Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (42 page)

In Vaspurakan even walled cities were under Yezda control, either stormed or, more often, simply starved into submission. Mavrikios’ host came to the first of these two days out of Soli—a town called Khliat, whose shadow in the afternoon sun ran long down the valley through which the army was traveling.

The Yezda commander refused surrender with a brusque message eerily close to Scaurus’ retort to the Emperor: “If you conquer, you could do me no worse harm than my lords would, should I yield.”

Gavras did not waste time in further negotiations. Using what light remained, he surrounded Khliat, quickly driving the Yezda skirmishers back inside the city’s walls. Once the encirclement was complete, he rode round the town just out of bowshot, deciding where it was most vulnerable to siege engines.

Again the night was furiously busy, this time with soldiers unloading the precut timbers and other specialized gear of the siege train. At the officers’ council that night, the Emperor declared, “Our assault party tomorrow will be made up of Romans and Namdaleni. As the most heavily armed troops we have, they are best suited to forcing their way through breached walls.”

Marcus gulped. Mavrikios’ reasoning was probably sound, but the attacking force’s casualties could well be hideous. The Namdaleni would fill their ranks with new recruits from the Duchy, but where was he to find new Romans?

“May your Majesty it please,” Gagik Bagratouni spoke up, “but I the privilege of leading this assault would beg for my men. It is their homes they are freeing. Their armors may be lighter, but their hearts shall be so too.”

Mavrikios rubbed his chin. “Be it so, then,” he decided. “Spirit has raised more than one victory where it had no right to grow.”

“Well, well, the gods do look out for us after all,” Gaius Philippus whispered behind his hand to Scaurus.

“You’ve been in this wizards’ land so long you’ve taken up mindreading,” Marcus whispered back. The centurion bared his teeth in a silent chuckle.

After the meeting broke up, Soteric fell into step beside the tribune. “How interesting,” he said sardonically, “and how lucky for you, to be chosen to share the butcher’s bill with us. The Emperor is glad of our help, aye, and glad to bleed us white, too.”

“Weren’t you listening? The Vaspurakaners are going in our stead.”

Soteric gestured in disgust. “Only because Bagratouni has more honor than sense. True, we’re spared, but not forgotten, I promise you. Everyone knows what Mavrikios thinks of the men of the Duchy, and you did yourself no good when you stood up to him yesterday. You’ll pay—wait and see.”

“You’ve been talking to your sister again,” Marcus said.

“Helvis? No, I haven’t seen her today.” Soteric eyed the tribune curiously. “By the Wager, man, don’t you know? Every blasted Videssian is buzzing over how you saved twelve men from having their heads chopped off.”

Scaurus exchanged a consternation-filled glance with Gaius Philippus. No matter how much he tried to evade the role, it seemed he was being cast as the Emperor’s opponent. That notwithstanding, though, he thought Soteric was wrong. Mavrikios Gavras might be devious in his dealings with his foes, but there was never any doubt who those foes were.

When he said as much to the Namdalener, Soteric laughed at his naiveté. “Wait and see,” he repeated and, still shaking his head over what he saw as the Roman’s gullibility, went off about his business.

Gaius Philippus gave thoughtful study to the islander’s retreating back. He waited until Soteric was too far away to hear him before delivering his verdict. “That one will always see the worst in things, whether or not it’s there.” Coming from the centurion, a pessimist born, the statement was startling.

Gaius Philippus glanced warily at Scaurus; after all, the
man he was dispraising was the brother of the tribune’s woman. Even so, Marcus had to nod. The characterization was too apt to gainsay.

Matching their commander’s defiance, the Yezda inside Khliat roared their war cries at the Videssian army from the city’s walls. The rising sun glinted bloodily off their sabers. It was a brave show, but not one to frighten the professionals in the audience. “This will be easy,” Gaius Philippus said. “There aren’t enough of them by half to give us trouble.”

Events quickly proved him right. The imperial army’s bolt-throwing engines and the strong bows of the Khamorth sent such floods of darts against Khliat’s defenders that the latter could not stop Videssian rams from reaching the wall in three separate places. The ground shook as each stroke did its pulverizing work.

One ram was put out of action for a time when the Yezda managed to tear some skins from its covering shed and dropped red-hot sand on the men who worked it, but new troops rushed forward to take the place of those who fell. The sheds’ green hides were proof against the burning oil and firebrands the nomads flung down on them, and many defenders bold enough to expose themselves in such efforts paid for their courage with their lives.

The wall crumbled before one ram, then, only minutes later, before a second. Yezda on the battlements shrieked in terror and anguish as they slid through crashing stones to the ground below. Others, cleverly stationed behind the masonry the rams were battering, sent withering volleys into the siege engines’ crews.

Then the Vaspurakaners were rushing toward the riven wall, Gagik Bagratouni at their head. Their battlecries held a savage joy, a fierce satisfaction in striking back at the invaders who had worked such ruin on their homeland.

A Yezda wizard, an angular figure in flapping blood-colored robes, clambered onto shattered masonry in one of the breaches to hurl a thunderbolt at the onstorming foe. But Marcus learned what Nepos had meant when he spoke of battle magic’s unreliability. Though lightning glowed from the mage’s fingertips, it flickered and died less than an arm’s
length from his body. At his failure, one of his own soldiers sabered him down in disgust.

The fight at the breaches was sharp but short. The Yezda were not natural foot soldiers, nor was there any place for their usual darting cavalry tactics in the defense of a fortified town. More heavily armored than their opponents, the Vaspurakaners hammered their way through the nomads’ resistance and into Khliat.

When he saw the enemy forces heavily committed against the “princes,” Mavrikios gave the order for a general assault. Like a sudden bare-branched forest, ladders leaped upward at Khliat’s walls. Here and there still-resolute defenders sent them toppling over with a crash, but soon the imperial forces gained a lodgement on the wall and began dropping down into the city itself.

The Romans were involved in little that deserved the name of fighting. The very heaviness of their panoplies, an advantage in close combat, made them slow and awkward on scaling ladders. The Emperor wisely did not use them thus until most danger was past. Khliat was largely in imperial hands by the time they entered it, a fact which brought advantages and disadvantages both. Their only casualty was a broken foot suffered when a legionary tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, but they found little loot, and some grumbled.

“Men are fools to complain over such things,” Gorgidas remarked, bandaging the injured soldier’s foot. “Think how much more booty there would be if the Yezda had killed everyone who got into the city before us, and how sorry we should be to have it.”

Gaius Philippus said, “For a man who’s followed the army a while, you’re trusting as a child. Most of these lads’d cheerfully sell their mothers if they thought the old gals would fetch more than two coppers apiece.”

“You may be right,” Gorgidas sighed, “though I still like to think otherwise.” Turning back to the Roman with the fracture, he said, “If you can, stay off that foot for three weeks. If you put your weight on it before it’s healed, it may pain you for years. I’ll change the dressings day after tomorrow.”

“I thank you kindly,” the legionary said. “I feel like a twit, falling over my own feet like that.”

Gorgidas checked to make sure the bandage was not tight enough to risk necrosis in the Roman’s foot. “Enjoy your rest while you can get it—you’ll be back at your trade too soon to suit you, I promise you that.”

The bravado of the Yezda cracked when it became plain they could not hold Khliat. They began surrendering, first one by one and then in groups, and were herded together like cattle in the city’s marketplace. Some of the Videssians crowding round wanted to massacre the lot of them, but Mavrikios would hear none of it. In the glow of victory he was prepared to be merciful.

He threw a cordon of Halogai and Romans around the prisoners, then ordered the defeated enemy’s common soldiers disarmed and sent back to Soli under guard. There they could await disposition until he had finished beating their countrymen. Most of them fought for Yezd instead of Videssos only because their wanderings first brought them to that land.

The chieftains were another matter. They knew full well the master they served and did so with open eyes. Yet their choice of overlord did not make the Yezda officers any less dauntless. Mavrikios came up to their commander, who was sitting dejectedly on the ground not far from where Marcus stood.

That captain and a handful of men had holed up in a house and would not yield until the Videssians threatened to burn it over their heads. Looking at him now, Scaurus did not think him wholly of the steppe blood, as were most of the warriors he led. He was more slimly built and finer of feature than they, with large liquid eyes; perhaps there were native Makuraners in his ancestry.

Thorisin Gavras was at his brother’s side. “Rise for the Emperor, you!” he barked.

The Yezda did not move. “Were our positions reversed, I do not think he would rise for me,” he said. His Videssian was fluent and almost without accent.

“Why, you impudent—” The Sevastokrator was furious, but Mavrikios checked him with a gesture. Not for the first time, Marcus saw the respect the Emperor gave forthrightness.

Mavrikios looked down at his captive. “Were our places reversed, what would you do with me?”

The Yezda stared back unflinchingly. He thought for a moment, then said, “I believe I would have you whipped to death.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, filth!” said Zeprin the Red, hefting his axe. The Haloga officer tolerated the Romans treating Mavrikios with less than due ceremony; they were, after all, allies. This insolence from a prisoner he would not stomach.

The Emperor was unperturbed. He told the Yezda commander, “I will not be as harsh as you. You are a brave man—will you not renounce the evil you followed and join us in rooting it out?”

Something flickered in the Yezda’s expressive eyes. Perhaps it was temptation. Whatever it was, it was gone before Marcus was sure he’d seen it. “I can no more foreswear myself than you could, were you sitting in this dust,” the officer said, and won grudging nods of approval from both Thorisin Gavras and Zeprin the Red.

“As you wish,” Mavrikios said. The quality of the man he faced made the Emperor eager to win him to his side. “I will not cast you in prison, though I will ship you to an island for safekeeping until I’ve beaten your khagan and his sorcerous minister. Then, maybe, your mind will change.”

Scaurus thought the Yezda was, if anything, being treated too leniently, but the man only shrugged. “What you do to me does not matter. Avshar will dispose of me as he pleases.”

The Emperor grew irritated for the first time. “You are under my control now, not your wizard-prince’s.” The Yezda shrugged again. Mavrikios spun angrily on his heel and strode away.

The next morning he sent men to take charge of the officer and ship him east. They found him dead, his lips burned from the poison he had swallowed. His stiff fist still clutched a tiny glass vial.

The news raised an unpleasant question in Marcus’ mind. Had the Yezda killed himself for fear of the vengeance he thought Avshar would take on him, or was his suicide itself that vengeance? The implications were distasteful in either case.

*  *  *  

Despite the questionable omen, the next two weeks went well for the imperial forces. Using Khliat as a base of operations, Mavrikios captured several other Yezda-held towns: Ganolzak and Shamkanor to the north, Baberd in the southeast, and Phanaskert due south of Khliat.

None of them put up a prolonged or difficult resistance. The Yezda were far more formidable on horseback than confined inside city walls, and the Videssian siege train proved its worth time and again. Moreover, the Vaspurakaners inside the towns hated their nomadic oppressors and betrayed them to the imperial forces at every opportunity. Large numbers of prisoners went trudging unhappily into the east; Videssian garrisons took their place.

Marcus noticed that Mavrikios Gavros was using troops of doubtful worth or loyalty to hold the newly captured cities, and appointing as garrison commanders officers whose allegiance he suspected. Gaius Philippus saw the same thing. He said, “He’s stripping us down for the real action, right enough. Better to put the fainthearts where they might be useful than have them turn tail and run when he really needs them.”

“I suppose so,” Marcus agreed. Still, he could not help recalling the grief he’d come to by dividing his Romans on riot duty in Videssos.

Phanaskert was a good-sized city, though badly depopulated by the raids of the Yezda and their occupation. When Mavrikios took the rest of his forces back to Khliat, he left more than half his Namdaleni behind to hold the town’s long circuit of walls against possible counterattack from the west.

Soteric was one of the islanders ordered to garrison duty. He invited his sister and Scaurus to share an evening meal with him before the bulk of the Videssian army returned to its base. Over captured Vaspurakaner wine—even thicker and sweeter than Videssian vintages—the Namdalener said to Marcus, “You see now what I meant outside the Emperor’s tent. By one trick or another, Mavrikios finds ways to be rid of us.”

Pretending not to take his meaning, the tribune answered, “Are you unhappy with your assignment? Holding a town
from the inside strikes me as softer duty than fighting your way into one.”