Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (10 page)

“Get that one right and you win the goldpiece,” Gaius Philippus muttered. Bagratouni lifted his thick eyebrows, not quite understanding.

“I see three choices, all risky,” Marcus said. He ticked them off on his fingers: “He can separate them from the rest of his army and send them, say, toward the Khatrish border. They’d be out of the way there, but who would hold them in check if they decided to imitate Drax?

“Or he can leave them behind, here in the capital, with the same danger. And if they seize Videssos the city, Videssos the Empire is dead.” The tribune remembered Soteric talking lovingly of the prospect.

Bagratouni gave a running, low-voiced translation of Scaurus’ words to his lieutenant Mesrop Anhoghin. Where his Videssian stumbled, his aide had next to none. The lanky Anhoghin was even more heavily bearded than the
nakharar
.

Marcus finished, “Or he can keep them with the rest of us and hope
they don’t go over to Drax the first chance they get. I hope so, too,” he added, and got a laugh.

“Aye, wouldn’t that be just what we needed?” Gaius Philippus said. “Facing the damned Namdalener heavy horse is bad enough head-on. My blood runs cold to think of being taken in flank by treachery.”

“I’ve heard Drax and Utprand are rivals,” Minucius said. “Is it so?”

“It’s true, I think, though I don’t know the why of it,” Marcus answered. He looked up and down the table. “Does anyone?”

“I do,” Laon Pakhymer said promptly. Somehow Scaurus was unsurprised. Khatrishers, inquisitive as sparrows, were made for gossip. Pakhymer explained, “They were friends and allies once, and joined up to besiege some noble’s keep. The place was on a lake; Utprand took the landward side while Drax covered the water. They sat there and sat there, starving this fellow out. He kept fighting, even though it was hopeless—didn’t want to surrender to Utprand, I think.”

Remembering the Namdalener captain’s wintry eyes, Scaurus decided he could not blame the hapless noble.

Pakhymer continued, “So he didn’t. He opened the gates on the lakeshore and yielded himself and his castle up to Drax—and Drax only. When Utprand asked for his first share of the spoil, the great count—” He was as sarcastic as Marcus had been. “—told him where to head in. Since then, for some reason they haven’t gotten on well.” Pakhymer had an infectious grin.

“That is a fair reason,” Zeprin the Red rumbled. “The gods spit on the oath-breaking man.” For all the holy Kveldulf’s labors, the Halogai were pagans yet, worshiping their own band of gloomy deities.

Pakhymer’s tale somewhat reassured Marcus; there did seem to be a true and lasting enmity between the two Namdalener leaders. That was the sort of thing Videssos’ wily politicians could use to good effect.

The tribune also wondered briefly how loyal Bagratouni and his Vaspurakaners would prove. True, the Yezda had driven them from their homeland into Videssos, but they had suffered worse from a pogrom led by a fanatic Videssian priest. Might they not see Drax and his Namdaleni as allies now instead of foes, even band together with them as fellow heretics? One more thing to worry about, he decided, and filed it away.

The meeting ended soon; there was not enough information to plan further. As the officers wandered away, Scaurus called Gaius Philippus to his side. “What would you do, were you Thorisin?” he asked, thinking the veteran’s keen sense of the practical might let him guess what the Emperor intended.

“Me?” The senior centurion scratched at his scarred cheek as he thought. At last he gave the ghost of a chuckle. “I think I’d find another line of work.”

“Come on, in you go,” sailors urged over and over as the legionaries jumped down into the transports that would take them over the narrow strait the Videssians called the Cattle-Crossing and into the westlands. One of the more considerate ones added, “Mind your feet, you lubbers. The gangplank’s bloody slippery in this rain.”

“Tell me more,” Gaius Philippus said, his cloak wrapped tight around him to protect his armor from the wet. Marcus wished they were embarking from the Neorhesian harbor on the city’s northern edge rather than the southern harbor of Kontoskalion. The storm was blowing out of the south, and he had no protection against it here.

Every so often he heard a thump and a volley of curses as a soldier missed a step and tumbled into the waist of a ship. Further down the docks, horses whinnied nervously as their Khatrisher or Namdalener masters coaxed them on board.

Senpat Sviodo landed clumsily beside Scaurus. The strings of the pandoura slung across his back jangled as he staggered to keep his balance. “Graceful as a cat,” he declared.

“A drunken, three-legged cat, maybe,” Gaius Philippus said. Not a bit put out, Senpat made a face at him.

The young noble’s wife leaped down a moment later. She did not need the arm he put out to steady her; her landing truly was cat-smooth. Nevrat Sviodo, Marcus thought, was a remarkable woman for many reasons. To begin with, she was beautiful in the swarthy, strong-featured Vaspurakaner way. Now her finest feature, her wavy, luxuriantly black hair, hung limp and sodden under a bright silk kerchief.

But there was more to Nevrat than her beauty. She wore tunic and
baggy trousers like her husband; a slim saber hung at her belt and it had seen use. Moreover, she was a fine horsewoman, with courage any man might envy. No ordinary spirit would have ridden out after Maragha from the safety of the fortress of Khliat, seeking her husband and the legionaries with no idea whether or not they lived—and finding them.

And as if that was not enough, she and Senpat enjoyed a love that seemed to have no room in it for ill. There were times Scaurus had to fight down jealousy.

More women were coming aboard now, and their children as well. Minucius’ companion Erene landed nearly as well as Nevrat had, then caught two of her girls as they jumped into her arms. Helvis handed down Erene’s third daughter, who was only a few months older than Dosti.

Malric leaped down on his own, laughing as he tumbled and rolled on the ship’s rough planking. Helvis started to follow him; Marcus and Nevrat jumped forward together to break her fall. “That was an idiot thing to do,” Nevrat said sharply, her brown eyes snapping with anger.

Helvis stared at her. “Who are you to scold me for such trifles?” she replied, not caring for the rebuke. “You’ve done more dangerous things than hopping off a gangplank.”

Nevrat frowned, sadness touching her. “Ah, but I would not, had Phos granted me a child to carry.” Her voice was very low; Helvis, suddenly understanding, hugged her.

“That’s my job,” Senpat said, and attended to it. Merriment danced in his eyes. “We have to keep practicing, that’s all, until we do it right.” Nevrat poked him in the ribs. He yelped and poked her back.

Thorisin Gavras, his mistress Komitta Rhangavve at his side, came strolling down the docks to watch his army embark. The Emperor still worried about Utprand’s Namdaleni, even after deciding to hazard using them. He studied every boarding mercenary, as if seeking treason in the heft of a duffel or the patches on a surcoat.

He relaxed somewhat when he reached the legionaries, giving Marcus a self-mocking smile. “I should have listened, when you warned me of Drax,” he said, shaking his head. “Is all well here?”

“Looks to be,” the tribune answered, pleased Gavras had remembered, and without anger. “Things are helter-skelter right now.”

“They always are, when you’re setting out.” The Emperor smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. “Phos’ light, I wish I were coming with you, instead of Zigabenos! This waiting business is hard on the nerves, but I don’t dare leave the city until I’m sure the Duchy won’t land on my back. It wouldn’t do to get stuck inland and then have to try to scramble back east to face maybe Tomond the Duke on ground of his choosing.”

A couple of years ago, Marcus thought, Thorisin would have charged blindly at the first foe to show himself. He was more cautious now. The capital was Videssos’ central focus as well as its greatest city. It sat astride travel routes by land and sea, and from it all the Empire’s holdings could be quickly reached.

Komitta Rhangavve sniffed at such trifles. “You could have stopped all this before it ever began if you’d heeded me,” she said to Thorisin. “If you’d made a proper example of Ortaias Sphrantzes, this cursed Drax would have been too afraid to think of rebelling—and Onomagoulos before him, too, for that matter.”

“Be quiet, Komitta,” the Emperor growled, not caring to hear his fiery paramour take him to task in public.

Her eyes sparked dangerously; her thin, pale face had the fierce loveliness of a bird of prey. “I will not! You cannot speak to me so; I am an aristocrat, though you grant me no decent marriage—” And so you sleep with a Gallic mercenary, Marcus thought, appalled at the line she was taking. Komitta seemed to realize its danger, too, for she returned to her first complaint. “You should have dragged Sphrantzes to the Forum of the Ox and burned him alive, as usurpers deserve. That—”

But Thorisin had heard enough. He could make himself hold his temper for affairs of state, but not for his own. “I should have taken a paddle to your bloodthirsty aristocratic backside the first time you started your ‘I-told-you-so’s,’ ” he roared. “You’d see a happier man here today.”

“You vain, hulking pisspot!” Komitta screeched, and they were off, standing there in the rain cursing each other like fishmongers. Seamen and soldiers listened, first in shock and then with growing awe. Marcus saw a grizzled sailor, a man with a lifetime of inventive profanity behind him, frowning and nodding every few seconds as he tried to memorize some of the choicer oaths.

“Whew!” Senpat Sviodo said as Gavras, fists clenched, wheeled and
stamped away. “Lucky for that lady that she shares his bed. She’d answer for lèse majesté if she didn’t.”

“She should anyway,” Helvis said. Though a Namdalener, she shared the Videssians’ venerant attitude toward the imperial dignity. “I can’t imagine why he tolerates her.”

But Scaurus had seen Thorisin and his mistress row before and come to his own conclusions. He said, “She’s like a sluice gate on a dam: she lets him loose all the spleen inside him.”

“Aye, and gives it back in double measure,” Gaius Philippus said.

“Maybe so,” Marcus said, “but without her, he might fall over from a fit of apoplexy.”

Gaius Philippus rolled his eyes. “He might anyway.”

“And if he did,” Senpat Sviodo said, “she’d say it was to spite her.”

He looked up in surprise at the crash of the gangplank being hauled on board. Sailors, nearly naked in the warm rain, stowed it under a deck tarpaulin. “Hello! We’re really going to sail in this, are we?” Sviodo said.

“Why not? It’s only over the Cattle-Crossing, and the wind doesn’t seem too bad,” Marcus answered. He was no more nautical than most Romans, but felt like a fount of knowledge next to the Vaspurakaner, whose homeland was landlocked. Showing off, he continued, “They say wetting sails actually helps them, for less air slips through their fabric.”

His seeming expertise impressed Senpat, but Helvis, from a nation of true seafarers, laughed out loud. “If that were so, dear, this would be the fastest ship afloat right now. It’s like salt in cooking: a little is fine, but too much is worse than none.”

Ropes hissed across the wet deck as the sailors wound them into snaky coils. A donkey brayed a few ships away. Two mates and the captain cursed—not half so spendidly as Thorisin and Komitta had—because the big square sail bore Helvis out by hanging from the yardarm like a limp, clinging sheet on a clothesline.

At last a fresh gust filled it; it came away from the mast with a wet sigh. The captain swore again, this time at the man on the steering oar for being slow—whether with reason, Scaurus could not tell. The ship slid away from the dock.

Soteric Dosti’s son rode up alongside the marching column of legionaries. Troopers in the front ranks grumbled at the dust his horse kicked up; those further back were already eating their comrades’ dust. The Namdalener reined in beside Marcus and shed his conical helmet with a groan of relief. Sweat ran in little clean rills through the dirt on his face. “Whew!” he said. “Hot work, this.”

“No argument there,” the tribune answered, doubting that his brother-in-law had ridden over to complain about the weather.

Whatever his point was, he seemed in no hurry to make it. “Fine country we’re passing through.”

Again Scaurus had to agree. The lowlands of the Empire’s western provinces were as fertile as any he had known. The rich black soil bore abundantly; the entire countryside seemed clothed in vibrant shades of green. Farmers went out each morning from their villages to the fields and orchards surrounding them to tend their wheat and barley and beans and peas, their vines, their olives, mulberries, peaches, and figs, their nut-trees, and sweet-smelling citruses. A few of the peasants cheered as the army tramped past them to fight the Namdalener heretics. More did their best to give soldiers on any side a wide berth.

The western plain was the breadbasket for Videssos the city, shipping its produce on the barges that constantly plied the rivers running eastward to the sea. It also fed the army as it marched southwest from the suburbs across the strait from the capital. This close to the Cattle-Crossing, the Empire’s governors still held the land; with the bureaucratic efficiency Videssos was capable of at its best, they had markets ready to resupply the imperial forces. Marcus wondered how long it would be before the first of Drax’—what was it Soteric had called them?—motte-and-bailey castles would stand by the roadside to block their way. Not long now, he thought.