The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  Another said, “Aye, there’s no good omen in that.” Several troopers drew Phos’ sun-circle over their hearts.

  Petronas glanced at his boots again. They still looked red to him. If his men did not see them so—he shivered. That omen seemed bad to him, too, as if he had no right to the imperial throne. He clenched his teeth against the idea that Phos had turned away from him and toward that accursed upstart Krispos…

  The moment his rival’s name entered his mind, he knew Phos was not the one who had arranged the omen. He shouted for his wizard. “Skeparnas!” When the mage did not appear at once, he shouted again, louder this time. “Skeparnas!”

  Skeparnas picked his way through the soldiers. He was a tall, thin man with a long, lean face, a beard waxed to a point, and the longest fingers Petronas had ever seen. “How may I serve you, Your Majesty?”

  “What color are my boots?” Petronas demanded.

  He’d seldom seen Skeparnas taken aback, but now the wizard blinked and drew back half a step. “To me, Your Majesty, they look red,” he said cautiously.

  “To me, too,” Petronas said. But before the words were out of his mouth, the soldiers all around set up a clamor, insisting they were black. “Shut up!” he roared at them. To Skeparnas he went on, more quietly, “I think Krispos magicked them, the stinking son of a spotted snake.”

  “Ahh.” Skeparnas leaned forward, like a tower tilting after an earthquake. “Yes, that would be a clever ploy, wouldn’t it?” His hands writhed in quick passes; those spidery fingers seemed almost to knot themselves together.

  Suddenly Petronas’ soldiers called out: “They’re red now, Your Majesty!”

  “There, you see?” Petronas said triumphantly.

  “A lovely spell, most marvelously subtle,” Skeparnas said with a connoisseur’s appreciation. “Not only did it have no hold on you, it was also made to be invisible to anyone who perceived it with a mage’s eye, thus perhaps delaying its discovery and allowing it to work the maximum amount of confusion.”

  “Very fornicating lovely,” Petronas snapped. He raised his voice to address his men. “You see, my heroes, there’s no omen here. This was just more of Krispos’ vile work, aiming to make you think something’s wrong when it’s not. Just a cheap, miserable trick, not worth fretting over.”

  He waited, hoping for an answering cheer. It did not come. Determinedly, though, he rode through the army as if it had. He waved to the men, making his horse rear and caracole.

  “How do we know those boots weren’t really black till the mage spelled ’em red again?” one soldier asked another as he came by. He rode on, but keeping his face still after that was as hard as if he’d taken a lance in the guts.

  TROKOUNDOS STAGGERED, THEN STEADIED HIMSELF. “THEY’VE broken the spell,” he gasped. “By the good god, I could do with a cup of wine.” Greasy sweat covered his fine-drawn features.

  Krispos poured with his own hand. “How much good do you think it’s done?”

  “No way to guess,” Trokoundos said, gasping again after he’d drained the cup at a single long draft. “You know how it is, Majesty: If the soldiers are truly strong for Petronas, they’ll stay with him come what may. If they’re wavering, the least little thing could seem a bad omen to ’em.”

  “Aye.” More and more, Krispos was coming to believe the art of leading men was a kind of magic, though not one sorcerers studied. What folk thought of a ruler, oftentimes, seemed more important than what he really was.

  “Shall I try the spell again this afternoon, Majesty, or maybe tomorrow morning?” Trokoundos asked.

  After some thought, Krispos shook his head. “That would make them sure it was our sorcery, I think. If it only happens the once, they can’t be certain quite what it is.”

  “As you wish, of course,” Trokoundos said. “What then?”

  “I’m going to let Petronas stew in his own juice for a couple of days,” Krispos answered. “When I do hit him again, I’ll hit hard. People who know this country have already told me of other passes through the hills, and he doesn’t have enough men to cover them all. If he stays where he is, I can leave enough men here to keep him from bursting out onto the plain again, while I take the rest around to hit him from behind.”

  “What if he flees?”

  “If he flees now, after losing to me twice, he’s mine,” Krispos said. “Then it’s just a matter of running him to earth.”

  While Petronas—he hoped—stewed, Krispos spent the next few days catching up on the dispatches that never stopped coming from the capital. He approved a commercial treaty with Khatrish, scribbled minor changes on an inheritance law before he affixed his seal to it, commuted one death sentence where the evidence looked flimsy, and let another stand.

  He wrote to Mavros of his second victory, then read through his foster brother’s gossipy reports of doings in Videssos the city. From them, and from Dara’s occasional shorter notes, he gathered that Phostis, while still small, was doing well. That filled him with sober satisfaction; whether a baby lived to grow up was always a roll of the dice.

  Mavros also forwarded dispatches from the war against Harvas Black-Robe. Krispos read and reread those. Agapetos’ preemptive attack had bogged down, but he still stood on enemy soil. Maybe, Krispos thought, the peasants near the northern border would be able to get in a crop in peace.

  Other documents also came from the city. Krispos began to dread opening the ones sealed with sky-blue wax. Every time he did, he read that Pyrrhos had deposed another priest or abbot for infractions that seemed ever more trivial. Casting a man from his temple for trimming his beard too close, for instance, left Krispos shaking his head. He wrote a series of increasingly blunt notes to the patriarch, urging Pyrrhos to show restraint.

  But restraint did not seem to be part of Pyrrhos’ vocabulary. Letters of protest also came to Krispos from ousted clerics, from clerics afraid they would be ousted, and from delegations of prominent citizens from several towns seeking protection for their local priests.

  More and more, Krispos wished he could have retained Gnatios as ecumenical patriarch. He’d never imagined that one of his strongest allies could become one of his greatest embarrassments. And yet Pyrrhos remained zealous in his behalf. With Petronas and Gnatios still to worry about, Krispos put off a decision on his rigorist patriarch.

  He sent a holding force under Sarkis against the pass through which Petronas had fled, then led the rest of the army north and west through another gap to get behind his rival. His part of the army was just entering that second pass when a courier from Sarkis galloped up on a blowing, foam-spattered horse. The man was panting as hard as if he’d done all that running himself. “Majesty!” he called. “Rejoice, Majesty! We’re through!”

  “You’re through?” Krispos stared at him. “Sarkis forced the pass, you mean?” That was good luck past all expectation. Petronas knew how to find defensive positions. A handful of determined men could have held the pass for days, so long as they were not outflanked.

  But the courier said, “Looks like Petronas’ army’s gone belly-up, the lord Sarkis told me to tell you. Some have fled, more are yielding themselves up. The fight isn’t in ’em anymore, Majesty.”

  “By the good god,” Krispos said softly. He wondered what part—if any—the magic he’d suggested had played. Have to ask some prisoners, he told himself before more urgent concerns drove the matter from his mind. “What’s become of Petronas, then? Has he surrendered?”

  “No, Majesty, no sign of him, nor of Gnatios, either. The lord Sarkis urges speed on you, to help round up as many flying soldiers as we may.”

  “Yes.” Krispos turned to Thvari, the captain of his Haloga guards. “Will you and your men ride pack horses, brave sir, to help us move the faster?”

  Thvari spoke to the guardsmen in their own slow, rolling speech. They shouted back, grinning and waving their axes. “Aye,” Thvari said unnecessarily. He added, “We would not miss being in at the kill.”

 
“Good.” Krispos called orders to the army musicians. The long column briefly halted. The baggage-train handlers shifted burdens on their animals, freeing up enough to accommodate the Halogai. They waved away soldiers who wanted to help; men without their long-practiced skill at lashing and unlashing bundles would only have slowed them down.

  The musicians blew At the trot. The army started forward again. The Halogai were no horsemen, but most managed to stay on their mounts and keep them headed in the right direction. That was plenty, Krispos thought. If they needed to fight, they would dismount.

  “Where do you think Petronas will go if his army has broken up?” Krispos asked Mammianos.

  The fat general tugged at his beard as he thought. “Some failed rebels might flee to Makuran, but I can’t see Petronas as cat’s-paw for the King of Kings. He’d sooner leap off a cliff, I think. He might do that anyway, Your Majesty, to keep you from gloating over him.”

  “I wouldn’t gloat,” Krispos said.

  Mammianos studied him. “Mmm, maybe not. But he would if he caught you, and we always reckon others from ourselves. Likeliest, though, Petronas’ll try and hole himself up somewhere, do what he can against you. Let me think…There’s an old fortress not too far from here, place called—what in the name of the ice is the place called? Antigonos, that’s what it is. That’s as good a guess as any, and better than most.”

  “We’ll head there, then,” Krispos said. “Do you know the way?”

  “I expect I could find it, but you’ll have men who could do it quicker, I’ll tell you that.”

  A few questions called to the soldiers showed Krispos that Mammianos was right. With a couple of locally raised men in the lead, the army pounded toward Antigonos. Krispos spent a while worrying what to do if Petronas was not in the fortress. Then he stopped worrying. His column was heading in the right direction to cut off fugitives anyhow.

  The riders ran into several bands from Petronas’ disintegrating army. None included the rival Emperor; none of his men admitted knowing where he had gone. From what they said, he and some of his closest followers had simply disappeared the morning before, leaving the rest of the men to fend for themselves. One trooper said bitterly, “If I’d known the bugger’d run like that, I never would have followed him.”

  “Petronas thinks of his own neck first,” Mammianos said. Remembering his own dealings with Anthimos’ uncle, Krispos nodded.

  He and his men reached the fortress of Antigonos a little before sunset. The fortress perched atop a tall hill and surveyed the surrounding countryside like a vulture peering out from a branch on top of a high tree. The iron-faced wooden gate was slammed shut; a thin column of cooksmoke rose into the sky from the citadel.

  “Somebody’s home,” Krispos said. “I wonder who.” Beside him, Mammianos barked laughter. Krispos turned to the musicians. “Blow Parley.”

  The call rang out several times before anyone appeared on the wall to answer it. “Will you yield?” Krispos called, a minor magic of Trokoundos’ projecting his voice beyond bowshot. “I still offer amnesty to soldiers and safe passage back to the monastery for Petronas and Gnatios.”

  “I’ll never trust myself to you, wretch,” shouted the man on the wall.

  Krispos started slightly to recognize Petronas’ voice. It, too, carried; Well, Krispos thought, I’ve known he had a mage along since he broke the spell on his boots. He touched the amulet he wore with his lucky goldpiece. Petronas used wizards for purposes darker than extending the range of his voice. Without Trokoundos by him, Krispos would have feared to confront his foe so closely.

  “I could have ordered you killed the moment I took the throne.” Krispos wondered if he should have done just that. Shrugging to himself, he went on, “I have no special yen for your blood. Only pledge you’ll live quietly among the monks and let me get on with running the Empire.”

  “My Empire,” Petronas roared.

  “Your empire is that fortress you’re huddling in,” Krispos said. “The rest of Videssos acknowledges me—and my patriarch.” If he was stuck with Pyrrhos, he thought, he ought to get some use out of him, even if only to make Petronas writhe in his cage.

  “To the ice with your patriarch, the Phos-drunk fanatic!”

  Krispos smiled. For once, he and Petronas agreed on something. He had no intention of letting his rival know it. He said, “You’re walled up as tightly here as you would be in the monastery of the holy Skirios. How do you propose to get away? You might as well give up and go back to the monastery.”

  “Never!” Petronas stamped down off the wall. His curses remained audible. He must have noticed that and signaled to his magician, for they cut off in the middle of a foul word.

  Krispos nodded to Trokoundos, who chanted a brief spell. When Krispos spoke again, a moment later, his voice had only its usual power once more. “He won’t be easy to pry out of there.”

  “Not without a siege train, which we don’t have with us,” Mammianos agreed. “Not unless we can starve him out, anyway.”

  Rhisoulphos stood close by, looking up at the spot on the wall that Petronas had just vacated. He shook his head at Mammianos’ words. “He has supplies for months in there. He spent the winter strengthening the place against the chance that the war would turn against him.”

  “Smart of him.” Mammianos also glanced toward the fortress of Antigonos. “Aye, he’s near as clever as he thinks he is.”

  “We’ll send for a siege train, by the good god, and sit round the fortress till it gets here,” Krispos said. “If Petronas wants to play at being Avtokrator inside till the rams start pounding on the walls, that’s all right with me.”

  “Your sitting here may be just what he wants,” Trokoundos said. “Remember that he tried once to slay you by sorcery. Such an effort would be all the easier to repeat with you close by. We’ve just seen his mage is still with him.”

  “I can’t very well leave before he’s taken, not if I intend to leave men of mine behind here,” Krispos said.

  Mammianos and Rhisoulphos both saluted him, then looked at each other as if taken by surprise. Mammianos said, “Majesty, you may not be trained to command, but you have a gift for it.”

  “As may be.” Krispos did not show how pleased he was. He turned to Trokoundos. “I trust you have me better warded than I was that night.”

  “Oh, indeed. The protections I gave you then were the hasty sort one uses in an emergency. I thank the lord with the great and good mind that they sufficed. But since you gained the throne, I and my colleagues have hedged you round with far more apotropaic incantations.”

  “With what?” Krispos wanted to see if the wizard could repeat himself without tripping over his tongue.

  But Trokoundos chose to explain instead: “Protective spells. I believe they will serve. With magecraft, one is seldom as sure as one would like.”

  “Come to that, we aren’t sure Petronas and his wizard will attack me,” Krispos said.

  “He will, Your Majesty,” Rhisoulphos said positively. “What other chance in all the world has he now to become Avtokrator?”

  “Put that way—” Krispos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Aye, likely he will. Here I stay, even so. Trokoundos will keep me safe.” What he did not mention was his fear that, if he returned to Videssos the city, Petronas might suborn some soldiers and get free once more.

  “Maybe,” Mammianos said hopefully, “he hasn’t had the chance to fill the cisterns in there too full. Summers hereabouts are hot and dry. With luck, his men will get thirsty soon and make him yield.”

  “Maybe.” But Krispos doubted it. He’d seen that Petronas could be matched as a combat soldier. For keeping an army in supplies, though, he had few peers. If he’d taken refuge in the fortress of Antigonos, he was ready to stand siege there.

  Krispos ringed his own army round the base of the fortress’ hill. He staged mock attacks by night and day, seeking to wear down the defenders. Trokoundos wore himself into exhaustion casting one pr
otective spell after another over Krispos and over the army as a whole. That Petronas’ mage bided his time only made Trokoundos certain the stroke would be deadly when it came.

  The siege dragged on. The healer-priests were much busier with cases of dysentery than with wounds. A letter let Krispos know that a train of rams and catapults had set out from Videssos the city for Antigonos. Behind a white-painted shield of truce, a captain approached the fortress and read the letter in a loud voice, finishing “Beware, rebels! Your hour of justice approaches!” Petronas’ men jeered him from the walls.

  Trokoundos redoubled his precautions, festooning Krispos with charms and amulets until his chains seemed heavier than chain mail. “How am I supposed to sleep, wearing all this?” Krispos complained. “The ones that don’t gouge my back gouge my chest.”

  With a look of martyred patience, Trokoundos said, “Your Majesty, Petronas must know he cannot hope to last long once the siege engines arrive. Therefore he will surely try to strike you down before that time. We must be ready.”

  “Not only will I be ready, I’ll be stoop-shouldered, as well,” Krispos said. Trokoundos’ martyred look did not change. Krispos threw his hands in the air and walked off, clanking as he went.

  But that night, alone at last in his tent, he tossed and turned until a sharp-pointed amethyst crystal on one of his new amulets stabbed him just above his right shoulder blade. He swore and clapped his other hand to the injury. When he took it away, his palm was wet with blood.

  “That fornicating does it!” he snarled. He threw aside the light silk coverlet and jumped to his feet. He took off the offending chain and flung it on the floor. It knocked over one of the other charms that ringed the bed like a fortress’ wall. Finally, breathing hard, Krispos lay down again. “Maybe Petronas’ wizard will pick tonight to try to kill me,” he muttered, “but one piece more or less shouldn’t matter much. And if he does get me, at least I’ll die sound asleep.”

  What with his fury, naturally, he had trouble drifting off even after the chain was gone. He tossed and turned, dozed and half woke. His shoulder still hurt, too.