Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (55 page)

The senior centurion was still amused. “He’s probably some sort of
smuggler, or a plain horse thief. More power to him, says I; anyone with the imagination to get himself a fifteen-hundred-man armed guard to cover his tracks deserves to do well.”

“I suppose so,” Scaurus sighed, and shelved the matter.

That night the weather finally broke, a reminder summer would not, after all, last forever. The wind shifted; instead of the seemingly endless westerly from the baking plains of Yezd, it blew clean and cool off the Videssian Sea to the north. There was fog in the early morning, and the low gray clouds did not burn away until almost noon.

“Well, hurrah!” Viridovix exclaimed when he emerged from his tent and saw the murky daylight. “My puir roasted hide won’t fry today. No more slathering myself with Gorgidas’ stinking goo, either. Hurrah!” he said again.

“Aye, hurrah,” Gaius Philippus echoed, with a morose look at the sky. “Another week of this and it’ll start raining; and it won’t let up till it snows. I don’t know about you, but I’m not much for slogging my way through mud. We’ll be stuck in the boondocks till spring.”

Marcus heard that with disquiet, still loath to be isolated while uncertainty—and Ortaias Sphrantzes—reigned in Videssos. But Quintus Glabrio remarked, “If we can’t move, odds-on no one else can either.” The manifest truth there cheered the tribune, who had been thinking of his men as an entity unto themselves and forgetting that nature laid its hand on all alike—Roman, Videssian, Namdalener, or Yezda.

As requested, Lexos Blemmydes led Scaurus’ band southeast toward Amorion. The tribune wanted to reach the town on the Ithome River before the fall rains made travel hopeless. Amorion controlled much of the west central plateau and would give him a base for the trouble he expected come spring—if Thorisin Gavras still lived to brew it.

Gorgidas all but held Nepos prisoner. The priest used his healing art on the legionaries and did his best to teach it to the Greek. But his efforts there were fruitless, which drove Gorgidas to distraction. “In my heart I don’t believe I can do it,” he moaned, “and so I can’t.”

Scaurus came to rely on Blemmydes more and more. The guide had an uncanny knowledge of which ways were open. Not only was he intimately familiar with the ground himself, but he also questioned everyone whose path he crossed—the few traders still abroad, village headmen,
farmers, and herders. Sometimes the route he chose was roundabout, but it was always safe.

At evening a couple of days later, the Romans reached a place where what had been a single valley split into two. The rivers that carved them were dry now, but Marcus knew the fall downpour would soon make torrents of them.

Blemmydes cocked his head down each gap, as if listening. He paused a long time, longer than any similar decision had taken him before. Scaurus gave him a curious glance, waiting for his choice. “The northern one,” he said at last.

Gaius Philippus also noticed the delay and looked a question at the tribune. “He’s been right so far,” Marcus said. The senior centurion shrugged and sent the Romans down the path Blemmydes had chosen.

Scaurus thought at first the guide had betrayed them. The valley was full of lowing cattle and their herdsmen—Yezda, or so they seemed. Dogs followed their masters’ shouted commands, nipping at the cows’ heels and driving them up the rocky mountainsides as the herdsmen saw the column of armed men coming toward them.

But the Romans’ alarm proved unfounded. The herdsmen were Videssians who had taken Marcus’ soldiers for invaders. Once they learned their mistake, they fraternized with the newcomers, though warily. Imperial armies could plunder as ruthlessly as any nomads. But when Scaurus actually paid for some of their beasts, the herders came close to geniality.

“This isn’t the sort of thing you want to do too often,” Senpat Sviodo remarked, watching money change hands.

“Hmm? Why not?” The tribune was puzzled. “The less we take by force, the better we should get along with the locals.”

“True, but some may die from the shock of not being robbed.”

Marcus laughed, but Nepos did not approve. The priest had finally managed to get away from Gorgidas for a few minutes and was wandering about watching the Romans run up their camp. He said to Senpat, “It’s never good to mock a generous heart. Our outland friend shows here the same kindness he used in giving a disgraced man a chance to redeem himself.”

The Vaspurakaner, not usually as cynical as his words suggested,
looked contrite. But the last part of what Nepos had said made no sense to Scaurus. “What are you talking about?” he demanded of the priest.

Nepos scratched his head in confusion. He had not had any more chance than the Roman to shave, and the top of his skull was starting to get bristly. He said, “No need for modesty. Surely only a great-souled man would restore to trust and self-respect the soldier he himself ousted from the Imperial Guards.”

“What in the world do you—” Marcus began, and then stopped cold, remembering the pair of guardsmen he had had cashiered for sleeping at their posts in front of Mavrikios’ private chambers. Sure as sure, this was the elder of the two; Scaurus even recalled hearing his name, now that Nepos had made the association for him.

He also remembered the sullen insolence Blemmydes had shown when called to account and the way the snoozing guardsmen were ignominiously banished from the capital when their effort to shift the blame to him fell through. It was hard to imagine Blemmydes having any good will toward the Romans after that.

Which meant … The tribune shouted for a sentry. “Find the guide and bring him to me. He needs to answer some questions.” The legionary gave the closed-fist Roman salute and hurried away.

Nepos and Senpat Sviodo were both staring at Scaurus. The priest said, “You weren’t taking Lexos on faith, then?”

Pretending not to hear his disappointment, Marcus answered, “On faith? Hardly. The truth is, with everything that’s happened in the months since I saw him that once, I forgot the whoreson existed. Why didn’t you speak up a week ago?”

Nepos spread his hands regretfully. “I assumed you knew who he was, and thought the better of you for it.”

“Splendid,” muttered the tribune. He wondered if his lapse would cost the Romans, a worry that abruptly became a certainty when he saw the sentry returning alone. “Well?” he barked, unable to keep from lashing out to hold his own alarm at bay.

“I’m sorry, sir, he doesn’t seem to be anywhere about,” the legionary reported cautiously—unlike Gaius Philippus, the tribune usually did not take out his feelings on his men.

“That tears it,” Marcus said, smacking fist into palm in disgust.
“Only a great-souled idiot would take in a man like that.” And if Blemmydes was gone, he must have thought he had his vengeance.

Marcus’ failure to follow up on his half recognition of the guide filled him with self-contempt. He could look at others’ mistakes with the easy tolerance his Stoic background gave him—they were, after all, only men, and perfection could not be expected from them. His own shortcomings, on the other hand, brought a black anger fiercer in some ways than the one he turned against battlefield foes.

With difficulty, he pulled himself free from that useless rage and began thinking what he had to do to set things right. First, plainly, he had to find out what the situation was. “Pakhymer!” he called.

The Khatrisher appeared at his elbow. “I’ve gotten to know that tone of voice,” he said with a lopsided smile. “What’s gone wrong now?”

The tribune’s answering grin was equally strained. “Maybe nothing at all,” he said, not believing it for a minute. “Maybe quite a lot.” He quickly sketched what had happened.

Pakhymer heard him out without comment, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “You think he’s buggered us, then?” he said at last.

“I’m afraid so, anyway.”

Pakhymer nodded. “Which is why you called me. I really should charge for this, you know.” But there was no malice in his words, only the amused mockery with which the Khatrishers so often faced life.

He went on, “All right, I’ll send some of the lads out to see what’s ahead—aye, and another bunch to track down your dear friend Blemmydes, if they can.” Seeing Scaurus wince, he added, “No one can think of everything, not even Phos—if he did, Skotos wouldn’t be here.”

That thought consoled the tribune but dismayed Nepos; the Khatrishers had a theology as free and easy as themselves. Pakhymer left before Nepos could put his protest into words. The priest was a good man, more tolerant than many of his colleagues, but there were limits his tolerance could not overstep.

Marcus wondered how Balsamon would have reacted to the Khatrisher’s remark. Likely, he thought, the patriarch of Videssos would have laughed his head off.

There was nothing to do but wait for the scouts’ return. The party sent out in pursuit of Blemmydes came back first, empty-handed. Marcus
was not surprised. The terrain was broken enough to give the disgruntled Videssian a hundred hiding places in plain sight of the camp.

The unusual comings and goings set tongues wagging, as Scaurus had known they would. For once, rumor might be an ally: if the men suspected trouble, they would be quicker to meet it. And if what the tribune was beginning to fear came true, speed would count soon.

He saw the Khatrishers come riding back out of the east, slide off their horses, and jog over to Pakhymer with their news, whatever it was. They said not a word to the soldiers who hurled questions at them. The horsemen might not have the Romans’ stiff discipline, but they were all right, the tribune decided for the hundredth time.

Their commander’s scarred face had no trace of his usual mirth as he came up to the tribune. “As bad as that?” Marcus asked, reading the trouble in his eyes.

“As bad as that,” Pakhymer agreed somberly. “The next valley east is crawling with Yezda; from what my boys say, they must have two or three times as many men as we do, the damned cuillions.”

“It figures,” Scaurus nodded bitterly. “Blemmydes has his revenge, all right—he must have been looking for Yezda all along, and run off when he found a band big enough to sink us.”

Pakhymer tried to keep him from falling into despair. “The count’s not very fine, you understand—just a short peek over that ridge ahead to reckon up their tents and fires.”

“Fires, aye,” Marcus said—fires to eat the Romans up. But something else about fire teased at the back of his mind. The sensation was maddening and horribly familiar; he had felt it when he tried without success to remember where he’d seen Lexos Blemmydes. Now he stood stock-still, not forcing whatever it was, but letting it come if it would.

Pakhymer started to say something; seeing Scaurus abstracted, he was sensitive enough to keep silent a little longer.

The tribune drove his fist into his palm for the second time in less than an hour, but now in decision. “The gods be praised I learned to read Greek!” he exclaimed. It had no meaning for Laon Pakhymer, but he saw the Roman was himself again.

He started to leave, but Scaurus stopped him, saying, “I’ll need your
men again, and soon. They’re better herders and drovers than the legionaries ever will be.”

“And if they are?” The Khatrisher was mystified.

Marcus started to explain, but Gaius Philippus strode up, demanding, “By Mars’ left hairy nut, what’s going on? The whole camp is seething like a boiled-over pot, but nobody knows why.”

The tribune spelled it out in a few sentences; his second-in-command swore foully. “Never mind all that,” Scaurus said. Now that his wits were working again, haste drove him hard. “Get a couple of maniples out there with Pakhymer’s men. I want every cow in the valley down here at this end inside an hour’s time.”

Khatrisher and centurion stared at him, sure he’d lost his mind after all. Then Gaius Philippus doubled over with laughter. “What a wonderful scheme,” he got out between wheezes. “And we won’t be on the receiving end this time, either.”

“You’ve read Polybius too?” Scaurus said, indignant and amazed at the same time; the senior centurion found written Latin slow going, and Marcus had not thought he could read Greek at all.

“Who? Oh, one of your pet historians, is he? No, not a chance.” For once Gaius Philippus’ smile had none of the wolf in it. “There’s more ways to remember things than books, sir. Every veteran’s known that trick since Hannibal used it, and known his head would answer if he fell for it.”

“Will the two of you talk sense?” Pakhymer asked irritably, but the Romans, enjoying their common joke, would not enlighten him.

They did explain the scheme to Viridovix; Marcus had thought of a special role he could play, if he would. The Celt whooped when he’d heard them out. “Sure and I’d kill the man you tried to put in my place,” he said.

The herdsmen who had praised Scaurus to the skies while the sun still shone cursed his name in the darkness as, without mercy or explanation, their cattle were taken away. They carried spears and knives to protect themselves against tax-collectors and other predators, but were helpless in the face of the legionaries’ swords and mail shirts, and the Khatrishers’ horses and bows.

Lowing resentfully at the change in their routine, the cattle shambled
down the valley, prodded along by their confiscators. Some of the herd dogs, unreasoningly gallant, leaped to their defense, but reversed spearshafts drove them yelping back.

At the camp, Marcus found Gaius Philippus had been right. When he ordered the legionaries still there to chop the stakes of the palisade into arm-long lengths, they grinned knowingly and fell to like so many small boys involved in a mammoth practical joke. Their women and new non-Roman comrades watched with the same caution one gave any group of men suddenly struck mad.

The tribune did not need to give them the next set of orders. As fast as cattle arrived from the west, the Romans tied the newly made sticks to their horns.

“Marcus, if this is meddling I crave your pardon, but what on earth is going on?” Helvis asked.

“Once your brother Soteric said my men had an advantage fighting in this world because we had a bundle of tricks no one here knows,” Scaurus answered elliptically. “It’s time to see if he was right.”