Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (62 page)

Thorisin took no offense, which was as well; Viridovix curbed his tongue for no one. His tale was about what the tribune had expected. His mauled right wing of the great Videssian army had been pushed back into Vaspurakan’s mountain fastnesses, terrain even more rugged than that which the Romans had crossed. There, much of the army had melted away, beaten soldiers slipping off singly or in small groups to try to make their way eastward.

Gaius Philippus nodded, commenting, “It’s what I would have guessed, looking at the men you have with you. The peasant levies and fainthearts are long gone, dead or fled.”

“That’s the way of it,” Thorisin agreed.

In one important respect, the younger Gavras’ troops had had a harder time of it than the Romans. The Yezda made a real pursuit after them, and it took two or three bitter rearguard actions to shake free. “It was that cursed white-robed devil,” one of the Videssian officers said. “He stuck tighter than a leech—aye, and sucked more blood, too.”

Marcus and his entire party leaned forward, suddenly alert. “So Avshar was trailing you, then,” the tribune said. “No wonder there was no sign of him in these parts—we had no idea what was keeping him out of Videssos.”

“I still don’t,” Gavras admitted. “He disappeared a couple of weeks after the battle, and I have no idea where he is. As much as anything, his going saved us—without him the Yezda are fierce enough, but a rabble. With him—” Thorisin fell silent; from his expression, the words stuck in his mouth were not to his taste.

The officer who had mentioned Avshar—Indakos Skylitzes, his name was—asked Marcus, “Has Amorion gone mad? We sent a man there to proclaim Thorisin, and they horsewhipped him out of town—for a day, we thought he might not live. Phos’ little suns, even in civil war, heralds have some rights.” As a Videssian baron, Skylitzes knew whereof he spoke.

“It’s Zemarkhos’ city now, and his word is law there,” Marcus said. He paused as a new thought struck him. “Was your envoy a Vaspurakaner, by any chance?”

Skylitzes looked uncertain, but Thorisin nodded. “Haik Amazasp? I should say so. What has that to do with—? Oh.” His scowl deepened as
he remembered how Amorion’s fanatic priest had wanted to start his persecution of the “heretics” with imperial backing. “Ortaias is welcome to his support—not that he’ll get much use from him.”

“You’ll avenge us?” Senpat Sviodo exclaimed eagerly. “You won’t regret it—Amorion is a perfect place to push east. You know that as well as I.” The young Vaspurakaner came halfway out of his seat in enthusiasm. Gagik Bagratouni began to rise, too, more slowly, but with a frightening sense of purpose.

Thorisin, though, waved them down once more. “No, we’re after Videssos the city, nothing else. With it, the whole Empire falls to us; without it, none of the rest is truly ours.”

Seeing their outraged disappointment, he went on, “If you don’t mind your revenge at second hand, I think you’ll get it. The Namdaleni are moving east out of Phanaskert, and I expect Amorion will be in their line of march. They’ll bring the town down around Zemarkhos’ ears if he squawks of heresy at them—and he will. He’s bigot enough.” Gavras contemplated the meeting with equanimity, even grim amusement. So, after a moment, did the Vaspurakaners.

Scaurus was ready to agree. Any trap that closed on the Namdaleni would be kicked open from the inside by six or seven thousand heavy-armed cavalry. So the men of the Duchy were on the move, too, were they? he thought. Armies were flowing like driblets from melting icicles after the winter freeze.

Something else occurred to him: the Namdaleni had a good many more soldiers hereabouts than Thorisin did. He asked, “What sort of understanding do you have with the easterners?”

“Mutual mistrust, as always,” Gavras answered. “If they see their way clear, they’ll go for our throats. I don’t intend to give them the chance.”

“Maybe Onomagoulos’ men can come up from the south to help keep an eye on them,” Marcus suggested.

It was the Emperor’s turn to be startled. “What? Baanes is alive?”

“If traders’ tales can be trusted,” Gaius Philippus said, still doubting the merchants’ rumor. He set it forth for Thorisin, who did not seem to find anything improbable in it.

“Well, well, good for the old fox. There’s tricks left in him after all,” Gavras murmured, but he did not sound overjoyed to Scaurus.

When Aptos disappeared behind a bend in the road, Gaius Philippus heaved a long sigh. “First time in full many a year I’m sorry to be on the move once more,” he said.

“By the gods, why?” Marcus asked, surprised. Marching under a spring sky was one of the pleasures of a soldier’s life. The last rains had given the foothills a carpet of new grass and were recent enough to keep Videssos’ dirt roads from turning into choking ribbons of dust. The air was fine and mild, almost tasty, and sweetly clamorous with the calls of returning birds. Even the butterflies looked fresh, their bright wings not yet tattered and tarnished by time.

“Canna you tell?” Viridovix said to Scaurus. “The puir lad’s heart is all broken in flinders—or would be, if he remembered where he mislaid it.”

“Oh, be damned to you,” Gaius Philippus said, the measure of his upset shown by his falling into the Celt’s idiom.

For a moment Marcus honestly had no idea of what Viridovix was talking about, or why the senior centurion took the gibe seriously. When he stopped to think, though, an answer did occur to him. “Nerse?” he asked. “Phorkos’ widow?”

“What if it is?” Gaius Philippus muttered, plainly sorry he’d said anything at all.

“Well, why didn’t you court her, then?” the tribune burst out, but Gaius Philippus was doing no more talking. The veteran set his jaw and stared straight ahead as he marched, enduring Viridovix’ teasing without snapping back. After a while the Celt grew bored of his unrewarding fun and went off to talk about swordplay with Minucius.

Studying Gaius Philippus’ grim expression, Marcus came to his own conclusions. Strange that a man who was utterly fearless in battle, and who took fornication and rape as part of the warrior’s trade, should be scared witless of paying suit to a woman for whom he felt something more than lust.

Thorisin Gavras’ army hurried northeast toward the shore of the Videssian Sea. Gavras hoped to commandeer shipping and swoop down on Ortaias in the capital before the usurper could make ready to meet him. But at each port his troops approached, shipmasters hurried their vessels out to sea and sent them fleeing to bring young Sphrantzes word of his coming.

The third time that happened, at a fishing village called Tavas, Thorisin’s short temper neared the snapping point. “For two coppers I’d sack the place,” he snarled, pacing up and down like a caged tiger, watching a bulky merchantman’s brightly dyed sails recede into sea mist as it drove north out of the Bay of Rhyax before turning east for the long run to Videssos.

He spat in disgust. “Bah! What’s left here? Half a dozen fishing boats. Phos willing, I could put a good dozen men in each.”

“You ought to pillage these faithless traders and peasants. Teach them to fear you,” Komitta Rhangavve said, walking beside him. The fierce expression on her lean, aristocratic features made her resemble a hunting hawk, beautiful but deadly.

Alarmed at the bloodthirsty advice Gavras’ lady gave, Scaurus said hastily, “Perhaps it’s as well the merchant got away; Ortaias must be forewarned by now in any case. If the fleet in the city stands with him, he’d smash anything you could scrape together here.”

Komitta Rhangavve glared at even this indirect disagreement, but Thorisin sighed, a heavy, frustrated sound. “You’re probably right. If I could have brought it off at Prakana, though, four days ago—” He sighed again. “What was that thing poor Khoumnos used to say? ‘If ifs and buts were candied nuts, then everyone would be fat.’ ” Nephon Khoumnos, though, was half a year dead, struck down by Avshar’s sorcery at the battle before Maragha.

Neither Gavras nor Marcus found that a pleasant thought to dwell on. Returning rather more directly to rebutting Komitta, the tribune said, “At least the people hereabouts are for you, whatever the shipmasters do.”

The Emperor’s smile was still sour. “Of course they are—we’ve come far enough east that folk have had a good taste of Ortaias’ taxmen; aye,
and of his money, too, though they’d break teeth if they tried to bite it.” Sphrantzes’ wretched coinage was a standing joke in his opponent’s army. As for his revenue agents, Scaurus had yet to see one. They ran from Thorisin even faster than the navarchs did.

Five days later came an envoy of Ortaias’ who did not flee. Accompanied by a guard force of ten horsemen, he rode deliberately up to Thorisin’s camp at evening. One of the troopers bore a white-painted shield on a spearstaff: a sign of truce.

“What can the henhearted wretch have to say to me?” Thorisin snapped, but let the emissary’s party approach.

The soldiers with Sphrantzes’ agents were nonentities—the hard shell of a nut, good only for protecting the kernel within. The envoy himself was something else again. Marcus recognized him as one of Vardanes Sphrantzes’ henchmen, but could not recall his name.

Thorisin had no such difficulty. “Ah, Pikridios, how good to see you,” he said, but there was venom in his voice.

Pikridios Goudeles affected not to notice. The bureaucrat dismounted with a sigh of relief. He’d sat his horse badly; from the look of his hands, the reins would have hurt them. They were soft and white, their only callus on the right middle finger. A pen-pusher right enough, Scaurus thought, feeling the aptness of the Videssian soldiery’s contemptuous term for the Empire’s civil servants.

Yet for all his unwarlike look, the small, dapper Goudeles was a man to be reckoned with. His dark eyes gleamed with ironic intelligence, and the quality of his nerve was adequately attested by his very presence in the rival Emperor’s camp.

“Your Majesty,” he said to Thorisin, and went to one knee, his head bowed—not a proskynesis, but the next thing to it.

Some of Gavras’ soldiers cheered to see their lord so acclaimed by his foe’s ambassador. Others growled because the acclamation was incomplete. Thorisin himself seemed taken aback. “Get up, get up,” he said impatiently. Goudeles rose, brushing dust from the knee of his elegant riding breeches.

He made no move to speak further. The silence stretched. At last,
conceding the point to him, Thorisin broke it: “Well, what now? Are you here to turn your worthless coat? What price do you want for it?”

Beneath the thin fringe of mustache, so like Vardanes’, Scaurus noticed—perhaps irrelevantly, perhaps not—Goudeles’ lip gave a delicate curl, as if to say he had noticed the insult but did not quite care to acknowledge it. “My lord Sevastokrator, I am merely here to help resolve the unfortunate misunderstanding between yourself and his Imperial Majesty the Avtokrator Ortaias Sphrantzes.”

Every trooper who heard that shouted in outrage; hands tightened on sword hilts, reached for spears and bows. “String the little bastard up!” someone yelled. “Maybe after he’s hung a while he’ll know who the real Emperor is!” Three or four men sprang forward. Goudeles’ self-control wavered; he shot an appealing glance at Thorisin Gavras.

Thorisin waved his soldiers back. They withdrew slowly, stiffly, like dogs whistled off a kill they think theirs by right. “What’s going on?” Gaius Philippus whispered to Marcus. “If this rogue won’t own Gavras as Emperor, by rights he’s fair game.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the tribune answered. With Gavras’ hot temper, Scaurus had expected him to deal roughly with Goudeles, ambassador or no—in civil war such niceties of usage were easy enough to cast aside. It was lucky Komitta was not in earshot of all this, he thought; she would already be heating pincers.

Yet Thorisin’s manner remained mild. Though a warrior by choice, he had known his share of intrigue as well, and his years at his brother’s right hand in the capital made him alert to subtleties less experienced men could miss. Voice still calm, he asked Goudeles, “So you do not reckon me rightful Avtokrator, eh?”

“Regrettably, I do not, my lord,” Goudeles said, half-bowing, “nor does my principal.” His glance at Thorisin was wary; they were fencing as surely as if they had sabers to hand.

“Just a damned rebel, am I?”

Goudeles spread his soft hands, gave a fastidious shrug.

“Then by Skotos’ dung-splattered beard,” Thorisin pounced, “why does your bloody principal”—He made the word an oath—“still style me Sevastokrator? Is that his bribe to me, keeping a title he’ll make sure is empty? Tell your precious Sphrantzes I am not so cheaply bought.”

The envoy from the capital looked artfully pained at Gavras’ crudity. “You fail to understand, my lord. Why should you not remain Sevastokrator? The title was yours during your deeply mourned brother’s reign, and you are still close kin to the imperial house.”

Thorisin stared at him as if he had started speaking some obscure foreign tongue. “Are you witstruck, man? The Sphrantzai are no kin of mine—I share no blood with jackals.”

Once again, the insult failed to make an impression on Goudeles. He said, “Then your Majesty has not yet heard the joyous news? How slowly it travels in these outlying districts!”