“What do you want?” asked the Romanizer softly.
I gave him the honest, shameful truth. “I would like my dragon to rest quietly in Cilurnum, with nothing more to do than patrol the Wall, put down occasional raids, and breed horses. But I confess to you honestly that my own men might ask the gods instead for glory and victory in war.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” said Dark Eyes. “There is nothing, I was told, that gives a Sarmatian more pleasure than killing any man whatsoever.”
I looked away, down at my hands now resting crossed on my torn knee. “In ten years’ time,” I said quietly, admitting another shameful truth that I’d known now for some time, “there will be no real Sarmatians in Britain. I am not what I was, nor is Arshak, nor are any of us. If you live in one place under an alien code of discipline, collect your wages four times a year, and spend your time drilling and patrolling, you are not the same as a nomad who lived by his herds and made war for pleasure. The only question has been, what do we become instead? I have answered it, ‘Roman soldiers.’ Arshak says, ‘British warriors.’ And perhaps there is no great difference in it. We are killers, in your terms, whatever we do-though you would do well to remember that as soldiers, we would defend you, while as warriors, we would become your oppressors. But I do not like the company we would keep as warriors, and I think even if we succeeded, we would succeed only to the destruction of all that is best in us. We used, in the past, to love truth, respecting our friends and keeping our oaths; we used to fight fairly, and spare the helpless. Those are the customs I wish us to keep, whatever else we may lose. I swear it on fire”-I raised my right hand and stretched it toward the brazier- “that I have asked for your help in a good cause which I believe ought by rights to be your cause, and that I will deal with you justly and without treachery.”
“It is our cause,” said the Brigantian.
“It is not!” said Dark Eyes.
“Christ is our cause,” said the Romanizer. “Him and him alone-but to serve him may mean serving goodness and justice wherever we may find it, as it is written: ‘and they said to him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? and he replied, Amen I tell you, whenever you gave it to the least of these my brothers, you gave it to me.’ ”
“He is not a brother!” exclaimed Dark Eyes angrily. “Least or greatest!”
“He is a neighbor, then,” snapped the Brigantian, “and engaged in a struggle with our enemies, who, by all accounts, have called on the aid of demons to curse him and have tried to murder him in this very city. Should we pass by on the other side, in the vain hope that the brigands won’t actually threaten us?”
“We put our trust in God, come what may,” replied Dark Eyes. “Not in princes.”
“We’ve prayed over this already, and argued it,” said the Romanizer. “I had a strong conviction of our Lord’s guidance in this before, and meeting the man has only reassured me. I’m sorry, brother, that it hasn’t helped you.”
Dark Eyes scowled. “He could have been worse,” he said, after a pause. “So you’re determined to go through with it?”
“For Christ’s sake!” exclaimed the Brigantian. “It’s our own city and our own homes at risk!”
“We have a clear choice between helping a man who is working for peace,” said the Romanizer, “or standing aside and letting the forces of destruction and violence take their course. I am for peace.” He stood and walked over to me, holding out his hand. “You have your alliance.”
XIII
The Christians were helpful as soon as their decision was made, even Dark Eyes, though it was plain he was reluctantly going along with the majority. They provided the name of someone who could write letters for Siyavak, a password and means to contact this person, and promised that any letter he wrote would be passed swiftly and secretly to me. Then the Romanizer produced a set of wax tablets. “We drew this up last night,” he said. “It is a list of people we know to be druids, together with their hiding places, and officials known to be sympathetic or bribable. But before I give it to you, you must swear not to show it to the authorities. Most of these people are innocent of any crime, and many of them abominate the practices of the extreme sects-but any of them would suffer cruelly if their sympathies were known.”
I put my hand over the fire and swore that I would not betray the information to the authorities, but only use it to defend myself and to collect evidence against the plotters, and I was given the tablets. I thanked the Romanizer with some warmth.
“No, we must thank you,” he returned. “You’re the one running the greatest risks in this contest. We will pray for your safety.”
I was contented when I rescued my horse from the goat shed and rode back along the cabbage-scented alleyway. My allies seemed both efficient and reliable. Eukairios was very silent. When we were riding back through the gates of the fortress, however, he gave one of his sudden dry chuckles, and I gave him a questioning look.
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. But his eyes were dancing.
“I did something you think is funny?” I asked resignedly.
He chuckled again. “The way you sat there on the floor, my lord, the perfect picture of a noble savage, telling Senicianus that you’d lost count of the number of men you’d killed! He was so shocked I thought he’d fall off his seat. I thought you’d lost them all, I really did. But it worked: they could see that you were being completely honest with them, and they realized that they could trust you.”
I snorted. “I was not trying to be amusing. And you must not go about telling people that I am a peacemaker. It is a disgraceful thing to report of the commander of a dragon.”
He chuckled again. “Not to Christians. But I will keep my mouth shut in future on that shocking truth.”
I looked at him with affection. There he sat, a small dark man in his forties, perched clumsily astride my red bay carriage horse and grinning at me. Riding, the cost of horse fodder and size of stud farms, the Sarmatian language: he had struggled valiantly to master them all. By rights he ought to hate me. He had been given to me very much against his own wishes, snatched away from home and friends and forced to adapt himself to a world nearly as alien to him as it was to me. “What would you do if I freed you?” I asked him.
The grin vanished. We were crossing the bridge from the city to the fortress now, and for a long minute we rode in a silence stirred only by the soft clopping of the hooves of our horses. “Would you do that?” Eukairios asked, in a strained voice.
I stopped my courser. “If you would agree to stay in my service, as a paid secretary, yes. But if you would go back to Bononia, no. I am sorry, but I cannot afford to lose you.”
He clenched his hands together on the reins and stared at me in consternation. “I hated Bononia!” he exclaimed. “I found that out within ten days of leaving it. All the stupid petty rules, and the short rations and the beatings if I complained or made a mistake; the way my supervisor loaded me with other people’s work and took the credit for mine. I loved my friends there, who supported me and cared for me when times were bad, but I was utterly wretched. But I didn’t even realize that until it ended; if you’ve staggered a long way under a burden, you don’t really know how heavy it is until you put it down. I’ve been very happy working for you. Hadn’t you realized that?”
I thought he had not been unhappy, but this astonished me. I shook my head.
“I would be very glad to go on working for you, my lord, very glad, in any circumstances.”
“If you want your freedom, then, you may have it,” I told him. “You know my people do not keep slaves. You can… How does one go about freeing a slave?”
He laughed out loud, a laugh that ended in something very like a sob. “ ‘She may sing, but we are dumb,’ ” he said, quoting verses in a voice suddenly harsh with both triumph and extraordinary pain.