Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (37 page)

“Where have you been, you worthless rutting tinpot?” she shrilled. “Out swilling again, from the look of you, with the mountain men and the goatherds, and tumbling their women—or their goats! I am of noble kin—how dare you subject me to this humiliation, you—” and she swore with the same aptness Scaurus had heard from her when she gambled with the Namdaleni.

“Phos’ little suns,” Thorisin muttered, giving back a pace under the blast. “I don’t need this, whether she’s right or not. My head hurts already.”

The two guards stood rigid, their blank faces caricatures of unhearingness. The Roman’s efforts along the same line were not so successful, but then, he thought, the poor guards likely got more practice.

He had to admire the way the Sevastokrator pulled himself together and returned his irascible mistress’ barrage. “Don’t bite the thumb at me, slattern!” he roared, his baritone pounding through her soprano curses. “Give me peace, or I’ll warm your noble backside!”

Komitta kept on at full bore for another few seconds, but when Thorisin Gavras stalked toward the tent with the evident intention of carrying out his threat, she turned and ducked back inside, only to emerge a moment later. Proud as a cat, she strode stiff-backed past Thorisin. “I shall be with my cousins,” she informed him with icy hauteur.

“Good enough,” he replied amicably; Marcus thought his anger mostly assumed. Gavras suddenly seemed to remember the Roman standing by his side. “True love is a wonderful thing, is it not?” he remarked
with a sour grin. A few seconds later he added, “If you pray to Phos, outlander, tack on a prayer that he deliver you from a taste for excitable women. They’re great fun, but they wear … oh, they wear.”

The Sevastokrator sounded very tired, but he was brisk again when he said to one of his bodyguards, “Ljot, fetch my brother for me, will you? We have a few things to discuss with this lad here.” He stabbed a thumb at Marcus. Ljot, who proved to be the guard on the right, hurried away.

Thorisin pulled the tent flap back for the Roman to precede him. “Go on,” he said, returning to the ironic tone with which he’d begun the encounter. “If not the Avtokrator’s throne, will the Sevastokrator’s mats please your excellency?”

Scaurus stooped to enter the tent; the air inside was still musky with Komitta’s perfume. He sank to the silk-lined mat flooring, waiting for the Sevastokrator to follow. Thorisin’s gamesome mood, his half-threats and sardonic compliments, only served to make the tribune jittery. As he had in the Emperor’s chambers, he felt caught up in an elaborate contest whose rules he did not understand, but where the penalty for a misplay could be disastrous.

The Sevastokrator and the Roman had waited only a couple of minutes when the guardsman Ljot returned. “His Majesty asked me to tell you he will be delayed,” the Haloga reported. “He is at breakfast with Baanes Onomagoulos and will join you when they are through.”

If Thorisin Gavras had put on anger to match Komitta’s, there was no mistaking his real wrath now. “So I’m less important than that bald-headed son of a smith, am I?” he growled. “Ljot, you take your arse back to Mavrikios and tell him he and his breakfast can both climb right up it.”

The Emperor’s own head appeared inside the tent, a wide grin on his face. “Little brother, if you’re going to commit lese majesty, never do it by messenger. I’d have to execute him too, and it’s wasteful.”

Thorisin stared, then started to laugh. “You are a bastard,” he said. “Come on, set that stringy old carcass of yours down here.” Mavrikios did so; the tent was a bit cramped for three but, thanks to its thin silk walls, not unbearably stuffy.

Opening a battered pine chest no finer than any private soldier might
have owned, Thorisin produced an earthenware jug of wine, from which he swigged noisily. “Ahh, that’s good. Phos willing, it will make my headache go away.” He drank again. “Seriously, brother, you shouldn’t use Baanes to twit me—I remember too well how jealous of him I was when I was small.”

“I know, but the chance to listen to you fume was too good to pass up.” Mavrikios sounded half-contrite, half-amused at his practical joke’s success.

“Bastard,” Thorisin said again, this time with no heat.

Marcus looked from one of the brothers Gavras to the other; though he’d had nothing to drink, he could feel the world starting to spin. Much of what he’d thought he understood of Videssian politics had just fallen to pieces before his eyes. Where was the feud that had the Gavrai so at odds with each other they rarely spoke?

“Oh dear,” Mavrikios said, spying the bewilderment Scaurus was doing his best to hide. “I’m afraid we’ve managed to confuse your guest.”

“Have we, now? Well, I’m damned if I’ll apologize to any Namdalener-loving barbarian.” Thorisin’s words were fierce enough to make the tribune start up in fright, but he accompanied them with an unmistakable wink. Marcus sagged back to his haunches, altogether muddled.

“Only right he should be confused,” the Sevastokrator went on, warming to his theme. “He and his whole crew like the easterners so bloody well this whole camp should be buzzing with talk they’re ganging together to kill us all. Phos knows we’ve paid enough good gold to sniff out the rumors.”

“We didn’t find any, either,” Mavrikios said accusingly. “Which leads to one of two conclusions: either you’re clever beyond compare, or else you may be loyal in spite of your perverse choice of friends.”

“I don’t think he looks all that bright, Mavrikios,” Thorisin said.

“You don’t look any too well yourself, little brother,” the Emperor retorted, but again the tone of the badinage was what would be expected from two brothers who liked each other well.

With the persistence too much wine can bring, Thorisin said, “If he’s not so smart as to be able to fool us all, he’s most likely loyal. Who would have thought it, from a friend of the Namdaleni?” He shook his head in amazement, then belched softly.

“The gods be thanked,” Marcus murmured to himself. When both Gavrai eyed him questioningly, he realized he’d spoken Latin. “I’m sorry you had any reason to doubt me,” he told them, returning to Videssian, “and very glad you don’t any longer.”

His relief was so great all of his defenses slid down at once, along with the guards on his tongue. “Then the two of you aren’t quarreling with each other?” he blurted, then stopped in worse confusion than before.

The brothers Gavras suddenly looked like small boys whose secret has been discovered. Mavrikios plucked a hair from his beard, looked at it musingly, and tossed it aside. “Thorisin, he may be smarter than he seems.”

“Eh?” Thorisin said blurrily. “I should hope so.” He was sprawled out on his side and fighting a losing battle with sleep.

“Lazy good-for-nothing.” Mavrikios smiled. He turned back to Scaurus. “You’re quite right, outlander. We are having a little play, and to a fascinated audience, I might add.”

“But I was there when you first quarreled, gambling against each other,” the tribune protested. “That couldn’t have been contrived.”

The Emperor’s smile slipped a notch. He looked at his brother, but Thorisin was beginning to snore. “No, it was real enough,” he admitted. “Thorisin’s tongue has always been more hasty than is good for him, and I own he made me spleenish that night. But next morning we made it up—we always do.”

Mavrikios’ smile broadened again. “This time, though, my contrary brother chose to make a donkey of himself in front of a hundred people. It was less than no time before the vultures started gathering over the corpse of our love.” He cocked an eyebrow at the Roman. “Some of them flapped near you, I’ve heard.”

“So they did,” Scaurus agreed, remembering the odd meeting he’d had with Vardanes Sphrantzes.

“You know what I mean, then.” Mavrikios nodded. “You were far from the only one sounded, by the way. It occurred to Thorisin and me that if we lay very still and let the vultures land, thinking they were about to pick our bones, why then we might have the makings of a fine buzzard stew for ourselves.”

“I can follow all that,” Marcus allowed. “But why, having laid your trap, did you give Ortaias Sphrantzes the left wing of your army, even with Khoumnos to keep him in check?”

“He is an imbecile, isn’t he?” the Emperor chuckled. “Nephon has his eye on him, though, so have no fear on that score.”

“I’ve noticed that. But why is he here at all? Without his precious book he knows less about soldiering than his horse does, and with it he’s almost more dangerous, because he thinks he knows things he doesn’t.”

“He’s here for the same reason he has his worthless command: Vardanes asked them of me.”

Marcus was silent while he tried to digest that. At last he shook his head; the crosscurrents of intrigue that could make the Sevastos request such a thing and the Emperor grant it were too complex for him to penetrate.

Mavrikios Gavras watched him struggle and give up. “It’s good to find there are still some things you don’t understand,” he said. “You have more skill at politics than most mercenary soldiers I know.”

Thinking of the ruling Roman triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey—each of whom gladly would have torn the hearts from the other two could he have done so without plunging his country into civil war—Scaurus said, “I know something of faction politics, but yours, I think, are worse.” He waited to see if Mavrikios would solve the riddle for him.

The Emperor did, with the air of a professor giving a demonstration for an inexperienced student who might have talent. “Think it through. With Ortaias here, Vardanes gets an eye in the army—not the best of eyes, perhaps, because I know it’s there, but an eye just the same. And who knows? Even though Khoumnos has the real power on the left, Ortaias may eventually learn something of war and become more useful to his uncle in that way. Clear so far?”

“Clear enough, anyway.”

“All right. If I’d said no to Vardanes, he wouldn’t have stopped plotting against me—he could no more do that than stop breathing. I thought it safer to have Ortaias here where I could keep an eye on him than involved in Phos knows what mischief back in the city.”

“I follow the logic well enough. From what little I’ve seen of Vardanes Sphrantzes, I’d say it was sound, but you know him far better than I.”

“He’s a serpent,” Mavrikios said flatly. His voice grew grim. “There’s one other reason to let Ortaias come along. If worse comes to worse, he’s worth something as a hostage. Likely not much, when I recall how conveniently Evphrosyne died, but something.” Still in the role of instructor, he spread his hands, palms out, as if he had just proven two lines in a complex figure parallel after all.

His, though, were not the pale soft hands of a sheltered don. Spear, sword, and bow had scarred and callused them, and sun and wind turned them brown and rough. They were the hands of a warrior, yes, but a warrior who also showed his skill in another arena, one where the weapons were the more deadly for being invisible.

The Emperor saw Scaurus’ admiration, dipped his head in acknowledgment of it. “Time the both of us got back to work,” he said. “Look angry when you come out. I’ve dressed you down, and Thorisin and I have been snapping at each other again. It would never do for people to think we like each other.”

“Are you odd-looking people, uh, Romans?” The speaker was a smilingly handsome, swarthy young man on a stocky, fast-looking horse. A girl of about his own age, her silver-braceleted arms round his middle, rode behind him.

Both were in typical Videssian horseman’s gear, a light, long-sleeved tunic over baggy woolen trousers tucked into boots. Each of them wore a sheathed saber; he had a bow and a felt quiver slung over his back.

They led a packhorse loaded with gear, prominent among it a wickerwork helmet, a bundle of javelins, and a fine pandoura, its soundbox decorated with elaborate scrollwork and inlays of mother-of-pearl.

The young fellow’s Videssian had a slight guttural accent. He wore a leather cap with three rounded projections toward the front, a broad neckflap and several streamers of bright ribbon trailing off behind. Marcus had seen a good many Vaspurakaners with such headgear—quite a few of them had settled in these lands not far from their ancestral home. On most of them the cap seemed queer and lumpy, but the stranger somehow gave it a jaunty air.

His flashing smile and breezy way of speech were wasted on Gaius
Philippus, who frowned up at him. “You don’t look any too good yourself,” he growled, unconsciously echoing Mavrikios speaking to Thorisin. “If we are Romans, what do you want with us?”

The centurion’s sour greeting did not put off the horseman. He answered easily, “You may as well get used to me. I am to be your guide through the passes of my lovely homeland. I am Prince Senpat Sviodo of Vaspurakan.” He drew himself up in the saddle.

Marcus was pleased he’d guessed the young man’s people, but more alarmed than anything else at the prospect of having to deal with a new and unfamiliar royalty. “Your Highness—” he began, only to stop, nonplused, when Senpat Sviodo and his companion burst into gales of laughter.

“You
are
from a far land, mercenary,” he said. “Have you never heard Vaspurakan called the princes’ land?”

Thinking back, the tribune did recall some slighting reference of Mavrikios’ during the briefing before the imperial army left Videssos. Of its significance, however, he had no idea, and said so.

“Every Vaspurakaner is a prince,” Sviodo explained. “How could it be otherwise, since we are all descendants of Vaspur, the first and most noble of the creations of Phos?”

Scaurus was instantly sure the Videssians did not take kindly to that theology. He had little time to ponder it, though, for the girl was nudging Senpat, saying, “Half-truths, and men’s half-truths at that. Without the princesses of Vaspurakan, there would be no princes.”

“A distinct point,” Senpat Sviodo said fondly. He turned back to the Romans. “Gentlemen,” he said, looking at Gaius Philippus as if giving him the benefit of the doubt, “my wife Nevrat. She knows Vaspurakan and its pathways at least as well as I do.”

“Well, to the crows with
you
, then,” someone called from about the third rank of Romans. “I’d follow her anywhere!” The legionaries who heard him whooped agreement. Marcus was relieved to see Senpat Sviodo laugh with them, and Nevrat too. She was a comely lass, with strong sculptured features, a dark complexion like her husband’s, and flashing white teeth. Instead of Senpat’s distinctive Vaspurakaner cap, she wore a flower-patterned silk scarf over her black, wavy hair.