“I must be going senile,” Gorgidas muttered in Greek. “To be outargued by a red-mustached Celt …” He let the sentence trail off as he walked away.
Marcus left the discussion, too, walking out to the frozen fields to watch his soldiers exercise. Laon Pakhymer’s Khatrishers darted here and there on horseback, wheeling, twisting, suddenly stopping short. Others practiced mounted archery, sending shafts slamming through heaped-up mounds of straw. For all their camaraderie with the Romans, they were still very much a separate command.
The foot soldiers, now, were something else again. The hundreds of stragglers who had joined the Romans after Maragha, as well as Gagik Bagratouni’s refugees, were beginning to blend into the legionaries’ ranks. Their beards and the sleeves on their mail shirts still gave Videssians and Vaspurakaners an exotic look, but constant practice was making them as adept with pilum and stabbing gladius as any son of Italy.
Phostis Apokavkos gave the tribune a wave and a leathery grin. Scaurus smiled back. He still felt good about taking the farmer-soldier out of the capital’s slums and making a legionary of him. But then, Apokavkos had adopted the Romans as much as they him, shaving his face and picking up Latin to become as much like his new comrades as he could.
His tall, lean frame almost hid Doukitzes beside him. They were fast friends; Scaurus sometimes wondered why. Doukitzes was the sort of man Phostis had refused to become during his hungry time in Videssos the city: a small-time thief. The tribune had saved Doukitzes from losing his hand to Mavrikios’ angry judgment not long before Maragha. Perhaps in gratitude, he had not plied his trade—or at least had not been caught—since joining the Romans after the battle. He waved, too, a little more hesitantly than Apokavkos.
Marcus watched their maniple let fly with a volley of practice-pila. He had a good little army, he thought with somber pride. That was as well; it would need to be good, soon enough.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a motion decidedly not military. Arms round one another’s waists, intent only on each other, Senpat Sviodo and Nevrat were making their slow, happy way to their cabin.
The sudden stab of envy was like a knife twisting in Scaurus’ guts. The feeling’s intensity was frightening, the more so because only weeks before he had been half of such a pair.
The world of the legions was simpler, he decided. Private life would not run by the brute simplicity of orders. He sighed, shook his head, and turned back to make what peace he could with Helvis.
IV
THE SWARTHY KHAMORTH SCOUT, WEARING GRAY-BROWN foxskins and mounted on a dun-colored shaggy pony, was like a lump of winter mud against the bright green of spring. Studying the plainsman closely, Marcus asked him, “How do I know you’re from Thorisin Gavras? We’ve seen snares before.”
The nomad gave back a contemptuous stare. He had no more use than his distant Yezda cousins for towns, plowed fields, or the folk who cherished them. But he had sworn loyalty to Gavras on his sword, and his clan-chief and the imperial contestant had drunk wine mixed with their two bloods.
Therefore he answered in his bad Videssian, “He bid me ask you what he say about excitable women, that morning in his tent.”
“That they’re great fun, but they wear,” the tribune answered, instantly satisfied. He remembered the morning in question only too well, having been afraid Thorisin was about to arrest him for treason. He was surprised Gavras also recalled it. The then-Sevastokrator had been very drunk.
“You right,” the Khamorth nodded. He grinned, a male grin that cut across all differences in way of life. “He right, too.”
“There’s something to it,” Marcus agreed, and smiled back. By Thorisin’s standards, though, Helvis hardly counted as excitable. The truce between her and Scaurus, brittle at first, had firmed as winter passed. If there were things they no longer spoke of, the tribune thought, surely that was a small enough price to pay for peace.
Any peace with a price on it, part of his mind said for the hundredth time, is too dearly bought. For the hundredth time, the rest of him shouted that part down.
The plainsman had said something while he was in his reverie. “I’m sorry?”
The disdain was back on the nomad’s face; what good was this fellow, if he would not even listen? Scaurus felt himself flush. Speaking as if to an idiot child, the Khamorth repeated, “You be ready to break camp, three days’ time? Thorisin, his men, so far behind me. I ride west meet them, bring here to you to join. You be ready?”
Excitement boiled in the tribune. Three days’ time, and he would be cut off from the world no longer. Three days’ time to break a camp that had housed his men for a season? If the Romans could not do it, they did not deserve their name.
“We’ll be ready,” he said.
The plainsmen swept a skeptical eye over ditch, palisade, and the townlet that had grown up inside them. To him and his, getting ready to leave a place was a matter of minutes, not hours or days. “Three days’ time,” he said once more. He made it sound like a warning.
Without waiting for an answer, he wheeled his little horse and trotted away. From his attitude, he had already wasted enough of this fine riding day on farmer folk.
A Khatrisher posted at the eastern end of Aptos’ valley waved his fur cap over his head. Close by Marcus, Laon Pakhymer waved back to show the signal was understood. Thorisin Gavras’ outriders were in sight. The picket came galloping back.
“Form up!” the tribune yelled. The buccinators’ trumpets and cornets echoed his command. His foot soldiers, Romans and newcomers together, quick-marched to their positions behind the nine manipular standards, the signa. Even after a year and a half without it, Scaurus still missed the legionary eagle his detachment had not rated.
Beside the infantry assembled the Khatrisher horsemen. Pakhymer did not try to form them into neat ranks. They looked like what they were: irregulars, longer on toughness than order.
Most of Aptos’ population lined the road into town. Fathers carried small boys and girls pickaback so they could see over the crowd—Phos alone knew when next an Emperor, even one with so uncertain a right to that title, would come this way.
From the talk he’d heard since the Khamorth scout appeared, Marcus knew half the rustics were wondering whether the hooves of Thorisin’s horse would touch the ground. Those who knew better, like Phorkos’ widow Nerse, were there, too.
“Ahhh!” said the townsmen. Still small in the distance, the first pair of Thorisin Gavras’ cavalry came into view. They carried parasols, and Scaurus knew them for the Videssian equivalent of Rome’s lictors with axes and bundles of fasces, the symbols that power resided here. Another pair followed, and another, until a dozen bright silk flowers bloomed ahead of Gavras’ men—the full imperial number, right enough.
Straining his eyes, the tribune saw Thorisin himself close behind them, mounted on a fine bay horse. Only his scarlet boots made any personal claim to rank; the rest of his gear was good, but no more than that. Not even assuming the imperium could make him fond of its trappings.
His army rumbled down the road behind him, almost all cavalry, as was the Videssian way. Of all the nations the Empire knew, only the Halogai preferred to fight afoot; Roman infantry tactics had been an eye-opener here. Gavras’ troops were about evenly divided between Videssians and Vaspurakaners—no wonder he had coined money to the “princes’ ” standard of weight.
“Good-looking men,” Gaius Philippus remarked, and Scaurus nodded. The unconscious arrogance with which they rode said volumes about the confidence Thorisin had drilled into them. After the disaster in front of Maragha, that was no mean feat. Marcus’ spirits rose.
He tried to gauge how many warriors accompanied Gavras as they came toward him. Maybe a thousand in the valley so far … now two … three thousand—no, probably not that many, for they had a good-sized baggage train in their midst. Say twenty-five hundred.
A good, solid first division, the tribune thought. In a moment the rest of the army would sh
ow itself, and then he would have a better idea of its real capabilities. Thorisin spotted him in front of his assembled troops and gave him quite an un-imperial wave. Warmed inside, he waved back.
It was certainly taking enough time for the next unit’s van to appear. Marcus reached up to scratch his head, felt foolish as fingers rasped on the iron of his helmet.
“Hercules!” Gaius Philippus muttered under his breath. “I think that’s all of them.”
Marcus wanted to laugh or cry, or, better, both at once. This was Thorisin Gavras’ all-conquering horde, with which he would reclaim Videssos from the usurper and drive the Yezda out of the Empire? Counting Pakhymer’s few hundred, he had almost this many men himself.
Yet as Gavras’ parasol bearers rode past the assembled inhabitants of Aptos, they bowed low to give honor to the Emperor. And as Thorisin brought his forces up to the troops Marcus had drawn up in review, Laon Pakhymer went to his knees and then to his belly in a full proskynesis, giving him formal reverence as sovereign. So did Gagik Bagratouni and Zeprin the Red, who stood near Scaurus.
The Roman, true to his homeland’s republican ways, had never prostrated himself for Mavrikios. He did not do so now, contenting himself with a deep bow. He remembered how furious the younger Gavras had been the first time he failed to bend the knee to the Emperor. Now Thorisin reined in his horse in front of the tribune and said with a dry chuckle, “Still stubborn as ever, aren’t you?”
Directly addressed, Marcus lifted his head to study the Emperor at close range. Thorisin still sat his stallion with the same jauntiness that had endeared him to Videssos’ citizenry when he was but Mavrikios’ brother, still kept the ironic gleam in his eye that made one ever uncertain how seriously to take him. But there was a harder, somehow more finished look to him than the Roman remembered; it was very much like Mavrikios come again.
“Your Majesty, would you recognize me any other way?” Scaurus asked.
Thorisin smiled for a moment. His gaze traveled up and down the silent Roman ranks, estimating their numbers just as the tribune had reckoned his. “You give yourself too little credit,” he said. “I’d know you by the wizardry that let you bring your troop out so near intact. You were there at the worst of it, weren’t you?”
Scaurus shrugged. The worst of it had been where Mavrikios’ Haloga bodyguard had fought for the Emperor to the last man and perished with him at the end. He said nothing of that, but Thorisin read it in his eyes. His smile slipped. “There will be a reckoning,” he said quietly. “More than one, in fact.”
The matter-of-fact promise in his voice almost made it possible to forget that Mavrikios had failed against the Yezda with an army of over fifty thousand men. His brother was undertaking that task, along with simultaneous civil war, and his forces, even adding in the Romans and their comrades, were less than a tenth as great.
“If you’ve a mind to,” Thorisin said to Marcus, “you can dismiss your troopers. A little ceremonial takes me a long way. Gather your officers together, round up some wine, and we’ll talk.”
“So the pipsqueak really did start the rout?” Thorisin mused. “I’d heard it before, but it galled me to believe it, even of Ortaias.” He shook his head. “One more reason for dealing with him—as if I needed another.”
Bareheaded, a mug in his hand, his red-booted feet propped on a table, he looked like any long-time soldier taking his ease after travel. His commanders, Videssians and Vaspurakaners both, were as nonchalant. Mavrikios had used the elaborate imperial ceremonies to enhance his own dignity, though he thought them foolish. Thorisin simply could not be bothered.
He listened closely as Scaurus told of the Romans’ wanderings, slapped his thigh with his left hand when the Roman explained how he had used Hannibal’s trick to free himself from the Yezda. “Turning flocks back on the nomads, eh? A fine ploy and only just,” he said.
The tribune did not mention Avshar’s parting gift to him. As soon as the Khamorth scout let him know Thorisin was nearby, he had buried Mavrikios’ head. With a real Gavras very much present, the risk of a false one seemed smaller.
“Enough of this chatter about us,” Viridovix said to the Roman. He turned to Thorisin, asking him, “Where was it you disappeared to, man? For months not a one of us knew if you were alive or dead or off in fairyland to come back a hundred years from now, the which would be no use at all to anybody.”
Thorisin took no offense, which was as well; Viridovix curbed his tongue for no one. His tale was about what the tribune had expected. His mauled right wing of the great Videssian army had been pushed back into Vaspurakan’s mountain fastnesses, terrain even more rugged than that which the Romans had crossed. There, much of the army had melted away, beaten soldiers slipping off singly or in small groups to try to make their way eastward.
Gaius Philippus nodded, commenting, “It’s what I would have guessed, looking at the men you have with you. The peasant levies and fainthearts are long gone, dead or fled.”
“That’s the way of it,” Thorisin agreed.
In one important respect, the younger Gavras’ troops had had a harder time of it than the Romans. The Yezda made a real pursuit after them, and it took two or three bitter rearguard actions to shake free. “It was that cursed white-robed devil,” one of the Videssian officers said. “He stuck tighter than a leech—aye, and sucked more blood, too.”
Marcus and his entire party leaned forward, suddenly alert. “So Avshar was trailing you, then,” the tribune said. “No wonder there was no sign of him in these parts—we had no idea what was keeping him out of Videssos.”
“I still don’t,” Gavras admitted. “He disappeared a couple of weeks after the battle, and I have no idea where he is. As much as anything, his going saved us—without him the Yezda are fierce enough, but a rabble. With him—” Thorisin fell silent; from his expression, the words stuck in his mouth were not to his taste.
The officer who had mentioned Avshar—Indakos Skylitzes, his name was—asked Marcus, “Has Amorion gone mad? We sent a man there to proclaim Thorisin, and they horsewhipped him out of town—for a day, we thought he might not live. Phos’ little suns, even in civil war, heralds have some rights.” As a Videssian baron, Skylitzes knew whereof he spoke.
“It’s Zemarkhos’ city now, and his word is law there,” Marcus said. He paused as a new thought struck him. “Was your envoy a Vaspurakaner, by any chance?”
Skylitzes looked uncertain, but Thorisin nodded. “Haik Amazasp? I should say so. What has that to do with—? Oh.” His scowl deepened as he remembered how Amorion’s fanatic priest had wanted to start his persecution of the “heretics” with imperial backing. “Ortaias is welcome to his support—not that he’ll get much use from him.”
“You’ll avenge us?” Senpat Sviodo exclaimed eagerly. “You won’t regret it—Amorion is a perfect place to push east. You know that as well as I.” The young Vaspurakaner came halfway out of his seat in enthusiasm. Gagik Bagratouni began to rise, too, more slowly, but with a frightening sense of purpose.
Thorisin, though, waved them down once more. “No, we’re after Videssos the city, nothing else. With it, the whole Empire falls to us; without it, none of the rest is truly ours.”
Seeing their outraged disappointment, he went on, “If you don’t mind your revenge at second hand, I think you’ll get it. The Namdaleni are moving east out of Phanaskert, and I expect Amorion will be in their line of march. They’ll bring the town down around Zemarkhos’ ears if he squawks of heresy at them—and he will. He’s bigot enough.” Gavras contemplated the meeting with equanimity, even grim amusement. So, after a moment, did the Vaspurakaners.
Scaurus was ready to agree. Any trap that closed on the Namdaleni would be kicked open from the inside by six or seven thousand heavy-armed cavalry. So the men of the Duchy were on the move, too, were they? he thought. Armies were flowing like driblets from melting icicles after the winter freeze.
Something else occurred to him: the Namdaleni had a good many m
ore soldiers hereabouts than Thorisin did. He asked, “What sort of understanding do you have with the easterners?”
“Mutual mistrust, as always,” Gavras answered. “If they see their way clear, they’ll go for our throats. I don’t intend to give them the chance.”
“Maybe Onomagoulos’ men can come up from the south to help keep an eye on them,” Marcus suggested.
It was the Emperor’s turn to be startled. “What? Baanes is alive?”
“If traders’ tales can be trusted,” Gaius Philippus said, still doubting the merchants’ rumor. He set it forth for Thorisin, who did not seem to find anything improbable in it.
“Well, well, good for the old fox. There’s tricks left in him after all,” Gavras murmured, but he did not sound overjoyed to Scaurus.
* * *
When Aptos disappeared behind a bend in the road, Gaius Philippus heaved a long sigh. “First time in full many a year I’m sorry to be on the move once more,” he said.
“By the gods, why?” Marcus asked, surprised. Marching under a spring sky was one of the pleasures of a soldier’s life. The last rains had given the foothills a carpet of new grass and were recent enough to keep Videssos’ dirt roads from turning into choking ribbons of dust. The air was fine and mild, almost tasty, and sweetly clamorous with the calls of returning birds. Even the butterflies looked fresh, their bright wings not yet tattered and tarnished by time.
“Canna you tell?” Viridovix said to Scaurus. “The puir lad’s heart is all broken in flinders—or would be, if he remembered where he mislaid it.”
“Oh, be damned to you,” Gaius Philippus said, the measure of his upset shown by his falling into the Celt’s idiom.
For a moment Marcus honestly had no idea of what Viridovix was talking about, or why the senior centurion took the gibe seriously. When he stopped to think, though, an answer did occur to him. “Nerse?” he asked. “Phorkos’ widow?”
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