Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (90 page)

So it proved. The imperial rescript that went out to Garsavra all but crackled off its parchment. By that time Marcus cared less than he had. He was working hard with his troops as they readied themselves for the coming summer campaign. As he sweated on the practice field, he was gratified to see the beginning potbelly he had grown during the winter’s inactivity start to fade away.

Roman training techniques were enough to melt the fat off anyone. The Videssians, Vaspurakaners, and other locals who had taken service with the legionaries grumbled constantly, as soldiers will over any exercises. Gaius Philippus, naturally, worked them all the harder for their complaints. As for Scaurus, he threw himself into the drills with an enthusiasm he had not felt when he first joined the legions.

The troops exercised with double-weight weapons of wood, and fought at pells until their arms ached, thrusting now at the dummy posts’ faces, now at their flanks, and again at thigh level. They used heavy wicker shields, too, and practiced advancing and retreating from their imaginary foes.

“Hard work, this,” Gagik Bagratouni said. The Vaspurakaner
nakharar
still led his countrymen and had learned to swear in broken Latin as foully as in his hardly more fluent Videssian. “By the time comes real battle, a relief it will be.”

“That’s the idea,” Gaius Philippus said. Bagratouni groaned and shook his head, sending sweat flying everywhere. He was well into his forties, and the drill came hard for him. He worked at it with the fierce concentration of a man trying to forget past shadows, and his countrymen showed a spirit and discipline that won the Romans’ admiration.

The only thing that horrified the mountaineers was having to learn to swim. The streams in their homeland were trickles most of the year, floods the rest. Learn they did, but they never came to enjoy the water legionary-style, as a pleasant way to end a day’s exercises.

The Videssians among the legionaries were not quite at their high pitch. A dozen times a day Marcus would hear some Roman yelling, “The point, damn it, the point! A pox on the bloody edge! It isn’t good for anything anyway!” The imperials always promised to mend their
swordplay and always slipped back. Most were ex-cavalrymen, used to the saber’s sweet slash. Thrusting with the short
gladius
went against their instincts.

More patient than most of his fellows, Quintus Glabrio would explain, “No matter how hard you cut, armor and bones both shield your foe’s vitals, but even a poorly delivered stab may kill. Besides, with the stabbing stroke you don’t expose your own body and often you can kill your man before he knows you’ve delivered the stroke.” Having nodded in solemn agreement, the Videssians would do as they were ordered—for a while.

Then there were those to whom Roman discipline meant nothing at all. Viridovix was as deadly a fighter as Scaurus had seen, but utterly out of place in the orderly lines of the legionaries’ maniples. Even Gaius Philippus acknowledged the hopelessness of making him keep rank. “I’m just glad he’s on our side,” was the senior centurion’s comment.

Zeprin the Red was another lone wolf. His great axe unsuited him for action among the legionaries’ spears and swords, as did his temperament. Where Viridovix saw battle as high sport, the Haloga looked on it as his cold gods’ testing place. “Their shield-maidens guide upwards the souls of those who fall bravely. With my enemy’s blood I will buy my stairway to heaven,” he rumbled, testing the edge of his double-bitted weapon with his thumb. No one seemed inclined to argue, though to Videssian ears that was pagan superstition of the rankest sort.

Drax of Namdalen and his captains came out to the practice field several times to watch the Romans work. Their smart drill impressed the great count, who told Scaurus, “By the Wager, I wish that son of a pimp Goudeles had warned me what sort of men you had. I thought my knights would ride right through you so we could roll up Thorisin’s horse like a pair of leggings.” He shook his head ruefully. “Didn’t quite work that way.”

“You gave us a bad time, too,” the tribune returned the compliment. Drax remained a mystery to him—a skilled warrior, certainly, but a man who showed little of himself to the world outside. Though unfailingly courteous, he had a stiff face a horse trader would envy.

“He reminds me of Vardanes Sphrantzes with the back of his head shaved,” Gaius Philippus said after the islander left, but that far Marcus
would not go. Whatever Drax’s mask concealed, he did not think it was the unmourned Sevastos’ cruelty.

However much the Namdaleni admired the legionaries, the senior centurion remained dissatisfied. “They’re soft,” he mourned. “They need a couple of days of real marching to get the winter laziness out of ’em once and for all.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Marcus said, though he felt a twinge of trepidation. If the troopers needed work, what of him?

“Full kits tomorrow,” he heard Gaius Philippus order, and listened to the chorus of donkey brays that followed. The full Roman pack ran to more than a third of a man’s weight; along with weapons and iron rations, it included a mess kit, cup, spare clothes in a small wicker hamper, a tent section, palisade stakes or firewood, and either a saw, pick, spade, or sickle for camping and foraging. Small wonder the legionaries called themselves mules.

Dawn was only a promise when they tramped out of the city, northward bound. The Videssian gate crew shook their heads in sympathy as they watched the soldiers march past. “Make way, there!” Gaius Philippus rasped, and waggoners hastily got their produce-filled wains out of the roadway. Like most of the Empire’s civilians, they distrusted what little they knew about mercenaries and were not anxious to learn more.

Marcus pulled a round, ruddy apple from one of the wagons. He tossed the driver a small copper coin to pay for it and had to laugh at the disbelief on the man’s face. “Belike their puir spalpeen was after thinking you’d breakfast on him instead of his fruit,” Viridovix said.

There was less room for good cheer as the day wore along. The military step was something the Romans fell into with unthinking ease, each of them automatically holding his place in his maniple’s formation. The men who had taken service since they came to Videssos did their best to imitate them but, here as in so many small ways, practice told. And because the newcomers were less orderly, they tired quicker.

Still, almost no one dropped from the line of march, no matter how footsore he became. Blistered toes were nothing to the blistering Gaius Philippus gave fallers-out, nor was any trooper eager to face his fellows’ jeers.

Phostis Apokavkos, first of all the Videssians to become a legionary,
strode along between two Romans, hunching forward a little under the weight of his pack. His long face crinkled into a smile as he flipped Scaurus a salute.

The tribune returned it. He hardly reckoned Apokavkos a Videssian any more. Like any son of Italy’s, the ex-farmer’s hands were branded with the mark of the legions. When he learned the mark’s significance, Apokavkos had insisted on receiving it, but Scaurus had not asked it of any of the other recruits, nor had they volunteered.

By afternoon the tribune was feeling pleased with himself. There seemed to be a band of hot iron around his chest, and his legs ached at every forward step, but he kept up with his men without much trouble. He did not think they would make the twenty miles that was a good day’s march, but they were not far from it.

Already they were past the band of suburbs that huddled under Videssos’ walls and out into the countryside. Wheat-fields, forests, and vineyards were all glad with new leaf. There were newly returned birds overhead, too. A blackcap swooped low. “Churr! Tak-tak-tak!” it scolded the legionaries, then darted off on its endless pursuit of insects. A small flock of linnets, scarlet heads and breasts bright, twittered as they winged their way toward a gorse-covered hilltop.

Gaius Philippus began eyeing likely looking fields for a place to camp. At last he found one that suited him, with a fine view of the surrounding area and a swift clear stream running by. Woods at the edge of the field promised fuel for campfires. The senior centurion looked a question toward Scaurus, who nodded. “Perfect,” he said. Even though this was but a drill, from skill and habit Gaius Philippus was incapable of picking a bad site.

The buccinators’ horns blared out the order to halt. The legionaries pulled tools from their packs and fell to work on the square ditch and rampart that would shelter them for the night. Stakes sprouted atop the earthwork wall. Inside, eight-man tents went up in neat rows that left streets running at right angles and a good-sized open central forum. By the time the sun was down, Marcus would have trusted the camp to hold against three or four times his fifteen hundred men.

Some of the farmers hereabout must have reported the Romans’ arrival to the local lord, for it had just grown dark when he rode up to investigate
with a double handful of armed retainers. Marcus courteously showed him around the camp; he seemed a bit unnerved to be surrounded by so much orderly force.

“Be gone again tomorrow, you say?” he asked for the third time. “Well, good, good. Have a pleasant night of it, now.” And he and his men rode away, looking back over their shoulders until the night swallowed them.

“What was all that in aid of?” Gaius Philippus demanded. “Why didn’t you just tell him to bugger off?”

“You’d never make a politician,” Marcus answered. “After he saw what we had, he didn’t have the nerve to ask for the price of the firewood we cut, and I didn’t have to embarrass him by telling him no right out loud. Face got saved all around.”

“Hmm.” It was plain Gaius Philippus did not give a counterfeit copper for the noble’s feelings. The tribune, though, found it easier to avoid antagonizing anyone gratuitously. With the touchy Videssians, even that little was not always easy.

He settled down by a campfire to gnaw journeybread, smoked meat, and an onion, and emptied his canteen of the last of the wine it held. When he started to get up to rinse it out, he discovered he could barely stagger to the stream. The break—the first he’d had from marching all day—gave his legs a chance to stiffen, and they’d taken it with a vengeance.

Many legionaries were in the same plight. Gorgidas went from one to the next, kneading life into cramped calves and thighs. The spare Greek, loose-limbed himself after the hard march, spotted Marcus hobbling back to the fireside. “
Kai su, teknon
?” he said in his own tongue. “You too, son? Stretch out there, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Scaurus obediently lay back. He gasped as the doctor’s fingers dug into his legs. “I think I’d rather have the aches,” he said, but he and Gorgidas both knew he was lying. When the Greek was done, the tribune found he could walk again, more or less as he always had.

“Don’t be too proud of yourself,” Gorgidas advised, watching his efforts like a parent with a toddler. “You’ll still feel it come morning.”

The physician, as usual, was right. Marcus shambled down to the stream to splash water on his face, unable to assume any better pace or
gait. His sole consolation was that he was far from alone; about one legionary in three looked to have had his legs age thirty years overnight.

“Come on, you lazy sods! It’s no further back than it was out!” Gaius Philippus shouted unsympathetically. One of the oldest men in the camp, he showed no visible sign of strain.

“Och, to the crows with you!” That was Viridovix; not being under Roman discipline, he could say what the legionaries felt. The march had been hard on the Gaul. Though larger and stronger than almost all the Romans, he lacked their stamina.

However much Gaius Philippus pressed as the legionaries started back, he did not get the speed he wanted. It took a good deal of marching for the men to work their muscles loose. To the senior centurion’s eloquent disgust, they were still a couple of miles short of Videssos when night fell.

“We’ll camp here,” he growled, again choosing a prime defensive position in pastureland between two suburbs. “I won’t have us sneaking in after dark like so many footpads, and you whoresons don’t deserve the sweets of the city anyway. Loafing good-for-naughts! Caesar’d be ashamed of the lot of you.” That meant little to the Videssians and Vaspurakaners, but it was enough to make the Romans hang their heads in shame. Mention of their old commander was almost too painful to bear.

When Marcus woke the next morning, he found to his surprise that he was much less sore than he had been the day before. “I feel the same way,” Quintus Glabrio said with one of his rare smiles. “We’re likely just numb from the waist down.”

There were quite a few bright sails in the Cattle-Crossing; probably a grain convoy from the westlands’ southern coast, thought Scaurus. A city the size of Videssos was far too big for the local countryside to feed.

Less than an hour brought the legionaries to the capital’s mighty walls. “Have yourselves a good hike?” one of the gatecrew asked as he waved them through. He grinned at the abuse he got by way of reply.

It was hardly past dawn; Videssos’ streets, soon to be swarming with life, as yet were nearly deserted. A few early risers were wandering into Phos’ temples for the sunrise liturgy. Here and there people of the night—whores, thieves, gamblers—still strutted or skulked. A cat darted
away from the legionaries, a fishtail hanging from the corner of its mouth.

The whole city was sweet with the smell of baking bread. The bakers were at their ovens before the sun was up and stayed till it was dark once more, sweating their lives away to keep Videssos fed. Marcus smiled as he felt his nostrils dilate, heard his stomach growl. Journeybread fought hunger, but the mere thought of a fresh, soft, steaming loaf teased the appetite to new life.

The legionaries entered the palace compound from the north, marching past the Videssian Academy. The sun gleamed off the golden dome on its high spire. Though the season was still early spring, the day already gave promise of being hot and muggy. Marcus was glad for a granite colonnade’s long, cool shadow.

Hoofbeats rang round a bend in the path, loud in the morning stillness. The tribune’s eyebrows rose. Who was galloping a horse down the palace compound’s twisting ways? A typical Roman, Scaurus did not know that much of horses, but it hardly took an equestrian to realize the rider was asking for a broken neck.