Voice cold as the north wind, Batbaian told him. He did not have the Videssian for all of it, but Viridovix and Skylitzes helped interpret, and his final, plunging gesture was graphic enough. Skylitzes, hardened soldier though he was, turned his head and was sick in the snow. He bent down and scooped up more to clean his mouth.
“Aye, that was the way of it,” Viridovix said grimly. “A sweet fellow, Avshar.” With a grunt of effort, the Celt fought his way to his feet. He stood swaying but triumphant. “And a deal to pay him back for, that there is.” His face grew bleak once more, his eyes far away. “That there is,” he repeated softly. He touched his sword, drawing strength from the thought of revenge.
Then he seemed to come back to himself, and asked Gorgidas, “Is anything to be done for the eye, now?”
The Greek had to toss his head in his people’s no. He knew he could heal again; like a boy’s first spending of his seed, the one success promised more. But that knowledge was useless here. “Time has given the wound such healing as it will have. Had I seen it when it was fresh, the best I could have done would have been to bring it to the state it is in now. The art works with what it finds; it cannot give back what is lost.”
Viridovix’ nod was unhappy, Batbaian’s only impatient—he wore the mutilation as a reminder to himself of what he owed.
Goudeles sneezed. The sound reminded Gorgidas that the blizzard had not gone away simply because he had found Viridovix. The Gaul could freeze all over again—and so could the rest of them. The physician ran back to his horse, pulled a blanket from his saddlebag, and wrapped Viridovix in it.
The Celt accepted it absently; being alive, being warm enough to feel the snow stinging his cheeks, was enough to savor. He hardly heard Gorgidas when the Greek asked him if he could ride, but the physician’s impatient growl got through. “I can that,” he said, and managed the ghost of a chuckle. “Dinna fash yoursel’.”
He mounted behind Gorgidas, Batbaian back of Skylitzes. The physician’s pony snorted resentfully at having to carry two; Gorgidas got it moving with the rest regardless. “Your riding’s better than it was,” Viridovix said.
“Yes, I know. I have many useless talents these days,” the Greek said, tapping the gladius that swung at his left hip. He paused, and added wonderingly, “And a real one, it seems.”
The ride west to the Arshaum army was short; the nomads had been pushing forward at their own steady pace while Gorgidas labored over the Gaul. Outriders yelled challenges. The scout leader answered with loud praise for Gorgidas’ healing talents. The physician’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. Now that he had done something worth talking about, the picket was glad enough to claim a share of it.
Viridovix did not know the Arshaum language, beyond a few obscenities Arigh had taught him. But his eyes grew wide as he took in the size of the approaching force. “The lot of you’ve not been wasting your time, have you now?” he said to Gorgidas. The Greek tossed his head.
Then there was a shout: “V’rid’rish!” Arigh rode up at a near-gallop, clumps of snow flying under his horse’s hooves. His grin as white as the landscape around them, he pounded the Gaul’s back. “I wanted to kill someone when I found the scouts who came across you were gone again before I knew about it.”
“Blame me for that,” Gorgidas said. Like Arigh, he spoke Videssian so Viridovix could understand.
“Blame, is it?” the Celt snorted. “Pay him no mind, Arigh darling. A little later and there’d only be the frozen corp of me here, the which’d be no good for saying hello.”
“You’re without a horse, I see,” Arigh said—the nomads’ first priority. “Take a couple from my string.”
“Obliged,” Viridovix said. “Might you also be having one for Batbaian my friend?”
Arigh’s grin disappeared as his glance slid to the Khamorth. His lip curled; for the first time, he reminded Gorgidas of Dizabul. “Your taste in friends has gone down,” he said.
“Has it now?” Viridovix said. “Well, belike you have the right of it; I keep picking khagans’ sons.” He locked eyes with the Arshaum prince.
With his swarthy skin and the thick layer of grease on his face, it was impossible to see whether Arigh flushed, but after a few moments he walked his horse over to Batbaian. He had learned a little of the Khamorth speech traveling across Pardraya to Prista and the Empire; now he used it to ask, “A horse—you need?”
Batbaian had stiffened as the Arshaum came up to him; he jerked in surprise to hear his own language. Then he nodded with a dignity beyond his years. “I thank you,” he said. He fumbled at his belt, undid the dagger there—fine metalwork, with a leaping stag in high relief on the bronze sheath—and offered it to Arigh. “A gift for a gift.”
The smile returned to Arigh’s face; he accepted the knife, clapped Batbaian on the shoulder. The watching Arshaum murmured in approval. Few of them, probably, had understood Arigh when he made his gift to Batbaian, but his return gesture needed no words. “The Hairy acts as a man should,” Gorgidas heard one nomad say, and his companion’s reply: “Why not? He’s seen a fight or two, looks like—that scar’s not pretty.”
Arigh said, “Skylitzes, Gorgidas, bring ’em along to my father. We can all hear what they have to say then.” He rode off toward the gray horsetail standard.
Viridovix bowed to Arghun as best he could riding double. The khagan was frailer than he had expected and sat his horse with difficulty; the Gaul wondered if he had been ill. He was soft-spoken, without the blustery temper Targitaus had used to browbeat his clansmen, but the Arshaum hurried to obey when he said something. Now he studied Batbaian cautiously, Viridovix with lively curiosity. He said something in the sibilant Arshaum tongue.
“He didn’t believe Arigh when he told him of your looks,” Gorgidas translated, “but he sees he was telling the truth after all.”
“Honh!” Viridovix said. In Latin he went on, “And I never set eyes on such a lot of slant-eyed flat-noses in all my days either, but no need to tell him that, I’m thinking. Give him top o’ the day instead.”
Gorgidas did. Arghun nodded at the courtesy, then said, “I’d be curious to know how the two of you happened to come here.” It was phrased as a request, but was plainly a command; Gorgidas put it into Videssian for Viridovix and Skylitzes into the Khamorth language for Batbaian.
“Up to me to start, it is,” Viridovix said, and began to tell of what had befallen him since Varatesh snatched him from the camp. The outlaw’s name raised a growl from a few of the Arshaum by Arghun, the ones whose clans wandered closest to the Shaum. They remembered his raid over the winter the year before, and its savagery. The Gaul was soon talking faster than Gorgidas could easily interpret; Arigh helped him when he faltered.
Another horseman pushed his way through the crowd gathering round the newcomers. What a dandified sprout, Viridovix thought; he wore furs and leather as if they were silk and cloth-of-gold, and even in the wind and snow he somehow kept his pony perfectly groomed, its mane braided with bright red ribbons.
“Father, I—” Dizabul began.
Arghun cut him off. “Whatever it is, it’ll have to keep, boy. These foreigners bear important news.”
The young prince’s handsome face clouded as he looked Viridovix’ way, the more so because of Arigh beside him. But when he spied Batbaian his jaw dropped. “Am I less than a Hairy, now?” he began angrily.
But Arghun silenced him again, this time with a gesture of dismissal. “Go on, redbeard,” he said.
“Not bad, not bad,” he said, laughing, when the Gaul told of the trick with the cattle he had suggested to drive Varatesh’s men back. By then Viridovix and Batbaian were speaking alternately as they described the events that had led up to the attack on the outlaws and their allies.
The khagan snapped sharp questions about the battle itself. Hearing it in detail reminded Gorgidas all too much of the catastrophe at Maragha. Avshar’s battle magic, whatever might be true of others’, did not fail in the heat of com
bat. If the soldiers he led could fight on anywhere near even terms, that sorcery would be enough to spell victory for them.
And the aftermath of victory—the Arshaum prided themselves on their hardness, but more than one cried out in loathing and horror as Batbaian, his voice dispassionate as if it had all happened to some stranger, spoke of endless red-hot irons. They flinched again when Viridovix told of the winners’ cruel toying with their enemies’ hopes, and of Targitaus’ seizure when the dreadful truth came clear. Apoplexy, thought Gorgidas, sickened but unsurprised.
After that, the story of the sack of the camp seemed almost anticlimax, though Viridovix felt the thin scabs tear open and the pain flow out like blood when he thought of Seirem. “So there it stands,” Batbaian finished. “Varatesh, the spirits dung on him, has Pardraya, and Avshar him, or so it looked to me when I was in their hands. Next to them,” and Batbaian looked Arghun full in the face, beyond fear now, “even you Arshaum are a good choice. So we came to beg your help, if you care to give.” The Khamorth glanced at the warriors all around, said dryly, “You may not need me to persuade you to move east.”
Arghun stroked his wispy beard. He turned to Gorgidas. “This is the Avshar you have spoken of, the one from Yezd?”
“Aye,” said the Greek, echoed by words or nods from his friends and comrades.
The khagan said, “I had not intended to leave much of Yezd on its wheels in any case. Your wizard will be one more yurt to knock down.” Arghun folded his arms with the serene confidence of a man who has not known defeat. The Arshaum who heard his declaration cheered; they, too, were sure only victory was possible when facing Khamorth and other weaklings.
Their guests, who had seen the wizard-prince’s handiwork, were less sanguine, but saw little point in saying so. “As well explain music to a deaf man,” Goudeles muttered. “One way or another, they’ll find out.”
“Or another,” Gorgidas agreed gloomily. Having warned Arghun over and over of the deadly might he would face, the physician was coming to understand the nature of the curse Apollo had laid on Kassandra.
Winter’s short day and the raging storm combined to force the Arshaum to an early halt. “Will you share my tent?” Gorgidas asked Viridovix as they dismounted. “I want to examine you—I can hardly believe you’re alive.” As nothing else could, curiosity held wariness at bay.
“I am that, thanks to you,” the Celt said. He poked Gorgidas in the ribs. “I’ll come wi’ you, though its nobbut the carcass o’ me you’re hankering after.”
“Bah!” From anyone but Scaurus or Viridovix, the crack would have frightened the Greek; and the tribune, he thought, would never have made it—too mannerly by half. As it was, he was obscurely pleased. He looked Viridovix up and down. “You flatter yourself.”
“Do I now?” Chuckling, the Gaul helped him set up his tent. “This is better than the one I had, but mind you drive the pegs down firm.”
The physician was adept with flint and steel and he soon had a dung fire going. After he and the Gaul had eaten, he seized Viridovix’ wrist; the pulse was firm and steady, that of a healthy man. When the fire had warmed the cramped space inside the tent, he had his friend strip off coat and tunic and listened to his lungs. The air whistled smoothly in and out, with none of the damp, soggy sound that would have warned of chest fever. Finally, he examined the Celt’s hands and feet, cheeks, nose, and ears for traces of frostbite. He tossed his head. “You’re disgustingly well.”
“The which is only your fault, so dinna come carping to me over it.”
“Scoffer. Truly, though, had you not been a strong, healthy man, you would have been dead long before I got to you.” Pride and delighted awe lit the Greek’s face as the notion that he had really healed took hold.
Viridovix dressed again with some haste; it was not so warm as all that. He gulped kavass. After months on the steppe, he hardly noticed the faintly sour taste—and it, too, was warmth of a sort. He said to Gorgidas, “You’re after hearing what’s befallen me—tell me now how the lot o’ you fared once I was raped away.” The Greek obeyed, talking much of the night away as the wind howled outside. Listening, Viridovix thought the past months had been good ones for Gorgidas. His wit was still biting, but he spoke with a confidence and a sense of his own worth the Gaul had not seen in him since his lover’s death—and perhaps not before.
Once the story was done, the physician seemed to change the subject. “Do you remember the argument we had a couple of years ago, not long after we came to Videssos?”
“Och, which one was that?” Viridovix said, grinning and yawning. “There’ve been so many, and rare sport they are, too.”
“Hmm. Well, maybe so. The one I’m thinking of had to do with war and what it was good for.”
The reminiscent smile disappeared from Viridovix’ face. “So that’s the one you mean, is it?” he said heavily, sighing through his thick mustaches. “I’m afeared you had the right of it after all. A cold cruel thing it is, warring, and glory only a word a reeking corp’ll never hear again.”
Gorgidas stared at the Celt, thunderstruck as if a second head had appeared on his shoulders. This, from the barbarian who exulted in combat for its own sweet sake? “Odd you should say so, when—” the physician began, and then stopped, looking at his friend more closely. He had examined the Gaul’s body; now he looked at the man, really saw for the first time the grief that sat behind his eyes and showed at the corners of his mouth and in the deepening lines of his forehead. “You lost more than a battle when you rode with the Khamorth,” he blurted.
“Too canny, y’are,” Viridovix said, and sighed again. “Aye, there was a lass, Batbaian’s sister she was. She’s dead now, though not soon enough.” After a while he went on, very low, “And part o’ me with her. And what was the sense in that, or the use?” he asked the Greek. “None I could see when I found her, puir broken thing, nor the now either. Blood for blood’s sake, the which is why I own I was wrong and you right.”
Gorgidas thought of Quintus Glabrio, face blank in death. The memory burned in him still, and from his own pain he knew the Gaul’s. They sat silent for a time, words no good to them. Then the Greek said, “No little irony here.”
“And what might that be?”
“Only that when I brought up that argument I intended to yield it to you.”
“Go on with you.” Viridovix was as startled as the physician had been before. “You, the chap who wouldna carry a sword, come to relish soldiering? Next you’ll be after taking heads and nailing ’em to your gate like a proper Celt.”
“Thank you, no. But—” Gorgidas slapped the gladius on his hip, which Viridovix had not noticed. “—I wear a blade these days, and I begin to know what to do with it. And perhaps I begin to understand your ‘glory.’ For is it not true,” he said, falling naturally into disputational style even though he was not speaking Greek, “that the idea of winning acclaim from one’s fellow will make a man more likely to resist the onslaught of the wicked?”
“Honh!” The Gaul shook his head; having once changed his mind, he held to his new view with a convert’s zeal. “An omadhaun’ll go after glory no less than an honest man, so where’s the use of it there?”
Gorgidas leaned forward with pleasure, sleep forgotten, loving the argument for its own sake. “That’s true, but the renown of a good man lives forever, while an evildoer’s fame is buried in disgrace. Four hundred years ago Herodotos said of the sycophant at Delphi who carved the Spartans’ name on a golden bowl they did not offer, ‘I know his name, but I will not record it.’ And no one knows it now.”
“He did that?” the Gaul said admiringly. “Now there’s a revenge for you. But listen—”
They wrangled through the night, pounding fists onto knees and shouting at each other, quite without rancor: “Thick-skulled woodsrunner!” “Hairsplitting knave of a Greek!” Fire and smelly tallow lamps guttered low, leaving them in near darkness. At last the thin murky light of winter dawn began to creep u
nder the tent flap.
Gorgidas knuckled his eyes, suddenly feeling exhaustion catch up with him again. No help for it, not with another day in the saddle ahead. The left side of his mouth quirked up in a wry grin. “Here we sit, not knowing which of us is right and which wrong, but we go on even so.”
“Aye, well, what else can we do?” Viridovix rose, stretched, jammed on his fur hat and stuck his head outside. “Come on, laddie, they’re stirring out there.” The swirl of cold air helped wake Gorgidas. Shivering, he belted his coat shut and followed the Gaul out into the snow.
XV
MARCUS WAS WORKING IN HIS CUBICLE LATE ONE AFTERNOON when he found he needed to go up to the records room to compare a protested assessment to the one levied the year before. He scratched his head; the place was empty. Where were the clerks hunched over registers, their ink-smudged fingers flicking beads on reckoning boards?
Only a single grizzled watchman paced the corridors, and he was making his rounds as fast as he could. When Scaurus hailed him, he looked at the tribune as at any madman. “Go on with you, sir. Who’s for work on Midwinter’s Day? The lot of ’em left hours ago, they did.”
“Midwinter’s Day?” Marcus echoed vaguely. He counted on his fingers. “Why, so it is.” The watchman was gaping now, exposing a few blackened stumps of teeth. Not even foreigners forgot the chief festival of the Videssian year, the celebration to call the sun back from the winter solstice.
Chilly air bit at Scaurus’ nose as he left the pen-pushers’ warm den. That had been true last year, too, when he’d been dragged from his desk by Viridovix and Helvis.… He kicked at the snow, remembering.
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