The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  With a flourish, the chief litter-bearer opened the door to the conveyance so Dara could slip in. Narvikka came over to hold Progress’ head. Krispos had his left foot in the stirrup when somebody not far away shouted, “You’ll go to the ice with the lax priest you follow!”

  “Too much pickiness will send you to the ice, Blemmyas, for condemning those who don’t deserve it,” someone else shouted back.

  “Liar!” Blemmyas shouted.

  “Who’s a liar?” Fist smacked flesh with a meaty thwock. In an instant, people all over the forecourt were screaming and cursing and pounding and kicking at one another. Wan sunlight sparkled off the sharpened edge of a knife. “Dig up Pyrrhos’ bones!” someone yelled. The ice that walked Krispos’ spine had nothing to do with chilly weather—digging up somebody’s bones was the call to riot in the city.

  A stone whizzed past his head. Another clattered off the side of Dara’s litter. She let out a muffled shriek. Krispos sprang into the saddle. “Give me your axe!” he shouted to Narvikka. The Haloga stared, then handed him the weapon. “Good!” Krispos said. “You, you, you, and you”—he pointed to guardsmen—“stay here and help the bearers keep the Empress’ litter safe. The rest of you, follow me! Try not to kill, but don’t let yourselves get hurt, either.”

  He spurred Progress toward the center of the forecourt. The Halogai gaped, then cheered and plunged after him.

  The axe was an impossible weapon to swing from horseback—too long, too heavy, balanced altogether wrong. Had Progress not been an extraordinarily steady mount, Krispos’ first wild swipe would have pitched him out of the saddle. As it was, he missed the man at whom he’d aimed. The flat of the axehead crashed into the side of a nearby man’s head. The fellow staggered as if drunk, then went down.

  “Go back to your homes. Stop fighting,” Krispos yelled, again and again. Behind him, the armored Halogai were happily felling anyone rash enough to come near them or too slow to get out of the way. From the cries of anguish that rose into the sky, Krispos suspected they weren’t paying much heed to his urge of caution.

  The riot, though, was murdered before it had truly been born. People in the forecourt broke and ran. They were too afraid of the fearsome northerners to remember why they had been battling one another. That suited Krispos well enough. He held the axe across his knees as he brought Progress to a halt.

  When he looked back, he saw about what he’d expected: several men and a woman down and unmoving. The Halogai were busy slitting belt pouches. Krispos looked the other way. Things could have got very sticky had they not waded into the crowd in his wake.

  From the top of the steps, priests peered down in dismay at the blood that splashed the snow in the forecourt. Under that snow, old blood still stained the flagstones from the last riot Pyrrhos had inspired. Enough was enough, Krispos thought.

  He leaned down from the saddle and returned Narvikka’s axe to him. “Maybe one day I show you what to do with it,” the Haloga said with a sly smile.

  Krispos’ ears heated; that stroke had looked as awkward as it felt, then. He pointed to a couple of corpses. “Take their heads,” he said. “We’ll set them at the foot of the Milestone with a big placard that says ‘rioters.’ The good god willing, people will see them and think twice.”

  “Aye, Majesty.” Narvikka went about his grisly task with no more concern than if he’d been slaughtering swine. He glanced over to Krispos when he was done. “You go at them like a northern man.”

  “It needed doing. Besides, if I hadn’t, the fighting just would have spread and gotten worse.” That was a most un-Halogalike notion. To the northerners, fighting that spread was better, not worse.

  Krispos rode the few steps to the litter. The bearers saluted. One of them had a cut on his forehead and a blackened eye. He grinned at Krispos. “Thanks to you, Majesty, we were only at the edge of things. They plumb stopped noticing us when you charged into the middle of ’em.”

  “Good. That’s what I had in mind.” Krispos leaned down and spoke into the small window set into the litter door. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Dara answered at once. “I was in the safest place in the whole forecourt, after all.” The safest place as long as the bearers didn’t run away, Krispos thought. Well, they didn’t. Dara went on, “I’m just glad you came through safe.”

  He could hear that she meant it. He’d worried about her, too. This was not the fiery sort of love about which lute players sang in wineshops, this marriage of convenience between them. All the same, bit by bit he was coming to see it was a kind of love, too.

  “Let’s get back to the palaces,” he said. The litter-bearers stooped, grunted, and lifted. The Halogai fell into place. Narvikka swaggered along, holding by their beards the two heads he’d taken. City folk either stared at the gruesome trophies or turned away in horror.

  Narvikka had fought to defend the Emperor whose gold he’d taken, and had enjoyed every moment of it. How, Krispos wondered uncomfortably, did that make him different from the Halogai who followed Harvas? The only answer he found was that Narvikka’s violence was under the control of the state and was used to protect it, not to destroy.

  That satisfied him, but not altogether. Harvas could trumpet the same claim for his conquests, no matter how vicious they were. The difference was, Harvas lied.

  “A PETITION FOR YOU, YOUR MAJESTY,” BARSYMES SAID.

  “I’ll read it,” Krispos said resignedly. Petitions to the Avtokrator poured in from all over the Empire. Most of them he did not need to see; he had a logothete in aid of requests who dealt with those. But even the winter slowdown did not keep them from coming into the city, and the logothete could not handle everything.

  He unrolled the parchment. His nostrils twitched, as if at the smell of bad fish. “Why didn’t you tell me it was from Gnatios?”

  “Shall I discard it, then?”

  Krispos was tempted to say yes, but had second thoughts. “As long as it’s in my hands, I may as well read it through.” Not the smallest part in his decision was Gnatios’ beautifully legible script.

  “‘The humble monk Gnatios to his imperial Majesty Krispos, Avtokrator of the Videssians: Greetings.’” Krispos nodded to himself—gone were the fawning phrases of Gnatios’ first letter. Having seen they did no good, the former patriarch was wise enough to discard them. They were not his proper style anyhow. Krispos read on:

  “‘Again, Your Majesty, I beg the boon of an audience with you. I am painfully aware that you have no reason to trust me and, indeed, every reason to mistrust me, but I write nonetheless not so much for my own sake as for the sake of the Empire of Videssos, whose interest I have at heart regardless of who holds the throne.’”

  That might even be true, Krispos thought. He imagined Gnatios scribbling in the scriptorium or in his own monastic cell, pausing to seek out the telling phrase that would make Krispos relent, or at least read further. He’d succeeded in the latter, if not in the former; Krispos’ eyes kept moving down the parchment.

  “‘Let me speak plainly, Your Majesty,’” Gnatios wrote. “‘The cause of Videssos’ present crisis is rooted three hundred years in the past, in the theological controversies that followed the invasions off the Pardrayan steppe, the invasions that raped away the lands now known as Thatagush, Khatrish, and Kubrat. As a result, you will need to consider those controversies and their consequences in contemplating combat against Harvas Black-Robe.’”

  The jingling alliteration, though very much the vogue in sophisticated Videssian circles, only irritated Krispos. So did Gnatios’ confident “as a result…” Of course the past shaped the present. Krispos enjoyed histories and chronicles for exactly that reason. But if Gnatios claimed the Empire’s current problems were in fact three hundred years old, he also needed to say why he thought so.

  And he did not. Krispos tried to find his reasons for holding back. Two quickly came to mind. One was that the deposed patriarch was lying. The other was that he thought he ha
d the truth, but feared to set it down on parchment lest Krispos use it and keep him mewed up in the monastery all the same.

  If that was what troubled him, he was naïve—Krispos could send him back to the monastery of the holy Skirios after hearing what he had to say as easily as he could after reading his words. Gnatios was many things, Krispos thought, but hardly naïve. Most likely, that meant he was lying.

  “Bring me pen and ink, please, Barsymes,” Krispos said. When the eunuch returned, he took them and wrote, “I still forbid your release. Krispos Avtokrator.” He gave the parchment to Barsymes. “Arrange to have this returned to the holy sir, if you would.”

  “Certainly, Your Majesty. Shall I reject out of hand any further petitions from him?”

  “No,” Krispos said after thinking it over. “I’ll read them. I don’t have to do anything about them, after all.” Barsymes dipped his head and carried the petition away.

  Krispos whistled between his teeth. Gnatios was everything Pyrrhos was not: he was smooth, suave, rational, and tolerant. He was also pliable and devious. Krispos had taken great and malicious glee in confining him to the monastery of the holy Skirios for a second time after Petronas’ rebellion failed. Now he wondered whether Gnatios had learned enough humility in the monastery to serve as patriarch once more.

  When that occurred to him, he also wondered whether he’d lost his own mind. The monastery had changed Petronas not at all, save only to fill him with a brooding desire for vengeance. If Pyrrhos was intolerable on the patriarch throne, what would Gnatios be but intolerable in some different way? Surely it would be better to replace Pyrrhos with an amiable nonentity, the priestly equivalent of barley porridge.

  Yet somehow the idea of restoring Gnatios, once planted, would not go away. Krispos got up, still whistling, and went to the sewing room to ask Dara what she thought of it. She jabbed her needle into the linen fabric on her lap and stared up at him. “I can see why you want Pyrrhos out,” she said, “but Gnatios has kept trying to wreck you ever since you took the crown.”

  “I know,” Krispos said. “But Petronas is dead, so Gnatios has no reason—well, less reason—for treachery now. He made Anthimos a good patriarch.”

  “You should have struck off his head when he surrendered at Antigonos. Then your own wouldn’t be filled with this moonshine now.”

  Krispos sighed. “No doubt you’re right. His petitions are probably moonshine, too.”

  “What petitions?” Dara asked. After Krispos explained, her lip curled in a noblewoman’s sneer. “If he knows so much about these vast secrets he’s keeping, let him tell them. They’d have to be vast indeed to earn him his way out of his cell.”

  “By the good god, so they would.” Krispos bent down to kiss Dara. “I’ll summon him and hear him out. If he has nothing, I can send him back to the monastery for good.”

  “Even that’s better than he deserves.” Dara did not sound quite happy at having her sarcasm taken literally. “Remember where you’d be, remember where we’d all be”—she patted her belly—“if he’d had his way.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Krispos promised. He made a wry face. “But I also remember what Iakovitzes told me, and Trokoundos, too: that Gnatios is no one’s fool. I don’t have to like him, I don’t have to trust him, but I have the bad feeling that I may need him.”

  Dara stabbed her needle into the cloth again. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t, either.” Krispos raised his voice to call for Barsymes. When the eunuch came into the sewing room, he said, “Esteemed sir, I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind. I think I’d best talk, or rather listen, to Gnatios after all.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty. I shall see to it at once.” Barsymes could make his voice toneless as well as sexless, but Krispos had now had years to learn to read it. He found no disapproval there. More than anything else, that convinced him he was doing the right thing.

  Chapter VIII

  FREEZING RAIN PELTED DOWN. GNATIOS SHIVERED IN HIS BLUE robe as he walked up to the imperial residence. The troop of Halogai who surrounded him—Krispos was taking no chances on any schemes the ex-patriarch might have hatched—bore the nasty weather with the resigned air of men who had been through worse.

  Krispos met Gnatios just inside the entranceway to the residence. Wet and dripping, Gnatios prostrated himself on the chilly marble floor. “Your Majesty is most gracious to receive me,” he said through chattering teeth.

  “Rise, holy sir, rise.” Gnatios looked bedraggled enough to make Krispos feel guilty. “Let’s get you dry and warm; then I’ll hear what you have to say.” At his nod, a chamberlain brought towels and furs to swaddle Gnatios.

  Krispos led Gnatios down the hall and into a chamber fitted out for audiences. Gnatios’ step was sure, but then, Krispos remembered, he’d been here many times before. Iakovitzes waited inside the chamber. He rose and bowed as Krispos led in the former patriarch. Krispos said, “Since I intend to name Iakovitzes as Sevastos to succeed Mavros, I thought he should hear you along with me.”

  Gnatios bowed to Iakovitzes. “Congratulations, your Highness, if I may anticipate your coming into your new office,” he murmured.

  Iakovitzes’ stylus raced over wax. He held up what he’d written so Krispos and Gnatios both could read it. “Never mind the fancy talk. If you know how to hurt Harvas, tell us. If you don’t, go back to your bleeding cell.”

  “That’s how it is, holy sir,” Krispos agreed.

  “I am aware of it, I assure you,” Gnatios said. For once his clever, rather foxy features were altogether serious. “In truth, I do not know how to hurt him, but I think I know who—‘what’ may be the better word—he is. I rely on Your Majesty’s honor to judge the value of that.”

  “I’m glad you do, since you have no other choice save silence,” Krispos said. “Now sit, holy sir, and tell me your tale.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Gnatios perched on a chair. Krispos sat down beside Iakovitzes on the couch that faced it. Gnatios said, “As I have written, this tale begins three hundred years ago.”

  “Go on,” Krispos said. He was glad he had Iakovitzes with him. He’d enjoyed the histories and chronicles he’d read, but the noble was a truly educated man. He’d know if Gnatios tried to sneak something past.

  Gnatios said, “Surely you know, Your Majesty, of the Empire’s time of troubles, when the barbarians poured in all along our northern and eastern frontiers and stole so many lands from us.”

  “I should,” Krispos said. “The Kubratoi kidnapped me when I was a boy, and I aided Iakovitzes in his diplomatic dealings with Khatrish some years ago. I know less of Thatagush, and worry about it less, too, since its borders don’t touch ours.”

  “Aye, we deal with them as nations now, like Videssos if neither so old nor so mighty,” Gnatios said. “But it was not always so. We had ruled for hundreds of years the provinces they invaded. We—the Empire of Videssos—had a comfortable world then. Save for Makuran, we knew no other nations, only tribes on the Pardrayan steppe and in frigid Halogaland. We were sure Phos favored us, for how could mere tribes do us harm?”

  Iakovitzes scribbled, then held up his tablet. “We found out.”

  “We did indeed,” Gnatios said soberly. “Within ten years of the borders being breached, a third of Videssos’ territory was gone. The barbarians rode where they would, for once past the frontier they found no forces to resist them. Videssos the city was besieged. Skopentzana fell.”

  “Skopentzana?” Krispos frowned. “That’s no city I ever heard of.” Wondering if Gnatios had invented the place, he glanced toward Iakovitzes.

  But Iakovitzes wrote, “It’s ruins now. It lies in what’s Thatagush these days, and the folk there still have but scant use for towns. In its day, though, it was a great city, maybe next greatest in the Empire after Videssos; in no way were more than two towns ahead of it.”

  “Shall I go on?” Gnatios asked when he saw Krispos had finished reading. At Krispos’ nod,
he did: “As I said, Skopentzana fell. From what the few survivors wrote afterward, the sack was fearsome, with all the usual pillage and slaughter and rape magnified by the size of the city and because no one had imagined such a fate could befall him till the day. Among the men who got free was the prelate of the city, one Rhavas.”

  Krispos sketched the sun-circle over his heart. “The good god must have kept him safe.”

  “Under other circumstances, Your Majesty, I might agree with you. As is—well, may I digress briefly?”

  “The whole business so far has seemed pretty pointless,” Krispos said, “so how am I to know when you wander off the track?” The story Gnatios spun was interesting enough—the man had a gift for words—but seemed altogether unconnected to Harvas Black-Robe. If he could do no better, Krispos thought, he’d stay in his monastery till he was ninety.

  “I hope to weave my threads together into a whole garment, Majesty,” Gnatios said.

  “Whole cloth, you mean,” Iakovitzes wrote, but Krispos waved for Gnatios to go on.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. I know you have no special training in theology, but you must be able to see that a catastrophe like the invasion off the steppes brought crisis to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. We had believed—comfortably, again—that just as we went from triumph to triumph in the world, so Phos could not help but triumph in the universe as a whole. That remains our orthodoxy to this day—” Gnatios sketched the sun-sign. “—but it was sorely tested in those times.

  “For, you see, now so many folk made the acquaintance of misfortune and outright evil that they began to doubt Phos’ power. Out of this eventually arose the Balancer heresy, which still holds sway in Khatrish and Thatagush—aye, and even in Agder by Halogaland, which though still Videssian by blood has its own king. But worse than that heresy arose, as well. As I said, Rhavas escaped the sack of Skopentzana.”