I wish you were not my enemy. But—
I swore an oath.
* * *
That same moment, staring down onto the plateau from the mountain pass, Belisarius studied the flickering fires of the far-distant Malwa army camp. It was the day after the ambush, and his own army had arrived. The Roman troops were camped just half a mile below the crest of the mountains.
He was no longer estimating the size of the enemy army. He was done with that. He was simply contemplating one of the men he knew was among that huge host.
It was very nicely done, Sanga. Sorry to have disappointed you.
The thought was whimsical, not angry. Had he been in Sanga’s place, he would have done the same. And he mused, once again, on the irony of the situation. There were few men in the world he dreaded as much as Rana Sanga. A tiger in human flesh.
And yet—
He sighed and turned away. He would meet Sanga again.
Picking his way down the trail in the semidarkness, he remembered the message which the Great Ones had once given Aide and his race. The secret—part of it, at least—which those awesome beings of the future imparted to the crystals they had created, when those crystals found themselves threatened by the “new gods.”
Guided by that message, the crystals had sent Aide back in time to find “the general who is not a warrior.” But the Great Ones had understood the entirety of the thing. Descended from human flesh—though there was no trace of that flesh remaining in them—they understood all the secrets of the human soul, and its contradictions.
Aide, in a soft mental message, spoke the words: See the enemy in the mirror.
A sudden deep sadness engulfed Belisarius.
The friend across the field.
Chapter 4
AXUM
Spring, 532 a.d.
Antonina shook her head, partly in awe, partly in disbelief. “Was anyone killed when it fell?” she asked.
Next to her, Eon lifted his massive shoulders in a small shrug.
“Nobody knows, Antonina.” For a moment, the Prince of Axum’s dark face was twisted into a grimace of embarrassment. “We were still pagans, at the time. And the workmen would have all been slaves. We Ethiopians kept many slaves, back then”—his next words came in a bit of a rush—”before we adopted the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Antonina fought down a smile. The semi-apology in Eon’s response was quite unnecessary, after all. It was not as if Roman rulers—
“Please, Eon! You don’t need to apologize for the barbarity of your pagan ancestors. At least your old kings didn’t stage gladiatorial contests, or feed Christians to lions.”
Alas. She could tell immediately, from Eon’s expression, that her attempt at reassurance had failed of its mark.
“Not Christians, no,” mumbled Eon. “But—” Another shrug of those incredible shoulders. “Well . . . There are a lot of big animals here in Africa. Lions, elephants. And it seems that the old kings—”
There came yet another shrug. But the gesture, this time, contained neither apology nor embarrassment. It was the movement of the powerful shoulders of a young prince who, when all was said and done, was not really given to self-effacement.
“It’s over, now,” he stated. “We instituted Christian principles of rule two hundred years ago.” He pointed to the enormous thing in front of them. “We keep that here as a reminder to our kings. Of the pagan folly of royal grandiosity.”
Antonina’s eyes returned to the object in question. Eon had brought her here, from the royal compound a mile to the southwest—the Ta’akha Maryam, it was called—as part of his sight-seeing tour of Ethiopia’s capital city. He had started off, in the morning, by showing her the magnificent churches which adorned the city. The churches, especially the cathedral which the Ethiopians had named the Maryam Tsion, were the pride of Axum. But then, in mid-afternoon, the prince had insisted on showing her this as well.
It was an obelisk, lying on its side, broken into several pieces. The huge sections were crumpled over the tombs of pre-Christian kings, leaving the obelisk a rippling monument to ancient folly. More than anything else, to Antonina, it resembled an enormous stone snake, making its serpentine way across the landscape of the Ethiopian highlands.