9. Moles

Cavalry gathered to the horns blaring the summon of Lorenzo's rescue. 

Ulpius Attianus clamped his back to the outside of a yurt as he watched a column of riders clop through before him. He swung his head, regarding his surroundings, then slipped behind where the sooty firepits were left. Tinkles of cutlery and crockery rose from a short distance among the thumping of scuttling feet and the screeching wagons pitching up a slope. 

"I'll be back!" A young man's voice drew close.

Ulpius followed the voice with his cataracted eyes. A meager glow in the east of the chilling winter morning cast a halo wherever he looked. The altitude had compounded his double vision, and every day, he had more trouble seeing than before. If the bloody war didn't end any sooner, he feared he might as well lose his sight like the Underdog. He rasped an exasperated sigh. 

Tailing the man, Ulpius snuck into a passage bending between yurts. The sun had risen, but the day looked dark, like the recurring dream he had so long ago when he was still a boy. In his dream, the sky always looked like a sea of sand. Under the desert sky sprawled an expansive maze where he pelted in circles. Every time he took a turn, the walls turned with him. No matter how fast he ran, he could never outrun the shifting walls that denied him his return. He could only pursue, getting deeper and further, until one day, he had finally lost himself. He became a brick in those shifting walls. He thrashed and found himself awake in a cold sweat. 

The young man he tailed glanced around before he dipped into a yurt near the edge of their campsite bordering a foothill. The yak skin he threw over his shoulder fell and slapped the ground. Ulpius followed. His vision bobbled. He screwed up his eyes, groping for the yak skin but missed. Staggering to the side, he stumbled with his arms out sideways. Having learned his lesson, he didn't lean his entire weight to it and yank until his fingers skimmed the rawhide. 

Inside the yurt, he found no one. His legs bumped into a hard object that felt like a stack of planks used for a table. He held still, the heel of his palm rubbing his eyes. Keep calm – he counseled himself – and listen! 

Feet rustled amidst a rattling of keys, layered with cooing. Ulpius craned forward his neck while edging towards the source of the sounds. He lifted the wall flaps on the side of the yurt opposing to where he had entered, his other hand scrabbling for the dirk girded to his waist. 

Close to the foothill, the man was crouching before shrubs of cloudberry. His slender arms fumbled through the lobes of leaves wavering in the wind as if many hands. From behind the shrubs, he retrieved an iron cage in which a dragon hawk was kept. 

 Ulpius harrumphed, sending the man to a jolt.

He rammed the cage back behind the shrubs. 

"Stealing hawks for personal use, are we, Pollux?" asked Ulpius, his hand clutching a dirk behind him, his voice surprisingly amused.

The man put up both arms and remained silent. 

"I know very well what you've been doing," Ulpius continued as he circled behind the man close to the ground. "Or why else should the wretched Remus Scipio ask me to find you a position in Lorenzo's kitchen? For years, the Gaius and the Scipios have rivaled, but really, they rock in the same boat. Neither can let the other drown lest the dead weight would scupper themselves." He snickered, his eyes screwing up. A lanky lad, as Ulpius saw now, with a headful of rambling fawn curls like wild tendrils. Ulpius tried to recall the color of the kitchen boy's hair. 

"We're but pawns in their games, Pollux," he continued, leveling the dirk at the young man's neck. "And we play our roles not because we're fools but to gain our own footholds, don't we?" When he heard no response, Ulpius continued, "Why so serious, then, playing the pawn, knowing there is nothing more to gain? Why still commit to such a role when it'll only cost your own life?" 

The young man smirked; his larynx rose and fell. "What'd you mean, m'lord?" he teased, his voice too snide to Ulpius' liking. 

"I know you've been informing Julius of our plans, and frankly, I don't give a fuck. So long as I breathe, I'll take a knee to whoever wins at last." He grinned, skimming the blade along the man's throat. "But who would have thought that wretched Lorenzo could lose so soon, and we'll have to march out to rescue him? Too bad, we won't be of much help. Julius commands the finest force of all Renanian armies. If you let Julius know what we're doing now, we'll all die in a pelt of arrows! Yourself included! Have you thought of that, Pollux?" 

"But, m'lord," teased the man as he slowly turned his head over the shoulder. "I'm not Pollux. Did you not know he has left with Lord Lorenzo?" 

Puckering his brows, Ulpius squinted. The image of a pale face layered one upon another before him and wobbled, mocking him with a wide smirk. Did it not belong to the kitchen boy he asked the officer to recruit months ago to clear his own debts with the Scipios? Was it his eyes or his mind that had tricked him? He gasped, his breath panic-stricken. 

The man who wasn't Pollux gripped his wrist and twisted it outward. 

Crying out of pain, Ulpius dropped the dirk. "Who are you?" He shrieked. 

"Cyprian Mamecus," the man fluted, his amber eyes looking at Ulpius as though torches of flame. "At your service."