Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (69 page)

“Wish he’d make up his bloody mind,” grumbled one. And another: “A good night’s sleep buggered right and proper.” With a veteran’s knack for making the best of things, a third said cheerily, “No matter. I had to get up to piss anyway.”

The camp settled back into peace. Scaurus yawned. It was near high tide, and the boom of surf on the nearby beach was lulling as smooth wine, as soft deep drums in the distance.

The tribune paused, half-stooped, a hand on his tentflap. Why had he thought of drums, from the sound of sea meeting sand? He jerked upright as he recognized the noise for what it was: waves on wood. Ships offshore, and close!

The fear of treachery flooding through him, he shouted for the buccinators once more. This time his men came forth growling, as at any drill they disliked. He did not care; his alarm blazed brighter than the mist-shrouded torchlight.

“Peel me off two maniples, quick,” he said to Gaius Philippus. “I think the Sphrantzai are landing on the beach. Set the rest of the men to defend here and send a runner to Gavras—I think we’re betrayed. In fact, send Zeprin the Red—Thorisin’s most likely to listen to him.”

“I’ll see to it he does,” the burly Haloga promised, understanding Marcus’ reasoning. Because of his former high rank in Mavrikios’ Imperial Guards, he was well-known both to the younger Gavras and his men. Throwing a wolfskin cape over his mail shirt, he vanished into the mist.

The senior centurion was barking orders. As the legionaries rushed to the places they were assigned, he turned back to Scaurus. “Betrayed, is it? You think those dung-faced horse-boys are there for a welcoming party?”

“What better reason?”

“Not a one, worse luck. What’s the plan—hold them until we get enough reinforcements to fling ’em back into the sea?”

“If we do. If we can.” The tribune wished he knew more of what he would face; ignorance’s fog could be more dangerous than the gray clammy stuff billowing around him.

Viridovix hurried up. He leaned his shield against his hip to give himself two free hands with which to fasten his helmet strap under his chin. “You’ll not get away with another shindy without me,” he said to Scaurus.

“Well, come along then. From the way you talk, anyone would think I did it on purpose.”

“So they would,” Viridovix agreed darkly. But when Marcus looked to see if he was as serious as he sounded, the Celt was grinning at him.

The legionaries quick-marched south, following the Videssian cavalry. Marcus felt something soft squash under his sandal; even in the fog and dark he did not have to ask what it was. He heard Viridovix swear in Gaulish, caught the name of the Celtic horse-goddess Epona.

The tribune slid and almost fell as his feet went from dirt to shifting sand. The Videssians were still invisible in the swirling mist ahead, but he heard their captain call, “Come ashore!”

“Are you daft, landlubber?” a sailor’s answer came thinly back. “My leadsmen near wet their breeches getting this close. We’ll send boats!”

“Battle line!” the tribune said softly. Smooth as if on parade, the legionaries deployed from their marching column. “Yell ‘Gavras’ when we charge,” Scaurus ordered. “Let the traitors know we know what they’re at.”

He feared he was come just too late. Already he could hear oars splashing toward shore, hear the scrape of light boats beaching. Well, no help for it. “Forward!” he said.

“Gavras!” The shout roared from two hundred throats. Swords drawn,
pila
ready to fling, the Romans slogged forward through the sand.

Down at the waterline there was a sudden chaos. Most of the Videssians were dismounted, walking up and down the beach holding torches to guide the boats in. Faintly through the fog, Scaurus saw some of those torches drop when his men bellowed out their war cry. A horse screamed off to one side; some Roman had seen movement in the mist and let fly with his javelin.

Full of asperity and command, an unseen voice demanded of the Videssian cavalry leader, “What sort of welcome have you prepared for us, captain?”

“Hold up! Hold up! Hold up!” the tribune shouted frantically, and blessed the legionaries, good discipline for bringing them to a ragged halt.

“What now?” Gaius Philippus snarled. “So they’ve a bitch with them—what of it? Sometimes I think the imperials can’t fight without their doxies alongside ’em.”

The senior centurion’s harsh voice ripped through the fog; Marcus thanked the gods whose existence he doubted that his comrade had spoken Latin. He answered in the same tongue; “Bitch she may well be, but that’s Komitta Rhangavve out there, or I’m a Celt.”

Gaius Philippus’ teeth came together with an audible click. “Thorisin’s woman? Oh, sweet Jupiter! Wait, though—she’s on the other side of the Cattle-Crossing with all the other skirts and their brats … begging your pardon, sir,” he added hastily.

Marcus waved the apology aside; in his confusion, he hardly heard the words that made it necessary. Those ships out there could not be Sphrantzes’—Komitta was a hellcat, but never a traitor. But they could not be Thorisin’s, either. The boats in his makeshift flotilla had long since gone back to their usual tasks. That left nothing … except the reality just offshore.

Two torches bobbed toward the Romans. Marcus stepped out ahead of his men to meet them. The Videssian captain stumped along under one, a short, stocky, red-faced man with upsweeping eyebrows and an iron-gray beard. Carrying the other was indeed Komitta Rhangavve, her pale, narrow face beautiful and fierce as a falcon’s.

The tribune gave them both his best courtier’s bow, but then, to his mortification, he heard himself blurting, “Will one of you please tell me what in Skotos’ name is going on?”

The captain frowned. He spat on the sand and looked through the fog toward heaven, his hands upraised. I’ve wounded his piety, Scaurus thought. Well, too bad for him.

Komitta looked down her elegant nose at the Roman. “The Emperor has decided it is time for his soldiers’ companions and families to rejoin
them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Were you not informed of the move? A pity.” She was the perfect aristocrat, asking a servant’s pardon for some small oversight.

The tribune resisted an urge to take her by her sculpted shoulders and shake information out of her. It was the devout captain who came to his rescue: “The Key’s ships have declared for Gavras, now that he’s put the city under siege. They sailed up during the last fog; his Highness ordered them to stay hidden so they could take advantage of the next one to bring our kin across without interference from the Sphrantzai. Worked, too.”

“The Key,” Scaurus breathed. Now that someone had spelled it out for him in small simple words, he mentally kicked himself for his stupidity. The fleets of the island of the Key were second in importance in Videssos only to the capital’s, something he had known for a year and more. But, land-oriented foreigner that he was, the fact had held no meaning for him, even after some broad hints from Thorisin Gavras.

Viridovix, subject to no discipline but his own, had been hanging back a couple of paces behind the Roman. Now he came forward to lay an indignant hand on Marcus’ arm. “Is it that there’s no fight here after all?” he said.

“So it would seem.” The tribune nodded, still bemused.

“Isn’t that the way of it?” the Gaul said loudly. “The first one his honor gives me a fair chance at, and it turns out there’s not a fornicating thing for him to be giving, at all.”

The Videssian captain, as much a professional at war as a Roman veteran, looked at the Celt as he would at any other dangerous madman. There was a smoldering interest in Komitta Rhangavve’s eye, though, that Marcus hoped against hope Viridovix would not pick up.

Luck rode with him; the Gaul’s noisy complaint had caught more ears than the ones close by. Guided by it, two of his lemans came running up the beach to smother him with hugs and squeals of, “Viridovix! Darling! We missed you so much!” Viridovix patted them as best he could with a torch in one hand and his shield in the other. To Scaurus’ relief, Komitta’s high-arched nostrils pinched as they might at a bad smell.

Turning back to his men, the tribune quickly explained what the real
situation was. The Romans raised a cheer, excited both by the new strength the Key’s fleet gave Gavras and, probably more, by the prospect of seeing their loved ones again. There was, Scaurus admitted reluctantly, something to this Videssian custom of keeping a soldier’s family close by him, however much it went against the Roman way. The men stayed in better spirits and seemed to fight harder knowing that their families’ fate as well as their own depended on their valor.

“We came for the wrong reason,” he said to the legionaries, “but now that we’re here we can be useful. Take your torches down to the shore and help guide those boats in.”

That was a task they set to with a will, some of them even splashing out into the sea so the lights they carried would reach further. As the small boats beached, the Romans kept calling the names of their loved ones. A glad cry would ring out every few minutes as couples reunited. Scaurus saw some of these walk into the mist in search of privacy, but pretended not to notice; after the tension of a few minutes before, that sort of release was inevitable.

Then he heard a familiar contralto calling, “Marcus!” and forgot about Roman discipline himself. He folded Helvis into an embrace so tight that she squeaked and said, “Careful of the baby—and of me, too, you and your ironworks.” Dosti was sound asleep in the crook of her right arm.

“Sorry,” he lied; even through armor the feel of her roused him. She laughed, understanding him perfectly. She leaned against his shoulder, tilted her head up for a kiss.

Malric ran his hands over the tribune’s mail. The excitement of the trip had kept him wide awake. “Papa,” he said, “I was on the ship with the sailors and then on the little boat going through the waves with mama, and—”

“Good,” Marcus said, absently ruffling his stepson’s hair. Malric’s adventures could wait. Scaurus’ other hand was sliding to tease Helvis’ breast, and she smiling up from eyes suddenly heavy-lidded and sensuous.

Out of the fog came a volley of discordant trumpet blasts, the metallic clatter of men running in mail, and loud shouts: “Gavras! Thorisin! The Emperor!”

“Ordure,” muttered the tribune, all thoughts of love-making banished.
He cursed himself for a fool. Somehow he had managed to forget the warning Zeprin the Red had taken to Thorisin. The Haloga had done his job only too well, it seemed; from the sound of them, hundreds of men were rushing the beach to meet the nonexistent invaders.

“Gavras!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, and the legionaries took up the cry, feeling at first hand the predicament in which they’d put the Videssian cavalry an hour before. An unpleasant prospect, being attacked by one’s own army.

The Emperor’s horsemen on the beach shouted as loudly as the Romans.

“Are you handling the traitors out there, Scaurus?” Thorisin was quite invisible, but the tribune could hear amusement struggling with concern in his voice.

“Quite well, thank you. We might have done better if we’d known they were coming.” Gavras had known that. “My plans are foggy,” Marcus remembered him saying. Foggy, forsooth! But he had not seen fit to tell his commanders. The jolt he must have got when Zeprin the Red stormed his tent shouting treachery served him right, Scaurus decided; he must have wondered if his scheme had turned in his hand to bite him.

The tribune gave him credit for taking nothing for granted; he had come ready to fight at need, and quickly, too. Now that they saw there was no danger, the troopers he had brought with him came running down to the seaside to help the boats in. It grew crowded and confused on the beach, but happy.

Komitta Rhangavve shrieked when Thorisin, mounted on his borrowed black, scooped her up and set her in front of his saddle like a prize of war. Gaius Philippus clucked in disapproval. “There’s times when I wonder if he takes this war seriously enough to win,” he said.

“Remember Caesar,” Marcus said.

The senior centurion’s eyes grew sad and fond, as at the mention of an old lover. “That bald whoremonger? Him and his Gallic tarts,” he said, pure affection in his voice. “Aye, but you’re right, he was a lion in the field. Caesar, eh?” he echoed musingly. “If the Gavras does half so well, we’ll get our names in more histories than Gorgidas’, and no mistake. Along with a copper, that’ll buy you some wine.”

“Scoffer,” the tribune snorted, but knew he’d made his point.

Afterglow upon him, Marcus took some of his weight on his elbows. Helvis sighed, an animal sound of content. He listened to the ocean rhythm of his pulse, more compelling than the surf muttering to itself in the distance.

“Why isn’t it always like this?” he said, more to some observer who was not there than to Helvis or himself.

He did not think she heard him. His fingers curious now in a new way, he touched her face, trying to bridge the gap between them. It was no good, of course; she remained the stubborn mystery anyone outside the self must always be, however closely bodies join. He looked down at her in the darkness inside their tent and could not read her eyes.