Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (58 page)

When her servants had taken the last scrap-laden platter from the dining hall, Nerse grew businesslike. “We are glad you are here,” she said
abruptly. “We will be gladder yet when we see you intend to treat us as a flock to be protected, not as victims to be despoiled.”

“Keep us supplied with bread and with fodder for our beasts, and we’ll pay for whatever else we take,” Marcus returned. “My troops are no plunderers.”

Nerse considered. “Less than I hoped for; more than I expected—fair enough. Can you live up to it?”

“What would my promises mean? The only test will be how we behave; you’ll have to judge that.” Marcus liked the way she put Aptos’ case without pleading. He liked, too, the straightforward way she dealt with him. She did not try to use her femininity as a tool, but treated the Roman as an equal and plainly expected the same from him.

He waited for the tiny threat that was the sole pressure she could bring to bear: that Aptos’ inhabitants would only cooperate with his men to the extent they were well treated. Instead, she turned the conversation to less important things. Before long she rose, nodded graciously, and escorted her guests to the door.

Gaius Philippus had been almost silent during the dinner. His presence, like that of Scaurus’ other companions, was more ceremonial than it was necessary. Once outside, though, he paused only to draw his cloak round himself against the rain before declaring, “There is a woman!”

He spoke so enthusiastically Marcus raised a quizzical eyebrow. He had trouble imagining the senior centurion as anything but a misogynist.

“Cold as a netted carp she’d be between the sheets, from the look of her,” Viridovix guessed, automatically ready to disagree with the veteran.

“Not if properly thawed,” Laon Pakhymer demurred. As soldiers will, they argued it all the way back to the soggy Roman camp.

The tribune was inside it before he realized that Nerse’s threat had in fact been made. It was merely that she had not crudely put it into words, but let him make it himself in his own mind. He wondered if she knew the Videssian board game that, unlike its Roman counterparts, depended only on a player’s skill. If so, he decided, he did not want to play against her.

Wintering at Aptos, Marcus thought, was like crawling into a hole and then pulling it in after himself. He and his men had been at the center of events since spring; he had hobnobbed with Videssos’ imperial family, sparred with the chief minister of the Empire, made a personal foe of the wizard-prince who led its foes, fought in a great battle that would change Videssos’ course for years to come … and here he was in a country town, wondering if its store of barley meal would hold out until spring. It was deflating, but gave him back a sense of proportion he had been in danger of losing.

Aptos was lonely enough at the best of times. News of the disaster before Maragha had reached it, aye; the distant kingdoms of Thatagush and Agder would know of that by now. But the Romans brought word of Ortaias Sphrantzes’ assumption of the throne, and Aptos had been equally ignorant of the persecution of the Vaspurakaners not five days’ march away.

The tribune was unwilling to leave some news to chance. He talked with Laon Pakhymer outside his tent one morning not long after rain turned to snow. “I’d like to send a couple of your riders west,” he said.

“West, eh?” The Khatrisher raised an eyebrow. “Want to find out what’s become of the younger Gavras, do you?”

“Yes. If all we have is a choice between Yezd and Ortaias, well, suddenly the life of a robber chief looks better than it had.”

“I know what you mean. I’ll get the lads for you.” Pakhymer clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Hate to send them out with so little hope of making it back, but what can you do?”

“Making it back from where?” Senpat Sviodo’s breath puffed out in a steaming cloud as he asked the question—he was just done with practice at swords and still breathing hard.

When Marcus explained, the handsome young Vaspurakaner threw his hands in the air. “This is foolishness! Would you throw birds in a river when you have fish handy? Who better to go to Vaspurakan than a pair of ‘princes’? Nevrat and I will leave within the hour.”

“The Khatrishers will be able to get in and out faster than you could.
They have the nomad way of traveling light,” Marcus said. Beside him, Pakhymer nodded reluctantly.

But Senpat laughed. “They’ll be able to get killed faster, you mean, likely mistaken for Yezda. Nevrat and I are of the country and will be welcome wherever our people live. We’ve gone in before and come back whole. We can again.”

He sounded so certain that Scaurus looked a question at Pakhymer. The Khatrisher said, “Let him go, if he wants to so badly. But he should leave Nevrat behind—the woman is too well favored to waste so.”

“You’re right,” Senpat said, which surprised the tribune until he went on, “I tell her so myself. But she will not have us separated, and who am I to complain of that?” He turned serious. “She can care for herself, you know.”

After her long journey west from Khliat, Marcus could not argue that. “Go, then,” he said, giving up. “Make the best time you can.”

“That we will,” Senpat promised. “Of course, we may do a little hunting along the way.” Hunting Yezda, Marcus knew he meant. He wanted to forbid it, but knew better than to give an order he could not enforce. The Vaspurakaners owed Yezd even more than Videssos did.

The tribune had his own troubles settling into semi-permanent quarters. Campaign and crisis had let him pay Helvis and Malric only as much attention as he wanted, something suddenly no longer true.

And, under settled conditions, Helvis did not always prove easy to live with. Marcus, a lifelong bachelor before this attachment, was used to keeping his thoughts to himself until the time came to act on them. Helvis’ past, on the other hand, made her expect confidences from him, and she was hurt whenever he did something that affected them both without consulting her first. He realized her complaints held justice and did his best to reform, but his habits were no easier to break than hers.

The irritations did not run in one direction alone. As her pregnancy progressed, Helvis grew even more prayerful. Every day, it seemed, a new icon of Phos or some saint appeared on the walls of the cabin she and Scaurus shared. By itself, that would have been only a minor nuisance to
the tribune. Not religious himself, he was willing to tolerate—that is, to ignore as much as possible—others’ practices.

In this theology-mad land, that was not enough. Like the rest of the Namdaleni, Helvis added a phrase to the creed Videssos followed; for the sake of half a dozen words, the two lands’ folk reckoned each other heretics. As the lone supporter of her version of the true faith for many miles, she naturally sought Marcus’ support. But to give it took more hypocrisy than was in him.

“I have no quarrel with what you believe,” he said, “but I would be lying if I said I shared it. Does Phos need worshippers so badly he would not resent a false one?”

She had to answer, “No.” There the matter rested. Scaurus hoped it was settled, not merely dormant.

If he and Helvis had difficulties, they managed to keep them below the level of conflagration. Others were not so lucky. One grayish-yellow morning when the fall rain had turned to sleet but not yet to snow, the tribune was rudely awakened by the crash of a pot against a wall, followed at once by a shrill volley of curses.

He pulled the thick wool blankets over his ears to muffle the fighting, but when a second pot followed the first to smithereens, he knew it was in vain. He rolled over onto one side and saw without surprise that Helvis was awake, too.

“They’re at it again,” he said unnecessarily, and added, “This is the first time I’ve ever resented having my officers’ quarters close to mine.”

“Shh,” Helvis said. “I want to listen.”

Asking him for quiet was hardly needful either; when provoked, Damaris’ voice had a carry to it that any professional herald would have envied. “ ‘Turn on your stomach’!” she was shouting. “ ‘Turn on your stomach’! I’ve rolled over for the last time for you, I can tell you that! Find yourself a boy, or a cow, or whatever suits your fancy, but you’ll not use me that way again!”

The door to Quintus Glabrio’s cabin slammed with tooth-rattling fury. Scaurus heard Damaris splash away, still screaming imprecations. “Even when I got you to put me on my back, you were no damned good!” she cried from some distance. Then, mercifully, the wind’s voice at last covered hers.

“Oh, dear,” the tribune said, his ears feeling red-hot.

Unexpectedly, Helvis broke into giggles. “What’s funny?” Marcus demanded, wondering how Glabrio was going to be able to hold his head up in front of his men again.

The harshness in his voice reached her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just one of those silly things you think of. You don’t understand women’s gossip, Marcus; we’ve done nothing but wonder why Damaris never got pregnant. Now I guess we know.”

That had never occurred to Scaurus. He felt a chuckle of his own rising unbidden, sternly suppressed it. But even as he did, he wondered again how many Romans were sniggering at the junior centurion.

At breakfast Glabrio moved in the center of a circle of silence. No one was quite able to pretend he had not heard Damaris, but no one had the nerve to mention her to him.

He drilled his maniple with grim intensity. Usually he was patient with the Videssians struggling to learn Roman ways of fighting, but not today. And he pushed himself even harder than his legionaries, not wanting to give them any opening to mock him.

But every group of men has its wit, a fellow who takes pleasure in amusing many at the expense of one. Marcus was not far away when one of Glabrio’s soldiers, in response to an order the tribune did not hear, stuck out his backside with deliberate impertinence.

Already tight-lipped, the junior centurion went dead pale. Scaurus hurried forward to deal with the insolent Roman, but there was no need. Quintus Glabrio, his face empty of all expression, broke his vine-stave—a centurion’s staff of office—over the soldier’s head. The man dropped without a sound into the mud.

Glabrio waited until he moaned and shakily tried to sit. The young officer tossed the two pieces of his staff into the legionary’s lap. “Fetch me a whole one, Lucilius,” he snapped, and waited over him until he staggered to his feet and did as ordered.

Seeing Marcus approach, the junior centurion stiffened to attention. “I’m more than capable of handling these things myself, sir. No need to involve yourself.”

“So I see,” Scaurus nodded. He dropped his voice until Glabrio alone could hear. “It does no harm for me to remind the men you’re an officer,
not a figure of fun. What happened to you could as easily have befallen one of them.”

“Could it? I wonder,” Glabrio murmured, as much to himself as to the tribune. His manner grew brisk once more. “Well, in any case I don’t think I’ll have any more trouble from the ranks. Now if you’ll forgive me—” He turned back to his troops. “I hope you enjoyed the rest you got, for you’ll need it. And—one—!”

There was no further trouble from the maniple. Nonetheless, Scaurus was not happy. Quietly but unmistakably, Glabrio had made any further conversation unwelcome. Ah, well, the tribune thought, that one usually has more on his mind than he shows. He stood watching for another couple of minutes, but the junior centurion had everything well in hand. The tribune shrugged, shivered in the cold wind, and found something else to do.

That afternoon Gorgidas sought him out. The Greek was diffident, something so far out of character that Marcus suspected he was about to announce a major calamity. But what he had to say was simple enough: the cabin Glabrio and Damaris had been sharing was, in the junior centurion’s opinion, too big for one man by himself, and he had invited Gorgidas to share it with him.

Scaurus understood the doctor’s hesitation. Everyone with more sensitivity than crude Lucilius had trouble speaking straight out about Glabrio’s misfortune. Still—“No reason to come at me as if you thought I was going to bite,” he said. “I think that’s all to the good. Better for him to have someone to talk to than sit by himself and brood. From the way you went about it, I thought you were going to tell me the plague had broken out.”

“I only wanted to make sure there would be no problems.”

“None I can think of. Why should there be?” The tribune decided Gorgidas’ continuing failure with Nepos’ healing magic was making him imagine difficulties everywhere. “It might do you both good,” he said.

“I,” Nepos announced, “need a stoup of wine.” He and Marcus were walking down Aptos’ main street. Snow crunched under their boots.

“Good idea. Hot mulled wine, by choice,” the tribune said. He rubbed the tip of his nose, which was starting to freeze. Like his men, he wore Videssian-style baggy woolen trousers and was glad to have them. Winter in the westlands was not weather for the toga.

Of Aptos’ half a dozen taverns, the Dancing Wolf was the best. Its proprietor, Tatikios Tornikes, enjoyed his work immensely; he was stout enough to make Nepos seem underfed beside him. “Good day to you, gentlemen,” he called with a smile when priest and Roman entered.