“And you must bear in mind,” the priest went on, “that both sides will have magicians with them. The usual result is that they cancel each other’s work and leave the result to you armored ruffians. In short, you have little to fear. I think my colleagues of the Academy and I should be able to keep our sorcerous friend Avshar quite well checked and perhaps give him more than he bargained for.”
Nepos sounded confident. Yet for all the priest’s assurances of wizardry’s small use in battle, Marcus could not help remembering the talking corpse in the armory of Videssos’ seawall, could not stop himself from recalling the black rumors swirling round Avshar’s name in the fighting thus far. His hand slid to the hilt of his good Gallic sword. There, at least, was something to be counted on to hold dire sorceries at bay.
XI
THE FIRST SIGNS VIDESSOS WAS A LAND UNDER ATTACK showed themselves several days’ march east of Amorion. A string of plundered, burned-out villages said more clearly than words that Yezda raiders had passed this way. So did abandoned farms and a gutted monastery with its ravaged fields. Some of the destruction was very fresh; a pair of starving hounds still prowled round the monastery, waiting for masters who would not return.
The damage the nomads had done elsewhere was not much worse than any land could expect in wartime. For the Empire’s god, though, the Yezda reserved a special fury. The small chapel by the monks’ living quarters was viciously desecrated. The images on its walls were ripped to bits, and the altar chopped up and used for stovewood. As a final act of insult, the bandits had stabled their horses there.
If the Yezda thought to strike terror into their enemies by such tactics, they failed. The Videssians already had good cause to hate their western neighbors. Now the same hatred was inculcated in the mercenaries who followed Phos, for Mavrikios made sure all his soldiers looked inside the profaned chapel. The Emperor made no comment about what they saw. None was needed.
The devastation upset Marcus for another reason. He had long since decided Yezd was a foe worth fighting. Any land that placed one such as Avshar high in its councils was not one with which decent men could hope to live at peace.
What the tribune had not realized was how strong Yezd was. The imperial army was not much more than halfway to Videssos’ western frontier, yet already the land bore the marks of the strokes the nomads were hurling at the Empire. And what they were seeing today was but the weakest, furthest touch of the Yezda. What would the land be like five days further west, or ten? Would anything grow at all?
That night there were no complaints over setting up the usual Roman field fortifications, with ditch, earth breastwork, and palisade of stakes. Not a Yezda had been seen, but the entire imperial force made camp as if in hostile country.
Scaurus was glad it was the turn of his group of legionaries to visit their women. As he and his men strolled from their camp to that of the women, he looked askance at local notions of what a fortified camp should be. He always did.
True, the women’s tents were surrounded by a palisade of sorts, but it was no better than other Videssian productions. There were too many large, haphazardly trimmed tree trunks—as soon as two or three foes could combine to pull one away from its fellows, the palisade was breached. The Romans, on the other hand, each carried several stakes, which they set up each night with their branches intertwining. They were hard to uproot, and even if one was torn free, it did not leave a gap big enough for a man to enter. He’d mentioned the matter to the Videssians several times; they always sounded interested, but did nothing.
Nervous sentries challenged the Romans half a dozen times in the five-minute walk. “Use your wits, fool!” Marcus snapped to the last of the challengers. “Don’t you know the Yezda fight on horseback?”
“Of course, sir,” the sentry answered in injured tones. Scaurus hesitated, then apologized. Any sort of ruse was possible, and the last thing he should do was mock a man’s alertness. He was more on edge than he’d thought; tonight he badly needed the peace Helvis could bring him.
Yet it was not easy for him to find that peace, though Helvis sent Malric to sleep with some friends he had made on the march. Scaurus was so long out of the habit of unburdening himself to anyone—and perhaps especially to a woman—that he spoke not of his concerns, but merely of the day’s march and other matters of little importance. Not surprisingly, Helvis sensed something was wrong, but the tribune’s shield was up so firmly she could not tell what it was.
Even their love that night could not give the Roman the relief he sought. He was too much within himself to be able to give much, and what passed for lovemaking had a hesitance and an incompleteness it had not known before. Feeling all the worse because he had hoped to feel better, the tribune slipped into uneasy sleep.
The next he knew, he was in a Gallic clearing he remembered only too well, in the midst of his little band of legionaries as the Celts began their massacre. He stared wildly about him. Where was Videssos, the Emperor, the baking plain he and the survivors of this very night had been crossing? Or were there any survivors? Was the Empire but a fantasy of a man driven from his wits by fear?
Here came Viridovix, swinging the long blade that was twin to Scaurus’ own. The tribune raised his sword to parry, or so he thought, but the hand he brought up over his head was empty. The Celt’s blade hurtled down—
“What is it, darling?” The touch on his cheek was not the bite of a blade, but Helvis’ hand. “Your thrashing woke me, and then you cried out loud enough to rouse half the camp.”
Marcus lay on his back for several seconds without answering. The night was nearly as hot as the day had been, but there was cold sweat on his chest and shoulders. He looked up to the ceiling of the tent, his mind still seeing torchlight glittering off a Celtic sword.
“It was a dream,” he said, more to himself than to Helvis.
“Of course it was,” she answered, caressing his face again. “Just a bad dream.”
“By the gods, how real it felt! I was in a bad dream inside a nightmare, dreaming Videssos was but a dream, and me about to die in Gaul—as I should have, by any sane man’s rules.
“How real it was!” he said again. “Was that the dream, or is this? What am I doing here, in this land I never imagined, speaking its tongue, fighting its wars? Is Videssos real? Will it—oh, the dear gods, will you—vanish, too, one day, like a soap-bubble when a needle pricks it? And am I doomed to soldier on, then, for whatever new king I find, and learn his ways as well?”
He shuddered; in the hours when one day was long dead and the next far from born, the vision had a terrifying feel of probability to it.
Helvis pressed her warm naked length against him. “The nightmare is gone when you wake. This is real,” she said positively. “You see it, you feel it, you taste it—what more could there be? I am no one’s dream but my own—though it gives me joy you share it.” In the darkness her eyes were enormous.
“How tight you are,” she said, her fingers exploring his chest, the side of his neck. “Roll over!” she ordered, and Scaurus turned obediently on his belly. She straddled his middle; he grunted in pleasure as her strong hands began to knead the tension from his back. Her massage always made him want to purr like a kitten, never more so than now.
After a few minutes he rolled to his back once more, careful not to dislodge her from atop him. “What are you doing?” she asked, but she knew the answer. He raised himself on his elbows to kiss her more easily. A strand of her hair was between them; she brushed it aside with a laugh. Her breath sighed out as she lowered herself onto him.
“This is real, too,” she whispered as she began to move. The tribune could not argue, nor did he want to.
Three days later the army saw its first live Yezda, a small band of raiders silhouetted against the sky to the west. The Emperor gave chase with a squadron of Videssian horse, but the nomads on their steppe ponies eluded the hunters.
Ortaias Sphrantzes was intemperate in his criticism of Mavrikios�
� choice. He told everyone who would listen, “Kalokyres plainly states that only nomads should be employed in the pursuit of other nomads since, being accustomed to the saddle from infancy, they are superior horsemen. Why have we Khamorth with us, if not for such a purpose as this?”
“If himself doesna cease his havering anent his precious book, the Gavras will be after making him eat it one fine day,” Viridovix said. Marcus thought the same, but if the Emperor was displeased he gave no immediate sign.
The morning after the Yezda were spotted, Scaurus was returning to the Roman camp from the women’s quarters when someone called his name. He turned to find Thorisin Gavras behind him. The Sevastokrator was swaying slightly; he looked to have had quite a night of it.
“Good morning, your Highness,” Scaurus said.
Thorisin raised a mocking eyebrow. “ ‘Good morning, your highness,’ ” he mimicked. “Well, it’s good to see you can still be polite to the hand that feeds you, even if you do sleep with an island wench.”
Marcus felt his face grow hot; the flush was all too noticeable with his fair skin. Catching sight of it, Thorisin said, “Nothing to be ashamed about. The lass is far from homely, I give you that. She’s no fool, either, from what I’ve heard, whether or not her brother eats nails every morning.”
“That sounds like Soteric.” Marcus had to smile, struck by the aptness of Thorisin’s description.
Gavras shrugged. “Never trust a Namdalener. Deal with them, yes, but trust? Never,” he repeated. He walked slowly up to Scaurus and then around him, studying the bemused Roman as he might a horse he was thinking of buying. Marcus could smell the wine on the Sevastokrator’s breath. Thorisin considered silently as he walked, then burst out, “So what’s wrong with you?”
“Sir?” When faced with a superior in an unpredictable mood, least said was best. The tribune knew that lesson as well as the lowliest of his troopers.
“What’s wrong with you?” It seemed Thorisin could only keep track of his thoughts by saying them over again. “You damned Romans keep company with the islanders by choice; Skotos’ frozen beard, you take to them like flies to dead meat.” Despite the unflattering simile, there was no rancor in the Sevastokrator’s voice, only puzzlement. “By rights, then, you should be bubbling with seditions, rebellions, and plots to put one Scaurus on my brother’s throne, with his skull for a drinking goblet.”
Now genuinely alarmed, the Roman started to protest his loyalty. “Shut up,” Thorisin said, with the flat authority power and drink can sometimes combine to put in a voice. “You come with me,” he added, and started back to his own tent, not looking to see whether the tribune was following.
Marcus wondered if he should disappear and hope the Sevastokrator would forget their meeting once sober. He could not take the chance, he decided; Thorisin was too experienced a drinker to go blank that way. Feeling nothing but trepidation, he trailed along after Mavrikios’ brother.
Gavras’ tent was of blue silk, but not a great deal larger than the canvas and wool shelters of the Videssian army’s common soldiers. The Sevastokrator was too much a warrior to care for extravagance in the field. Only the pair of Haloga bodyguards in front of the opening gave any real indication of his rank. They snapped to attention when they caught sight of their master. “Sir,” said one, “the Lady Komitta has been asking for you for the past—”
Komitta Rhangavve herself chose that moment to poke her head out of the tent. Her lustrous black hair was pulled back from her face, accenting her aquiline features. She looked, in fact, like a barely tamed angry falcon, and the tirade she loosed at Thorisin did nothing to lessen the resemblance.
“Where have you been, you worthless rutting tinpot?” she shrilled. “Out swilling again, from the look of you, with the mountain men and the goatherds, and tumbling their women—or their goats! I am of noble kin—how dare you subject me to this humiliation, you—” and she swore with the same aptness Scaurus had heard from her when she gambled with the Namdaleni.
“Phos’ little suns,” Thorisin muttered, giving back a pace under the blast. “I don’t need this, whether she’s right or not. My head hurts already.”
The two guards stood rigid, their blank faces caricatures of unhearingness. The Roman’s efforts along the same line were not so successful, but then, he thought, the poor guards likely got more practice.
He had to admire the way the Sevastokrator pulled himself together and returned his irascible mistress’ barrage. “Don’t bite the thumb at me, slattern!” he roared, his baritone pounding through her soprano curses. “Give me peace, or I’ll warm your noble backside!”
Komitta kept on at full bore for another few seconds, but when Thorisin Gavras stalked toward the tent with the evident intention of carrying out his threat, she turned and ducked back inside, only to emerge a moment later. Proud as a cat, she strode stiff-backed past Thorisin. “I shall be with my cousins,” she informed him with icy hauteur.
“Good enough,” he replied amicably; Marcus thought his anger mostly assumed. Gavras suddenly seemed to remember the Roman standing by his side. “True love is a wonderful thing, is it not?” he remarked with a sour grin. A few seconds later he added, “If you pray to Phos, outlander, tack on a prayer that he deliver you from a taste for excitable women. They’re great fun, but they wear … oh, they wear.”
The Sevastokrator sounded very tired, but he was brisk again when he said to one of his bodyguards, “Ljot, fetch my brother for me, will you? We have a few things to discuss with this lad here.” He stabbed a thumb at Marcus. Ljot, who proved to be the guard on the right, hurried away.
Thorisin pulled the tent flap back for the Roman to precede him. “Go on,” he said, returning to the ironic tone with which he’d begun the encounter. “If not the Avtokrator’s throne, will the Sevastokrator’s mats please your excellency?”
Scaurus stooped to enter the tent; the air inside was still musky with Komitta’s perfume. He sank to the silk-lined mat flooring, waiting for the Sevastokrator to follow. Thorisin’s gamesome mood, his half-threats and sardonic compliments, only served to make the tribune jittery. As he had in the Emperor’s chambers, he felt caught up in an elaborate contest whose rules he did not understand, but where the penalty for a misplay could be disastrous.
The Sevastokrator and the Roman had waited only a couple of minutes when the guardsman Ljot returned. “His Majesty asked me to tell you he will be delayed,” the Haloga reported. “He is at breakfast with Baanes Onomagoulos and will join you when they are through.”
If Thorisin Gavras had put on anger to match Komitta’s, there was mistaking his real wrath now. “So I’m less important than that bald-headed son of a smith, am I?” he growled. “Ljot, you take your arse back to Mavrikios and tell him he and his breakfast can both climb right up it.”
The Emperor’s own head appeared inside the tent, a wide grin on his face. “Little brother, if you’re going to commit lese majesty, never do it by messenger. I’d have to execute him too, and it’s wasteful.”
Thorisin stared, then started to laugh. “You are a bastard,” he said. “Come on, set that stringy old carcass of yours down here.” Mavrikios did so; the tent was a bit cramped for three but, thanks to its thin silk walls, not unbearably stuffy.
Opening a battered pine chest no finer than any private soldier might have owned, Thorisin produced an earthenware jug of wine, from which he swigged noisily. “Ahh, that’s good. Phos willing, it will make my headache go away.” He drank again. “Seriously, brother, you shouldn’t use Baanes to twit me—I remember too well how jealous of him I was when I was small.”
“I know, but the chance to listen to you fume was too good to pass up.” Mavrikios sounded half-contrite, half-amused at his practical joke’s success.
“Bastard,” Thorisin said again, this time with no heat.
Marcus looked from one of the brothers Gavras to the other; though he’d had nothing to drink, he could feel the world starting to spin. Much of what h
e’d thought he understood of Videssian politics had just fallen to pieces before his eyes. Where was the feud that had the Gavrai so at odds with each other they rarely spoke?
“Oh dear,” Mavrikios said, spying the bewilderment Scaurus was doing his best to hide. “I’m afraid we’ve managed to confuse your guest.”
“Have we, now? Well, I’m damned if I’ll apologize to any Namdalener-loving barbarian.” Thorisin’s words were fierce enough to make the tribune start up in fright, but he accompanied them with an unmistakable wink. Marcus sagged back to his haunches, altogether muddled.
“ ‘Only right he should be confused,” the Sevastokrator went on, warming to his theme. “He and his whole crew like the easterners so bloody well this whole camp should be buzzing with talk they’re ganging together to kill us all. Phos knows we’ve paid enough good gold to sniff out the rumors.”
“We didn’t find any, either,” Mavrikios said accusingly. “Which leads to one of two conclusions: either you’re clever beyond compare, or else you may be loyal in spite of your perverse choice of friends.”
“I don’t think he looks all that bright, Mavrikios,” Thorisin said.
“You don’t look any too well yourself, little brother,” the Emperor retorted, but again the tone of the badinage was what would be expected from two brothers who liked each other well.
With the persistence too much wine can bring, Thorisin said, “If he’s not so smart as to be able to fool us all, he’s most likely loyal. Who would have thought it, from a friend of the Namdaleni?” He shook his head in amazement, then belched softly.
“The gods be thanked,” Marcus murmured to himself. When both Gavrai eyed him questioningly, he realized he’d spoken Latin. “I’m sorry you had any reason to doubt me,” he told them, returning to Videssian, “and very glad you don’t any longer.”
Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) Page 28