Videssos Cycle, Volume 1

by Harry Turtledove

  But Clozart spat in fine contempt. “I fart in Ortaias Sphrantzes’ face,” he said.

  “A pox on the twit.” Soteric nodded. “The seal-stamping fop’s a worse bargain than Gavras ever would be, him and his pot-metal ‘goldpieces.’ ”

  “What then?” Scaurus said, puzzled. “What other choice is there?”

  “Home,” Turgot said at once, and longing filled his eyes at the word. “The lads have had a bellyful, and so have I. Let the damned imperials bake in their own oven, and may both sides burn. Give me cool Sotevag again and the long waves rolling off the endless gray ocean, and if the Empire’s recruiters come my way again I’ll set the hounds to ’em like your Vaspurakaner friend did to the Videssian priest.”

  The tribune felt no longing, only a jealousy that by now itself was tired. In this world he and his had no home, nor were they likely to. “You make it sound simple,” he said dryly. “But what do you propose to do, march through the Empire’s eastlands until you come to your own country?”

  His intended sarcasm fell on deaf ears. “Aye,” Clozart said, “or rather the sea across from it. Why not? What do the imperials have between here and there to stop us?”

  “It should be easy,” Utprand agreed. “T’Empire stripped t’garrisons bare to fight the Yezda, and then again for t’is civil war. Once we get clear of Videssos, there would be no army dare come near us. And T’orisin has to let us go—if he tries to hold us, the Sphrantzai come out and eat him up.”

  The chilly logic was convincing, as was Utprand himself; if the bleak Namdalener said a thing could be done, it very likely could. The only question Marcus could find was, “Why tell me now?”

  “We want you and yours to come with us,” Soteric answered.

  The tribune stared, surprised past speech. The Namdelener rushed on, “Duke Tomond, Phos love him, would be proud to have such fighters take service with him. There’s room and to spare in the Duchy, enough to make your troops yeoman farmers, each with his own plot, and you, I’d guess, a count. How’s the sound of that? ‘Scaurus, Scaurus, the great count Scaurus!’ if ever you chose to go on campaign again.”

  Soteric’s tickling at his vanity left Marcus unmoved; he had more influence as a general in the Empire than he would with a fancy title of nobility in Namdalen. But for the first time since the Romans were swept to this world, he found himself tempted to cast aside his allegiance to Videssos. Here, freely offered, was the thing he had thought impossible: a home, a place of their own in which they could belong.

  The offer of land alone would seem like a miracle to his troops. Civil wars had been fought in Rome to get discharged veterans the allotments their generals promised. “Room and to spare …”

  “Aye, outlander, it’s a lovely country we have,” Turgot said, still sentimental over the motherland he missed. “Sotevag sits on the coast, between oak woods and croplands, and I spend much of my time there, I will say. But I have a steading up in the moors as well—the high hills, all covered with heather and gorse, and flocks of sheep on ’em. The sky’s a different color from what it is here, a deeper blue, almost makes you think you can see through it. And the wind carries music on its breath, not the smell of horseshit and dust.”

  The Roman sat silent, all but overwhelmed by his own memories of Mediolanum lost forever, of the snow-mantled Alps seen from a safe, warm house, of tart, pungent Italian wine, of speaking his mind in Latin instead of picking through this painfully learned other tongue …

  All four Namdaleni were watching him closely. Clozart saw his struggle for decision but, mistrusting everyone not of his island nation, mistook its meaning. Dropping into the thick patois the men of the Duchy used among themselves, he said to his comrades, “I told you we never should have started this. Look at him there, figuring whether to sell us out or no.”

  He did not think Scaurus could follow his speech; few Videssians would have been able to. But more than a year’s time with Helvis had given the tribune a grasp of the island dialect. His quick-sprung optimism faded. He and his were as alien to the Namdaleni as to the imperials.

  Soteric knew him better than the other three and saw he had understood. Giving Clozart a venomous glare, he apologized as handsomely as he could.

  “We know your worth,” Utprand agreed. “You would not be here else.”

  Marcus nodded his thanks; praise from a soldier like this one was praise to be cherished. “I’ll put what you’ve said to my men,” he said. Clozart’s hard face reflected only disbelief, but the tribune meant it. There was no point in keeping the Namdalener offer from the legionaries, and no way to do so short of shutting them all in camp and killing any islander who came within hailing distance. Better by far to lead events than be led by them.

  When the tribune emerged from his brother-in-law’s tent, Fayard was nowhere to be seen. The dice spoke loudly to Namdaleni, and he doubtless decided Scaurus knew the way back to his own quarters.

  His mind was spinning as he walked back to the Roman camp. His first feeling at Soteric’s proposal still held true: after a Roman upbringing and almost two years in the Empire of Videssos, being a count in the Duchy seemed rather like being a large wolf in a small pack. Nor was he eager to abandon the Empire. The Yezda were foes who needed fighting once the civil war was won—if it could be won.

  On the other hand, when thinking only of the Romans’ best interests, Namdalen looked attractive indeed. He still had a hard time believing there could be land to offer freely to soldiers. In Rome the Senate kept a jealous grip on it; in the Empire it was in the hands of the nobles, with small freeholders taxed to the wall. Land—it would draw his men, right enough.

  And on another level altogether, Helvis would surely leave him if he said Soteric nay, and that he did not want. What was between them refused to die, batter it about as they would. And they had a son … Was nothing ever simple?

  Gaius Philippus waited just inside the north gate, edgily pacing back and forth. His saturnine features lit as he saw Scaurus. “About time,” he said. “Another hour and I’d have come after you, and brought friends with me.”

  “No need for that,” Marcus said. “We have some talking to do, though. Fetch Glabrio and Gorgidas and meet me back here—we’ll take a stroll outside the palisade. Bring the Celt, while you’re at it; this affects him, too.”

  “Viridovix? Is it a talk you want, or a brawl?” Gaius Philippus chuckled, but he hurried away to do what the tribune asked. Marcus saw how the Romans followed him with their eyes; they knew something was afoot. Damn Soteric and his amateur theatrics, he thought.

  It was only a couple of minutes before the men whose judgment he most trusted and respected were gathered round him, curiosity on their faces. He led them into the night, talking all the while of little things, doing his futile best to make the conference seem ordinary to his men.

  Out of earshot of the camp, though, he dropped the façade and gave a bald recounting of what had passed. A thoughtful silence followed as his comrades began to work the thing through, much as he had on his way back from Soteric’s tent.

  Gaius Philippus was the first to break it. “Were it up to me, I’d tell ’em no. I haven’t a thing against the islanders—they’re brave men and fine friends to drink with, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my days living among barbarians.” The senior centurion had in full measure the sense of superiority the Romans felt for all other peoples save Greeks. In this world Videssos was the standard by which such things were gauged, and he identified himself with the imperial folk here, forgetting they reckoned him as barbarous as the Namdaleni.

  Gorgidas understood that perfectly well, but his choice was the same. He said, “I left Elis for Rome years ago because I knew my home was a backwater. Am I to reverse that course now? I think not—here I stay. There’s too much I have yet to learn, too much the men of the Duchy don’t know themselves.”

  The other two were slower to answer. Viridovix said, “Sure and it’s not an easy choice you set us, Scau
rus dear, but I think I’m for the change, belike for all the reasons the last two were against it. I’m easier with the islanders than with these sly, haughty imperials, where you never know the thought in a man’s head until one day there’s a hired dagger between your ribs because he misliked the cut of your tunic. Aye, I’ll go.”

  That left only Quintus Glabrio; to judge by the pain on his face, his was the hardest choice of all. “And I,” he said finally. Gorgidas’ sharp intake of breath only made him seem more miserable, but he went on, “It’s the land, more than anything else. The hope of it was the only reason I took service in the legions; it was the chance to be my own man one day, not a slave to someone else’s wages. Without land, no one really has anything.”

  “You’re a worse slave to land than to any human master,” Gaius Philippus retorted. “I joined the eagles to keep from starving at the miserable little stone-bound plot where I was born. You want to walk behind an ox’s arse from sunup to sundown, boy? You must be daft.”

  But Glabrio only shook his head; his dream was proof against the senior centurion’s harsh memories, proof even against his bond with Gorgidas. The physician looked like a soldier doggedly not showing a wound pained him, but he made no complaint against his companion’s decision, whatever his eyes might say. Marcus admired him the more, thinking of his own private fears and wondering how much they would sway his course.

  The centurions were too well-disciplined and Gorgidas too polite to ask the obvious question, but Viridovix put it squarely: “And what does your honor intend to do?”

  Scaurus had hoped some consensus might show itself in his comrades’ answers, but they were as divided among themselves as he was in himself. He stood silent a long while, feeling his inner balance sway now one way, now the other.

  At last he said, “With this attack gone for nothing, I don’t think Gavras has any real chance to take the city, and without it he’ll lose the civil war. I’ll go to Namdalen, I think; under the Sphrantzai the Empire will fall, and in any case I would not serve them. The Yezda, almost, are better, for they wear no mask of virtue.”

  Even with the decision made, he was far from sure it was right. He said, “In this I will give no man orders. Let each one do as he will. Gaius, my friend, my teacher, I know you’ll do gallantly with the men who feel as you do.” They embraced; Scaurus was shocked to see tears on the veteran’s cheeks.

  “A man does what he thinks is right,” Gaius Philippus said. “A long time ago, when I was hardly more than a boy, I fought on Marius’ side in the civil war, while my closest friend chose Sulla. While the war lasted I would have killed him if I could, but years later I happened to meet him in a tavern, and we drank the place dry between us. May it be so with you and me one day.”

  “May it be so,” Marcus whispered, and his own face was wet.

  Viridovix was hugging Gaius Philippus now, saying, “The crows take me if I won’t miss you, you hard-shell runt!”

  “And I you, you great hulking savage!”

  With their long habit of discretion, what Gorgidas and Quintus Glabrio thought they kept to themselves.

  “There’s no point in throwing the camp into an uproar tonight,” Marcus said. “Morning muster will be the right time to let the men know their choice; keep it to yourselves until then.”

  There were nods all around. They walked slowly back to the palisade, not one picking up the pace, all thinking this might be the last time they were together. The raucous noises from behind the city’s walls were an intrusion on their thoughts. Things sounded as much like a riot as a celebration, the tribune thought bitterly. He cursed the Sphrantzai yet again, for forcing him to a decision he did not want to make.

  The sentries drooped like flowers in a drought when their officers passed them by without a hint of what they had discussed. All through the camp, men stared toward them.

  “Be damned to you!” Viridovix shouted. “I’ve not grown a second head, nor a crest of purple feathers either, so dinna be dragging your eyes over me so!” The Celt’s short temper was reassuringly normal; legionaries turned back to their food, their talk, or their endless games of chance.

  Gorgidas said, “You’ll forgive me, I hope, but I have wounded to attend to, crude as my methods are.” Much to his own dismay, he still fought hurts with styptics and ointments, tourniquets and sutures. Nepos maintained he had the skill to learn Videssian healing arts, but his efforts bore no fruit. Scaurus suspected that was one reason, and not the least, he had decided to stay in Videssos.

  Quintus Glabrio followed the physician, talking in a voice too low for Scaurus to hear; he saw Gorgidas dip his head in a Greek affirmative.

  Someone hefted a skin of wine. Viridovix ambled toward it, drawn as surely as nails by a lodestone.

  Helvis was sleeping when the tribune ducked into their tent. He touched her cheek, felt her stir. She sat up, careful not to wake Malric or Dosti. “It’s late,” she said, a sleepy complaint. “What do you want?”

  Scaurus told her of her brother’s plan, speaking as tersely as he had to his officers. She said nothing for a full minute when he was through, then asked, “What will you do?” It was a curiously uninflected question, all emotion waiting on the answer.

  He said only, “I’ll go.” Reasons did not matter now; the essence of the thing was the choice itself.

  Even in the darkness he saw her eyes go wide. She had been braced for a no and for the explosion that would follow it. “You will? We will?” she said foolishly. Then she laughed in absolute delight, forgetting her sleeping children. She flung her arms around the tribune’s neck, planted a lopsided kiss on his mouth.

  Her joy did not make him any easier over his decision; somehow it only brought into sharper focus the doubts he felt. Caught up in that joy, she did not notice his somber mood. “When will we leave?” she asked, eager and practical at the same time.

  “In three or four days, I’d guess.” Marcus answered with reluctance; putting a date to the departure made it painfully real.

  Malric woke up, and crossly. “Stop talking so much,” he said. “I want to go back to sleep.”

  Helvis scooped him up and hugged him. “We’re talking so much because we’re happy. We’re going home soon.”

  Her words meant nothing to her son, who had been born in Videssos and known no life save that of the camp. “How can we go home?” he asked. “We are home.”

  The tribune had to smile. “How do you propose to explain that to him?”

  “Hush,” Helvis said, rocking the sleepy boy back and forth. “Phos be thanked, he’ll learn what the word really means. And thank you, my very dear, for giving him the chance. I love you for it.”

  Scaurus nodded, a short, abrupt motion. He was still fighting his internal battle, and praise seemed suspect. But with his choice made, what need was there to load his qualms on her? Better, he thought, to hold them to himself.

  He slid under the blanket; this day had drained him, and in another way the one upcoming would be worse. But it was a long time before he slept.

  Turmoil outside woke him at first light of day. He knuckled his eyes, cursed groggily, and then sat bolt upright. The first cause for the uproar that crossed his mind was his men’s somehow learning what was afoot. He scrambled into his cloak and dashed out of the tent. It would be all too easy for hubbub to turn to riot.

  But there was no sign of riot, though the legionaries were not standing to muster in front of their eight-man tents. Instead they were packed in a shoving, shouting mass against the western wall of the camp, peering and pointing over the palisade in high excitement. More kept coming as the camp awakened.

  The tribune pushed through the crowd; his men gave way with salutes as they recognized him. They were jammed so close together, though, that he took several minutes to work his way up to the palisade.

  He did not have to be right by it—his inches let him see over the last couple of ranks of men. Someone next to him pounded him on the back: Minucius. The troop
er’s eyes were alight with triumph, his strong features stretched in a grin. “Will you look at that, sir?” he exclaimed. “Will you just look at that?”

  For a moment Marcus still did not know what he meant. There ahead was Thorisin’s earthwork and, beyond it, the capital’s fortifications, silently indomitable as always.

  That sentence had no sooner taken shape than it echoed like a gong inside him. No wonder the great double walls seemed silent in the dawn—not a defender was on them.

  He felt giddy, as if he had gulped down a jug of neat wine. “Step aside! Make room!” he cried, ramming his way to the very front—he had to see as much as he could, be as close as he could. Normally he would have been ashamed to use his rank so, but in his excitement he did not give it a second thought.

  There were the Silver Gates straight ahead, the works that had beaten back everything his men could throw at them. They were wide open now, and in them stood three men with torches, almost hopping in their eagerness to wave the besiegers into Videssos. Their shouts came thinly across the no-man’s-land between the city and the siege-works: “Hurrah for Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator of the Videssians!”

  VIII

  THE TORCH-WAVERS AND THEIR FRIENDS BEHIND THEM WERE AS UNSAVORY a lot of ruffians as the tribune had ever seen. Gaudy in street finery—baggy tunics with wide, flopping sleeves and tights dyed in an eye-searing rainbow of colors—they swarmed around the orderly Roman ranks, flourishing cudgels and shortswords and shouting at the top of their lungs.

  No matter who they were, though, their cries were what Scaurus most wanted to hear: “Gavras the Emperor!” “Dig up Ortaias’ bones!” “To the Milestone with the Sphrantzai, the dung-munching Skotos-lovers!”

  As he looked north along the wall, the tribune saw Thorisin’s army loping by squads and companies through every wide-flung gate. The Namdaleni were moving up from their stretch of siege line along with all the rest. If Gavras was a winner after all, withdrawal suddenly looked foolish.