The Tale of Krispos (5 page)

“That sounds like too many to me,” Krispos said. “But I would like a second shirt.”

“So would I, boy,” his father said, laughing. “So would I.”

A day or so later, a company of Videssian troopers joined the returning peasants. Their chain-mail shirts jingled as they came up, an accompaniment to the heavy drumroll of their horses’ hooves. Iakovitzes handed their leader a scroll. The captain read it, glanced at the farmers, and nodded. He gave Iakovitzes a formal salute, with clenched right fist over his heart.

Iakovitzes returned the salute, then rode south at a trot so fast it was almost a gallop. Pyrrhos left the peasants at the same time, but Iakovitzes’ horse quickly outdistanced his mule. “My lord, be so good as to wait for your servant,” Pyrrhos called after him.

Iakovitzes was so far ahead by then that Krispos, who was near the front of the band of peasants, could barely hear his reply: “If you think I’ll crawl to the city at the pace of a shambling mule, priest, you can bloody well think again!” The noble soon disappeared round a bend in the road. More sedately, Pyrrhos followed.

Later that day, a dirt track from the east ran into the highway. The Videssian captain halted the farmers while he checked the scroll Iakovitzes had given him. “Fifteen here,” he told his soldiers. They counted off the fifteen men they saw, and in a moment fifteen families, escorted by three or four horsemen, headed down that track. The rest started south again.

Another stop came before long. This time, twenty families were detached from the main group. “They’re treating us just like the Kubratoi did,” Krispos’ mother said in some dismay.

“Did you expect we’d get to go back to our old village, Tatze?” his father said. She nodded. “I didn’t,” he told her. “We’ve been gone a good while now. Someone else will be working our fields; I suppose we’ll go to fill some holes that’ve opened up since.”

So it proved. The next morning, Phostis was one of a group of thirty peasant men told off by the Videssian soldiers. Along with the others and their kinsfolk, he, Tatze, Krispos, and Evdokia left the main road for a winding path that led west.

They reached their new village late that afternoon. At the sight of it, even Phostis’ resignation wore thin. He glared up at one of the troopers who had come with the farmers. “The Kubratoi gave us more to work with than this,” he said bitterly. Krispos watched his father’s shoulders slump. Having to start over from nothing twice in three years could make any man lose heart.

But the Videssian soldier said, “Take another look at the fellows waiting there for you, farmer. Might be you’ll change your mind.”

Phostis looked. So did Krispos. All he’d noticed before was that there weren’t very many men in the village. He remembered arriving at the one in Kubrat. His father was right: more people had been waiting there than here. And he saw no one out in the fields. So what good could this handful of men be?

Something about the way they stood as they waited for the newcomers to reach them made Krispos scratch his head. It was different from the way the villagers in Kubrat had stood, but he could not put his finger on how.

His father could. “I don’t believe those are farmers at all,” he said slowly.

“Right the first time.” The trooper grinned at him. “They’re pensioned-off veterans. The Avtokrator, Phos bless him, has established five or six like them in every village we’re resettling with you people.”

“But what good will they be to us, save maybe as strong backs?” Phostis said. “If they’re not farmers, we’ll have to show them how to do everything.”

“Maybe you will, at first,” the soldier said, “but you won’t have to show ’em the same thing twice very often, I’ll warrant. And could be they’ll have a thing or two to teach you folk, as well.”

Krispos’ father snorted. “What could they teach us?”

He’d meant that for a scornful rhetorical question, but the horseman answered it. “Bow and sword, spear and shield, maybe even a bit of horse-work. The next time the Kubratoi come to haul you people away, could be you’ll give ’em a bit of a surprise. Tell me now, wouldn’t you like that?”

Before his father could answer, Krispos threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Phostis started to laugh, then stopped abruptly. His hands curled into fists, and he bayed, too, a deep, solid underpinning to his son’s high yips.

More and more farmers began to howl, and finally even some of the soldiers. They entered the new village like a pack at full cry.
If the Kubratoi could only hear us,
Krispos thought proudly,
they’d never dare come south of the mountains again.

He was, after all, still a boy.

Chapter
II

F
OR SOME YEARS, THE KUBRATOI DID NOT RAID INTO VIDESSOS.
Sometimes, in absent moments, Krispos wondered if Phos had heard his thought and struck fear into the wild men’s hearts. Once, when he was about twelve, he said as much to one of the retired veterans, a tough gray-beard called Varades.

Varades laughed till tears came. “Ah, lad, I wish it were that easy. I’d sooner spend my time thinking bad thoughts at my foes than fighting, any day. But more likely, I reckon, is that old Omurtag still hasn’t gone through all the gold Rhaptes sent him to buy you back. When he does—”

“When he does, we’ll drive the Kubratoi away!” Krispos made cut-and-thrust motions with the wooden sword he was holding. Grown men, these days, practiced with real weapons; the veterans had been issued enough for everyone. A spear and a hunting bow hung on the wall of Krispos’ house.

“Maybe,” Varades said. “Just maybe, if it’s a small band bent on robbery instead of a full-sized invasion. The Kubratoi know how to fight; not much else, maybe, but that for certain. You farmers won’t ever be anything but amateur soldiers, so I wouldn’t even try taking ’em on without a good advantage in numbers.”

“What then?” Krispos said. “If there’s too many, do we let them herd us off to Kubrat again?”

“Better that than getting killed to no purpose and having them herd off your mother and sisters even so.”

Krispos’ second sister, Kosta, had just turned two. He thought of her being forced to trek north, and of his mother trying to care for her and Evdokia both. After a moment, he thought of his mother trying to do all that while mourning his father and him. He did not like any of those thoughts.

“Maybe the Kubratoi just won’t come,” he said at last.

Varades laughed again, as boisterously as before. “Oh, aye, and maybe one of the village jackasses’d win all the hippodrome races down in Videssos the city. But you’d better not count on it.” He grew serious. “I don’t want you to mistake my meaning, boy. Sooner or later, they’ll come. The whoresons always do.”

B
Y THE TIME KRISPOS WAS FOURTEEN, HE WAS CLOSE TO BEING
as tall as his father. The down on his face began to turn dark; his voice cracked and broke, generally at moments when he least wanted it to.

He was already doing a man’s work in the fields. Now, though, Varades and the other veterans let him start using real arms. The wire-wound hilt of a steel sword felt nothing like the wooden toy he’d swung before. With it in his hand, he felt like a soldier—more, like a hero.

He felt like a hero, that is, until Idalkos—the veteran who had given him the blade—proceeded to disarm him half a dozen times in the next ten minutes. The last time, instead of letting him pick up the sword and go on with the lesson, Idalkos chased him halfway across the village. “You’d better run!” he roared, pounding after Krispos. “If I catch you, I’ll carve hams off you.” Only one thing saved Krispos from being even more humiliated than he was: the veteran had terrorized a good many people the same way—some of them Phostis’ age.

Finally, puffing, Idalkos stopped. “Here, come back, Krispos,” he called. “You’ve had your first lesson now, which is that it’s not as easy as it looks.”

“It sure isn’t,” Krispos said. As he walked slowly back toward Idalkos, he heard someone giggle. His head whipped around. There in her doorway stood Zoranne the daughter of Tzykalas the cobbler, a pretty girl about Krispos’ age. His ears felt on fire. If she’d watched his whole ignominious flight—

“Pay the chit no mind,” Idalkos said, as if reading his thoughts. “You did what you had to do: I had a sword and you didn’t. But suppose you didn’t have room to run. Suppose you were in the middle of a whole knot of men when you lost your blade. What would you do then?”

Die,
Krispos thought. He wished he could die, so he wouldn’t have to remember Zoranne’s giggle. But that wasn’t the answer Idalkos was looking for. “Wrestle, I suppose,” he said after a moment.

“Would you?” Krispos put down the sword. He set himself, leaning forward slightly from the waist, feet wide apart. “Here, I’m an old man. See if you can throw me.”

Krispos sprang at him. He’d always done well in the scuffles among boys. He was bigger and stronger than the ones his own age, and quicker, too. If he could pay back Idalkos for some of his embarrassment—

The next thing he knew, his face was in the dirt, the veteran riding his back. He heard Zoranne laugh again and had to fight back tears of fury. “You fight dirty,” he snarled.

“You bet I do,” Idalkos said cheerfully. “Want to learn how? Maybe you’ll toss me right through a dung heap one fine day, impress your girl there.”

“She’s not my girl,” Krispos said as the veteran let him up. Still, the picture was attractive—and so was the idea of throwing Idalkos through a dung heap. “All right, show me what you did.”

“A hand on the arm, a push on the back, and then you twist—so—and take the fellow you’re fighting down over your leg. Here, I’ll run you through it slow, a couple of times.”

“I see,” Krispos said after a while. By then they were both filthy, from spilling each other in the dirt. “Now how do I block it when someone tries to do it to me?”

Idalkos’ scar-seamed face lit up. “You know, lad, I’ve taught my little trick to half a dozen men here, maybe more. You’re the first one with the wit to ask that question. What you do is this….”

That was the start of it. For the rest of that summer and into fall, until it got too cold to spend much time outside, Krispos learned wrestling from Idalkos in every spare moment he had. Those moments were never enough to suit him, not squeezed as they were into the work of the harvest, care for the village’s livestock, and occasional work with weapons other than Krispos’ increasingly well-honed body.

“Thing is, you’re pretty good, and you’ll get better,” Idalkos said one chilly day in early autumn. He flexed his wrist, winced, flexed it again. “No, that’s not broken after all. But I won’t be sorry when the snow comes, no indeed I won’t—give me a chance to stay indoors and heal up till spring.”

All the veterans talked like that, and all of them were in better shape than any farmer their age—or ten years younger, too. Just when someone started to believe them, they’d do something like what Idalkos had done the first time they wrestled.

So Krispos only snorted. “I suppose that means you’ll be too battered to come out with the rest of us on Midwinter’s Day,” he said, voice full of syrupy regret.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” Idalkos made as if to grab Krispos. He sprang back—one of the things he’d learned was to take nothing for granted. The veteran went on, “The first year I don’t celebrate Midwinter’s Day, sonny, you go out to my grave and make the sun-sign over it, ’cause that’s where I’ll be.”

S
NOW STARTED FALLING SIX WEEKS BEFORE MIDWINTER’S DAY
, the day of the winter solstice. Most of the veterans had served in the far west against Makuran. They complained about what a hard winter it was going to be. No one who had spent time in Kubrat paid any attention to them. The farmers went about their business, mending fences, repairing plows and other tools, doing woodwork…and getting ready for the chief festival of their year.

Midwinter’s Day dawned freezing but clear. Low in the south, the sun hurried across the sky. The villagers’ prayers went with it, to keep Skotos from snatching it out of the heavens altogether and plunging the world into eternal darkness.

As if to add to the light, bonfires burned in the village square. Krispos ran at one, his hide boots kicking up snow. He leaped over the blaze. “Burn, ill-luck!” he shouted when he was right above it. A moment later, more snow flew as he thudded down.

Evdokia came right behind him. Her wish against bad luck came out more as a scream—this was the first year she was big enough to leap fires. Krispos steadied her when she landed clumsily. She grinned up at him. Her cheeks glowed with cold and excitement.

“Who’s that?” she said, peering back through the shimmering air above the flames to see who came next. “Oh, it’s Zoranne. Come on, let’s get out of her way.”

Pushed by his sister, Krispos walked away from the fire. His eyes were not the only ones in the village that followed Zoranne as she flew through the air over it. She landed almost as heavily as Evdokia had. If Evdokia hadn’t made him move, he thought, he could have been the one to help Zoranne back up.

“Younger sisters really are a nuisance,” he declared loftily.

Evdokia showed him he was right: she scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it against the side of his neck, then ran away while he was still writhing. Bellowing mingled outrage and laughter, he chased her, pausing a couple of times to make a snowball and fling it at her.

One snowball missed Evdokia but caught Varades in the shoulder. “So you want to play that way, do you?” the veteran roared. He threw one back at Krispos. Krispos ducked. The snowball hit someone behind him. Soon everyone was throwing them—at friends, foes, and whoever happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. People’s hats and sheepskin coats were so splashed with white that the village began to look as if it had been taken over by snowmen.

Out came several men, Phostis among them, wearing dresses they must have borrowed from a couple of the biggest, heaviest women in the village. They put on a wicked burlesque of what they imagined their wives and daughters did while they were out working in the fields. It consisted of gossiping, pointing fingers while they gossiped, eating, and drinking wine, lots of wine. Krispos’ father did a fine turn as a tipsy lady who was talking so furiously she never noticed falling off her stool but lay on the ground, still chattering away.

The male spectators chortled. The women pelted the actors with more snowballs. Krispos ducked back into his house for a cup of wine for himself. He wished it was hot, but no one wanted to stay indoors and tend a pot of mulled wine, not today.

The sun set as he came back to the square. The village’s women and girls were having their revenge. Dressed in men’s short tunics and doing their best not to shiver, several of them pretended to be hunters bragging about the immense size of their kill—till one of them, fastidiously holding it by the tail, displayed a mouse.

This time, the watching women cheered and most of the men jeered and threw snow. Krispos did neither. One of the female “hunters” was Zoranne. The tunic she wore came down only to mid-thigh; her nipples, stiff from the cold, pressed against its thin fabric. As he looked and looked, he felt a heat grow in him that had nothing to do with the wine he’d drunk.

At last the women skipped away, to thunderous applause. More skits came in quick succession, these mocking the foibles of particular villagers: Tzykalas’ efforts to grow hair on his bald head—in the skit, he raised a fine crop of hay—Varades’ habit of breaking wind, and more.

Then Krispos watched in dismay as a couple of farmers, plainly intended to be Idalkos and him, practiced wrestling. The embrace in which they ended was more obscene than athletic. The villagers whooped and cheered them on.

Krispos stamped away, head down. He was at an age where he could laugh at others, but could not bear to have them laugh at him. All he wanted to do was get away from the hateful noise.

Because he was not watching where he was going, he almost ran into someone coming back toward the center of the village. “Sorry,” he muttered and kept walking.

“What’s wrong, Krispos?” He looked up, startled. It was Zoranne’s voice. She’d changed back into her own long skirt and a coat, and looked a good deal warmer for it. “What’s wrong?” she said again.

“Those stupid jokers back there, that’s what,” he burst out, “making as if when Idalkos and I wrestle, we don’t just wrestle.” Half his rage evaporated as soon as he said out loud what was bothering him. He began to feel foolish instead.

Zoranne did not help by starting to laugh. “It’s Midwinter’s Day, Krispos,” she said. “It’s all in fun.” He knew that, which only made matters worse. She went on, “Anything can happen on Midwinter’s Day, and no one will pay any mind to it the day after. Am I right?”

“I suppose so.” He sounded surly, even to himself.

“Besides,” she said, “it’s not as if what they made out was true, is it?”

“Of course not,” he said, so indignantly that his changing voice left the last word a high-pitched squeak. As if from nowhere, the memory of Iakovitzes’ hand on his back stirred in his mind. Maybe that was part of why the skit had got under his skin so.

She did not seem to notice. “Well, then,” she said.

Back by the bonfires, most of the villagers erupted in laughter at some new skit. Krispos realized how quiet it was out here near the edge of the village, how alone he and Zoranne were. The memory of how she’d looked capering in that brief tunic rose again. Without his conscious mind willing it, he took a step toward her.

At the same moment, she was taking a step toward him. They almost bumped into each other. She laughed again. “Anything can happen on Midwinter’s Day,” she said softly.