The Legion of Videssos (40 page)

The khagan gestured to both embassies in dismissal. “It is time for us to talk among ourselves on what we’ve heard,” he said. His own eyebrow lifted in mild irony. “There is a bit to think about.” Bogoraz and the Videssian party ignored each other as they left the banquet tent; the driver whistled his horses to a brief halt so they could alight.

Once back in their own yurt, Goudeles threw himself down on the rug with a great sigh of relief. “Scratch one robe,” he said. “I’ve sweated clean through it.” A serving girl, understanding tone if not words, offered him a skin of kavass. “Phos’ blessings on you, my sweet,” he exclaimed, and half emptied it in one great draught.

“Save some,” Skylitzes ordered. After he had drunk, he slapped the bureaucrat on the back. Ignoring Goudeles’ yelp, he said, “Pikridios, I never thought I’d see the day when you disowned the Sphrantzai and spoke up for Thorisin—aye, and sounded like you meant it.”

“Professional pride compelled,” the bureaucrat said. “Should I let a mere Makuraner get the better of me, how could I show my face in the chancery again? And as for your precious Gavras, my hardheaded friend, if he had given me my just deserts, I would still be comfortably ensconced there.”

“If he had given you your just deserts,” Skylitzes retorted, “you’d be short a head, for your embassy to him during the civil war.”

“Such details are best forgotten,” Goudeles said with an airy wave. The pen-pusher went on, “The shock of my sensibilities here on the barren steppe is punishment enough, I assure you. So far from being the safe center of the cosmos, Videssos seems an island in a barbarous sea, quite small, lonely, and surrounded by deadly foes.”

Now Skylitzes was staring at him. “Well, Phos be praised! You really have learned something.”

“If the two of you can hold off singing each other’s praises for a bit,” Gorgidas said pointedly, “you might send that skin this way.”

“Sorry.” Skylitzes passed it to him. As the Greek drained it, the Videssian officer said, “We might find you a line or two while we’re singing. You gave me the idea to warn the Arshaum of Avshar’s games.”

“Aye, aye, aye.” After the tension in the banquet tent, the
kavass was hitting Goudeles hard; his round cheeks were red, and his eyes a little glassy. He nodded as if his head were on springs, bobble, bobble, bobble. “And that parable about what’s-his-name, your king with the funny name. That took Bogoraz’ high-necked pretensions down a peg, yes it did.” He giggled.

“Glad to help,” Gorgidas said, warming to their praise. He remembered something he had caught in the arguments before the khagan and spoke it before he could lose it again: “Did you notice how Bogoraz slighted Avshar? Are there splits among the Yezda?”

“Never a court without ’em,” Goudeles declared loudly.

“Even if there are, what use can we make of it here?” Skylitzes asked, and the Greek had to admit he did not know.

“Not to worry about that, my dears,” Goudeles said. His elegant syntax was going fast, but his wits still worked. “Now we got—
have
—an idea of where the clan elders stand, we throw gold around. Works pretty good, most times.” He giggled again. “Wonderful stuff, gold.”

“It would be even more so if Bogoraz didn’t have it, too,” Gorgidas said. Goudeles snapped his fingers to show what he thought of that.

The pony’s muscles flexed between Viridovix’ thighs as the beast trotted over the plain. The Celt held the reins in his left hand; the right was on the hilt of his sword. He tried to look in every direction at once. Riding to war, even in a scouting party such as this, was new to him; he was used to fighting on foot.

The steppe’s broad, flat reaches also oppressed him. He turned to Batbaian beside him. “What’s the good of being a general, now, with the whole country looking all the same and not a place to lay an ambush in the lot of it?”

“A gully, a swell of land to hide behind—you use what you have. There’s plenty, when you know where to look.” The khagan’s son eyed him with amusement. “A good thing you aren’t leading us. You’d get yourself killed and break my sister’s heart.”

“Sure and that’d be a black shame, now wouldn’t it?” Viridovix whistled a few bars of a Videssian love song. His soldier’s alertness softened as he thought of Seirem. After so
many women, finding love in place of simple rutting was an unexpected delight. As is often true of those whose luck comes late, he had fallen twice as hard, as if to make up for squandered years. “Och, she’s a pearl, a flower, a duckling—”

Batbaian, who could remember his sister as a squalling tot, made a rude noise. Viridovix ignored him. “At least you have nothing to fear for her sake,” the young Khamorth said. “With so many clans sending men to fight Varatesh, the camp has never been so large.”

“Many, yes, but not enough.” That was Rambehisht, who led the patrol. As sparing of words as usual, the harsh-featured plainsman pierced to the heart of the matter. Targitaus’ army grew day by day, but many clans chose not to take sides, and some few ranged themselves with Varatesh, whether from fear of Targitaus or a different kind of fear of the outlaw chief and Avshar.

The scouting party’s point rider came galloping back toward his mates, swinging his cap in the air and shouting, “Horsemen!” Viridovix’ blade rasped free of its scabbard; the plainsmen he rode with unslung their bows and set arrows to sinew bowstrings. On this stretch of steppe other horsemen could only be Varatesh’s.

A few minutes after the outrider appeared, the patrol spied dust on the northwestern horizon. Rambehisht narrowed his eyes, taking the cloud’s measure. “Fifteen,” he said. “Twenty at the outside, depending on remounts.” The numbers were close to even, then.

The opposing commander must have been making a similar calculation from what he saw, for suddenly, before his men came into view, he swung them round sharply and retreated as fast as he could go. Batbaian let out a yowl of glee and punched Viridovix in the shoulder. “It works!” he shouted.

“And why not, lad?” the Celt said grandly, swelling with pride as he accepted congratulations from the plainsmen. Even Rambehisht unbent far enough to give him a frosty smile. That truly pleased Viridovix, to have the man he had beaten come to respect him.

Behind them, the six or eight cattle that accompanied the patrol took advantage of the halt to snatch a few mouthfuls of grass. Each of the beasts had a large chunk of brush tied
behind it and threw as much dust into the air as a couple of dozen men. “The polluted kerns’ll be after thinking it’s whole armies chasin’ ’em,” Viridovix chuckled.

“Yes, and tell their captains as much,” Rambehisht said. He was a thoughtful enough warrior to see the use of confusing his foes.

“And we must have a double handful of patrols out,” Batbaian said. “They’ll be running from so many shadows they won’t know when we really move on them.” He gazed at Viridovix with something close to hero worship.

Feeling pleased with themselves, the scouts camped by a small stream. To celebrate outfoxing the enemy, Rambehisht slit the throat of one of the cattle. “Tonight we have a good feed of meat,” he said.

Viridovix scratched his head. “I’m as fond o’ beef as any man here, but how will you cook him? There’s no wood for a fire, nor a pot to seethe him in, either.”

“He’ll cook himself,” the plainsman answered.

“Och, aye, indeed and he will,” Viridovix scoffed, sure he was the butt of a joke. “And belike come morning the corp of him’ll grow feathers and fly off tweeting wi’ the burdies.”

After Rambehisht opened the cow’s belly, a couple of nomads dug out the entrails and tossed them into the stream. It turned to silvery turmoil as fish of all sizes swarmed to the unexpected feast. A couple of large, brown-shelled turtles splashed off rocks to steal their share. Another was staring straight at Viridovix. It blinked deliberately, once, twice.

Rambehisht proved as good as his word. Arms gory to the elbows, he stripped hunks of flesh from the beast’s bones and made a good-sized heap of the latter. To the Celt’s surprise, he proceeded to light them; with the marrow inside and the fat still clinging to them, they burned well. The resourceful Khamorth then threw enough meat to feed the patrol into a bag made of the cow’s raw hide, dipped up water from the stream and added it to the meat, and hung the makeshift cauldron over the fire with a javelin. Before long boiled beef’s mouth-watering scent filled the air, mixing with the harsher smell of the burning bones.

Most of the nomads stuck strips of raw meat under their saddles, to rough-cure as they rode along. There the Celt declined to imitate them. “I’d sooner have salt on mine, or mustard,
thanking you all the same. Horse sweat doesna ha’ the same savor.”

What Rambehisht had cooked, though, was delicious. “My hat’s off to you,” Viridovix said, and so it was—with the coming of night he had laid aside the bronze-studded leather cap he wore. He belched magnificently. As any plainsman would, Rambehisht took it for a compliment and dipped his head in reply.

Patting his belly, the Gaul rose and ambled over to the creek, well upstream from the offal in it—a precaution the Romans had taught him. The water was cool and sweet. He dried his mustaches on his sleeve and saw that same fat turtle still sitting on its boulder. He flapped his arms, screeched, “Yaaah!” Horrified, the little animal flapped its legs insanely, trying to swim before it was in the water. After a moment it collected the few wits it had and dove into the stream.

“Och, what a terror I am,” Viridovix laughed. He remembered Arigh’s joke with the frogs at Prista, looked in vain for the turtle. “Puir beastie! If you were but a puddock, now, you could take revenge on the lot of us wi’ a single peep.”

Varatesh listened in consternation as the scout babbled, “It’s a horde, I tell you. From the dust, there must be hundreds of ’em coming this way. You’d best believe we didn’t stick around for a closer look, or I wouldn’t be here to warn you.”

The outlaw chief bit his lip, wondering how Targitaus had conjured up such an army. Seven patrols, now, had sighted big forces moving on his camp. Even discounting their reports by half, as any sensible leader did, his enemies were showing more vigor than they ever had before. If they kept pushing forward, they would drive him back toward the Shaum—or over it. He weighed the risks, wondering whether Targitaus could be as dangerous as the Arshaum. A raid was one thing, a fine piece of bravado, but to try to establish himself in Shaumkhiil …

White robes swirling around him, heavy boots clumping in the dirt, Avshar emerged from his tent and strode toward the outlaw chief. Varatesh could not help flinching; the scout, who knew far less than he, cringed away from the wizard-prince. “What lies is this coward grizzling out?” Avshar demanded, cruelly disdainful.

Varatesh glanced up at the veiled face, not sorry he could not meet those masked eyes. He repeated the rider’s news, adding out of his own concern, “Where are they getting the men?”

Avshar rubbed mailed hands together, a tigerish gesture of thought. He swung round on the scout. “Whose patrol are you with?”

“Savak’s.” The renegade kept his answer as short as he could.

“Savak’s, eh? Then you
are
a coward.” As the scout began to protest, Avshar’s booted foot lashed out and caught him in the belly. He spun away and fell, retching, to the ground. In showy contempt, the wizard-prince turned his back on him. The rider would have tried to kill any outlaw, even Varatesh himself. From Avsahr he crept away.

The sorcerer turned back to Varatesh, deigning to explain. “Your escaped swordsman rides with the ‘army’ Savak’s putrid carrion fled from, which makes it easier for me to track them with my scrying. Shall I tell you how they grow their soldiers?”

“Yes.” Varatesh’s hands had balled into fists at Avshar’s viciousness and scorn. At mention of Viridovix they tightened further. He was not glad to be reminded of how the Celt had bested him. Nothing had gone right since that red-whiskered rogue appeared on the plains.

When the wizard-prince was done, Varatesh stood rigid with fury at the trick. The gall of it all but choked him. “Cattle?” he whispered. “Brush?” Realization burst in him. “All their bands must be so!” His voice rose to a roar, summoning the camp. “Ho, you wolves—!”

“Here’s that lad back again,” Viridovix said. His comrades sat their horses calmly as the point rider came toward them. After days of frightening off Varatesh’s patrols without fighting, they looked forward to doing it again.

When Rambehisht saw the cloud of dust behind the scout, though, his sneer became a worried frown. “Lots of them, this time,” he said, and unshipped his bow. The rest of the Khamorth did the same.

“Is it a brawl, now?” the Gaul asked eagerly.

Rambehisht spared him one sentence: “They aren’t here to
trade tunics with us.” Then the plainsman was shouting, “Spread out, there! Quick, while there’s time! Oktamas, fall back with the remounts. And kick those cattle in the arse, somebody; they’re no good to us any more.”

Horsemen grew visible through the dust, trotting forward at a good clip. Rambehisht’s “spread out” order confused Viridovix for a moment. Used to infantry fights, his natural inclination would have been to gather his forces for a charge. Then the first arrow whizzed past his head, and he understood. A headlong rush would have been pincushioned in seconds.

Nomads were darting every which way, or so it seemed, snapping off shots at what looked like impossible ranges. Yet men screamed when they were hit, and horses, limbs suddenly unstrung, went crashing to the steppe. It was deadly and confusing, and the Gaul, an indifferent rider with a weapon whose reach was only arm’s length, was of little use to himself or his comrades.

His ignorance of the plains’ fluid way of fighting almost got him killed or captured in the first moments of the skirmish. Varatesh’s men outnumbered Rambehisht’s patrol, which promptly gave ground before them. For Viridovix, retreat and defeat were as one word. He held his ground, roaring defiance at the outlaws, until Batbaian shouted, “Fall back, fool! Do you want to see Seirem again?”

That brought the Celt to his senses as nothing else could have. It was nearly too late. Already one of the outlaws was past him and twisting in the saddle to fire. Viridovix slammed his heels into his horse’s flanks. It sprang forward, and the arrow flew behind him.