An Emperor for the Legion (16 page)

But between the army on that western shore and the object of its desire swung an endlessly patrolling line of bronze-beaked warships. Ortaias Sphrantzes might have lost the transmarine suburbs of the capital, but when his forces pulled out they left behind few vessels larger than a fishing smack. Not even Thorisin Gavras’ impetuosity made him eager to risk a crossing in the face of the enemy fleet.

Balked from advancing further, his frustration grew with his army. He summoned an officers’ council to what had been the local governor’s residence until that bureaucrat fled to Ortaias. An east-facing window of clear glass gave a splendid view of the Cattle-Crossing and Videssos the city beyond. Marcus suspected Gavras had chosen the meeting place as a goad to his generals.

Baanes Onomagoulos said, “Thorisin, without ships of our own, we’ll stay here till we die of old age, and that’s how it is. We could have ten times the men we do, and they wouldn’t be worth a counterfeit copper to us. We have to get control of the sea.”

He thumped his stick on the table; his wound had left his right leg shrunken and lame.

Thorisin glared at him, not so much for what he said but for the patronizing way he said it. Short, lean, and bald, Onomagoulos had a hard, big-nosed face; he had been Mavrikios Gavras’ comrade since they were boys, but had never quite got the idea that the dead Emperor’s little brother was now a man in his own right.

“I can’t wish ships here,” Thorisin snapped. “The Sphrantzai pay their captains well, if no one else. They know they’re all that’s keeping their heads from going up on the Milestone.”

Privately, Marcus thought that an exaggeration. Along with Videssos’ proud buildings and elegant gardens, its fortifications—the mightiest the Roman had ever seen—were visible from this seaside house. Even with the Cattle-Crossing somehow overleaped, an assault on that double line of frowning dun walls was enough to daunt any soldier. One problem at a time, he thought.

“Onomagoulos is right, I t’ink. Wit’out ships, you fail. Why not get dem from the Duchy?” Utprand Dagober’s son entered the debate for the first time, his island accent almost thick enough to pass for that of the Namdaleni’s Haloga cousins. His men were new-come to the seacoast, having marched and fought their way from Phanaskert clear across the Videssian westlands.

“Now there’s a notion,” Thorisin said dryly. Plainly he did not much like it, but Utprand’s forces had swelled his own by a third. It behooved him to walk soft.

The Namdalener smiled a wintry smile; winter seemed at home in his eyes, the chill blue of the ice his northern ancestors left behind when they took Namdalen from the Empire two hundred years before. Matching Gavras irony for irony, he asked, “You cannot misdoubt our good fait’?”

“Surely not,” Thorisin replied, and there were chuckles up and down the table. The Duchy of Namdalen had been a thorn in Videssos’ flesh since its stormy birth. Its Haloga conquerors did not stay rude pirates long, but learned much from their more civilized subjects. That learning made their mixed-blooded descendants dangerous, subtle warriors. They fought for the Empire, aye, but they and their paymasters both knew they would seize it if they could.

“Well, what would you?” Soteric Dosti’s son demanded of Gavras. Helvis’ brother sat at Utprand’s left hand; the young Namdalener had risen fast since the tribune last saw him. He
went on, “Would you sooner win this war with our help, or lose without?”

Scaurus flinched; Soteric always presented choices so as to make yea unpalatable as nay. Save for a proud nose that bespoke partly Videssian ancestry, his features were much like his sister’s, but his wide mouth habitually drew up in a thin, hard line.

Thorisin looked from him to the tribune and back again. Marcus’ own lips compressed; he knew the Emperor still carried misgivings over the ties of friendship and blood between Romans and Namdaleni. But Gavras’ answer was mild enough: “There still may be other alternatives than those.”

His gaze swung back to Scaurus. “What say you?” he asked. “Not much, so far.”

The tribune was glad of a question he could deal with dispassionately. “That ships are needed, no one can doubt. As to how to get them, others here know better than I. We Romans always took more naturally to fighting on land than on the sea. Put me on the other side of the Cattle-Crossing and you’ll hear advice from me in plenty, never fear.”

Thorisin smiled mirthlessly. “I believe that—the day you don’t speak your mind is the day I begin to suspect you. And I grant you, silence is better than breaking wind by mouth when you’ve nothing useful to say.”

But, having just disclaimed knowledge of naval warfare, Marcus thought back to his lost homeland’s past. “My people fought wars with a country called Carthage, which at first had a strong fleet where we had none. We used a beached ship of theirs as a model for our own and soon we were challenging them on the sea. Could we not build our own here?”

The idea had not occurred to Gavras, whose thinking had dealt solely with ships already in existence. He rubbed his bearded chin as he thought; Marcus thought the white streaks on either side of his jaw were wider than they had been a year ago. Finally the Emperor asked, “How long did it take your folk to get their navy built?”

“Sixty days for the first ship, it’s said.”

“Too long, too long,” Thorisin muttered, as much to himself as to his marshals. “I begrudge every day that passes. Phos alone knows what the Yezda are doing behind us.”

“Not Phos alone,” Soteric said, but so low Gavras could not hear. Few of the tales that the Namdaleni brought from
their journey across Videssos were gladsome. Though they had no love for Thorisin Gavras, they agreed that the sooner he won his civil war—if he could—the better his hope of reclaiming the westlands for Videssos.

The Emperor refilled his wine cup from a shapely carafe of gilded silver—like the house in which the council sat, a possession of the recently departed governor. Gavras spat on the dark slate floor in rejection of Skotos and all his works, then raised his eyes and hands on high as he prayed to Phos—the same ritual over wine Scaurus had seen his first day in the Empire.

He realized with some surprise, though, that now he understood the prayer. What Gorgidas had said so long ago was true; little by little, Videssos was setting its mark on him.

Half an hour’s ride south of the suburb the Videssians simply called “Across,” citrus orchards came down to the sea, leaving only a thin strand of white beach to mark the coastline. Scaurus tethered his borrowed horse to the smooth gray branch of a lemon tree, then cursed softly when in the darkness he scraped his arm on one of the tree’s protecting spines.

It was nearly midnight on a moonless night; the men dismounting near the Roman were but blacker shadows under Videssos’ strange stars. The light from the great city on the eastern shore of the strait was of more use than their cold gleam, or would have been, had not a war galley’s cruel silhouette blocked most of it from sight.

Gaius Philippus nearly tripped as he dismounted. “A pox on these stirrups,” he muttered in Latin. “I knew I’d forget the bloody things.”

“Quiet, there,” Thorisin Gavras said, walking out onto the beach. The rest of his party followed. It was so dark the members were hard to recognize. What little light there was glistened off Nepos’ smooth-shaved head and showed his short, tubby frame; Baanes Onomagoulos’ painful rolling gait was also unmistakable. Most of the officers were simply tall shapes, one interchangeable with the next.

Gavras unhooded a tiny lantern, once, twice, three times. A cricket chirped in such perfect imitation of the signal that men jumped, laughing quick, nervous, almost silent laughs. But the insect call was not the response Thorisin awaited.

“There’s too many of us here,” Onomagoulos said nervously.
A few seconds later he added, “Your precious fellow out there will get the wind up.”

“Hush,” Gavras said, making a gesture all but invisible in the dark. From the bow of the silent warship came one flash, then a second.

Thorisin gave a soft grunt of satisfaction, sent back a single answering flash. All was dark and silent for a few moments, then Marcus heard the soft slap of waves on wood as a boat was lowered from that lean, menacing shape ahead.

The tribune’s right hand curled round his sword hilt. “Other alternatives”—he recalled Gavras’ words of a week before only too well. This parley struck him as suicidally foolish; if the admiral aboard that bireme—drungarios of the fleet was his proper title, Marcus remembered—chose treachery and landed marines, the rebellion against the Sphrantzai would be short-lived indeed.

Thorisin had only laughed at him when he put his fears into words. “You never met Taron Leimmokheir, or you wouldn’t speak such nonsense. If he promises a safe meeting, a safe meeting there will be. It’s not in him to lie.”

The boat was beyond its parent vessel’s shadow now, and Scaurus saw Gavras had been right. There were but three men in it: a pair of rowers and a still figure at the stern who had to be the drungarios. The rowers feathered their oars so skillfully that they passed silently over the sea. Only the green-blue phosphorescence that foamed up at each stroke told of their passage.

The little rowboat beached, its keel scraping softly against sand. The rowers leaped out to pull it past waves’ reach. When it was secured, Leimmokheir came striding toward the knot of men waiting for him by the trees. Either he was a lucky man or his night sight was very keen, for he unerringly picked out Thorisin Gavras from among his followers.

“Hello, Gavras,” he said, clasping Thorisin’s hand. “This skulking around by night is a dark business more ways than one, and I don’t care for it a bit.” His voice was deep and hoarse, roughened by years of shouting over wind and wave. Even at first hearing, Marcus understood why Thorisin Gavras trusted this man; it was not possible to imagine him deceitful.

“A dark business, aye,” Gavras agreed, “but one which can lead toward the light. Help us pass the Cattle-Crossing and oust Ortaias the fool and his uncle the spider. Phos, man,
you’ve had half a year now to see how the two of them run things—they aren’t fit to clean the red boots, let alone to wear em.”

Taron Leimmokheir drew in a slow, thoughtful breath. “I gave my oath to Ortaias Sphrantzes when it was not known if you were alive or dead. Would you forswear me? Skotos’ ice is the final home for oathbreakers.”

“Would you see the Empire dragged down to ruin by your scruples?” Thorisin shot back. There were times when he sounded all too much like Soteric, and Scaurus instinctively knew he was taking the wrong tack with this man.

“Why not work with them, not against?” Leimmokheir returned. “They freely offer you the title you bore under your brother, may good Phos shine upon his countenance, and declare their willingness to bind themselves by any oaths you name.”

“Were it possible, I’d say I valued the oaths of the Sphrantzai less even than their coins.”

That got home; Leimmokheir let out a bark of laughter before he could check himself. But he would not change his mind. “You’ve grown bitter and distrustful,” he said. “If nothing else, the fact that you and they are now related by marriage will hold them to their pledges. Doubly damned are those who dare against kinsmen.”

“You are an honest, pious man, Taron,” Thorisin said regretfully. “Because you have no evil in you, you will not see it in others.”

The drungarios half bowed. “That may be, but I, too, must try to do right as I see it. When next we meet, I will fight you.”

“Seize him!” Soteric said urgently. At the edge of hearing, Leimmokheir’s two sailors snapped to alertness.

But Gavras was shaking his head. “Would you make a Sphrantzes of me, Namdalener?” Close by, Utprand rumbled agreement. Thorisin ignored him, turning back to Taron Leimmokheir. “Go on, get out,” he said. Marcus had never heard such bitter weariness in his voice.

The drungarios bowed once more, this time from the waist. He walked slowly down to his boat, turned as if to say something. Whatever it was, it did not pass his lips. He sat down at the boat’s stern; his men pushed it out until they were waist-deep in the sea, then scrambled aboard themselves. Oars rose
and fell; the rowboat turned in a tight circle, then moved steadily back to the galley.

Marcus heard a rope ladder creak as it took weight, the sound faint but clear across the water. Taron Leimmokheir’s raspy bass rumbled a command. The bireme’s quiet oars awoke, sending it gliding south like some monster centipede. It disappeared behind an outjutting point of land.

Thorisin watched it go, disappointment plain in every line of his body. He said softly to himself, “Honest and pious, yes, but too trusting by half. One day it will cost him.”

“If it doesn’t cost us first,” Indakos Skylitzes exclaimed. “Look there!” From the north, a longboat was darting toward the lonely stretch of beach; no little ship’s gig this, but a twenty-footer packed to the gunwales with armed men.

“Sold!” Gavras said, disbelief in his voice. He stood frozen for a moment as the longboat came ashore. “Phos curse that baseborn treacher for all eternity. Belike he landed marines south of us, too, just as soon as he was out of sight, to make it a good, thorough trap.”

His sword rang free of scabbard. It glittered coldly in uncaring starlight. “Well, as friend Baanes said, there’s more of us here than he reckoned on. We can give this lot a fight. Videssos!” he yelled, and charged the longboat, where soldiers were still climbing out onto the beach.

Scaurus among them, his officers pounded after him, sand spraying up as they ran. Only Nepos and Onomagoulos hung back—the one was no warrior, while the other could scarcely walk.

It was four to three against Gavras’ party, or something close to that; there must have been twenty men in the grounded boat. But instead of using their numbers to any advantage, they stood surprised, waiting to receive their foes’ onset.

“Ha, villains!” Thorisin cried. “Not the easy assassination you were promised, is it?” He cut at one of the men from the boat, who parried and slashed back. Lithe as a serpent, Thorisin twisted, cut again. The man groaned, dropped his blade to clutch at the spurting gash below his left shoulder. A last stroke, this one two-handed, ripped into his belly. He slumped to the sand, unmoving.