Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  Now, though, his finger darted forward. “Seize him!” Two Halogai sprang out from behind the chamber’s double doors to lock Scaurus’ arms back of him in an unbreakable grip. Struggle would have been useless; the burly warriors overtopped even the tribune’s inches by half a head. Like some of the sentries outside, they wore their hair in thick braids that hung down to the small of their backs, but there was nothing effeminate about them. Their hands were big as shovels, hard as horn.

  Surprise and alarm drove discretion from the tribune. “This is no way to get a proskynesis,” he blurted.

  A smile flickered on Alypia’s face, but Thorisin’s remained hard. “Be silent,” he said, and then turned to the other occupant of the room. “Nepos, is that hell-brew of yours ready yet?”

  First seeing Alypia and then being collared by the Haloga giants, Marcus had hardly noticed the tubby little priest, who was busily grinding gray, green, and yellow powders together. “Very nearly, your Majesty,” Nepos replied. He beamed at the Roman. “Hello, outlander. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Is it?” Scaurus said. He did not like the sound of “hell-brew.” Nepos was mage as well as priest, and a master at his craft, master to the point of teaching theoretical thaumaturgy at the Videssian Academy. The tribune wondered if he was so expendable as to be only an experimental animal. He had no relish for life since Helvis had forsaken him, but there were ends and ends. Nepos, cheerfully oblivious, poured his mixed powders into a golden goblet of wine, stirred it with a short glass rod.

  “Can’t use wood or brass for this, you know,” he said, perhaps to Thorisin, perhaps to Marcus, perhaps only because he was used to lecturing. “They’d not be the better afterward.” The Roman gulped despite himself.

  The Emperor fixed him with the same searching glance he had brought to bear in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches. “After you let the islanders loose, outlander, my first thought was to put you on the shelf and leave you there till the dust covered you up. You’ve always been too thick with the Namdaleni for me to really trust you.” The irony of that almost jerked laughter from Scaurus, but Thorisin was going on, not altogether happily, “Still and all, there are those who think you truly are loyal, and so we’ll find out tonight.” Alypia Gavra would not meet the tribune’s eye.

  Nepos raised the goblet by its graceful stem. “Do you remember Avshar’s puppet,” he asked Marcus, “the Khamorth who attacked you with the spell-wound knife after you bested Avshar at swords?” The tribune nodded. “Well, this is the same drug that wrung the truth from him.”

  “And he died when you were done questioning him, too,” Scaurus said harshly.

  The priest gestured in abhorrence. “That was Avshar’s sorcery, not mine.”

  “Give it to me, then,” the tribune said. “Let’s be done with it.”

  At Thorisin’s nod, the Haloga who pinioned Scaurus’ right arm let go. The Avtokrator warned, “Spilling it will do you no good. There’ll just be another batch, and a funnel down your throat.”

  But when the goblet was in his hand, Marcus asked Nepos, “Is there only just enough, or a bit more?”

  “A bit more, perhaps. Why?”

  The tribune sloshed a few drops of wine onto the floor. “Here’s to that fine fellow Thorisin, then,” he said. The Videssians frowned, not understanding; he heard one of the Halogai behind him grunt in confusion. It was the toast of Theramenes the Athenian to Kritias when forced to take poison in the time of the Thirty Tyrants after the Peloponnesian War.

  He swallowed the wine at a single draught. Beneath the sweetness he could taste Nepos’ drugs, tart on his tongue, but also numbing. He waited, wondering if he would start to gibber, or thrash about on the floor like a poisoned dog.

  “Well?” Thorisin Gavras growled at Nepos.

  “The effects vary from case to case, from person to person,” the priest replied. “Some take longer to respond than others.” Scaurus heard him as if from very far away; the whole of his mind was suffused with a golden glow. Of all the things he had expected, this godlike feeling was the last. It was like an orgasm that went on and on, but with all the pleasure gone and only transcendence left.

  Someone—it was the Emperor, but that did not matter to him—was asking him something. He heard himself answering. Why not? Whatever the question was, it could only be trivial next to the immanence in which he drifted. He heard Thorisin swear; that was not important either. “What drivel is he mouthing?” the Avtokrator said. “I can’t follow a word of it.”

  Alypia Gavra said quietly, “It’s his birth-speech.”

  “Well, he should use ours, then.”

  Marcus obeyed, untroubled; one language was as good as another. The questions came faster: why had he let Mertikes Zigabenos take refuge in a monastery? “I thought that if you could do as much for Ortaias Sphrantzes, who deserved worse, then I could for Mertikes, who deserved better.”

  A grunt from Thorisin. “Is he truly under, priest?”

  Nepos peeled back one of Scaurus’ eyelids, waved a hand an inch in front of his face. The tribune neither flinched nor blinked. “Truly, your Majesty.”

  Gavras laughed ruefully. “Well, I suppose I had that coming. Still, Zigabenos hadn’t a tenth the political muscle the Sphrantzai carry, and only fear of that saved Ortaias’ scrawny neck.” Alypia made a sound in the back of her throat that might have meant anything or nothing.

  Why had the tribune only pretended to blind the Namdalener marshals at Garsavra?

  “I wanted to do nothing that could not be undone later. You might have had some use for them that I did not know.” Thorisin grunted again, this time in satisfaction, but Marcus went on, “And Soteric was Helvis’ brother, and I was sure she would leave me if I harmed him. I did not want her to leave me.”

  The Roman, who had not bothered to close his eye after Nepos pulled it open, saw but did not notice the look of triumphant suspicion Gavras shot his niece. “Now we come down to it,” the Emperor said. “So you did not want the doxy gone, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me, then, how it happened she escaped, and the whole nest of snakes with her. Tell me everything about that: what she did, what you think she did, what you did, what you thought while you were doing it. Damn you, Scaurus, I’ll know your soul for once.”

  Drugged as he was, the tribune stood silent a long time. The grief Thorisin was probing could touch the tranquility of a god. “Answer me!” the Emperor shouted, and Scaurus, his will overborne by the other’s, began again. While one part of him listened and bled, the rest told exactly how Helvis had worn him down into drowsiness. The worst of it was knowing he would remember everything after Nepos’ potion no longer held him.

  As he droned on, Nepos reddened in embarrassment. The Haloga guardsmen muttered back and forth in their own tongue. And Alypia Gavra turned on her uncle, saying angrily, “In Phos’ name, stop this! Or why not flay the skin from him while you’re about it?”

  At the word “stop,” Marcus obediently did. But Thorisin’s voice was cold as he told Alypia, “This was your idea, to have the truth from him. Now have the stomach to sit and hear it, or else get out.”

  “I would not stay to see anyone stripped naked against his will.” Her face was pale as she whispered, “I know the taste of that too well.” She stepped past Marcus and was gone.

  “Bah!” Thorisin seemed to notice Scaurus was not talking. “Go on, you!” he roared. The tribune told him of the pursuit; of the beacon fire that had drawn the Namdalener corsair; of Helvis, her sons, and the rest of the islanders escaping the beach in the raiders’ longboat. “And what did you do then?” the Emperor asked, but quietly; Marcus’ account of that desperate, futile chase had left him without his hectoring tone.

  “I cried.”

  Thorisin winced. “To the ice with me if I blame you for it,” he said to himself. “Alypia had the right of it after all; I’ve raped an honest man.” Very gently then, to Scaurus, “And what then, and why?”

&
nbsp; The tribune shrugged; the Halogai were still at his back, but no longer restrained him. “Then I came to the city here, to you. There was nothing else for me to do. How could I flee to a monastery, when I do not follow your god? And if Drax was wrong to turn rebel, so would I have been. Besides, I would have lost.”

  Thorisin gave him a very odd look. “I wonder. I do wonder.”

  XII

  SEIREM PRESSED HER LIPS AGAINST VIRIDOVIX’; HE HUGGED her to him. “You’re too tall,” she said. “My neck gets stiff when I kiss you.”

  “Make yourself used to it, girleen, for you’ll be doing a lot of it after we’re back from the squashing o’ that flea of a Varatesh,” the Gaul answered. A measure of his fancy for her was that he passed up the obvious bawdy comeback to her words. Between them there was no need for such artificial warmers; they were pleased enough with each other as they were.

  She hugged him. “You be after comin’ back, hear?” she said, mimicking his brogue so perfectly they both laughed.

  “Mount up, you lazy groundling!” came Targitaus’ gruff bellow. “You think we have time to waste on your mooning about?” But the khagan was fighting a smile, and next to him Batbaian grinned openly.

  “Och, the corbies take you,” Viridovix said, but after a last squeeze he let Seirem go and swung up into the saddle. As it often did, his steppe pony snorted a complaint; he was heavier than most Khamorth.

  Targitaus looked over to Lipoxais. “You promised ten days of decent weather,” he said, half-threateningly. It was no small matter. The first autumn rains had already fallen, and war among the nomads depended on clear skies. Wet bowstrings made a mockery of their chief fighting skill.

  The enaree shrugged, flesh bobbling inside his yellow wool robe. “I saw what I saw.”

  “I wish you’d seen who would win,” Targitaus grumbled, but not in real complaint. The passion that surrounded battle clouded foretelling. “We’ll have to find out, then,” the chieftain said. He raised his voice to a shout. “We ride!” Batbaian raised the wolf standard of the clan, and the Khamorth clucked their horses into motion. Scouts trotted ahead, with flank guards out to either side.

  “You, too, wretched beast,” Viridovix said, snapping the reins and digging his boots into the pony’s sides. He turned to wave a last good-bye to Seirem and was almost pitched off the horses’s back when it shied at a blowing scrap of cloth. He clutched its mane, feeling a fool.

  Perhaps over the last few years he had grown more used to Roman discipline than he suspected, for the army Targitaus led seemed a very disorderly thing. Indeed, he could be said to lead it only because more plainsmen rode round his standard than any other. But no one could make the other clan-chiefs follow his orders if they did not care to. They fought Varatesh for their own reasons, not his.

  A dozen separate bands of nomads, then, rode north and west against the outlaws. They ranged in size from the double handful in white fox caps who followed Oitoshyr to the several hundred with Anakhar of the Spotted Cats, a contingent second in size only to Targitaus’. Anakhar’s wavering had abruptly stopped when he discovered that Krobyz, his hated neighbor on the steppe, favored Varatesh. “If that goat’s arse is for him, there’s reason enough to smack him down,” he had declared, and joined Targitaus forthwith.

  Beyond finding Varatesh and then fighting him, they had no plan of action. When Viridovix suggested working one out, Targitaus and the rest of the clan leaders looked at him as if he had fallen from the moon. The Celt had to laugh when he thought of it. “As if I’d have listened to a Roman spouting such balderdash,” he said to himself. Even so, he worried a little.

  “One thing,” Batbaian said, “the rains have laid the dust to rest.”

  “They have that, and not sorry I am for it,” Viridovix agreed. Going to fight without choking on the grit his comrades kicked up was a pleasure he had not known since Gaul. Clouds covered the sun every few minutes, sending shadows racing over the plains. The day was cool, the air crisp and clean. Sometimes, tramping across Videssos’ dry plateau, he’d thought the whole country made of dust.

  After a moment, he said, “But outen the dust, how are the scouts to be spotting the kerns we’re after?” Batbaian blinked; he had not thought of that. Viridovix worked up a fair-sized anger—was nothing without its drawbacks?

  Targitaus stretched his mouth in what was not quite a smile. “For one thing, they have the same problem with us. For another, scouts who don’t pay attention to what’s ahead of them end up dead, and that keeps ’em lively.”

  “Well, you have the right of it there,” the Gaul allowed.

  The nomad army seemed larger than it was, thanks to the string of remounts behind each plainsman. The rumble of hooves on damp ground reminded Viridovix of the constant murmur of the sea. “But it doesna make me want to gi’ back my breakfast,” he said happily.

  He thought of Arigh’s jibe about horsesickness and was glad there was nothing to it. Though he still could not stomach the half-raw beef the Khamorth used for iron rations, he munched on wheatcakes and curded cheese, washed them down with kavass. He wished for something sweet, wine or fruit or berries. When Rambehisht passed him a chunk of honeycomb and the heady tang of wild clover filled his mouth, he was content with the world. “A braw lass, a good scrap to go to, and e’en a bit o’ honey when you need it most,” he said to no one in particular. “Who could want for more?”

  After the Khamorth camped that night they went from fire to fire, trading news, telling tales, and gambling with a bizarre assortment of money, some of it so worn Viridovix could not tell whether it had been minted in Videssos or Yezd. There were also square silver coins stamped with dragons or axes, whose like he had not seen. “Halugh,” a nomad explained. The Gaul won several goldpieces and one of the Haloga coins, which he pocketed for luck.

  The next day’s travel was much like the one before. The steppe seemed endless, and the plainsmen with whom Viridovix rode the only men on it. But when the evening fires went up, there was a faint answering glow against the northern horizon. Men checked harness and gear; here a nomad tightened a girth, there another filed arrow-points to razor sharpness, while two more practiced sword-strokes on horseback, making ready for what would come tomorrow.

  Viridovix woke before dawn, shivering from the cold. In Gaul the trees would have been gorgeous with autumn’s colors; the only change the steppe grass showed was from green to grayish yellow. “Sure and it’s bleak enough, for all its size,” he mumbled around a mouthful of cheese.

  The Khamorth teased the handful of older men left behind to guard the remounts. The latter gave back good as they got: “When you’re done beating the bastards, drive ’em this way. We’ll show you what we can do!”

  Clan by clan, the plainsmen mounted. As they rode north they shook themselves out into a rough battle line. Targitaus’ band held the right wing. Eyeing the gaps between clans and the ragged front, Viridovix consoled himself by thinking that Varatesh’s bandits would keep no better ranks.

  Moving dots against the steely sky, the outlaws appeared. A murmur ran down the line; men nocked arrows and freed swords in scabbards. Varatesh’s men drew closer with a speed that Viridovix, still used to foot campaigns, found dismaying. He waved his sword, howling out a wild Celtic war cry that startled his comrades; what it did to the foe was harder to tell.

  Skirmishers traded arrows in the shrinking no-man’s-land between the armies. A pair of nomads dueled with sabers. When the outlaw slid from his saddle, a cheer rang out from his foes.

  It clogged in Viridovix’ throat when he spied in the center of the enemy line a white-robed figure riding a black horse half again the size of the steppe ponies around it. “Well, you didna think himself’d stay away,” he muttered. “Och, would he had, though.” The Gaul thought his side outnumbered the bandits, but who knew how many men Avshar was worth?

  No time for thought after that—the two main bodies were shooting at each other now. The arrows flew, bitter as the sleet th
at could be only days away. Useless in the long-range fight, the Celt watched over the edge of his small, light shield. The deadly rhythm had a fascination to it: right hand over left shoulder to pull a shaft from the quiver, nock, draw, a quick glance for a target, shoot, and over the shoulder again. The plainsmen methodically emptied their quivers. Now and again the measured cadence would break down: a curse, a grunt, or a scream as a man was hit, or a wild scramble to leap free of a foundering horse before it crushed its rider.

  Varatesh watched in astonishment as Avshar wielded his great black bow. It was built to the same double-curved pattern as any nomad bow, but not even the burliest outlaw could bend it. Vet the wizard-prince used it as Varatesh might a child’s weapon, killing with his wickedly barbed shafts at ranges the outlaw chief would not have believed a man could reach. His skill was chillingly matter-of-fact. He gave no cry of triumph when another shot struck home, nor even a satisfied nod, but was already choosing his next victim.

  An arrow whined past Varatesh’s cheek. He ducked behind his horse’s neck—futile, of course, if the shaft had been truly aimed. He fired back, saw a rider topple. He wondered if it was the man who had shot at him. “No,” Avshar said, reading his thought. The wizard-prince’s voice held scornful mirth. “Why should you care, though? He would have been glad enough to kill you.” That was true, but even truth from Avshar left a sour taste.

  The wizard’s eye traveled the enemy line for new targets. He wheeled his horse leftward, steadying it with his knees. He drew the black bow back to his ear, but as he shot Varatesh reached out and knocked his wrist aside. The arrow flew harmlessly into the air.

  The wizard-prince seemed to grow taller in the saddle, glaring down at Varatesh like an angry god. “What are you playing at, fool?” he rasped, a whisper more menacing than any other man’s roar of rage.