Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (35 page)

There was something wrong with the town’s outline as the Romans came up to it, but Marcus could not put his finger on its oddness. Gaius Philippus had never a doubt. “I will be damned,” he said. “The bloody place is without a wall!”

He was right; Garsavra’s houses, shops, and public buildings were open to the surrounding world, unprotected from any attack. More than anything else he had seen in the Empire, that brought home to Marcus Videssos’ accomplishment. Imbros, even the capital itself, had to ward off barbarians from the north, but the land they shielded had known peace so long it had forgotten even fortcraft.

With his predator’s mind, Viridovix was quick to see the other side of the coin. “Wouldn’t the Yezda have a lovely time
now, swooping down on a town so naked and all? They’d fair break their poor horses’ backs with the booty they’d haul off.”

The thought of Avshar’s wolves laying waste this peaceful, fertile land was nearly enough to make Scaurus physically sick. Like vicious children loose in a pottery, they could wreck in minutes what had taken years to create and take only delight in the wrecking.

“That’s why they pay us,” Gaius Philippus said, “to do the dying so they can stay happy and fat.”

Marcus found that notion little more appetizing than Viridovix’. It was not strictly fair, either; Videssians made up much the greatest part of Mavrikios’ army, and several thousand more native troops were already here awaiting the Emperor’s arrival.

There was, however, a grain of truth behind the centurion’s cynical words. The men Baanes Onomagoulos had called up from the soldier-peasants of the countryside were all too plainly less soldier than peasant. Their mounts were a collection of crowbait, their gear old and scanty, and their drill next to nonexistent.

Their commander was something else again, a general out of the same school from which Mavrikios Gavras had come. Scaurus got a good look at him during the review the Emperor called to welcome the new contingent into his forces. Onomagoulos rode past the Romans on his way to Mavrikios; now and again he touched his spurs to his horse’s flank to make the beast rear. He was not a very big man, but the way he sat his horse and the set of his hawk-nosed face proclaimed him a seasoned warrior nevertheless. He was well past forty; the years had swept most of the hair from his crown, but neither its remnants nor his pointed beard were frosted with gray.

Protocol demanded that he rein in, dismount, and perform a proskynesis before addressing the Emperor. Instead, he rode straight up to Mavrikios, who was also mounted, and cried, “Gavras, you old bastard, how have you been?”

Marcus waited for the world to fall to ruins, or at least for the Halogai at the Emperor’s side to tear the offender limb from limb. Some of the younger guardsmen reached for their swords, but Zeprin the Red was watching Mavrikios. Seeing the Emperor was not angry, the mercenary officer made a quick hand signal, and his men relaxed.

Gavras smiled thinly. “I manage to keep busy—too busy, usually. Maybe you should have had the job after all.” He brought his horse forward and slapped Onomagoulos on the back. Onomagoulos threw a lazy phantom punch at the Emperor, who ducked, his smile wider now.

The tribune suddenly understood a great deal. For Baanes Onomagoulos, Mavrikios Gavras was no distant omnipotent sovereign, but a fortunate equal, like a man who was lucky in love—and Scaurus thought of Helvis with a brief, warm glow. He wondered how long these two leaders had known each other and what they had seen together, for their friendship to survive the challenge of Mavrikios’ imperial rank.

Baanes looked to Thorisin, asking, “And how are you, pup?”

“Well enough,” the Sevastokrator answered. His tone was not as warm as his brother’s. Marcus noted he made no move to join Baanes and Mavrikios.

“ ‘Pup,’ is it?” Viridovix breathed into Scaurus’ ear. “Sure and it’s a rare bold man to be calling Thorisin Gavaras a name like that, with himself so feisty and all.”

“Onomagoulos has likely known him since before he could walk,” the Roman whispered back.

“All the more reason for the name to rankle now. You have no older kin, I’m thinking?”

“No,” Scaurus admitted.

“There’s no one worse than your elder brother’s friends. The first they see of you is a wee pulling lad, and they never forget it, not when you’re taller than the lot of them.” There was an edge to the Celt’s voice Marcus had seldom heard; when he looked round, Viridovix was thoroughly grim, as if chewing on a memory whose taste he did not like.

The Arandos river bounced down from the plateau into the flatlands over a series of cataracts, past which the army marched as it made its way westward. Churning down over the great boulders in the streambed, the Arandos hurled rainbow-catching spray hundreds of feet to either side of the riverbanks. The fine droplets drying on the faces of the soldiers slogging west were almost the only relief they got from the burning heat.

The central highlands were a very different place from the
lush coastal plain. The land was baked a dirty gray-brown by the sun and crisscrossed by gullies, dry nine parts of the year but rampaging torrents the tenth. Wheat grew here too, but only with reluctance when compared to the riot of fertility to the east.

Long stretches of land were too poor for agriculture of any sort, supporting only a thin cover of grass and spikey shrubs. Herdsmen drove vast flocks of sheep, cattle, and goats across the rugged terrain, their way of life more akin to that of the nomadic Khamorth than to that practiced elsewhere in the Empire.

For the first time, the supply problems Marcus had feared began showing up. Bread from the lowlands still followed the army up the Arandos, portaged past the rapids. It helped, for local deliveries of flour and grain were spotty and small. Some of the shortfall was made up from the herds, which gave the Romans something new to gripe about. On campaign they preferred a largely vegetarian diet, feeling that eating too much meat made them hot, heavy, and slow.

Most of the Videssians, used to a climate like Italy’s, had similar frugal tastes. The Halogai and their Namdalener cousins, on the other hand, gorged themselves on roast mutton and beef—and, as always, suffered more from the heat than did the rest of the army.

The Khamorth ate everything edible and did not complain.

Marcus grew more thankful for the Arandos with every day that passed. Without it and its occasional tributaries, the plateau would have been a desert in which nothing could survive. Its water was blood-warm and sometimes muddy, but never failed or slackened. The tribune found nothing more exquisite on a scorching afternoon than dipping up a helmetful and pouring it over his head. So thirsty was the air for moisture, though, that half an hour later he would have to do it again.

By the middle of the third week of the march, the army was beginning to become a real unit, not the motley collection of forces that had set out from Videssos. Mavrikios sped the process with a series of drills, rushing the men from column formation into line of battle, now ordering them to defend against the front, now the right, and again the left.

The maneuvers were exhausting when carried out in that heat, but the men started to know each other and to know what
they could expect in battle from their comrades: the iron courage of the Halogai, the Romans’ steadiness, the overwhelming charges of the Namdaleni, the dash of the little company of light horse from Khatrish, the Khamorth bands’ speed and ferocity, and the all-around competence of most of the Videssian majority—though not so specialized in their techniques as their allies, the Videssians were more versatile than any other troops.

The army’s left wing seemed no slower to deploy than the right or the center and no clumsier in its evolutions. Marcus began to think he had done Ortaias Sphrantzes an injustice. Then one day he heard Nephon Khoumnos’ bull voice roaring out on the left, overriding Sphrantzes’ reedy tones but careful to preface each command with, “Come, on, you lugs, you heard the general. Now—” and he would shout out whatever was needed.

Gaius Philippus heard him too, and said, “There’s a relief. At least now we know things won’t fall apart on our flank.”

“True enough,” Scaurus agreed. His solid respect for Mavrikios’ wits increased once more. The Emperor had managed to give the young scion of the rival faction a position that seemed powerful, but no authority to go with his rank. Sometimes Videssian subtlety was not to be despised.

As he and his men were slowly making their way to the Roman position in column after an exercise, the tribune caught sight of a familiar plump figure atop a donkey. “Nepos!” he called. “I didn’t know you were with us.”

The fat little priest steered his mount over to the Romans. A conical straw hat protected his shaven pate from the sun’s wrath. “There are times I’d sooner be lecturing at the Academy,” he admitted. “My fundament was not designed for days on end in the saddle—oh, a horrid pun there. I crave pardon—it was unintentional.” He shifted ruefully, continuing, “Still, I was asked to come and so here I am.”

“I would have thought the Emperor could find enough priests to take omens, hearten the men, and suchlike without pulling you away from your research,” Gorgidas said.

“And so there are,” Nepos said, puzzled at the physician’s slowness. “I do such things, to be sure, but they are hardly my reason for being here.”

“What then, your honor?” Viridovix asked with a sly grin. “Magic?”

“Why, of course,” Nepos replied, still surprised anyone needed to put the question to him. Then his brow cleared as he remembered. “That’s right—in your world, magic is more often talked of than seen, is it not? Well, my friends, answer me this—if not for magic, how and why would you be marching through some of the least lovely land in the Empire of Videssos? How would you be talking with me now?”

Viridovix, Gorgidas, and the Romans in earshot looked uncomfortable. Nepos nodded at them. “You begin to understand, I see.”

While his mates were still wrestling with Nepos’ words, Gaius Philippus drove to the heart of the problem. “If you use magic in your fighting, what can we poor mortals expect? Hordes of demons shrieking out of the sky? Man-sized fireballs shot from miles away? Gods above, will the very earth crack under our feet?”

Nepos frowned at the centurion’s oath, but saw from his listeners’ faces how alarming the prospect of the unknown was. He did his best to reassure them. “Nothing so dramatic, I promise you. Battle magic is a very chancy thing—with men’s minds and emotions at the pitch of combat, even the most ordinary spells often will not bite. For that matter, sorcerers are often too busy saving their own skins to have the leisure they need for magecraft.

“And you must bear in mind,” the priest went on, “that both sides will have magicians with them. The usual result is that they cancel each other’s work and leave the result to you armored ruffians. In short, you have little to fear. I think my colleagues of the Academy and I should be able to keep our sorcerous friend Avshar quite well checked and perhaps give him more than he bargained for.”

Nepos sounded confident. Yet for all the priest’s assurances of wizardry’s small use in battle, Marcus could not help remembering the talking corpse in the armory of Videssos’ seawall, could not stop himself from recalling the black rumors swirling round Avshar’s name in the fighting thus far. His hand slid to the hilt of his good Gallic sword. There, at least, was something to be counted on to hold dire sorceries at bay.

T
HE FIRST SIGNS
V
IDESSOS WAS A LAND UNDER ATTACK
showed themselves several days’ march east of Amorion. A string of plundered, burned-out villages said more clearly than words that Yezda raiders had passed this way. So did abandoned farms and a gutted monastery with its ravaged fields. Some of the destruction was very fresh; a pair of starving hounds still prowled round the monastery, waiting for masters who would not return.

The damage the nomads had done elsewhere was not much worse than any land could expect in wartime. For the Empire’s god, though, the Yezda reserved a special fury. The small chapel by the monks’ living quarters was viciously desecrated. The images on its walls were ripped to bits, and the altar chopped up and used for stovewood. As a final act of insult, the bandits had stabled their horses there.

If the Yezda thought to strike terror into their enemies by such tactics, they failed. The Videssians already had good cause to hate their western neighbors. Now the same hatred was inculcated in the mercenaries who followed Phos, for Mavrikios made sure all his soldiers looked inside the profaned chapel. The Emperor made no comment about what they saw. None was needed.

The devastation upset Marcus for another reason. He had long since decided Yezd was a foe worth fighting. Any land that placed one such as Avshar high in its councils was not one with which decent men could hope to live at peace.

What the tribune had not realized was how strong Yezd
was. The imperial army was not much more than halfway to Videssos’ western frontier, yet already the land bore the marks of the strokes the nomads were hurling at the Empire. And what they were seeing today was but the weakest, furthest touch of the Yezda. What would the land be like five days further west, or ten? Would anything grow at all?

That night there were no complaints over setting up the usual Roman field fortifications, with ditch, earth breastwork, and palisade of stakes. Not a Yezda had been seen, but the entire imperial force made camp as if in hostile country.

Scaurus was glad it was the turn of his group of legionaries to visit their women. As he and his men strolled from their camp to that of the women, he looked askance at local notions of what a fortified camp should be. He always did.

True, the women’s tents were surrounded by a palisade of sorts, but it was no better than other Videssian productions. There were too many large, haphazardly trimmed tree trunks—as soon as two or three foes could combine to pull one away from its fellows, the palisade was breached. The Romans, on the other hand, each carried several stakes, which they set up each night with their branches intertwining. They were hard to uproot, and even if one was torn free, it did not leave a gap big enough for a man to enter. He’d mentioned the matter to the Videssians several times; they always sounded interested, but did nothing.