Gold medallions, naturally. Except for the silver wings, and the tiny little garnet eyes.
Belisarius glanced around the table. Bouzes, Coutzes and Maurice were all staring at their own identical goblets. The brothers with astonishment, Maurice with deep gloom.
“Afraid to touch the damned thing,” he heard Maurice mutter.
Fortunately, Baresmanas intervened.
“Have no fear, comrades,” he said, smiling. “My nephew has two chests full of these things.”
He gestured gaily. “Besides, even if you should happen to drop one, it would hardly break on this floor.”
The four Romans eyed the carpet. In truth, the pile was so thick that the cushions on which they sat were entirely redundant.
Kurush, taking his place at the other end of the table from Belisarius, frowned. Not with irritation, but simply from puzzlement. “Is there a problem?” he asked. His Greek, like that of most Persian noblemen, was accented but fluent.
Baresmanas chuckled. “Not everyone, nephew, is accustomed to drinking wine out of a king’s ransom.”
The young Persian stared at the goblet in his hand. “This thing?” He looked up at his uncle. “It is valuable?”
All four of the Romans joined Baresmanas in the ensuing laughter. Their reaction was not diplomatic, perhaps, but they found it impossible to resist.
Fortunately, Kurush proved to be the affable type. He seemed to possess little of the prickly hauteur of most Persian noblemen. After a moment, he even joined in the laughter himself.
“I’m afraid I don’t pay any attention to these matters,” he confessed. Shrugging: “My retainers take care of that.” He made a sweeping gesture. “But—please, please! Drink up! You must all be dying of thirst, after that miserable desert.”
Kurush’s words swept hesitation aside. All four Romans drank deeply from their goblets. And found, not to their surprise, that the vintage was marvelous.
Belisarius took advantage of the distraction to give Kurush a careful study. He had already learned, from Baresmanas, that Kurush had been charged by Emperor Khusrau to be the Persians’ principal military liaison with Belisarius and his Roman forces.
The nobleman was in his mid-twenties, he estimated. The young officer was tall and slender, with a narrow face and rather delicate features.
At first glance, he reminded Belisarius of certain hyper-cultured Athenian aesthetes whom the general had occasionally encountered. The sort of soulful young men who could not complete a sentence without two or three allusions to the classics, and whose view of the world was, to put it mildly, impractical.
The likeness was emphasized by the way in which Kurush wore his clothing. The garments themselves were expensive and well-made. (As were those of Athenian aesthetes—all of whom were aristocrats, not shepherds.) But they seemed to have been tossed on with little care for precision of fit and none at all for color coordination.
Closer examination, however, undermined the initial impression. Kurush’s hands, though slim-fingered, were strong-looking. And Belisarius did not miss the significance of the worn indentation on Kurush’s right thumb. Unlike Romans, who favored the three-fingered draw, Persians drew their bows with thumb-rings.
Then, there was the way he moved. Kurush’s stride, his gestures—even his facial expressions—all had a nervous quickness about them. Almost eager, like a spirited thoroughbred before a race. They bore no resemblance whatever to the affected languor of aesthetes.
Finally, there were the eyes. Like most Medes—and most Athenian aesthetes, for that matter—Kurush’s eyes were brown. But there was nothing vague and unfocussed in their gaze. Despite his youth, the Persian was already beginning to develop faint wrinkles around the sockets. Those wrinkles did not come from studying poetry in Athens by candlelight. They came from studying terrain under the scorching desert sun.
Kurush’s first words, after setting down his goblet, were to Maurice. “I understand that you were in command of the Roman forces on the hill, at Mindouos.”
Maurice nodded. Kurush shook his head.
“You must have laughed at us, trying to drive our horses up that demon-created slope.”
Maurice hesitated, gauging the Persian. Then, with a little shrug:
“You’d have done better to dismount.”
Kurush smiled. Quite cheerfully. “So I discovered! My horse was shot out from under me right at the start. I cursed my bad luck, at the time. But I think it was all that saved my life. On foot, I could duck behind boulders. Not even your arrows could penetrate rock!”