Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (24 page)

Mavrikios snorted. “Even a blind hog stumbles across an acorn now and then. There we go!” he exclaimed. Marcus had just thrown suns, and Thorisin had bet against him. The Emperor turned to his brother, palm out. With a shrug, Thorisin passed the stake to him.

Marcus soon decided these were two men who should not gamble against each other. Both were such intense competitors that they took losing personally, and the good humor in their banter quickly disappeared. They were tight-lipped with concentration on the dice; their bets against each other were far greater than any others round the circle. Thorisin’s earlier winnings vanished. When Mavrikios rolled the suns yet another time, his brother had to reach into his pouch to pay.

Mavrikios stared at the coins he produced. “What’s this?” he said, flinging half of them to the ground. “You’d pay me with money from Yezd?”

Thorisin shrugged once more. “They look like gold to me, and finer than what we mint these days, for that matter.” He scooped them up and tossed them far into the crowd. Glad cries said they were not lost for long. Seeing his brother’s expression, Thorisin said, “If it won’t pay my scot, what good is money to me?” Mavrikios slowly turned a dull red.

Everyone who saw or heard the exchange between the two brothers did his best to pretend he had not. Nevertheless, the camaraderie the dicing circle had enjoyed was shattered, and Marcus was not sorry to see the game break up a few minutes later. It could only bode ill for Videssos when the Emperor’s brother showed him up in public, and he knew the story would do nothing but grow in the telling.

Climbing a stairway in the great building that housed the Grand Courtroom—the opposite side of the building from Nephon Khoumnos’ workplace—Marcus wondered how much the story had grown in the past few days. Ahead of him on the stair was the thin clerk who had brought the tribune the invitation to this meeting, and ahead of
him
was a destination to which Scaurus had never thought to be bidden—the offices of Vardanes Sphrantzes.

“This way, if you please,” the clerk said, turning to his left as he reached the top of the stairs. He led the Roman past a series of large rooms, through whose open doors Scaurus could see whole maniples of men busy with stylus and waxed tablet, pen, ink, and parchment, and the trays of reckoning beads with which skilled Videssians could calculate magically fast. The tribune was far more at home with the power of the barracks hall, but, watching the bureaucrats at work in this nerve center of Empire, he could not deny that power dwelt here too.

A pair of stocky nomads from the plains of Pardraya stood sentry at the door the clerk was approaching. Their faces, blank with boredom before, turned alert when they spied him and stormy when they recognized the Roman behind him. Scaurus had neither wanted nor had much to do with the Khamorth since coming to Videssos, but it was plain they felt he had brought disgrace down on them by exposing one of their number as Avshar’s tool.

From the black looks they were giving him, Marcus got the notion they would have much preferred it if their countryman had succeeded in driving his demon-haunted blade hilt-deep in the Roman.

“The boss wants to see this?” one of them asked the tribune’s guide, jerking his thumb at Scaurus in a deliberately offensive way. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” the clerk snapped. “Now stand aside, will you? You’ll win no thanks for interfering in his business.”

Insolently slow, the Khamorth gave way. As Scaurus stepped past them, one made a ghastly gurgle, like the dying gasp of a man with a slit throat. It was so horribly authentic the tribune whipped his head around before he could stop himself. The plainsman grinned nastily.

Furious at losing face before the barbarian, Scaurus cranked his defenses to the highest pitch of readiness as he walked into the Sevastos’ office. When the functionary who led him announced his name, he bowed with the same punctiliousness he would have shown the Emperor—not by any act of omission would he give Sphrantzes a moral advantage over him.

“Come in, come in, you are most welcome,” the Sevastos said. As always, his smooth, deep voice revealed nothing but what he wanted in it; at the moment, a cultured affability.

Before Marcus could fully focus his suspicions on the Sevastos, the
office’s other occupant, a gangling, scraggly-bearded fellow in his early twenties, bounced up from his seat to shake the tribune’s hand. “A brilliant martial display, truly brilliant!” he exclaimed, adding, “I saw you beat the Namdaleni. Had it been crimson-handed war and not mere sport, the ground would have been a thirsty sponge to drink their blood. Brilliant!” he said again.

“Er—yes, of course,” Scaurus muttered, at a loss to reconcile this unwarlike-seeming youth with his gore-filled talk.

Vardanes Sphrantzes coughed drily. “One of the reasons I asked you here, my outland friend, was to present you to my nephew, the spatharios Ortaias Sphrantzes. Since your victory over the easterners, he’s done nothing but pester me to arrange the meeting.”

While spatharios had the literal meaing of “sword-bearer,” it was a catch-all title, often with little more real meaning than “aide.” In young Ortaias’ case, that seemed just as well; he looked as if the effort of toting a sword would be too much for him.

He was, though, nothing if not an enthusiast. “I was fascinated to see you successfully oppose the Namdaleni on foot,” he said. “In his
Art of Generalship
Mindes Kalokyres recommends plying them with arrows from afar and strongly implies they are invincible at close quarters. It’s a great pity he is a century in his grave; I should have like to hear his comments on your refutation of his thesis.”

“That would be interesting, I’m sure, your excellency,” Scaurus agreed, wondering how much of Ortaias’ speech he was understanding. The young noble spoke very quickly; this, coupled with his affected accent and his evident love for long words, made following his meaning a trial for someone with the tribune’s imperfect grasp of Videssian.

“Kalokyres is our greatest commentator on things military,” Ortaias’ uncle explained courteously. “Do sit down, both of you,” he urged. “Scaurus,”—In Videssian it sounded more like Scavros—“take some wine if you will. It’s a fine vintage, from the western province of Raban, and rather hard to come by in these sorry times.”

The pale wine poured silkily from its elegant alabaster carafe. Marcus sipped once for politeness’ sake, then a second time with real appreciation; this was more to his liking than any wine he’d yet sampled in Videssos.

“I thought you would enjoy it,” Vardanes said, drinking with him. “It’s a touch too piquant for me to favor ordinarily, but it is a pleasant change of pace.” Scaurus gave the Sevastos his reluctant admiration. It could hardly have been easy for him to learn the Roman’s taste in wine and then to meet it. The obvious effort Sphrantzes was making to put him at his ease only made him wonder further what the real object of this meeting might be.

Whatever it was, the Sevastos was in no hurry to get around to it. He spoke with charm and wit of bits of gossip that had crossed his path in the past few days and did not spare his fellow bureaucrats. “There are those,” he remarked, “who think the mark for a thing in a ledger is the thing itself.” Raising his cup to his lips, he went on, “It takes but a taste of the wine to see how foolish they are.”

The tribune had to agree, but noted how possessively Sphrantzes’ hand curled over the polished surface of the cup.

The Sevastos’ office was more richly furnished than Mavrikios Gavras’ private chambers, with wall hangings of silk brocade shot through with gold and silver threads and upholstered couches and chairs whose ebony arms were inlaid with ivory and semiprecious stones. Yet the dominant impression was not one of sybaritic decadence, but rather of a man who truly loved his comforts without being ruled by them.

In Rome Marcus had known men who enjoyed having fish ponds set in their villas’ gardens, but he had never seen a decoration like the one on Sphrantzes’ desk—a globular tank of clear glass with several small, brightly colored fish darting through waterplants rooted in gravel. In a strange way, it was soothing to watch. The tribune’s eyes kept coming back to it, and Sphrantzes gazed fondly at his little pets in their transparent enclosure.

He saw Scaurus looking at them. “One of my servants has the duty of catching enough gnats, flies, and suchlike creatures to keep them alive. He’s certain I’ve lost my wits, but I pay him enough that he doesn’t say so.”

By this time the Roman had decided Sphrantzes’ summons masked nothing more sinister than a social call. He was beginning to muster excuses for leaving when the Sevastos remarked, “I’m glad to see no hard
feelings exist between yourselves and the Namdaleni after your recent tussle.”

“Indeed yes! That is most fortunate!” Ortaias said enthusiastically. “The tenacity of the men of the Duchy is legendary, as is their fortitude. When linked to the specialized infantry skills you Ronams—”

“Romans,” his uncle corrected him.

“Your pardon,” Ortaias said, flushing. Thrown off his stride, he finished with the simplest sentence Scaurus had heard from him. “You’ll fight really well for us!”

“I hope so, your excellence,” Marcus replied. Interested by Vardanes’ mention of the islanders, he decided to stay a bit longer. Maybe the Sevastos would be forthcoming after all.

“My nephew is right,” the elder Sphrantzes said. “It would be unfortunate if there were a lasting grudge between yourselves and the Namdaleni. They have served us well in the past, and we expect the same of you. There is already too much strife within our army, too much talk of native troops as opposed to mercenaries. Every soldier is a mercenary, but with some, paymaster and king are one and the same.”

The tribune steepled his fingers without replying. The Sevastos’ last statement, as far as he was concerned, was nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. Nor did he think Sphrantzes believed it any more than he did—whatever else he was, Vardanes Sphrantzes was no fool.

He also wondered how Vardanes was using his “we” and “us.” Did he speak as head of the bureaucratic faction, as prime minister of all the Empire, or with the royal first person plural? He wondered if Sphrantzes knew himself.

“It’s regrettable but true,” the Sevastos was saying, “that foreign-born troops do not have the fairest name in the Empire. One reason is that they’ve so often had to be used against rebels from the back of beyond, men who, even on the throne, find no more dignity than they did in the hayseed robbers’ nests from which they sprang.” For the first time, his disdain rang clear.

“They have no breeding!” Ortaias Sphrantzes was saying. “None! Why, Mavrikios Gavras’ great-grandfather was a goatherd, while we Sphrantzai—” The cold stare Vandanes sent his way stopped him in confusion.

“Forgive my nephew once more, I beg you,” the Sevastos said smoothly. “He speaks with youth’s usual exaggeration. His Imperial Majesty’s family has been of noble rank for nearly two centuries.” But by the irony still in his voice, he did not find that long at all.

The conversation drifted back toward triviality, this time for good. A curiously indecisive meeting, Marcus thought on his way back to the barracks. He had expected the Sevastos to show more of his mind but, on reflection, there was no reason why he should do so to a man he felt to be of the opposite side. Then too, with one slip of the tongue his nephew probably had revealed a good deal more than the senior Sphrantzes wanted known.

Two other things occurred to the tribune. The first was that Taso Vones was a lucky acquaintance. The little Khatrisher had an uncanny knowledge of Videssian affairs and was willing to share it. The second was a conclusion he reached while wondering why he still distrusted Vardanes Sphrantzes so much. It was utterly in character, he decided, for the Sevastos to delight in keeping small, helpless creatures in a transparent cage.

A
S THE WEEKS PASSED AFTER
M
AVRIKIOS
G
AVRAS
’
RINGING DECLARATION
of war against Yezd, Videssos began filling with warriors mustered to wage the great campaign the Emperor had planned. The gardens, orchards, and other open spaces which made the imperial capital such a delight saw tent cities spring up on them like mushrooms after a rain. Every street, it seemed, had its contingent of soldiers swaggering along, elbowing civilians to one side, on the prowl for food, drink, and women … or simply standing and gaping at the wonders Videssos offered the newcomer’s eye.

Troops flowed in day after day. The Emperor pulled men from garrisons in towns he reckoned safe, to add weight to his striking force. A hundred men came from here, four hundred more from there, another two hundred from somewhere else. Marcus heard that Imbros’ troops had arrived and wondered if Skapti Modolf’s son was among them. Even the saturnine Haloga would be hard pressed to call the city a less pleasant place than Imbros.

The Empire’s own soldiers were not the only ones to swell Videssos to the bursting point. True to his promise, Mavrikios sent his neighbors a call for mercenaries against Yezd, and the response was good. Videssian ships sailing from Prista, the Empire’s watchport on the northern coast of the Videssian Sea, brought companies of Khamorth from the plains, and their steppe-ponies with them. By special leave, other bands of nomads were permitted to cross the Astris River. They came south to the capital by land, paralleling the seacoast and, in the latter stage of their journey, following the route the Romans had used from Imbros. Parties of Videssian outriders made sure the plainsmen did not plunder the countryside.

Khatrish, whose border marched with Videssos’ eastern frontier,
sent the Empire a troop of light cavalry. In gear and appearance they were about halfway between imperials and plainsdwellers, whose bloods they shared. Most of them seemed to have the outspoken cheeriness of Taso Vones. Scaurus had a chance to get acquainted with a fair number of them at a heroic feast the Khatrisher ambassador put together. Viridovix made the night memorable by throwing a Khamorth clear through a very stout wineshop door without bothering to open it first. Vones paid the repair costs out of his own pocket, declaring, “Strength like that deserves to be honored.”