An Emperor for the Legion (22 page)

“He must have died quickly,” Gorgidas said, showing the tribune the neat slash that ran from under the little man’s left ear to the center of his throat. A couple of purple-bellied flies buzzed indignantly away from his pointing finger. “He couldn’t have been alive for the rest of—that. The whole camp—Asklepios, the whole whole city—would have heard him, and no one knew a thing until his relief came out and found him.”

“A mercy for him, aye,” Gaius Philippus grunted. “The only one he got, from the look of it.”

“The Sphrantzai have Yezda fighting for them,” Marcus said at last, groping for some sort of explanation. “This could be their work—they kill foully to terrify their enemies.” But even as he spoke he doubted his own words. The Yezda were barbarians; they killed and tortured with savage gusto. The surgical precision of this butchery matched anything of theirs for brutality, but was far beyond it in cruel, cold malice.

Phostis Apokavkos said, “The Yezda had nothing to do with it, curse ’em. Almost wish they had—I’d come nearer understandin’ then.” The adopted Roman spoke Latin with the twang of Videssos’ westlands; the accent only emphasized his grief. Though he shaved his face like his mates among the legionaries, he was still a Videssian in his heart of hearts. He and Doukitzes, two imperials making their way among the Romans, had been fast friends since the chaos after Maragha.

“You talk as if you know this wasn’t sport for the nomads,” Gaius Philippus said, “but at your folk’s worst I can’t imagine any of them doing it.”

“For which I give you thanks,” Apokavkos said, rubbing his long chin. More often than not he insisted on styling himself a Roman, but this once he accepted the Videssian label. “Don’t have to imagine it, though—it’s true. See here.” He pointed to the dead man’s forehead.

To Scaurus the wounds incised there had been just another
sample of the hideous virtuosity Doukitzes’ killer had displayed. He looked again; this time his mind’s eye stripped away the black dried blood and grasped the pattern the knife had cut. It was a word, or rather a Videssian name: Rhavas.

“Sure and the son of a sow’s a natural-born turnip-head to be after doing such a thing,” Viridovix said that evening by the Roman campfire. “He must ken we’ll not be forgetting soon.” He was eating lightly, bread and a few grapes; his stomach, always sensitive save in the heat of battle, had heaved itself up at the sight of Doukitzes’ pathetic corpse.

“Aye,” Gaius Philippus agreed, his square, hairy hands closing as if round an invisible neck. “And a fool twice in the bargain, for he’s cooped up there in the city where getting away won’t be so easy.”

“One more reason to take it,” Marcus said. He held out his apricot-glazed wine cup for a refill. Still shaken by what he had seen, he drank deep to dull the memory.

“The worst of it, sir, is what you said this morning,” Quintus Glabrio said to Gaius Philippus, “though not quite the way you meant it. Doukitzes wasn’t nomad’s sport. To mutilate him so after he was dead—there’s purpose in it, right enough, but may the gods spare me from too fine an understanding of such purposes.” He put the heels of his hands to his eyes, as though they had betrayed him by looking on Doukitzes.

Scaurus drank again, stuck out his cup for yet another dollop of the sweet, syrupy Videssian wine. His companions matched him draught for draught, but their drinking brought no cheer. One by one they sought their beds, hoping sleep would prove a better anodyne than wine.

The tribune thrust the tent flap open, came out through it still arranging his mantle about him. He let his feet take him where they would; one path was good as the next, so long as it led away from the tent. Phos’ Wager, or any other, could be lost as well as won.

Sentries gave Scaurus the clenched-fist Roman salute as he walked out the camp’s north gate and into the darkness. He returned it absently, wishing no one at all had to see him; save for a few men coming and going to the latrines, the camp was quiet, its fires no more than embers.

Every legionary sentry post was double-manned now, both in camp and along Thorisin’s besieging earthwork. The tribune saw torches glowing all the way down to the sea. Tonight, he knew, no man would sleep at his station.

The night was clear and cool, almost chilly. The moon had long since set behind Videssos’ walls, leaving the sky to the distant stars. Glancing up at their still-strange patterns, Scaurus wondered if the Videssians used them to reckon destinies. It seemed a notion that would fit their beliefs, but he could not recall hearing of it in the Empire. Nepos would know.

The thought was gone almost as soon as it appeared, drowned in a fresh wave of resentment. The tribune wandered on, still going north; before long he was past the Roman section of line and coming up on the Namdalener camp. He gave that a wide berth, too, not much wanting to see any of the islanders right now.

He heard shouting in the distance ahead, a woman’s voice. After a moment he recognized it as Komitta Rhangavve’s. About now Thorisin was probably wishing she was back on the western side of the Cattle-Crossing. Scaurus let out a sour chuckle. It was a feeling he fully understood.

His laugh had startled someone nearby. He heard a sharp intake of breath, then a half-question, half-challenge: “Who is it?”

Another woman’s voice, lower than Komitta’s and more familiar, too, with a guttural trace of accent. Marcus peered into the night. “Nevrat? Is that you?”

“Who—?” she said again, but then, “Scaurus, yes?”

“Aye.” The tribune briefly warmed to hear her. She and her husband no longer camped with the legionaries, having joined several of Senpat Sviodo’s cousins among the Vaspurakaners who marched with Gavras. Marcus missed them both, Senpat for his blithe brashness, his wife for her clear thinking and courage, and the two of them together as a model of what a happy couple could be.

She walked slowly toward him, minding each step in the dark. As usual, she dressed mannishly in tunic and trousers; a swordbelt girded her waist. Her shining hair, blacker than the night, fell curling past her shoulders.

“What are you doing out and about?” Scaurus asked.

“Why not?” she retorted. “I feel like a cat prowling
through the darkness, looking for who knows what. And the night is very beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Eh? I suppose it is,” he answered; whatever beauties it held were lost on him.

“Are you all right?” she asked suddenly, lifting a hand to touch his shoulder.

He thought about it a moment. “No, not really,” he said at last.

“Can I do anything?”

Crisp and direct as ever, he thought; Nevrat was not one to ask such a question unless she meant it to be taken seriously. Here, though, there could be only one answer. “Thank you, lady, no. This doesn’t have that sort of cure, I fear.”

He was afraid she would press him further, but she only nodded and said, “I hope you solve it soon, then.” Her grip on his arm tightened for a second, then she was gone into the night.

Marcus kept walking, still without much goal. He was well among Gavras’ Videssian contingents now. A couple of troopers passed within twenty feet of him, unaware of his presence. One was saying, “—and when his father asked him why he was crying, he said, ‘This morning the baker came and ate the baby!’ ”

They both laughed loudly; they sounded a little drunk. Without the rest of the joke, the punchline was so much gibberish to Scaurus. Somehow that seemed to march very well with everything else that had happened that day.

A man on horseback trotted by, singing softly to himself. Caught up in his song, he, too, failed to notice the tribune.

An awkward footfall ahead, a muttered curse. As the woman approached, Marcus reflected there was scant need to ask her why she was walking through the night. Her slit skirt swung open with every step she took, giving glimpses of her white thighs.

Unlike the soldiers, she saw the tribune almost as soon as he knew she was there. She came boldly up to him. She was slim and dark and smelled of stale scent, wine, and sweat.

Her smile, half-seen in the darkness, was professionally inviting. “You’re a tall one,” she said, looking Marcus up and down. Her speech held the rhythm of the capital, quick and sharp, almost staccato. “Do you want to come with me? I’ll make that scowl up and go, I promise.” Scaurus had not
known he was frowning. He smoothed his features as best he could.

The lacing of her blouse was undone; he could see her small breasts. He felt a tightness in his chest, as if he were trying to breathe deep in a too-tight cuirass. “Yes, ITI go with you,” he said. “Is it far?”

“No, not very. Show me your money,” she said, all business now.

That brought him up short. Save for the mantle he was naked, even his sandals left behind. But as he started to spread his hands regretfully, a glint of silver on his right index finger made him pause. He pulled the ring free, held it out to her. “Will this do?”

She hefted it, held it close to her face, then smiled again and reached for him with knowing fingers.

As she promised, her small tent was close by. Shrugging off his cloak, Scaurus wondered if she was what he sought. He doubted it, but lay down beside her nonetheless.

“W
HAT
? R
ESAINA FALLEN TO THE
Y
EZDA
?” G
AIUS
P
HI
lippus was saying to Viridovix, astonishment in his voice. “Where did you hear that?”

“One o’ the sailor lads it was told me, last night over knucklebones. Aye, it’s certain sure, he says. What with their moving around so much and all, those sailors get the news or ever anyone else does.”

“Yes, and it’s always bad,” Marcus said, spooning up a mouthful of his morning porridge. “Kybistra in the far south gone a couple of weeks ago, and now this.” Resaina’s loss was a heavier blow. The town was perhaps two days’ march south of the Bay of Rhyax, well east of Amorion. If it had truly fallen, the Yezda were getting past the roadblock the latter city represented, in Zemarkhos’ fanatic hands though it was.

And while the westlands were falling town by town to the invaders, the siege of Videssos dragged on. There were men beginning to slip over the wall at night now, and others escaping in small boats. They brought tales of tightened belts inside the city, of increasingly harsh and capricious rule.

Whatever the shortcomings of the regime of the Sphrantzai, though, the capital’s double walls and tall towers were always manned, its defenders ready to fight.

“All Thorisin’s choices are bad,” the tribune brooded. “He can’t go back over the Cattle-Crossing to fight the Yezda without turning Ortaias and Vardanes loose behind him, but if he doesn’t, he won’t have much of an empire left even if we win here.”

Gaius Philippus said, “What we need is to win here, and quickly. But that means storming the walls, and I shake in my shoes every time I think of trying.”

“Och, such a pair for the glooms I never have seen,” Viridovix said. “We canna go, we canna stay, and we canna be fighting either. Wellaway, we might as well the lot of us get drunk if nothing better’s to be done.”

“I’ve heard ideas I liked less,” Gaius Philippus chuckled.

The Celt’s casual dismissal of logic annoyed Marcus. Giving Viridovix an ironic dip of his head, he asked him, “What do you see left to us, now that you’ve disposed of all our choices?”

“I haven’t done that at all, Roman dear,” the Gaul retorted, his green eyes twinkling, “for you’ve left treachery out of the bargain, the which Gavras’ll never do. Too honest by half, y’are.”

“Hmp,” Scaurus grunted—no denying Viridovix had a point. But he did not much care for the label the Celt gave him: “too credulous,” it seemed to mean. Moreover, he did not feel he deserved it. He had not repeated that angry night with the whore, nor wanted to; even while she clawed his back, he knew she was not the answer to his troubles with Helvis. If anything, those had since grown worse. There were times when his guarded silence hung between them like a muffling cloak.

He was glad to have his unpleasant reverie broken by a tall Videssian he recognized as one of Gavras’ messengers. He took a last pull of thin, sour beer; Videssian wine was too cloying for him to stomach in the early morning. To business, then. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

The soldier bowed as he would to any superior, but Scaurus caught his slightly raised eyebrow, his delicately curled lip—to aristocratic Videssians, beer was a peasant drink. “There will be an officers’ conclave in his Majesty’s quarters, to commence midway through the second hour.”

Like the Romans, Videssos split day and night into twelve hours each, reckoned from sunrise and sunset. The tribune glanced at the sky; the sun was hardly yet well risen. “Plenty of time to make ready,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“Would your honor care for a wee drop of ale?” Viridovix asked the messenger, offering the little keg that held it.
Marcus saw the beginnings of a grin lurking under his flame-red mustaches.

“Thank you, no,” Thorisin’s man replied, his face and voice now altogether expressionless. “I have others to inform.” And with another bow he was gone, in almost unseemly haste.

As soon as he was out of sight, Gaius Philippus swatted Viridovix on the back. “ ‘Thank you, no,’ ” mimicking the Videssian. Centurion and Celt broke up together, forgetting to snarl at each other.

“And would
your
honor care for a wee drop?” Viridovix asked him.

“Me? Gods, no! I hate the stuff.”

“I’d best not waste it, then,” Viridovix said, and swigged from the cask.

It was easy to divide the commanders in Thorisin’s tent into two sets: those who knew of Resaina’s fall, and the rest. A current of expectancy ran through the first group, though no one was sure what to look for. By contrast, the ignorant ones mostly wandered in late, as to any other meeting where nothing much was going to happen.

For a time it seemed they were going to be proved right. The first order of business was a fuzz-bearded Videssian lieutenant hauled in between a pair of burly guards. The youngster looked scared and a little sick.