Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (55 page)

His office and his room were both pleasantly warm. He was glad the bureaucrats heated their wing of the Grand Courtrooms so lavishly. Then he thought of his friends on the steppe and was even gladder.

T
HE WIND HOWLED AND MOANED LIKE A DEEP-VOICED HOUND GONE
mad, driving snow into Batbaian’s face and frosting Viridovix’ ruddy mustaches. A thick, short beard hid his cheeks and chin; he had not shaved in weeks and did not know when he would have the chance again. He swore when a gust sneaked under his heavy fur greatcoat and chilled his back. The coat did not fit him very well. It had been made for one of Varatesh’s riders, but the fellow had no use for it now.

The Gaul gave a gusty sigh. His breath puffed out white. He sighed again, remembering the felt tent and how breathing smoke had bemused him. His face hardened. Targitaus’ tent was smoke now, and the tents of all his clan, and the clansmen with them.

Timing pitilessly exact, Varatesh had given the Wolves three days to thrash with caring for nearly a thousand blinded men who could do nothing to help themselves—and with the torment their coming brought. Then he struck, and shattered the clan.

Viridovix and Batbaian were herding an outlying flock of sheep when the blow fell, or they would have perished with the rest. As it was, when evening came they rode into camp and found massacre waiting for them. In his way, Varatesh was a gifted leader, to instill order into his cutthroats: they had descended on their foes, killed, raped, looted, and gone, probably all in two hours’ time.

Gaul and nomad rode together through silence so thick it echoed; even the yapping little dogs that had run scavenging from tent to tent were slain. For Viridovix, shock piled on shock left an eerie calm; Batbaian’s face was twisted in agony too deep for words. Every so often one of them would nod to the other when he came across the body of someone he cared for. There was dour Rambehisht, with three dead outlaws around him and an arrow in his back. If he had planned vengeance on
Viridovix, he would never have it now. And Lipoxais, yellow
enaree
’s robe soaked with blood. And Azarmi the serving wench, her skirt on the ground beside her. She still wore a blood-soaked blouse; the outlaws had not bothered tearing it off before their sport, only stabbed through it when they were done.

Filled with the same dreadful surmise, Batbaian and Viridovix leaped from their horses and ran for what had been Targitaus’ tent. It leaned drunkenly to one side, half its framework broken. And inside their worst fears were realized. Borane’s dead fist clutched a dagger. The blade was stained—she had fought before she died. But she was fat and getting old; Varatesh’s men had merely slaughtered her. By all the signs, Seirem had not been so lucky.

Viridovix cursed himself for memory; the anguish flared in him, red and agonizing as when he had first seen Seirem’s corpse. He wished for the thousandth time that he had never known his few short weeks of love, or that he had died with the one who gave it to him.

“And what’s a wish worth?” he said to himself. “Damn all anyway.” A bitter tear ran down his cheek.

Batbaian turned at the sound of his voice. “That does no good,” he said stonily. “It will only freeze to your skin.” The dead khagan’s son was no more the near-boy he had been till summer; he seemed to have aged ten years in as many weeks. His face was thinner, with lines of suffering carved into his forehead and at the corners of his mouth.

He had been the one who suggested firing the camp. “It will warn off any other herders who might still be alive,” he had said, “and might lure Varatesh’s riders back.” A cold, hungry light kindled in his eye then, and he patted his bow-case. He and Viridovix found an ambush point; it would not do to give their lives away without as rich a revenge as they could take.

But the renegades had not returned, no doubt thinking the smoke came from an overturned lamp or smoldering torch that had set the encampment ablaze. When it was clear they would not, Batbaian took the patch from his ruined eye and threw it to the ground. “When I kill them, let them know what I am,” he said.

His score stood at four now, one ahead of the Gaul’s.

They lived as outlaws, one of the many reversals since the war against
Varatesh went so disastrously awry. Now the bandit chief and his brigands lorded it over the steppe and hunted its one-time leaders like vermin. But as Varatesh himself had shown, running them to earth was no easy task. A goat here, a sentry there, two horses stolen somewhere else—the blowing winter snow covered tracks. It was the hardest life Viridovix had ever known, but it could be lived.

Hands clumsy inside thick gloves, they fought their tent into place as evening fell. Despite the windbreak of snow they piled in front of it, the raw north wind still found its way through the felt. They huddled in blankets next to the bonfire, roasting chunks of mutton over it. No problem keeping meat fresh in winter, Viridovix thought—the trick was thawing it again.

He rubbed grease from his chin and licked his fingers clean. Let the Romans try to live in this cold with their journeybread and porridges, he thought. Red meat was all that kept up a man’s strength here.

Instead of wiping it away, Batbaian smeared the mutton fat over his cheeks, nose, and forehead. “Helps against frostbite,” he said. He spoke seldom, these days, and always to the point.

“Next time, lad,” Viridovix nodded. He drew his sword, examined it for rust. In the cold and constant wet it spread all too easily. He scoured away a tiny fleck of red, rust or dried blood. “Wouldna hurt to rub the blade wi’ fat, either.”

A wolf howled in the distance, a bay chill as the night. One of the horses snorted nervously.

“North again come morning?” Viridovix said.

“Oh yes.” Batbaian’s lips opened in a humorless smile. “Where better than down their throats? Richer pickings, too—more flocks. More men.” His one eye gleamed in the sputtering firelight. The other socket was a ghastly shadow.

The Gaul nodded again, but through a smothering sense of futility. Not even killing could bring back what he had lost. “Is it any use at all, at all?” he cried. “We skulk about pretending it’s some good we’re about, slaying the spalpeens by ones and twos, but I swear by gods it’s nobbut a sop to our prides. It no more hurts ’em than the grain a pair o’ wee mice steal’ll make the farmers starve.”

“So what will you do? Fold up and die?” A nomad’s harsh contempt
rode Batbaian’s voice for the comparison and for the despair as well. “We’re not the only men in Pardraya who’d tie Varatesh in a rope of his own guts.”

“Are we not, though? Too near it, I’m thinking. Them as’d try it did, and see what we got for it. And as for the rest, there’s no more will in ’em than your sheep; they’ll follow whoever leads ’em. Precious few have the ballocks to go after a winner.”

“Leave if you like, then. I’ll go on alone,” Batbaian said. “At least I’ll die as a man, doing as I should. And I say again, even without you I won’t be alone forever. Pardraya is a wide land.”

“Not wide enough,” Viridovix came back, stung by the plainsman’s dismissal and wanting to wound him in return. Then he hesitated. “Not wide enough,” he repeated softly. His eyes went wide. “Tell me at once, Khamorth dear, would you ride away from Varatesh the now—och, and from Avshar, too—for a greater vengeance later, and mayhap one you might live through in the bargain?”

Batbaian’s glare seized him, as if to drag his meaning out by force of will. “What does dying soon or late mean to me? But make me believe in a greater vengeance, and I will follow you off the edge of Pardraya.”

“Good, for you’ll need to,” the Celt replied.

“A pox!” Gorgidas said, clutching too late at the top of his head. The freezing wind tore his otter-fur cap free and sent it spinning over the snowy ground. He ran cursing after it, his naked ears tingling in the cold.

The nearby Arshaum laughed and shouted bad advice. “Kill it!” “Shoot it!” “Quick, it’s getting away! Stab it with that thrusting-sword of yours!”

Recapturing the flyaway headgear, the Greek whacked it against his trousers to get the snow off—and to work off his own annoyance. Then he jammed it back in place, and swore again as a last, freezing clump came loose and horrified the back of his neck.

Skylitzes’ mouth was twitching; Goudeles did not try to hide a grin. “Now you see why all plainsmen, east or west of the Shaum, swear by wind spirits,” he said.

He meant it as a joke, but it brought Gorgidas up short. “Why, so
they do,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed that.” He reached for the tablet on his belt—it hung at his right hip, where most men would carry a dagger. He scrawled a note, writing quickly but carefully. When he set stylus to wax in this weather, great chunks wanted to come away from the wood.

“That’s nothing,” Arigh said when he complained. “One winter a long time ago, a man went out riding without remounts and his horse broke a leg. He tried to yell for help, but it was so cold no one heard him till his shout thawed out next spring. That was a few months too late to do him any good, I fear.”

Arigh told the story with so perfect a dead-pan air that Gorgidas wrote it down, though he added pointedly, “I have heard this, but I do not believe it.” If that sort of disclaimer was enough to let Herodotos sneak a good yarn into his history when he found one, it should be good enough for him, too.

Arghun hobbled out of his tent, leaning on Dizabul. Arigh sent his brother a glance that was still full of mistrust. The khagan’s elder son shouted for quiet, a shout the officers of the Gray Horse clan took up. The riders gathered round their chief. The rest of the Arshaum, attracted by the motion, also drew near, so that Arghun soon commanded the whole army’s attention.

An attendant led the khagan’s horse through the crowd. “See if you two can work with each other for once,” Arghun said to his sons. Dizabul scowled; Arigh nodded, though his lips pursed. Together they helped their father into the saddle.

Arghun’s hands curled lovingly on the reins he had not held for so long. But his legs were still all but useless. Arigh had to place his booted feet in the stirrups and then lash them there so they would not slip out. Even so, pride glowed on the khagan’s face. A great cheer rang from the nomads to see him mounted once more; to them a man who could not ride was only half alive.

“Fetch the standard,” Arghun said to the attendant, who hurried back with the spear that carried Bogoraz’ long coat. Arghun held it high over his head so even the most distant rider could see it. “To Mashiz!” he cried.

The Arshaum host was silent for a moment, then echoed the cry, brandishing their swords, bows, and javelins. “Ma-shiz! Ma-shiz!
Ma-shiz!” The noise dinned in Gorgidas’ ears. Still roaring the war call, the plainsmen dashed to their horses, leaving a great trampled place in the snow to show where they had stood.

Almost as at home on horseback as an Arshaum, Skylitzes was grinning as he mounted. “I can hardly care whether this comes off or not,” he called to Goudeles. “Either way we make Wulghash sweat to hold against us.”

“No one could sweat in this weather,” the pen-pusher said firmly, scrambling onto his own beast. “And it had best work, or my mistress will be most disappointed.”

“Your mistress? What of your wife?”

“She inherits.”

“Ah.” Skylitzes started to say something more, but a fresh round of cheers from the nomads drowned him out. Still carrying the standard, Arghun rode east, his back straight in the high-cantled saddle, only the firm set of his mouth showing the strain he felt. As usual, his two sons flanked him; perhaps, thought Gorgidas, each was afraid to let the other have their father to himself for long. Singly and by bands, the Arshaum streamed after them.

Goudeles wanted to show the Videssian presence by riding in the van beside the khagan, but Skylitzes vetoed that. “Why wear out our horses breaking trail?” he asked with a veteran’s experience. “You wait a bit, and he’ll drop back to us.” He soon proved right; for all Arghun’s will, he could not set the pace for long.

The khagan threw questions at Skylitzes about the land east of the Shaum and especially about the mountains of Erzerum, which stretched between the Mylasa Sea and the Videssian Sea and separated Yezd from the Pardrayan steppe. The discussion on the ways and means of mountain warfare quickly bored Gorgidas. Despite Arghun’s disappointed look, the Greek went searching for Tolui to talk about plant lore, something nearer his own heart.

“One of the ground roots you gave me smells like—” Gorgidas stopped, annoyed, not knowing the name in the Arshaum speech. “Orange, about so long, fatter than my thumb.”

“Carrot,” the shaman supplied.

“Yes, thanks. All my people do with it is eat it. What do you use it for?”

“We mix it with nightshade and wild rue in honey. It cures—” Tolui used another word Gorgidas did not know. The shaman grinned and made an unmistakable gesture.

“I understand: hemorrhoids.” In a folk as much in the saddle as the Arshaum, the Greek could see how piles would be a common problem. He asked, “Is it given by mouth, or put directly where, ah, it will do the most good?”

“By mouth. For the other, we make an ointment of goose or partridge fat, egg white, fennel, and oil of wild roses, then smear it on. It soothes well.”

Gorgidas dipped his head in agreement. “It should. You might also try mixing honey with that, I think. Honey is good for relieving inflammations generally.”

That sort of conversation pleased the Greek much more than arguments over the best way to sniff out an ambush in a pass. After a while he guiltily remembered that he had come to the plains as historian, not physician. He asked Tolui, “Why do your people and the Khamorth differ so much from each other in your looks and in the build of your bodies?”

Tolui frowned. “Why should we be the same as the Hairies?” His voice carried as much disdain as a Greek’s would, talking about barbarians.

“I’m looking to learn, not to offend you,” Gorgidas said hastily. “To a foreigner like me, you and they seem to live on similar land under much the same kind of weather. So I wondered why the two folk are not the same as well.” They should have been, if the doctrine Hippokrates put forward in
Airs, Waters
,
Places
was correct, as the Greek had always believed.