Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (25 page)

Scaurus did not reply; Gorgidas had a gift for bringing up things he would rather not think about. He did resolve to fix his every memory so firmly it could never escape. Even as he made the resolution, he felt the cold wind of futility at his back. Well, then, the best you can, he told himself, and was satisfied. Failure was no disgrace; indifference was.

Videssian usages also began to change what Marcus had thought a fundamental part of Roman military thinking—its attitude toward women. The army of Rome was so often on campaign that marriage during legionary service was forbidden as being bad for discipline. Neither the Videssians nor their mercenary soldiers followed that rule. They spent much of their time in garrison duty, which gave them the chance to form long-lasting relationships that could not have existed in a more active army.

As with the worship of the Empire’s god, the tribune knew he could not keep his men from uniting with Videssos’ women. He would have faced mutiny had he tried, the more so as the local soldiers enjoyed the privilege the legionaries
were seeking. First one and then a second of the four barracks halls the Romans used was transformed by hastily erected partitions of wood and cloth into quarters where privacy could be had. Nor was it long before the first proud Romans could boast that they would be the fathers of fine sons—or so they hoped—to take their places.

Gaius Philippus grumbled more than ever. “I can see us in a few years’ time—brats squalling underfoot, troopers brawling because their queans had a spat. Mars above, what are we coming to?” To forestall the evil day, he worked the legionaries harder than before.

Scaurus had reservations too, but he noted that while most of the Namdaleni had women, it did not seem to blunt their edge. In a way, he could even see it as an advantage—with such an intimate stake in Videssos’ survival, the legionaries might fight harder for the Empire.

Yet he also realized that acquiring mates was another tap on the wedge Videssos was driving into the souls of his men, another step in their absorption into the Empire. Every time the tribune saw a Roman walk by with his attention solely on the woman whose waist his arm encircled, he felt again the inevitability of Gorgidas’ words. The Romans were a drop of ink fallen into a vast lake; their color had to fade with time.

Of all the peoples they came to know in the capital, the legionaries seemed to blend best with the Namdaleni. It embarrassed Scaurus, who reserved his loyalty for the Emperor and knew the men of the Duchy would cheerfully gut Videssos if ever they saw their chance. But there was no getting around it—Roman and Namdalener took to one another like long-separated relatives.

Maybe the skirmish and feast they had shared made friendship easier; maybe it was simply that the Namdaleni were less reserved than Videssians and more willing to meet the Romans halfway. Whatever the reason, legionaries were always welcome in taverns that catered to the easterners, and constant traffic flowed between the islanders’ barracks and those housing the Romans.

When Marcus worried his soldiers’ fondness for the men of the Duchy would undermine the friendships he’d built up with the Videssians, Gaius Philippus put an arm round his
shoulder. “You want friends everywhere,” he said, speaking like a much older brother. “It’s your age, I suppose; everyone in his thirties thinks he needs friends. Once you reach your forties, you find they won’t save you any more than love did.”

“To the crows with you!” Marcus exclaimed, appalled. “You’re worse than Gorgidas.”

One morning, Soteric Dosti’s son came to invite several of the Roman officers to that day’s Namdalener drill. “Aye, you bettered us afoot,” he said, “but now you’ll see us at our best.”

Marcus had watched the Namedaleni work before and had a healthy respect for their hard-hitting cavalry. He also approved of their style of practice. Like the Romans, they made their training as much like battle as they could, so no one would be surprised on the true field of combat. But from the smug grin Soteric was trying to hide, this invitation was to something special.

A few Khamorth were practicing archery at the drillfield’s edge. Their short, double-curved bows sent arrow after arrow
whocking
into the straw-stuffed hides they had set up as targets. They and the party Marcus led were the only non-Namdaleni on the field that day.

At one end stood a long row of hay bales, at the other, almost equally still, a line of mounted islanders. The men of the Duchy were in full caparison. Streamers of bright ribbon fluttered from their helms, their lances, and their big horses’ trappings. Each wore over his chain mail shirt a surcoat of a color to match his streamers. A hundred lances went up in salute as one when the easterners caught sight of the Romans.

“Och, what a brave show,” Viridovix said admiringly. Scaurus thought the Gaul had found the perfect word; this was a show, something prepared specially for his benefit. He resolved to judge it on that basis if he could.

The commander of the Namdaleni barked an order. Their lances swung down, again in unison. A hundred glittering leaf-shaped points of steel, each tipping a lance twice the length of a man, leveled at the bales of hay a furlong from them. Their leader left them thus for a long dramatic moment, then shouted the command that sent them hurtling forward.

Like an avalanche thundering down an Alpine pass, they started slowly. The heavy horses they rode were not quick to
build momentum, what with their own bulk and the heavily armored men atop them. But they gained a trifle at every bound and were at full stride before halfway to their goal. The earth rolled like a kettledrum under their thuttering hooves; their iron-shod feet sent great clods of dirt and grass flying skywards.

Marcus tried to imagine himself standing in a hay bale’s place, watching the horses thunder down on him until he could see their nostrils flaring crimson, staring at the steel that would tear his life away. The skin on his belly crawled at the thought of it. He wondered how any men could nerve themselves to oppose such a charge.

When lances, horses, and riders smashed through them, the bales simply ceased to be. Hay was trampled underfoot, flung in all directions, and thrown high into the air. The Namdaleni brought their horses to a halt; they began picking hay wisps from their mounts’ manes and coats and from their own surcoats and hair.

Soteric looked expectantly to Scaurus. “Most impressive,” the tribune said, and meant it. “Both as spectacle and as a show of fighting power, I don’t think I’ve seen the like.”

“Sure and it’s a cruel hard folk you Namdaleni are,” Viridovix said, “to beat poor hay bales all to bits, and them having done you no harm.”

Gaius Philippus added, “If that was your way of challenging us to a return engagement on horseback, you can bloody well think again. I’m content to rest on my laurels, thank you very kindly.” The veteran’s praise made Soteric glow with pride, and the day, the islanders agreed, was a great success.

But the centurion was in fact less overawed than he let the Namdaleni think. “They’re rugged, don’t misunderstand me,” he told Scaurus as they returned to their own quarters after sharing a midday meal with the easterners. “Good steady foot, though, could give them all they want. The key is keeping their charge from flattening you at the start.”

“Do you think so?” Marcus asked. He’d paid Gaius Philippus’ words less heed than he should. It must have shown, for Viridovix looked at him with mischief in his eye.

“You’re wasting your breath if you speak to the lad of war, I’m thinking,” he said to the centurion. “There’s nothing in his
head at all but a couple of fine blue eyes, sure and there’s not. She’a a rare beauty lass, Roman; I wish you luck with her.”

“Helvis?” Marcus said, alarmed his feelings were so obvious. He covered himself as best he could. “What makes you think that? She wasn’t even at table today.”

“Aye, that’s true—and weren’t you the disappointed one now?” Viridovix did his best to assume the air of a man giving serious advice, something of a wasted effort on his naturally merry face. “You’re about it the right way, I’ll say that. Too hard and too soon would do nothing but drive her from you. But those honied plums you found for her boy, now—you’re a sly one. If the imp cares for you, how could the mother not? And giving them to Soteric to pass along will make him think the better of you too, the which canna hurt your chances.”

“Oh, hold your peace, can’t you? With Helvis not there, who could I give the sweets to but her brother?” But quibble as he would over details, in broad outline he knew the Celt was right. He was powerfully drawn to Helvis, but that was complicated by his guilt over his role, accidental though it was, in Hemond’s death. Still, in the few times he had seen her since that day, she bore out her claim that she had no ill will toward him. And Soteric, for his part, would have had to be blind not to have noticed the attention Scaurus paid his sister, yet he raised no objections—a promising sign.

But that his feelings should be common knowledge, maybe—no, certainly—the subject of gossip through Videssos’ community of soldiers, could only dismay the tribune, who did not much care to reveal himself to any but his friends.

He was relieved when Gaius Philippus returned to the conversation’s original subject. “Stiffen your line with pikemen and give them a good volley of
pila
as soon as they come into range, and your fine Namdalener horsemen will have themselves a very warm time indeed. Horses know better than to run up against anything sharp.”

Viridovix gave the centurion an exasperated glance. “You are the damnedest man for holding onto a worthless idea I ever did see. Here we could be making himself squirm like a worm in a mug of ale, and you go maundering on about nags, Epona preserve them.” He named the Gallic horse-goddess.

“One day, maybe, it’ll be you in the alepot,” Gaius Philippus
said, looking him in the eye. “Then we’ll see if you’re glad to have me change the subject.”

While Mavrikios readied his stroke to put an end to Yezd once for all, the Empire’s western enemy did not stand idle. As always, there was a flow of wild nomads down off the steppe, over the Yegird River, and into the northwest of what had been the land of Makuran. Thus had the Yezda entered that land half a century before. Khagan Wulghash, Marcus thought, was no one’s fool. Instead of letting the newcomers settle and disrupt his state, he shunted them eastward against Videssos, urging them on with promises of fighting, loot, and the backing of the Yezda army.

The nomads, more mobile than the foe they faced, slid through Vaspurakan’s mountain valleys and roared into the fertile plains beyond them, spreading atrocity, mayhem, and rapine. The raiders were like so much water; if checked at one spot, they flowed someplace else, always probing for weak spots and all too often finding them.

And at their head was Avshar. Marcus cursed and Nephon Khoumnos swore the first reports of him were lies, but soon enough they had to admit the truth. Too many refugees, straggling into Videssos with no more than they could carry, told a tale that left no room for doubt. Yezd’s wizard-chieftain did not try to hide his presence. On the contrary, he flaunted it, the better to terrify his foes.

With the white robes he always wore, he chose to ride a great black charger, half again the size of his followers’ plains-ponies. His sword hewed down the few bold enough to stand against him, and his mighty bow sent shafts of death winging farther than any normal man, any human man, could shoot. It was said that any man those arrows pierced would die, be the wound ever so tiny. It was also said no spear or arrow would bite on him, and that the mere sight of him unstrung even a hero’s courage. Remembering the spell his good Gallic blade had turned aside, Marcus could well believe the last.

High summer approached and still the Emperor gathered his forces. Local levies in the west fought the Yezda without support from the host building in the capital. None of the Romans could understand why Mavrikios, certainly a man of
action, did not move. When Scaurus put the question to Neilos Tzimiskes, the borderer replied, “Too soon can be worse than too late, you know.”

“Six weeks ago—even three weeks ago—I would have said aye to that. But if matters aren’t taken in hand soon, there won’t be much of an Empire left to save.”

“Believe me, my friend, things aren’t as simple as they seem.” But when Marcus tried to get more from Tzimiskes than that, Neilos retreated into vague promises that matters would turn out for the best. It was not long before the Roman decided he knew more than he was willing to say.

The next day, Scaurus kicked himself for not seeking what he needed to know from Phostis Apokavkos. The truth was, the former peasant had blended so well into the Roman ranks that the tribune often forgot he had not been with the legionaries in the forests of Gaul. His new allegiance, Marcus reasoned, might make him more garrulous than Tzimiskes.

“Do I know why we’re not out on campaign? You mean to tell me you don’t?” Apokavkos stared at the tribune. He plucked the air where his beard had been, then laughed at himself. “Still can’t get used to this shaving. Answer to your question’s a simple thing: Mavrikios isn’t about to leave the city until he’s sure he’ll still be Emperor when he gets home.”

Marcus thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “A pox on faction politics! The whole Empire is the stake, not who sits the throne.”

“You’d think a mite different if it was your backside on it.”

Scaurus started to protest, then thought back on the last decades of Rome’s history. It was only too true that the wars against King Mithridates of Pontus had dragged on long after that monarch should have been crushed, simply because the legions opposing him were sometimes of Sulla’s faction, sometimes of the Marians’. Not only was cooperation between the two groups poor; both kept going back to Italy from Asia Minor to fight another round of civil war. The Videssians were men like any others. It was probably too much to ask of them not to be fools like any others.

“You’re getting the idea, all right,” Apokavkos said, seeing Marcus’ grudging agreement. “Besides, if you doubt me, how do you explain Mavrikios staying in the city last year and not
going out to fight the Yezda? Things were even tighter then than they are now; he plain didn’t dare leave.”