Anna snorted and began to stalk off to the northwest. "Don't you read anything besides those damned Dispatches?"
Cottomenes spoke up. "No one does," he said. Cheerfully, as usual. "No soldier, anyway. Your husband's got a way with words, he does. Have you ever tried to read official regulations?"
Those words, too, brought a reflex of anger. But, as she forced her way through the mob toward the military hospital, Anna found herself thinking about them. And eventually came to realize two things.
One. Although she was a voracious reader, she hadn't ever read any official regulations. Not those of the army, at any rate. But she suspected they were every bit as turgid as the regulations which officials in Constantinople spun out like spiders spinning webs.
Two. Calopodius did have a way with words. On their way down the Euphrates -- and then again, as they sailed from Charax to Chabahari -- the latest Dispatches and the newest chapters from his History of Belisarius and the War had been available constantly. Belisarius, Anna had noted, seemed to be as adamant about strewing printing presses behind his army's passage as he was about arms depots.
The chapters of the History had been merely perused on occasion by her soldier companions. Anna could appreciate the literary skill involved, but the constant allusions in those pages were meaningless to Illus and his brother, much less the illiterate Abdul. Yet they pored over each and every Dispatch, often enough in the company of a dozen other soldiers. One of them reading it aloud, while the others listened with rapt attention.
As always, her husband's fame caused some part of Anna to seethe with fury. But, this time, she also thought about it. And if, at the end, her thoughts caused her anger to swell, it was a much cleaner kind of anger. One which did not coil in her stomach like a worm, but simply filled her with determination.
The hospital was even worse than she'd imagined. But she did, not surprisingly, find an unused tent in which she and her companions could make their quarters. And she did discover the location of the telegraph office -- which, as it happened, was situated right next to the sprawling grounds of the "hospital."
The second discovery, however, did her little good. The official in charge, once she awakened him from his afternoon nap, yawned and explained that the telegraph line from Barbaricum to Chabahari was still at least a month away from completion.
"That'll mean a few weeks here," muttered Illus. "It'll take at least that long for couriers to bring your husband's reply."
Instead of the pure rage those words would have brought to her once, the Isaurian's sour remark simply caused Anna's angry determination to harden into something like iron.
"Good," she pronounced. "We'll put the time to good use."
"How?" he demanded.
"Give me tonight to figure it out."
It didn't take her all night. Just four hours. The first hour she spent sitting in her screened-off portion of the tent, with her knees hugged closely to her chest, listening to the moans and shrieks of the maimed and dying soldiers who surrounded it. The remaining three, studying the books she had brought with her -- especially her favorite, Irene Macrembolitissa's Commentaries on the Talisman of God, which had been published just a few months before Anna's precipitous decision to leave Constantinople in search of her husband.
Irene Macrembolitissa was Anna's private idol. Not that the sheltered daughter of the Melisseni had ever thought to emulate the woman's adventurous life, except intellectually. The admiration had simply been an emotional thing, the heroine-worship of a frustrated girl for a woman who had done so many things she could only dream about. But now, carefully studying those pages in which Macrembolitissa explained certain features of natural philosophy as given to mankind through Belisarius by the Talisman of God, she came to understand the hard practical core which lay beneath the great woman's flowery prose and ease with classical and biblical allusions. And, with that understanding, came a hardening of her own soul.
Fate, against her will and her wishes, had condemned her to be a wife. So be it. She would begin with that practical core; with concrete truth, not abstraction. She would steel the bitterness of a wife into the driving will of the wife. The wife of Calopodius the Blind, Calopodius of the Saronites.
The next morning, very early, she presented her proposition.
"Do any of you have a problem with working in trade?"
The three soldiers stared at her, stared at each other, broke into soft laughter.
"We're not senators, girl," chuckled Illus.
Anna nodded. "Fine. You'll have to work on speculation, though. I'll need the money I have left to pay the others."
"What 'others'?"
Anna smiled grimly. "I think you call it 'the muscle.' "
Cottomenes frowned. "I thought we were 'the muscle.' "
"Not any more," said Anna, shaking her head firmly. "You're promoted. All three of you are now officers in the hospital service."
"What 'hospital service'?"
Anna realized she hadn't considered the name of the thing. For a moment, the old anger flared. But she suppressed it easily enough. This was no time for pettiness, after all, and besides -- it was now a clean sort of anger.
"We'll call it Calopodius' Wife's Service. How's that?"
The three soldiers shook their heads. Clearly enough, they had no understanding of what she was talking about.
"You'll see," she predicted.
It didn't take them long. Illus' glare was enough to cow the official "commander" of the hospital -- who was as sorry-looking a specimen of "officer" as Anna could imagine. And if the man might have wondered at the oddness of such glorious ranks being borne by such as Illus and his two companions -- Abdul looked as far removed from a tribune as could be imagined -- he was wise enough to keep his doubts to himself.
The dozen or so soldiers whom Anna recruited into the Service in the next hour -- "the muscle" -- had no trouble at all believing that Illus and Cottomenes and Abdul were, respectively, the chiliarch and two tribunes of a new army "service" they'd never heard of. First, because they were all veterans of the war and could recognize others -- and knew, as well, that Belisarius promoted with no regard for personal origin. Second -- more importantly -- because they were wounded soldiers cast adrift in a chaotic "military hospital" in the middle of nowhere. Anna -- Illus, actually, following her directions -- selected only those soldiers whose wounds were healing well. Men who could move around and exert themselves. Still, even for such men, the prospect of regular pay meant a much increased chance at survival.
Anna wondered, a bit, whether walking-wounded "muscle" would serve the purpose. But her reservations were settled within the next hour, after four of the new "muscle" -- at Illus' command -- beat the first surgeon into a bloody pulp when the man responded to Anna's command to start boiling his instruments with a sneer and a derogatory remark about meddling women.
By the end of the first day, eight other surgeons were sporting cuts and bruises. But, at least when it came to the medical staff, there were no longer any doubts -- none at all, in point of fact -- as to whether this bizarre new "Calopodius' Wife's Service" had any actual authority.
Two of the surgeons complained to the hospital's commandant, but that worthy chose to remain inside his headquarters' tent. That night, Illus and three of his new "muscle" beat the two complaining surgeons into a still bloodier pulp, and all complaints to the commandant ceased thereafter.
Complaints from the medical staff, at least. A body of perhaps twenty soldiers complained to the hospital commandant the next day, hobbling to the HQ as best they could. But, again, the commandant chose to remain inside; and, again, Illus -- this time using his entire corps of "muscle," which had now swollen to thirty men -- thrashed the complainers senseless afterward.