The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  Krispos patted his son on the back. “You have to bear in mind, lad, that once upon a time I wasn’t a creaking elder. I had the same yen for good wine and bad women as any other young man.”

  “Yes, Father,” Katakolon said, but not as if he believed it.

  Sighing, Krispos said, “If you have too much trouble picturing me with a zest for life, try to imagine Iakovitzes, say, as a young man. The exercise will do your wits good.”

  He gave Katakolon credit: the youth visibly did try. After a few seconds, he whistled. “He’d have been something, wouldn’t he?”

  “Oh, he was,” Krispos said. “He’s still something, come to that”

  All at once, he wondered if Iakovitzes had ever tried his blandishments on Katakolon. He didn’t think the old lecher would have got anywhere; like his other two sons, his youngest seemed interested only in women. If Iakovitzes had ever tried to seduce Katakolon or one of the other boys, they’d never brought Krispos the tale.

  “Now let me tell you why I interrupted you at a tender moment—” Krispos explained what he had in mind for the most junior Avtokrator.

  “Of course, Father. I’ll come with you, and help as I can,” Katakolon said when he was done; of the three boys, he was the most tractable. Even the stubborn streak he shared with his brothers and Krispos was in him good-natured. “I don’t expect I’ll be busy every moment, and some of the provincial lasses last summer were tastier than I’d have expected away from the capital. When do we start out?”

  “As soon as the roads are dry.” Dry himself, Krispos added, “You won’t be devastating the local girls by leaving quite yet.”

  “All right,” Katakolon said. “In that case, if you’ll excuse me—” He started down the hall, more purpose in his stride than on any mission for his father. Krispos wondered if he’d burned that hot at seventeen. He probably had, but he had almost as much trouble believing it as Katakolon did in placing him at one of Anthimos’ revels.

  LIVANIOS ADDRESSED HIS ASSEMBLED FIGHTERS: “SOON WE FARE forth, both to fight and to advance along the gleaming path. We shall not go alone. By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear our trouble will not be raising men but rather making sure we are not overwhelmed by those who would join us. We shall spread across the countryside like a fire through grassland; no one and nothing can hold us back.”

  The men cheered. By their look, a good many of them were herders from the westlands’ central plateau: lean, weather-beaten, sunbaked men intimately acquainted with grass fires. Now they carried javelins in their hands, not staves. They were not the best-disciplined troops in the world, but fanaticism went a long way toward making up for sloppy formations.

  Phostis cheered when everyone else did. Standing there silent and glum would have got him noticed, and not in a way he wanted. He was trying to cultivate invisibility, the way a farmer cultivated radishes. He wished Livanios would forget he existed.

  The heresiarch was in full spate: “The leeches who live in Videssos the city think they can suck our life’s blood forever. We’ll show them they’re wrong, by the good god, and if the gleaming path leads through the smoking ruins of the palaces built from poor men’s blood, why then, it does.”

  More cheers. Phostis didn’t feel quite such a hypocrite in joining these: the ostentatious wealth the capital held was what had made him flirt with the doctrines of the Thanasioi in the first place. But Livanios’ speech was a harangue and nothing more. If any Avtokrator of recent generations was sensitive to the peasant’s plight, it was Krispos. Phostis was sick of hearing how his father had been taxed off his land, but he knew the experience made Krispos want not to visit it on anyone else.

  “We’ll hang up the fat ecclesiastics by their thumbs, too,” Livanios shouted. “Whatever gold the Emperors don’t get, the clerics do. Has Phos the need for fancy houses?”

  “No!” the men roared back, and Phostis with them. In spite of everything, he still had some sympathy for what Thanasios had preached. He wondered if Livanios could truly say the same. And he wondered still more just how much hold Artapan had on the rebel leader. He was no closer to knowing that for certain than he had been on the day when he and Olyvria first became lovers.

  Whenever she crossed his mind, his blood ran hotter. Digenis would have scolded him, or more likely given up on him as an incorrigible sinner and sensualist. He didn’t care. He wanted her more with every passing day—and he knew she also wanted him.

  They’d managed to join twice more since that first time: once late at night up in his little cell while the guard snored down the hall and once in a quiet corridor carved into the stone beneath the keep. Both couplings were almost as hurried and frantic as the first had been; neither was what Phostis had in mind when he thought of making love. But they inflamed him and Olyvria for more.

  Was what he felt the love of which the romancers sang? He knew little firsthand of love; around the palaces, seduction and hedonism were more often on display. His own father and mother seemed to have got on well, but he’d still been a boy when Dara died. Zaidas and Aulissa were called a love match, but the wizard—aside from being Krispos’ crony, which of itself made him suspect—had to be close to forty: could an old man really be in love?

  Phostis couldn’t tell if he was in love himself. All he knew was that he missed Olyvria desperately, that when they were apart every moment dragged as if it were an hour, that every stolen hour together somehow flashed by like a moment.

  Lost in his own thoughts, he missed Livanios’ last few sentences. They brought loud cheers from the assembled soldiers. Phostis cheered, too, as he had all through the heresiarch’s speech.

  Then one of the fighters who knew who he was turned round and slapped him on the back. “So you’re going to fight with us for the gleaming path, are you, friend?” the fellow boomed. His grin had almost as many gaps as Syagrios’.

  “I’m going to what?” Phostis said foolishly. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his ears: more that he didn’t want to.

  “Sure—like Livanios said just now.” The soldier wrinkled his brow, trying to recall his chief’s exact words. “Take up the blade against maternalism—something like that, anyways.”

  “Materialism,” Phostis corrected before he wondered why he bothered.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” the soldier said happily. “Thank you, friend. By the good god, I’m right glad the Emperor’s son’s taken up with righteousness.”

  Moving as if in a daze, Phostis made his way toward the citadel. Fighters who recognized him kept coming up and congratulating him on taking up arms for the Thanasiot cause. By the time he got inside, he was sore and bruised, while his wits had taken a worse pummeling than his back.

  Livanios was using his name to raise the spirits of the Thanasiot warriors: so much was clear. But life in the palace, while it left Phostis ignorant of love, made him look beneath the surface of machinations with as little effort as he used to breathe.

  Not only would his name spur on the followers of the gleaming path, it would also dismay those who clove to his father. And if he fought alongside the Thanasioi, he might never be reconciled with Krispos.

  Further, Livanios might arrange a hero’s death for him. That would embarrass the Avtokrator as much as having him alive and fighting, and would hurt Krispos a good deal more. And it would serve Livanios’ ends very well indeed.

  Syagrios found Phostis. Phostis might have guessed the ruffian would come looking for him. From the nasty grin on Syagrios’ face, he’d known about Livanios’ scheme before the heresiarch announced it to his men. In fact, Phostis thought with the taut nerves of a man who genuinely has been persecuted, Syagrios might well have come up with it himself.

  “So you’re going to be a man before your mother, are you, stripling?” he said, making cut-and-thrust motions right in front of Phostis’ face. “Go out there and make the gleaming path proud of you, boy.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” Phostis was aware of the ambiguity, but le
t it lay. He did not want to hear Syagrios speak of his mother. He wanted to smash the ruffian for presuming to speak of her. Only a well-founded apprehension that Syagrios would smash him instead kept him from trying it.

  That was yet another thing the romances didn’t talk about. Their heroes always beat the villains just because they were heroes. No writer of romances, Phostis was certain, had ever met Syagrios. For that matter, both sides here thought they were heroes and their foes villains. I swear by the good god I’ll never read another romance again as long as I live, Phostis thought.

  Syagrios said, “I don’t know what you know about weapons, but whatever it is, you better practice it. Whoever you fight ain’t gonna care that you’re the Avtokrator’s brat.”

  “I suppose not,” Phostis said in a hollow voice that set Syagrios laughing anew. He’d actually had some training; his father had thought he’d find it useful. He didn’t mention it. The more hopeless a dub everyone took him for, the less attention people would pay him.

  He went up the black spiral stairway to his little chamber. When he opened the door, his mouth fell open in astonishment: Olyvria waited inside. He was not too surprised, however, to shut the door behind him as fast as he could. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Do you want to get us both caught?”

  She grinned at him. “What could be safer?” she whispered back. “Everyone in the keep was down in the courtyard listening to my father.”

  Phostis wanted to rush to her and take her in his arms, but that brought him up short. “Yes, and do you know what your father said?” he whispered, and went on to explain exactly what Livanios had announced.

  “Oh, no,” Olyvria said, still in a tiny voice. “He wants you dead, then. I prayed he wouldn’t.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Phostis agreed bitterly. “But what can I do about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Olyvria reached out to him. He hurried over to her. Her touch made him, if not forget everything else, then at least reckon it unimportant for as long as he held her. But he remembered how careful they had to be even while her thighs clasped his flanks; what should have been sighs of delight came from both of them as tiny hisses.

  As they’d grown used to doing, they set their clothes to rights as fast as they could when they were through. Not for them the pleasure of lying lazily by each other afterward. “How will we get you out of here?” Phostis whispered. Before Olyvria could say anything, he found the answer for himself: “I’ll go downstairs. Whoever’s out there—probably Syagrios—will follow me. Once we’re gone, you can come down, too.”

  Olyvria nodded. “Yes, that’s very good. It should work; few of the rooms in this hallway have people in them, so I’m not likely to be seen till I’m safely down.” She looked at him with some of her old calculation. He liked the soft looks he usually got from her these days better. But she said, “You wouldn’t have found a plan so fast when we first brought you here.”

  “Maybe not,” he admitted. “I’ve had to take care of a good many things I wasn’t in the habit of doing for myself.” He touched the very tip of her breast through her tunic, just for a moment. “Some of them I like better than others.”

  “You don’t mean I’m your first?” That thought almost startled her into raising her voice; he made an alarmed gesture. But she was already shaking her head. “No, I couldn’t have been.”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “You’re the first who matters, though.”

  She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. “That’s a sweet thing to say. It must not have been easy for you, growing up as you did.”

  He shrugged. He supposed the problem was that he just thought too much. Evripos and especially Katakolon seemed to have had no trouble enjoying themselves immensely. But all that was by the way. He got to his feet. “I’ll leave you now. Listen to make sure everything’s quiet before you come out.” He took a step toward the door, stopped, then turned back to Olyvria. “I love you.”

  Her arched eyebrows lifted. “You hadn’t said that before. I love you—but then you know I must, or I wouldn’t be here in spite of my father.”

  “Yes.” Phostis thought he knew that, but he’d been raised to see plots, so sometimes he found them even when they weren’t there. Here, though, he had to—and wanted to—take the chance.

  He stepped into the hallway. Sure enough, there sat Syagrios. The ruffian leered at him. “So you found out you can’t hide in there, did you? Now what are you going to do, head down and celebrate that you got turned into a soldier?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Phostis answered. He had the somber satisfaction of seeing Syagrios’ jaw sag. After lighting a taper to keep from killing himself on the dark stairway, he headed down toward the ground floor of the keep. Syagrios muttered under his breath but followed. Phostis had all he could do to keep from whistling on the stairs: letting Syagrios know he’d put one over on him wouldn’t do.

  OUTSIDE THE SOUTHERN END OF THE GREAT DOUBLE WALL that warded the landward side of Videssos the city lay a broad stretch of meadow on which the Empire’s cavalry practiced their maneuvers. Fresh new grass poked through the mud and the dead grayish remains of last year’s growth as Krispos came out to watch his soldiers exercise.

  “Don’t be too hard on them too soon, Your Majesty,” Sarkis urged. “They’re still ragged from being cooped up through the winter.”

  “I know that—we have done this business a few times before,” Krispos answered, amiably enough. “But we’ll go on campaign as soon as weather and supplies allow, and if they’re still ragged then, it will cost lives and maybe battles.”

  “They won’t be.” Sarkis put grim promise into his voice. Krispos smiled; he’d hoped to hear that note.

  A company rode hard toward upright bales of hay that simulated an enemy. They drew up eighty or ninety yards away, plied the targets with arrows as rapidly as they could draw bow, and then, at an officer’s command, yanked out their swords and charged the imaginary foe with fierce and sanguinary roars.

  The iron blades glittering in the bright sun made a fine martial spectacle. Nonetheless, Krispos turned to Sarkis and remarked, “This whole business of war would be a lot easier if the Thanasioi didn’t fight back any harder than those bales.”

  Sarkis’ doughy face twitched in a grin. “Isn’t it the truth, Your Majesty? Every general wants every campaign to be a walkover, but you can make yourself a reputation that will live forever if you get one of those in a lifetime. The trouble is, you see, the chap on the other side wants his walkover, too, and doesn’t much care to cooperate in yours. Rude and inconsiderate of him, if you ask me.”

  “At the very least,” Krispos agreed. After the company of archers reassembled well beyond the hay bales, another unit approached and pelted the targets with javelins. Farther away, a regiment split in two to get in some more realistic mounted swordwork. They tried not to hurt one another in practices like that, but Krispos knew the healers would have some extra work tonight.

  “Their spirits seem as high as you could hope for,” Sarkis said judiciously. “No hesitation about going out for another crack at the heretics, anyhow.” He used the word with no irony whatever, though his own beliefs were anything but orthodox.

  Krispos didn’t twit him about it, not today. After some thought, he’d figured out the difference between the Vaspurakaners’ heterodoxy and that of the Thanasioi. The “princes” might not want any part of that version of the faith that emanated from Videssos the city, but they also weren’t interested in imposing their version on Videssos the city. Krispos could live with that.

  He said, “Where do you suppose the Thanasioi will pop up this season?”

  “Wherever they can make the worst nuisances of themselves,” Sarkis answered at once. “Livanios proved how dangerous he is last year. He won’t hurt us in a small way if he has the chance to hurt us in a big one.”

  Since that accorded all too well with Krispos’ view of the situation, he only
grunted by way of reply. Not far away, a youngster in gilded chain mail rode up to the hay-bale targets and flung light spears at them. Katakolon’s aim wasn’t bad, but could have been better.

  Krispos cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Everybody knows you can use your lance, son, but you’ve got to get the javelin down, too!”

  Katakolon’s head whipped around. He spotted his father and stuck out his tongue at him. Ribald howls rose from the horsemen who heard. Sarkis’ chuckle held dry amusement. “You’ll give him a reputation that way. I suppose it’s what you have in mind.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. If you’re a lecher at my age, you’re a laughingstock, but young men pride themselves on how hard they can go—so to speak.”

  “So to speak, indeed.” Sarkis chuckled again, even more dryly than before. Then he sighed. “We ought to get some practice in ourselves. Battles take funny turns sometimes.”

  “So we should.” Krispos sighed, too. “The good god knows I’ll be sore for a long time after I start working, though. I begin to see I won’t be able to go out on a campaign forever.”

  “You?” Sarkis ran a hand along his own corpulent frame. “Your Majesty, you’re still svelte. I’ve put almost another me inside my mail here.”

  Krispos made an imperial decision. “I’ll start exercising—tomorrow.” The trouble with being Avtokrator was that none of the demands of the job went away when you concentrated on any one thing. You had to plug leaks everywhere at once, or some of them would get beyond the plugging stage while you weren’t watching.

  He went back to the palaces to make sure he didn’t fall too far behind on matters of trade and commerce. He was examining customs reports from Prista, the imperial outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea, when someone tapped on the door to the study. He glanced up, expecting to see Barsymes or another of the chamberlains. But it was none of them—it was Drina.