His relief was so great all of his defenses slid down at once, along with the guards on his tongue. “Then the two of you aren’t quarreling with each other?” he blurted, then stopped in worse confusion than before.
The brothers Gavras suddenly looked like small boys whose secret has been discovered. Mavrikios plucked a hair from his beard, looked at it musingly, and tossed it aside. “Thorisin, he may be smarter than he seems.”
“Eh?” Thorisin said blurrily. “I should hope so.” He was sprawled out on his side and fighting a losing battle with sleep.
“Lazy good-for-nothing,” Mavrikios smiled. He turned back to Scaurus. “You’re quite right, outlander. We are having a little play, and to a fascinated audience, I might add.”
“But I was there when you first quarreled, gambling against each other,” the tribune protested. “That couldn’t have been contrived.”
The Emperor’s smile slipped a notch. He looked at his brother, but Thorisin was beginning to snore. “No, it was real enough,” he admitted. “Thorisin’s tongue has always been more hasty than is good for him, and I own he made me spleenish that night. But next morning we made it up—we always do.”
Mavrikios’ smile broadened again. “This time, though, my contrary brother chose to make a donkey of himself in front of a hundred people. It was less than no time before the vultures started gathering over the corpse of our love.” He cocked an eyebrow at the Roman. “Some of them flapped near you, I’ve heard.”
“So they did,” Scaurus agreed, remembering the odd meeting he’d had with Vardanes Sphrantzes.
“You know what I mean, then,” Mavrikios nodded. “You were far from the only one sounded, by the way. It occurred to Thorisin and me that if we lay very still and let the vultures land, thinking they were about to pick our bones, why then we might have the makings of a fine buzzard stew for ourselves.”
“I can follow all that,” Marcus allowed. “But why, having laid your trap, did you give Ortaias Sphrantzes the left wing of your army, even with Khoumnos to keep him in check?”
“He is an imbecile, isn’t he?” the Emperor chuckled. “Nephon has his eye on him, though, so have no fear on that score.”
“I’ve noticed that. But why is he here at all? Without his precious book he know less about soldiering than his horse does, and with it he’s almost more dangerous, because he thinks he knows things he doesn’t.”
“He’s here for the same reason he has his worthless command: Vardanes asked them of me.”
Marcus was silent while he tried to digest that. At last he shook his head; the crosscurrents of intrigue that could make the Sevastos request such a thing and the Emperor grant it were too complex for him to penetrate.
Mavrikios Gavras watched him struggle and give up. “It’s good to find there are still some things you don’t understand,” he said. “You have more skill at politics than most mercenary soldiers I know.”
Thinking of the ruling Roman triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey—each of whom gladly would have torn the hearts from the other two could he have done so without plunging his country into civil war—Scaurus said, “I know something of faction politics, but yours, I think, are worse.” He waited to see if Mavrikios would solve the riddle for him.
The Emperor did, with the air of a professor giving a demonstration for an inexperienced student who might have talent. “Think it through. With Ortaias here, Vardanes gets an eye in the army—not the best of eyes, perhaps, because I know it’s there, but an eye just the same. And who knows? Even though Khoumnos has the real power on the left, Ortaias may eventually learn something of war and become more useful to his uncle in that way. Clear so far?”
“Clear enough, anyway.”
“All right. If I’d said no to Vardanes, he wouldn’t have stopped plotting against me—he could no more do that than stop breathing. I thought it safer to have Ortaias here where I could keep an eye on him than involved in Phos knows what mischief back in the city.”
“I follow the logic well enough. From what little I’ve seen of Vardanes Sphrantzes, I’d say it was sound, but you know him far better than I.”
“He’s a serpent,” Mavrikios said flatly. His voice grew grim. “There’s one other reason to let Ortaias come along. If worse comes to worse, he’s worth something as a hostage. Likely not much, when I recall how conveniently Evphrosyne died, but something.” Still in the role of instructor, he spread his hands, palms out, as if he had just proven two lines in a complex figure parallel after all.
His, though, were not the pale soft hands of a sheltered don. Spear, sword, and bow had scarred and callused them, and sun and wind turned them brown and rough. They were the hands of a warrior, yes, but a warrior who also showed his skill in another arena, one where the weapons were the more deadly for being invisible.
The Emperor saw Scaurus’ admiration, dipped his head in acknowledgment of it. “Time the both of us got back to work,” he said. “Look angry when you come out. I’ve dressed you down, and Thorisin and I have been snapping at each other again. It would never do for people to think we like each other.”
“Are you odd-looking people, uh, Romans?” The speaker was a smilingly handsome, swarthy young man on a stocky, fast-looking horse. A girl of about his own age, her silver-braceleted arms round his middle, rode behind him.
Both were in typical Videssian horseman’s gear, a light, long-sleeved tunic over baggy woolen trousers tucked into boots. Each of them wore a sheathed saber; he had a bow and a felt quiver slung over his back.
They led a packhorse loaded with gear, prominent among it a wickerwork helmet, a bundle of javelins, and a fine pandoura, its soundbox decorated with elaborate scrollwork and inlays of mother of pearl.
The young fellow’s Videssian had a slight guttural accent. He wore a leather cap with three rounded projections toward the front, a broad neckflap and several streamers of bright ribbon trailing off behind. Marcus had seen a good many Vaspurakaners with such headgear—quite a few of them had settled in these lands not far from their ancestral home. On most of them the cap seemed queer and lumpy, but the stranger somehow gave it a jaunty air.
His flashing smile and breezy way of speech were wasted on Gaius Philippus, who frowned up at him. “You don’t look any too good yourself,” he growled, unconsciously echoing Mavrikios speaking to Thorisin. “If we are Romans, what do you want with us?”
The centurion’s sour greeting did not put off the horseman. He answered easily, “You may as well get used to me. I am to be your guide through the passes of my lovely homeland. I am Prince Senpat Sviodo of Vaspurakan.” He drew himself up in the saddle.
Marcus was pleased he’d guessed the young man’s people, but more alarmed than anything else at the prospect of having to deal with a new and unfamiliar royalty. “Your Highness—” he began, only to stop, nonplused, when Senpat Sviodo and his companion burst into gales of laughter.
“You are from a far land, mercenary,” he said. “Have you never heard Vaspurakan called the princes’ land?”
Thinking back, the tribune did recall some slighting reference of Mavrikios’ during the briefing before the imperial army left Videssos. Of its significance, however, he had no idea, and said so.
“Every Vaspurakaner is a prince,” Sviodo explained. “How could it be otherwise, since we are all descendants of Vaspur, the first and most noble of the creations of Phos?”
Scaurus was instantly sure the Videssians did not take kindly to that theology. He had little time to ponder it, though, for the girl was nudging Senpat, saying, “Half-truths, and men’s half-truths at that. Without the princesses of Vaspurakan, there would be no princes.”
“A distinct point,” Senpat Sviodo said fondly. He turned back to the Romans. “Gentlemen,” he said, looking at Gaius Philippus as if giving him the benefit of the doubt, “my wife Nevrat. She knows Vaspurakan and its pathways at least as well as I do.”
“Well, to the crows with you, then,” someone called
from about the third rank of Romans. “I’d follow her anywhere!” The legionaries who heard him whooped agreement. Marcus was relieved to see Senpat Sviodo laugh with them, and Nevrat too. She was a comely lass, with strong sculptured features, a dark complexion like her husband’s, and flashing white teeth. Instead of Senpat’s distinctive Vaspurakaner cap, she wore a flower-patterned silk scarf over her black, wavy hair.
Lest the next gibe have a less fortunate outcome, the tribune made haste to introduce some of his leading men to the Vaspurakaners. Then he asked, “How is it you are in Videssos’ service?”
Senpat Sviodo told his story as they traveled west; it was not much different from what Scaurus had expected. The young man was of a noble house—his fine horse, his elegant pandoura, and the silver Nevrat wore had already made the tribune sure he was no common soldier.
“Being a noble in Vaspurakan these past few years was not an unmixed blessing,” he said. “When the Yezda came sweeping through, our peasants could flee, having little to lose by taking shelter here inside the Empire. But my family’s estates had rich fields, wealth besides from a small copper mine, and a keep as strong as any. We chose to fight to hold them.”
“And well, too,” Nevrat added. “More than once we drove the raiders off our lands licking their wounds.” Her slim hand touched the hilt of her saber in a way that told Marcus she meant “we” in the most literal sense.
“So we did,” Senpat agreed with a smile. But that smile faded as he thought of the grinding fight he had waged—and lost. “We never drove them far enough, though, or hard enough. Season by season, year by year, they wore us down. We couldn’t farm, we couldn’t mine, we couldn’t go more than a bowshot from the keep without being attacked. Two years ago a Videssian regiment passed by our holding chasing Yezda, and Senpat Sviodo, prince of Vaspurakan, became Senpat Sviodo, imperial scout. There are worse fates.” He shrugged.
He tugged at the rope by which he led his packhorse. When the beast came forward, he plucked the pandoura from its back and struck a fiery chord. “Worse fates indeed!” he shouted, half singing. “Wolves of the west, beware! I come to take back what is mine!” Nevrat hugged him tightly, her face shining with pride.
The Romans thought well of his display of spirit, but it had a special purport for Gorgidas. Familiar with the strife-torn politics of Greek cities, he said, “That one and his wife will do well. It’s so very easy for an exile to leave hope behind along with his home. The ones who somehow bring it with them are a special breed.”
As the army halted for the night, Senpat Sviodo and his wife, like so many before them in the Empire of Videssos, walked up to observe with unfeigned admiration as the Romans created their camp. “What a good notion!” he exclaimed. “With fieldworks like these, it would be easy to stand off attackers.”
“That’s the idea behind them,” Scaurus agreed, watching his men toss the dry, reddish-brown plateau soil up from the ditch they were digging to form the camp’s breastwork. “You’ll have officer’s status among us, so your tent will be one of those in front of mine, along the via principalis—” At Senpat’s blank expression, he realized he’d used the Latin name and hastily translated: “The main road, I should say.”
“Well enough, then,” the Vaspurakaner said. Lifting the three-peaked cap from his head, he used a tunic sleeve to wipe caked sweat and dust from his forehead. “I could use a good night’s sleep—my behind isn’t sorry to be out of the saddle.”
“Yours?” Nevrat said. “At least you had a saddle to be out of—I’ve been astride a horse’s bumpy backbone all day, and my stern is petrified.” She gave her husband a look full of meaning. “I hope you don’t plan on being out of the saddle the whole night long.”
“Dear, there are saddles, and then there are saddles,” Senpat grinned. His arm slid round her waist; she nestled happily against him.
Seeing their longing for each other, Scaurus muttered a Latin curse—Videssian was too new in his mouth for comfortable swearing. Until that moment he had forgotten the rule he’d imposed against women in the camp. If it stood for his own men, he could hardly break it for these newcomers. As gently as he could, he explained his edict to the Vaspurakaners.
They listened in disbelief, too amazed to be really angry. Finally Senpat said, “Watching your soldiers building this camp convinced me you were men of no common discipline. But to enforce that kind of order and have it obeyed—” He shook his head. “If your Romans are fools enough to put up with it, that’s their affair and yours. But I’m damned if we will. Come on, love,” he said to Nevrat. And their tent went up, not within the Roman stockade, but just outside it, for they preferred each other’s company to the safety of trench, earthwork, and palisade. Alone inside his tent later that evening, Marcus decided he could not blame them.
His own sleep came slowly. It occurred to him that Phostis Apokavkos might well be able to tell him much more than he already knew about the strong-willed folk who came out of Vaspurakan. Apokavkos was from the far west and presumably had dealt with Vaspurakaners before.
The adopted Roman was not sleeping either, but throwing knucklebones with a double handful of men from his maniple. “You looking for me, sir?” he asked when he saw Marcus. “Won’t be sorry if you are—I’ve got no luck tonight.”
“If you’re after an excuse to get out of the game, your luck just turned,” the tribune said. He spoke in his own language, and Apokavkos had no trouble understanding him; when the onetime peasant-soldier tried to speak Latin, though, his lisping Videssian accent still made him hard to follow. But he stuck with it doggedly, and his progress was easy to see.
Scaurus took him back to his own tent and asked him, “Tell me what you know of Vaspurakan and its people.” Recalling Apokavkos’ dislike of the Namdaleni for their heterodox beliefs, he made himself ready to discount as prejudiced some of what the other would reply.”
“The ‘princes’?” Phostis said. “About their land I can’t tell you that much—where I grew up, it was no more than mountains on the northern horizon. Beastly cold in winter, I’ve heard. They raise good horses there, but everybody knows that.”
Even Scaurus had heard good things about Vaspurakaner horseflesh, and he had the traditional Roman attitude toward the equestrian art—that it was a fine skill, for other people. He was intellectually aware that the use of stirrups made horsemanship a very different thing from the one he knew, but still found it hard to take the idea seriously.
Apokavkos proceeded to surprise him, for he spoke of the Vaspurakaners themselves, not with suspicion, but with genuine and obvious respect. “It’s said three ‘princes’ working together could sell ice to Skotos, and I believe it, for work together they would. I don’t know where they learned it, unless being stuck between countries bigger’n they are taught it to them, but they take care of their own, always. They’ll fight among themselves, aye, but let an outsider meddle in their affairs and they’re tight as trap jaws against him.”
To Marcus that seemed such plain good sense as hardly to be worth comment, but Phostis Apokavkos’ voice was full of wistful admiration. “You—we, I mean—Romans are like that too, but there’s plenty of Videssians who’d hire on Skotos himself, if it meant paying their enemies back one.”
The tribune’s thoughts went to the decayed heads he had seen at the foot of the Milestone in Videssos, generals who rebelled with Yezda backing, both of them. He also thought, uneasily, of Vardanes Sphrantzes. Apokavkos had a point.
Trying to shake the worrisome pictures from his mind, Scaurus decided to tease Phostis a bit, to see what he would do. “How can you speak so well of heretics?” he asked.
“Because they’re good people, religion or no,” Apokavkos said at once. “They aren’t like your precious islanders—begging your pardon, sir—always chipping away at other people’s ideas and changing their own whenever the wind shifts. The ‘princes’ believe what they believe and they don’t care a horseturd whether you do or not. I don’t know
,” he went on uncomfortably, “I suppose they’re all damned—but if they are, old Skotos had better watch himself, because enough Vaspurakaners in his hell and they might end up taking it away from him.”
The first raid on the imperial army came two days before it got to Amorion. It was a pinprick, nothing more—a handful of Yezda waylaying a Videssian scout. When he was missed, his comrades searches until they found his body. The Yezda, of course, had plundered it and stolen his horse.
There was a slightly larger encounter the next day, when a small band of Khamorth traded arrows with the Yezda until reinforcements drove the enemy away. Trivial stuff, really, Marcus thought, until he remembered the Emperor promising the journey from Garsavra to Amorion would be as easy as that from the capital to Garsavra. More invaders were loose in the Empire than Mavrikios had thought.
And Amorion, when the army reached it, proved to have suffered badly. Lying on the northern bank of the Ithome, a tributary of the Arandos River, Amorion, like most towns in Videssos’ westlands, had long ago torn down its walls for their building stone. Yezda raiders took full advantage of the city’s helplessness, ravaging its suburbs and penetrating almost to the river bank in several places. As the army approached, the plundered areas were barren and rubble-strewn, in stark contrast to the fertility the river brought neighboring districts.
The contingent Gagik Bagratouni had gathered to reinforce Mavrikios was not as large as the one under Baanes Onomagoulos, but it was, Marcus soon decided, made up of better men. Most were Vaspurakaners like their commander—dark, curly-haired men with bushy beards, usually heavier of build than the Videssians they lived among. They wore scale-armor; many had helmets of wicker like Senpat Sviodo’s, often ornamented with plaited horns or wings. Almost all of them looked like veterans.
“So we should,” Senpat Sviodo said when Marcus remarked on this. “At least as much as the Empire’s akritai, we have stood in Yezd’s way these past years and been Videssos’ shield. Believe me, it was not what we wanted, but being set where Phos chose to place his princes in this world, we had no choice.”
Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) Page 29