Carullus shook his head, his own mouth a thin line in a smooth-shaven face. ‘Slaves who strike a soldier—any soldier, let alone an officer—are torn apart in a public execution. Everyone knows that. He nearly knocked me down.’
‘He’s not a slave, you contemptible shit!’
Carullus said, mildly enough, ‘Careful. My men might hear you, and I’d have to respond. I know he isn’t a slave. We looked at his papers. He’ll be whipped and castrated when we get to camp, but not killed between the horses.’
Crispin felt his heart thump then, hard. ‘He’s a free man, an Imperial citizen and my hired servant. You touch him at absolute peril. I mean it. Where’s the girl? What’s happened to her?’
‘She is a slave, from one of the inns. And young enough. We can use her at camp. She spat in my face, you know.’
Crispin forced himself to be calm; anger would make him nauseated again, and useless. ‘She was sold from the inn. She belongs to me. You will know this, having gone through those papers, too, you pustulent excrescence. If she is touched or harmed, or if the man is harmed in any way, my first request of the Emperor will be your testicles sliced off and bronzed into gaming dice. Be clear about this.’
Carullus sounded amused. ‘You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Though pustulent excrescence is good, I must say. How do you tell anything to the Emperor at all if it is reported that you and your companions were found by our company to have been robbed, sexually penetrated in various ways, and foully murdered by outlaws on the road today? I repeat, the man and the girl will be dealt with in the usual manner.’
Crispin said, still struggling to keep his composure, ‘There is an idiot here, but he’s on the horse not in the litter. The Emperor will receive a precise report of our encounter from the Sleepless Ones, along with their earnest petition that I return to supervise the restoration of the image of Jad on the dome, as we were discussing when you burst in. We were neither robbed nor killed. We were accosted in a holy place by slovenly horsemen under an incompetent dung-faced tribune, and a man personally summoned by Valerius II to Sarantium was struck by a weapon in the face. Do you prefer a reprimand leavened by my conceding I provoked you, or castration and death, Tribune?’
There was a satisfying period of silence. Crispin brought up a hand and tenderly touched his jaw.
He looked over and up at the horseman, squinting into the light. Odd specks and colours danced erratically in his vision. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘you could turn back west, kill the clerics—all of them will know the story by now—and claim we were all robbed and violated and killed by those evil brigands on the road. You could do that, you dried-out rat dropping.’
‘Stop insulting me,’ Carullus said, but without force this time. He rode some further distance in silence. ‘I had forgotten about the fucking cleric,’ he admitted, at length.
‘You forgot about who signed my Permit, too,’ Crispin said. ‘And who requested me to come to the City. You’ve read the papers. Get on with it, Tribune: give me half a reason to be forgiving. You might consider begging.’
Instead, Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian began to swear. Impressively, in fact, and for quite some time. Finally he swung down from his horse, gestured at someone Crispin couldn’t see, and handed off the reins to the soldier who hurried up. He began walking alongside Crispin’s litter. ‘Rot your eyes, Rhodian. We can’t have civilians—especially foreigners—insulting army officers! Can’t you see that? The Empire is six months behind in their pay. Six months, with winter coming! Everything’s going for buildings.’ He said the word like another obscenity. ‘Have you any notion what morale is like?’
‘The man. The girl,’ Crispin said, ignoring this. ‘Where are they? Are they hurt?’
‘They’re here, they’re here. She’s not been touched, we’ve no time for play. You are late, I told you. That’s why we were riding to look for you. An undignified, Jad-cursed order if ever there was one.’
‘Oh, shit yourself! The courier was late. I wrapped up affairs and left five days after he came! It was past the season for sailing. You think I wanted to be on this road? Find him and ask questions. Titaticus, or something. An idiot with a red nose. Kill him with your helmet. How is Vargos?’
Carullus looked back over his shoulder. ‘He’s on a horse.’
‘What? Riding?’
The tribune sighed. ‘Tied across the back of one. He was . . . worked over a little. He struck me after you fell. He can’t do that!’
Crispin tried to sit up, and failed, miserably. He closed his eyes and opened them again when this seemed practical. ‘Listen to me carefully. If that man has been seriously injured, I will have your rank and your pension revoked, if not your life. This is an oath. Get him in a litter and have him tended to. Where’s the nearest physician who doesn’t kill people?’
‘At camp. He struck me,’ Carullus repeated, plain-tively But he turned, after a moment, and gestured again, behind him. When another soldier trotted up on his horse, Carullus murmured a rapid volley of instructions, too softly for Crispin to hear. The cavalryman muttered unhappily but turned to obey.
‘It is done,’ Carullus said, turning back to Crispin. ‘They say he’s had nothing broken. Won’t walk or piss easy for a while, but nothing that won’t pass. Are we friends?’
‘Fuck yourself with your sword. How far to your camp?’
‘Tomorrow night. He’s all right, I’m telling you. I don’t lie.’
‘No, you just shit all over your uniform when you realize you’ve made the mistake of your life.’
‘Jad’s blood! You swear more than I do! Martinian, there is fault here both ways. I am being reasonable.’
‘Only because a holy man saw what happened, you bloated fart, you pantomime buffoon.’
Carullus laughed suddenly. ‘True enough. Number it among the great blessings of your life. Give money to the Sleepless Ones until the day you die. Bloated fart is also good, by the way. I like it. I’ll use it. Do you want a drink?’
The situation was outrageous, and he was only moderately reassured about Vargos’s condition, but it did begin to appear that Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian was not entirely a lout, and he did want a drink.
Crispin nodded his head, carefully.
They brought him a flask, and later an aide to the tribune cleaned Crispin’s bloodied cheek and jawline with decent care when they halted for a brief rest. He saw Vargos then. They had indeed worked him over, and more than a little, but had evidently chosen to reserve more substantial chastisement until such time as everyone at their camp could watch the fun. Vargos was awake by then. His face was puffy from the blows and there was an ugly gash on his forehead, but he was in a litter now. Kasia was led up, apparently untouched, though with that furtive, doe-like look in her eyes again, as if caught in torchlight by night hunters and frozen in place with apprehension. He remembered his first sight of her. Yesterday at about this time in the front room of Morax’s inn. Yesterday? That was astonishing. It would give him another headache if he dwelled on it. He was an idiot. An imbecile.
Linon was gone, to her god, into silence in the Aldwood.
‘We have an escort to the military camp,’ Crispin said to both of them, still moving his jaw as little as possible. ‘I have achieved an understanding with the tribune. We will not be harmed further. In return I will allow him to continue functioning as a man and a soldier. I am sorry if you were hurt, or frightened. It seems I am now to be accompanied to Sarantium the rest of the way. There was more urgency to my summons than was evident in the documents themselves or their delivery. Vargos, they have promised a physician at their camp tomorrow night to tend to you, and I will release you from my service then. The tribune swears you will come to no harm and I believe he is honest. A gross pig, but honest.’
Vargos shook his head. He mumbled something Crispin couldn’t make out. His lips were badly swollen, the words garbled.
‘He wants to come with you,’ Kasia said softly. The sun
was low, now, behind her, almost straight along the road. It was growing colder, twilight coming. ‘He says he cannot serve on this road any more, after this morning. They will kill him.’
Crispin, after a moment’s thought, realized that had to be true. He remembered a blow struck by Vargos in the dark of the innyard before dawn this morning. Vargos, too, had intervened in this sacrifice. His own was not the only life in the midst of change, it seemed. In the last bronze glow of the sun underlighting clouds he looked closely at the man in the other litter. ‘This is correct? You wish me to retain your services all the way to the City?’
Vargos nodded his head.
Crispin said, ‘Sarantium is a different world, you know that.’
‘Know that,’ Vargos said, and this time he heard it clearly. ‘Your man.’
He felt something unexpected then, like a shaft of light through everything else that day. It took him a moment to recognize it as happiness. Crispin stretched out a hand from his litter and the other man reached across the space between to touch it with his own.
‘Rest now,’ said Crispin, struggling to keep his own eyes open. His head was hurting a great deal. ‘It will be all right.’ He wasn’t sure he believed that, but after a moment he saw that Vargos had indeed closed his eyes and was asleep. Crispin touched his bruised chin again and struggled not to yawn: it hurt when he opened his mouth so much. He looked at the girl. ‘We’ll talk tonight,’ he mumbled. ‘Need to sort out your life, too.’
He saw that quick, flaring apprehension in her again. Not a surprise, really. Her life, what had happened to her this year, and this morning. He saw Carullus coming over: long strides, his shadow behind him on the road. Not a bad man, really. An easy laugh, sense of humour. Crispin had provoked him. In front of his soldiers. It was true. Not the wisest thing. Might admit that later. Might not. Might be better not.
He was asleep before the tribune reached his litter.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ Kasia said to the officer as he came up, though Crispin never heard it. She stepped quickly between the litter and the soldier.
‘I can’t hurt him, girl,’ said the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian, shaking his head bemusedly, looking at her. ‘He has both my balls on a smith’s anvil and the hammer in his hand.’
‘Good!’ she said. ‘Keep remembering that.’ Her expression was fierce, northern, not at all doe-like just then.
The soldier laughed aloud. ‘Jad rot the moment I saw the three of you in that chapel,’ he said. ‘Now Inici slave girls tell me what to do? What were you even doing abroad on the fucking Day of the Dead, anyhow? Don’t you know it is dangerous today in Sauradia?’
She went pale, he saw, but made no reply. There was a tale here, his instincts told him. They also told him he wasn’t likely to hear it. He could have her beaten for disrespect, but knew he wouldn’t. He really was a kindhearted man, Carullus told himself. The Rhodian didn’t know how lucky he was.
Carullus also had a sense—a mild one, to be sure—that his own future might possibly be at risk as a result of this encounter at the sanctuary. He’d seen, a little too late, the Rhodian’s Permit, and who had signed it, and had read the specific terms of the Emperor’s request for the presence of a certain Martinian of Varena.
An artisan. Only an artisan, but personally invited to the City to lend his great expertise and knowledge to the Emperor’s new Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom. Another building. Another fucking building.
Wisdom, holy or wholly practical, suggested to Carullus that he exercise a measure of caution here. The man talked a very confident game, and he had papers to back him up. He did own the girl, too; those documents had been in the satchel as well. Only since last night, mind you. Part of that story he wasn’t going to learn, Carullus guessed. The girl was still glaring at him with those blue northern eyes. She had a strong, clever face. Yellow hair.
If the cleric hadn’t been watching what had happened, Carullus could have had the three of them killed and dropped in a ditch. He probably wouldn’t have. He was far too soft, he told himself. Hadn’t even broken the Rhodian’s jaw with his helmet. Shameful, really. Respect for the army had disappeared in this generation. The Emperor’s fault? Possibly, though you could be drummed out of the ranks with a slit nose for saying as much. Money went to monuments these days, to Rhodian artisans, to shameful payments to the butt-fucked Bassanids in the east, instead of to honest soldiers who kept the City and the Empire safe. Word was that even Leontes, the army’s beloved, the golden-haired Supreme Strategos, spent all his time now in the City, in the Imperial Precinct, dancing courtly attendance on the Emperor and Empress, playing games of a morning with balls and mallets on horseback, instead of smashing Bassanid or northern enemies into the puling rabble they were. He had a rich wife now. Another reward. Wives could be a world of trouble to a soldier, Carullus thought, had always thought. Whores, if they were clean, were much less bother.
They had halted long enough. He gestured to his second in command. Darkness was coming and the next inn was a ways yet. They could only move as fast as the carried men. The litters were hoisted, the litter-bearers’ horses collected and led along. The girl gave him a last fierce glare, then began walking between the two sleeping men, barefoot, looking small and fragile in a brown, too-large cloak in the last of the light. She was pretty enough. Thin for his taste, but spirited, and one couldn’t have everything. The artisan would be useless to her tonight. One had to exercise a bit of discretion with the personal slaves of other men, but Carullus wondered absently what his best smile might achieve here. He tried to catch her eye, but failed.
He was in some real pain but his father and brothers had given him worse beatings in his day and Vargos was not by nature inclined to feel sorry for himself or surrender to discomfort. He had struck an army tribune in the chest today, nearly felled him; by rights they could kill him for that. They had intended to, he knew, when they reached the camp. Then Martinian had intervened, somehow. Martinian did . . . unexpected things. In the darkness of the inn’s crowded main-floor sleeping room, Vargos shook his head. So much had happened since last night at Morax’s.
He thought he had seen the old god this morning.
Ludan, in his guise of the zubir, in the Aldwood. In a sacred grove of the Aldwood. He had stood there, knelt in that grove . . . and had walked alive from there out into the misty field again because Martinian of Varena had carried some kind of magicked bird about his neck.
The zubir. Against the memory of that, what were bruises or a swollen mouth or a stream of red when he pissed tonight? He had seen what he had seen, and lived. Was he blessed? Could such a man as he be blessed? Or was he being warned—a sudden thought—to forsake the other god, the one behind the sun, Jad and his chariot-driving son?
Or was Martinian right about this, too: that the one power need not mean a denial of the other? No cleric Vargos knew would accept that, but Vargos had already decided that the Rhodian was worth listening to. And staying with.
All the way to Sarantium, it seemed. There was apprehension in that thought. Megarium, on the coast in the west of Sauradia, was the largest city Vargos had ever seen, and he hadn’t liked it. The confining walls, the crowded, filthy, noisy streets. Carts rumbling by all night long, brawling voices when the taverns spilled their denizens, no calm or quietude even in the dark when the moons rode. And Vargos knew by tale what Sarantium was: as much beyond provincial Megarium as golden-haired Leontes, Strategos of the Empire, was beyond Vargos of the Inicii.
He couldn’t stay here, though. It was the simplest of truths. He’d made a decision in the dark of a hallway in Morax’s late last night and had sealed it with a blow of his staff in the pre-dawn courtyard amid smoky torches and fog. When you can’t go back and you can’t stay still, you move forward, nothing to think about, get on with it. The sort of thing his father would have said, draining another flask of home-brewed ale, wiping his moustache with his wet sleeve, gesturing with a thick arm for one of the women to
bring more beer. It wasn’t a complex decision, seen a certain way, and the grace here was that there was a man worth following and a place to go.
Vargos lay on a perfectly decent cot in the next inn east from Morax’s and listened to snoring soldiers and laughter from the common room. They were still drinking there, Martinian and the tribune.
He lay quietly, unable to sleep, and thought of the Aldwood again. Of the zubir in the middle of the Imperial road in a swirling away of fog, then appearing—somehow—right beside them in the misty field an instant after. He would think of these things all his days, Vargos knew. And remember how Pharus had looked in the road when they came back out.
The stablemaster had been dead before they went into the wood, but when they stood above his body, after, they saw what else had been done to him. Vargos would swear by his mother’s life and his own soul that no man had walked up to where the dead man lay. Whatever had claimed the man’s heart had not been mortal.
He’d heard a lifeless bird speak aloud with a woman’s voice to the zubir. He’d led a man and a woman through the Aldwood and out. He’d even—and here, for the first time, Vargos smiled a little in the close darkness—struck a Sarantine officer, a tribune, and they’d only roughed him up a little, and then they had put him in a litter—a litter!—and carried him to this inn, because Martinian had made them. That memory, too, would stay with him. He would have enjoyed having his Jad-cursed father watch cavalrymen dismount to carry him along the Imperial road like some senator or merchant prince.
Vargos closed his eyes. An unworthy, vain thought, today of all days. Pride had no place in the soul tonight. He struggled to shape a proper prayer to Jad and to his son, the fire-bearer, asking guidance and forgiveness. In his mind’s eye, though, he kept seeing again and again that ripped-open chest of a dead man he’d known and the black zubir with blood on the short, curved horns. To whom did one pray?
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