The Tale of Krispos (100 page)

“A pity the flames from the wall didn’t reach here,” he said. “We’ll just have to fire this building ourselves.” More than anything else, he wanted Phos’ icons to burn.

One of the guardsmen clapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. Zaidas said, “Excellent, Your Majesty. Fire and its light are gifts from Phos, and will cleanse the evil that has put its roots down here. May something better arise from the ashes. And,” he added, his voice suddenly hopeful, “if Harvas has managed to elude us here, fire will cleanse the world of him as well.”

“So may it be,” Krispos said. After that, he was not ashamed to leave the dark chapel. Zaidas followed close on his heels. The young mage carefully closed the splintered door behind him, as if to make sure what dwelt inside stayed there.

All the wizards gathered by the entrance that Gepas still guarded. They’d not found Harvas, nor had any of the rest of them stumbled onto anything as black as Skotos’ altar. Not one, however, offered a word of protest at what Krispos proposed to do to the palace.

He unhitched Progress and led the gelding well away from the wooden building. The mages still kept a close watch on it, as if they could sense even at a distance the evil Harvas had brought into it. Very likely they could, Krispos thought. Most of his guardsmen stayed by him, but one hurried back to the imperial camp.

The guard returned fairly soon. He was carrying a jar of lamp oil and a smoking torch. He handed Krispos the torch, unstoppered the jar, and splashed oil on the palace wall. “Light it, Majesty,” he urged.

As Krispos touched the torch to the oil, he reflected that the dromons’ incendiary mix would have served even better. But the lamp oil did the job. Flames walked across the weathered surface of the wooden wall, crept into cracks, climbed over carvings. Before long the wood caught, too. No hearth logs could have been better seasoned than the old timbers of the palace. They burned quick and hard and hot. A pillar of smoke rose to the sky.

Imperials ran and rode up in alarm, fearing the blaze had broken out on its own. Krispos kept some of them close by, to help fight the fire in case it spread. But the palace was set apart from Pliskavos’ other buildings, as if to give the khagans of Kubrat the sense of space they might have enjoyed on the steppe. It had plenty of room in which to burn safely.

Krispos watched the fire for a while. He wished he could know whether Harvas was burning with those flames. Whether or not, though, the power he had forged to strike at Videssos was broken; those of his raiders who lived were boarding rafts under the eyes and arrows of imperial troops. And Harvas’ own power was broken, as well, thanks to Tanilis. Krispos shook his head, wishing for the thousandth time the price of the latter breaking had not been so high.

But he knew that Tanilis had willingly paid the price, and that she would not have wanted him to grieve in victory. The knowledge helped—some. He swung himself up onto Progress and twitched the reins. The horse turned till Krispos felt the warmth of the burning palace on his back. He touched Progress’ flanks with his heels and rode away.

W
ITH A HAND SHADING HIS EYES TO EASE THE GLARE, KRISPOS
peered across the Astris. Tiny in the distance, the last of Harvas’ Halogai trudged away from the northern back of the river. “This land is ours now,” Krispos said, slightly embarrassed to hear slight surprise in his voice. “Ours again,” he amended.

Mammianos was also watching the Halogai go. “A very neat campaign, Your Majesty,” he said. “The provincial levies will be back on their farms in time to help with the harvest. Very neat indeed.”

“So they will.” Krispos turned to the fat general. “And what of you, Mammianos? Shall I send you back to your province, too, to govern the coastal lowlands for me?”

“This for the coastal lowlands.” Mammianos yawned a slow, deliberate, scornful yawn. “The only reason I was there is that Petronas sent me to the most insignificant place he could think of.” The yawn gave way to a smug expression. “Turned out not to be so insignificant after all, the way things worked out, eh, Your Majesty?”

“You’re right about that,” Krispos said. Mammianos had given him the opening he’d hoped for. “If you’re bored with the lowlands, eminent sir, will you serve as my governor here, as the first governor of the new province of Kubrat?”

“Ah. That job wouldn’t soon grow dull, now would it?” Mammianos didn’t sound surprised, but then Mammianos was no one’s fool. His voice turned musing. “Let’s see, what all would I be doing? Keeping the nomads on their side of the Astris, and the Halogai, too, if they think about getting frisky again—”

“Cleaning up the Haloga settlements that got started here, like the one that gave Sarkis so much trouble,” Krispos put in.

“Aye, and the Kubratoi might decide to rise up again, once they get over being grateful to us for ridding them of dear Harvas, which is to say any time starting about day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, we ought to be good until next week,” Krispos said. Both men chuckled, although Krispos knew he wasn’t really joking. He went on, “We’ll start resettling farmers, too, to start giving you enough men to use as a balance against the Kubratoi. People will want to come if we forgive, say, their first five years’ taxes after they get here. It’s not the worst farming country, not if the Kubratoi don’t come by every fall to steal half your crop.”

“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, yes.” Even across more than two decades and the vast gulf that separated the man he was from the boy he had been, Krispos could still call up the helpless fury he’d felt as the nomads plundered the peasants they’d kidnapped.

Mammianos glanced over to the walls of Pliskavos not far away. “I’ll need artisans to help set the town right, and merchants to come live in it, aye, and priests, as well, for the good god”—he sketched Phos’ sun-circle—“seems mostly forgotten here.” He hardly seemed to notice he’d agreed to take the job.

“The artisans will come,” Krispos promised, “though Imbros needs them, too.” Mammianos nodded. Krispos continued, “I’ll see that priests come, too. They’ll be happier if we have a temple ready for them.” He snapped his fingers in happy inspiration. “And I know just where—on the spot where the old wooden palace stood.”

“That’s very fine, Your Majesty. The traders’ll come, too, I expect. They’ll be eager for the chance to do direct business with the nomads north of the Astris instead of going through Kubrati middlemen. Come to that, there’ll be trade down the Astris, too, in the days ahead, from Pliskavos to Videssos the city direct by water. Aye, the merchants will come.”

“I think you’re right,” Krispos said. “You’ll be busy, making all of that happen.”

“I’d sooner be busy than bored, unlike half the useless drones back in the city,” Mammianos said. His eyes narrowed as he studied Krispos. “You think you’ll stay busy yourself, Your Majesty, without a civil war and a foreign one to juggle?”

“By the good god, eminent sir, I hope not!” Krispos exclaimed. Mammianos stared at him, then started to laugh. Krispos said, “Trouble is, though, something always comes along. By the time I’m back to the capital, I’ll have something new to worry about. One thing I can think of right away: before too long, I have to decide whether to keep paying tribute to Makuran or take the chance on another war by cutting it off.”

“We’re not ready for another war,” Mammianos said seriously.

“Don’t I know it! But we can’t let the King of Kings go on sucking our blood forever, either.” Krispos sighed. “This Avtokrator business is hard work, if you try to do it the way you should. I understand Anthimos better than I used to, and why he forgot about everything save women and wine. Sometimes I think he had the right idea after all.”

“No, you don’t,” Mammianos said.

Krispos sighed again. “No, I suppose I don’t. But there are times when packing it in can look awfully good.”

“A farmer can’t afford to pack it in, and he only has to deal with one plot of land,” Mammianos said. “You have the whole Empire to look out for. On the other hand, you get rewards that poor farmer will never see, starting with the parade down Middle Street when you do get back to the city.”

“Anthimos arranged for people to cheer him, too.”

“Ah, but there’s a difference. You’ll have earned these cheers—and you know it.” Mammianos thumped Krispos lightly on the back. Krispos thought it over. At last, he nodded.

Chapter
XIII

T
HE GREAT VALVES OF THE SILVER GATE SWUNG OPEN. TRUMPETERS
on the wall above blared out a fanfare. Krispos flicked Progress’ reins. Along with his victorious army, he rode into Videssos the city.

As he passed through the covered way between the outer and inner walls, his mind went back to the day, now more than a decade behind him, when he’d first walked into the great imperial capital. Then no one had known—or cared—he was arriving. Now the whole city waited for him.

He came out of the shadow of the covered way and into the city. Another fanfare blew. Ahead of him in the procession, a marching chorus began to chant. “Behold, Krispos comes in triumph, who subjected Kubrat! Once he served the folk north of the mountains, but now they serve him!”

People packed both sides of Middle Street. They jeered the chained Haloga prisoners who dejectedly clanked along in front of Krispos. When they saw him, the jeers turned to cheers. “Thou conquerest, Krispos!” they shouted. “Thou conquerest!”

In his two years as Avtokrator, he’d heard that acclamation many times. As often as not, it was as much for form’s sake as a cobbler’s giving his neighbor good morning. Every once in a while, though, people sounded as if they truly meant it. This was one of those times.

He smiled and waved as he rode up the city’s main thoroughfare. Protocol demanded that an Emperor stare straight ahead, looking neither to the left nor to the right, to emphasize how far above the people he was. Barsymes would probably scold him when he got back back to the palaces, but he didn’t care. He wanted to feel the moment, not to pretend it wasn’t happening.

On either side of Progress marched more Halogai, members of the imperial guards. Some wore crimson surcoats that matched Krispos’ boots, others blue ones that went along with the banner of Videssos. The guardsmen seemed to ignore the people they strode past, but the axes they carried were not just for show.

Behind Krispos clattered the iron-shod hooves of Sarkis’ unit of scouts. The scouts were looking into the crowd, all right, and didn’t pretend otherwise. They knew what they were looking for, too. “Hey, pretty lass, I hope I find you tonight!” one of them called.

Hearing that, Krispos made a note to himself to make sure extra watchmen were on the street after the procession was done. Wine shops and joy-houses would both be jumping, and he wanted no trouble to mar the day. His smile turned ironic for a moment. Automatically thinking of such things was part of what it meant to be Avtokrator.

Then he thought of Dara and how good it was not to be just one more man prowling the city for whatever he could find for a night. When he came to the palaces, he was coming home. He wondered what Evripos looked like. Soon enough he’d find out. He even wondered how Phostis was doing. About time his heir got to know him.

“Kubrat is ours again!” the people shouted. Some of them, he was certain, had no idea in which direction Kubrat lay or how long it had been out of Videssian hands. They shouted anyway. If he’d got himself killed in the campaign, they would have shouted just as hard for whichever general seized the throne. Some of them would have shouted just as loud for Harvas Black-Robe, were he riding down Middle Street in triumph.

Krispos’ smile disappeared altogether. Ruling over the Empire was making him expect the worst in men, because the consequences of misfortune were so often what he saw and had to try to repair. Folk who led good and quiet lives seldom came to his notice. But he needed to remember the good still existed; if he forgot that, he began to walk the path Harvas had followed. And if he needed to remember the good, he had only to think of Tanilis.

The procession moved on along Middle Street, past the dogleg where it bent more nearly due west, through the Forum of the Ox, and on toward the plaza of Palamas. After a while Krispos grew bored. Even adulation staled, when it was the same adulation again and again. He did his best to keep smiling and waving anyhow. While he heard the same praise, the same chorus over and over, the parade was fresh and new to each person he passed. He tried to make it as fine as he could for all of them.

The sun was a good deal higher in the sky by the time he finally reached the plaza of Palamas. Much of the big square was packed as tight with people as the sidewalks of Middle Street had been. A thin line of watchmen and soldiers held the crowd back from its center, to give all the units in the parade room to assemble.

A temporary wooden platform stood close to the Milestone. Atop it paced a shaven-headed, gray-bearded man in a robe of blue and cloth-of-gold. Krispos guided Progress toward the platform. He caught the eye of the man on it and nodded slightly. Savianos nodded back. He looked most patriarchal. Of course, so had Pyrrhos and Gnatios. As Savianos himself had said, how well he would wear remained to be learned. All the same, seeing his new patriarch in full regalia for the first time sent hope through Krispos.

He rode up to the stairs on the side of the platform nearest the red granite obelisk that was the center of distance measure throughout the Empire. Geirrod stepped forward with him and held Progress’ head while he dismounted.

“Thanks,” he said to the Haloga guard. He started for the stairway, then stopped. Gnatios’ severed head was still displayed on the base of the Milestone, along with a placard that detailed his treacheries. After some weeks exposed to the elements, the head was unrecognizable without the placard.
Your own fault,
Krispos said to himself. He went up the steps with firm, untroubled stride.

“Thou conquerest, Majesty!” Savianos said loudly as Krispos reached the top of the platform.

“Thou conquerest!” the crowd echoed.

Savianos prostrated himself before Krispos, his forehead pressed against rough boards.

“Rise, most holy sir,” Krispos said.

Savianos got to his feet. He turned half away from Krispos to face the crowd. His hands rose in benediction. He recited Phos’ creed: “We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

Krispos spoke the creed with him. So did the great throng who watched them both. Their voices fell like rolling surf with the rhythms of the prayer. Krispos thought that if he listened to that oceanic creed a few times, he might discover for himself how healer-priests and mages used the holy words to sink into a trance.

But instead of repeating the creed, Savianos addressed the people who packed the plaza of Palamas. “We call our Avtokrator the vice-regent of Phos on earth. Most often this strikes us as but a pleasant conceit, a compliment, even a flattery, to the man who sits on the high throne in the Grand Courtroom. For we know that, while he does rule us, he is but a man, with a man’s failings.

“But sometimes, people of the city, sometimes we find the fulsome title enfolds far more than fulsomeness. I submit to you, people of the city, that we have just passed through such a time. For great evil threatened from the north, and only through the good god’s grace could his champion have overcome it.”

“Thou conquerest, Krispos!” The shout filled the square. Savianos kept facing the crowd, but his eyes slid to Krispos. Krispos waved to the people. The shouts redoubled. Krispos waved again, this time for quiet. Slowly, slowly, the noise faded.

The patriarch resumed his speech. Krispos listened with half an ear; the opening had been enough to tell him Savianos was indeed the man he wanted wearing the blue boots: intelligent, pious, yet mindful that only the Emperor was the chief power of Videssos.

Instead of listening, Krispos watched the people who were watching him. He also finally got to watch his parade, as unit after unit entered the plaza. After the imperial guards and the scouts came the northerners who had chosen to serve Videssos rather than returning to Halogaland. After them rode Bagradas’ company, which had routed the Halogai who tried to fight on horseback. A contingent of Kanaris’ marines marched behind them; without the grand drungarios’ dromons, the northerners could have crossed the Astris in safety and lingered near Kubrat, ready to swoop down again at any moment. A unit of military musicians had played all the way up Middle Street. The men fell silent as they came into the plaza of Palamas, so as not to drown out Savianos.

The patriarch finished just as the last troop of horsemen entered the square. He waved his hand toward Krispos and said, “Now let the Avtokrator himself tell you of his dangers, and of his triumphs.” With a deep bow, he urged Krispos to the forward edge of the platform.

Krispos’ attitude toward speeches was the same as his attitude toward combat: they were a part of being Avtokrator he wished he could do without. Along with the people, polished courtiers would be weighing his words, smiling at his unsophisticated phrases.
Too bad for them,
he thought. He attacked speeches as if they were armored foes and went straight at them. The approach was less than elegant, but it worked.

“People of the city, brave soldiers of Videssos, we have won a great victory,” he began. “The Halogai are bold warriors. No one would say otherwise, or we would not want them as the Emperor’s guards. We should applaud the Halogai who fought for me and for the Empire. They served as loyally as any of our men, though they fought their own countrymen. Without their courage, I would not be talking to you today.”

He pointed down at his guardsmen and clapped his hands together. The assembled units of the army were the first to join him in paying tribute to the Halogai; they’d seen the northerners in action. More slowly, cheers filled the rest of the plaza of Palamas. Some of the imperial guards grinned. Others, not used to such plaudits, looked at their boots and shuffled half a step this way and that.

Krispos went on, “We should also cheer our own brave soldiers, who made the fierce men from the north yield for the first time in history. Some of the Halogai you see now are their captives. Some joined Videssos’ army of their own free will after their chief Ikmor surrendered Pliskavos to us—we’d shown them we were the better soldiers.”

The soldiers cheered first again. Many of them cried, “Hurrah for us!” The rest of the crowd joined in more quickly this time; cheering their fellow Videssians made the people of the city happier than applauding foreigners, even foreigners in imperial service.

“We did not face danger from the Halogai alone,” Krispos said when something not far from quiet returned once more. “We also faced a wizard who worshiped Skotos.” As always in Videssos, the dark god’s name brought forth first shocked gasps, then complete, attentive, almost fearful silence. Into that silence, Krispos continued, “Truth to tell, the accursed one did us more harm than the Halogai. But in the end, the mages of the Sorcerers’ Collegium were able to stymie his wicked attacks, and one, the brave sorceress Tanilis of Opsikion, broke his power, though she herself died in that combat.”

People sighed when they heard that. Krispos heard a few women weep. Some of the soldiers called out Tanilis’ name. All of that was as it should be. None of it was close to what she deserved.

“What we’ve won is important,” he said. “Kubrat is ours again; wild horsemen will raid south of the mountains no more. And the Astris is a broad, swift river. The nomads will not easily slip over it to steal away the land we’ve regained. With this victory, Videssos is truly stronger. It’s no sham triumph, unlike some you may have seen in the past.” He could not resist the dig at Petronas, who had celebrated his undistinguished campaign against Makuran as if he’d overthrown Mashiz.

“People of the city, you deserve more than a parade to mark what we have done,” Krispos proclaimed. “That’s why I declare the next three days holidays throughout the city. Enjoy them!”

This time the ordinary people in the plaza of Palamas cheered faster and louder than the soldiers. “May Phos be with us all!” Krispos shouted through the din.

“May Phos be with you, Your Majesty!” the people shouted back.

Savianos stepped close to Krispos. “You’ve made them like you, Your Majesty,” he said, too quietly for anyone but Krispos to hear in the turmoil.

Krispos eyed him curiously. “Not ‘love,’ most holy sir? Most men would say that, if they aimed to pay a compliment.”

“Let most men say what they will and curry favors as they will,” Savianos answered. “Wouldn’t you like to have at least one man around who tells you what he thinks to be the truth?”

“Now I have two,” Krispos said. It was Savianos’ turn to look curious. Krispos went on, “Or has Iakovitzes died in the last quarter of an hour?” He knew perfectly well that Iakovitzes hadn’t died. Were the Sevastos still able to speak, he’d have been on the platform with Krispos and the patriarch.

Savianos dipped his head. “There you have me, Your Majesty.” One of his bushy eyebrows lifted. “At least I won’t envenom it before I give it to you.”

“Ha! I ought to tell him you said that, just to see some venom come your way. But since the good god knows you’re not altogether wrong, I’ll let you get away with it.”

“Your Majesty is merciful,” Savianos said. His eyebrow went up again.