“As for pledges,” Arigh said at once, “I will swear my own people’s oath, and any that suit you. Are you a Phos-worshiper like the Videssians? He seems not a bad god, for farmer-folk.”
The Arshaum meant it as a compliment, though Skylitzes’ face was scandalized. Gashvili shook his head, setting silver curls bouncing under his gilded helm. “For all the blue-robes’ prating, I and most of mine hold to the old gods of sky and earth, rock and river. I am a stubborn old man, and they humor me.” His tone belied the self-mockery; he was proud his people followed his lead.
“No trouble there, then,” Arigh said. His manner abruptly harshened. “But what is this talk of hostages? Will you give me hostages in turn, so no man of mine will be risked without knowing that, if he dies from treachery, some Erzrumi’s spirit will go with him to serve him in the next world?”
“By Tahund of the thunders, I will, and more!” Gashvili spoke with sudden hard decision. “I and all but a skeleton garrison will ride with you. With the Khamorth in disorder, the pass will be safe this year. And,” he added, looking shrewdly at Arigh, “having watch-hounds along will no doubt encourage you to keep your fine promises.”
“No doubt,” Arigh said, so blandly that Gorgidas stared at him. This one, he thought, has nothing to fear from haughty Dizabul, however handsome Arghun’s younger son might be. Still mild, Arigh went on, “You’ll have to keep up with us, you know.”
The fortmaster chuckled. “You may know the steppe, but credit me with some idea of my business here. We’ll stick tight as burrs under your horses’ tails.” He rode to brush cheeks with Arigh. “We agree, then?”
“Aye. Bring on your oath.”
“It is better done by night.” Gashvili turned his head. “Vakhtang, go tell the men to get ready to—” But Vakhtang was already trotting back toward Gunib, waving to show all was well. Gashvili laughed out loud. “My daughter knew what she was about when she chose that one.”
The Arshaum and the Gunib garrison spent the afternoon warily fraternizing. No plainsman was invited into the fortress, and Gashvili made it clear his vigilance had not relaxed. Arigh was offended at that until Goudeles reminded him, “He is going against generations of habit in treating with you at all.”
Through Sklylitzes—who looked acutely uncomfortable as he translated—an Erzrumi priest, a wizened elder whose thick white beard reached his thighs, explained his people’s way of binding pledges to Tolui. The shaman nodded thoughtfully when he was done, saying, “That is a strong ritual.”
In a way, the Erzrumi oath-taking ceremony reminded Gorgidas of the one the Arshaum had used to pledge the Videssian party and Bogoraz of Yezd against threat to Arghun. At twilight the priest, whose name was Tzathmak, lit two rows of fires about thirty feet long and three or four feet apart. “Will he be walking through them, now?” asked Viridovix, who had heard about but not seen the Arshaum rite.
“No; the ways here are different,” Goudeles said.
In striped ceremonial robe, Tzathmak led one of the fort’s scavenger dogs out to the fires. Tolui joined him in his fringed shaman’s regalia and mask. Together they prayed over the dog, each in his own language. Tolui called to his watching countrymen, “The beast serves as a sign of our agreement.”
Normally nothing could have made the dog walk between the two crackling rows of flame, but at Tzathmak’s urging it padded docilely down them. “As the dog braves the fire, so may the peace and friendship between us overcome all obstacles,” Tolui said. Tzathmak spoke in his own tongue, presumably giving Gashvili’s men the same message.
At the far end of the fires stood a muscular Erzrumi, naked to the waist and leaning on a tall axe not much different from the sort the Halogai used. When the dog emerged, he swung the axe up in a glittering arc, brought it whistling down. The beast died without a sound, cut cleanly in two. All the Erzrumi cried out at the good omen.
“May the same befall any man who breaks this pact!” Tolui shouted, and the Arshaum, understanding, yelled their approval, too.
Gashvili could roar when it suited him. “Tomorrow we ride!” he cried in the Khamorth tongue. Both groups yelled together then—the Arshaum raggedly, for not all of them had even a smattering of Khamorth, but with high spirits all the same.
“Effective symbolism, that, if a bit grisly,” Goudeles remarked, pointing toward the sacrificed dog.
“Is that all you take it for?” Gorgidas said. “As for me, I’d sooner not chance finding out—I remember what happened to Bogoraz too well.”
“Gak!” the bureaucrat said in horror. He tenderly patted his middle, as if to reassure himself no axeblade, real or sorcerous, was anywhere near.
Viridovix squinted with suspicion at the new valley shimmering in the sultry heat-haze ahead. “Sure and I wonder what’ll be waiting for us here.”
“Something different,” Gorgidas said confidently. At the first sight of the Arshaum army’s outriders, herders were rushing their flocks up into the hills and peasants dashing for the safety of their nobles’ fortresses. Other men, armored cavalry, were moving together in purposeful haste.
Viridovix snorted at the Greek. “Will you harken to the Grand Druid, now? That’s no foretelling at all, at all, not in this Erzerum place. Were you after saying ’twould be the same, the prophecy’d be worth the having.”
“With your contrariness, you should feel right at home,” the physician snapped. He clung to his patience and to the subject. “It makes perfectly good sense for every little valley here to be nothing like any of its neighbors.”
“Not to me, it doesn’t,” Viridovix and Arigh said in the same breath.
The Arshaum continued, “My folk range over a land a thousand times the size of this misbegotten jumble of rocks, but all our clans make up one people.” He looked haggard. Seven separate bands of Erzrumi were with the nomads, and as overall leader he had the thankless job of keeping them from one another’s throats. They used five different languages, were of four religions—to say nothing of sects—and were all passionately convinced of their own superiority.
“You have the right of it, Arigh dear,” Viridovix backed him. “In my Gaul, now, I’ll not deny the Eburovices, the tribe southwest o’ my own Lexovii, are a mangy breed o’ Celt, but forbye they’re Celts. Why, hereabouts a wight canna bespeak the fellow over the hills a day’s walk away, and doesna care to, either. He’d sooner slit the puir spalpeen’s weasand for him.”
Lankinos Skylitzes said, “We Videssians hold that Skotos confounded men’s tongues in Erzerum when the natives fell away from Phos’ grace by refusing to accept the orthodox faith.”
“No need to haul in superstition for something with a natural cause,” Gorgidas said, rolling his eyes. Seeing Skylitzes bristle, he demanded, “Well, how does your story account for the men of Mzeh riding with us? They’re as orthodox as you are, but the only Videssian they have is learned off by rote for their liturgy. Otherwise not even Gashvili can follow their dialect.”
The officer tugged at his beard in confusion, not used to the notion of testing ideas against facts. Finally he said, “What is this famous ‘natural cause’ of yours, then?”
“Two, actually.” The Greek ticked them off on his fingers. “First, the land. Size means nothing. Shaumkhiil and Gaul are open countries. People and ideas move freely, so it is no wonder they aren’t much different from one end to the other. But Erzerum? It’s all broken up with mountains and rivers. Each valley makes a bastion, and since none of the peoples here could hope to rule the whole land, they’ve been able to keep their own ways and tongues without much interference.”
He paused for a gulp of wine. Erzerum’s vintages were rough, but better than kavass. Down in the valley, behind a covering stream, the band of cavalry was moving two by two into position at the edge of the stream. Bright banners snapped above them.
Gorgidas put the wineskin away; he would rather argue. “Where was I? Oh, yes, the second reason for Erzerum’s diversity. Simple—it’s the rubbi
sh-heap of history. Every folk beaten by Makuran, or Videssos, or even by Vaspurakan or the peoples of Pardraya, has tried to take refuge here, and a good many pulled it off. Thus the Shnorhali, who fled the Khamorth when they entered Pardraya who knows how long ago—their remnant survives here.”
“Isn’t he the cleverest little fellow, now?” Viridovix said, beaming at the Greek. “Clear as air he’s made the muddle, the which had me stymied altogether.”
“Clear as fog, you mean,” Skylitzes said. He challenged Gorgidas: “Does your fine theory explain why the Mzeshi are orthodox? You brought them up, now account for them. By your rules they should have taken their doctrine from the heretic Vaspurakaners, who were the first people close to them to follow Phos, even if wrongly.”
“An interesting question,” the physician admitted. After thinking a bit, he said slowly, “I would say they are orthodox for the same reason the Vaspurakaners aren’t.”
“There you go, speaking in paradoxes again,” Skylitzes growled.
“These Greeks are made for talking circles round a body,” Viridovix put in.
“To the crows with both of you. There is no paradox. Look, Vaspurakan liked Videssos’ religion, but was afraid the influence of the Empire would come with its priests. So the ‘princes’ worked out their own form of the faith, which satisfied them and kept the Empire at arm’s length. But Vaspurakan was to the Mzeshi what Videssos was to Vaspurakan: a land with attractive ideas to borrow, but maybe risky to their freedom, too. So they decided for orthodoxy. Videssos is too far away to be dangerous to them.”
Skylitzes wore a grimace of concentration as he worked that through, but Goudeles, who had been quiet till now, said, “I like it. It makes sense. And not only does it show why the Mzeshi are orthodox and the ‘princes’ not, it also makes clear why Khatrish, Thatagush, and Namdalen keep clinging to their own pet heresies.”
“Why, so it does,” Gorgidas said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, a good theory should be able to cover a wide range of cases.” He paused and waved back toward the varied groups of new allies. “Erzerum is a wide range of cases by itself.”
Arigh said, “To me this history of yours only makes so much fancy talk. I’m just glad the one thing all these hillmen can get together on is hating Yezd.”
“Right you are,” Skylitzes said, and the others nodded. Though most of the Yezda had roared east against Vaspurakan and Videssos, enough raiders had pushed north to rape and loot and kill among the Erzrumi valleys that the locals, whatever tiny nation they might claim, welcomed Yezd’s foes. That was the only reason Arigh could control them at all. Hitting back was too sweet a prospect to jeopardize with their own petty quarrels.
The Arshaum waved for a messenger. “Fetch me, hmm, let’s see, Hamrentz of the Khakuli. Let’s see what he can tell us about these horsemen ahead.” The riders were still deploying along their stream; through the dust their mounts kicked up, the sun glinted off spearpoints.
Hamrentz, whose holding lay a couple of days’ ride north, was a thin, gloomy man with enormous hands. He wore a mail coif, but the rest of his armor was a knee-length shirt of leather covered with bone scales. Though he spoke some Videssian, he followed the Four Prophets of Makuran and had lines from their writings tattooed on his forehead.
When Arigh put the question to him, his doleful features grew even longer; one of his verses almost disappeared in a deep fold of skin. “This is—how would you say?—the Vale of the Fellowship. So they call it here, let me say. They are no cowards. I give them so much. I have seen them fight. But to their neighbors they are the—” He used a guttural obscenity in his own language, adding an equally filthy gesture.
Arigh repeated the scurrility with a grin. It was one to fill the mouth and soothe the angry spirit. “I know that’s foul,” he said. “What exactly does it mean?”
“What it says, of course,” Hamrentz said. “In this language, I do not know the words.” He seemed offended. The rest of his answers were hardly more than grunts. “You will find out, and then you will understand,” he finished cryptically, and rode off.
Arigh looked at his advisors, who shrugged one by one. Goudeles said, “You might summon one of the others.”
“Why waste my time when I can see for myself? Come along, if you care to.” The Arshaum raised his voice. “Narbas, to us! The further south we get, the more of these people speak Vaspurakaner.”
They hoisted the truce sign and trotted down toward the stream. Behind them, several Erzrumi contingents erupted in hisses, catcalls, and the whistles some of the hillmen used for jeers. Viridovix scratched his head. “You’d think these Fellowship laddies the greatest villains left unkilled, sure and you would, the way the carry on. To see ’em, though, why, they’re better-seeming soldiers than half we have wi’ us.”
The troops drawn up on the far side of the little river were indeed disciplined-looking, well-horsed, and well-armored in crested helms, mail shirts under surcoats, and bronze greaves. They numbered archers as well as lancers. The Arshaum scouts, not wanting to start a war by accident, were keeping a respectful distance from the border stream.
A few of the locals nocked arrows or let their horses move a couple of paces forward as Arigh’s party drew close, but in the center of their line a black-bearded giant in an orange coat nodded to his companion, a younger man whose surcoat matched his. The latter blew three bright notes from a coiled horn. At once the horsemen settled back into watchful waiting.
Perhaps drawn by the action of the leaders, Viridovix ran an eye down the line. “Will you mark that, now? Pair by pair they are, matched by their coats.” The others saw he was right. One pair wore light green, the next scarlet, then ocher, then the deep blue of woad; remembering a tunic of that exact shade he had once owned, the Celt ached for his lost forests.
“How quaint,” Goudeles said, with the disdain he showed any non-Videssian custom. “I wonder what it might signify.”
Gorgidas felt himself go hot, then cold. He was suddenly sure he understood Hamrentz’s obscenity. In a way he hoped he did, in a way not; if not altogether satisfying, his life had been simple for some time now. Were he right, it might not long stay so.
He had only a moment to reflect; with a sudden toss of his head, the big man in orange spurred forward into the stream, which proved only belly-deep on his mount. Without a second thought, his comrade with the horn followed. Cries of alarm rang along the line. The big man shouted them down.
With his size and his horse’s—it was one of the big-boned mountain breed—he towered over Arigh. But the Arshaum, backed by a much bigger army, met his stare with a king’s haughtiness; he had learned a great deal, treating with the Erzrumi. The local gave a rumbling grunt of approval. He said something in his own language. Arigh shook his head. “Videssian?” he asked.
“No,” the black-bearded chief said; it seemed the only word he knew. He tried again, this time in throaty Vaspurakaner. Narbas Kios translated: “The usual—he wants to know who we are and what in the name of Wickedness we’re doing here.”
“They follow the Four Prophets, then,” Skylitzes said, recognizing the oath.
“In the name of Wickedness it is, with Avshar and all,” Viridovix said.
“Aye.” Arigh began to explain their goal. When he said “Yezd,” both the locals growled; the younger one reached for the spiked mace on his hip. Thanks to Gunib and the other forts in the passes, the only nomads they had seen were Yezda raiders from the south, and thought Arigh was identifying himself as one. They laughed when Kios made them understand their mistake. “All we ask is passage and fodder,” Arigh said. “You can see from the bands with my men that we did not plunder their countryside. We’ll all loot to glut ourselves in Yezd.”
Black-Beard jerked his chin toward the Erzrumi with the Arshaum. “I care not a turd for them. But,” he admitted, “they are a sign you tell some of the truth.” He could not keep a glow from his eyes, the glow that comes to any hillman’s face when he thinks o
f the booty to be taken in the flatlands below.
He shook himself, as if awaking to business from a sweet dream. “You have given your names; let it be a trade. Know me to be Khilleu, prince of the Sworn Fellowship of the Yrmido. This is Atroklo, my—” He dropped back into his own tongue. Atroklo, who by the fuzziness of his beard could not have been far past twenty, smiled at the prince when his name was mentioned.
Gorgidas knew that smile, had felt it on his own face years—a lifetime!—ago, before he left provincial Elis for Rome and whatever it might offer. No, he thought, his life would not be the same.
Khilleu was laughing in his beard; his face was heavy-featured but open, a good face for a leader. “So you’d poke the Yezda, eh? I like that, truly I do.”
Atroklo broke in in their language, his voice, surprisingly, not much lighter than his chieftain’s bass. Khilleu pursed his lips judiciously and gave an indulgent wave, as if to say, “You tell it.” Atroklo did, in halting Vaspurakaner: “That wizard you speak—spoke—of, I think he pass through here.”
From the way all eyes swung toward him, he might have been a lodestone. He reddened with the almost invisible flush of a swarthy man, but plowed ahead with his story. “Four days ago we find in field a black stallion, dead, that none of us knows.” He had given up on the past tense of his verbs. “It is a fine horse once, I think, but used to death. Used past death, I mean—never I see an animal so worn. A skeleton, lather long caked on sides, one hoof with no shoe and down to bloody nub. Cruel, I think then. Now I think maybe magic or desperate, or both. No tackle is with this dead horse, and next day our noble Aubolo finds two of his best beasts missing. Who thief is, he does not know then and does not know now.”
“Avshar!” Arigh’s companions exclaimed together; it was, Gorgidas thought, becoming a melancholy chorus. “Four days!” the Arshaum chief said bitterly. “See, we’ve lost another two to him. These Erzrumi can’t stay with us; they only slow us down.”
Swords of the Legion (Videssos) Page 18