The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  As soon as Pityos came into view, the travelers all squinted and shaded their eyes to peer ahead. Phostis wondered how he’d feel to see a forest of masts in the harbor. But unless his eyes were tricking him, though the town seemed to boast fishing boats aplenty, none of them were the big imperial merchantmen that hauled troops and horses.

  Syagrios grunted suspiciously. “Your old man is up to something sneaky,” he told Phostis, as if it were the latter’s fault. “Maybe the ships are lying out to sea so they can come in at nightfall and take folk by surprise, or maybe he’s decided to have them make land at Tavas or Nakoleia after all.”

  “Livanios’ Makuraner mage should have been able to divine where they’d put in,” Phostis said.

  “Naah.” Syagrios made a slashing gesture of contempt with his hand. “Livanios took him on because his sorcery fuddles Videssian wizards, but it works the other way round, too, worse luck—some days he’s lucky to find his way out of bed, that one is.” He paused to give Phostis a meditative stare. “How did you know he’s from Makuran?”

  “By his accent,” Phostis answered, as innocently as he could. “And when I recognized that, I remembered I’d seen Makuraner envoys at court who wore caftans like his.”

  “Oh. All right.” Syagrios relaxed. Phostis breathed easier, too; if he’d let Artapan’s name fall from his lips, he’d have thrown himself straight into the soup pot.

  The sentries lounging in front of the gates of Pityos were Thanasioi, longer on ferocity than discipline. When Syagrios greeted them in the name of the gleaming path, grins creased their grim faces in unexpected directions. They waved him and his companions into the city.

  Pityos was smaller than Nakoleia; as Phostis had thought Nakoleia little better than a village, he’d expected to feel cramped in Pityos as well. But after some months in Etchmiadzin, much of that time mewed up inside the fortress, he found Pityos spacious enough to suit him.

  Syagrios rented an upstairs room in a tavern near the harbor so he could keep lookout and spy imperial ships before they started spewing out their men. Olyvria stayed quiet all through the spirited haggle that got the room; Phostis couldn’t tell whether the taverner thought her a beardless youth or knew she was a woman but didn’t care.

  The chamber got crowded when a potboy fetched in a third straw pallet, but remained roomier than Phostis’ cubicle had been with him there by himself. He unslung his bedroll and, with a sigh of relief, let it fall to the mattress he’d chosen.

  Syagrios leaned out the window to examine the harbor at close range. He shook his head. “Bugger me with a pinecone if I know where they are. They ought to be here, unless I miss my guess altogether.” By a slight swagger, he managed to indicate how unlikely that was.

  Olyvria picked up the chamber pot, which had been shoved into a corner when the new set of bedding arrived. She looked down into it, made a face, then walked over to the window as if to throw its contents out onto the street—and any unwary passersby below. Instead, when she came up behind Syagrios, she raised the chamber pot high and smashed it over his head.

  The pot was of heavy earthenware; no doubt she’d hoped he would sag silently and easily into unconsciousness. But Syagrios was made of stern stuff. He staggered and groaned out, blood running down his face, turned shakily on Olyvria.

  Phostis felt his heart beat—once, twice—while he gaped dumbfounded on what she’d done. Then he unfroze. He grabbed Syagrios by the shoulder and hit the ruffian in the face as hard as he could with his left fist. Syagrios lurched backward. He tried to bring up his hands to protect himself or even to grapple with Phostis, but he moved as if in the slowness of a dream. Phostis hit him again, and again. His eyes rolled up in his head; he collapsed to the floor.

  Olyvria seized the knife on his belt and held it above his neck. Phostis grabbed her wrist. “Have you gone mad?” she cried.

  “No. We’ll take his weapons and we’ll tie him up,” he answered. “But I owe him enough for this”—he touched his healing shoulder—“that I don’t care to slit his throat.”

  She made a face but didn’t argue, instead turning the dagger on the linen mattress covers to cut strips of cloth for bonds. Syagrios grunted and stirred when Phostis rolled him over to tie his hands behind his back. Phostis hit him again, and also tied cloth strips over his mouth for a gag. Then he tied the ruffian’s ankles together as tightly as he could.

  “Give me the dagger,” he said suddenly.

  Olyvria pressed it into his hand. “Change your mind?”

  “No.” Phostis slit the money pouch Syagrios wore on his belt. Half a dozen goldpieces and a handful of silver spilled out. He scooped up the coins and stuffed them into his own belt pouch. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  “All right,” Olyvria said. “Whatever you intend to do, you’d best be quick about it. The good god only knows how long he’ll lie quiet there, and he won’t be pleased with us for what we’ve done.”

  That, Phostis was sure, was an understatement. “Come on,” he said. They hurried out of the chamber. When they came down into the all-but-deserted taproom, the taverner raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Phostis walked over to him, took out a goldpiece, and set it on the bar. “You didn’t see us come out. You were in the back room. You’ve never seen us.”

  The taverner’s hand covered the coin. “Did somebody say something?” he asked, looking past Phostis. “This place is so empty, I’m starting to hear phantoms.”

  “I hope it’s enough,” Phostis said as he and Olyvria walked rapidly down to the harbor.

  “So do I,” Olyvria said. “Best if we don’t have to find out. I hope you have something along those lines in mind.”

  “I do.” Phostis took deep, happy gulps of seaside air. The salt tang and the aroma of stale fish reminded him at a level almost below consciousness of the way things smelled around the palaces. For the first time in months, he felt at home.

  A fisherman leapt from the little boat he’d just tied to a pier. His catch was similarly minimal, a couple of buckets of mackerel and other, less interesting, fare. “Good day,” Phostis called to him.

  The fisherman was closer to sixty than fifty, and looked deathly tired. “Maybe you think so,” he said. “It is a day. It is done. It is enough.”

  Phostis said, “I will give you two goldpieces for that boat, and another to forget you ever sold it to me.” The boat could not have been worth more than a goldpiece and a half. Phostis didn’t care. He had the money and he needed to be out of Pityos as fast as he could. He pressed ahead: “Does that make it a better day, if not a good one?”

  He pulled out the three bright gold coins from his pouch and held them in the palm of his hand so they sparkled into the fisherman’s face. The fellow stared as if he could not believe his eyes. He set down one of his buckets of fish. “Young man,” he said slowly, “if you mock me, I shall thrash you, grizzled though I am. By the lord with the great and good mind I swear it.”

  “I don’t mock,” Phostis answered. “Have you hammocks aboard there, and your lines and nets?”

  “Only one hammock—I fish alone,” the fisherman answered, “but there are blankets so the other of you can bed down on deck. And aye, the rest of the tackle is there. See for yourself before you buy—I would not have you say I cheated you, though you must know you are cheating yourself. There’s fresh water from yesterday in the tuns, too. You can sail a good ways without coming in to land, if that’s what you aim to do.”

  “Never mind what I aim to do.” The less Phostis told the fisherman, the better. He walked along the dock and peered into the boat. The nets lay neatly coiled at the bow; lines with hooks on them were wrapped between pegs on one side of the tiny cabin behind the mast. A pair of long sweeps lay on the deck. He nodded to himself and gave the fisherman the goldpieces. “You keep it shipshape.”

  “And if I don’t, who’ll do it for me?” the man answered.

  Phostis handed Olyvria down into the boat, then got in himself
and put the sweeps in the oarlocks. “Would you cast off the line?” he called to the fisherman.

  The fellow was still staring at the gold coins. He started slightly before he obeyed. Grunting with effort, Phostis worked the sweeps. The fishing boat slowly backed away from the pier. Its former owned seemed glad to have seen the last of it. He picked up his buckets and walked into town without a backward glance.

  When Phostis had put enough distance between himself and the dock, he let down the sail from its yard. It was, like most Videssian sails, a simple square rig, not much good for sailing against the wind but fine with it. The wind blew out of the west. Phostis wanted to sail east. As long as the wind held, he’d have no problems.

  He turned to Olyvria. “Do you know anything about fishing?”

  “No, not much, not boats, either,” she answered. “Do you?”

  “Enough,” he said. “I can manage the boat as long as the weather doesn’t get too rough. And I can fish, too, even if the gear here isn’t exactly what I’m used to. I learned from my father.” It was, he thought, the first time he’d ever simply acknowledged that Krispos had taught him something worth knowing.

  “Good for him and good for you.” Olyvria watched the harbor of Pityos recede off to the starboard side of the stern. That means we won’t starve right away?”

  “I hope so,” Phostis said, “though you never can tell with fish. If we have to put in to shore to feed ourselves, I still have some of Syagrios’ money left.” He slapped the pouch that hung from his belt.

  Olyvria nodded. “That sounds fine to me. What do you plan to do? Sail along the coast until you find where the imperial fleet really is?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’d intended to sail straight to Videssos the city. I can find out more about what’s going on there than anywhere else, and then head straight out to the main body of the army. My father will be there, and I ought to join him. If I hadn’t intended to do that, what point to leaving the Thanasioi?”

  “None, I suppose.” Olyvria looked back at Pityos again. Already it seemed a toy town, the buildings shrunk to the size of those a woodcarver might shape for his children to play with. Quietly, without looking back to him, she asked, “And what do you intend to do about me?”

  “Why—” Phostis shut his mouth with a snap. The question was too pointed to answer before he considered it. After a moment, he went on, “I hadn’t thought so far ahead yet. The most that had occurred to me was that for the next few days we’d finally be able to make love without worry about someone catching us while we were at it.”

  She smiled, but her eyes were still on Pityos. “Yes, we’ll be able to do that, if it’s what you want. But what about afterward? What happens when you go to the palaces in Videssos the city? What then, young Majesty?”

  At Etchmiadzin, no one had called him that except in mockery or the false courtesy that was worse. Now Olyvria reminded him of everything to which he’d be returning: the eunuchs, the ceremonial, the rank. He also remembered, as he had not lately, that she’d kidnapped and humiliated him. She, plainly, had never forgotten. The question she’d asked him was pointed indeed.

  Where she looked back across the water toward everything she was leaving, he looked out past the fishing boat’s bow at what lay ahead. Slowly he said, “You stole me out of the camp, true. But if it hadn’t been for you just now, I wouldn’t have got free of Pityos, either. As far as I can reckon us, that puts us at quits there—but still leaves everything else between us.”

  “Which means?” Olyvria still sounded—apprehensive was the word, Phostis decided after a little thought. And no wonder. Until the fishing boat headed out onto the Videssian Sea, she’d been the dominant one, and set the terms of their dealings with each other. She’d kidnapped him, at Etchmiadzin she’d had the power of her father and the Thanasioi behind her…but now she’d committed herself to sailing into what literally was, or would be, his dominion. If he wanted vengeance, it was his for the taking.

  “If you like,” he said, “I’ll put in to shore at any deserted beach you like and let you off there. I swear by the lord with the great and good mind I’ll do everything in my power to keep my father from ever coming after you. Or—”

  “Or what?” She fairly snapped at him. Yes, she was nervous about how things had changed.

  He took a deep breath. “Or you can stay with me till we get to Videssos the city, and for as long as you care to after that. For the rest of our lives, I hope.”

  She studied him, wondering, no doubt, if this was but one more trap to make eventual revenge sweeter. “You mean it,” she said at last, and then, “Of course I will,” and then, “But what will your father say?”

  “He’ll probably have kittens,” Phostis said cheerfully. “So what? I’m of a man’s years, so he can’t make me put you aside. And besides, people don’t always remember these days—it’s been a long time, after all—but my mother was Anthimos’ Empress before she was my father’s. Since I was born less than a year after my father took the throne, you can see his ways there weren’t perfectly regular, either.”

  Phostis listened to that sentence again in his mind. As a matter of fact, he’d been born quite a bit less than a year after Krispos became Avtokrator. He hadn’t really thought about how much less till just now. He wondered if Krispos had sired him…or Anthimos. By his birthdate, either was possible.

  Maybe he frowned, for Olyvria said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and then again, more firmly, “Nothing.” Anthimos wasn’t around anymore to claim him and, even if Krispos never had quite warmed to him—all at once, he wondered if he saw a new reason for that—he’d named him junior Avtokrator before he was out of swaddling clothes. Krispos wouldn’t dispossess him of the succession now, especially when he’d escaped from danger by his own efforts—and those of Olyvria.

  She was looking off to starboard again. Land now was just a strip of green and occasional brown on the horizon there; they were too far out to sea to make out any detail. Smiling, she turned to Phostis. “If nothing’s wrong, you can prove it.”

  He started to say, “How am I supposed to do that?” Before he got out more than a couple of words, she took off her hat, shook down her hair, and then pulled her tunic up over her head. Sure enough, he found a way to show her everything was all right.

  “YOUR MAJESTY!” THAT WAS ZAIDAS, CALLING FROM OUTSIDE the imperial pavilion before the army got moving on a day full of muggy heat. “I’ve news, Your Majesty!”

  Inside the pavilion, Krispos was wearing a decidedly unimperial pair of linen drawers and nothing more. To the ice with ceremony, he thought, and called, “Well, come in and tell it, then.” He smiled at Zaidas’ pop-eyed expression. “Never mind the proskynesis, sorcerous sir. Just brush aside the mosquito netting and let me know what you’ve learned.”

  Zaidas inhaled portentously. “May it please Your Majesty, my sorcery shows your son Phostis has traveled from Etchmiadzin down to Pityos on the coast.”

  “Has he?” Krispos growled. As usual with news prefaced by that formula, it pleased him not at all. “Bloody good thing I ordered the fleet to Tavas, then. The only reason I can find for him to go down to the port is to try and forestall us. But Livanios sent him to the wrong place, by Phos.” He smacked one fist into the other palm. “The Thanasioi have spies among us, sure enough, but they didn’t learn enough, not this time.”

  “No, Your Majesty,” Zaidas agreed. He hesitated, then went on, “Your Majesty, I might add that Phostis’ sorcerous trace, if you will forgive an inexact expression, has itself become inexact.”

  “More interference from that accursed Makuraner.” Krispos made it statement, not question.

  But Zaidas shook his head. “I think not, Your Majesty. It’s almost as if the trace is attenuated by—water, perhaps. I’m puzzled to come up with any other explanation, yet the heretics would scarcely send Phostis out by sea, would they?”

  “Not a chance,” Krispos said, his voice
flat. “Livanios isn’t such a fool; I wish to Phos he were. Keep searching. The lord with the great and good mind willing, you’ll come up with something that makes better sense. Believe me, sorcerous sir, I still have full confidence in you.”

  “More than I have in myself sometimes.” Zaidas shook his head. “I’ll do my best for you.”

  Krispos started sweating hard as soon as he put on his gilded mail shirt. He sighed; summer felt as if it were here already. He went out to stand in line with the soldiers for his morning bowl of porridge. The cooks never knew which line he’d pick. The food in all of them was better for it. This morning, for instance, the barley porridge was thick with onions and cloves of garlic, and almost every spoonful had a bit of chopped ham with an intensely smoky flavor.

  He emptied the bowl. “If I’d eaten this well on my farm, I’d never have wanted to come to Videssos the city,” he remarked.

  Several of the soldiers nodded. Life on a farm, as Krispos knew, was seldom easy. That was one of the big reasons men left the country: if nothing else, soldiers ate regularly. But while farm work was harder day in and day out, soldiers sometimes earned their keep harder than any man who lived off the land.

  The army’s discipline, not bad when the men set out from the capital, had improved steadily since. Everyone knew his place, and went to it with a minimum of fuss. The cooks’ kettles went back onto the supply wagons, the troopers mounted their horses, and the army pushed on through the lowlands toward Tavas.

  Krispos rode at the head of the main body, a few hundred yards behind the vanguard. Peasants looked up from the fields in wonder as he went by, as if he were some kind of being altogether different from themselves. Had Anthimos’ father Rhaptes ever happened to parade past the village where Krispos had grown to manhood, he was sure he would have gaped the same way.

  A little before noon, a messenger on a lathered, blowing horse caught up with the army from behind. The animal gulped in great drafts of air as the fellow brought it down to a slow trot beside the Avtokrator’s horse. He pulled out a sealed tube of oiled leather and handed it to Krispos. “From the city, Your Majesty.”