Swords of the Legion (Videssos)

by Harry Turtledove

  They spoke in low voices, for they were approaching the High Temple. As they drew near, Marcus saw that Sebeos looked decidedly anxious himself. So he might, the tribune thought—hardly in place a month, he was conducting his first great ceremony under the Emperor’s eye. Not all patriarchs reigned as long as Balsamon.

  When Sebeos stayed frozen a few seconds longer than he should, one of his attendant priests leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Saborios knows his job,” Scaurus murmured to Thorisin, who smiled. His clerical watchdog slid smoothly back into place.

  Cued, Sebeos stepped forward to meet the wedding party, saying, “May the good god send his blessings down on this union, as his sun gives the whole world light and warmth.” He had a mellow baritone, far more impressive than Balsamon’s scratchy tenor—and far less interesting.

  With Alypia, and Thorisin, Marcus followed the patriarch in sketching Phos’ sun-sign. The ritual gesture still felt unnatural, but he performed it perfectly; he had practiced.

  Sebeos bowed, turned, and led the way into the High Temple. The outside of the great building had a heavy impressiveness to it, with its walls of unadorned stucco, small windows, and massive buttresses to support the weight of the central dome and the smaller half-domes around it. For the interior Scaurus had his memories, as well as more recent ones of the shrine at Garsavra, which aped its greater model. He discovered how little they were worth the moment he set foot inside.

  He could have overlooked the luxury of the seats that ranged out from the altar under the dome in each of the cardinal directions, their polished oak and sandalwood and ebony and glistening mother-of-pearl, the more easily because they were filled by notables not important enough to join the wedding party. The colonnades faced with moss agate were lovely, but the Grand Courtroom had their match in multicolored marble.

  The interior walls reproduced the heavens, east and west mimicking sunrise and sunset with sheets of bloodstone, rose quartz, and rhodochrosite rising to meet the white marble and turquoise that covered the northern and southern walls down to their bases. They had their own splendor, but they also served to lead the eye up to the central dome; and before that all comparison failed.

  The soft beams of light coming through the arched windows that pierced its base seemed to disembody it, to leave it floating above the High Temple. They reflected from gold and silver foil like shining milk and butter.

  They also played off the golden tesserae in the dome mosaic itself; the sparkle shifted at every step Scaurus took. And that shifting field of gold was only the surround of the great image of Phos that looked down from on high on his worshipers, his long, bearded face stern in judgment. Beneath that awesome countenance, with its omniscient eyes that seemed to bore into his soul, the tribune could not help feeling the power of the Videssian faith and could only hope to be recorded as acceptable in the sealed book Phos bore in his left hand. The god depicted in the dome would give him justice, but no mercy.

  He must have missed a step without noticing, for Alypia whispered, “It affects everyone so.” That, he saw, was true. Even the imperials who worshipped in the High Temple daily kept glancing up at the dome, as if to reassure themselves that the Phos there was not singling them out for their sins.

  A choir in a vestibule behind the northern seats burst into song, hymning Phos’ praises in the archaic liturgical language Marcus still could only half follow. He thought how different Videssian marriage customs were from those of Rome. In Rome, while ceremonies, of course, usually accompanied a marriage, what made it valid was the intent of its partners to be married; the ceremonies themselves were not necessary. To the Videssians, the religious rites were the marriage.

  As Scaurus, Alypia, and Thorisin passed the inmost row of seats, the Empress Alania stood and joined her husband. Because of her pregnancy, she had not walked in the wedding procession, but come ahead in a sedan chair. The Avtokrator would not risk her health, though in her flowing formal robes the child she was carrying did not show. She had olive skin and jet-black hair like Komitta Rhangavve’s, but her face was round and kindly; her eyes, her best feature, were dark, calm pools. Thorisin, Marcus thought, had chosen wisely.

  Then the tribune had no time for such trivial ruminations, for the wedding party had reached the holy table in front of the ivory patriarchal throne. The Emperor and Empress stepped back a pace. As he had been drilled, Marcus took Alypia’s right hand in his left and laid them on the altartop; the polished silver was cool beneath his fingertips. Smiling, Alypia squeezed his hand. He gently returned the pressure.

  From the other side of the holy table, Sebeos said softly, “Look at me.” Marcus saw the patriarch take a deep breath. Until that moment he had held his own nerves under tight control, but suddenly he heard everything through the pounding of his heart.

  The choir fell silent. Sebeos intoned the creed with which the Videssians began every religious service: “We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the right and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

  Marcus and Alypia echoed the prayer together. He did not stumble. Having decided at last to acknowledge Phos’ faith, he was determined to do so properly.

  The High Temple filled with murmurs as the faithful also repeated the creed. A couple of high Namdalener officers ended it with their own nation’s addition: “On this we stake our very souls.” Their neighbors frowned at the heresy.

  Sebeos also frowned, but carried on after a glance at the Emperor told him Thorisin did not want to make an issue of it. Again the prayers were in the old-fashioned liturgical tongue, as were Scaurus’ memorized responses. He knew in a general way that he was asking Phos’ blessing for himself, for his wife to be, and for the family they were founding.

  He gave all the correct replies, though sometimes so quietly that only those closest to him could hear. Alypia squeezed his fingers again, encouraging him. Her own responses rang out firmly. Usually she was more outgoing in private than in large gatherings, but she was determined to make this day an exception.

  Finishing the prayers, Sebeos returned to contemporary Videssian. He launched into a homily on the virtues that went into a successful marriage which was so perfectly conventional that Marcus found himself anticipating what the patriarch would say three sentences before it came. Respect, trust, affection, forbearance—everything was in its place, correct, orderly, and unmemorable.

  In Latin, Viridovix whispered loudly, “Och, there’s a man could make sex dull.”

  Marcus had all he could do not to explode. He wished for Balsamon, who would have taken the same theme and turned it into something worth hearing.

  Eventually, Sebeos noticed the Emperor tapping his foot on the marble floor. He finished in haste: “These virtues, if diligently adhered to, are sure to guarantee domestic felicity.”

  Then, his manner changing, he asked Alypia and Scaurus, “Are the two of you prepared to cleave to these virtues together, and to each other, so long as you both may live?”

  Marcus made his voice carry: “Yes.”

  This time Alypia’s answer came soft: “Oh, yes.”

  As they spoke the binding words, Thorisin stepped forward to place a wreath of myrtle and roses on the tribune’s head, while Alania did the same for Alypia.

  “Behold them decked in the crowns of marriage!” Sebeos cried. “It is accomplished!”

  While the spectators burst into applause, Scaurus slipped a ring onto the index finger of Alypia’s left hand. That again followed the Videssian way; the Romans preferred the third finger of the same hand, believing a nerve connected it directly to the heart. The ring, however, was of his own choosing—gold, with an emerald set in a circle of mother-of-pearl. Alypia had not seen it before. She threw her arms around his neck.

  “Kiss her, tha twit!” Viridovix whooped.

  That had not been part of the ceremony as rehearsed; the tribune glanced at Thorisin to see if it fell within the bounds of custom
. The Emperor was grinning. Marcus took that for permission. The cheers got louder. There were bawdy shouts of advice, of the same sort he had heard—and called—at weddings back in Mediolanum. Human nature did not change, and a good thing, too, he thought.

  He felt Alypia tense slightly; some of the shouts must have touched memories she would sooner have left buried. Shaking her head in annoyance, she made a brave face of it. “This is us, as it should be,” she said when he tried to comfort her. “It’s all right now.”

  The crowds had thinned when the wedding party emerged from the High Temple for the return procession to the feast laid out in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. The palace servitors bore freshly filled bags, bigger than the ones from which they had thrown coins on the way to the High Temple, but the city folk were much less interested in these; they held only nuts and figs, symbols of fertility.

  Full circle, Marcus thought as he walked through the smoothly polished bronze doors of the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. He had met Alypia here the Romans’ first evening in Videssos the city, along with so many others. He was lucky Avshar had not killed him that very night.

  As tradition decreed, he and Alypia shared a single cup of wine; a serving maid hovered near them with a silver ewer to make sure it never emptied. Others were quite able to take care of such matters on their own—Gawtruz, the fat, bald ambassador from Thatagush, had somehow managed to filch an ewer for himself. “Haw! Congratulations I you give!” he shouted in broken Videssian. He found it useful to play the drunken barbarian, but in fact he was no one’s fool and could use the imperial tongue without accent and with great polish when he chose.

  A fried prawn in one hand, Thorisin Gavras used the other to pound on a tabletop until he had everyone’s attention. He pointed to another table, in a corner close to the kitchen doors, which was piled high with gifts. “My turn to add to those,” he said.

  There was a polite spatter of applause and a few raucous cheers from celebrants already tipsy. Gavras waited for quiet to return. “I’ve already honored the groom with the rank of yposevastos, but you can’t eat rank, though I sometimes think that in the city we breathe it.” Inevitably, a joke from the Emperor won laughter.

  Thorisin went on, “To live on, I grant him the estates in the westlands forfeited to the crown by the traitor and rebel Baanes Onomagoulos and grant him leave to settle on those estates the men of his command, so he and they may have the means to defend Videssos in the future as they have in the past.”

  In the near future, Marcus thought; Onomagoulos’ lands were near Garsavra, on the edge of Yezda-infested territory. A rich gift but a dangerous one—Thorisin’s style through and through. And the Emperor had also granted him what every Roman general sought, land for his troops.

  Filled with pride, he bowed nearly double. He whispered to Alypia, “You put him up to that last part.” Having studied Videssos’ past, she had seen that the Empire’s troubles began when it weakened the population of farmer-soldiers settled on the countryside.

  She shook her head. “My uncle makes his own decisions, always.” Her eyes sparkled. “I think this was a very good one.”

  So, apparently, did most of the Videssians, who crowded up to Scaurus to congratulate him all over again—and perhaps to reappraise one grown suddenly powerful among them. If they thought less of him because he was not of their blood, they were careful not to show it.

  But Provhos Mourtzouphlos was bold enough to shout, “This accursed foreigner doesn’t deserve the honors you’re giving him!”

  Thorisin’s voice grew cold. “When your services match his, Provhos, you may question me. Until then, hold your tongue.” The hotheaded young noble, true to his own principles, stamped out of the Hall.

  That was the only incident marring the day’s festivities, though Marcus had an anxious moment when Thorisin steered him over to the gifts table and said, “I suppose you can explain this.”

  “This” was an exquisite ivory statuette of a standing warrior, perhaps a foot tall, carved in the ebullient, rococo style of Makuran. The sword the warrior brandished was of gold; his eyes were twin sapphires. “It’s from Wulghash,” the tribune said lamely.

  “I know that. First damned wedding present ever delivered behind shield of truce, I’d wager.” The Emperor seemed more amused than anything else; Scaurus relaxed.

  “Here’s fine silk,” Gavras said, running an appreciative hand along a bolt of the smooth lustrous fabric, which was dyed a deep purple-red. “A rich gift. May I ask who it came from?”

  “Tahmasp,” Marcus said.

  Thorisin raised an eyebrow at the exotic name, then placed it. “Oh, that caravaneer you traveled with. How did he find out you were getting harnessed?”

  “No idea,” the tribune said, but nothing Tahmasp did could surprise him any more. The surprise was the throwing knife next to the silk. That was from Kamytzes, and Marcus had thought the caravan guard captain utterly without sentiment.

  After the Emperor let him go, Marcus returned to Alypia’s side. A clavier on a little raised platform tinkled away, accompanied by flutes and a couple of men sawing away at viols of different sizes. The music was soft and innocuous; the tribune, who cared little for such things, hardly noticed it.

  It mightily annoyed Senpat Sviodo, though. He slipped a servant a few coppers and gave him the password to the legionary barracks so the sentries would not take him for a thief. The man trotted away, coming back shortly with the Vaspurakaner’s pandoura. “Ha! Well done,” Senpat said, and tipped him again.

  He sprang onto the platform. Startled, the musicians came to a ragged halt. “Enough of this pap!” Senpat cried. “My lords and ladies, here’s a tune to suit a celebration!” His fingers struck a ringing chord. Heads turned, as if drawn by a lodestone. He sang in a clear, strong tenor, stamping out the rhythm with a booted foot.

  Not many could follow the song, which was in the Vaspurakaner tongue, but no one could stand still with that wild music ringing through the Hall. Before long, the feasters were spinning in several concentric rings, one going one way, the next the other. They raised their hands to clap out the beat with Senpat.

  Alpia’s foot was tapping. “Come on,” she said, touching Marcus’ sleeve. He hung back, having no taste or skill for dancing. But he yielded to her disappointed look and let himself be steered into the outer ring.

  “You don’t get away that easy!” Gaius Philippus said. The treacherous senior centurion was in the next ring in; when he whirled past the tribune, he reached out and tugged him and Alypia toward the center.

  Other dancers, laughing and clapping, pulled them further in, at last shoving them into the open space in the center of the rings, where Viridovix had been dancing alone. “Sure and it’s yours,” the Gaul said, easing back into the inner ring.

  Scaurus felt like a man condemned to speak after Balsamon. Viridovix’ Celtic dance, performed with gusto, had drawn every man’s—and woman’s—eye. It was nothing like the dances of the Empire, for he held his upper body motionless and kept his hands always on his hips. But his steps and leaps were at the same time so intricate and so athletic that they vividly displayed his skill.

  The tribune kicked and capered, sometimes with the tune but more often not. Even with Alypia slim and graceful beside him, he knew he was cutting a sorry figure. But he soon realized it did not matter. As the bridegroom, he was supposed to be in the center. Past that, no one cared.

  Senpat Sviodo finished with a virtuoso flourish, shouted “Hai!” and leaped off the platform to a storm of applause, his pandoura high over his head. Panting a little, Marcus made his escape.

  Senpat’s talent and his striking good looks drew a flock of admiring ladies to him. He flirted outrageously with all his new conquests and went no further with any; Scaurus saw him tip his wife a wink. Nevrat stood back easily, watching him enjoy himself.

  Viridovix, Marcus thought, should also be getting some attention after his exhibition. The Gaul, though, was nowhere to be s
een.

  He came back through a side door a few minutes later, followed not quite discreetly enough by a noblewoman adjusting her gown. The tribune frowned; come to think of it, this was not the first time Viridovix had disappeared.

  The Gaul must have caught Scaurus’ expression from across the Hall. He weaved toward him. “Sure and you’re right,” he said in Latin as he drew near. “I’m a pig, no mistake.” Only then did Marcus notice how drunk he was.

  Viridovix’ eyes filled with tears. “Here my sweet Seirem is dead, and me rutting like a stoat wi’ Evdoxia and—och, the shame of it, I never found out t’other one’s name!”

  “Easy, there.” Marcus set his hand on the Gaul’s shoulder.

  “Aye, tha can speak so, having a fine lass to wife and all. Me, I ken how lucky y’are. This hole-and-corner friking is a cruel mock, but what other way is there o’ finding again what I lost?”

  “What troubles him?” Alypia asked. She had not been able to follow the conversation, but the Celt’s woe was plain without words. At Viridovix’ nod, Scaurus quickly explained.

  She considered the problem seriously, as if it were some historical dilemma. Finally she said, “The trouble, I think, is the confusion between what’s called lovemaking and actual love. There’s no faster road to a woman’s heart than the one that starts between her legs, but many surer ones.”

  “Summat o’ wisdom in that,” Viridovix said after owlish pondering. He turned to Marcus, drunkenly serious. “A treasure she is. Do be caring for her.”

  “Shall I put him to bed, Scaurus?” Gorgidas appeared at the tribune’s elbow, as usual where he was needed.

  “Aye, I’ll go with ye.” Viridovix spoke for himself, then bowed to Alypia with great dignity. “My lady, I’ll take myself off the now, and bad cess to me for being such an oaf as to put a gloom on your wedding day.”

  “Nonsense,” she said crisply. “Lightening sorrows should always be in season, and too seldom is. I remember.” Her voice went soft, her eyes far away. Marcus slipped an arm around her.