Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (67 page)

“Aye, a splendid job,” he said expansively to Nepos. “Puts the whole war in hailing distance of being won.”

Like all of Phos’ priests, Nepos was pledged to humility. He flushed under Scaurus’ praise. “Thank you,” he said shyly. He was academic as much as priest and so went on, “This success will take an important new charm out of the realm of theory and into the practical sphere. The research, of course, was the work of many; it’s mere chance that makes me the one to execute it. It—”

The priest lurched and turned purple: no blush of modesty this, but a darkening as if strangler’s hands were round his neck. Marcus and Gorgidas darted toward him, both afraid the fat little man’s labor had brought on a fit of apoplexy.

But Nepos was suffering no fit, though tears rolled down his cheek to
lose themselves in his thicket of beard. His hands moved in desperate passes; he whispered cantrips fast as his lips could shape them.

“What’s toward?” Gaius Philippus barked. Doubly out of his reckoning on the sea and treating with magic, he nonetheless knew trouble when he saw it. His hand snaked to his sword hilt, but the familiar gesture brought him no comfort.

“Counterspell!” Nepos got out between his quickly repeated charms. He was shaking like a man with an ague. “A vicious one—aimed at me as much as my spell. And strong—Phos, who at the Academy can it be? I’ve never felt such strength—almost struck me down where I stood.” He had been incanting between sentences, sometimes between words, and returned wholly to his sorcery once the gasped explanation was through.

The priest’s skill was enough to save himself, but could not keep his spell intact. Still at his miserable perch over the rail, Viridovix cried out, “Och, we’re for it now! The cat’s after kenning there’s mice in the cupboard!”

Including
Corsair Breaker
, there were seven galleys in Marcus’ sight. He could hardly imagine how Sphrantzes’ ship captains and sailors must have felt, with the ocean full of their enemy’s ships. Their reaction, though, was nothing like the palpitations the tribune had jokingly wished on them a few minutes before. They went charging against the small craft all around them like so many bulls rampaging through a herd of sheep.

Scaurus’ heart leaped into his mouth to see one of the cruel-beaked ships bearing down on the rearmost barge, a craft that was, to his horror, filled with legionaries. But the bireme’s captain, at least, was unnerved enough by his foes’ apparition to make a fatal error of judgment. Instead of trusting to his vessel’s ram, his port oars swept up and out of the way as he came gracefully alongside and demanded the barge’s surrender.

In his pride, though, he forgot there was more to the bargain than his sleek ship against the slow-moving, clumsy river scow: there were men as well. Ropes snaked up to catch on belaying pins and the steering oar, binding ship to ship tight as a lover’s embrace. And up those ropes and over the galley’s low gunwales swarmed the Romans, whooping with wolfish glee. They pitched the handful of marines on board over the side;
those splashes marked their end for, not true sailors, they wore cuirasses which now were fatal, not protecting.

Seeing his ship taken from under him, the captain fled to the high stern. He, too, wore armor: gilded, in token of his rank. It flashed brilliantly for a moment as he leaped into the sea to drown, too proud to outlive his folly.

That mattered little, as far as the outcome went. The Romans, no sailors themselves, laid hold of the bireme’s pilot and put a sword against his throat. Thus encouraged, he bawled orders to the crew. Oars came raggedly to life; the sail spread and billowed. Like a race horse among carters’ nags, the galley sprinted for the beach.

Elsewhere, things went not so well. Warned by their comrade’s blunder, Ortaias’ warships made no further unwise moves. A fishing boat kissed by their sharp bronze simply ceased to be, save as sodden canvas, splintered timbers, and men struggling in the warm blue waters of the strait. Worse still, alarm bells were ringing in the city, and through the boom of surf off sea walls Marcus could hear officers shouting their men aboard fresh galleys.

But all that needed time, and the Sphrantzai had little time to spend. Already Gavras’ boats were beginning to beach, soldiers jumping from them as fast as they could scramble. And each attack run stole precious minutes from the warships, for their targets jinked and dodged with all the desperate skill their crews could summon. Even after a ram bit home, there was more delay as the triumphant bireme backed oars to pull itself free of its prey. Unspining was a delicate task, lest the warships, like bees, were to leave stings behind in their wounds, and with results as damaging to themselves.

Marcus shouted himself hoarse to see what seemed a surely fatal stroke go wide. He was so intent on the sprawling seafight that he almost did not hear the helmsman’s frightened cry: “Phos have mercy! One o’ the buggers is on our tail!”

“Come a point north,” the captain ordered instantly, gauging wind, coast, and pursuer in one comprehensive glance.

“ ’Twill lose us some of our wind,” the helmsman protested.

“Aye, but it’s a shorter run to the beach. Steer so, damn you!” Pale beneath his sun-swarthied skin, the helmsman obeyed.

Scaurus bit his lip, not so much from fright but frustration. His fate was being decided here, and not a thing he could do but impotently wait. If that sea-bleached fishing captain knew his business, the boat might come safe through it; if not, surely not. But either way, there was nothing the tribune could do to help or hurt. His skills were worthless here, his opinions of no value.

The shore seemed nailed in place before him, while from behind the galley came rushing up, shark-sure and swift. Too fast, too fast, he thought; Achilles would surely catch this tortoise.

Gaius Philippus was making the same grim calculation. “He’ll be up our arse before we ground,” he said. “If we shed our mail shirts now, we have hope to swim it.”

Abandoning armor was an admission of defeat, but that was not what set Marcus against it. There were archers on that cursed bireme; already a couple of shafts had whistled past, more swift and slender than any flying fish. To be shot swimming defenselessly in the sea was not an end he relished.

If the bireme was in arrow range the end of the chase could not be far away. With sick fascination, the tribune watched the imperial pennant stiff in the breeze at the warship’s bow. Below it was another, this one crimson with five bronze bars, the drungarios’ emblem. So, Marcus thought, it was Taron Leimmokheir himself who’d sink him. He would willingly have forgone the honor.

But another ship was racing up alongside the imperial vessel, not so big, but packed to the gunwales with armed men … and also flying the imperial banner. “Go on, Leimmokheir, go on, you sneaking filthy knife in the night!” Thorisin Gavras roared across the narrowing space of water, his furious bellow like song in Scaurus’ ears. “Ram, and then you face me! You haven’t the stones in your bag for it!”

No taunt, no insult could have moved the Videssian admiral from his chosen course, but hard reality did. If he sank the fishing boat ahead, Gavras would surely come alongside and board—and with so many soldiers crammed into his ship, that fight could have but one outcome. “Hard to port,” Leimmokheir cried, and his ship heeled on its side as it twisted free from danger.

Thorisin and his men yelled derision after him: “Coward! Traitor!”

“No traitor I!” That was Leimmokheir’s rough bass. “I said I would fight you if I met you again.”

“You thought that would be never, you and your hired murderers!”

Wind and quickly growing distance swept away the admiral’s reply. Thorisin shook his fist at the retreating galley and sent after it a volley of curses that Leimmokheir never heard.

Marcus waved his thanks to the Emperor. “So it was you I rescued, was it?” Gavras shouted. “See, I must trust you after all—or maybe I didn’t know who was in your boat!” The tribune wished Thorisin had not added that gibing postscript; all too likely it held a touch of truth.

“Shoaling, we are,” one of the sailors warned, and grabbed the fishing boat’s rail. Gorgidas and Nepos both had the wisdom to do the same. A moment later timbers groaned as the boat ran hard aground. Marcus and Gaius Philippus fell in a swearing heap; Viridovix, still leaning over the side, almost went overboard.

“This salt water’ll play merry hell with my armor,” Gaius Philippus said mournfully as he splashed ashore. Marcus followed, carrying his sword above his head to keep it safe from rust.

A wave knocked Viridovix off his feet. He emerged from the sea looking like a drowned cat, his mustaches and long red locks plastered wetly across his face. But a grin flashed behind that hair. “It’s one man jolly well out of a boat I am!” he cried. As soon as he got above the tide-line, he carefully dried his blade in the white sand. He was careless in some things, but never with his weapons.

The whole fringe of beach was full of small units from Thorisin Gavras’ army, all trying to form up into larger ones. A full maniple of Romans came marching toward the tribune from the captured Videssian bireme a quarter of a mile down the beach; Quintus Glabrio was their head.

“I thought you were done for when that whoreson came up on you,” Marcus said, returning the junior centurion’s salute. “ ‘Well done’ doesn’t say enough.”

As usual, Glabrio shrugged the praise aside. “If he hadn’t made a mistake, it wouldn’t have turned out so well.”

Gavras’ ship went aground next to the boat that had carried Scaurus and his companions. “Hurry, there!” the Emperor exhorted his men as
they came up onto the land. “Form a perimeter! If the Sphrantzai have the wit to make a sally against us, we’ll wish we were on the other shore again. Hurry!” he repeated.

He co-opted Glabrio’s maniple as part of his guard force. Scaurus gave it to him without demur; he had been taking constant nervous glances at Videssos’ frowning walls and great gates, wondering if the capital’s masters would contest their rival’s landing.

But rather than vomiting forth armed men, the city’s gates were slamming shut to hold the newcomers out. The thunder of their closing was audible where Gavras’ men stood. “Pen-pushers! Seal-stampers!” Thorisin said with contempt. “Ortaias and his snake of an uncle must think to win their war huddling behind the city’s walls, hoping I’ll grow bored and go away, or that their next assassination scheme won’t miscarry, or suchlike foolishness. There can’t be a real soldier among ’em, no one to tell them walls don’t win sieges, not by themselves. That takes wit and gut both. The young Sphrantzes has neither, Phos knows; Vardanes I’ll give credit for shrewdness, aye, but the only guts to him are the ones bulging over his belt.”

Scaurus nodded at Gavras’ assessment of his imperial foes, though he suspected there might be more to Vardanes Sphrantzes than Thorisin thought. But even after it was plain there would be no sally from Videssos, the tribune’s eye kept drifting back to that double wall of dour brown stone. How much wit, he asked himself, would it take to keep men out, fighting from works like those?

He must have spoken his thoughts aloud, for Gaius Philippus commented soberly, “Close, but not quite on the mark. The real question is, how much wit will it take to get in?”

T
RUMPETS BLARED A FANFARE, THEN SKIRLED INTO A MARCH BEAT
. Twelve parasols, the imperial number, popped open as one, bright flowers of red, blue, gold, and green silk. Thorisin Gavras’ army, formed in a great long column, lifted weapons in salute of their overlord. A herald, a barrel-chested stentor of a man, roared out, “Forward—ho!” and, with the usual Videssian love of ostentatious ceremony, the column stamped into motion. It slowly paraded from south to north just out of missile range from the imperial capital’s walls, a fierce spectacle intended to give the city’s defenders second thoughts on their choice of masters.

“Behold Thorisin Gavras, his Imperial Majesty, rightful Avtokrator of the Videssians!” the herald bellowed from his place between Thorisin and his parasol bearers. The Emperor’s bay stallion, his accustomed mount, was still on the other side of the Cattle-Crossing. He rode a black, its coat curried to dark luster.

Gavras waved to the city, doffing his helmet to let Sphrantzes’ troops on the wall see his face. For the occasion he wore a golden circlet around the businesslike conical helm; his boots were a splash of blood against the horse’s jet-black hide. Otherwise he was garbed as a common soldier—it was to soldiers he would appeal, and in any case he had no patience with the jewel-encrusted, gold-stitched vestments that were an Avtokrator’s proper garb.

There were warriors aplenty to watch his progress before the city. They lined the lower, outer wall; the greatest numbers, as was natural, defended the gates. Except for gate house forces, the massive inner wall, fifty feet tall or even a bit more, was not so heavily garrisoned.

“Why serve pen-pushers?” the herald cried to the troops inside Videssos. “They’d sooner see you serfs than soldiers.” That, Marcus knew, was only the truth. Bureaucratic Emperors had held sway in Videssos
for most of the past half-century and, to break the power of their rivals, the provincial nobles, the pen-pushers systematically dismantled the native Videssian army and replaced it with mercenaries.

But that process was far-gone now, and the force defending Ortaias Sphrantzes and his uncle was itself largely made up of hired troops. They hooted and jeered at Gavras, crying, “All your people are serfs! That’s why they need real men to fight for ’em!” The regiment of Namdaleni started its shout of “Drax! Drax! The great count Drax!” to drown out Gavras’ herald’s words.

One mercenary, a man with strong lungs and a practical turn of mind, shouted, “Why should we choose you over the Sphrantzai? They’ll pay us and keep us on, and you’d send us home poor!” Thorisin’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a humorless smile; his distrust of mercenaries was too well known, even though his own army was more than half hired troops.

Forgetting his herald, he yelled back, “Why prop up a worthless turntail rascal? For fierce Ortaias cost us everything in front of Maragha by running away like a frightened mouse, him and his talk of being ‘ashamed to suffer not suffering.’ Bah!”