Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (35 page)

“Most interesting,” Ortaias said. His concern with the Romans’ standards, however, was for a different reason. “Is your custom always to group like numbers of soldiers under each ensign?”

“Of course,” Scaurus replied, puzzled.

“And why not?” his centurion added.

“Excuse me a moment,” Sphrantzes said. He pulled out of the Roman line of march so he could stop his horse and use both hands to go through his tactical volume. When he found what he wanted, he sent the beast trotting back up to the Romans.

“I quote from Kalokyres,” he said: “The first book, chapter four, part
six: ‘It is necessary to take care not to make all companies exactly equal in number, lest the enemy, counting one’s standards, form an exact idea of one’s numbers. Take heed in this matter: as we said, the companies should not be more than four hundred men, nor less than two hundred.’ Of course, your units are smaller than the ones Kalokyres uses, but the principle, I should say, remains the same. Good day to you, gentlemen.” He rode away, leaving the Romans speechless behind him.

“Do you know,” Gaius Philippus said, “that’s not a bad notion?”

“So it isn’t,” Marcus said. “In fact, it’s a very good one. How in the world did Ortaias Sphrantzes ever come up with it?”

“It’s not as if he thought of it himself,” the centurion said, looking for a way out of his discomfiture. “This Kalo-what’s-his-name must have had his wits about him. Yes.” He tried to console himself with that thought, but still looked rattled.

Viridovix had watched the entire exchange with high glee. “Sure and there he is, the man who sucked in soldiering with his mother’s milk—a centurion she was herself, I have no doubt—all tossed in a heap by the biggest booby ever hatched. It all goes to prove the Celtic way of fighting is the best—get in there and do it, for the more you think, the more trouble you’re in.”

Gaius Philippus was too graveled even to argue. “Oh, shut up,” he muttered. “Where’d Gorgidas get to? My stomach’s hurting again.”

The coastal plain between the suburbs across from Videssos and the city of Garsavra was some of the most fertile land the Romans had ever seen. The soil was a soft black loam that crumbled easily in the hand and smelled rich, almost meaty, in its promise of growth. Scores of rivers and lesser streams ran down from the central plateau so that the soil could fulfill its promise. The warm rain fetched by the constant breeze off the Sailors’ Sea watered those few stretches flowing water did not touch.

Viridovix’ dire predictions about the weather, made months before, came true with a vengeance. It was so hot and humid the ground steamed each morning when the sun came up. The pale Halogai, used to the cool, cloudy summers of their northern home, suffered worse than most; day
after day, they fainted in their armor and had to be revived with helmetsful of water.

“Red as a boiled crayfish, he was,” Viridovix said of one sunstruck northerner.

Gorgidas cocked an eye at him. “You don’t look any too good yourself,” he said. “Try wearing a soft hat instead of your helmet on march.”

“Go on with you,” the Celt said. “It takes more than a bit of sun to lay me low.” But Scaurus noticed he followed the physician’s advice.

With fine soil, abundant water, and hot sun, no wonder the breadbasket of the Empire lay here. The land was clothed with the various greens of growing plants. There were fields of wheat, millet, oats, and barley, and others growing flax and cotton, which Gorgidas insisted on calling “plant wool.” Orchards grew figs, peaches, plums, and exotic citrus fruits. As none of these last had been common in the western Mediterranean, Marcus had trouble telling one from the next—until the first time he bit into a lemon, thinking it an orange. After that he learned.

Vineyards were rare here; the soil was too good, and water too plentiful. Nor did Scaurus see many olive trees until the land began to rise toward the plateau a day or so outside of Garsavra.

The folk who farmed the fertile plain were as much a revelation to the tribune as their land. They were quiet, steady, and as industrious as any people he had seen. He was used to the tempestuous populace of Videssos the city, with their noisy, headlong pace, their arrogant assumption of superiority over all the rest of mankind, and their fickle swings of mood. He’d wondered more than once how the Empire had managed to prosper for so many centuries with such truculent material on which to build.

Gorgidas laughed at him for saying that one night. The Greek physician was always a part of the unending talk round the Roman watchfires. He seldom left camp after dusk had fallen. Scaurus knew he had no sweetheart, but used the company of men to hold loneliness at bay.

Now he commented, “You might as well judge Italy by the hangers-on at the lawcourts in Rome. For as long as Videssos has had its empire, the Emperors have spoiled the people of the capital to win their favor. You can hardly blame them, you know—reckoning by the riots a few weeks ago, their necks would answer if they didn’t keep them happy.
Don’t forget, the Empire has lasted a long time; the city people think luxury their rightful due.”

The tribune remembered Cato’s complaint of over a century before his own time, that a pretty boy could cost more than a plot of land, and a jar of imported liquamen more than a plowman. Rome had not become less fond of pleasure in the intervening years. What was the joke about Caesar?—every woman’s husband and every man’s wife. Scaurus shook his head, wondering what his native capital would be like after hundreds of years as an imperial capital.

Garsavra, which the army reached on the ninth day out of Videssos, was a long way from imperial status. The town was, in fact, smaller than Imbros. Thanks to its river-junction site, it was a trade center for a good part of the westlands. Nevertheless, when the expeditionary force camped round the city, it more than doubled Garsavra’s population.

There was something wrong with the town’s outline as the Romans came up to it, but Marcus could not put his finger on its oddness. Gaius Philippus had never a doubt. “I will be damned,” he said. “The bloody place is without a wall!”

He was right; Garsavra’s houses, shops, and public buildings were open to the surrounding world, unprotected from any attack. More than anything else he had seen in the Empire, that brought home to Marcus Videssos’ accomplishment. Imbros, even the capital itself, had to ward off barbarians from the north, but the land they shielded had known peace so long it had forgotten even fortcraft.

With his predator’s mind, Viridovix was quick to see the other side of the coin. “Wouldn’t the Yezda have a lovely time now, swooping down on a town so naked and all? They’d fair break their poor horses’ backs with the booty they’d haul off.”

The thought of Avshar’s wolves laying waste this peaceful, fertile land was nearly enough to make Scaurus physically sick. Like vicious children loose in a pottery, they could wreck in minutes what had taken years to create and take only delight in the wrecking.

“That’s why they pay us,” Gaius Philippus said, “to do the dying so they can stay happy and fat.”

Marcus found that notion little more appetizing than Viridovix’. It was not strictly fair, either; Videssians made up much the greatest part of Mavrikios’ army, and several thousand more native troops were already here awaiting the Emperor’s arrival.

There was, however, a grain of truth behind the centurion’s cynical words. The men Baanes Onomagoulos had called up from the soldier-peasants of the countryside were all too plainly less soldier than peasant. Their mounts were a collection of crowbait, their gear old and scanty, and their drill next to nonexistent.

Their commander was something else again, a general out of the same school from which Mavrikios Gavras had come. Scaurus got a good look at him during the review the Emperor called to welcome the new contingent into his forces. Onomagoulos rode past the Romans on his way to Mavrikios; now and again he touched his spurs to his horse’s flank to make the beast rear. He was not a very big man, but the way he sat his horse and the set of his hawk-nosed face proclaimed him a seasoned warrior nevertheless. He was well past forty; the years had swept most of the hair from his crown, but neither its remnants nor his pointed beard were frosted with gray.

Protocol demanded that he rein in, dismount, and perform a proskynesis before addressing the Emperor. Instead, he rode straight up to Mavrikios, who was also mounted, and cried, “Gavras, you old bastard, how have you been?”

Marcus waited for the world to fall to ruins, or at least for the Halogai at the Emperor’s side to tear the offender limb from limb. Some of the younger guardsmen reached for their swords, but Zeprin the Red was watching Mavrikios. Seeing the Emperor was not angry, the mercenary officer made a quick hand signal, and his men relaxed.

Gavras smiled thinly. “I manage to keep busy—too busy, usually. Maybe you should have had the job after all.” He brought his horse forward and slapped Onomagoulos on the back. Onomagoulos threw a lazy phantom punch at the Emperor, who ducked, his smile wider now.

The tribune suddenly understood a great deal. For Baanes Onomagoulos, Mavrikios Gavras was no distant omnipotent sovereign, but a fortunate equal, like a man who was lucky in love—and Scaurus thought of Helvis with a brief, warm glow. He wondered how long these two leaders
had known each other and what they had seen together, for their friendship to survive the challenge of Mavrikios’ imperial rank.

Baanes looked to Thorisin, asking, “And how are you, pup?”

“Well enough,” the Sevastokrator answered. His tone was not as warm as his brother’s. Marcus noted he made no move to join Baanes and Mavrikios.

“ ‘Pup,’ is it?” Viridovix breathed into Scaurus’ ear. “Sure and it’s a rare bold man to be calling Thorisin Gavras a name like that, with himself so feisty and all.”

“Onomagoulos has likely known him since before he could walk,” the Roman whispered back.

“All the more reason for the name to rankle now. You have no older kin, I’m thinking?”

“No,” Scaurus admitted.

“There’s no one worse than your elder brother’s friends. The first they see of you is a wee pulling lad, and they never forget it, not when you’re taller than the lot of them.” There was an edge to the Celt’s voice Marcus had seldom heard; when he looked round, Viridovix was thoroughly grim, as if chewing on a memory whose taste he did not like.

The Arandos River bounced down from the plateau into the flatlands over a series of cataracts, past which the army marched as it made its way westward. Churning down over the great boulders in the streambed, the Arandos hurled rainbow-catching spray hundreds of feet to either side of the riverbanks. The fine droplets drying on the faces of the soldiers slogging west were almost the only relief they got from the burning heat.

The central highlands were a very different place from the lush coastal plain. The land was baked a dirty gray-brown by the sun and crisscrossed by gullies, dry nine parts of the year but rampaging torrents the tenth. Wheat grew here too, but only with reluctance when compared to the riot of fertility to the east.

Long stretches of land were too poor for agriculture of any sort, supporting only a thin cover of grass and spikey shrubs. Herdsmen drove vast flocks of sheep, cattle, and goats across the rugged terrain, their way
of life more akin to that of the nomadic Khamorth than to that practiced elsewhere in the Empire.

For the first time, the supply problems Marcus had feared began showing up. Bread from the lowlands still followed the army up the Arandos, portaged past the rapids. It helped, for local deliveries of flour and grain were spotty and small. Some of the shortfall was made up from the herds, which gave the Romans something new to gripe about. On campaign they preferred a largely vegetarian diet, feeling that eating too much meat made them hot, heavy, and slow.

Most of the Videssians, used to a climate like Italy’s, had similar frugal tastes. The Halogai and their Namdalener cousins, on the other hand, gorged themselves on roast mutton and beef—and, as always, suffered more from the heat than did the rest of the army.

The Khamorth ate everything edible and did not complain.

Marcus grew more thankful for the Arandos with every day that passed. Without it and its occasional tributaries, the plateau would have been a desert in which nothing could survive. Its water was blood-warm and sometimes muddy, but never failed or slackened. The tribune found nothing more exquisite on a scorching afternoon than dipping up a helmetful and pouring it over his head. So thirsty was the air for moisture, though, that half an hour later he would have to do it again.

By the middle of the third week of the march, the army was beginning to become a real unit, not the motley collection of forces that had set out from Videssos. Mavrikios sped the process with a series of drills, rushing the men from column formation into line of battle, now ordering them to defend against the front, now the right, and again the left.

The maneuvers were exhausting when carried out in that heat, but the men started to know each other and to know what they could expect in battle from their comrades: the iron courage of the Halogai, the Romans’ steadiness, the overwhelming charges of the Namdaleni, the dash of the little company of light horse from Khatrish, the Khamorth bands’ speed and ferocity, and the all-around competence of most of the Videssian majority—though not so specialized in their techniques as their allies, the Videssians were more versatile than any other troops.

The army’s left wing seemed no slower to deploy than the right or
the center and no clumsier in its evolutions. Marcus began to think he had done Ortaias Sphrantzes an injustice. Then one day he heard Nephon Khoumnos’ bull voice roaring out on the left, overriding Sphrantzes’ reedy tones but careful to preface each command with, “Come, on, you lugs, you heard the general. Now—” and he would shout out whatever was needed.

Gaius Philippus heard him too, and said, “There’s a relief. At least now we know things won’t fall apart on our flank.”

“True enough,” Scaurus agreed. His solid respect for Mavrikios’ wits increased once more. The Emperor had managed to give the young scion of the rival faction a position that seemed powerful, but no authority to go with his rank. Sometimes Videssian subtlety was not to be despised.