Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  The script was plain and forceful; Scaurus recognized the Emperor’s writing at once. The note had Gavras’ straightforward phrasing, too, with none of Drax’ rhetorical flourishes added. “Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator, to his captain Marcus Aemilius Scaurus: I greet you. Thanks to some pen-pusher’s idiocy, your latest letter did not get out of the city till I came here, so I have it only now. I say well-done to you; you have served me better than I could have hoped. I have sent some of your islander prisoners to enjoy the winter in garrison duty on the Astris and will exchange the rest for my own men whom the brigands captured. That will take time, as I drove them off the mainland at Opsikion with much loss, though I fear pirate raids still continue all along our coasts. As soon as possible, I will send the Garsavrans gold to repay what you took from them—I trust you have receipts.” The tribune smiled at the sly reference to his brief bureaucratic career. He read on: “Bring Drax and the remaining rebel leaders here at once, with as small a detachment as may be counted on to prevent their escape—do not weaken Garsavra’s garrison more than you must. Head the detachment yourself, that I may reward you as you deserve; your lieutenant has enough wit to hold his own in your absence. Done at Videssos the city, nineteen days after the autumn equinox.”

  Marcus thought rapidly, then looked up at the messenger. “Six days, eh? You made good time, riding through such slop.”

  “Thank you, sir. Is there any reply?”

  “Not much point to one. You’ll only beat me to the capital by a few days. Tell his Majesty I’m carrying out his orders—that should be enough.”

  “I’ll do it. Can I trouble you for some dry clothes?”

  “Aye, it should be easy enough duty,” Gaius Philippus said. “The Yezda won’t be doing much in this weather, not unless they teach their little ponies to swim.” Sardonic amusement lit his face. “And come to that, you’ll have a jolly little tramp through the bog, won’t you?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Marcus said. He longed for a good Roman road, wide, raised on a embankment to keep it free of mud and snow, solidly paved with flat square stones set in concrete. Each fall and spring, with the rains, Videssos’ dirt tracks turned into bottomless quagmires. That they were easier on horses’ hooves than paving stones did not, to the tribune’s way of thinking, make up for their being useless several months out of the year.

  “Will two dozen men be enough?” the senior centurion asked.

  “To keep four from getting loose? They’d better be. And with women and children and what-have-you, the party will look plenty big to discourage bandits—not that the bandits won’t be chin-deep in slime themselves. Besides, I have my orders, and there’s no doubt Thorisin’s right—you’ll have more need of troops here than I will. I’m sorry I’m stealing Blaesus from you.”

  “Don’t be. Most of your men are from his maniple, and he knows them. And while he’s gone,” Gaius Philippus continued with his usual practicality, “I get the chance to bump Minucius up a grade for a while. He’ll do well.”

  “You’re right. He has the makings of a centurion in him, that one.” Scaurus grinned at the veteran. “You’re bumping up a grade yourself.”

  “Aye, so I am, aren’t I? I hadn’t thought of that, but I’ll remember when the time comes to deal out the pay, I promise.”

  “Go howl,” the tribune laughed.

  The rain pelted down, whipped into almost horizontal sheets by a fierce north wind. Thus, while the Namdalener prisoners’ departure from Garsavra made a little procession, few townsfolk watched it. Senpat and Nevrat Sviodo rode ahead of the main body of legionaries as scouts. In the midst of the Romans came the four islanders, at Scaurus’ command still wearing their veiling. Baggage-mules and donkeys for the soldiers’ families followed, while Junius Blaesus led the five-man rear guard.

  The legionaries were plodding past the graveyard just outside Garsavra when the tribune looked back through the storm and saw a lone figure riding after them. “Who is it?” he yelled back to Blaesus. The howling wind swept away the junior centurion’s answer. Uselessly wiping at his face, Marcus filled his lungs to shout again.

  Before he could, Styppes came splashing up to him, astride a scrawny, unhappy-looking donkey that made heavy going of his bulk. The rain had soaked the healer-priest’s blue robe almost black. Looking down at Scaurus afoot, he announced, “I shall accompany you back to the city. I have been away from my monastery too long, and there are perfectly capable healers at Garsavra to tend to your soldiers there.”

  As it often did, his peremptory tone grated on the tribune. “Please yourself,” he said shortly, but in truth he was not sorry to have Styppes’ company this once—not with Helvis carefully riding sidesaddle a hundred feet behind and due in less than three months. He had tried to persuade her to stay at Garsavra, but when she refused he yielded. After all, he thought, she was not likely to see her brother again.

  Styppes’ donkey stepped into a particularly deep patch of mire—what had been a rut in the road in drier times—and almost stumbled. The healer-priest pulled sharply on the reins. The beast recovered, but gave him a reproachful look.

  Scaurus’ sympathies lay with the donkey. Marching during the rainy season was an exercise suited to Sisyphos, save that the tribune’s burden, instead of rolling down a hillside in the underworld to be hauled up anew, only grew heavier. Every step was hard work. The mud clung to his caligae and made a soft sucking sound of protest every time he pulled his leg free. In some stretches, he could not lift his legs at all, but had to slog forward pushing a mucky wake ahead of himself. He began to envy his prisoners, burdened by neither armor nor packs.

  As eagerly as he looked forward to camping at the end of the day, the halt proved hardly better. Camp was a slapdash affair; he did not have the men to dig in with, and the weather foredoomed that anyhow. It was impossible to start a fire in the open. The Romans and their companions made miserable meals half-heated over braziers or olive-oil lamps, in their tents.

  “Are you all right?” the tribune asked Helvis as he clashed flint and steel over tinder that was not as dry as it should have been. Click, click! The metal and gray-yellow stone seemed to laugh at him.

  Helvis toweled at her hair. “Stiff, tired, drowned—otherwise not bad,” she said, smiling wryly. While on donkeyback she had worn a thick, belted, woolen cloak, now cast aside, but her yellow linen shift had got wet enough to mold itself to her belly and swelling breasts. She toweled again, harder. “I must look like that monster your people have, the one whose head is all over snakes.”

  “The Medusa?” Marcus said, still clicking away. “No, not really. When I look at you, only one part of me turns to stone.” She snorted. He paid no attention, bending over the little pile of tinder to blow gently on the orange spark that had caught at last. As it burst into flame, he sighed in relief. “There, that’s done; now we can close the tent flap.”

  Helvis did, while the tribune lit lamps. When he started to ask, “Is the baby—” she cut him off firmly.

  “The baby,” she declared, “is better than I am, I’m sure. And why not? He’s out of the cold and damp. He gave me such a kick when I got down from that mangy hard-backed beast that I thought he was this one.” She nodded at Malric, who was rolling a giggling Dosti over and over on the sleeping mat. Bored from having ridden all day, he had energy to spare. Helvis gave a little shriek. “Not into the mud!” She sprang forward, too late.

  Later, after both boys had finally fallen asleep, she took Marcus’ hand, guided it to her belly. Her skin was warm and smooth as velvet, taut from pregnancy. The tribune smiled to feel the irregular thumps and surges as the baby moved within her. “You’re right,” he said. “He’s lively.”

  She stayed quiet so long he wondered if she’d heard him. When she finally spoke, he heard unshed tears in her voice. “If it is a boy,” she said, “shall we call him Soteric?”

  He was silent himself after that, then touched her cheek. “If you like,” he said, as gently as he c
ould.

  “I remember marching from Videssos to Garsavra in a week’s time,” Marcus said to Senpat Sviodo. “Why is it so much farther from Garsavra back to Videssos?”

  “Ah, but the land knows you and loves you now, my friend,” Senpat answered, cheery despite his bedraggled state. The brightly dyed streamers that hung from his three-pointed Vaspurakaner hat were running in the rain, putting splotches of contrasting colors on the back of his cloak; his precious pandoura was safe inside a leather bag behind him. Grinning, he went on, “After all, did it not love you, why would it embrace you so? It fairly cries out for you to stay with it forever.”

  “You can laugh, up there on your horse,” Scaurus growled, but Senpat’s foolishness pleased him, even so.

  As for the rich black loam of the Empire’s coastal lowlands, he was ready to consign it to the Namdaleni, the Yezda, or Skotos’ demons for that matter. The soil grew progressively more fertile and quaggier, too, as the sea drew closer. Traveling across it when it was wet was like trying to wade through cold, overcooked porridge. The tribune’s party was almost alone on the road. He had no trouble understanding that—only mad men or desperate ones would go journeying in the fall rains.

  “And in which of those classes do you fit?” Senpat asked when he said that aloud.

  “You’re here with me—judge for yourself,” Marcus came back. Something else occurred to him. “I begin to see why the symbol of Videssian royalty is the umbrella.”

  Early the next morning Styppes’ donkey fell again, throwing him into the ooze. He came up spluttering and cursing in most unpriestly fashion, face, beard, and robe plastered with mud. The donkey did not rise; it had broken a foreleg. It brayed piteously when Bailli, who knew more of horseleeching than any of the Romans, touched the shattered bone. “I doubt you’ll trust me with a knife, so cut its throat yourself,” he said to Marcus. Turning to Styppes, he went on, “As for you, fatty, you’ll use your own hooves from here on out.”

  “Skotos’ ice is waiting for you, insolent heretic,” Styppes said, trying to wipe the muck from his face but only spreading it about. From the glare he gave Bailli, it was plain he did not like the idea of marching for several days.

  The donkey squealed again, a sound that tore at Scaurus’ nerves. He said, “Why not heal it, Styppes?”

  The Videssian priest purpled under his coat of mud. He shouted, “The ice take you, too, ignorant heathen! My talent lies in serving men, not brute beasts. Do you want me to prostitute myself? I have no idea how the worthless creature is made inside and no interest in learning, either.”

  “I was but looking to help,” the tribune began, but Styppes, insulted and petulant, was in full spate and trampled the interruption. He railed at Marcus for every remembered slight since the day they met, dredging up things the Roman had long forgotten.

  The entire party came to a halt to listen to his tirade, or try not to. A couple of legionaries knelt in the mud to tighten the ankle-straps on their caligae; Helvis, as she often did, urged her donkey forward so she could talk to her brother and the other islanders. The Romans paid no attention to her, understanding why she had come with them. Turgot reached out to touch Dosti’s fair hair. He shook his head in pain as he remembered his lost Mavia.

  Scaurus bent and put the donkey out of its pain. It kicked once or twice and was still. Styppes railed on.

  “Be quiet, you bloated, bilious fool,” Drax said at last. “Are you a four-year-old bawling over your broken toy?” He did not raise his voice, but the flash of cold contempt in his eyes brought Styppes up short, mouth opening and closing like a fresh-caught fish.

  Drax bowed slightly to Marcus. “Shall we get on with it?” he said, as courteously as if they were on their way to a feast or celebration. The tribune nodded, admiring his style. He called out an order. The company lurched forward.

  “By the gods, sir, there were times I thought we’d never make it,” Junius Blaesus said to Scaurus as the dirty gray of the afternoon’s rainy sky darkened toward night, “but it’s getting close now, isn’t it?”

  “So it is,” the tribune said, brushing back a loose lock of hair that crawled like a wet worm down his cheek. “A day and a half, maybe, to the Cattle-Crossing. In decent weather it’d be half a day.”

  A six-man mounted party splashed west past them, kicking up muck and earning curses from the legionaries. Here among the suburbs of the capital, there was a good deal of local traffic. It made the roads worse, something Marcus had not thought possible. He had his prisoners resume their black veils full-time; in the less crowded country further west he had only made them clap on the veiling once or twice a day when someone approached. This was safely imperial territory and the charade was probably unneeded, but where Drax was concerned he took few chances.

  More splashing from up ahead, and another rider loomed out of the rain—Nevrat. Her head turned as she searched for Scaurus in the gloom. She smiled when she saw him, teeth flashing against her dark skin. “I’ve found us a campsite,” she said, “a farm with a good stone horse barn to keep our, ah, guests warm and safe. I looked it over. It has little slit windows—” She held her hands a palm’s breadth apart to show him. “—and a door that bars from the outside.”

  “Perfect,” Marcus exclaimed. “The great count won’t break out of that.” He had made Junius Blaesus virtually ring the prisoners’ tent with sentries each night. Behind stone and wood, though, they’d be safe enough. A single sentry each watch should do, giving his troopers a much-needed rest.

  The farmer on whose land the barn stood was a toplofty little man whose prosperity was made plain enough by the very fact that he owned several horses. He tried to bluster when the tribune asked to use the barn, naming two or three minor court officials who, he declared, “will not be pleased to hear of my being mistreated in this way!”

  Annoyed, Marcus dug out Thorisin Gavras’ letter and wordlessly handed it to the man, who went red and then white as he saw the imperial signature. “Anything you desire, of course,” he said rapidly, and shouted for his farmhands. “Vardas! Ioustos! Come quick, you lazy wretches, and drive the horses into the field!”

  The two men emerged from a little cottage set to one side of the main farmhouse, one of them still chewing at a mouthful of supper. Having won his point, the tribune could afford to be gracious. He waved them back. “Let the beasts be. The men inside will have no fire, and the animals’ heat will help keep them warm.”

  Vardas and Iuostos looked toward their master, whose name Scaurus did not know. “As he pleases,” the farmer said; they went back to their interrupted meal. Now ingratiating, the short tubby man said to the Roman, “You will honor me by joining me for supper?”

  “Thank you, no.” An hour of nervous chatter from this fellow, arrogant and servile by turns, was not to Marcus’ taste. He gave an excuse that let the man save face. “I have to see to setting up camp.”

  “Ah.” The farmer nodded wisely, as if understanding what a great labor that was. He bobbed a stiff bow, turned, and fled back into his house. Marcus laughed silently at his retreating back.

  The legionaries, whose tents were going up nicely without any supervision, greeted his orders with barely muffled cheers. They did whoop out loud when Blaesus volunteered to take a turn at the barn door himself. Grinning with pleasure at their response, the junior centurion said, “Why not? It’s easier than sleeping, almost.”

  “You’d better not sleep, Junius,” the tribune said, driving a tent peg into the muddy ground—at last, something the rain made easier. His tone was bantering, and Blaesus still smiled, but not as widely as he had. The fustuarium waited for sentries who dozed at their posts.

  Once the tent was up, Scaurus dried himself as best he could. Malric and Dosti fell deeply asleep as soon as their dinner was done. “What did you do, beg a potion from Styppes?” the tribune whispered to Helvis as she covered the two boys. “They’ve been hellions since we set out.”

  “Not far wrong,” she said,
rising. She tossed him a half-empty wineskin. “I gave them each a good nip while you were busy.”

  “Did you? Whatever for?”

  She gave him a slow sidelong look. “For us,” she said, her voice thick and sweet as the unwatered wine in the skin.

  He scarcely had time to set it down before she stepped smiling into his arms. He kissed her in glad surprise; her desire turned fickle when she was carrying a child.

  Her fingers toying with him, she undid his sword belt, pulled down his metal-studded military kilt. “Such complications,” she murmured. Scaurus kissed her eyes and then her ear, having already tugged her simple shift over her head. He blew out the lamps. Together, they slipped to the sleeping mat.

  After a while she turned her back on him; he slid into her from behind. The posture, made for slow, lazy love, was easy on them both, her for her pregnancy and him for his weariness after days of pushing through mud. She sighed and wriggled closer.

  When he was spent, he rolled lazily onto his back, whistling up into the darkness. Malric stirred, muttering something. “Hush, dear,” Helvis said softly. Marcus was not sure which of them she was talking to until she groped for the wineskin, found it, and gave her son a long swallow. He smacked his lips, then turned over and went back to sleep.

  “There,” Helvis said to the tribune. “Tonight, no interruptions.” She pressed herself against him, her hand busy once more.

  “Easy there,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “I think you’re fine,” she said, mischief in her voice, and did not stop.

  “I’m not sure anything will happen.” But as he spoke, he felt himself rising to her touch. His arms tightened around her.

  “You are the noisiest man,” she grumbled, kindly, a bit later, pushing him away from her; his gasps had wakened Dosti. Every pore content, he did not answer. She quieted the baby the same way she had Malric, then returned to the tribune’s side.

  After a while, she touched him again. He looked at her, bemused, but there was not enough light to read her expression. “You’re asking too much, you know,” he said sleepily.