The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  He didn’t know what he wanted, that is, until the fellow who looked like a thief came out with a loaf of black bread, some runny yellow cheese, and a jar of the sort that commonly held cheap wine. Then his growling stomach and spit-filled mouth loudly made their wishes known.

  He ate like a starving badger. The wine mounted from his belly to his head. He felt more nearly human that he had since he was drugged, but that wasn’t saying much. He asked, “May I have a cloth or a sponge and some water to wash myself? And some clean clothes, if there are any?”

  The skinny fellow looked at Syagrios. Syagrios, for all his bluster, looked at Olyvria. She nodded. The skinny fellow said to Phostis, “You’re my size, near enough. You can wear one of my old tunics. I’ll get it. There’s a pitcher and a sponge on a stick in the privy.”

  Phostis waited until he had the rough, colorless homespun garment in his hands, then headed for the privy. The robe he wore was worth dozens of the one he put on, but he made the exchange with nothing but delight.

  He looked down at himself as he came out of the privy. He was no peacock, like some of the young men who swaggered around Videssos the city displaying themselves and their finery on holidays. Even if he’d had such longings—as Katakolon did, to some degree—Krispos wouldn’t have let him indulge them. Having been born on a farm, Krispos still kept the poor man’s scorn for fancy clothes he couldn’t afford himself. Nonetheless, Phostis was sure he’d never worn anything so plain in his whole life.

  The thin man pointed at him. “See! Without the embroidered robes, he looks like anybody else. That’s what Thanasios says, bless him—take away the riches that separate one man from another and we’re all pretty much the same. What we have to do is make sure nobody has riches. The lord with the great and good mind will love us for that.”

  “Other way to make us all the same is let everybody have riches.” Syagrios cast a covetous eye on the befouled robe Phostis had been so happy to remove. “Clean that up and it’d bring a pretty piece of change.”

  “No,” Olyvria said. “Try to sell it and you shout ‘Here I am!’ to Krispos’ spies. Livanios ordered us to destroy everything Phostis had when we took him, and that’s what we’ll do.”

  “All right, all right,” Syagrios said, voice surly. “Still seems a waste, though.”

  The skinny man rounded on him. “Your theology’s not all it should be. The goal is the destruction of riches, says Thanasios, not the equality, for Phos best loves those who give up all they have for the sake of his truth.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Syagrios said. “If all were alike, poor or rich, we wouldn’t be jealous of each other, and if jealousy ain’t a sin, what is, eh?” He set hands on hips and smiled triumphantly at the thin man.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the other answered hotly, ready as any Videssian to do battle for the sake of his dogmas.

  “No, you won’t.” Olyvria’s tone reminded Phostis of the one Krispos used when delivering judgment from the imperial throne. “The forces of materialism are stronger than we are. If we quarrel among ourselves, we are lost…so we shall not quarrel.”

  Syagrios and the skinny fellow both glared at her, but neither one of them carried the argument any further. Phostis was impressed. He wondered what power Olyvria had over her henchmen. Whatever it was, it worked. Maybe she carried an amulet…or would a heretic’s charm be efficacious? Then again, were the Thanasioi heretics or the most perfect of the orthodox?

  Before Phostis could formulate an answer to either of those questions, the skinny man jerked a thumb in his direction and said, “What do we do with this one tonight?”

  “Keep watch on him,” Olyvria said. “Tomorrow we move on.”

  “I’m going to tie him up, too, just in case,” the skinny fellow said. “If he gets loose, the imperial executioners have a lot of ways to keep you alive when you’d rather be dead.”

  “I don’t think we need to do that,” Olyvria said. This time, though, her tone was doubtful, and she looked to Syagrios for support. The short, muscular man shook his head; he sided with the thin fellow. Olyvria’s mouth twisted, but she gave over arguing. With a shrug, she turned to Phostis and said, “I think you’d be safe unbound, but they don’t trust you enough yet. Try not to hate us for it.”

  Phostis also shrugged. “I won’t deny I’ve thought long and hard about becoming one of you Thanasioi, but I never thought I’d be…recruited…this way. If you expect me to be happy about it, I fear you’re in for disappointment.”

  “You’re honest, at any rate,” Olyvria said.

  Syagrios snorted. “He’s but a babe, same as you, lass. He don’t believe nothin’ bad can happen to him, not in his guts, not in his balls. You’re young, you say what you want and don’t give a fart for what happens next on account of you think you’re gonna live forever anyways.”

  That was the most words Phostis had heard from Syagrios at any one time. Try as he would, he couldn’t keep his face straight. His laughter had a high, hysterical edge to it, but it was laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Syagrios growled. “You laugh at me, you’ll go to the ice. I’ve sent better and tougher men there than you, by the good god.”

  When Phostis tried to stop laughing, he found it wasn’t easy. He had to take a deep breath, hold it, and let it out slowly before the fit would pass. At last, carefully, he said, “I will apologize, Syagrios. It’s just that—that—I never expected you to talk like—like—my father.” He held his breath again to stave off another wild attack of laughter.

  “Huh.” Syagrios’ smile revealed several broken teeth and a couple of gaps. “Yeah, maybe that is funny. I guess if you’ve been around awhile, you start thinkin’ one kind o’ way.”

  Before Phostis could answer that or even think about it very much, the skinny man came up to him with a fresh length of rope. “Put your hands behind you,” he said. “I won’t tie ’em as tight as they was before. I—”

  Phostis made his move. The romances he’d read insisted a man whose cause was just could overcome several villains. The writers of those romances had never run into the skinny fellow. Phostis’ eyes must have given him away, for the thin man kicked him square in the crotch almost before he managed to raise an arm. He fell in a moaning heap and threw up most of the food he’d eaten. He knew he ought not to writhe and clutch at himself, but he could not help it. He’d never known such pain.

  “You were right,” Olyvria told the skinny man, her voice curiously neutral. “He needs to be tied tonight.”

  Skinny nodded. He waited for Phostis’ thrashings to cease, then said, “Get up, you. Don’t be stupid about it, either, or I’ll give you another dose.”

  Swiping at his mouth with the sleeve of his homespun tunic, Phostis struggled to his feet. He had needed to get used to Digenis’ addressing him as lad rather than young Majesty; now he hurt too much to bridle at being roughly called you. At the thin man’s gesture, he put his hands behind his back and let himself be tied. Maybe the rope wasn’t as tight as it had been before. It was none too loose, either.

  His kidnappers brought out a blanket that smelled of horse and draped it over him once he’d lain down. The two men went inside the farmhouse, leaving Olyvria behind for the first watch. She had both a hunting bow and a knife that would have made a decent shortsword.

  “You keep an eye on him,” Syagrios called from the doorway. “If he tries to get loose, hurt him and holler for us. We can’t let him get away.”

  “I know,” Olyvria said. “He shan’t.”

  By the way she handled the bow, Phostis could see she knew what to do with it. He had no doubt she’d shoot him to keep him from escaping. With the dull, sickening ache still in his stones, he wasn’t going anywhere anyhow, not for a while. He said as much to Olyvria.

  “You were stupid to try to break away there,” she answered, again in that odd, dispassionate tone.

  “So I found out.” The inside of Phostis’ mouth tasted like something t
hat had just been scraped out of a sewer.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Because I thought I might succeed, I suppose.” Phostis thought a little, then added, “Syagrios would probably say because I’m young and stupid.” What he thought about both Syagrios and his opinions he would not repeat to a woman, not even one who’d shown him her nakedness, who’d drugged him and stolen him.

  He could, at the moment, think of Olyvria’s nakedness with absolute detachment. He knew he wasn’t ruined for life, but he certainly was ruined for the evening. He wriggled around a little on the hard-packed ground, trying to find some position less uncomfortable than most of the others.

  “I’m sorry,” Olyvria said, as contritely as if they were friends. “Did you want to rest?”

  “What I want to do and what I can do aren’t the same,” he answered.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help that,” she said, sharply now. “If you’d not been so foolish, I might have managed something, but since you were—” She shook her head. “Syagrios and our other friend are right—we have to get you safe to Livanios. I know he’ll be delighted to see you.”

  “To have me in his hands, you mean,” Phostis retorted. “And what puts you so high in Livanios’ council? How can you know what he will or won’t be?”

  “It’s not hard,” Olyvria answered. “He’s my father.”

  ZAIDAS LOOKED WORN. HE’D RIDDEN HARD TO CATCH UP WITH the army. Still in the saddle, he bowed his head to Krispos. “I regret, Your Majesty, that I have had no success in locating your son by sorcerous means. I shall accept without complaint any penalty you see fit to exact for my failure.”

  “Very well, then,” Krispos said. Zaidas stiffened, awaiting the Avtokrator’s judgment. Krispos delivered it in his most imperial voice: “I order you henceforth to be forcibly prevented from mouthing such nonsense.” He started talking normally again. “Don’t you think I know you’re doing everything you know how to do?”

  “You’re generous, Your Majesty,” the wizard said, not hiding his relief. He took the reins in his left hand for a moment so he could pound his right fist down onto his thigh. “You can’t imagine how this eats at me. I’m used to success, by the lord with the great and good mind. Knowing a mage out there can thwart me makes me furious. I want to find out who he is and where he is so I can thrash him with my bare hands.”

  His obvious anger made Krispos smile. “A man who believes he can’t be beaten is most often proved right” But his grin soon slipped. “Unless, of course, he’s up against something rather more than a man. If you were wrong back in the city and we do, in fact, face Harvas—”

  “That thought crossed my mind,” Zaidas said. “Being beaten by one of that sort would surely salve my self-respect, for who among mortal men could stand alone against him? Before I rejoined you, I ran the same sorcerous tests I’d used at the Sorcerers’ Collegium, and others besides. Whoever he may be, my foe is not Harvas.”

  “Good,” Krispos said. “That means Phostis does not lie under Harvas’ hands—a fate I’d wish on no one, friend or foe.”

  “There we agree,” Zaidas answered. “We will all be better off if Harvas Black-Robe is never again seen among living men. But knowing he is not the agency of your son’s disappearance hardly puts us closer to learning who is responsible.”

  “Responsible? Who but the Thanasioi? That much I assume. What puzzles me—and you as well, obviously—is how they’re able to hide him.” Krispos paused, plucked at his beard, and listened over again in his mind to what Zaidas had just said. After a moment’s thought, he slowly went on, “Knowing Harvas isn’t responsible for stealing Phostis lifts a weight from my heart. Have you any way to learn by sorcery who is to blame?”

  The mage bared his teeth in a frustrated grimace that had nothing to do with a smile save in the twist of his lips. “Majesty, my sorcery can’t even find your son, let alone who’s to blame for absconding with him.”

  “I understand that,” Krispos said. “Not quite what I meant. Sometimes in ruling I find problems where, if I tried to solve them all at once with one big, sweeping law, a lot of people would rise up in revolt. But they still need solving, so I go about it a little at a time, with a small change here, another one there, still another two years later. Anyone who thinks he can solve a complicated mess in one fell swoop is a fool, if you ask me. Problems that grow up over years don’t go away in a day.”

  “True enough, Your Majesty, and wise, too.”

  “Ha!” Krispos said. “If you’re a farmer, it’s something you’d better know.”

  “As may be,” Zaidas answered. “I wasn’t going to go on with flattery, believe me. I was just going to say I didn’t see how your principle, though admirable, applies in this case.”

  “Someone’s magic is keeping you from learning where Phostis is—am I right?” Krispos didn’t wait for Zaidas’ nod; he knew he was right. He continued, “Instead of looking for the lad for the moment, can you use your magic to learn what sort of sorcery shields him from you? If you can find out who’s helping to conceal Phostis, that will tell us something we hadn’t known and may help our physical search. Well? Can it be done?”

  Zaidas hesitated thoughtfully. At last he said, “The art of magecraft lost a great one when you were born without the talent, Your Majesty. Your mind, if you will forgive a crude comparison, is as twisty as a couple of mating eels.”

  “That’s what comes of sitting on the imperial throne,” Krispos answered. “Either it twists you or it breaks you. Does the idea have merit, then?”

  “It…may,” Zaidas said. “It certainly is a procedure I had not considered. I would not promise results, not before trial and not out here away from the resources of the Sorcerers’ Collegium. If it works, it will require sorcery of the most delicate sort, for I would not want to alert my quarry to his being scrutinized in this fashion.”

  “No, that wouldn’t do.” Krispos reached out and set a hand on Zaidas’ arm for a moment. “If you think this worth pursuing, eminent and sorcerous sir, then do what you can. I have faith in your ability—”

  “More than I do, right now,” Zaidas said, but Krispos neither believed him nor thought he believed himself.

  The Avtokrator said, “If the idea turns out not to work, we’re no worse off: am I right?”

  “I think so, Your Majesty,” the wizard answered. “Let me explore what I have here and the techniques I might use. I’m sorry I can’t give you a quick answer as to the practicability of your scheme, but it really does require more contemplation and research. I promise I’ll inform you as soon as I either see a way to attempt it or discover I have not the skill, knowledge, or tools to undertake it.”

  “I couldn’t ask for more.” Halfway through the sentence, Krispos found himself talking to Zaidas’ back. The mage had swung his horse away. When he got hold of an idea, he worried it between his teeth—and ceased to worry about protocol or even politeness. In Krispos’ mind, his long record of success would have justified far worse lapses of behavior than that.

  The Avtokrator soon forced magical schemes and even worry about Phostis to the back of his mind. Early that afternoon, the imperial army rode into Harasos, which let him see firsthand the devastation the Thanasioi had worked on the supply dumps there. In spite of himself, he was impressed. They’d done a job that would have warmed the heart of the most exacting military professional.

  Of course, the local quartermasters had made matters easier for them, too. Probably because the warehouses inside the shabby little town’s shabby little wall were inadequate, sacks of grain and stacks of cut firewood had been stored outside. Burned black smears on the ground and a lingering smell of smoke showed where they’d rested.

  Next to the black smears was an enormous purple one. The broken crockery still in the middle of it said it had been the army’s wine ration. Now the men would be reduced to drinking water before long, which would increase both grumbling and diarrhea.

>   Krispos clicked his tongue between his teeth, sorrowing at the waste. The country hereabouts was not rich; collecting this surplus had taken years of patient effort. It might have seen the district through a famine or, as here, kept the army going without its having to forage on the countryside.

  Sarkis rode up and looked over the damage with Krispos. The cavalry general pointed to what had been a corral. “See? They had beeves waiting for us, too.”

  “So they did.” Krispos sighed. “Now the Thanasioi will eat their share of them.”

  “I thought they had scruples against feasting on meat,” Sarkis said.

  “That’s right, so they do. Well, they’ve slaughtered some”—the Avtokrator wrinkled his nose at the stench from the bloated carcasses inside the ruined fence—“and driven off the rest. We’ll have no use from them, that’s certain.”

  “Aye. Too bad.” By his tone, Sarkis worried more about filling his own ample belly than the effect of the raid on the army as a whole.

  “We’ll be able to bring in a certain amount of food by sea at Nakoleia,” Krispos said. “By the good god, though, that’ll be a long supply line for us to maintain. Will your men be able to protect the wagons as they make their way toward us?”

  “Some will get through, Your Majesty. Odds are most will get through. If they hit us, though, we’ll lose some,” Sarkis answered. “And we’ll lose men guarding those wagons, too. They’ll be gone from your fighting force as sure as if the rebels shot ’em all in the throat.”

  “Yes, that’s true, too. Rude of you to remind me of it, though.” Krispos knew how big a force he could bring to bear against the Thanasioi; he’d campaigned enough to make a good estimate of how many men Sarkis would have to pull from that force to protect the supply line against raiders. Less certain was how many warriors the rebels could array in line of battle. When he’d set out from Videssos the city, he’d thought he had enough men to win a quick victory. That looked a lot less likely now.