He glanced curiously at Wulgash. “And who’s this stone-faced spalpeen?”
“We’ve met,” the khagan said coldly, looking him up and down. “I remember your loose tongue.”
The Gaul bristled and hefted his captive’s sword. Several of Wulghash’s men growled; one pointed a lance at Viridovix. Wulghash did not move, but shifted his weight to be ready for whatever happened.
Marcus said quickly, “Let be.” He told Viridovix who the khagan was, and Wulghash of the Celt’s part in beating Avshar. “We’ve fought the same foe; we shouldn’t quarrel among ourselves.”
“All right,” the two men said in the same grudging tone. Startled, they both smiled. Wulghash stuck out his hand. Viridovix put the saber in his belt and took it, though the result was as much a trial of strength as a clasp.
“Touching,” Thorisin Gavras said dryly. He showed no concern at riding up to the very edge of the Makuraner line. A fly flew in front of his face. He stared at it cross-eyed, then waved it away. “Surely the priests would approve of making a late enemy into a friend.”
There was no mistaking him; the setting sun shone dazzlingly off his corselet and the gold circlet on his brow. Wulghash licked his lips hungrily. He had a good many retainers behind him.… “If I gave the word,” he murmured, “you would be the late enemy.”
The Emperor’s eyebrows came down like storm clouds. “Who’s this arrogant bastard?” he demanded of Scaurus, unconsciously imitating Viridovix. Wulghash scowled back; he did not care for being insulted to his face twice running.
The tribune did not answer at once. Instead he said testily, “Will someone give me a drink of water?” Thorisin blinked. Viridovix was first with a canteen. It held wine, not water. Marcus drained it. “Thanks,” he breathed, sounding like himself again. He turned back to the Avtokrator, who was barely holding his temper. “Your Majesty, I present Wulghash, khagen of Yezd.”
Thorisin sat straighter on his horse. All at once, the Halogai behind him were alert again, instead of tiredly slapping one another on the back and exclaiming over what a hard fight it had been. Scaurus could read the Emperor’s mind; Gavras was thinking what Wulghash had a moment before, what the tribune had in the throne room at Mashiz—one quick blow, now.…
“You wouldn’t have won your battle without him,” Marcus said.
“What has that to do with anything?” Thorisin replied, but he gave no order.
Wulghash had followed Gavras’ thought as readily as the Roman. His guards were as loyal as Thorisin’s; they had chosen him when he was a fugitive and followed him across hundreds of miles to restore him to his throne. He lifted his mace, not to attack but in plain warning. “Move on me and thou’t not enjoy it long, even an thou slayest me,” he promised the Emperor.
“Save your ‘thous’ for Avshar,” Thorisin said. He was still taking the measure of the khagan’s horsemen, weighing the chances.
“Avshar is gone,” Marcus said. “Without him setting Yezd against Videssos, can the two of you find a way to live in peace?”
Wulghash and Gavras both looked at him in surprise; the thought did not seem to have occurred to either of them. The moment for violence slipped away. Thorisin let out a harsh chuckle. “You hear the strangest notions from him,” he said to Wulghash. “Something to it, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Wulghash said. He turned his back on the Emperor to remount his horse. Once he was aboard it, he went on, “We will camp for the night. If we are not assailed, we will not be the ones to start the fighting.”
“Agreed.” Thorisin spoke with abrupt decision. “I will send someone come morning, behind a shield of truce, to see what terms we can reach. Should we fail …” He stopped. Again the tribune could think along with him.
So could Wulghash. He grinned sourly. “You’ll try to rip my gizzard out,” he finished.
Thorisin laughed. Here, at least, was one who did not misunderstand him.
The khagan pointed at Scaurus. “Send him; no one else. No, I take that back—send his friend, too, the tough, stocky one. I can read a lie on him, where this one’s too smooth by half.” The tale Marcus had spun in Mashiz was not forgotten, then.
“Why them?” the Emperor said, not relishing Wulghash’s demand. “I have real diplomats at hand—”
“Who sucked in tedium with their mothers’ milk,” Wulghash interrupted. “I haven’t time to waste listening to their wind. Besides, that pair rescued me and let me go free out of their comrades’ camp, knowing full well who I was. I trust them—somewhat—not to play me false.” He gave Thorisin a measuring stare. “Can it be you do not feel the same?”
Challenged, Gavras yielded. “As you wish, then.” Because he was at bottom a just man, he added, “All in all, they’ve served Videssos well—as has this outlander here.” He nodded at Viridovix. “Ridding the world of Avshar outweighs anything else I can think of.”
The Gaul had been unwontedly quiet since the Emperor came up, not wanting to draw notice to himself. At last he saw that Thorisin really did not hold a grudge against him. He beamed in relief, saying, “Sure and your honor is a fine gentleman.”
“As may be. What I am is bloody tired.” With that, no one in earshot could disagree. Thorisin turned to Scaurus. “See me in the morning for your instructions. Between now and then I intend to sleep for a week.”
“Aye, sir,” the tribune said, saluting. “By your leave …” At the Emperor’s nod, he and Viridovix took their leave. Along the way they picked up Gorgidas, who was doubly worn with fighting and healing. After waiting for him to help a last wounded Haloga, they steered him back toward the main body of legionaries, holding him upright when he stumbled from fatigue. He muttered incoherent thanks.
“Och, Scaurus, what’ll you and himself do if Gaius Philippus is after getting himself killed?” Viridovix asked. “Wouldn’t that bugger up your plans for fair?”
“Phos, yes,” Marcus said, surprising himself by swearing by the Videssian god. He could not imagine Gaius Philippus dying in battle; the veteran seemed indestructible. Apprehension seized him.
His heart leaped when he heard the familiar parade-ground rasp: “Form up there, you jounce-brained lugs! You think this is a fornicating picnic, just because the scrap’s over for a while? Form up, the gods curse your lazy good-for-nothing bungling!”
Gorgidas roused a bit from his stupor. “Some things don’t change,” he said.
Darkness was swiftly falling; the Roman, Greek, and Gaul were almost on top of Gaius Philippus before he recognized them. When he did, he shouted, “All right, let’s have a cheer for our tribune now—beat Avshar singlehanded, he did!”
The roar went up. “I like that,” Viridovix said indignantly. “There for my health, I suppose I was.”
Marcus laid a hand on his shoulder. “We both know better.”
So, in fact, did Gaius Philippus. He came up to the Gaul and said in some embarrassment, “I hope you understand that was for the sake of the troops. I know nothing would have worked without your having the backbone to go through with the scheme.”
“Honh! A likely tale.” Viridovix tried to sound gruff, but could not help being mollified by the rare apology from the senior centurion.
It seemed the legionaries had left camp weeks ago, not half a day. Great holes were torn in their ranks; Scaurus mourned each Italian face he would never see again. With Vorenus slain on the field, Titus Pullo trudged back to the Roman ditch and earthwork like a man stunned. Their rivalry was done at last. Pinarius, the trooper who had challenged Marcus and his friends when they returned to Amorion, was dead, too, and his brother beside him, along with so many more.
And Sextus Minucius was hobbling on a stick, his right thigh tightly bound up, his face set with pain and pale from loss of blood. Having seen more battlefield injuries than he liked to remember, Marcus was not sure the young Roman would walk straight again. Maybe Gorgidas’ healing would help, he thought. Still, Minucius was luckier than not—his Erene was no widow.
If anything, the Videssians and Vaspurakaners who had joined the legionaries suffered worse than the Romans, being not quite so skilled at infantry fighting. Scaurus felt a stab of guilt walking past Phostis Apokavkos’ corpse; had he left the Videssian in the city slum where he found him, Apokavkos might eventually have made a successful thief.
Gagik Bagratouni limped from a wound much like Minucius’. Two “princes” were dragging his second-in-command, Mesrop Anhoghin, in a litter close behind him. Perhaps mercifully, Anhoghin was unconscious; sticky redness soaked through the bandages wrapped round his belly.
Bagratouni gave Scaurus a grave nod. “We beat them,” was all he said; the victory had been too narrow for exultation.
As the legionaries began filing into camp, Laon Pakhymer led the tattered remnant of his Khatrishers up to the palisade. “May we bivouac with you?” he called to Marcus. He looked from his own men to the Romans and sadly shook his head. “There’s room for the lot of us.”
“Too true,” Marcus said. “Of course; come ahead.” He made sure an adequate guard had been detailed to watch the legionaries’ prisoners, then stumbled into his tent, started to undo his armor, and fell asleep still wearing one greave.
Seeing Gaius Philippus carrying a white-painted shield on a spearshaft, Pikridios Goudeles raised a sardonic eyebrow. “First Scaurus usurps my proper function, and now you?” he said.
The veteran grunted. “You’re welcome to it. I’m no diplomat, with or without any damned olive branch.”
Goudeles frowned at the Roman idiom, then caught it. “Blame your honest face,” he chuckled. His own features were once more as they had been at the capital; he had trimmed his hair and beard, and also shed his Arshaum leathers for a short-sleeved green robe of brocaded silk. But he was wearing his saber and kept glancing proudly at the dressing that covered an arrow wound on his arm—pen-pusher or no, he had been in the previous day’s fighting.
“Let’s get on with it,” Marcus said, hefting his own shield of truce. His head was buzzing with Thorisin’s commands, and the most urgent of them had been to reach an agreement quickly.
Several Halogai and Videssians saluted the tribune as he walked out of the imperial camp; they knew what he had done. Provhos Mourtzouphlos, though, turned his back. Marcus sighed. “It’s wrong to wish someone on your own side had been killed in action, but—”
“Why?” Gaius Philippus asked bluntly. “He’s a worse enemy than a whole clan of Yezda.”
Vultures and carrion crows flapped into the air, screeching harsh protests, as the Romans went through the battleground. Wild dogs and foxes scuttled out of their path. Flies, Avshar’s and others, swarmed over the littered corpses. Those were already beginning to swell and stink under the late summer sun.
Makuraner sentries, apparently forewarned to expect Scaurus and Gaius Philippus, led them to Wulghash. On their way, they took them through the entire camp, which was even more sprawled and disorderly than the one they had left not long before.
The tribune caught his breath sharply when they rounded a last corner and approached Wulghash’s pavilion. In front of it stood a long row of heads, sixty or seventy of them. Some still wore the gilded or silvered helms of high officers.
“I don’t see Tabari,” Marcus said.
“You were looking for him, too, eh? Let’s hope he had sense or luck enough to stay in Mashiz.”
One head still seemed to be trying to say something. Scaurus wondered uneasily if awareness could linger for a few seconds after the axe came down.
Gaius Philippus’ thoughts went in another direction. He said, “I was wondering why we hadn’t been shown any prisoners. Now I know. With the dangerous ones shortened, Wulghash drafted the rest to fill out his army.”
Marcus smacked his fist into his palm, annoyed he had not made the connection himself. It fit what he knew of Wulghash’s bold, ruthless character. Following the logic a step further, he said, “Then he’ll be looking to bring the scattered Yezda back under his command, too.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a double handful of nomads rode by on their ponies. They scowled, recognizing the Romans’ gear. Marcus was also frowning. “Something else we were meant to see, I think.”
“Aye. Just what Gavras is afraid of, too.”
The tribune’s suspicion that the show had been planned grew sharper when the guides, who had disappeared into Wulghash’s tent, chose that moment to emerge and beckon the Romans forward. One of the Makurani held the gray felt flap wide so they could enter.
The tent held no regal finery; its furnishings were an incongruous blend of the ornate Makuraner and spare Yezda styles—whatever had been easy to scrape up, Marcus guessed. The only exception was the large quantity of sorcerer’s gear—codices, a cube of rose crystal, several elaborately sealed jars, an assortment of knives with handles that looked unpleasantly like flesh, and other oddments—now heaped carelessly in a corner.
Wulghash saw the tribune glance that way. “Useless preparations, as it turned out,” he remarked.
“Like the performance you put on for us out there?” Marcus asked politely.
The khagan was unfazed. “It showed what I intended. I am not as weak as Gavras thinks—and I grow stronger by the hour.”
“No doubt,” Gaius Philippus nodded. He and Scaurus had agreed that he should deliver Thorisin’s ultimatum. “That’s why the Emperor gives you three days to begin withdrawing to Yezd. After that the truce is over, and he will attack without warning.”
The senior centurion’s bluntness made Wulghash’s wide, fleshy nostrils flare with anger. “Does he? Will he?” he cried. “If that’s what he meant by talking, let him come today, and I will speak a language he understands.” He tugged his saber halfway out of its scabbard.
“You’d lose,” Marcus said. “We were holding—barely, I grant, but holding—against the whole army Avshar had mustered, and you don’t have much more than the core left. We’d trounce you. Why shouldn’t you go home? This is not your country and never was. You have your own throne again—see to your land, and your hold on it.”
The khagan looked so grim Marcus was afraid he would not be able to hold his temper. The trouble, he knew, was that Wulghash was as eager to conquer Videssos as Avshar had been. He had to be burning like vitriol inside because his charge, instead of ruining the wizard-prince, had only saved the imperial forces.
But he had been a ruler for many years, and learned realism. His bluster aside, Thorisin could crush him if willing to pay the butcher’s bill. He breathed heavily for close to a minute, not trusting himself to speak, then finally ground out, “Has Gavras any other little, ah, requests for me?”
Again it was Gaius Philippus who answered. “Only one. Since all the nomads, not only from this latest invasion but from years gone by, too, have come to Videssos without his leave, he bids you order them back to Yezd and keep them there from now on.”
Scaurus waited for Wulghash to explode again. Instead he threw back his head and laughed in the Romans’ faces. “Then he may as well bid me tie all the winds up in a sack and keep them in the sky. The nomads in Videssos are beyond my control, or that of any other man. They go as they will; I cannot make them do anything.”
As that was exactly what the tribune had thought when Thorisin gave him the instruction, he had no good answer ready. Wulghash went on, “For that matter, I would not recall the nomads if I could. Though they are of my blood, I have no use for them, save sometimes in battle. You’ve seen who backs me—Makurani. Civilized men.
“The nomads spread strife wherever they go. They plunder, they kill, they ruin farms, wreck trade, empty cities, and drain my coffers. When some of the clan chiefs wanted to harry the Empire instead of Yezd, I helped them on their way and sent more after them. Good riddance, I say. Had they all gone, my rule would have been ten times easier.”
Marcus was suddenly reminded of the Romans after they had conquered Greece—captured by their captors in art, in li
terature, in luxury, in their entire way of life. Wulghash was much the same. His people had been barbarians, but he seized on the higher culture of Makuran with a convert’s zeal.
The khagan had another reason to resent the folk from whom he had sprung. His hands bunched into fists, and he glowered down at the sleeping-mats on the ground as he paced between them. He said, “And the Yezda chose Avshar over me, followed him, worshiped him.” That rankled yet, Scaurus thought. “It was not just his magic; he and they suited each other, with their taste for blood. So, since you serve Gavras, tell him he is welcome to the nomads he has. I do not want them back.”
After his outburst, there did not seem to be much room for discussion. “We’ll take your words back to the Emperor,” Marcus promised in a formal voice, “and tell him of your determination.”
“Can’t say I blame you, either, looking at things from your side,” Gaius Philippus added.
Wulghash softly pounded him on the shoulder in gratitude. “I said to Gavras’ face you were an honest man.”
“Won’t stop me from cutting you up a few days from now, if I have to,” the veteran answered stolidly. “Like your Makurani, I know which side I’m on.”
“Be it so, then,” the khagan said.
“He won’t commit himself to getting the nomads out, eh?” Thorisin asked.
“No,” Scaurus replied. “He disowns them. If anything, I think he hates them worse than you do. And in justice,” he went on, and saw the Emperor roll his eyes at the phrase, “I don’t see what he could do. Yavlak and the other clan-chiefs are their own law. They wouldn’t heed his commands any more than yours, and he hasn’t the power to compel them.”
“I know that,” Gavras said placidly. If he was angry at Wulghash’s rejection of his demand, he hid it well. In fact, he looked pleased with himself, in a foxy way. “I wanted to hear them denied from his own lips.”
Marcus tugged at his ear, not following whatever the Emperor had in mind. Beside him, Gaius Philippus shrugged almost invisibly.
“Never mind,” Thorisin said. “Just make sure you see me tomorrow morning before you go off and haggle with him again. Now get out. I have more people to see than the two of you.” He did sound in good spirits, Marcus thought.
Swords of the Legion (Videssos) Page 43