Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (76 page)

“Isn’t he the finest little fellow now?” Viridovix crowed, gleefully thumping Arigh again. The big ruddy Celt and slight, flat-faced, black-haired nomad made a strange pair, but they had often roistered together when the Romans were stationed in the city. Each owned a fierce, uncomplicated view of life that appealed to the other, the more so in the wordly-wise capital.

The tribune’s brief musing was snapped by a scream within the Grand Courtroom, a woman’s shriek of mortal anguish that sent the hairs on his arms and at the nape of his neck bristling upright. Hardened though they were, the Romans and their foes both stood frozen in horror for a moment before returning to their business of murdering one another.

Marcus’ first thought after his wits began to work again was that Alypia Gavra might well be in the besieged courtroom. If that scream had been hers—“Harder, damn you!” he shouted to the men at the rams and shoved sword in scabbard so he could take hold of a log.

The ram crews needed no urging; the cry had put fresh spirit in them as well. They rushed forward. The Grand Gates tolled like a sub-bass bell. Scaurus fell, scraping elbows and knees and feeling the wind half knocked from him, almost as if he had run full-tilt into the gates himself.

He leaped to his feet and ran back to the log, never noticing the fist-sized stone that smashed into the grass where he had sprawled. Then it was back and forward again, and yet again. The rough bark drew blood from even the most callused hands.

Twice as tall as a man, the burnished gates were leaning drunkenly back against the bar that held them upright. Quintus Glabrio’s clear voice rang out, “Once more! This one pays for all.” The rams crashed home. With the desperate sound a great plank makes on breaking, the
bar gave way. The Grand Gates flew open, as if kicked. Cheering, the Romans surged forward.

A fierce volley met them, but Scaurus, expecting such, had put shieldmen in front of the ram crews to hold off the arrows. Then it was savage fighting at the breached gate. The small opening kept the Romans from bringing their full numbers into play, and Rhavas’ bandits fought with the reckless fury of men who knew themselves trapped. Even so, the legionaries were better armed and better trained; step by bitter step they pushed their foes back from the entrance and into the courtroom.

As he fought his way past the Grand Gates, Marcus felt the dismay Zeprin the Red had known when the tribune ordered rams brought to bear against them. The high reliefs on them were exquisite, a wordless chronicle of the Emperor Stavrakios’ conquest of Agder in the far northeast eleven hundred years before. Here the imperial troops led back prisoners, the bowed heads of the captive women agonizing portraits of despair. A little higher, engineers carved a road along the side of a cliff so the army could advance; a pack mule’s hoof skittered on the edge of disaster. At the join of the gates Stavrakios led a counterattack against the Halogai. And over all stood the Miracle of Phos, when hot sun in midwinter melted a frozen river and trapped the barbarians without retreat. The Videssian god appeared in brooding majesty above his chosen folk.

But Agder was lost to the Empire these last eight long centuries, and now, the reliefs that showed its overthrow themselves met war. The rams had flattened mountains and crushed faces with impartial brutality. A tiny twisted bronze ear was trampled in the grass at the tribune’s feet. Nothing can come into being without change, he told himself, but the maxim did little to console him.

He shouldered past one of Rhavas’ bravoes, thrust home under the arm where his mail shirt was weak. The man groaned and twisted away, enlarging his own wound. As he fell, Scaurus tore his small round shield from him to replace the
scutum
left outside the courtroom.

Marcus’ eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the relative gloom within. He had expected to face Outis Rhavas at the entrance—had Ortaias Sphrantzes’ foul captain fled? No, there he was, by a seething iron cauldron in the very center of the porphyry floor; the rude log fire kindled on that perfect surface was a desecration in itself. A knot of men
around him jostled one another, each trying to dip a surcoat sleeve into whatever mixture bubbled in the kettle.

By it sprawled a gutted corpse, naked, female. The druids’ stamps on Marcus’ blade flared into light, but he did not need them to warn him of magic.

The fight was not the well-planned, carefully orchestrated engagement in which Gaius Philippus could take pride. The Romans perforce broke ranks to battle through the Grand Gates; inside the courtroom it was a vicious sprawl of fighting, one on one, three against two, up and down the broad center aisle and around the tall columns of lightdrinking basalt. A hanging of cloth of gold and scarlet silk came tumbling down to enfold a handful of warriors in its precious web.

Marcus fought his way toward Rhavas. He moved cautiously; his hobnailed
caligae
would not bite on the glass-smooth flooring, and he felt as if he were walking on ice.

When one of Rhavas’ men stumbled against him, they both fell heavily. They grappled, so closely locked together Scaurus could smell his enemy’s fear. He could not stab with his sword; it was too long. He smashed the pommel into the brigand’s face until the clutching arms around him relaxed their grip.

The tribune staggered to his feet. There were shouts outside—more of Thorisin’s men reaching the palace complex at last through Videssos’ maze of streets. Scaurus had no time for them. Outis Rhavas loomed over him, a tower of enameled steel from closed helm to mailed boots.

Most Videssians fought by choice from horseback and thus preferred sabers. But as he had in the brush at the rampart, Rhavas swung a heavy longsword. His giant frame made it a wickedly effective weapon; even the tall Scaurus gave away inches of reach.

“A pity you scrape your face bare,” Rhavas hissed, his voice full of venom. “It ruins the pleasure of shaving your corpse.”

The tribune did not answer; he knew the taunt was only meant to enrage and distract him. Their blades rang together. As Marcus had already found, Outis Rhavas was as skilled as he was strong. Stroke by stroke, he drove the Roman back; it was all Scaurus could do to parry the storm of blows. After the protection of his lost
scutum
, the small shield he carried seemed no more useful than a lady’s powder puff.

But for all their fell captain’s might, Rhavas’ band was falling back around him. They fought as bandits do, furiously but without order. Though the legionaries’ maniples were in disarray, long training had drilled into them the notion that they were parts of a greater whole. Like a constricting snake’s coils, they pressed constantly, never yielding an advantage once gained.

Thus when Rhavas threatened Marcus, he was alone, while Viridovix and half a dozen Romans leaped to the tribune’s defense. Balked of his prey, Rhavas cursed horribly. But he gave ground, falling back until he was one of the last defenders of the cauldron that still boiled and steamed in the center of the courtroom.

Even through woodsmoke, Marcus caught its contents’ sick-sweet carrion reek, but a score of Rhavas’ soldiers had already wet their sleeves in the liquid. And not soldiers alone; the sleeve that went into the pot now was purple satin shot through with thread of silver and gold.

“Vardanes!” the tribune shouted, and at the cry the elder Sphrantzes jerked as if jabbed with a pin. Scaurus had rarely seen Ortaias’ uncle other than perfectly composed or known that round, ruddy face with its fringe of neat black beard to reflect anything but what the Sevastos wanted seen. But now he wore the furtive, guilty look of a man surprised at a perversion.

The battle stiffened. Some of Rhavas’ bandits, it seemed, would not fall, no matter what blows landed on them. Marcus heard Gaius Philippus snarl, “Go down, you bastard, go down!,” heard the soft, meaty sound of a blade driven home.

But the senior centurion’s foe only grinned like a snake. Scaurus saw the yellowish stain on his surcoat sleeve. He slashed back at the Roman, a clumsy stroke Gaius Philippus turned with his shield. But doubt clouded the veteran’s eyes—how was he to beat a man he could not wound?

That same doubt appeared on more and more Roman faces. As Rhavas’ anointed gained confidence in their invulnerability to steel, they began running risks no warrior would have thought sane, taking ten blows to land one. They taunted the legionaries, as boys will taunt a savage dog when safely behind a high fence. And, inevitably, they took their share of victims. The Roman advance stumbled.

Smiling wickedly, a tall, jackal-lean Videssian engaged Viridovix. The cutthroat swung his sword two-handed—what need had he of shield? The big Gaul slid to one side, light on his feet as a great hunting cat. His blade, twin to Scaurus’ own, sang through the air, druids’ marks flashing gold.

It bit through flesh and windpipe and bone. Before the expression of horrified surprise could form on the brigand’s face, his head leaped from his shoulders, hitting the ground with a warm, splattery thud. The spouting corpse collapsed, its limbs thrashing, for a moment not realizing they were dead.

Viridovix’s banshee howl of triumph filled the courtroom. He leaped forward. Another muck-sleeved ruffian fell, clutching at the guts the Celt’s sword laid out into his hands, neat as an anatomical demonstration.

Marcus went hunting stained surcoats, too, realizing that, as had always been true in Videssos, his good Gallic blade was proof against sorcery. Like Viridovix, he killed his first man with ridiculous ease. Not knowing the weapon he faced, the bandit scarcely bothered to protect himself. He gasped as the tribune’s sword found his heart, then tried to breathe, but coughed blood instead.

“Liar!” he whispered, slumping to the floor; his eyes were on Rhavas.

The harsh captain’s men wavered in their attack, newfound confidence faltering as they watched their comrades die so in surprise. Then Arsaber, the hulking street ruffian, felled yet another of their number, his heavy club making a shattered ruin of the left side of his opponent’s face.

Gaius Philippus was no scholar, but in battle he missed nothing. “It’s only iron won’t hurt ’em!” he shouted to the legionaries. He snatched a
pilum
from one of the Romans, grabbing the shank to wield it clubwise. He shouted in fierce delight as the blow sent one of Rhavas’ warriors spinning back, sword flying from nerveless fingers. Marcus did not think that man would rise again; the senior centurion had exorcised all his fear of magic in one prodigious swing.

“Stand, you ball-less rabbits!” Rhavas bellowed, and Vardanes Sphrantzes’ well-trained baritone rose in exhortation: “Hold fast! Hold fast!” But they were shouting against a gale of fear roaring through their
followers—sword and spear had not held the Romans, and now sorcery failed as well.

One desperate band cut its way clean through the legionaries; its handful of survivors dashed through the Grand Gates, intent only on escape. Marcus heard their cries of despair as they ran headlong into more of Thorisin Gavras’ troops outside. With agility born of desperation, bandits clawed their way up wall hangings to insecure refuges in window niches ten feet above the floor. Others tried to surrender, but not many of Scaurus’ men would let them yield. Quintus Glabrio kept more than one from being killed out of hand, but he could not be everywhere.

Outis Rhavas cut down a bolting man from behind, and then another, his own way of encouraging his bandits to stand and fight. But even with the hardiest of his irregulars at his side, the surging Romans at last drove him from his wizard’s cauldron. He fell back toward the imperial throne.

Marcus traded swordstrokes with one of his lieutenants. The man was fast as a striking viper; he pinked Scaurus twice in quick succession, and a vicious slash just missed the tribune’s eye. But the cutthroat’s heel slipped in the great pool of blood that had gushed from the serving wench his master had killed. Before he could recover, Scaurus’ blade tore out his throat. He fell across the girl’s outraged corpse.

As the tribune pushed forward, he glanced down into the iron pot Rhavas had defended with such ferocity and found himself looking at horror. Floating in the boiling, scum-filled water was a dead baby, the soft flesh beginning to fall away from its bones. No, he corrected himself, not even a baby—the tiny body was no longer than the distance between the tips of his outstretched thumb and little finger.

His eyes slipped to the serving wench’s opened belly, back in disbelief to the cauldron, and he was sick where he stood. He spat again and again to clear his mouth of the taste and wished he might somehow wipe his vision clear so easily.

Cold in him was the knowledge that there were, after all, worse evils than Doukitzes’ tortured death. He was tempted to follow the creed of Videssos, for in Outis Rhavas surely Skotos walked on earth.

That thought led to another, and sudden dreadful certainty gripped him. “Rhavas!” he shouted; the name was putrid as the vomit on his
tongue. Then he solved the other’s anagram, his monstrous joke, and cried another name: “Avshar!”

It grew very still within the Grand Courtroom; blows hung in the air, unstruck. Outis Rhavas’ name brought with it rage and hatred, but the wizard-prince of Yezd had struck cold terror into Videssos’ heart for a generation. Inside the ranks of Rhavas’ men, Marcus saw Vardanes Sphrantzes’ red cheeks go pale as he understood his state’s greatest foe had been a chief upholder of his rule.

Across the thirty feet that separated them, Rhavas—no, Avshar—dipped his head to the tribune in derisive acknowledgment of his astuteness. “Very good,” he chuckled, and Scaurus wondered how he had not known that fell voice at first hearing. “You have more wit than these dogs, it seems—much good will it do you.”

After that moment of stunned dismay, the legionaries hurled themselves with redoubled fury at the backers of him who had styled himself Outis Rhavas. The men they faced threw down their swords in scores. Rhavas the brigand chief was a captain they had followed in hope of blood and plunder, but few were the Videssians who would willingly serve Avshar.