Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (63 page)

“What are you yapping of?” Gavras demanded, but his voice was suddenly tense.

His quarry vulnerable at last, Goudeles thrust home with suave precision. “Surely the Avtokrator will pay you all respect due a father-in-law, putting you in the late Emperor’s place. Why, it must be more than a month now since his daughter Alypia and my lord Ortaias were united in wedlock.”

Thorisin went white. Voice thick with rage, he choked out, “Flee now, while you still have breath in you!” And Goudeles and his guardsmen, with no ceremony whatever, leaped on their horses and rode for their lives.

Gaius Philippus took a characteristically pungent view of the marriage. “It’ll do Ortaias less good than he thinks,” he said. “If he’s the same kind of lover as he is a general, he’ll have to take a book to bed to know what to do with her.”

Remembering the military tome constantly under Sphrantzes’ arm, Scaurus had to smile. But alone in his tent with Helvis and the sleeping Malric later that evening, he burst out, “It was a filthy thing to do. As good as rape, joining Alypia to the house her father hated.”

“Why so offended?” Helvis asked. She was very bulky now, uncomfortable, and often irritable. With a woman’s bitter realism, she went on, “Are we ever anything but pawns in the game of power? Beyond the politics of it, why should you care?”

“The politics are bad enough.” The marriage, forced or not, could
only rob Thorisin Gavras of support and gain it for Ortaias and his uncle. Helvis was right, though: Marcus’ anger was more personal than for his cause. “From the little I knew of her, I rather liked her,” he confessed.

“What has that to do with the price of fish?” Helvis demanded. “Since the day you came to Videssos, you’ve known the contest you were in; aye, and played it well, I’ll not deny. But it’s not one with much room for things as small as likes.”

Scaurus winced at that harsh picture of his career in his adopted homeland. In Videssos, scheming was natural as drawing breath. No one who hoped to advance could escape it altogether.

But Alypia Gavra, he thought, should not fall victim to it merely by accident of birth. Behind the schooled reserve with which she met the world, the tribune had felt a gentleness this unconsented marriage would mar forever. The image of her brought miserable and defenseless to Ortaias’ bed made cold fury flash behind his eyes.

And how, he asked himself, am I going to say that to Helvis without lighting a suspicion in her better left unkindled? Not seeing any way, he kept his mouth shut.

Sentries’ shouts woke Scaurus at earliest dawn. Stumbling to his feet, he threw on a heavy wool mantle and hurried out to see what the trouble was. Gaius Philippus was at the rampart before him, sword in hand, wearing only helmet and sandals.

Marcus followed the veteran’s pointing finger. There was motion at the edge of sight in the east, visible at all only because silhouetted against the paling sky. “I give you two guesses,” the senior centurion said.

“You can have the first one back—I know an army when I see it. Shows how sincere Goudeles’ talk of Thorisin being an honored father-in-law was, doesn’t it?”

“As if we needed showing. Well, let’s be at it.” The veteran’s bellow made up for the cornets and trumpets of the still-sleeping buccinators. “Up, you weedy, worthless good-for-nothings, up! There’s work to do today!”

Romans tumbled from their tents, pulling on corselets and tightening
straps as they rushed to their places. Campfires banked during the night were fed to new life to light the running soldiers’ paths.

Marcus and Gaius Philippus looked at each other and, in looking, realized they were hardly clad for battle. Gaius Philippus cursed. They dashed for their tents.

When the tribune emerged a couple of minutes later, he led his troops out to deploy in front of their fortified camp. Pakhymer’s light cavalry screened their lines. The Khatrishers’ winter-long association with the Romans made them as quick to be ready as the legionaries. The rest of Thorisin Gavras’ forces were slower in emerging.

There was no time to plan elaborate strategies. Thorisin rode up on his highbred bay, grunted approval at the Romans’ quiet steadiness. “You’ll be on the right,” he said. “Stay firm, and we’ll smash them against you.”

“Good enough,” Marcus nodded. Less mobile than the mounted contingents of standard Videssian warfare, his infantry usually got a holding role. As Gavras’ cavalry came into line, the tribune swung Pakhymer over to his own right to guard against outflanking moves from the foe.

“A rare lovely day it is for a shindy, isn’t it now?” Viridovix said. His mail shirt was painted in squares of black and gold, imitating the checkered pattern of a Gallic tunic. A seven-spoked wheel crested his bronze helm. His sword, a twin to Scaurus’, was still in its scabbard; his hand held nothing more menacing than a chunk of hard, dry bread. He took a healthy bite.

The tribune envied him his calm. The thought of food repelled him before combat, though afterwards he was always ravenous. It
was
a beautiful morning, still a bit crisp with night’s chill. Squinting into the bright sunrise, Scaurus said, “Their general knows his business, whoever he is. An early morning fight puts the sun in our faces.”

“Aye, so it does, doesn’t it? What a rare sneaky thing to think of,” the Celt said admiringly.

Ortaias’ army was less than half a mile away now, coming on at a purposeful trot. It looked no larger than the one backing Thorisin, Marcus saw with relief. He wondered what part of the total force of the Sphrantzai it contained.

It was cavalry, as the tribune had known it would be. He felt the hoofbeats like approaching thunder.

Quintus Glabrio gave his maniple some last instructions: “When you use your
pila
, throw at their horses, not the men. They’re bigger targets, less well armored, and if a horse goes down, he takes his rider with him.” As always, the junior centurion’s tone was measured and under firm control.

There was no time for more speechmaking than that; the enemy was very close. In the daybreak glare, it was still hard to see just what manner of men they were. Some had the scrubby look of nomads—Khamorth or even Yezda—while others … lanceheads gleamed briefly crimson as they swung down in a disciplined flurry. Namdaleni, Marcus thought grimly. The Sphrantzai hired the best.

“Drax! Drax! The great count Drax!” shouted the men of the Duchy, using their commander’s name as war cry.

“At them!” Thorisin Gavras yelled, and his own horsemen galloped forward to meet the charge. Bowstrings snapped. A Namdalener tumbled from his saddle, unluckily hit below the eye at long range.

The enemy’s light horse darted in front of the Namdaleni to volley back at Thorisin’s men. But the field was now too tight for their hit-and-run tactics to be used to full effect. More sturdily mounted and more heavily armed, the Videssians and Vaspurakaners who followed Gavras hewed their way through the nomads toward the men of the Duchy who were the opposing army’s core.

The count Drax was new-come from the Duchy. The only foot worth its pay he’d seen was that of the Halogai. Of Romans he knew nothing. He took them for peasant levies Thorisin had scraped up from Phos knew where. Crush them quickly, he decided, and then deal with Gavras’ outnumbered cavalry at leisure. With a wave of his shield to give his men direction, he spurred his mount at the legionaries.

Dry-mouthed, Scaurus waited to receive the charge. The pounding hooves, the rhythmic shouting of the big men rushing toward him like
armored boulders, the long lances that all seemed aimed at his chest … he could feel his calves tensing with the involuntary urge to flee. Longsword in hand, his right arm swung up.

Drax frowned in sudden doubt. If these were drafted farmers, why were they not running for their paltry lives?

“Loose!” the tribune shouted. A volley of
pila
flew forward, and another, and another. Horses screamed, swerved, and fell as they were hit, pitching riders headlong to the ground. Other beasts stumbled over the first ones down. Namdaleni who caught Roman javelins on their shields cursed and threw them away; the soft iron shanks of the
pila
bent with ease, fouling the shields beyond use.

Still, the legionaries sagged before the slowed charge’s momentum. Trumpets blared, calling squads from the flank to hold the embattled center. The mounted surge staggered, stalled, turned to melee.

The knight who came at Scaurus was about forty, with a cast in his right eye and a twisted little finger. Near immobile in the press, he jabbed at the tribune with his lance. Marcus parried, ducking under the thrust. His strong blade bit through the wood below the lancehead, which flew spinning. Eyes wide with fear, the Namdalener swung the ruined lance as he might a club. Scaurus ducked again, stepped up and thrust, felt his point pierce chain and flesh. Sphrantzes’ mercenary gave a shriek that ended in a bubbling moan. Scarlet foam on his lips, he slid to the ground.

Close by, Zeprin the Red raised his long-hafted Haloga war axe high above his helmet, to bring it crashing down on a horse’s head. Brains flew, pink-gray. The horse foundered like a ship striking a jagged rock. Pinned under it, its Namdalener rider screamed with a broken ankle, but not for long. A second stroke of the great axe silenced him for good.

An unhorsed mercenary slashed at Scaurus, who took the blow on his shield. His
scutum
was bigger and heavier than the horseman’s lighter shield. Marcus shoved out with it. The man of the Duchy stumbled backwards, tripped on a corpse’s upthrust foot. A legionary drove a stabbing-sword into his throat.

Though the Namdalener charge was checked, they still fought with the skill and fierceness Marcus had come to know. Foul-mouthed Lucilius stood staring at his broken sword, the hard steel snapped across by a cunning lance stroke. “Well, fetch me a whole one!” he shouted, but before anybody could, a man of the Duchy rode him down.

“By all the gods, why aren’t these bastards on our side? They’re too bloody much work to fight,” Gaius Philippus panted. There was a great dent in the right side of his helmet, and blood flowed down his face from a cut over one eye. The tide of battle swept them apart before Scaurus could answer.

A Namdalener stabbed down at someone writhing on the ground before him. He missed, swore, and brought his blade back for another stroke. So intent was he on his kill that he never noticed Marcus until the tribune’s Gallic longsword drank his life.

Marcus pulled the would-be victim up, then stared in disbelief. “Grace,” said Nevrat Sviodo, and kissed him full on the mouth. The shock was as great as if he’d taken a wound. Slim saber in hand, she slipped back into battle, leaving him gaping after her.

“Watch your left, sir!” someone cried. The tribune jerked up his shield in reflex response. A lancehead glanced off it; the Namdalener swept by without time for another blow. Marcus shook himself—surprise had almost cost him his neck.

With a banshee whoop, Viridovix leaped up behind a mounted mercenary and dragged him from his horse. He jerked up the luckless man’s chin, drew sword across his throat like a bow over a viol’s strings. Blood fountained. The Gaul shouted in triumph, sawed through windpipe and backbone. He lifted the dripping head and hurled it into the close-packed ranks of the Namdaleni, who cried out in horror as they recoiled from the grisly trophy.

The count Drax was not altogether sorry to see retreat begin. These foot soldiers of Thorisin’s, whoever they were, fought like no foot he had met. They bent but would not break, rushing men from quiet spots along the line to meet threats so cleverly that no new points of weakness appeared. Quite professional, he thought with reluctant admiration.

From his left wing, the Khatrishers were spraying his bogged-down men with arrows and then darting away, just as he had hoped his hireling nomads would to Thorisin Gavras’ heavy horse. But his clans of plainsmen were squeezed between his own men and the oncoming enemy. Soon they would break and run—to stand against this kind of punishment was not in them.

With a wry smile, Drax of Namdalen realized it was not in him, either. When Gavras’ cavalry broke through the nomads and stormed into his stalled knights, the result would be unpleasant. And in the end, a mercenary captain’s loyalty was to himself, not to his paymaster. Without men, he would have nothing to sell.

He reined in, tried to wheel his horse among his tight-packed countrymen. “Break off,” he shouted, “and back to our camp! Keep your order, by the Wager!”

Marcus heard the count’s shout to his men but was not sure he understood it; among themselves, the Namdaleni used a broad patois quite different from the Videssian spoken in the Empire. Yet he soon realized what Drax must have ordered, for pressure eased all along the line as the men of the Duchy broke off combat. It was skillfully done; the Namdaleni knew their business and left the legionaries few openings for mischief.

The tribune did not pursue them far. In part he was ruled by the same concern that governed Drax: not to spend his men unwisely. Moreover, the notion of infantry chasing horsemen did not appeal. If the Namdaleni spun round and counterattacked, they could cut off and destroy big chunks of his small force. In loose order the Romans would be horribly vulnerable to the tough mounted lancers.

Gavras’ cavalry and the Khatrishers followed Sphrantzes’ men for a mile or two, harassing their retreat, trying to turn it to rout. But when the Romans were not added in, the Namdaleni and their nomad outriders probably outnumbered the forces opposed to them. They withdrew in good order.

Scaurus looked up in the sky, amazed. The sun, which had but moments before—or so it seemed—blazed straight into his face as it rose,
was well west of south. Marcus realized he was tired, hungry, dry as the Videssian plateau in summer, and in desperate need of easing himself. A slash on his sword hand he did not remember getting began to throb, the more so when sweat ran down his arm into it. He flexed his fingers. They all moved—no tendon was cut.

Legionaries were plundering the corpses of their fallen opponents. Others cut the throats of wounded horses, and of those Namdaleni so badly hurt as to be beyond hope of recovery. Foes with lesser injuries got the same rough medical treatment the Romans did—they could be ransomed later and hence were more valuable alive than dead.