Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (36 page)

As he and his men were slowly making their way to the Roman position in column after an exercise, the tribune caught sight of a familiar plump figure atop a donkey. “Nepos!” he called. “I didn’t know you were with us.”

The fat little priest steered his mount over to the Romans. A conical straw hat protected his shaven pate from the sun’s wrath. “There are times I’d sooner be lecturing at the Academy,” he admitted. “My fundament was not designed for days on end in the saddle—oh, a horrid pun there. I crave pardon—it was unintentional.” He shifted ruefully, continuing, “Still, I was asked to come and so here I am.”

“I would have thought the Emperor could find enough priests to take omens, hearten the men, and suchlike without pulling you away from your research,” Gorgidas said.

“And so there are,” Nepos said, puzzled at the physician’s slowness. “I do such things, to be sure, but they are hardly my reason for being here.”

“What then, your honor?” Viridovix asked with a sly grin. “Magic?”

“Why, of course,” Nepos replied, still surprised anyone needed to put the question to him. Then his brow cleared as he remembered. “That’s right—in your world, magic is more often talked of than seen, is it not? Well, my friends, answer me this—if not for magic, how and why would you be marching through some of the least lovely land in the Empire of Videssos? How would you be talking with me now?”

Viridovix, Gorgidas, and the Romans in earshot looked uncomfortable. Nepos nodded at them. “You begin to understand, I see.”

While his mates were still wrestling with Nepos’ words, Gaius Philippus drove to the heart of the problem. “If you use magic in your fighting, what can we poor mortals expect? Hordes of demons shrieking out of the sky? Man-sized fireballs shot from miles away? Gods above, will the very earth crack under our feet?”

Nepos frowned at the centurion’s oath, but saw from his listeners’ faces how alarming the prospect of the unknown was. He did his best to reassure them. “Nothing so dramatic, I promise you. Battle magic is a very chancy thing—with men’s minds and emotions at the pitch of combat, even the most ordinary spells often will not bite. For that matter, sorcerers are often too busy saving their own skins to have the leisure they need for magecraft.

“And you must bear in mind,” the priest went on, “that both sides will have magicians with them. The usual result is that they cancel each other’s work and leave the result to you armored ruffians. In short, you have little to fear. I think my colleagues of the Academy and I should be able to keep our sorcerous friend Avshar quite well checked and perhaps give him more than he bargained for.”

Nepos sounded confident. Yet for all the priest’s assurances of wizardry’s small use in battle, Marcus could not help remembering the talking corpse in the armory of Videssos’ seawall, could not stop himself from recalling the black rumors swirling round Avshar’s name in the fighting thus far. His hand slid to the hilt of his good Gallic sword. There, at least, was something to be counted on to hold dire sorceries at bay.

T
HE FIRST SIGNS
V
IDESSOS WAS A LAND UNDER ATTACK SHOWED THEMSELVES
several days’ march east of Amorion. A string of plundered, burned-out villages said more clearly than words that Yezda raiders had passed this way. So did abandoned farms and a gutted monastery with its ravaged fields. Some of the destruction was very fresh; a pair of starving hounds still prowled round the monastery, waiting for masters who would not return.

The damage the nomads had done elsewhere was not much worse than any land could expect in wartime. For the Empire’s god, though, the Yezda reserved a special fury. The small chapel by the monks’ living quarters was viciously desecrated. The images on its walls were ripped to bits, and the altar chopped up and used for stovewood. As a final act of insult, the bandits had stabled their horses there.

If the Yezda thought to strike terror into their enemies by such tactics, they failed. The Videssians already had good cause to hate their western neighbors. Now the same hatred was inculcated in the mercenaries who followed Phos, for Mavrikios made sure all his soldiers looked inside the profaned chapel. The Emperor made no comment about what they saw. None was needed.

The devastation upset Marcus for another reason. He had long since decided Yezd was a foe worth fighting. Any land that placed one such as Avshar high in its councils was not one with which decent men could hope to live at peace.

What the tribune had not realized was how strong Yezd was. The imperial army was not much more than halfway to Videssos’ western frontier, yet already the land bore the marks of the strokes the nomads were hurling at the Empire. And what they were seeing today was but the
weakest, furthest touch of the Yezda. What would the land be like five days further west, or ten? Would anything grow at all?

That night there were no complaints over setting up the usual Roman field fortifications, with ditch, earth breastwork, and palisade of stakes. Not a Yezda had been seen, but the entire imperial force made camp as if in hostile country.

Scaurus was glad it was the turn of his group of legionaries to visit their women. As he and his men strolled from their camp to that of the women, he looked askance at local notions of what a fortified camp should be. He always did.

True, the women’s tents were surrounded by a palisade of sorts, but it was no better than other Videssian productions. There were too many large, haphazardly trimmed tree trunks—as soon as two or three foes could combine to pull one away from its fellows, the palisade was breached. The Romans, on the other hand, each carried several stakes, which they set up each night with their branches intertwining. They were hard to uproot, and even if one was torn free, it did not leave a gap big enough for a man to enter. He’d mentioned the matter to the Videssians several times; they always sounded interested, but did nothing.

Nervous sentries challenged the Romans half a dozen times in the five-minute walk. “Use your wits, fool!” Marcus snapped to the last of the challengers. “Don’t you know the Yezda fight on horseback?”

“Of course, sir,” the sentry answered in injured tones. Scaurus hesitated, then apologized. Any sort of ruse was possible, and the last thing he should do was mock a man’s alertness. He was more on edge than he’d thought; tonight he badly needed the peace Helvis could bring him.

Yet it was not easy for him to find that peace, though Helvis sent Malric to sleep with some friends he had made on the march. Scaurus was so long out of the habit of unburdening himself to anyone—and perhaps especially to a woman—that he spoke not of his concerns, but merely of the day’s march and other matters of little importance. Not surprisingly, Helvis sensed something was wrong, but the tribune’s shield was up so firmly she could not tell what it was.

Even their love that night could not give the Roman the relief he sought. He was too much within himself to be able to give much, and
what passed for lovemaking had a hesitance and an incompleteness it had not known before. Feeling all the worse because he had hoped to feel better, the tribune slipped into uneasy sleep.

The next he knew, he was in a Gallic clearing he remembered only too well, in the midst of his little band of legionaries as the Celts began their massacre. He stared wildly about him. Where was Videssos, the Emperor, the baking plain he and the survivors of this very night had been crossing? Or were there any survivors? Was the Empire but a fantasy of a man driven from his wits by fear?

Here came Viridovix, swinging the long blade that was twin to Scaurus’ own. The tribune raised his sword to parry, or so he thought, but the hand he brought up over his head was empty. The Celt’s blade hurtled down—

“What is it, darling?” The touch on his cheek was not the bite of a blade, but Helvis’ hand. “Your thrashing woke me, and then you cried out loud enough to rouse half the camp.”

Marcus lay on his back for several seconds without answering. The night was nearly as hot as the day had been, but there was cold sweat on his chest and shoulders. He looked up to the ceiling of the tent, his mind still seeing torchlight glittering off a Celtic sword.

“It was a dream,” he said, more to himself than to Helvis.

“Of course it was,” she answered, caressing his face again. “Just a bad dream.”

“By the gods, how real it felt! I was in a bad dream inside a nightmare, dreaming Videssos was but a dream, and me about to die in Gaul—as I should have, by any sane man’s rules.

“How real it was!” he said again. “Was that the dream, or is this? What am I doing here, in this land I never imagined, speaking its tongue, fighting its wars? Is Videssos real? Will it—oh, the dear gods, will you—vanish, too, one day, like a soap-bubble when a needle pricks it? And am I doomed to soldier on, then, for whatever new king I find, and learn his ways as well?”

He shuddered; in the hours when one day was long dead and the next far from born, the vision had a terrifying feel of probability to it.

Helvis pressed her warm naked length against him. “The nightmare is gone when you wake. This is real,” she said positively. “You see it, you
feel it, you taste it—what more could there be? I am no one’s dream but my own—though it gives me joy you share it.” In the darkness her eyes were enormous.

“How tight you are,” she said, her fingers exploring his chest, the side of his neck. “Roll over!” she ordered, and Scaurus turned obediently on his belly. She straddled his middle; he grunted in pleasure as her strong hands began to knead the tension from his back. Her massage always made him want to purr like a kitten, never more so than now.

After a few minutes he rolled to his back once more, careful not to dislodge her from atop him. “What are you doing?” she asked, but she knew the answer. He raised himself on his elbows to kiss her more easily. A strand of her hair was between them; she brushed it aside with a laugh. Her breath sighed out as she lowered herself onto him.

“
This
is real, too,” she whispered as she began to move. The tribune could not argue, nor did he want to.

Three days later the army saw its first live Yezda, a small band of raiders silhouetted against the sky to the west. The Emperor gave chase with a squadron of Videssian horse, but the nomads on their steppe ponies eluded the hunters.

Ortaias Sphrantzes was intemperate in his criticism of Mavrikios’ choice. He told everyone who would listen, “Kalokyres plainly states that only nomads should be employed in the pursuit of other nomads since, being accustomed to the saddle from infancy, they are superior horsemen. Why have we Khamorth with us, if not for such a purpose as this?”

“If himself doesna cease his havering anent his precious book, the Gavras will be after making him eat it one fine day,” Viridovix said. Marcus thought the same, but if the Emperor was displeased he gave no immediate sign.

The morning after the Yezda were spotted, Scaurus was returning to the Roman camp from the women’s quarters when someone called his name. He turned to find Thorisin Gavras behind him. The Sevastokrator was swaying slightly; he looked to have had quite a night of it.

“Good morning, your Highness,” Scaurus said.

Thorisin raised a mocking eyebrow. “ ‘Good morning, your highness,’ ”
he mimicked. “Well, it’s good to see you can still be polite to the hand that feeds you, even if you do sleep with an island wench.”

Marcus felt his face grow hot; the flush was all too noticeable with his fair skin. Catching sight of it, Thorisin said, “Nothing to be ashamed about. The lass is far from homely, I give you that. She’s no fool, either, from what I’ve heard, whether or not her brother eats nails every morning.”

“That sounds like Soteric.” Marcus had to smile, struck by the aptness of Thorisin’s description.

Gavras shrugged. “Never trust a Namdalener. Deal with them, yes, but trust? Never,” he repeated. He walked slowly up to Scaurus and then around him, studying the bemused Roman as he might a horse he was thinking of buying. Marcus could smell the wine on the Sevastokrator’s breath. Thorisin considered silently as he walked, then burst out, “So what’s wrong with you?”

“Sir?” When faced with a superior in an unpredictable mood, least said was best. The tribune knew that lesson as well as the lowliest of his troopers.

“What’s wrong with you?” It seemed Thorisin could only keep track of his thoughts by saying them over again. “You damned Romans keep company with the islanders by choice; Skotos’ frozen beard, you take to them like flies to dead meat.” Despite the unflattering simile, there was no rancor in the Sevastokrator’s voice, only puzzlement. “By rights, then, you should be bubbling with seditions, rebellions, and plots to put one Scaurus on my brother’s throne, with his skull for a drinking goblet.”

Now genuinely alarmed, the Roman started to protest his loyalty. “Shut up,” Thorisin said, with the flat authority power and drink can sometimes combine to put in a voice. “You come with me,” he added, and started back to his own tent, not looking to see whether the tribune was following.

Marcus wondered if he should disappear and hope the Sevastokrator would forget their meeting once sober. He could not take the chance, he decided; Thorisin was too experienced a drinker to go blank that way. Feeling nothing but trepidation, he trailed along after Mavrikios’ brother.

Gavras’ tent was of blue silk, but not a great deal larger than the canvas
and wool shelters of the Videssian army’s common soldiers. The Sevastokrator was too much a warrior to care for extravagance in the field. Only the pair of Haloga bodyguards in front of the opening gave any real indication of his rank. They snapped to attention when they caught sight of their master. “Sir,” said one, “the Lady Komitta has been asking for you for the past—”

Komitta Rhangavve herself chose that moment to poke her head out of the tent. Her lustrous black hair was pulled back from her face, accenting her aquiline features. She looked, in fact, like a barely tamed angry falcon, and the tirade she loosed at Thorisin did nothing to lessen the resemblance.