Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (26 page)

Viridovix gave the centurion an exasperated glance. “You are the damnedest man for holding on to 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.”

The adopted Roman’s comment made clear something Scaurus had puzzled over for some time. No wonder Mavrikios looked so bleak when he admitted his earlier inability to move against Yezd! The past year had seen the Empire’s power vastly increase and, in the face of the Yezda threat, its unity as well. The tribune better understood Mavrikios’ pouched, red-veined eyes; it was strange he dared sleep at all.

Yet power and unity still did not walk hand in hand in Videssos, as Marcus discovered a few mornings later. The tribune had urged Apokavkos to keep the street connections he’d made in the city. Marcus saw how the Namdaleni were excluded from the news and rumors always seething, and did not want his Romans similarly deprived. The report Phostis brought made him thankful for his forethought.

“If it didn’t have us in it, too, I likely wouldn’t tell you this,” Apokavkos said, “but I think it’d be smart for us to walk small the next few days. There’s trouble brewing against the damned easterners, and too many in town put us and them in the same wagon.”

“Against the Namdaleni?” Marcus asked. At Phostis’ nod, he said, “But why? They’ve quarreled with the Empire, true, but every one of them in the city now is here to fight Yezd.”

“There’s too many of ’em here, and they’re too proud of themselves, the swaggering rubes.” Phostis’ conversion to Roman tastes did not stretch to the men of the Duchy. “Not only that, they’ve taken over half a dozen shrines for their own services, the damned heretics. Next thing you know, they’ll start trying to convert decent folk to their ways. That won’t do.”

Marcus suppressed a strong impulse to scream. Would no one in this god-ridden world forget religion long enough to do anything needful? If the followers of Phos as sure victor over evil fought those who believed in Phos’ Wager, then the only winners would be Skotos-worshippers. But when the Roman suggested that to Apokavkos, his answer was, “I don’t know but what I’d sooner see Wulghash ruling in Videssos than Duke Tomond of Namdalen.”

Throwing his hands in the air, Scaurus went off to pass the warning to Soteric. The islander was not in his usual billet on the ground floor of
the barracks. “He’s with his sister, I think. You can probably find him there,” offered one of the men whose bed was nearby.

“Thanks,” the tribune said, heading for the stairway. As usual, the prospect of seeing Helvis made him skittish and eager at the same time. He was aware that more than once he’d invented excuses to visit Soteric in the hope of encountering his sister. This time, though, he reminded himself, his business with the Namdalener was real and urgent.

“By the Wager!” Soteric exclaimed when he saw who was knocking on Helvis’ door. “Talk about someone and just see if he doesn’t show up.” That was an opening to take Scaurus clean out of play, especially since the Namdalener declined to follow it up and left Marcus guessing.

“Would you care for some wine, or some bread and cheese?” Helvis asked when the Roman was comfortable. She was still far from the vibrant lady who had caught his fancy a few weeks before, but time, as it always does, was beginning its healing work. The pinched look of pain that sat so wrongly on her lively features was not so pronounced now; there were times again when her smile would reach her eyes.

Malric darted into the livingroom from the bedchamber beyond. He was carrying a tiny wooden sword. “Kill a Yezda!” he announced, swinging his toy blade with three-year-old ferocity.

Helvis caught up her son and swung him into the air. He squealed in glee, dropping his play weapon. “Again!” he said. “Again!” Instead, his mother squeezed him to her with fierce intensity, remembering Hemond in him.

“Run along, son,” Soteric said when his nephew was on his feet again. Grabbing up his sword, the boy dashed away at the same breakneck speed he’d used to come in. Recalling his own younger sisters growing up, Scaurus knew all small children were either going at full tilt or asleep, with next to nothing in between.

Once Malric was gone, the tribune told Soteric the story he had heard from Phostis Apokavkos. The islander’s first reaction was not the alarm Marcus had felt, but rather smoldering eagerness. “Let the rabble come!” he said, smacking fist into palm for emphasis. “We’ll clean the bastards out, and it’ll give us the excuse we need for war on the Empire. Namdalen will inherit Videssos’ mantle soon enough—why not now?”

Scaurus gaped at him, flabbergasted. He knew the men of the Duchy
coveted the city and the whole Empire, but Soteric’s arrogance struck him as being past sanity. Helvis was staring at her brother, too. As softly as he could, Marcus tried to nudge him back toward sense. “You’ll take and hold the capital with six thousand men?” he asked politely.

“Eight thousand! And some of the Khamorth will surely join us—their sport is plunder.”

“Quite true, I’m sure. And once you’ve disposed of the rest of the plainsmen, the Emperor’s Haloga guards, and the forty thousand or so Videssian warriors in the city, why then all you need do is keep down the whole town. They’d hate you doubly—for being heretics and conquerors both. I wish you good fortune, for you’ll need it.”

The Namdalener officer looked at him as Malric would if he’d snapped the boy’s toy sword over his knee. “Then you didn’t come to offer your men as allies in the fight?”

“Allies in the fight?” If it came to a fight such as Soteric envisioned, Scaurus hoped the Romans would be on the other side, but he guessed the islander would be more furious than chastened to hear that. The tribune was still marveling at Soteric’s incredible … there was no word in Latin for it. He had to think in Greek to find the notion he wanted:
hubris
. What tragedian had written, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”?

Gorgidas would know, he thought.

Some of the ravening glitter in Soteric’s eye faded as he saw Marcus’ rejection. He looked to his sister for support, but Helvis would not meet his glance. She was as ardent a Namdalener as her brother, but too firmly rooted in reality to be swept away by a vision of conquest, no matter how glowing.

“I came to stop a riot, not start a war,” Marcus said into the silence. He looked for some reason he could use to draw Soteric from his dangerous course without making him lose face. Luckily, one was close at hand. “With Yezd to be dealt with, neither you nor the Empire can afford secondary fights.”

There was more than enough truth in that to make Soteric stop and think. The smile on his face had nothing to do with amusement; it was more like a stifled snarl. “What would you have us do?” he asked at last. “Hide our beliefs? Skulk like cowards to keep from firing the rabble? The
Videssians have no shame over throwing their creed in our faces. I’d sooner fight than kowtow to the street mob, and damn the consequences, say I!” But mixed with the warrior’s pride in his speech was the frustrated realization that the outcome of such a fight likely would not be what he wished.

Marcus tried to capitalize on the islander’s slowly emerging good sense. “No one would expect you to knuckle under,” he said. “But a little restraint now could stop endless trouble later.”

“Let the bloody Cocksures show restraint,” Soteric snapped, using the Duchy’s nickname for the orthodox of Videssos.

Continued contact with the Namdalener’s hot temper was beginning to fray Scaurus’ own. “There’s the very thing I’m talking about,” he said. “Call someone a ‘Cocksure’ once too often and you can be sure you’ll have a scramble on your hands.”

Up to this time Helvis had listened to her brother and the Roman argue without taking much part. Now she said, “It seems to me the two of you are only touching one part of the problem. The city people may like us better if we’re less open about some things they don’t care for, but what we do can only go so far. If Videssos needs our service, the Emperor—or someone—should make the people know we’re important to them and should not be abused.”

“Should, should, should,” Soteric said mockingly. “Who would put his neck on the block for a miserable band of mercenaries?”

It was plain he did not think his sister would have a good answer for him. Thinking of the government leaders he knew, Marcus did not find it likely either. Mavrikios or Thorisin Gavras would sacrifice the men of the Duchy without a qualm if they interfered with the great campaign against Yezd. Nephon Khoumnos might sacrifice them anyway, on general principles. True, the Namdaleni were part of the power Vardanes Sphrantzes wielded against the Gavrai, but the Sevastos, Scaurus was sure, was too unpopular in the city to make his words, even if given, worth much.