Shadow of Ararat

Thyatis tapped her foot impatiently. The play, much slowed by the actor having to play all of the parts, dragged on. Bagratuni kept up a ru

“If this is Anagathios, I’ll skin him myself…” Thyatis’ patience was wearing thin. All she needed now was for some nosy aedile to come snooping around and find her in this getup in an alleyway. She’d be locked up for prostitution for sure…

“Roman” lady, I think that he’s done. Yes, the people watching are giving him a few coins. He bows, he does a flip, he bows… there are my cousins. Oop! He’s a quick one all right, but they have him by both arms. Here they come.“

Bagratuni slid to one side of the step, keeping the blanket on his lap.

“Which play do you suppose it was?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Thyatis.

“Eyes front! Sounds like the Girl from Miletus, which is about right for Anagathios. Just the kind of play to get him thrown in jail by some straitlaced Persian garrison on the edge of nowhere.”

The actor was hustled into the doorway by Bagratuni’s two cousins, who bounced him gently off the right wall a few times to settle him down. The actor, free of the arms of the two heavily built men, brushed off his tattered motley and produced, with a flourish, a knife with a serrated edge. Thyatis stepped forward and raised a hand. The man in front of her crouched down and found the wall behind him with the heel of his foot. At the entrance to the doorway, Bagratuni moved back into the middle of the steps.

“So, actor, do you have anything to say to your critics?”

The man’s head jerked up, showing a dusky olive skin, a fine-boned nose, high cheekbones, and liquid brown eyes with long eyelashes. The knife wavered in his hand. Thyatis unhooked the veil and demurely drew it from her face. The Syrian’s face split with a huge grin and he bowed his head to the flagstones without bending his legs. The knife disappeared into a sleeve in the process. Thyatis wrapped him a huge hug.

“Hello, old friend,” she said in a warm voice as she sat him down. “I was afraid that you were dead.” Anagathios shook his head no, but his eyes were sad. His ringers sketched in the air and Thyatis sighed. I was separated from the others and hid in the bushes unfit the soldiers were gone. I did not see them take any prisoners. Sorry.

No matter, she signed back. Time is short. I have work for you to do.

The Syrian smiled again, his perfect face glowing. Thyatis gri

Stripped down to only a loincloth with a cotton bandeau twisted tight around her chest, Thyatis stood thigh deep in the rush of the sewage tu

The sound of thirty men moving in the tu

Sloshing through the muck that swirled around her legs, which left-them coated with grease, she dragged the collar down to the level of the log. She knew that up above, in the clerestory of the temple, Bagratuni and his cousins were anxiously watching the upper end of the rope slither through the pulleys that they had embedded in a heavy wooden framework at the top of the shaft. A heavy leather bag slapped at her waist, filled with iron rods. Reaching the log, she dragged the collar over the end of it, which had been cut out into a cross shape by a hand axe and adze.

“Isn’t this a bit much?” Jusuf wheezed, his muscular shoulder straining under the weight of the log. “A ladder over the wall would do as well to get us in.“

“A ladder in the street would be seen by a passerby,” she said, shaking her head. “This way gets us in and out unseen. With your brother’s package safely delivered, it could be days or weeks before the prison guards realize that anything is amiss.”

Once the collar was past the cutout, she fumbled in the bag and drew out an iron rod. One end was bluntly pointed, while the other was flattened into a mushroomlike cap. She pushed the blunt point into one of a pair of matching holes drilled through the cross-section of the end of the log. It stuck partway through, and she cursed under her breath at the delay. She tapped Jusuf twice on his shoulder and stepped back to the little ledge on the edge of the sewer tu

“You don’t believe in keeping it simple, do you? Really, just a plain old ladder…”

Thyatis ignored him and picked up a mallet with a cotton cloth wrapped around one end and returned to the log. The three men carrying the log braced their feet against the wall of the tu

“Ready!” She hissed at the three men and they walked forward a bit, until she stopped them, just as the log was about to pass beyond the opening in the ceiling of the sewer. She tugged on the rope again, three times, and then felt it go taut.

“Lay it down,” she called over the sound of the rushing water to the three men. Jusuf motioned to the two others and they laid the end of the log down into the water. The rope and the collar drew snug against the bolts driven through the end of the log and the rope kept the one end high, while the other end was now in the water. Far above Thyatis thought she heard a creaking sound, and she leaned forward, both hands on the log to guide it. The rope groaned a little as it took the full weight of the log, and then the log began to rise. Thyatis and the three men guided it into the center of the shaft and watched as it rose up into the darkness.

“Prepare the others,” she said to Jusuf, handing him the bag of iron rods and the mallet. “If you think about it, my fine Bulgar friend, we can use these pylons for more than just this one purpose.”

Jusuf stared at her in something verging on horror. “We’re going to move them again after this?” His whisper climbed near to a shout.

Thyatis gave him a look that could have melted bronze and pointed off down the sewer.

He shrugged and splashed away into the fetid darkness to prepare the other nine logs that had been pushed in darkness across the river and dragged by the Bulgars up through the water gate of the city and into the sewers. The creaking sound continued to echo above, and Thyatis began to worry that the sound of the pulleys could be heard in the temple. Her fingers itched for the hilt of her sword, but it was in a bundle with her other clothes up at the top of the shaft.

There was a noise above her, and she suddenly skipped out of the way as a cloth bag filled with sand dropped out of the darkness and splashed into the water. Thyatis cursed and wiped slime off her face.

“Quick on the hook,” she said, reaching up to grab the rope. It quivered under her fingers, still stretched taut. “Wait for it!” The other two men had splashed forward and grabbed the top of the bag, where a hook was snagged into the rope bag that surrounded the cloth. “There!”