At the camp, Marcus found Gaius Philippus had been right. When he ordered the legionaries still there to chop the stakes of the palisade into arm-long lengths, they grinned knowingly and fell to like so many small boys involved in a mammoth practical joke. Their women and new non-Roman comrades watched with the same caution one gave any group of men suddenly struck mad.
The tribune did not need to give them the next set of orders. As fast as cattle arrived from the west, the Romans tied the newly made sticks to their horns.
“Marcus, if this is meddling I crave your pardon, but what on earth is going on?” Helvis asked.
“Once your brother Soteric said my men had an advantage fighting in this world because we had a bundle of tricks no one here knows,” Scaurus answered elliptically. “It’s time to see if he was right.”
He probably would have given her the full explanation in another minute or two, but a Khatrisher scout brought him bad news: “Whatever you’re playing at, it had better work soon. A couple of Yezda just stuck their heads into the valley to see what all the ruckus is about here. I took a shot at them, but in the dark I missed.”
Scaurus gave his preparations a last look. Not so many cattle as he would have liked were festooned with sticks, but a good two thousand head were ready. “This is all fascinating,” Pakhymer said ironically. “Do you suppose the Yezda will run from a stampeding forest?”
“I doubt it. But they just might, from a forest fire.” The tribune took a burning piece of wood from a campfire’s edge and walked toward the cattle.
Pakhymer’s eyes got round.
“Strike them now, I say!”
“Rest easy, Vahush. They’ll be there in the morning.” The speaker, a stocky, middle-aged Yezda, pulled a spit from the campfire, and offered the sizzling meat on it to his nephew.
Vahush rejected it with an angry gesture. Hawk-nosed as any Videssian, he had a zealot’s narrow face and moved with the barely controlled grace of a beast of prey. “When you find your foe, Prypet, smite him!” he snapped. “So says Avshar, and he speaks truly.”
“And so we will,” Prypet said placatingly. “It will be easy; if the scouts tell no lies, the imperials are running about like so many madmen. In any case, we outnumber them two to one at least.” He waved out into the darkness, where felt tents dotted the valley like toadstools.
The flocks would grow fat in this wide new land, Prypet thought. He pulled at a wine jug, another of the spoils of war. True, he mused, Avshar had won the battle that gave the nomads room to grow, but who had seen him since? In any case, he, Prypet, led the clan, not this wizard whose face no one knew … and not his own wife’s sister’s son, either.
Still, the lad showed promise and should not be squelched. “We’ve had hard riding, these past weeks. We’ll fight better for the night’s rest. Sit yourself down and relax. Have some bread.” He lifted the chewy, unleavened sheet from the light griddle that served the nomads in place of an oven.
“You listen too much to your belly, uncle,” Vahush said, his confidence in his own lightness driving soft words from him—and wrecking any hope of making the older man listen.
Prypet got deliberately to his feet, the mildness gone from his face. Nephew or not, Vahush could go too far. “If you like, boy, you can find a fight closer than the next valley,” he said quietly.
Vahush leaned forward. “Any time you—” He blinked. “Avshar’s black bow! What’s that?”
Beginning in the valley to the west, the low rumble could be felt through the soles of the feet as well as heard. Bass bellows of pain and terror accompanied it. Prypet snorted his contempt. “Get dry behind your ears, whelp. Don’t you know cows when you hear them?”
Vahush flushed. “Of course. Skotos, I’m edgy tonight.”
His uncle relaxed, seeing the fighting moment was past. “Don’t worry about it. Farmers never could handle kine—look at them letting a batch run loose like that. It might not be a bad idea for a few men to saddle up at that, you know, and round up the stragglers as they come through.”
“I’ll do that,” the younger man said. “It’ll let me work off my nerves.” He turned toward his horse, then stopped dead, horror on his face.
Prypet looked west, too, and felt ice leap up his back. The thunder was louder now, pounding its way into the valley where the Yezda took their ease. Cattle? It was not, it could not be cattle, but the great reverberation of a rolling, chopping sea of flame washing toward them at the speed of a fast man’s run. And at the edge of the wave ramped a devil, his banshee wail loud through the roar. The shifting fire struck scarlet sparks from the sword he waved above the tide.
The clan leader was a warrior seasoned in countless fights, but this was magic beyond his courage to face. “Flee for your lives!” he screamed.
Yezda tumbled from their tents, glanced west, and leaped for their mounts in panic. “Demons! Demons!” they shrieked, and set spur to their horses without another backward glance. Like an upset mug, the valley emptied of nomads. The fiery sea rolled over their tents as if they had never been.
Vahush would have fled with his uncle and his clanmates, but for long minutes his terror, far worse than Prypet’s, held him motionless. You wanted to attack them, fool, his mind gibbered, when they’ve found a wizard who could blow Avshar out like a candle.
Nearer and nearer came the roaring ocean of flame. The young nomad stared into the shattered darkness, waiting numbly for it to sweep him away. And then at last it was close enough for him to see the grinning riders driving the cattle on, see the bare burning branches lashed hastily to horns, smell their smoke and the reek of singed hair and flesh.
Rage exploded in him, freeing spirit and body from panic’s grip. He sprang onto his tethered horse. With a single slash of his saber, he cut the rope that held it. Now his spurs bit; he darted not away from the tortured herd but toward it, blade bright in his hands. “Back! Come back! You’ve been tricked!” he cried to his escaping comrades, but in the din and distance they did not hear.
Closer by, though, someone did. “Aren’t you the noisy one, now?” an oddly accented voice said. Too late, Vahush remembered the devil-cries from the head of the stampede. There was a man on a pony in front of those frenzied cattle. A long straight blade leaped at the nomad’s neck.
His last thought as he slid from his horse in death was that the imperials did not fight fair.
Had the Yezda stopped their panic-struck flight and returned to investigate, they likely would have routed the Romans from the valley they had vacated. In the relief their deliverance brought them, Marcus’ troops and Pakhymer’s danced with their women in whooping circles round the campfires, clapping, stamping, snapping their fingers, and shouting with glee for all the world to hear.
Pakhymer took no part in the celebration, wandering through the camp like a man in a daze. When he found Scaurus reveling with the rest of his men, he pulled the tribune out of his circle, earning him a glare from Helvis as the dance whirled her away. The tribune was ready to be angry, too, until he saw the lost look in the Khatrisher’s eyes.
“Cattle,” Pakhymer said blankly. “Plainsmen who spend their lives with cattle, heathens who kill for the sport of it, running like frightened children from a harmless herd of cows.” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if trying to drive belief into it.
Marcus, who had taken on a good deal of wine, had no better answer for him than a shrug and a wide, foolish grin. But Gorgidas was close enough to hear Pakhymer’s comment and sober enough to try to deal with it. He had kept the Greek habit of watering his wine and, moreover, found the pursuit of understanding a sweeter fruit than any that grew on a vine.
“We may have driven cattle against the Yezda,” he said to the Khatrisher, “but do you think it was cattle the nomads saw, charging out of the night aflame? Would you, in this magic-steeped land? If you expect to find sorcery, you will—whether it’s there or not.”
His mouth quirked upward in something th
at was not a smile.
“Belief is all, you know. When I studied medicine I was trained to hate magic and everything it stood for. Now I’ve found a magic that truly heals, and it will not serve me.”
“Perhaps you should serve it, instead,” Pakhymer said slowly.
“Does everyone here talk like a priest?” Gorgidas snarled, but his eyes were thoughtful.
“Sure and they don’t.” Viridovix caught only what was said, not its overtones. He looked most unpriestly, with each arm encircling a girl’s waist.
Marcus could not for the life of him remember which two of his three they were. For one thing, the tall Celt mostly called them “dear” or “darling,” a part of his speech pattern that served him well, lessening the chance of an embarrassing slip. For another, while all three were of dainty, flowerlike beauty, none had enough character to leave much other impression on the mind.
Viridovix suddenly noticed Scaurus standing with the Greek doctor and Laon Pakhymer. He loosed his hold on the girls to fold the tribune into a bear hug; Marcus smelled the wine fumes clinging to him even through his own drunkenness.
The Gaul held him at arm’s length for a moment, studying him with owlish intensity. Then he turned to Gorgidas, declaring, “Will you look at him now, standing there so quiet and all after the greatest joke any of us ever saw, the which saved all our necks besides. And here I am a hero for sitting on some smelly horse’s back and scaring those poor omadhauns all to bits, and where’s the glory for the fellow who thought to put me there in the first place?”
“You deserve it,” Marcus protested. “What if the Yezda had decided to ride toward you instead of away? One did, you know.”
“Och, that puir fool?” Viridovix gave a snort of scorn. “A week and a half it seemed he gawped at me. It’s probably only when he pissed himself that he woke up. Who would have thought I’d make a horseman?”
“Cowman might be better, thinking of the herd,” Laon Pakhymer said with a sidelong glance.
“Hmm. That’s hardly a name for a man.” But the Gaul’s eyes were twinkling. “If you’d called me bullman, now, you might be closer to the truth. Isn’t that right, loves?” he said, leading the girls back toward the tent they shared. Their bodies swayed toward his in mute agreement with the boast.
Pakhymer gave Viridovix’ back a frankly jealous look. “What does he do with them all?” he wondered aloud.
“Ask him,” Gorgidas suggested. “He’ll tell you. Whatever else he may be, our Celtic friend is not shy.”
Pakhymer watched three bodies briefly silhouetted by lanternlight as Viridovix pulled back his tent flap. “No,” he sighed, “I don’t suppose he is.”
Next morning, Marcus thought for a bleary moment the noise of raindrops muttering on the sides of his tent was his pulse hammering in his ears. Pain throbbed dully through his head; the taste of sewers was in his mouth. When he sat up too quickly, his stomach yelped, and his surroundings gave a queasy lurch.
His motion woke Helvis, who yawned, stretched lithely, and smiled up at him from the sleeping mat. “Good morning, love,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “How are you?”
Even her smooth contralto grated. “Bloody awful,” the tribune croaked, holding his head in his hands. “Does Nepos know how to heal a hangover, do you think?” He belched uncomfortably.
“If there were a cure for nausea, I promise you pregnant women would know it. We can be sick together,” she said, mischief in her voice. But then, seeing Scaurus’ real misery, she added, “I’ll do my best to keep Malric quiet.” The boy was stirring under his blanket.
“Thanks,” Marcus said, and meant it. A rambunctious three-year-old, he decided, could be the death of him at the moment.
The downpour meant no cooking fires; the Romans breakfasted on cold porridge, cold beef, and soggy bread. The tribune ignored his soldiers’ grumbles. The thought of food, any food, did not appeal.
He heard Gaius Philippus squelching his way from one group of men to the next, instructing them, “Don’t forget, grease your armor, leather and metal both. Easier that than grinding out the rust and patching over the rotted hide just because you were too lazy to do what needed doing. And oil your weapons, too, though the gods help you if you need me to tell you that.”
With Lexos Blemmydes vanished, there were no guides to show Scaurus’ force the way to Amorion. Save for the Romans, the valley the invaders had held was empty of humanity. The angry herders whose cattle had served to rout the Yezda hid in the hills, unwilling to help the men who, from their viewpoint, first befriended and then betrayed them.
Much later than was pleasing to Marcus’ senior centurion, the army finally began slogging southeast. The sky remained a sullen, leaden gray; hour after hour the rain kept falling, now in little spatters of drizzle, now in nearly opaque sheets driven by a wind with the early bite of winter in it.
There was no way to steer a steady course in those dreadful conditions. Drenched and miserable, the legionaries and their companions struggled through a series of crisscrossing little canyons more bewildering than Minos’ labyrinth. They trudged glumly on, trusting in dead reckoning.
The storm blew itself out toward evening; through tattered clouds, the sun gave an apologetic peep at the world. And when it did, some soldiers fearfully exclaimed it was setting in the east, for it shone straight into their faces.
Listening to the men, Quintus Glabrio shook his head in resignation. “Isn’t that the way of the world? They’d sooner turn the heavens topsy-turvy than face up to our own blundering.”
“You spend too cursed much time hanging round Gorgidas,” Gaius Philippus said. “You’re starting to sound like him.” Scaurus had the same impression, though, thinking back on it, he did not remember seeing the junior centurion and the physician together very often.
“Worse things have happened,” Glabrio chuckled. Gaius Philippus was content to let it rest. If there were things he did not understand in the younger officer, he approved of enough to tolerate the rest.
Marcus was glad the chaffing went no further than it did. His hangover was gone at last, but he had not eaten all day and felt lightheaded. A real quarrel would have been more than he was up to dealing with.
Only bits of scudding gray showed the storm’s passage when dawn came again—those, and the red-brown clinging mud that tried to suck sandals from feet. It was, Marcus thought with disquiet, almost the color of Yezd’s banners. He was strangely pleased to see tiny green shoots thrusting up through it, fooled into thinking it was spring.
Gaius Philippus barked harsh laughter when he said that aloud. “They’ll find out soon enough how wrong they are.” He sniffed at the brisk northern breeze, weather-wise from a lifetime lived in the open. “Snow’s coming before long.”
Quite by accident, for they were still guideless, they came upon a town early that afternoon. Aptos, it was called, and held perhaps five thousand souls. Peaceful, un walled, unknown to the Yezda, it nearly brought tears to the tribune. To him, towns like this were Videssos’ greatest achievement, places where generation on generation lived in peace, never fearing that the next day might bring invaders to rape away in hours the fruit of years of labor. Such bypassed tranquil islands were already rare in the westlands; soon, too soon, none would be left.
Monks pulling weeds from the rain-softened soil of their vegetable gardens looked up in amazement as the battered mercenary company tramped past. True to the disciplined kindness of their vocation, they hurried into the monastery storehouses, returning with fresh-baked bread and pitchers of wine. They stood by the side of the road, offering the refreshments to any who cared to stop for a moment.
Scaurus had mixed feelings about the Videssian clergy. When humane, as these monks seemed to be, they were among the best of men: he thought of Nepos and the patriarch Balsamon. But their zeal could make them frighteningly, violently xenophobic; the tribune remembered the anti-Namdalener riots in Videssos the city and the pogrom the priest Zemarkhos ha
d wanted to incite against the Vaspurakaners of Amorion. His mouth tightened at that—Zemarkhos was still there.
The gilded sun-globes atop the monastery’s spires disappeared behind the Romans. As they marched through Aptos itself, a shouting horde of small boys surrounded them, dancing with excitement and firing questions like arrows: Was it true the Yezda were nine feet tall? Were the streets in Videssos paved with pearls? Wasn’t a soldier’s life the most glorious one in the world?
The boy who asked that last question was a beautiful child of about twelve; flushed with the first dreams of manhood, he looked ready, nay, eager to run off with the army. “Don’t you believe it for a minute, son,” Gaius Philippus said, speaking with an earnestness Marcus had rarely heard him use. “Soldiering’s a trade like any other, a bit dirtier than most, maybe. Go at it for the glory and you’ll die too damned young.”
The boy stared in disbelief, as if hearing one of the monks curse Phos. His face crumpled. Tears come hard at twelve, and scald when they fall.
“Why are you after doing that to the lad?” Viridovix demanded. “Sure and there’s no harm in feeding his dreams a mite.”
“Isn’t there?” The centurion’s voice was like a slamming door. “My younger brother thought that way. He’s thirty years dead now.” He looked stonily at the Celt, daring him to take it further. Viridovix reddened and kept still.
Despite the peregrinations of the day before, Scaurus learned Amorion was only about four days’ march southeast. Aptos’ adults pointed the way, though no one seemed eager to lead the Romans there. Still, as one plump fellow declared with the optimism of rustics everywhere, “You can’t miss it.”
“Maybe not, but watch us try,” Gaius Philippus muttered to himself. Marcus was inclined to agree with him. All too often a landmark was a landmark because a local saw it every day of his life. To a stranger, it was just another tree or hill or barn.
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