Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (54 page)

Kananos studied the newcomers with wary curiosity, as if still unsure they were not Yezda in disguise. “You’re the first decent-sized bunch of our troops I’ve seen. Was starting to think there weren’t none left,” he said to Marcus. He had an up-country twang that matched his dour mien.

“Some regiments did get free,” the tribune answered. “We—”

Kananos kept right on, as if Scaurus had not spoken. “Ayuh,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve seen hardly a one, but for the miserable little band that rode in with the Emperor yesterday. On his way to Pityos, he was, and then by sea to the capital, I suppose.”

Marcus stared at the
hypasteos
, his mouth falling open. Everyone close enough to hear stood similarly frozen in his tracks. “The Emperor?” It was Zeprin the Red who asked the question, elbowing his way up through the Roman ranks. The burly Haloga had been one of the commanders of Mavrikios’ Imperial Guard, and his failure to save his overlord had plunged the once-ebullient northerner so deep into depression
that he marched along day after day with hardly a word. Suddenly his face and voice were alive again. “The Emperor?” he repeated eagerly.

“That’s what I said,” Kananos agreed. He used his words sparingly; it seemed to pain him to have to go back over ground once covered.

To the point as always, Gaius Philippus demanded, “How could Thorisin Gavras have come through here without us getting word he was close? And I’d hardly call the troops he had with him a ‘miserable little band’—he got clear in pretty fair order.”

“Thorisin Gavras?” Evghenios Kananos stared at the centurion in surprise and a little suspicion. “Didn’t say a word about Thorisin Gavras. I was talking about the Emperor—the Emperor Ortaias. Far as I know, there ain’t no other.”

“Y
OUR HONOR, YOU
’
RE A RARE STUBBORN MAN
,” V
IRIDOVIX TOLD
S
CAURUS
the day after Kananos’ shattering news, “but you can march the legs off the lot of us, and we’ll still never catch up to that omadhaun of a Sphrantzes.”

Weary and frustrated, the tribune halted. His outrage over Ortaias’ gall in assuming the imperial title had made him fling his small army north to drag the usurper to earth. But Viridovix was right. When looked at rationally and not through the red haze of anger, the Romans had no chance to overtake him. Sphrantzes was mounted, had no women and wounded to encumber him, and had a day’s lead. Moreover, the further north Scaurus led his men, the more Yezda they met, and the more hostile the nomads were.

The legionaries clearly saw the futility of pursuit. Roman discipline kept them pushing toward Pityos, but their hearts were not in it. They were harder to get moving after every halt, and slower on the march. And only the fear that leaving would be worse kept the men they had added since Maragha with them. Everyone despised Ortaias Sphrantzes, but they all knew they could not catch him.

Laon Pakhymer sensed this stop was different from the ones before. He rode back to Marcus, asking, “Finally had enough?” His voice held sympathy—he had no more use than the Romans for Sphrantzes—but also a certain hardness, warning that he, too, was running out of patience with this useless hunt.

Marcus looked from him to the Gaul, then, as a last hope, to Gaius Philippus, whose contempt for the would-be Emperor knew no bounds. “Are you asking what I think?” the senior centurion said.

Marcus nodded.

“All right, then. There’s not a prayer of catching up with the
worthless son of a sow. In your heart you must know that as well as I do.”

“I suppose so,” the tribune sighed. “But if that’s what you think, why didn’t you say so when we set out?” Roman discipline or no, Scaurus rarely had doubts about Gaius Philippus’ opinion.

“Simple enough—whether or not we nailed Sphrantzes, I thought Pityos a good place to head for. If Ortaias could sail back to Videssos the city, so could we, and save ourselves having to fight across the westlands. But from the look of things, there are too bloody many Yezda between us and the port to let us get there unmangled.”

“I fear you’re right. I wish we knew how Thorisin stands.”

“So do I—or
if
he stands. Too many Yezda westward, though, to swing back and find out.”

“I know.” Marcus clenched his fist. Now more than ever, he wished for any word of the slain emperor’s brother, but the choice he was forced to only made getting that word more unlikely. “We have to turn east, away from them.”

They had spoken Latin; when the tribune saw Pakhymer’s blank look, he quickly translated his decision into Videssian. “Sensible,” the Khatrisher said. He cocked his head at the Romans in a gesture his people often used. “Do any of you know where you’re headed? ‘East’ covers a lot of ground, and you’re not from these parts, you know.” In spite of his gloom, Marcus had to smile at the understatement.

Gaius Philippus said, “The Yezda can’t have run everyone off the land. There’s bound to be a soul or two willing to show us the way—if for no better reason than to keep us out of his own valley.”

Laon Pakhymer chuckled and spread his hands in defeat. “There you have me.
I
wouldn’t want this ragtag mob of ruffians camped near me any longer than I could help it.”

The senior centurion grunted. He might have been pleased at gaining the Khatrisher’s agreement, but hardly by his unflattering description of the legionaries.

The shrill sound of a squabble woke Marcus before dawn the next morning. He cursed wearily as he sat up in his bedroll, still worn from the
previous day’s march through broken country. Beside him Helvis sighed and turned over, fighting to stay asleep. Malric, who never seemed to sleep when the tribune and Helvis wanted him to, did not stir now.

Scaurus stuck his head through his tent flap. He was just in time to see Quintus Glabrio’s companion Damaris stamp from the junior centurion’s tent. She was still shouting abuse as she angrily stode away: “—the most useless man I can imagine! What I saw in you I’ll never know!” She disappeared out of the tribune’s line of vision.

In fact, Scaurus was more inclined to wonder what had attracted the Roman to her. True, she was striking enough in the strong-featured Videssian way, with snapping brown eyes. But she was skinny as a boy and had all the temper those eyes foretold. She was, the tribune realized, as hotheaded as Thorisin’s lady Komitta Rhangavve—and that was saying a great deal. Nor did Glabrio have Thorisin’s quick answering contentiousness. It was a puzzler.

Glabrio, rather in the way of a man who pokes his head out the door to see if a thunderstorm is past, looked out to see which way Damaris had gone. He caught sight of Marcus, shrugged ruefully, and withdrew into his tent once more. Embarrassed at witnessing his discomfiture, the tribune did the same.

Damaris’ last outburst had succeeded in rousing Helvis, though Malric slept on. Brushing sleep-snarled brown hair back from her face, she yawned, sat up, and said, “I’m glad we don’t fight like that, Hemond—” She stopped in confusion.

Marcus grunted, his lip quirking in a lopsided smile. He knew he should not be bothered when Helvis absently called him by her dead husband’s name, but he could not help the twinge that ran through him every time she slipped.

“You might as well wake the boy,” he said. “The whole camp will be stirring now.” The effort to keep annoyance from his voice took all emotion with it, leaving his words flat and hard as a marble slab.

The unsuccessful try at hiding anger was worse than none at all. Helvis did as he asked her, but her face was a mask that did as little to hide her hurt as had his coldly dispassionate tone. Looks like a fine morning already, just a fine one, the tribune thought as he laced on his armor.

He threw himself into his duties to take his mind off the almost-quarrel. His supervision of breaking camp was so minute one might have supposed his troops were doing it for the first time rather then the three-hundredth or, for some, the three-thousandth. He heard Quintus Glabrio swearing at the men in his maniple—something rare from that quiet officer—and knew he was not the only one with nerves still jangling.

The matter of guides went as Gaius Philippus had guessed. The Romans were passing through a hardscrabble country, with scores of rocky little valleys running higgledy-piggledy one into the next. The coming of any strangers into such a backwater would have produced a reaction; the coming of an army, even a small, defeated army, came close to raising panic.

Farmers and herders so isolated they rarely saw a tax collector—isolation indeed, in Videssos—wanted nothing more than to get the Romans away from their own home villages before pillage and rape broke loose. Every hamlet had a young man or two willing, nay, eager, to send them on their way … often, Marcus noted, toward rivals who lived one valley further east.

Sometimes the tribune’s men got a friendlier reception. Bands of Yezda, with their nomadic hardiness and mobility, had penetrated even this inhospitable territory. When a timely arrival let the Romans appear as rescuers, nothing their rustic hosts owned was too fine to lavish on them.

“Now this is the life for me, and no mistake,” Viridovix said after one such small victory. The Celt sprawled in front of a campfire. A mug of beer was in his right hand, a little mountain of well-gnawed pork ribs at his feet. He took a long pull at the mug, belched, and went on, “You know, we could do a sight worse than kinging it here for the rest of our days. Who’d be caring enough to say us nay?”

“I, for one,” Gaius Philippus answered promptly. “This place is yokeldom’s motherland. Even the whores are clumsy.”

“There’s more to life than your prick, you know,” the Celt said. His righteous tone drew howls from everyone who heard him; Gaius Philippus mutely held out a hand with three upraised fingers. With the ruddy
firelight and his permanently sunburned skin, it was impossible to tell if Viridovix blushed, but he did tug at his sweeping mustaches in chagrin.

“But still,” he persisted, “doesn’t all this”—He reached out a foot and toppled the pile of bones—“make munching marching rations a thought worth puking on? Dusty porridge, stale bread, smoked meat with the taste of a herd of butchered shoes—a day of that would gag a buzzard, and we eat it week after week.”

Gorgidas said, “You know, my Gallic friend, there are times you’re naïve as a child. How often do you think this miserable valley can supply feasts like this?” He waved out into the dark, reminding his listeners of the poor, small, rocky fields they’d come through, fields that sometimes seemed to go straight up a mountainside.

“I grew up in country like this,” the doctor went on. “The folk here will eat poorer this winter for feasting us tonight. If they did it two weeks running, some would starve before spring—and so would some of us, should we stay.”

Viridovix stared at him without comprehension. He was used to the lush fertility of his northern Gallic homeland, with its cool summers, mild winters, and long, gentle rains. Cut firewood sprouted green shoots there; here in the Videssian uplands, rooted trees withered in the ground.

“There are more reasons than Gorgidas’ for going on,” Marcus said, disturbed that the idea Viridovix put forward half jokingly was getting serious attention. “However much we’d like to forget the world, I fear it won’t forget us. Either the Yezda will flatten the Empire—which looks all too likely right now—or Videssos will somehow drive them back. Whoever wins will stretch their rule all through this land. Do you think we could stand against them?”

“They’d have to find us first.” Senpat Sviodo gave Viridovix unexpected support. “To judge from the run of guides we’ve had, even the locals don’t know the land three valleys over.”

There were rumbles of agreement to that from around the campfire. Gaius Philippus muttered, “To judge from the run of guides we’ve had, the locals don’t know enough to squat when they crap.”

No one could dispute that, either. Glad to see the argument diverted, Scaurus said, “This last one is better,” and the centurion had to nod. The
Romans’ latest guide was a solidly built middle-aged man with a soldier’s scars; his name was Lexos Blemmydes. He carried himself like a veteran, too, and his Videssian had lost some of its original hill-country accent. Marcus had a nagging feeling he’d seen Blemmydes before, but the guide’s face did not seem familiar to any of his men.

The tribune wondered if Blemmydes was one of the refugees from Videssos’ shattered army. The man had attached himself to the Romans a few days before, coming up to their camp one evening and asking if they needed a guide. Whoever he was, he certainly knew his way through this rocky maze. His descriptions of upcoming terrain, villages, and even village leaders ahead were unfailingly accurate.

He was, in fact, so much superior to earlier escorts that Scaurus looked from one campfire to the next until he spotted Blemmydes shooting dice with a couple of Khatrishers. “Lexos!” he called, and then repeated more loudly when the Videssian did not look up. The guide’s head whipped around; Marcus waved him over.

He picked himself up from the game, though he still had his stiff gambler’s face on when he came to the tribune’s side. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked. His voice had the resigned patience of any common soldier’s before an officer, but the dice muttered restlessly to themselves in his closed right fist.

“Not much, really,” Marcus said. “It’s only that you know so much more of this country than other guides we’ve had, and we’re wondering how you learned it so well.”

Blemmydes could not have been said to change expression, but his eyes grew wary. He answered slowly, “I’ve made it my business to know the best ways through the land I travel. I wouldn’t want to be caught napping.”

Suddenly intent, Scaurus leaned forward. Almost he remembered where this frozen-faced soldier had crossed his path before. But Gaius Philippus was chuckling at Blemmydes’ reply. “Your business and no one else’s, hey? Well, fair enough. Go on, get back to your game.” Blemmydes nodded, still unsmiling, and strode off. Marcus’ half memory stayed stubbornly dark.