Krispos the Emperor (54 page)

Most of the heretics, though, were glad enough to get any help the imperials gave them. They held out gashed arms and legs for bandages and obeyed their captors' commands with the alacrity of men who knew they might suffer for any transgression. In short, they behaved like other prisoners of war Krispos had seen over the years.

Katakolon rode up to the Avtokrator. "Father, they've run down the heretics' baggage train. In it they found some of the gold, ah, abstracted from the mint at Kyzikos."

"Did they? That's good news," Krispos said. "How much of the gold gold was recovered?"

"Something less than half the amount reported taken," Katakolon answered.

"More than I expected," Krispos said. Nevertheless, he suspected the troopers who'd captured the baggage train were richer now than when they'd started their pursuit. That was part of the price the Empire paid for civil war. If he tried to squeeze the gold out of them, he'd get a name for niggardliness that might lead to another revolt a year or three down the line.

"Your Majesty!" Another messenger waved frantically. "Your Majesty, we think we have Livanios!"

The gilded mail shirt that weighed on Krispos' shoulders all at once seemed lighter. "Fetch him here," the Avtokrator ordered. Then he raised his voice. "Phostis!"

"Aye, Father?" His eldest looked worn, but so did everyone else in the army.

"Did you hear that? They think they've caught Livanios. Will you identify him for me? You've see him often enough."

Phostis thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No," he said firmly.

"What?" Krispos glared at him. "Why not?"

"He's Olyvria's father," Phostis said. "How am I to live with her if I point the finger at him for the headsman?"

"Your mother's father plotted against me when you were a baby, do you know that?" Krispos said. "I exiled him to a monastery at Prista." The outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea was as grim a place of exile as the Empire had.

"But did Mother tell you of his plot?" Phostis demanded. "And would you have taken his head if he'd not been her father?"

The questions, Krispos admitted to himself, were to the point. "No and yes, in that order," he said. Even after exiling Rhisoulphos, he'd been nervous about sleeping in the same bed with Dara for a while.

"There, you see?" Phostis said. "Livanios was an officer of ours. You'll have others here who can name him for you."

Krispos thought about ordering Phostis to do as he'd said, but not for long. He had learned better than to give orders that had no hope of being obeyed—and in any case, Phostis was right. "Let it be as you say, son," the Avtokrator said.

He watched in some amusement as Phostis, obviously ready to argue more, deflated. "Thank you," the younger man said, his voice full of relief.

Krispos nodded, then called, "Who among my soldiers knows the traitor and rebel Livanios by sight?"

The question ran rapidly through the army. Before long, several men sat their horses close by Krispos. Among them was Gainas, the officer who'd sent back to Videssos the city the dispatch warning of Livanios' defection to the gleaming path.

The prisoner himself took a while to arrive. When he did.

Krispos saw why: he was afoot, one of several captives with hands tied behind their backs so they could not even walk quickly. Phostis said, "The one on the left there, Father, is the mage Artapan."

"Very good," Krispos said quietly. If Artapan was in this group, then Livanios probably was. too. Phostis had, in fact, all but said he was. Here, though, the
all but
was important. Krispos turned to the men he'd assembled. "Which of them is Livanios?"

Without hesitation, they all pointed to the fellow two men away from Artapan. The captive straightened and glared at Krispos. He was doing his best to keep up a brave front. "I am Livanios. Do as you please with my body. My soul will walk the gleaming path beyond the sun and dwell with Phos forever."

"If you were so set on walking the gleaming path, why did you rob the mint at Kyzikos and not just burn it?" Phostis asked. "You didn't despise material things enough to keep from dirtying your hands with them."

"I do not claim to be the purest among the followers of the holy Thanasios," Livanios said. "Nevertheless, I follow the truth he preached."

"The only place you'll follow him. I think, is to the ice," Krispos said. "And since I've beaten you and taken you in arms against me. I don't need to argue with you." He turned to one of the Halogai. "Trygve, you're still carrying your axe. Strike off his head and have done."

"Aye, Majesty." The big blond northerner strode over to Livanios and pushed him so he went to his knees. Trygve spoke with neither cruelty nor any great compassion, merely a sense of what needed doing: "Bend your neck. you. It will be over soonest then."

Livanios started to obey, but then his eyes found Phostis. With a quick glance toward Krispos, he asked, "May I put a last question?"

Krispos thought he knew what that question would be. "Be quick about it."

"Yes, your Majesty." Livanios did not sound sarcastic—but then, Krispos did not have to give him an easy end, and he knew it. He turned to Phostis. "D'you have my daughter? Syagrios said he thought you did, but—"

"Yes, I have her," Phostis said.

Livanios bowed his head. "I die content. My blood goes on."

Krispos did not want him having the last word. "My father-in-law died in exile up in Prista, a traitor," he said. "My son's father-in-law will die before he even properly gains that title, also a traitor. Temptation, it seems, rides Emperors' fathers-in-law hard—too hard." He gestured to Trygve.

The axe came down. It wasn't a broad-bladed, long-handled headsman's weapon, but the big man who wielded it was strong enough that that didn't matter. Krispos turned his head away from the convulsions of Livanios' corpse. Phostis, who had watched, looked green. Executions were harder to stomach than deaths in combat.

Unfortunately, they were also sometimes necessary. Krispos turned to Artapan. "If your hands were free, sirrah, I daresay you'd be making magic from his death agony there."

"I would try." Artapan's mouth twisted. "You have a strong mage at your side, Videssian Emperor. With him opposing, perhaps I'd not succeed."

"Did Rubyab King of Kings know you were a death-drinker when he sent you forth to help our heretics?" Krispos asked.

"Oh, indeed." The Makuraner magician's mouth twisted again, this time in a different way—wry amusement. "I was under sentence of death from the
Mobedham-mobedh
—the high patriarch, you would say—when the King of Kings plucked me from my cell and told me what he required. I had nothing to lose by the arrangement. Nor did he."

"True enough," Krispos said. If Artapan had failed in the mission Rubyab set him, he would die—but he was condemned to die anyhow. And if he succeeded, he would do more good for Makuran than for himself. Rubyab had never been anything but a wily foe to Videssos, but this piece of double-dealing was as devious as any Krispos had ever imagined.

He nodded again to Trygve. Artapan jerked free of his captors and tried to run. With his hands bound behind him, with so many men chasing him, he didn't get more than a couple of paces. The meaty sound of the axe striking cut off his last scream.

"Foolishness," Trygve said from where he cleaned the blade on the wizard's caftan. "Better to die well, since die he would. Livanios did it properly."

Katakolon pointed to the other two captive Thanasioi, who stood in glum and shaky silence. "Will you take their heads, too, Father?"

Krispos started to ask if they would abandon their heresy, then remembered the answer meant little: the Thanasioi felt no shame at lying to save their skins, and might keep their beliefs in secret. Instead, the Avtokrator turned to Phostis and asked, "How big are these fish we've caught?"

"Medium size," Phostis answered. "They're officers, but they weren't part of Livanios' inner circle."

"Take them away and put them with the rest of the prisoners, then," Krispos said to the guards who stood behind the captives. "I'll figure out what to do with them later."

"I've never seen—I've never imagined—so many captives." Katakolon pointed toward long rows of Thanasiot prisoners, each bound to the man in front of him by a line that wrapped round his wrists and then his neck: any effort to flee would only choke those near him. Katakolon went on, "What will you do with them all?"

"I'll figure that out later, too," Krispos said. His memory went back across two decades, to the fearsome massacres Harvas Black-Robe had worked among the captives he'd taken. Seeing those pathetic corpses, even so long ago, had burned away forever any inclination toward slaughter Krispos might have had. He could imagine no surer road to the eternal ice.

"You can't just send them back to their villages," Phostis said. "I did come to know them while I was in their hands. They'll promise anything, and then a year from now, or two, or three, they'll find themselves a new leader and start raiding again."

"I know that," Krispos said. "I'm glad to see you do, too."

Sarkis rode up. In spite of bloody bandages, the cavalry general seemed in high spirits. "We shattered 'em and scattered 'em, your Majesty," he boomed.

"Aye, so we did." Krispos sounded less gleeful. He'd learned to think in bigger terms than battles, or even campaigns. He wanted more from this victory than the two years' respite Phostis had suggested. He scratched his nose, which wasn't as impressive as Sarkis' but did exceed the Videssian norm. "By the good god," he said softly.

"What is it?" Katakolon asked.

"My father—after whom you're named, Phostis—always said we had Vaspurakaner blood in us, even though we lived far from here, up by—and sometimes over—what used to be the border with Kubrat. My guess is that our ancestors had been resettled there on account of some crime or other."

"Very likely," Sarkis said, as if that were a matter for pride.

"We could do the same with the Thanasioi," Krispos said. "If we uproot the villages where the heresy flourishes most and transplant those people over near Opsikion in the far east, say, and up near the Istros—what used to be Kubrat still needs more folk to work the land—those Thanasioi would be likely to lose their beliefs in a generation or two among so many orthodox folk, just as a pinch of salt loses itself in a big jug of water."

"It might work," Sarkis said. "Videssos has done such things before—else, as you say, your Majesty, your own forebears would not have ended up where they did."

"So I've read," Krispos said. "We can even run the transfer both ways, sending in orthodox villagers to loosen the hold the Thanasioi have on the region round Etchmiadzin. It will mean a great lot of work, but if the good god is willing it will put an end to the Thanasiot problem once and for all."

"Moving whole villages—thousands, tens of thousands of people—from one end of the Empire to the other? Moving more thousands back the other way?" Phostis said. "Not the work alone—think of the hardships you'll be making."

Krispos exhaled in exasperation. "Remember, these men we just beat down have sacked and ravaged Kyzikos and Garsavra just lately, Pityos last year, and the lord with the great and good mind only knows how many smaller places. How much hardship did they make? How much more would they have made if we hadn't beaten them? Put that in the balance against moving villagers around and tell me which side of the scale goes down."

"They believe in the Balance in Khatrish and Thatagush," Phostis said. "Have you beaten one heresy, Father, only to join another?"

"I wasn't talking about Phos' Balance, only the one any man with a dram of sense can form in his own mind," Krispos said irritably. Then he saw Phostis was laughing at him. "You scamp! I didn't think you'd stoop to baiting me."

As was his way, Phostis quickly turned serious again. "I'm sorry. I'll build that balance and tell you what I think."

"That's fair," Krispos said. "Meanwhile, no need to apologize. I can stand being twitted. If I couldn't, Sarkis here would have spent these last many years in a cell under the government office buildings—assuming he'd fit into one."

The cavalry commander assumed an injured expression. "If you'd jailed me many years ago, your Majesty, I shouldn't have attained to my present size. Not on what you feed your miscreants, I shouldn't."

"Hrmph." Krispos turned back to Phostis. "What did your balance tell you?"

"If it must be done, then it must." Phostis neither looked nor sounded happy. Krispos didn't mind that. He wasn't happy himself. He and his village had been resettled twice when he was a boy, once forcibly by Kubrati raiders, and then again after the Empire ransomed them from the nomads. He knew the hardship relocating entailed. Phostis went on, "I wish it didn't have to be done."

"So do I," Krispos said. Phostis blinked, which made Krispos snort. "Son, if you think I enjoy doing this, you're daft. But I see that it has to be done, and I don't shrink from it. Liking all of what you do when you wear the red boots is altogether different from doing what needs doing whether you like it or not."

Phostis thought about that. It was a very visible process. Krispos gave him credit for it; before he'd been snatched, he would have been more likely to dismiss out of hand anything Krispos said. At last, biting his Up, Phostis nodded. Krispos nodded back, well pleased. He'd actually managed to get a lesson home to his hardheaded son.