An Emperor for the Legion (12 page)

“Your pardon, hello. Now, what news?” They all laughed. But the tribune was not really joking. He had been waiting for
the Vaspurakaners’ return—and worrying over the word they would bring—too long for that.

“Are you going to throw or not?” an annoyed gambler called from the table where he had been sitting. “Give us the dice back if you aren’t.” Marcus flushed, realizing he was still holding them.

Nevrat pressed a coin into his hand; her fingers were still cold. “Here,” she said. “Bet this.”

He looked at the goldpiece. It was good money, not pale with silver or darkened by copper’s blush—likely from a Vaspurakaner mint, he thought. But the inscription on the reverse was in Videssian letters: “By this right.” Above the words stood a soldier brandishing a sword. Scaurus had not seen a coin like it before. He turned it over, curious to learn what lord had issued it.

The diemaker was skillful. The face on the obverse was no stylized portrait, but the picture of a living, breathing man. He was shaggy of hair and beard, with a proud nose, and a mouth bracketed by forceful lines. The tribune almost felt he knew him.

Scaurus stiffened. He did know this man, had seen his mouth wide with laughter and straight as a sword blade in wrath. The Roman looked up at the ceiling and whistled, soft and low.

He noticed the inscription under the portrait bust for the first time. “Avtokrator,” it said, and then a name, but he needed no inscription to name Thorisin Gavras for him.

When the tribune got back to camp with his news, Helvis took it like any mercenary’s woman. “This has to mean another round of civil war,” she said. He nodded. She went on, “Both sides will be wild for troops—you can sell our swords at a good price.”

“Civil war be damned,” said Marcus, who remembered Rome’s latest one from his childhood. “The only fight that counts is the one against Avshar and Yezd. Any others are distractions; the worse they get, the weaker the Empire becomes for the real test. With Thorisin as Emperor, Videssos may even have a prayer of winning; with Ortaias, I wouldn’t give us six months.”

“Us?” Helvis looked at him strangely. “Are you a Videssian? Do you think either Emperor would call you one? They
hire swords—you have them. That’s all you can hope to be to them: a tool, to be used and put aside when no longer needed. If Ortaias pays you more, you’re a fool not to take his money.”

The tribune had the uneasy feeling there was a good deal of truth in what she said. He thought of his men and goals as different from those of other troops Videssos hired, but did its overlords? Probably not. But the idea of serving a poltroon like young Sphrantzes was too much to stomach.

“If Ortaias melted down the golden globe atop the High Temple in Videssos and gave it all to me, I would not fight for him,” he declared. “For that matter, I don’t think my men would take his side either. They know him for the coward he is.”

“Aye, courage speaks,” Helvis admitted, but she added, “So does gold. And do you think Ortaias runs affairs in the city today? My guess is he has to ask his uncle’s leave before he goes to the privy.”

“That’s worse, somehow,” Scaurus muttered. Ortaias Sphrantzes was a fool and a craven; his uncle Vardanes, Marcus was sure, was neither. But try as he might to hide it, the elder Sphrantzes had a coldly ruthless streak his nephew lacked. The Roman would have trusted him further if he did not make such an effort to hide his true nature with an affable front. It was like perfume on a corpse, and made Marcus’ hackles rise.

He made a clumsy botch of explaining, and knew it. But the feeling was still in his belly, and he did not think any weight of gold could make it leave.

He also knew he was far from convincing Helvis. The only principle the Namdaleni who fought for Videssos knew was expedience; the higher the pay and fewer the risks, the better.

She walked over to the small altar she’d lately installed on the cabin’s eastern wall, lit a pinch of incense. “However you decide,” she said, “Phos deserves to be thanked.” The sweet fumes quickly filled the small stuffy space.

When the tribune remained silent, she swung round to face him, really angry now. “You should be doing this, not me. Phos alone knows why he gives you such chances, when you repay him nothing. Here,” she said, holding out the little alabaster jar of incense to him.

That peremptory, outthrust hand drove away the mild answer
that might have kept peace between them. The tribune growled, “Probably because he’s asleep, or more likely not there at all.” Her horrified stare made him wish he’d held his tongue, but he had said too much to back away.

“If your precious Phos lets his people be smashed to bloody bits by a pack of devil-loving savages, what good is he? If you must have a god, pick one who earns his keep.”

A skilled theologian could have come up with a number of answers to his blunt gibe: that Phos’ evil counterpart Skotos was the power behind the success of the Yezda, or that from a Namdalener point of view the Videssians were misbelievers and therefore not entitled to their god’s protection. But Helvis was challenged on a far more fundamental level. “Sacrilege!” she whispered, and slapped him in the face. An instant later she burst into tears.

Malric woke up and started to cry himself. “Go back to sleep,” Scaurus snapped, but the tone that would have chilled a legionary’s heart only frightened the three-year-old. He cried louder. Looking daggers at the tribune, Helvis stooped to comfort her son.

Marcus paced up and down, too upset to hold still. But his anger slowly cooled as Malric’s wails shrank to whimpers and then to the raspy breathing of sleep. Helvis looked up at him, her eyes wary. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she said tonelessly.

He rubbed his cheek. “Forget it. I was out of turn myself.” They looked at each other like strangers; in too many ways they were, despite the child Helvis carried. What was I thinking, Scaurus asked himself, when I wanted her to share my life?

From the half-wondering, half-measuring way she studied him, he knew the same thought was in her mind.

He helped her to her feet; the warm contact of the flesh of her hand against his reminded him of one reason, at least, why the two of them were together. Though her pregnancy was nearly halfway through, it had yet to make much of a mark on her large-boned frame. There was a beginning bulge high on her belly, and her breasts were growing heavier, but someone who did not know her might have failed to notice her bigness.

But when Marcus tried to embrace her, she twisted free of his arms. “What good will that do?” she asked, her back to him. “It doesn’t settle things, it doesn’t change things, it just puts them off. And when we’re angry, it’s no good anyway.”

The tribune bit down an angry retort. More times than one, troubles had dissolved in love’s lazy aftermath. But her desire had grown fitful since pregnancy began; understanding that such things happened, Scaurus accepted it as best he could.

Tonight, though, he wanted her, and hoped it would help heal the rift between them. He moved forward, put the palms of his hands on her shoulders.

She wheeled, but not in desire. “You don’t care about me or what I feel at all,” she blazed. “All you can think of is your own pleasure.”

“Ha!” It was anything but a laugh. “Were that so, I’d have looked elsewhere long before this.”

Having swallowed his anger once, Marcus hit too hard when he finally loosed it. Helvis began to cry again, not with the noisy sobs she had used before but quietly, hopelessly, making no effort to wipe the tears from her face. They were running down her cheeks when she blew out the lamp and, as the wick’s orange glow died, slid beneath the covers of the sleeping mat.

Scaurus stood in darkness some endless while, listening to the careful sobs that let out grief without disturbing the sleeping boy. At last he bent down to stroke her through the thick wool, not in want but to give what belated comfort he might.

She flinched away, as if from a blow. Careful not to touch her further, the tribune got under the blankets himself. The scent of incense was still in his nostrils, sweet as death.

He stared up at the low ceiling, though there was nothing to see in the darkness. Eventually he slept.

When he woke, the Roman felt wrung out and used up as after a day in battle. Helvis’ face was puffed and blotchy from crying. They spoke to each other, moved around each other, with cautious courtesy, neither wanting to reopen last night’s wound. But Scaurus knew it would be a long time healing, if it ever did.

He was glad of the excuse of seeing to his men to leave quickly, and Helvis seemed relieved to see him go. The soldiers, of course, were oblivious to their commander’s private woes. They buzzed with excitement over the goldpiece he had come across. The tribune managed a wry smile at that; he had almost forgotten the coin and its meaning.

He soon found he had accurately gauged their mood. To a
man, they felt contempt for Ortaias Sphrantzes. “The mimes had the right of it,” Minucius said. “With Thorisin Gavras alive, there’ll hardly be a fight. The other’ll run till he falls off the edge of the world.”

“Aye, the Gavras is much better suited for kinging it,” Viridovix agreed. “A fine talker he is, a rare good-looking wight to boot, and the stomach of him can hold a powerful lot of wine.”

Gorgidas gave the Celt an exasperated look. “What does any of that have to do with kingship?” he demanded. “By your reckoning, Thorisin Gavras would make an excellent sophist, a pretty girl—” Marcus blinked at his choice of that figure, but had to admit its aptness. “—or a splendid sponge. But a king? Scarcely. What the state needs from a king is justice.”

“Well be damned to you, you and your sponges,” the Gaul said. “Forbye, be your would-be king never so just, if he talk like a sausage seller and look like a mouse turd, not a soul will pay him any mind at all. If you’re a leader, ye maun fit the part.” He preened ever so slightly, reminding his listeners he had been a noble with a large following himself.

“There’s something to that,” Gaius Philippus said. Reluctant as he was to go along with Viridovix on anything, he had led enough men to know how much of the art of leadership was style.

Gorgidas dipped his head in reluctant agreement. “I know there is. But it’s too easy to look the part without having what’s really needed to play it. Take Alkibiades, for instance.” The name flew past centurion and Celt alike. Gorgidas sighed and tried another tack, asking Viridovix, “What good does it do a king to be able to outdrink his subjects?”

“Och, man, the veriest fool should be able to see that. After standing the yapping of nitpickers all the day—” Viridovix stared at Gorgidas until the doctor, reddening, urged him on with a rude gesture “—what better way to ease the sorrows than with sweet wine?” He smacked his lips.

“I must be going senile,” Gorgidas muttered in Greek. “To be outargued by a red-mustached Celt …” He let the sentence trail off as he walked away.

Marcus left the discussion, too, walking out to the frozen fields to watch his soldiers exercise. Laon Pakhymer’s Khatrishers darted here and there on horseback, wheeling, twisting, suddenly stopping short. Others practiced mounted
archery, sending shafts slamming through heaped-up mounds of straw. For all their camaraderie with the Romans, they were still very much a separate command.

The foot soldiers, now, were something else again. The hundreds of stragglers who had joined the Romans after Maragha, as well as Gagik Bagratouni’s refugees, were beginning to blend into the legionaries’ ranks. Their beards and the sleeves on their mail shirts still gave Videssians and Vaspurakaners an exotic look, but constant practice was making them as adept with
pilum
and stabbing
gladius
as any son of Italy.

Phostis Apokavkos gave the tribune a wave and a leathery grin. Scaurus smiled back. He still felt good about taking the farmer-soldier out of the capital’s slums and making a legionary of him. But then, Apokavkos had adopted the Romans as much as they him, shaving his face and picking up Latin to become as much like his new comrades as he could.

His tall, lean frame almost hid Doukitzes beside him. They were fast friends; Scaurus sometimes wondered why. Doukitzes was the sort of man Phostis had refused to become during his hungry time in Videssos the city: a small-time thief. The tribune had saved Doukitzes from losing his hand to Mavrikios’ angry judgment not long before Maragha. Perhaps in gratitude, he had not plied his trade—or at least had not been caught—since joining the Romans after the battle. He waved, too, a little more hesitantly than Apokavkos.

Marcus watched their maniple let fly with a volley of practice-
pila
. He had a good little army, he thought with somber pride. That was as well; it would need to be good, soon enough.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a motion decidedly not military. Arms round one another’s waists, intent only on each other, Senpat Sviodo and Nevrat were making their slow, happy way to their cabin.

The sudden stab of envy was like a knife twisting in Scaurus’ guts. The feeling’s intensity was frightening, the more so because only weeks before he had been half of such a pair.

The world of the legions was simpler, he decided. Private life would not run by the brute simplicity of orders. He sighed, shook his head, and turned back to make what peace he could with Helvis.

T
HE SWARTHY
K
HAMORTH SCOUT, WEARING GRAY-BROWN
foxskins and mounted on a dun-colored shaggy pony, was like a lump of winter mud against the bright green of spring. Studying the plainsman closely, Marcus asked him, “How do I know you’re from Thorisin Gavras? We’ve seen snares before.”

The nomad gave back a contemptuous stare. He had no more use than his distant Yezda cousins for towns, plowed fields, or the folk who cherished them. But he had sworn loyalty to Gavras on his sword, and his clan-chief and the imperial contestant had drunk wine mixed with their two bloods.

Therefore he answered in his bad Videssian, “He bid me ask you what he say about excitable women, that morning in his tent.”