Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (19 page)

The sentries Nepos had awakened met them there. One of the watchmen, alarm on his face, said to Marcus, “Please do not blame us for failing, sir. One moment we were all standing to arms, and the next this priest was bending over us, undoing the magic that laid us low. We didn’t doze by choice.”

At any other time the Roman would have been gladdened by the way his reputation had shot through the Videssian army. As it was, he could only say tiredly, “I know. The wizard who tricked you gulled us all. He got clean away, and I don’t doubt many throughout the Empire will have cause to regret it.”

“The son of nobody’s not safe yet,” Nephon Khoumnos declared. “Though he’s crossed the strait, he has five hundred miles of travel through our western provinces before he reaches his accused borders. Our fire-beacons can flash word to seal the frontiers long before even a wizard could reach them. I’ll go have the beacons fired now; we’ll see what kind of welcome our
akritai
ready for that fornicating sorcerer!” And Khoumnos was off, shoulders hunched forward like a determined man walking into a gale.

Scaurus could only admire his tenacity, but did not think much would come of it. If Avshar could get free of the most strongly fortified city this world knew, the Roman did not believe Videssos’ border troops, no matter how skilled, would keep him from slipping across the frontier into his own dark land.

He turned to the Namdaleni. Though he shrank from it, there was something he felt he had to do, something for which he needed the good will of these men. He said, “It was an unlucky chance that led me to you this morning. Now three of you have died, thanks to that unlucky chance. I had not known him long, but I was happy to call Hemond my
friend. If it is not against your customs, it seems only right for me to be one of those who carries news of his loss to his lady. I bear the blame for it.”

“A man lives as long as he lives and not a day more,” said one of the men of the Duchy. Whether or not he followed the cult of Phos, some of the ways of his Haloga ancestors still lived in him. The Namdalener went on, “You were doing the best you could for the state that bought your sword. So were we. Service honorably done may cause hurt, but it is no matter for blame.”

He paused for a moment to read his countrymen’s eyes. Satisfied by what he saw, he said, “There is nothing in our usages to keep you from being the man who brings Hemond’s sword to Helvis.” Seeing Scaurus’ lack of understanding, he explained, “That is our way of saying without word what words are too painful to carry. No blame rests with you,” the mercenary repeated, “but were it there, what you are doing now would erase it. I am called Embriac Rengari’s son and I am honored to know you.”

The other six Namdaleni nodded soberly; one by one, they spoke their names and gave the tribune the two-handed clasp all men of northern descent seemed to share. That brief formality over, they lifted their burdens once more and began the somber journey back to their quarters.

News of what had happened spread like windblown fire, as always in Videssos. Before the soldiers had finished half their short course, the first cries of “Death to Yezd!” began ringing through the city. Scaurus saw a band of men armed with clubs and daggers dash down an alley after some foreigner or other—whether a Yezda or not, he never knew.

As he trudged toward the palace complex, the dead weight of Hemond’s body made the tribune’s shoulders ache, though he shared it with a Namdalener. He and his companions were all wounded. They slowly made their way to the mercenaries’ barracks, pausing more than once to lay down the bodies of the dead and rest for a moment. Their load seemed heavier after each halt.

Marcus kept turning over in his mind why he had taken on himself the task of telling Hemond’s woman of his death. What he had said to the Namdalener was true, but he was uneasily aware it was not the entire truth. He remembered how attractive he had found Helvis before he
knew she was attached and had a guilty suspicion he was letting that attraction influence his behavior.

Stop it, lackwit, he told himself, you’re only doing what has to be done. But … she was very beautiful.

The barracks of the Namdaleni were an island of ironic peace in the ferment rising in Videssos. Because they were outlanders and heretics, the men of the Duchy had few connections with the city’s ever-grinding rumor mill and had no notion of the snare Avshar had sprung on their countrymen. A couple of men were wrestling outside the barracks. A large crowd cheered them on, shouting encouragements and bets. Two other soldiers practiced at swords, their blades clanging off one another. From a nearby smithy, Marcus heard the deeper ring of a hammer on hot steel. Several islanders were on their knees or haunches shooting dice. It occurred to Marcus that he had seen dicing soldiers whenever he passed their barracks, and they were quick to bet on almost anything. Gambling appealed to them, it appeared.

Someone in the back of the crowd looked up from the half-naked wrestlers and saw the approaching warriors and their grim burden. His startled oath lifted more eyes; one of the fencers whipped his head around and dropped his sword in surprise and shock. His opponent’s blade was beginning its victory stroke when its owner, too, caught sight of the bodies the returning troopers bore. The stroke went undelivered.

The Namdaleni rushed up, crying out questions in the broad island patois they spoke among themselves. Marcus could hardly make out their dialect at the best of times; now he was too full of his own misery to make the effort. He and the mercenary who had helped him carry Hemond put down their burden for the last time. The Roman freed Hemond’s sword and scabbard from his belt and made his way through the Namdaleni toward their barracks.

Most of the mercenaries stood back to let him pass when they saw what he bore, but one came up and grasped his arm, shouting something in his own speech. Scaurus could not catch more than a word or two, but Embriac replied, “He took it on himself, and his claim to it is good.” He spoke in clear Videssian so his countryman and the tribune could both understand him. The islander nodded and let Marcus go.

The barracks of the Namdaleni were, if anything, even more comfortable
than the Romans’ quarters. Part of the difference, of course, was that there had been a Namdalener contingent in the Videssian army for many years, and over those years the men of the Duchy had lavished much labor on making their dwelling as homelike as they could. By contrast, the Romans had not yet made their hall their own.

Because many of the mercenaries spent a large portion of their lives in Videssian service, it was not surprising that they formed families in the capital, either with women of the Empire or with wives or sweethearts who had accompanied them from Namdalen. Their barracks reflected this. Only the bottom floor was a common hall like that of the Romans, a hall in which dwelt warriors who had formed no household. The upper story was divided into apartments of varying size.

Remembering Helvis waving to him from a window above—was it only a couple of days before?—Marcus climbed the stairway, a wide, straight flight of steps nothing like the spiral stair that had led to Avshar’s trap. He felt more misgivings now than he had on the wizard’s trail; Hemond’s sword in his hand was heavy as lead.

Thanks to his memory of Helvis displaying for him the jewelry she’d brought with her winnings, the tribune knew about which turns to take through the upper story’s corridors. From an open doorway ahead, he heard a clear contralto he knew. “Now stay there for a few minutes,” Helvis was saying firmly. “I want to find out what the commotion down below is all about.”

He and she came into the doorway at the same moment. Helvis drew back a pace, laughing in surprise. “Hello, Marcus!” she said. “Are you looking for Hemond? I don’t know where he is—he should have been back from the drillfield some time ago. And what’s going on outside? My window won’t let me see.”

She came to a halt, really seeing him for the first time. “Why so grim? Is anything the …” Her voice faltered as she finally recognized the sheathed blade he carried. “No,” she said. “No.” The color faded from her face; her knuckles whitened as her hand clutched at the doorlatch, seeking a support it could not give her.

“Who is this man, Mama?” A naked boy of about three came up to peer at Scaurus from behind Helvis’ skirts. He had her blue eyes and Hemond’s shock of blond hair. Marcus had not imagined he could be
more wretched, but then he had not known Hemond had a son. “Aren’t you going downstairs?” the tot asked his mother.

“Yes. No. In a minute.” Helvis searched the tribune’s features, her eyes pleading with him to give her some other, any other explanation than the one she feared for Hemond’s sword in his hands. He bit his lip until the pain made him blink, but nothing he could say or do would erase his mute message of loss.

“Aren’t you going downstairs, Mama?” the child asked again.

“Hush, Malric,” Helvis said absently. “Go back inside.” She stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her. “It’s true, then?” she said, more wonder in her voice than anything else. Though she said the words, it was plain she did not believe them.

Marcus could only nod. “It’s true,” he answered as gently as he could.

Not looking at the tribune, moving in a slow, dreamlike fashion, she took Hemond’s sword from his hands into her own. She caressed the blade’s worn, rawhide-wrapped hilt. Her hand, Marcus noticed in one of those irrelevant flashes he knew he would remember forever, though large for a woman’s, was much too small for the grip.

Her head still bent, she leaned the sword against the wall by the closed door of her rooms. When at last she looked at the tribune, tears were running down her cheeks, though he had not heard her start to weep. “Take me to him,” she said. As they walked down the hall, she clasped his arm like a drowning man seizing a spar to keep himself afloat a few minutes longer.

She was still looking for small things she did not understand to keep from facing the great incomprehensibility that lay, cold and stiffening, outside the barracks. “Why did you bring me his sword?” she asked the tribune. “I mean no harm, no insult, but you are not of our people or our ways. Why you?”

Scaurus heard the question with a sinking feeling. He would have given a great deal for a plausible lie but had none ready; in any case, such false kindness was worse than none. “It seemed only right I should,” he said, “because it is all too much my fault he fell.”

She stopped as short as if he had struck her; her nails were suddenly claws digging into his flesh. Only by degrees did the misery on the Roman’s face and in his voice reach her. Her face lost the savage look it had
assumed. Her hand relaxed; Marcus felt blood trickle down his arm from where her nails had bitten him.

“Tell me,” she said, and as they walked down the stairs he did so, hesitantly at first but with growing fluency as the tale went on.

“The end was very quick, my lady,” he finished lamely, trying to find such consolation as he could. “He could hardly have had time to feel much pain. I—” The upwelling futility of any apology or condolence he might make silenced him effectively as a gag.

Helvis’ touch on his arm was as gentle as it had been fierce a minute before. “You must not torment yourself for doing what was only your duty,” she said. “Had your roles been reversed, Hemond would have asked the same of you. It was his way,” she added softly, and began to cry again as the truth of his death started forcing its way past the defenses she had flung up.

That she could try to comfort him in her own anguish amazed Marcus and made him feel worse at the same time. Such a woman did not deserve to have her life turned upside down by a chance meeting and a wizard’s scheme. Another score against Avshar, he decided, as if more were needed.

After the dimness of the interior of the barracks, the bright sun outside dazzled the Roman. Seeing the crowd still ringing the bodies of Hemond and his squadmates, Helvis dropped Scaurus’ arm and ran toward them. Suddenly alone among strangers, the tribune felt another burst of empathy for Viridovix’ plight. As quickly as he could, he found an excuse to get away and, wishing he had this day back to live over in some other way, went back to the Roman barracks.

As he stood sweating in his full regalia on the elevated central spine of Videssos’ amphitheater, Scaurus decided he had never seen such a sea of people gathered together in one place. Fifty thousand, seventy thousand, a hundred twenty thousand—he had no way to guess their numbers. For three days criers ran through the city to proclaim the Emperor would speak this noon; the great arena had begun to fill at dawn and now, a few minutes before midday, almost every inch of it was packed with humanity.

The only clear spaces in all that crush were a lane leading from the Emperor’s Gate at the western end of the amphitheater’s long oval to its spine and that spine itself. And the clearing of that latter was only relative. Along with statues of marble, bronze, and gold, along with a needle of gilded granite reaching for the sky, the spine held scores of Videssian functionaries in their gaudy robes of state, priests of various ranks in blue regalia, and contingents of troops from every people who soldiered for the Empire. Among them, Scaurus and the maniple he led had pride of place this day, for they stood just below the elevated rostrum from which Mavrikios Gavras would soon address the throng.

To either side of the Romans were squadrons of tall Halogai, unmoving as the statuary they fronted. All the discipline in the world, though, could not keep resentment from their faces. The place of honor the Romans were usurping was at most times theirs, and they were not happy to be displaced by these newcomers, men who would not even show proper respect for the Emperor they served.

But today that central place was rightfully the Romans’; they, indeed, were the reason this assemblage had been called. News of Avshar’s sorcerous assault on Scaurus and the deadly snare he had set to make good this escape had raced through the city like fire through parched woodlands. The mob Marcus saw chasing a fleeing foreigner was but the start of troubles. Many Videssians concluded that, if Yezd could reach into their capital to assail them, it was their Phos-given right to take vengeance on anyone they imagined a Yezda—or, at a pinch, on any other foreigners they could find.