Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (18 page)

The warning rap was scarcely gentle; a dozen heavy fists slammed into the door. There was no response. “Break it down!” Khoumnos snapped. But the portal so staunchly resisted shoulders and booted feet that Scaurus wondered whether it was merely a strong bar or magic which held it closed.

“Enough of this foolery! Out of my way!” One of the Namdaleni, a dark-haired giant with tremendous forearms, preferred the axe of his Haloga cousins. Men scurried back to give him room to swing. Chips flew and boards split as his axe buried itself helve-deep.

Within a dozen strokes, the door sagged back in defeat. The troopers stepped into their enemy’s chambers, weapons at the ready. Khoumnos
stood outside the door, repeatedly explaining to the startled, frightened, or angry diplomats who threw questions at him why the Videssians had come.

Marcus’ first thought was that, while Avshar’s lusts for power and destruction were boundless, he had no corresponding desire for personal luxury. Except for a Videssian desk, the embassy of Yezd was furnished nomad-style. Pillows took the place of chairs, and tables were low enough for men sitting on the ground to use. Cushions and tables alike were black, the walls of the room a smoky gray.

The door between Yezd’s public offices and Avshar’s private quarters was locked, but a few strokes of the axe dealt with that. But Avshar was no more to be found in his chambers than in the embassy portion of Yezd’s suite. Marcus was not surprised; the rooms had a dead feel, a feel of something discarded and forgotten. The Videssians had come too late.

The Yezda’s room was as sparely equipped as the office: more black-lacquered low tables, pillows, and a sleeping mat of felt stuffed with horsehair. Above the mat hung the image of a fierce-faced warrior dressed all in black and hurling a livid blue thunderbolt. He strode against the fleeing sun over a pile of naked, bloody victims. “Skotos!” the Videssian soldiers murmured to themselves; their fingers moved in signs against evil.

On one of the tables stood a small brazier and another icon of the dark god Yezd followed. Beside the icon lay the pitiful figure of a white dove with its neck wrung. The brazier was full of ashes; Avshar had left not intending to return and burned those papers he did not wish his foes to see.

Neither Videssians nor Namdaleni would go near that table, but when Marcus walked around it he saw on the floor a scrap of parchment scorched at one edge; it must have fallen from the brazier before the fire could sieze it. He bent to pick it up and shouted in sudden excitement: it was a sketch-map of the city and its walls, with a spidery red line leading from the Hall of the Ambassadors to a tower by the sea.

His companions crowded round him at his yell, peering over his shoulder and asking what he’d found. Their letdown at not trapping Avshar in his lair disappeared when they understood what the Roman was holding. They shook his hand and slapped his back in congratulations.
“A second chance!” Hemond whooped. “Phos is truly with us today!”

“There’s still no time to lose,” Nepos said. “We should celebrate after we catch the Yezda, not before.”

“Well said, priest,” Hemond agreed. Leaving a couple of his men and a like number of Videssians to search the embassy quarters further, he led the rest out past Nephon Khoumnos, who was still justifying the soldiers’ presence to the diplomats crowding around him.

Marcus stuck the fragment of parchment under his nose. Khoumnos’ eyes crossed as he snatched it from the Roman’s hands and tried to focus on it. “The game is still in play, then!” he exclaimed. He bowed to the envoys and their aides, saying, “Gentles, further explanations must wait on events.” He pushed his way through the crowd, shouting to his men, “Wait, fools, I have the map!”

The tower Avshar’s sketch had shown was at Videssos’ northwest corner, where the city jutted furthest into the strait called the Cattle-Crossing. It was about half a mile north and slightly west of the Hall of the Ambassadors, through the palace complex and the streets of the town, and it seemed mostly uphill.

The tribune felt his heart race and the sweat spring from his brow as he trotted through the city. The troopers with him suffered far more than he, for he was in mantle and sandals while they loped along fully armored. One Namdalener could not stand the pace and fell back, his face flushed lobster-red.

As he ran, Scaurus was spurred on by the knowledge that so cold-blooded a calculator as Avshar could blunder—and blunder badly. Not only had his attempt at assassination gone for nought, but when he set about destroying his papers the most crucial one of all, the route of his escape, failed to burn and gave his pursuers another chance at him. If only he knew, Marcus thought—he’d gnash his teeth behind those veils of his.

The path turned down, bringing the sea wall of Videssos into sight. “That one!” Khoumnos panted, pointed at the square tower straight ahead. But when he sucked in wind, the middle-aged officer had enough breath to shout, “Ho the tower guards! Any sign of Avshar the Yezda?”

No answering shout came. When the soldiers wove their way through
the last of the buildings between themselves and the wall, they saw the four-man watch contingent lying motionless in front of the guard tower’s open gate. Khoumnos swore horribly. To Marcus he said, “The past five years I can recall no dozing sentries. Now I find them twice in two days, and you as witness both times. In Phos’ holy name, I stand ashamed before you.”

But the sprawled-out guards suggested only one thing to the tribune—the magic Avshar’s nomad tool had used to get into the Roman barracks. He explained quickly, adding, “I don’t think they are asleep through any fault of their own; it’s some spell the westerner knows. His map did not lie—there may still be time to catch him before he can get down the seaward side of the wall.”

Nephon Khoumnos reached out to press his arm. “Outlander, you are a man of honor.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said, surprised and touched.

“Come on, the two of you!” Hemond exclaimed, tugging his straight sword free of its scabbard. “Time enough for pretty speeches later!” He charged toward and through the gate, the rest of the warriors close behind. Nepos fell behind for a moment to revive the guardsmen Avshar had entranced.

Marcus was almost blind for a few seconds in the sudden gloom of the tower’s interior. He stumbled up the tight spiral staircase; the only light in the stairwell came from small arrow slits let into the wall.

“Hold up!” Hemond called from above him. Men cursed as they bumped and tripped trying to stop quickly.

“What is it?” asked Khoumnos, who was several men below the Namdalener.

“I’m at the mouth of a corridor,” Hemond replied. “It must lead to a weapons store, or something like that—and, square in the strip of sun from a firing slit, there’s a scrap of white wool, just what might get torn from a nomad’s robes if he ran past something stickery. We have the bastard hooked!” He laughed aloud in sheer exultation.

An excited hum ran up and down the spiral line of hunters. More swords slid from their scabbards. One by one, the men stepped into the passage Hemond had found.

The narrow corridor within the wall ran about fifty feet before ending in a single doorway. Clutching his sword hilt, Marcus moved forward with the rest of the warriors. He no longer saw Avshar as the dreaded evil mage Nepos had depicted, but as a wicked, frightened fool who had slipped at every turn in his escape attempt and, at the end, managed to close himself in a chamber with but one entrance. He could nearly pity the trapped Yezda on the other side of the door.

Hemond gave that door a tentative push. It swung open easily. The mercenary had been right in his guess at the chamber’s function; it was indeed an armory. Through the doorway Marcus could see neat sheaves of arrows, piled spears, rows of maces and swords, and, as he came nearer and gained a wider view, the tip of an outstretched foot upon the floor.

Along with the rest of the soldiers, Scaurus pushed into the storeroom to see better. Unlike most of them, he recognized the dead man lying by the back wall—it was Mebod, Avshar’s ever-frightened body servant. His head was twisted at an impossible angle, his neck broken like that of the dove on Skotos’ altar in the Yezda’s private chamber.

The senselessness and wanton cruelty of slaying this inoffensive little man bewildered the tribune. So did something else—Avshar had surely been here, but was no longer. There was no place to hide among the glittering weapons. Where, then, was the fugitive emissary of Yezd?

At nearly the same moment that thought crossed his mind, the door slammed shut behind them. Though it had opened invitingly to Hemond’s lightest touch, now it would not yield to the frantic tugging of all the warriors caught behind it. Suddenly trapped instead of trapper, Marcus felt dread course through his veins.

“Ah, how pleasant. My guests have arrived.” At the sound of that deep voice, full of chilly hate, the soldiers’ hands fell from the bronze doorlatch. They turned as one, in disbelief and terror. Head still lolling on its right shoulder, eyes blind and staring, the corpse of Mebod was on its feet, but through its dead lips came Avshar’s voice.

“You were so kind—and so clever—to answer the invitations I left for you,” the wizard went on, bending his servant to his will in death as in life, “that I thought I should prepare fitting hospitality for you.” With the jerky grace of a stringed puppet, what had been Mebod threw its
hands wide. At their motion the weapons of the armory came alive, flying against the stunned men who, minutes before, had thought themselves about to seize Yezd’s wizard-envoy.

One of the Videssians fell at once, a spear driven through chain mail and flesh alike. An instant later a Namdalener was on the ground beside him, his neck pierced from behind by a dagger. Another screamed in fear and pain as a mace laid open his arm.

Never had Marcus imagined—never had he wanted to imagine—a fight like that one, men against spears and swords that hovered in the air and struck like giant angry wasps. It did no good to strike back against them; there was no wielder to lay low. Worse, there was no shuffle of foot, no telltale shift of eye, to give a clue where the next blow would fall. The warriors were reduced to a purely defensive fight and, thus constrained in their very thoughts, suffered wounds from strokes they would have turned with ease had a body been behind them.

With his usual quickness of thought, Hemond slashed at Mebod’s animate lich, but his blow did no good—the weapons still came on.

At first clash of enchanted steel, the druids’ marks on Scaurus’ blade flamed into fiery life. The sword his brand had met clattered to the floor and did not rise again. The same things happened again and yet again. So many blades were hovering for a chance to bite, though, that the un-armored Roman had all he could do to stay alive. He gave the best protection he could to his mates, but when he tried to follow Hemond’s lead and strike down Mebod with his potent sword, the disembodied weapons kept him at bay and drove him back, bleeding from several cuts.

Someone was pounding on the door from the outside. Marcus shouted a warning to whoever it was, but his shout was drowned by a bellow of anguish from Hemond. A sword stood hilt-deep in the Namdalener’s chest. His hands grabbed at the hilt, then fell limply to his side as he went down.

From the other side of the door came a cry louder even than Hemond’s. “Open, in Phos’ holy name!” Nepos roared, and the portal sprang back as if kicked. The priest-mage bounded into the weapons store, his arms upraised. He was a short man, but the power crackling from his rotund frame seemed to give him inches he did not possess.

Recognizing the danger in Nepos, Avshar’s swooping armory abandoned the mere men-at-arms to dart at this new foe. But the priest was equal to them. He moved his hands in three swift passes, shouting a fraction of prayer or spell with each. Before the blades could touch him, they fell, inert, to the floor. As they did so, Mebod’s body sank with them, to become again nothing more than a corpse.

It was like waking from a nightmare. The soldiers still on their feet held their guard for several seconds, hardly daring to believe the air empty and quiet. But quiet as it was, the weapons strewn like jackstraws and the bodies on the ground showed it had been no dream.

As the dazed survivors of the sorcerous assault bent to the fallen, they learned four were dead: the Videssian killed in the first instant of attack and three Namdaleni, Hemond among them. The mercenary officer had died as rescue stood outside the door. Marcus shook his head as he closed Hemond’s set eyes. Had he not happened on the Namdalener in his search for Nephon Khoumnos, a good soldier who was becoming a good friend would still be alive.

Still looking down at Hemond’s body, the tribune flinched when someone touched his arm. It was Nepos, his chubby features haggard and drawn. “Let me tie those up for you,” he said.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, go ahead.” Lost in his thoughts, Scaurus had almost forgotten his own wounds. Nepos bandaged them with the same dexterity Gorgidas might have shown.

As the priest worked, he talked, and Marcus learned he was not the only one carrying a burden of self-blame. Nepos could have been talking to anyone or no one; as it happened, the Roman heard his struggle to understand the why of what had taken place.

“Had I not paused to end a small enchantment,” the priest said bitterly, “I could have checked this far more wicked one. Phos knows his own ways, but it is an untasty thing to rouse four men from sleep only to see four others die.”

“You did what was in your nature, to help wherever you first saw it needed,” Marcus told him. “You could not be what you are and have done otherwise. What happened afterwards could not be helped.”

Nepos did not agree. “You feel as do the Halogai, that there is a fate
no man can hope to escape. But we who follow Phos know it is our god who shapes our lives and we seek to make out his purposes. There are times, though, when those are hard, hard to understand.”

Moving slowly, as if still caught up in the bad dream from which they had just escaped, the warriors bound one another’s wounds. Almost in silence, they lifted their fallen comrades’ bodies—and that of Mebod as well—and awkwardly brought them down the watchtower’s spiral stair and out into the sunlight once more.