptly, Sestius ended the nonsense by accepting the charity and mounting the beast. Perennius felt like an idiot for having wasted time and let matters get out of hand in such a ridiculous way. The agent never knew how to deal with generosity.
Perhaps he was fortunate that generosity was so rarely to be met with.
Father Ramphion had not forgotten the question Perennius had earlier implied, though. As the two men plodded after the mounted centurion, Ramphion said, “Of course, we’re prepared to defend ourselves if needs be. To help God defend us, I should rather say.” He gestured toward the church. There were unglazed windows in the second and third levels of the stepped tower. The agent could now see that the only openings in the twenty-foot high base cylinder were the front door and a circuit of arrow slits at shoulder height in the stone wall. A proper military force with artillery and battering rams could take the structure without serious difficulty. A band of raiders like those the Eagle had fallen among would have turned away after an abortive assault or two against the stone. The church would preserve the villagers and such movable property as they could get inside it.