Videssos Cycle, Volume 1

by Harry Turtledove

  He could have omitted his preparations, sketchy as they were. When the Roman guardsman led Nephon Khoumnos into the barracks hall, a glance was enough to show that the Videssian officer was a man in the last stages of exhaustion. His usual crisp stride had decayed into a rolling, almost drunken gait; he seemed to be holding his eyes open by main force. With a great sigh, he collapsed into the chair the Romans offered him.

  “No, no wine, thank you. If I drink I’ll fall asleep, and I can’t yet.” He yawned tremendously, knuckling his red-tracked eyes at the same time. “Phos, what a night!” he muttered.

  When he sat without elaborating, Marcus prompted him, “How are things out there?”

  “How do you think? They’re bad, very bad. I’d sooner be naked in a wood full of wolves than an honest man on the streets tonight. Being robbed is the best you could hope for; it gets worse from there.”

  Gaius Philippus came up in time to hear him. Blunt as always, he said, “What have you been waiting for? It’s only a mob running wild, not an army. You have the men to squash it flat in an hour’s time.”

  Khoumnos twisted inside his shirt of mail, as if suddenly finding its weight intolerable. “I wish things were as simple as you make them.”

  “I’d better turn around,” Gaius Philippus said, “because I think you’re about to bugger me.”

  “Right now I couldn’t raise a stand for the fanciest whore in the city, let alone an ugly old ape like you.” Khoumnos drew a bark of laughter from the senior centurion, but was abruptly sober again. “No more could I turn the army loose in the city. For one thing, too many of the men won’t try very hard to keep the mob from the Namdaleni—they have no use for the islanders themselves.”

  “It’s a sour note when one part of your fornicating army won’t help the next,” Gaius Philippus said.

  “That’s as may be, but it doesn’t make it any less true. It cuts both ways, though: the men of the Duchy don’t trust Videssian soldiers much further than they do any other Videssians.”

  Scaurus felt like turning around himself; he had caught Nephon Khoumnos’ drift, and did not like it. The imperial officer confirmed the tribune’s fears with his next words. “In the whole capital there are only two bodies of troops who have the respect of city-folk and Namdaleni alike: the Halogai, and your men. I want to use you as a screen to separate the mob and the easterners, while Videssian troops bring the city as a whole under control. With you and the Halogai keeping the main infection cordoned off, the riot should lose force quickly.”

  The tribune was anything but eager to use his troops in the street-fighting that wracked Videssos. He had already learned the mercenary commander’s first lesson: his men were his capital, and not to be spent lightly or thrown away piecemeal in tiny, meaningless brawls down the city’s back alleys. Unfortunately, what Khoumnos was proposing made sense. Without the excitement of heretic-hunting, riot for the sake of riot would lose much of its appeal. “Are you ordering us into action, then?” he demanded.

  Had Nephon Khoumnos given him an imperious yes, he probably would have refused him outright—in the city’s confusion, Khoumnos could not have enforced the order. But the Videssian was a soldier of many years’ standing and knew the ways of mercenaries better than Scaurus himself. He had also come to know the tribune accurately.

  “Ordering you?” he said. “No. Had I intended to give you orders, I could have sent them through a spatharios. I came to ask a favor, for the Empire’s sake. Balsamon put it better than I could—the fight against Yezd makes everything else trivial beside it. No matter what the idiot monks say, that’s true. That fight can’t go forward without peace here. Will you help bring it?”

  “Damn you,” Scaurus said tiredly, touched on the weak spot of his sense of duty. There were times, he thought, when a bit of simple selfishness would be much sweeter than the responsibility his training had drilled into him. He considered how much of his limited resources he could afford to risk.

  “Four hundred men,” he decided. “Twenty squads of twenty. No units smaller than that, unless my officers order it—I won’t have a solitary trooper on every corner for the young bucks to try their luck with.”

  “Done,” Khoumnos said at once, “and thank you.”

  “If I said you were welcome, I’d be a liar.” Shifting into Latin, Scaurus turned to Gaius Philippus. “Help me find the men I’ll need. Keep things tightly buttoned here while we’re gone and in the name of the gods don’t throw good men after bad if we come to grief. Even if we should, you’d still have better than a cohort left; that’s a force to reckon with, in this world of useless infantry.”

  “Hold up, there. What’s this talk about you not coming back, and what I’d have if you didn’t?” the centurion said. “I’m going out there myself.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not this time, my friend. I have to go—it’s by my orders we’re heading into this, and I will not send men into such a stew without sharing it with them. Too many officers will be out in the city as is; someone here has to be able to pick up the pieces if a few of us don’t come back. That’s you, I fear. Curse it, don’t make this harder than it is; I don’t dare risk both of us at once.”

  On Gaius Philippus’ face discipline struggled with desire and finally threw it to the mat. “Aye, sir,” he said, but his toneless voice accented instead of concealed his hurt. “Let’s get the men picked out.”

  The colloquy between Khoumnos, the tribune, and Gaius Philippus had been low-voiced, but once men were chosen to go out into Videssos and they began to arm themselves, all hope for quiet vanished. As Scaurus had feared, Viridovix woke up wildly eager to go into the city and fight.

  The tribune had to tell him no. “They want us to stop the riot, not heat it further. You know your temper, Viridovix. Tell me truly, is that the task you relish?”

  Marcus had to give the big Gaul credit; he really did examine himself, chewing on his mustaches as he thought. “A plague on you for a cruel, hard man, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, and another for being right. What a cold world it is, where a man knows himself too hot-blooded to be trusted with the breaking of heads.”

  “You can stay here and wrangle with me,” Gaius Philippus said. “I’m not going either.”

  “What? You?” Viridovix stared at him. “Foosh, man, it’d be the perfect job for you—for a good soldier, you’re the flattest man ever I’ve met.”

  “Son of a goat,” the centurion growled, and their long-running feud was on again. Scaurus smiled inside himself to hear them; each, he knew, would take out some of his disappointment on the other.

  When the selection was done, and while the legionaries chosen were readying themselves for action, the tribune asked Khoumnos, “Where are you sending us?”

  The Videssian officer considered. “There’s a lot of newly come Namdaleni in the southern harbor district, especially round the small harbor; you know, the harbor of Kontoskalion. My reports say the fighting has been vicious there—city people murdering islanders, and islanders murdering right back when the odds are in their favor. It’s a running sore that needs closing.”

  “That’s what we’ll be there for, isn’t it?” Marcus said. He made no effort to pretend an enthusiasm he did not feel. “The harbor district, you say? Southeast of here, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Khoumnos agreed. He started to say more, but the tribune cut him off.

  “Enough talk. All I want is to get this worthless job over. Soonest begun, soonest done. Let’s be at it.” He strode out of the barracks into the predawn twilight.

  As the legionaries came to attention, he walked to the head of their column. There were a couple of warnings he felt he had to give his men before he led them into action. “Remember, this is riot duty, not combat—I hope. We want the least force needed to bring order, not the most, lest the riot turn on us. Don’t spear someone for throwing a rotten cabbage at you.

  “That’s one side of things. Here’s the other: if your life is on the line
, don’t spend it; if the choice is between you and a rioter, you count ten thousand times as much, so don’t take any stupid chances. We’re all the Romans there are here and all the Romans who ever will be here. Do your job, do what you have to do, but use your heads.”

  He knew as he gave it the advice was equivocal, but it accurately reflected his mixed feelings over the mission Khoumnos had given him. As the sun rose red through the city’s smoke, he said, “Let’s be off,” and marched his men away from their barracks, out of the palace complex, and into the strife-torn heart of the city.

  Most times he savored Videssos’ early mornings, but not today. Smoke stung his eyes and stank in his nostrils. Instead of the calls of gulls and songbirds, the dominant sounds in the city were looters’ cries, the crack of glass and splintering of boards as houses and shops were plundered, and the occasional sliding rumble of a fire-gutted building crashing down.

  The legionaries stayed in a single body on their way to the harbor of Kontoskalion. Scaurus did not intend to risk his men before he had to and reckoned the sight of four hundred armored, shielded warriors tramping past would be enough to make any mob think twice.

  So it proved; aside from curses and a few thrown stones, no one interfered with the Romans as they marched. But theirs was a tiny, moving bubble of order drifting through chaos. Videssos, it seemed, had abandoned law’s constraints for an older, more primitive rule: to the strong, the quick, the clever go the spoils.

  Where there were few Namdaleni to hunt, the riot lost part of its savagery and became something of a bizarre carnival. Three youths pulled velvet-covered pillows from a shop and tossed them into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. Marcus saw a middle-aged man and woman dragging a heavy couch down a sidestreet, presumably toward their home.

  A younger pair, using their clothes for padding, made love atop a heap of rubble; they, too, were cheered on by a rapt audience. The Romans passing by stared and shouted with as much enthusiasm as any Videssians. They clattered their shields against their greaves to show their enjoyment. When the couple finished, they sprang to their feet and scampered away, leaving their clothes behind.

  In madness’ midst, the occasional island of normality was strange in itself. Marcus bought a pork sausage on a bun from a vender plying his trade as if all were peaceful as could be. “Haven’t you had any trouble?” the tribune asked as he handed the man a copper.

  “Trouble? Why should I? Everyone knows me, they do. Biggest problem I’ve had is making change for all the gold I’ve got today. A thing like this is good for the city now and again, says I—it stirs things up, a tonic, like.” And he was off, loudly crying his wares.

  Two streets further south, the Romans came upon a double handful of corpses sprawled on the cobbles. From what could be seen through the blackened, congealed blood that covered them, some were Namdaleni while others had been city men. They were covered in little more than their blood; all the bodies, alien and citizen alike, had been stripped during the night.

  Soon the sound of active combat came to the Romans’ ears. “At a trot!” Scaurus called. His men loped forward. They rounded a corner to find four Namdaleni, two of them armed only with knives, trying to hold off what must have been three times their number of attackers. Another easterner was on the ground beside them, as were two shabbily dressed Videssians.

  Their losses made the rioters less than enthusiastic about the fight they had picked. While the ones to the rear yelled, “Forward!” those at the fore hung back, suddenly leery of facing professional soldiers with weapons to hand.

  The Videssians cried out in terror when they saw and heard the Romans bearing down on them. They turned to flee, throwing away their weapons to run the faster.

  The men of the Duchy joyfully greeted their unexpected rescuers. Their leader introduced himself as Utprand Dagober’s son. He was not a man Marcus had seen before; the tribune guessed he must be one of the newly come Namdalener mercenaries. His island accent was so thick he sounded almost like a Haloga. But if the tribune had trouble with his shades of meaning, there was no mistaking what Utprand wanted.

  “Are you not after the devilings?” he demanded. “T’ree of my stout lads they kill already—we had the misfortune to be near their High Temple when they set on us and we’ve crawled through stinking alleys since, trying to reach our mates. Do for them, I say!” The other islanders still on their feet snarled agreement.

  After some of the things he had seen in Videssos, Marcus was tempted to turn his men loose like so many wolves. Though it would do no good—and in the long run endless harm—it would be so satisfying. In this outburst the city folk had forfeited a great part of the respect he had come to feel for their state. He could also see the legionaries trembling to be unleashed.

  He shook his head with regret, but firmly. “We were sent here to make matters better, not worse, and to form a cordon between you and the Videssians to let the riot burn itself out. It has to be so, you know,” he said, giving Utprand the same argument he had used against Soteric. “If the imperial army moves against you with the mob, you’re doomed, do what you will. Would you have us incite them to it?”

  Utprand measured him, eyes pale in a gaunt, smoke-blackened face. “I never thought I could want to hate a clear-thinking man. Curse you for being right—it gripes my belly like a green apple that you are.”

  He and two of his men took up their fallen comrade and the dagger he had used in vain to defend himself. Marcus wondered where the dead man’s sword might be and who would take the dagger to his kin. The three started toward their camp by the harbor. The fourth islander, Grasulf Gisulf’s son, stayed behind with the Romans to point out the best places to seal off the harbor of Kontoskalion from the rest of the city.

  The tribune posted his double squads where Grasulf recommended; most of them were stationed along major streets leading north and south. Scaurus had no reason to complain of Grasulf’s choices. The Namdalener had an eye for a defensible position.

  As he’d known he might have to, Marcus gave his underofficers leave to split their commands in half to cover more ground. “But I want no fewer than ten men together,” he warned them, “and if you do divide your forces, stay in earshot of each other so you can rejoin quickly at need.”

  The Romans worked their way steadily west. They passed from a district of small shops, taverns, and cramped, untidy houses into a quarter inhabited by merchants who had made their fortunes at Videssos’ harbors and still dwelt nearby. Their splendid homes were set off from the winding streets by lawns and gardens and warded further with tall fences or hedges of thorn. These had not always saved them from the mob’s fury. Several were burned, looted wrecks. Others, though still standing, had hardly a pane of glass left in their windows. Many had an unmistakable air of desertion about them. Their owners, knowing how easily rioters’ anger could turn from the foreign to the merely wealthy, had taken no chances and left for safety in the suburbs or on the western shore of the Cattle-Crossing.

  By the time he had penetrated most of the way into this section of the city, Marcus had only a couple of units of legionaries still with him. He placed one between a temple of Phos built solidly enough to double as a fortress and a mansion’s outreaching wall. Along with Grasulf and his last twenty men, he pressed on to find a good spot to complete the cordon. The sound of the sea, never absent in Videssos, was sharp in his ears; a final good position should seal Videssians and Namdaleni from each other.

  A spot quickly offered itself. Sometime during the night, the rioters had battered a rich man’s wall to rubble and swarmed in to plunder his villa. The prickly hedge on the other side of the street still stood, unchallenged. “We can throw up a barricade here,” the tribune said, “and stand off troubles from either side.”

  His men fell to work with the usual Roman thoroughness; a breastwork of broken brick and stone soon stretched across the roadway. Marcus surveyed it with considerable pride. Fighting behind it, he thought, the legionaries co
uld stop many times their numbers.

  That thought loosed another. The position the Romans had just made was so strong it did not really need twenty men to hold it. He could leave ten behind and push closer yet to the sea. It would be safe enough, he thought. This part of the city, unlike the turbulent portion he’d gone through before, seemed to be a no man’s land of sorts. Most of the property owners had already fled, and, after the storm of looting passed by, neither the men of the city nor those of the Duchy were making much use of these ways to reach each other.

  Taking heart in that observation, Marcus divided his small force in two. “I know just the place for you,” Grasulf told him. He led the Romans to a crossroads between four mansions, each of them with strong outwalls at the edge of the street. The sea was very close now; along with its constant boom against the seawall, the tribune could hear individual waves slap-slapping against ships and pilings in the harbor of Kontoskalion.

  The city was still troubled. New smokes rose into the noonday sky, and from afar came the sound of fighting. Scaurus wondered if the mob was battling Namdaleni, the Videssian army, or itself. He also wondered how long and how much it would take before Nephon Khoumnos—or, by rights, the Emperor himself—decided to teach the city’s explosive populace a lesson it would remember.

  In this momentary backwater it was easy to forget such things. The Romans stood to arms for the first couple of hours at their post, but when nothing more frightening came by than a stray dog and a ragpicker with a great bag of scraps slung over his back, the tribune did not see anything amiss in letting them relax a bit. While three men took turns on alert, the others sat in the narrow shade of the southern wall. They shared food and wine with Grasulf. The Namdalener puckered his lips at their drink’s bite, though to Scaurus it was still too sweet.

  Shadows were beginning to lengthen when the distant commotion elsewhere in Videssos grew suddenly louder. It did not take Marcus long to decide the new outbreak was due east of his position—and, from its swelling volume, heading west at an uncomfortable clip.