Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  “Beshrew me, I’ve forgotten the rest,” he mourned and hung his head in shame.

  After the imperial capital’s broad straight streets paved with cobblestones or flags and its efficient underground drainage system, Prista came as something of a shock. The main thoroughfare was hard-packed dirt. It zigzagged like an alley and was hardly wider than one. Sewage flowed in a channel down the center. Gorgidas saw a nomad undo his trousers and urinate in the channel; no one paid him any mind.

  The Greek shook his head. In Elis, where he had grown up, such things were commonplace. The cry of “Exito! Here it comes!” warned pedestrians that a fresh load of slops was about to be thrown out. But the Romans had better notions of sanitation, and in their greater cities the Videssians did, too. Here on the frontier they did not bother—and surely paid the price in disease.

  Well, what of it? Gorgidas thought; they have healer-priests to set things right. Then he wondered even about that. By the look of things, many of the Pristans kept their plains customs and probably did not follow Phos. He glanced toward the Videssian god’s temple. Its discolored stones and weather-softened lines proclaimed it one of the oldest buildings in the town, but streaks of tarnish ran down the gilded dome atop it. Skylitzes saw that, too, and frowned.

  If Pikridios Goudeles felt any dismay at the temple’s shabby condition, he hid it well. But he grew voluble when he saw the inside of the inn the natives, through Skylitzes, had assured him was the best Prista offered. “What a bloody hole! I’ve seen stockyards with better-run pens.”

  Two of the Pristans scowled; Gorgidas had thought they understood Videssian. In truth, the Greek was with Goudeles. The taproom was small, poorly furnished, and decades overdue for cleaning. Caked-on soot blackened the wall above each torch bracket. The place smelled of smoke, stale liquor, and staler sweat.

  Nor was the clientele more prepossessing. Two or three tables were filled by loafers who might have been blood-brothers to the idlers on the docks. Half a dozen Videssians drank at another. Though most of them were in their middle years, they wore gaudy, baggy-sleeved tunics like so many young street ruffians; each looked to have a fortune in gold on his fingers and round his neck. Their voices were loud and sharp, their speech filled with the capital’s slang.

  In Latin, Viridovix murmured, “Dinna be gambling with these outen your own dice.”

  “I know thieves when I see them,” Gorgidas answered in the same language, “even rich thieves.”

  If the taverner was one such, he spent his money elsewhere. A short, fat man, his sullen mouth and suspicious eyes belied all the old saws about jolly plump folk. The upstairs room he grudgingly yielded to the embassy was hardly big enough to hold the five straw-stuffed mattresses a servant fetched in.

  Goudeles tipped the men with the party’s equipment. Once they had gone, he fell down onto a mattress—the thickest one, Gorgidas noted—and burst out laughing. At his companions’ curious stares, he said, “I was just thinking: if this is the best Prista has to offer, Phos preserve me from the worst.”

  “Enjoy it while you may,” Skylitzes advised.

  “No, the pudgy one is right,” Arigh said. Goudeles, unpacking a fresh robe, did not seem overjoyed at his support, if that was what it was. The Arshaum went on, “Even the finest of towns is a prison; only on the plains can a man breathe free.”

  Someone rapped politely on the door—a soldier. He had the half-Khamorth look of most folk here, being wide-shouldered, dark, and bushy-bearded. But he wore chain mail, instead of the boiled leather of the plains, and spoke good Videssian. “You are the gentlemen from the Conqueror, the envoys to the Arshaum?”

  He bowed when they admitted it. “His excellency the hypepoptes Methodios Sivas greets you, then, and bids you join him at sunset tonight. I will come back then to guide you to his residence.” He dipped his head again, sketched a salute, and left as abruptly as he had come. His boots thumped on the narrow stone stairway.

  “Is the hyp—whatever—a wizard, to be after knowing we’re here almost before we are?” Viridovix exclaimed. He had seen enough sorcery in the Empire to mean the question seriously.

  “Not a bit of it,” Goudeles replied, chuckling at his naïveté. “Surely as Phos’ sun rises in the east, one of the leisured gentlemen of the harbor is in his pay.”

  More sophisticated than the Gaul at governors’ wiles, Gorgidas had reasoned that out for himself, but he was not displeased to have it confirmed. This Sivas’ main function was to watch the plains for the Empire. If he kept them as closely surveyed as he did his own city, Videssos was well served.

  Methodios Sivas was a surprisingly young man, not far past thirty. His outsized nose gave him an air of engaging homeliness, and he was boisterous enough to fit his frontier surroundings. He pounded Arigh on the back, shouting, “Arghun’s son, is it? Will you make me put sentries at the wells again?”

  Arigh giggled, a startling sound from him. “No need. I’ll be good.”

  “You’d better.” Making sure each of his guests had a full wine cup, Sivas explained, “When this demon’s sprig came through here on his way to the city, he threw a handful of frogs into every well in town.”

  Lankinos Skylitzes looked shocked and then guffawed; Goudeles, Viridovix, and Gorgidas were mystified. “Don’t you see?” Sivas said, and then answered himself, “No, of course you don’t. Why should you? You don’t deal with the barbarians every day—sometimes I forget it’s me on the edge of nowhere, not the rest of the Empire. Here’s the long and short of it, then: all Khamorth are deathly afraid of frogs. They wouldn’t drink our water for three days!”

  “Hee, hee!” Arigh said, laughing afresh at the memory of his practical joke. “That’s not all, and you know it. They had to pay a Videssian to hunt down all the little beasts, and then sacrifice a black lamb over each well to drive away the pollution. And your priest of Phos tried to stop that, quacking about heathen rites. It was glorious.”

  “It was ghastly,” Sivas retorted. “One clan packed up an easy five thousand goldpieces’ worth of skins and went back to the steppe with ’em. The merchants howled for months.”

  “Frogs, is it?” Gorgidas said, scribbling a note on a scrap of parchment. The hypepoptes noticed and asked him why. Rather hesitantly, he explained about his history. Sivas surprised him with a thoughtful nod and several intelligent questions; sharp wits hid beneath his rough exterior.

  The governor had other interests hardly to be expected from a frontiersman. Though his residence, with its thick walls, slit windows, and iron-banded oak doors, could double as a fortress, the garden that bloomed in the courtyard was a riot of colors. Mallows and roses bloomed in neat rows. So did yellow and lavender adder’s-tongues, which told Gorgidas of Sivas’ skill. The low plants, their leaves mottled green and brown, belonged in moist forests or on the mountainside, not here at the edge of the steppe.

  As was only natural, Sivas, isolated from events in the capital, was eager to hear the news the embassy brought with it. He exclaimed in satisfaction when he learned how Thorisin Gavras had regained control of the sea from the rebel forces led by Baanes Onomagoulos and Elissaios Bouraphos. “Damn the traitors anyway,” he said. “I’ve been sending messages with every ship that sailed for the capital for the last two months; they must have sunk them all. That’s too long, with Avshar running loose.”

  “Are you sure it’s himself?” Viridovix asked. The name of the wizard-prince was enough to distract him from his flirtation with one of the hypepotes’ serving girls. A bachelor, Sivas had several comely women in his employ, even if their mixed blood made them too stocky to conform to the Videssian ideal of beauty.

  He did not seem put out by the Celt’s trifling. Viridovix had obviously intrigued him from the moment he set eyes on him; men of the Gaul’s stature and coloring were rare among the peoples the Videssians knew, and his musical accent was altogether strange.

  Now Sivas answered, “Who but shrouds himself in robes so his very eyes are unseen?
Who but stirs discord in his wake as the wind stirs waves on the sea? And who but rides a great black charger in a land of ponies? On the plains, that were enough to name him without the other two.”

  “Sure and it’s the spalpeen, all right,” Viridovix agreed. “Still and all, my good Celtic blade should do to let the mischief out of him.” Methodios Sivas raised a politely skeptical eyebrow, but Gorgidas knew Viridovix was not idly boasting. His sword was twin to the one Scaurus bore, both of them forged and spell-wrapped by Gallic druids and both uncannily mighty in this land where magic flourished.

  “Yet another matter has reached me since my last dispatches to Videssos,” Sivas said. By his voice, it was one he would rather not have heard. He paused for a moment before going on: “You will understand this is rumor alone, and unsupported, but it’s said Varatesh has thrown in his lot with your cursed wizard.”

  Again Gorgidas was conscious of something important slipping past him; again Viridovix and Goudeles were as mystified. Even Arigh seemed unsure of the name. But Lankinos Skylitzes knew it. “The outlaw,” he said, and it was not a question.

  “It’s but a voice on the breeze, you understand,” Sivas repeated.

  “Phos grant it stay such,” Skylitzes answered, and drew the sun-sign on his breast. Seeing his comrades’ incomprehension, he said, “The man is dangerous and wily, and his riders are no bargain. A great clan against us would be worse, but not much.”

  His obvious concern reached Gorgidas, who did not think Skylitzes one to alarm himself over trifles. Arigh was less impressed. “A Khamorth,” he said contemptuously. “Next you’ll have me hiding from baby partridges in the grass.”

  “He’s one to be reckoned with, and growing stronger,” Sivas said. “You may not know it, but this winter when the rivers froze he raided west over the Shaum.”

  Arigh gaped, then hissed a curse in his own language. The Arshaum were convinced of their superiority to the Khamorth, and with justice; had they not driven the bushy-beards east over the river? It had been decades since Khamorth, even outlaws, dared strike back.

  Sivas shrugged. “He’s a ready-for-aught, you see.” Arigh was still stormy, so the hypepoptes called to his serving maid, “Filennar, why don’t you detach yourself from your brick-whiskered friend and fetch us a full skin?”

  She swayed away, Viridovix following her hungrily with his eyes.

  “A skin?” Arigh said eagerly. He forgot his anger. “Kavass? By the three wolf tails of my clan, it’s five years since I set tongue to it. You benighted farmer-folk make do with wine and ale.”

  “A new tipple?” That was Pikridios Goudeles, sounding intrigued. Gorgidas remembered the Arshaum boasting of the plains drink before, but had forgotten what the nomads brewed it from. Viridovix, a toper born, no longer seemed so dismayed over Filennar’s disappearance.

  She soon returned, carrying a bulging horsehide with the hair still on the outside. At Sivas’ gesture, she handed it to Arigh, who took it as tenderly as he might an infant. He undid the rawhide lace that held the drinking-mouth, raised the skin to his face. He drank noisily; it was good manners on the plains to advertise one’s enjoyment.

  “Ahhh!” he said at last, pinching the mouth closed after a draught so long his face had begun to darken.

  “There’s dying scarlet!” Viridovix exclaimed—city slang for drinking deep. He raised the skin for a swig of his own, but at the first taste his anticipation was replaced by a surprised grimace. He spat a large mouthful out on the floor. “Fauggh! What a foul brew! What goes into the making of it, now?”

  “Fermented mares’ milk,” Arigh answered.

  Viridovix made a face. “Sure and it tastes like the inside of a dead snail.” The Arshaum glowered at him, irritated at hearing his beloved drink maligned.

  Lankinos Skylitzes and Methodios Sivas, both long familiar with the steppe brew, showed no qualms at drinking and smacked their lips in best nomad style. When the skin came to Goudeles he swallowed enough for politeness’ sake, but did not seem sorry to pass it on to Gorgidas.

  “Get used to it, Pikridios,” Skylitzes said, amusement just below the surface of his voice.

  “That is a phrase with which I could easily grow bored,” the bureaucrat said tartly. More than a little warmed by all he’d drunk, Skylitzes chuckled.

  Gorgidas gave a suspicious sniff as he hefted the horsehide, now half empty. He expected a sour, cheesy odor, but the kavass smelled much more like a light, clear ale. He drank. Actually, he thought, it had surprisingly little flavor of any kind, but it put a quick warm glow in his belly. For potency it matched any wine he knew.

  “It’s not bad, Viridovix. Try it again,” he urged. “If you were looking for something as sweet as wine it’s no wonder you were startled, but surely you’ve had worse.”

  “Aye, and better, too,” the Gaul retorted. He reached for a flagon of wine. “On the steppe I’ll have no choice, but the now I do and I’m for the grape, begging your pardon, Arigh. Pass him his snail-squeezings, Greek, sith he’s so fond of ’em and all.” Viridovix’ larynx bobbed as he swallowed.

  Sivas gave the embassy a token guard of ten men. “Enough to show you’re under the Empire’s protection,” he explained. “Prista’s whole garrison wouldn’t be enough to save you from real trouble, and if I did send them out, every clan on the plains would unite to burn the town round my ears. They find us useful, but only so long as we don’t seem dangerous to them.”

  The hypepoptes did let the envoys choose horses and remounts from the garrison’s stables. His generosity saved them from the mercies of their fellow guests at the inn, who had proved to be horse traders. True to Viridovix’ prediction, they were also gamblers. Gorgidas sensibly declined to game with them; Arigh and Pikiridios Goudeles were less cautious. The Arshaum lost heavily, but Goudeles held his own.

  When Skylitzes heard that he smiled a rare smile, observing, “Seal-stampers are bigger bandits than mere horse copers dream of being.”

  “To the ice with you, my friend,” Goudeles said. Gold clinked in his belt-pouch.

  In another area the bureaucrat was wise enough to take expert advice. Like Gorgidas and Viridovix, he asked Arigh to choose a string of horses for him. Only Skylitzes trusted his own judgment enough to pick his beasts, and did so well that the plainsman looked at him with new respect. “There’s a couple there I wouldn’t mind having for myself,” he said.

  “Och, how can he be telling that?” Viridovix complained. “I know summat o’ horseflesh, at least as we Celts and the Videssians reckon it, and such a grand lot of garrons I’ve never seen before, like as so many beans in the pod.”

  With its Gallic flavor, the word was an apt one to describe the rough-coated steppe ponies. They were small, sturdy beasts, unlovely and not very tame—nothing like the highbred steeds the Videssians prized. But Arigh said, “Who needs a big horse? The plains beasts’ll run twice as long and find forage where one of those oat-burners would starve. Isn’t that right, my lovely?” He stroked one of his horses on the muzzle, then jerked his hand away as the beast snapped at him.

  Gorgidas laughed with the rest, but nervously. He was at best an indifferent horseman, having practiced the art only rarely. Well, then, you can’t help getting better, he told himself; but Arigh’s promise of months in the saddle made his legs twinge in anticipation.

  A week after the Conqueror put into Prista, the embassy and its accompanying guards rode out the town’s north gate. Though the party numbered only fifteen, from any distance it looked far larger. In steppe fashion, each man rode at the head of five to seven horses, some carrying gear and iron rations, the rest unloaded. The nomad custom was to ride a different animal each day so as not to wear down any of them.

  The morning sun shone silver off the Maiotic Bay. The pinched-off arm of the Videssian Sea was several miles to the east, but there were no hills to screen it from view. Beyond the bay a darkness marked another promontory of land jutting south into the ocean. That horizon line, too,
was low, flat, and smooth, another portion of the steppe that rolled west—how far? No man knew.

  Gorgidas gave such things irregular thought. Most of his attention rested on staying aboard his horse; as beasts will, the cursed animal sensed his inexperience and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in missteps that almost threw him from the saddle. That, luckily, was of the style both Videssians and plainsfolk favored: high-cantled, with pommels before and behind, and with that marvelous invention, stirrups. Without such aids the Greek would have been tossed more than once.

  All the improvements, though, did nothing to dull the growing ache in his thighs. He was in good hard shape, able to keep up with the Roman legionaries on march, but riding plainly made different demands. His discomfort was only made worse by the short stirrup leathers the nomads used, which made him draw his knees up and cramped his legs the more.

  “Why keep them so short?” he asked the squad leader heading the embassy’s guardsmen.

  The underofficer shrugged. “Most things in Prista we do Khamorth-style,” he said. “They like to stand tall in the saddle for archery.” He was a Videssian himself, a lean dark man with heavily muscled forearms. His name was Agathias Psoes. Three or four of his men also looked to have come from across the sea. The rest, like the soldier who had greeted the ambassadors, were obviously locals. Among themselves all the troopers spoke a strange jargon, so thickly laced with Khamorth phrases and turns of syntax that Gorgidas could hardly follow it.

  “I have some longer strips,” Arigh said. “We Arshaum don’t need to get up to know what we’re shooting at.” He won scowls from his escorts, but ignored them. So did Gorgidas. He took the leathers gratefully. They helped—somewhat.

  The Greek’s distress was nothing compared to that of Pikridios Goudeles. The seal-stamper was an influential man, but not one who had ever been required to push his body much. When the day’s ride ended and he awkwardly scrambled down from his horse, he tottered about like a man of ninety. His hands were soft, too, and chafed from holding the reins. Collapsing to the ground with a groan, he said, “Now I understand Gavras’ ploy in making me a legate; he expects my exhausted corpse to be buried on these plains, and may well get his wish.”