Krispos the Emperor

by Harry Turtledove

  "We'll leave you to your rest now," Olyvria said. "Come tomorrow, you'll begin to see how the followers of the pious and holy Thanasios shape their lives."

  She and Syagrios walked out. She closed the door after them. It wasn't much of a barrier, but it would have to do. Phostis looked around at his cell—that struck him as a better name for the place than room, and in truth no monk would have complained its furnishings were too luxurious. It was, however, not a dungeon. He did indeed have that for which to be grateful to Olyvria.

  He lay down on the pallet. Dry straw rustled under his weight. It smelled musty. Straws poked through the thin linen covering, and in a couple of places through his tunic as well. He wiggled till he was no longer being stabbed, then drew the blanket up to his neck. When he did that, his feet stuck out. He wiggled some more and managed to get all of himself covered. Competing fears and worries roared in his head so loudly he could clearly hear none of them. He fell asleep almost at once.

  Rain blew into Krispos' face. He cast an unhappy countenance up to the heavens—and got an eyeful of raindrops for his presumption. "Well," he said in a hollow voice, "at least we won't be hungry."

  Sarkis rode at his left hand. "That's true, your Majesty. We got the flying column into Aptos just in time to drive off the Thanasiot raiders. It was a victory."

  "Why don't I feel victorious?" Krispos said. Rain trickled between his hat and cloak and slithered down the back of his neck. He wondered how well the gilding and grease on his coat of mail repelled rust. He had the feeling he'd find out.

  To his right, Evripos and Katakolon looked glum. They looked worse than glum, in fact—they looked like a couple of drowned cats. Katakolon tried to make the best of it. He caught Krispos' eye and said, "I usually like my baths warm, Father."

  "If you go out in the field, you have to take that up with Phos, not with me," Krispos said.

  "But you're his viceregent on earth. Don't you have his ear?"

  "Aye, viceregent on earth—so they say. But nowhere, son, will you find that an Avtokrator has jurisdiction over what the heavens decide to do. Oh, I can tell the clouds not to drop rain on me, but will they listen? They haven't yet, not to me or any of the men who came before me."

  Evripos muttered something sullen under his breath. Krispos looked at him. He shook his head, muttered again, and rode a little farther away so he wouldn't have to say anything out loud to his father. Krispos thought about pressing him, decided it wouldn't be worth the argument, and kept his own mouth shut.

  Sarkis said, "If you could command the weather, your Majesty, you'd have started doing it your first fall on the throne, when Petronas raised his revolt against you. The rains came early that year, too."

  "That's true; they did. I wish you hadn't reminded me," Krispos said. The rains then had kept him from following up a victory and let Petronas regroup and continue the fight the next year. He hoped he'd manage a genuine victory against the Thanasioi before the downpour made warfare impossible.

  Katakolon said, "I'd expected the heretics to come out and really fight against us by now." He sounded disappointed that they hadn't; he was only seventeen, with no true notion of what combat was about. Krispos had got his own first taste at about the same age, and sickened on it. He wondered if Katakolon would do the same.

  But his son had raised a legitimate point. Krispos said, "I'd thought they would come out and fight, too. But this Livanios of theirs is a canny one, curse him to the ice. He knows he gains if I don't destroy him this campaigning season."

  "He doesn't gain if we take back Pityos," Sarkis said.

  Krispos' horse put a foot in a hole concealed by water and almost stumbled. When he'd saved his seat and brought the gelding back under control, he said, "I'm starting to think we'll need a break in the rain even to get to Pityos."

  "Even if the Thanasioi attack us, it'll be a poor excuse for a battle," Sarkis said. "By the time a man's shot his bow twice, the string'll be too wet to use again. Not much chance for tactics after that—-just out saber and slash."

  "A soldiers' battle, eh?" Krispos said.

  "Aye, that's what they call it," Sarkis said, "the ones who live to call it anything, that is."

  "Yes," Krispos said. "What it really means is, some stupid general's fallen asleep on the job." Soldiers' battles were part of the Videssian military tradition, but not a highly esteemed part. Videssos honored cleverness in warfare as in everything else; the point was not simply to win, but to win with minimum damage to oneself. That could make unnecessary what would have been the next battle.

  Sarkis said, "In this campaign, a soldiers' battle would favor us. But for the band of turncoats who went over with Livanios, most of the Thanasioi are odds and sods who oughtn't to have the discipline they need to stand up in a long fight."

  "From your mouth to the good god's ear," Krispos said.

  "Cowardly scum, the lot of them," Evripos growled; he'd been listening after all. By his tone, he hated the Thanasioi less for their doctrinal errors than for making him get cold and wet.

  "They won't be cowards, young majesty; that's not what I meant at all," Sarkis said earnestly. "They'll have fire and dash aplenty, unless I miss my guess. What I doubt is their sticking power. If they don't break us at the first onset, they should be ours."

  Evripos grunted once more, wordlessly this time. Krispos peered through the rain at the territory ahead. He didn't like it: too many hills to pass between on the way to Pityos. Maybe he would have done better to stick to the coastal plain. He hadn't expected the rains so soon. But he was too far in to withdraw; the best course now was to forge ahead strongly and hope things would come out right in the end.

  That was, however, also the least subtle course. Against the odds and sods Sarkis had mentioned, he'd have been confident of success. But Livanios had shown himself to be rather better at the game of war than that. Krispos wondered what he had in mind to counter it, and how well the ploy would work.

  "One more thing I'll have to find out the hard way," he murmured. Sarkis, Katakolon, and even Evripos looked curiously at him. He didn't explain. His sons wouldn't have understood, not fully, while the cavalry commander probably followed him only too well.

  Camp that night was soaked and miserable. The cooks had trouble starting their fires, which meant the army was reduced to bread, cheese, and onions. Evripos scowled in distaste at the hard, dark little loaf a fellow handed him out of a greased leather sack. After one bite, he threw it down in the mud.

  "No more for you this evening," Krispos ordered. "Maybe hunger'll give you a better appetite for breakfast."

  Evripos started worse than the rain that beat down on him. Long used to ignoring importunate men pleading their cases at the top of their lungs, Krispos ignored him. The Avtokrator saw nothing particularly wrong with the army bread. Phos had granted him good teeth, so he had no trouble eating it He didn't like it as well as the white bread he ate in the palaces, but he wasn't in the palaces now. In the field, you made the best of what you had. Evripos hadn't figured that out yet.

  Whether from his own good sense or, more likely, fear of igniting his father, Katakolon ate up his ration without complaint. Young face unwontedly thoughtful, he said, "I wonder what Phostis is eating tonight."

  "I wonder if he's eating anything tonight," Krispos said. With the evening's orders given, with the morrow's line of march planned, he had nothing to keep him from brooding over the fate of his eldest. He couldn't stand that sort of helplessnes. Trying to hold it at bay, he went over to Zaidas' tent to see what the mage had learned.

  When he stuck his head into the tent, he found Zaidas scraping mud off his boots. Chuckling to catch his friend at such untrammeled mundanity, he asked, "Couldn't you do that by magic instead?"

  "Oh, hello, your Majesty. Aye, belike I could," the wizard answered. "Likely it would take three times as long and leave me drained for two days afterward, but I could. One of the things you have to learn if you go into magic is when to leave wel
l enough alone."

  "That's a hard lesson for any man to learn, let alone a mage," Krispos said. Zaidas got up and unfolded a canvas chair for him; he sank into it. "Perhaps I've not learned it myself in fullness. If I had, I might not come here to tax you on what you've found out about Phostis."

  "No one could think ill of you for that, your Majesty." Zaidas spread his hands. "I only wish I had more news—or, indeed, any news—to give you. Your eldest son remains hidden from me."

  Krispos wondered whether that showed Phostis was in fact a cuckoo's egg in his nest. But no: the magic Zaidas worked sought Phostis for himself, not on account of his relation—if any—to the Avtokrator. Krispos said, "Have you progressed toward learning what sort of sorcery conceals his whereabouts?"

  Zaidas bit his lip; not even a friend casually tells his Avtokrator he has failed to accomplish something. The wizard said, "Your Majesty, I must confess I have continued to devote most of my efforts toward locating Phostis rather than on analyzing why I cannot locate him."

  "And what sort of luck have you had in those efforts?" The question was rhetorical; had Zaidas had any luck other than bad, he would have proclaimed it with trumpet and drum. Krispos went on, "Eminent and sorcerous sir, I strongly urge you to give over your direct efforts, exactly because they've not succeeded. Learn what you can about the mage who opposes you. If you have any better fortune there, you can go back to seeking out Phostis."

  "It shall of course be as your Majesty suggests," Zaidas said, understanding that an imperial recommendation was tantamount to a command. The wizard hesitated, then continued, "You must be aware I would still have no guarantee of success, especially here in the field. For this delicate work, the tomes and substances accumulated within the Sorcerers' Collegium are priceless assets."

  "So you've said," Krispos answered. "Do your best. I can ask no more of any man."

  "I shall," Zaidas promised, and reached for a codex as if

  about to start incanting on the spot. Before he could demonstrate such diligence, Krispos left the tent and headed back to his own pavilion. He was disappointed in his chief mage, but not enough to say anything more to Zaidas than he'd already said: Zaidas had been doing the best he could, by his own judgment. An emperor who castigated the men he'd chosen for their expert judgment would not long retain such experts around him.

  Rain drummed on the oiled silk; mud squelched underfoot. The tent was a joyless place. Krispos felt the weight of every one of his years. Even with the luxuries his rank afforded him—enough room to stand and walk around, a cot rather than just a bed roll—campaigning was hard on a man as old as him. The only trouble was, not campaigning would in the long run prove harder still.

  So he told himself, at any rate, as he blew out the lamps, lay down, and tried to sleep. So men always told themselves when they went off to war. So, no doubt, Livanios was telling himself somewhere not far enough away. Only by looking backward through the years could anyone judge who had been right, who wrong.

  Outside the entrance to the tent, the Haloga guards chatted back and forth in their own slow, sonorous speech. Krispos wondered if they ever had doubts when they lay down at night. They were less simple than many Videssians made them out to be. But they did actively like to fight, where Krispos avoided battle when he could.

  He was still wishing life could be less complicated when at last he surrendered to exhaustion. When he woke up the next morning, his mind bit down on that as if he'd never slept. He dressed and went out to share a breakfast as dank and miserable as the supper the night before.

  Getting the army moving helped kick him out of his own gloom, or at least left him too busy to dwell on it. By now the soldiers were more efficient than they had been when they set out from Nakoleia. Knocking down tents, then loading them onto horses and mules and into wagons, took only about half as long as it had earlier. But, as if to make sure no blessing went unmixed, the rain made travel slower and tougher than Krispos had counted on. He'd planned to reach Pityos six or seven days after he set out from Aptos. That would stretch now.

  The army rode through a village. But for a couple of dogs splashing through the mud between houses, the place was deserted. The peasants and herders who called it home had fled into the hills. That was what peasants and herders did when a hostile army approached. Krispos bit his lip in frustrated anger and sorrow that his subjects should reckon forces he led hostile.

  "They're most of them Thanasioi, is my guess," Evripos answered when he said that aloud. "They know what they have to look forward to when we stamp out this heresy of theirs."

  "What would you do with them after we win?" Krispos asked, interested to learn how the youth would handle a problem whose solution he did not clearly see himself.

  Evripos was confident, if nothing else: "Once we beat the rebel army in the field, we peel this land like a man stripping the rind off an orange. We find out who the worst of the traitors are and give them fates that will make the rest remember for always what opposing the Empire costs." He shook his fist at the empty houses, as if he blamed them for putting him here on horseback in the cold rain.

  "It may come to that," Krispos said, nodding slowly. Evripos' answer was one a straightforward soldier might give—was, in fact, not very different from what Sarkis had proposed. The lad could have done worse, Krispos thought.

  Confident in his youth that he'd hit on not just an answer but the answer, Evripos spoke out in challenge: "How could you do anything but that, Father?"

  "If we can lure folk back to the true faith by persuasion rather than fear, we cut the risk of having to fight the war over again in a generation's time," Krispos anwered. Evripos only snorted; he thought in terms of weeks and months, not generations.

  Then Krispos had to stop thinking about generations, or even weeks: a scout from the vanguard came splattering back, calling, "The bastards aim to try and hold the pass up ahead against us!"

  Open fighting at last, Krispos thought—Phos be praised. Already, at Sarkis' bawled orders, the musicians were ordering the imperial army to deploy. While it traveled as a strung-out

  snake, it could not fight that way. It began to stretch out into line of battle.

  But, as Krispos saw when he rode forward to examine the ground for himself, the line of battle could not stretch wide. The Thanasioi had cunningly chosen the place for their stand: the sides of the pass were too steep for cavalry, especially in the rain, while at the narrowest point the enemy had erected a rough barricade of logs and rocks. It would not stop the attackers, but it would slow them down .. . and here and there, behind the barrier, cloth-covered awnings sprouted like drab toadstools.

  Krispos pointed to those as Sarkis came up beside him. "They'll have archers under there, or I miss my guess. The barricade to hold us in place, the bowmen to hurt us while we're held."

  "Likely you're right, your Majesty," the cavalry commander agreed glumly. "Livanios, curse him, is a professional."

  "We'll send some infantry around the barricade to either side to see if we can't push them back, then," Krispos decided. It was the only maneuver he could think of, but not one in which he had great confidence. The foot soldiers were the poorest troops in his force, both in fighting quality and literally: they were the men who could not afford to outfit themselves or be outfitted by their villages with horse and cavalry accouterments.

  Being a horseman himself, Sarkis shared and more than shared the Avtokrator's distrust of infantry. But he nodded, not having any better plan to offer. A courier hurried off to the musicians. At their call, the infantry went forward to outflank the Thanasioi, who waved spears and yelled threats from behind their barricade.

  "We'll send the horse forward at the same time, your Majesty, if that's all right with you," Sarkis said, and Krispos nodded in turn. Keeping as many of the enemy as possible busy would go a long way toward winning the fight.

  Shouting "Phos with us!" and "Krispos!" the imperials advanced. As the Emperor and Sarkis had thought they wo
uld, bowmen under cover from the rain shot at soldiers who had trouble answering back. Here and there along the line, a man crumpled or a wounded horse screamed and broke away from its rider's control.

  Then the enemy's awnings shook, as if in a high breeze— but there was no breeze. Several of them fell over, draping Thanasiot archers in yards of soaked, clinging cloth. The stream of arrows slackened. Krispos' men raised a cheer and advanced. The Avtokrator looked round for Zaidas. He did not see the sorcerer, but had no doubt he'd caused the collapse. Battle magic might have trouble touching men, but things were another matter.

  Yet the Thanasioi, even with their strategem spoiled, were far from beaten. Their men swarmed forward to fight the foot soldiers who sought to slide around their barrier. The heretics' war cry was new to Krispos: "The path! The gleaming path!"

  Their ferocity was new, too. They fought as if they cared nothing whether they lived or died, so long as they hurt their foes. Their impetuous onslaught halted Krispos' infantry in its tracks. Some of his men kept fighting, but others scrambled out of harm's way, skidding and falling in the muck as they ran.

  Krispos cursed. "The ice take them!" he shouted. "The good god knows I didn't expect much from them, but this—" Fury choked him.

  "Maybe the rebels will make a mistake," Sarkis said, seeking such solace as he could find. "If they come out to chase our poor sorry lads, the cavalry'll nip in behind 'em and cut 'em off at the knees."

  But the Thanasioi seemed content to hold off the imperial army. Again Krispos saw the hand of a well-trained soldier in their restraint: raw recruits, elated at success, might well have swarmed forward to take advantage of it and left themselves open to a counterblow like the one Sarkis had proposed. Not here, though. Not today.

  The imperial cavalry tried to force its way through the barrier the rebels had thrown up. On a clear day, they could have plied their poorly armored foes with arrows and made them give ground. With the sky weeping overhead, that didn't work. They fought hand to hand, slashing with sabers and using light spears against similarly armed opponents who, while not mounted, used the barricade as if it were their coat of mail.