The Dark Lord (25 page)

"Hai!"
Alexandros spurred the black stallion and the horse bolted away. As he moved, so did the assembled mass of Companions and suddenly they thundered across the grassy field, banners and horse manes streaming in the wind of their passage. Alexandros raced ahead of them, gripped by petulant anger, his face terrible and he bore down upon the Avar flank guards like a lightning bolt.

Krythos stared after him, rubbing his right hand as if burned. Then he shook himself and looked around. His scouts had ridden up and were looking at him with interest.

"What do we do now?" Semfronius asked, stringy black beard jutting out at an angle from under his helmet. Krythos ignored him for a moment while he swung up onto his horse. The scout could feel the earth trembling a little. As he turned his horse, there was a burst of noise—shouting, screams, the wild screaming of an injured horse, the clash and rattle of metal on metal. Krythos didn't bother to look—he had seen men fight before—and waved his hand at the edge of the field.

"Spread out," he called to his soldiers. "We'll cover the far edge of Lord Alexandros' attack, to make sure no one is sneaking about in the orchards. The
comes
will take care of his own business, I'm sure."

Clouds covered the sun by the time Jusuf limped up to the field hospital. He was glad to see the canvas awning and the bustle of men in priestly robes working among the wounded. There was a thick smell, but the Khazar was used to death, and the stench of drying blood and flesh no longer provoked stomach-churning nausea. A ring of tall willow-wands surrounded the hospital and there was a subtle change in the air as Jusuf passed between them. Inside the invisible barrier, he noted at once there were no flies or insects. Men lay in long rows on the ground, wrapped in woolen blankets. Most of the soldiers were bandaged on the arms or chest, a few in the leg. Some peered up at the gray sky through linen wrappings on their faces. Jusuf knew how they felt; he had lost part of an ear once, in a border skirmish with the T'u-chüeh. Any kind of a head wound bled furiously.

He accounted the Eastern troops very lucky. Among the Khazars, priests with the healing arts were rare and highly prized and no one thought of gathering them together and sending them out with the army. The Romans, however, had an efficient and well-regulated
medikus
traveling with each Legion. The rare priests of Asklepius were supplemented by a large number of orderlies—brawny men easily capable of carrying a wounded man on their shoulders—who gathered the fallen from the field of battle and tended to their simple wounds.

"Jusuf!" Dahvos, kagan of the Khazar people, sat under a lemon tree at the edge of the
medikus'
encampment, his arm tightly bound to his chest. Jusuf smiled broadly and jogged up to his half-brother. Two heavy bundles, one long and one short, banged against his hip. Dahvos did not get up; content to sit with his back to the tree, in the shade. "You look... battered," the kagan said in a tired voice.

"There was some dispute over the field," Jusuf replied in a nonchalant tone, squatting down beside Dahvos and laying down his packages. "How is your arm?"

"It was bad," Dahvos said, frowning down at the bandaged limb, "but the priest laid his hands on and now he says it will mend properly. Did you see me fall? That shot destroyed my shield like a stone falling from heaven! The point tore clear through my mailed sleeve too." Dahvos shook his head in dismay.

"I saw you fall," Jusuf admitted, running dirty fingers through his hair. His helmet was tied to the back of his belt. The rest of him was stained with soot, mud and ground-in dirt. "I saw blood and thought you'd been killed."

Dahvos nodded, eyes hooded by the close passage of death. He fingered his chest, tracing the outline of an enormous bruise. "I thought I was too! But my luck held and an iron strap blunted the arrow's flight. Did you see whose arm drove such a bolt of lightning?"

"Yes." Jusuf ran his hand over the silk-wrapped bundle on the ground. His fingers brushed over embroidered leaves, rusty with fall colors and tinted with gold. "I saw the man shoot, more than once. He killed many men—most of them our
umen
commanders."

Dahvos frowned, seeing a strange look in his half-brother's eyes. "Who was it?"

"It was Bayan himself." Jusuf did not look up and his voice was soft. "But I rushed him with my lancers and brought the dog to sword strokes before he could take a shot at me. I killed him, Dahvos, with my own hand and took his head as your prize."

Jusuf picked up the smaller package—not bound in silk, but in rough woolens, now matted and dark—and untied the simple knot. The cloth fell away and the crown of a head was revealed. Blood and bits of bone were interspersed with stringy black hair. Pale skin, now the color of yellowed parchment, was revealed and then the face, frozen in a look of horror and surprise, as Jusuf rolled the skull over. Dahvos looked down with cold eyes, then reached out and turned the head so that he could look carefully upon the cold features.

"You knew him," the kagan stated absently. "I remember, you were sent away as a hostage."

"Yes." Jusuf's voice was flat. "I was."

"You're sure, then? Wasn't he supposed to be crippled?" Dahvos looked up and Jusuf nodded. The kagan smiled. "Well done."

"My duty, kagan." Jusuf wrapped up the head again. They might need it later, to parade before the army. "Did you see the end of the battle?"

"No." Dahvos grinned ruefully. "I saw some blue sky and my guardsmen carrying me from the field."

"The
comes
Alexandros crashed into their left about the same time I cut down Bayan. I think our Macedonian expected to rout them himself—but then, he's never fought the Avars before... The Avar wing held, his charge was repulsed with loss, and the enemy withdrew in good order."

"Their casualties?" Dahvos scowled, thinking of his own dead.

"Many of their allies perished in the center—but they are only spear- or axe-men. Slav or Sklavenoi vassals... no real loss." Jusuf tugged at his chin, thinking. "Of his heavy horse, perhaps one or two thousand men fell. Their true casualty was Bayan."

"Yes." Dahvos squinted at the trees beyond the
medikus
. "Both the khagan and time—they will have to retire to Serdica and the
hring
, to quarrel and discuss and ultimately elect a new khagan to lead them. The rest of the year, at least, will be wasted in quarrels and feuds. The great families will need to decide which whelp of Bayan's rises to the throne."

"His eldest sons are dead..." Jusuf mused. Then he felt a sharp stab of elation.
That will be a vigorous discussion! And I killed him and set them in confusion!

"What is this?" Dahvos poked the long bundle with a finger. "That's beautiful cloth."

"Nothing," Jusuf snapped, drawing the bundle away from his half-brother. "The khagan's tunic and my weapons."

"Good enough," Dahvos said, giving Jusuf a considering look. The tarkhan stood abruptly, looking down at Dahvos.

"I am going to round up the men," Jusuf said, feeling strangely skittish. "And number our losses. I fear we bled freely today. Will you be here?"

"No," Dahvos grunted and levered himself up from the ground. "I will be with the
comes
Alexandros, I think. We need to decide what to do next. I have things I wish to say to him, about his conduct in this... battle."

Jusuf nodded abruptly and then walked quickly away, the long bundle held tightly across his chest. Dahvos stared after him, a little unsettled.

Galen Atreus, Emperor and princeps of both East and West, entered a lofty-ceilinged room high on the Forum side of the Palace of Tiberius. Large square windows admitted cool northern light, making the marble and tile gleam. A circular fan turned slowly, moved by ropes passing overhead into a nearby room. The Emperor ignored the Praetorians beside the door and strode quickly to a dark mahogany swan-wing chair at the head of the table. He sat and nodded briskly to the men and women already seated. In polite society men would recline on couches and women sit, but the Emperor was far too focused on matters of state to care for social propriety today.

"Good morning," he said, opening a wooden folder on the table in front of him. The packet was filled with parchment sheets covered in small, neat handwriting. Galen's secretaries had risen before dawn and spent a hurried hour as the eastern sky lightened, trying to condense everything about everything onto the square-cut pages. The Emperor grimaced, looking at the first sheet.
Persia,
he thought glumly. Despite his assured entrance, he felt completely exhausted, bled by thousands of minute, invisible mosquitoes. The Empire had never suffered a shock like the fall of Constantinople—not at Adrianopolis, not at Cannae, not even when fool Crassus threw away six Legions in the Mesopotamian desert.

Why does it fall to me?
he thought bleakly.
Have I angered the gods?

The Emperor sighed, arranged his papers again and looked up, face hard and mask-like. Everyone else straightened up a little and Galen counted noses to make sure everyone was present. His own brother, Maxian, sat somberly to his right, young face paler than usual above a dark tunic and dark brown robes. Beyond the prince, the elderly and nondescript Gaius was doing a good job of being invisible. Galen's eyes passed over him without pausing. The man did a centurion's work with any project, though he had not proven to be innovative, only dogged past anyone's expectation. The Emperor had not warmed to the bureaucrat—he couldn't say why, really. Normally he valued a hard-working, prudent man above all else—but there was something about Gaius...

In earlier, better times, Gregorius Auricus would have held a chair, speaking and listening for the Senate as he had done for nearly fifty years. Now his duties had fallen to Gaius Julius—his aide and executor for the past year. Galen tried to ignore the absence and made mental note—not for the first time—to ensure someone appropriate assumed the old man's mantle of Speaker in the Senate. The Duchess De'Orelio sat almost opposite, her perfect face framed by demurely coifed curls wound with gold and emerald. A single booklet lay on the table in front of her and the Emperor did not bother to hide a grimace. The chapbook was simply for show—Galen often wondered if there were anything written on the pages inside—for he could not remember the last time she had consulted the book in the course of business. The Duchess relied on her memory, which was prodigious.

Beside the Duchess' cool elegance, looking very much like a plump brown wren trapped on a ledge beside a hawk, sat Empress Martina. Her presence here was both a personal concession from Galen, who had extended her every courtesy and honor, and a political one. Though Galen had assumed the title Avtokrator of the East, reuniting both halves of the Empire for the first time in almost three and a half centuries, there was no way he could administer the rump provinces of the East without the willing support of their remaining governors.

Those men, as numerous letters and private meetings had revealed, considered him not their Emperor, but merely a regent for Martina's son, Heracleonas, who was probably crawling around in the palace gardens with Galen's own child, Theodosius. Galen knew Martina's residence-in-exile was now the natural and expected gathering place for the huge crowd of dispossessed Eastern nobles, their wives, children, and retainers who had fled the fall of Constantinople. Through her, he hoped to gain the assistance and trust of the Eastern nobility. Galen needed their assistance badly and he hoped she understood the desperate nature of their situation.

"We must," Galen said, clearing his throat, "discuss Persia and Egypt. Lady Anastasia, please relate the current state of affairs." He suppressed a twinge of disquiet. Despite years of working with the Duchess, he still felt uncomfortable allowing a woman to hold such a powerful position. She knew things he did not, which bothered the Emperor a great deal. At the same time, he needed her and the sprawling network of agents she commanded.

"Lord and God," Anastasia began, bowing to the Emperor and inclining her head to the others. "Our situation in the East is poor. We have lost the provinces of Lesser Syria, Phoenicia and Judea to these rebels out of the old Greek cities in the Decapolis and their Arab mercenaries. Greater Syria and the city of Antioch have fallen to Persia, as well as portions of Anatolia and, of course, the city of Constantinople itself. Worse, we have suffered the loss of nearly the entire Eastern fleet and the Eastern Legions have been roughly handled not once, but twice by the enemy."

The Duchess paused for an instant and opened her notebook. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw surprise flit across the Emperor's face and she repressed a smile. The others watched her with varying attention—Maxian seemed entirely absent, his attention far away, and Anastasia noted his hair was unwashed and his clothing rumpled. She wondered if he slept at all. The lean old man at his side, unfortunately, was watching her with rapt attention. Anastasia did not find being desired by a dead man a pleasant sensation. However, she did not allow herself to show revulsion. There was business to be done here. At her side, Empress Martina was trying to stay awake and plucking at the hem of her very expensive and rather over-ornamented gown.

"Word has reached us," she continued, "of the enemy fleet—captained, we believe, by Palmyrene and Arab merchants—leaving Constantinople." She touched a sheet of parchment in the notebook with the tip of a well-manicured fingernail. "A ship friendly to us sighted the enemy fleet bearing east from Rhodes under full sail. I believe—and this, Lord and God, is only a guess—the fleet is aiming to make landfall at Caesarea Maritima, on the coast of Judea. It is quite likely the fleet is carrying those Arab and Decapolis contingents who fought at Constantinople home again."

"Not the Persians?" Galen leaned forward, narrow chin on his fist. "If this is so, where is the Persian army itself? Where is the Boar?"

"Luckily," Anastasia responded, "the Persian attack on Constantinople, like the campaign three years ago, is really only a very large raid. Despite crossing the breadth of Anatolia, they have not actually conquered the Roman provinces between the Persian frontier and the Eastern Capital. However, there are no Roman armies to keep them from moving freely through those lands. Indeed, reports from the larger coastal cities of Pergamum, Ephesus and Myra report no Persian or Decapolis threat at all!"