Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (32 page)

“It’s all right now,” Scaurus said, stroking her tangled hair with the same easy motion he would have used to gentle a frightened horse. She sighed and snuggled closer. For the first time, he was actually aware of her half-clothed state and that their embrace was changing from one sort of thing to another altogether.

He bent his head to kiss the top of hers. Her hands stroked the back of his neck as he tilted her face up to his. He kissed her lips, her ear; his mouth trailed down her neck toward her uncovered breasts. Her skirt rustled as it slid over her hips and fell to the ground. His own coverings were more complicated, but he was free of them soon enough. He had a brief second of worry for his embattled men, but this once not all his discipline could have stopped him from sinking to the grass beside the woman waiting for him there.

There is almost always a feeling among first-time lovers, no matter how much they please each other, that their love will grow better as they come to know each other more. So it was here; there was fumbling, some awkwardness, as between any two people unsure of one another’s likes. Despite that, though, for the tribune it was far sweeter than he had
known before, and he was so close to his own time of joy he nearly did not notice the name Helvis cried as her nails dug into his back was not his own.

Afterward he would have liked nothing better than to lie beside her forever, wholly at peace with the world. But now the tuggings of his conscience were too strong to ignore. Already he felt guilt’s first stir over the time he had spent pleasuring himself while his troopers fought. He tried to drown it with Helvis’ lips but, as is ever the way, only watered it instead.

His armor had never felt more confining than when he redonned it now. He handed Helvis her slain attacker’s shortsword, saying, “Wait for me, love. You’ll be safer here, I think, even alone, than on the streets. I won’t be long, I promise.”

Another woman might have protested being left behind, but Helvis had seen combat and knew what Marcus was going to. She rose, ran her finger down his cheek to the corner of his mouth. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. Come back for me.”

Like a man recovering from a debilitating fever, Videssos slowly came back to its usual self. The riots, as Khoumnos had predicted, died away after the Romans and Halogai succeeded in cordoning off the Namdaleni who were their focus. By the time a week had gone by, the city was nearly normal once more, save for the uncleared piles of rubble that showed where the mob had struck. Small, stubborn columns of smoke still rose from some of these, but the danger of great conflagrations was past.

Where the city was almost itself again, Scaurus’ life changed tremendously in the couple of weeks following the riots. He and a party of his men had taken Helvis first to the Namdaleni based by the harbor of Kontoskalion and then, as Videssos began to calm, she was able to return to the islanders’ barracks in the palace complex.

She did not stay there long, however. Their first unexpected union did not slake, but whetted, her appetite and the tribune’s. It was only days before she and Marcus—and Malric—took quarters in one of the two halls the Romans reserved for partnered men.

While he was more eager to share her company than he had ever been for anyone else’s, a few concerns still gave him pause. First and foremost in his mind was the attitude Soteric would take. The tribune had seen more than once how prickly Helvis’ brother could be when he thought his honor touched. How would he react to the Roman’s first taking his sister and then taking her away?

When he raised the question to Helvis, she disposed of it with a woman’s practicality. “Don’t trouble yourself over it. If anything needs saying, I’ll say it; I doubt it will. You hardly seduced a blushing virgin, you know, and had you not been there, the dogs who had me likely would have slit my throat when they were too worn to have any other use for me. Dearest, your saving me will count for more with Soteric than anything else—and so it should.”

“But—” Helvis stopped his protest with a kiss, but could not quiet his fretting so easily. Still, events proved her right. Her brother’s gratitude for her rescue carried over to the rescuer as well. He treated Marcus like a member of his family, and his example carried over to the rest of the Namdaleni. They knew what the Romans had done for them in Videssos’ turmoil; when the legionaries’ commander fell in love with one of their women, it was yet another reason to treat him as one of themselves.

That problem solved, Marcus waited for the reaction of his own men to the new situation. There was some good-natured chaffing, for the Romans knew his acquiescence to their taking companions had been grudging, and here he was with one himself.

“Pay them no mind,” Gaius Philippus said. “No one will care if you’re bedding a woman, a boy, or a purple sheep, so long as you think with your head and not with your crotch.” And after that bit of pungent but cogent advice the centurion went off to hone his troops once more.

It was, Scaurus found, a suggestion easier to give than to follow. He found himself wallowing in sensuality in a way unlike any he had known. Before, he was always moderate in venery—in vanished Mediolanum, in Caesar’s army, and since his arrival in Videssos. When he needed release he would buy it, and he did not often seek the same woman twice. Now, with Helvis, he found himself making up for long denial and growing greedier of her with every night that passed.

She, too, took ever-increasing delight from their love. Hers was a simple, fierce desire; though she had looked at no man since Hemond’s death, her body nonetheless craved what it had become accustomed to and reacted blissfully to its return. Marcus found he was sleeping more soundly than he had since he was a boy. It was lucky, he thought once, that Avshar’s Khamorth had not come seeking him after he found Helvis. He surely would never have wakened at the nomad’s approach.

Scaurus had wondered how Malric would adjust to the change in his life, but Helvis’ son was still young enough to take almost anything in his stride. Before long he was calling the tribune “Papa” as often as “Marcus,” which gave the Roman an odd feeling, half pride, half sorrow it was not so. The lad instantly became the legionaries’ pet. There were few children around the barracks, and the soldiers spoiled them all. Malric picked up Latin with the incredible ease small children have.

There were days when the tribune almost forgot he was in a city arming for war. He wished there could be more of them; he had never been happier in his life.

“I
T
’
S BLOODY WELL TIME
,” G
AIUS
P
HILIPPUS SAID WHEN THE SUMMONS
to the imperial council of war came. “The campaign should have started two months ago and more.”

“Politics,” Marcus answered. He added, “The riots didn’t help, either. But for them, I think we’d be under way by now.” With faint irony, he heard himself justifying the delays he had complained about not long before. He was much less anxious to begin than he had been then and knew why only too acutely. At the moment, it was as well such matters were not under his control.

The tribune had not been in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches since the night of his duel with Avshar. As always, the reception hall was couchless. A series of tables was joined end-to-end to form a line down its center. Atop the tables were maps of the Videssian army’s proposed line of march; along them sat the leaders from every troop contingent in that army: Videssians, Khatrishers, nomadic Khamorth chieftains, Namdalener officers, and now the Romans too.

Mavrikios Gavras, as was his prerogative, sat at the head of the tables. Marcus was glad to see Thorisin at his brother’s right hand. He hoped it meant their rift was healing. But the other two people by the Emperor made Scaurus want to rub his eyes to make sure they were not tricking him.

At Mavrikios’ left sat Ortaias Sphrantzes. For all the young aristocrat’s book-learning about war, Marcus would not have thought he had either the knowledge or the mettle to be part of this council, even if he was a member of the Emperor’s faction instead of the nephew of Gavras’ greatest rival. Yet here he was, using the point of his ornately hilted dagger to trace a river’s course. He nodded and waved when he spied the
entering Romans. Marcus nodded back, while Gaius Philippus, muttering something unpleasant under his breath, pretended not to see him.

The Emperor’s daughter was on Thorisin Gavras’ right, between him and Nephon Khoumnos. Alypia was the only woman at the gathering and, as was usually her way, doing more listening than talking. She was jotting something on a scrap of parchment when the Romans came into the Hall of the Nineteen Couches and did not look up until a servant had taken them to their assigned place, which was gratifyingly close to the table’s head. Her glance toward Scaurus was cool, measuring, and more distant than the tribune had expected; he suddenly wondered if she knew of his joining with Helvis. Her face was unreadable, a perfect mask to hide her thoughts.

Marcus took his seat with some relief. He bent his head to study the map before him. If he read the spidery Videssian writing aright, it represented the mountains of Vaspurakan, the border land whose passes offered tempting pathways between the Empire and Yezd.

As had Apsimar’s, the map looked marvelously precise, far more so than any the Romans made. Peaks, rivers, lakes, towns—all were portrayed in meticulous detail. Nevertheless, Scaurus wondered how trustworthy a chart it was. He knew how even well-intentioned and usually accurate men could go wrong. In the third book of his history, Polybios, as careful an investigator as was ever born, had the Rhodanus River going from east to west before it flowed south through Narbonese Gaul and into the Mediterranean. Having tramped along almost its entire length, the Roman was wearily certain it ran north and south throughout.

Mavrikios did not formally begin the council until an hour after the Romans arrived. Only when the last latecomers—Khamorth, most of them—were seated did he break his quiet conversation with his brother and raise his voice for the entire room to hear.

“Thank you for joining us this morning,” he said. The hum of talk running along the tables as the gathered soldiers discussed their trade died away. He waited until it was quite gone before continuing, “For those who have marched and fought in the westlands before, much of what you’ll hear today will be stale news, but there are so many newcomers I thought this council would be worthwhile for their sakes alone.”

“Fewer new men are here than should be, thanks to your cursed monks,” someone called, and Marcus recognized Utprand son of Dagober. The Namdalener still wore the same look of cold fury he’d had when the tribune rescued him from the riots; here, Scaurus judged, was a man not to be easily deflected from his purposes. Growls of agreement came from other easterners. Marcus saw Soteric well down at the junior end of the tables, nodding vehemently.

Ortaias Sphrantzes and Thorisin Gavras looked equally offended at Utprand’s forthrightness. Their reasons, though, were totally different. “Blame not our holy men for the fruit of your heresy,” Ortaias exclaimed, while the Sevastokrator snapped, “Show his Imperial Majesty the respect he deserves, you!” Up and down the tables, Videssians assented to one or the other—or both—of those sentiments.

The Namdaleni stared back in defiance. “What respect did we get when your holy men were murdering us?” Utprand demanded, answering both critics in the same breath. The temperature in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches shot toward the boiling point. Like jackals prowling round the edge of a fight, the Khamorth shifted in their seats, ready to leap on the battler they thought weaker.

Marcus felt the same growing despair he had known many times before in Videssos. He was calm both by training and temperament, and found maddening the quarrels of all the touchy, excitable people the Empire and its neighbors bred.

Mavrikios, it seemed, was cast from a similar mold. He laid one hand on his brother’s shoulder, the other on that of Ortaias Sphrantzes. Both subsided, though Thorisin moved restively. The Emperor looked down the tables to Utprand, his brown eyes locking with the Namdalener’s wolf-gray ones. “Fewer of you
are
here than should be,” he admitted, “nor is the fault yours.” Now it was Sphrantzes’ turn to squirm.

The Emperor ignored him, keeping all his attention on Utprand. “Do you remember why you are here at all?” he asked. His voice held the same urgency Balsamon’s had carried in the Great Temple when he requested of Videssos a unity it would not grant him.

As Marcus had already seen, Utprand recognized truth when he heard it. The Namdalener thought for a moment, then gave a reluctant nod. “You’re right,” he said. For him that was enough to settle the matter.
He leaned forward, ready to take part in the council once more. When a few hotheaded young Namdaleners wanted to carry the argument further, the ice in his eyes quelled them faster than anything the Videssians might have done.

“There is one hard case,” Gaius Philippus whispered admiringly.

“Isn’t he, though? I thought the same when I met him during the riots,” Scaurus said.

“He’s the one you talked of, then? I can see what you meant by—” The centurion broke off in mid-sentence, for the Emperor was speaking.

Calm as if nothing untoward had happened, Mavrikios said to Ortaias Sphrantzes, “Hold up that map of the westlands, would you?” The spatharios obediently lifted the parchment so everyone could see it.

On the chart, Videssos’ western dominions were a long, gnarled thumb of land stretching toward the imperial capital and separating the almost landlocked Videssian Sea in the north from the great Sailors’ Sea to the south.

The Emperor waited while a couple of nearsighted officers traded seats with colleagues near the map, then began abruptly, “I want to leave within the week. Have your troops ready to go over the Cattle-Crossing within that length of time, or be left behind.” He suddenly grinned a most unpleasant grin. “Anyone who claims he cannot be ready by then will find himself ordered to the hottest, most Phos-forsaken garrison I can think of—he’ll wish he were fighting the Yezda, I promise you that.”