Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (63 page)

Troops flooded into the capital, and tension arose between the mercenaries from the island Duchy of Namedalen and the native Videssians over a small matter of religion. Each regarded the other as heretical. The Videssian patriarch Balsamon preached tolerance, but fanatic monks soon started a riot. Marcus led the Romans to quell that. As the riot was ending, Marcus saved the Namdalener woman Helvis. Soon she and her young son joined him in the Roman barracks.

Finally Videssos’ army moved west against Yezd, accompanied by women and children. Marcus was pleased that Helvis had become pregnant, but shocked to learn that the left wing was commanded by young and inexperienced Ortaias Sphrantzes, son of the prime minister, Vardanes Sphrantzes.

Three Vaspurakaners joined later—Senpat Sviodo and his wife
Nevrat to act as guides, and the general Gagik Bagratouni. When the fanatic priest Zemarkhos cursed him, Bagratouni threw the priest and his dog into a sack and beat them. Marcus finally intervened.

At last the two armies met. The battle seemed a draw, until a spell from the sorcerer Avshar panicked Ortaias, who fled. As the left wing collapsed, the Emperor was killed and the army routed.

The Romans retreated eastward in order, rescuing the teacher-priest Nepos and being joined by Laon Pakhymer and his mounted Katrishers as cavalry support. They wintered in a friendly town, learning that Ortaias had declared himself Emperor and forced Alypia to marry him.

Thorisin Gavras had wintered in a nearby town with twenty-five hundred troops. In the spring, the legion joined him to march on Videssos the city. The gates were barred, but a group inside the city opened them. As the defenders fled, Avshar, disguised as Ortaias’ commander Rhavas, tried foul magic, but was foiled by the swords of Viridovix and Marcus. Avshar retreated, then suddenly vanished.

Thorisin was crowned Emperor. He annulled Alypia’s marriage and banished Ortaias to serve as a humble monk. But he was handicapped by lack of funds. He sent Marcus to supervise the accounting “pen-pushing” bureaucrats, and Marcus discovered that many rich landowners did not pay their taxes. The worst offender was a general, Onomagoulos, a former friend of Mavrikios Gavras. Learning this, Thorisin sent Namdaleni under count Drax to deal with Onomagoulos.

He also sent a group north to seek help from the Arshaum. The Greek physician Gorgidas, disgusted at being unable to learn healing magic, joined, as did Viridovix, fleeing a wrathful lover.

Drax overcame and killed Onomagoulos, then declared the western region Namdalener territory under him. Thorisin sent Marcus and the legion to defeat him.

In the north, Viridovix was kidnapped by outlaws working for Avshar. He escaped to a nomad village, which was soon destroyed by the outlaws. Viridovix and young Batbaian fled into a raging blizzard. Meantime, Gorgidas and the others reached the Arshaum leader Arghun. Gorgidas managed to save Arghun when the Yezda envoy tried to poison him, and Arghun mustered an army to help Videssos by striking Yezd.
On the march, they found the almost-frozen Viridovix. Gorgidas saved him, using the healing magic which he had given up on before.

Meantime, Marcus moved against count Drax and his Namdaleni. After a difficult campaign, he defeated them and took the leaders as prisoners. Among them was Soteric, brother of Helvis. She used wine and her body to put Marcus into a sound sleep, then stole out to free the prisoners and go with them, taking Marcus’ children. With mixed sadness and shame, Marcus returned to report to Thorisin.

His brief account was not enough for the Emperor. With Alypia watching, Thorisin ordered Nepos to prepare a drug to make Marcus talk freely and truthfully, then inquired all details, even the personal ones. At the end, Thorisin admitted, “I have raped an innocent man.”

Marcus returned to his job supervising the pen-pushers, but tried like a hermit to shut the world away. Alypia, however, sympathized deeply with him. Greeting him at a festival, she got him to take her to dinner. And dinner led to other things.…

“I
’
D LIKE TO HAVE A BETTER LOOK AT THAT ONE, IF
I
COULD
,” M
ARCUS
Aemilius Scaurus said, pointing to a necklace.

“Which?” asked the jeweler, a fat, bald little man with a curly black beard. The Roman pointed again. A grin flashed across the craftsman’s face; he bobbed a quick bow. “You have good taste, my master—that is a piece fit for a princess.”

The military tribune grinned, too, at the unintended truth in the jeweler’s sales talk. I intend it for one, he thought. That he did not say; what he did came out in a growl: “With a price to match, no doubt.” Best to start beating the fellow down before he named a figure, for Scaurus intended to have the necklace.

The jeweler, who had played this game many times, assumed a look of injured innocence. “Who spoke of money? Here,” he said, pressing the chain into Marcus’ hands, “take it over to the window; see if it is not as fine as I say. Once you are satisfied of that, we can speak further, if you like.”

The shop had its shutters flung wide. The sun shone bravely, though every so often the northerly breeze would send a patch of cloud in front of it, dimming for a moment the hundreds of gilded spheres that topped Phos’ temples, large and small, all through Videssos the city. It was still winter, but spring was in the air. Gulls scrawked high overhead; they lived in the Videssian Empire’s capital the year around. Closer by, the tribune heard a chiffchaff, an early arrival, whistle from a rooftop.

He hefted the necklace. The thick, intricately worked chain had the massy, sensuous feel of pure gold. He held it close to his face; months of work with tax receipts in the imperial chancery were making him a trifle nearsighted. The nine square-cut emeralds were perfectly matched in size and color, a deep, luminous green. They would play up Alypia
Gavra’s eyes, he thought, smiling again. Between them were eight oval beads of mother-of-pearl. In the shifting light their elusive color shimmered and danced, as if seen underwater.

“I’ve seen worse,” Marcus said grudgingly as he walked back to the jeweler behind his counter, and the bargaining began in earnest. Both of them were sweating by the time they agreed on a price.

“Whew!” said the artisan, dabbing at his forehead with a linen rag and eyeing the tribune with new respect. “From your fairness and accent I took you for a Haloga, and Phos the lord of the great and good mind knows how free the northerners are with their gold. But you, sir, you haggle like a city man.”

“I’ll take that for a compliment,” Scaurus said. Videssians often mistook the tribune for one of the big, towheaded north-men who served the Empire as mercenaries. Most of his Romans were short, olive-skinned, and dark of hair and eye, like the folk into whose land they had been swept three and a half years before, but he sprang from the north Italian town of Mediolanum. Some long-forgotten Celtic strain gave him extra inches and yellow hair, though his features were aquiline rather than Gallic sharp or blunt like a German’s—or, in this world, a Haloga’s.

The jeweler was wrapping the necklace in wool batting to protect the stones. Marcus counted out goldpieces to pay him. The artisan, taking no chances, counted them again, nodded, and opened a stout iron strongbox. He dropped them in, saying, “And I owe you a sixth. Would you like it in gold or silver?”

“Silver, I think.” Videssian sixth-goldpieces were shoddy things, stamped from the same dies as the one-third coins but only half as thick. They were fairly scarce, and for good reason. In a purse they bent and even broke, and they were more likely to be of short weight or debased metal than more common money.

Marcus put the four silver coins in his belt-pouch and tucked the necklace away inside his tunic. He would have to cross the plaza of Palamas to get back to his room in the palace complex, and light-fingered men flocked to the great square no less than honest merchants. The jeweler tipped him a wink, understanding perfectly. “You’re a careful one. You wouldn’t want to lose your pretty so soon after you get it.”

“No indeed.”

The jeweler bowed, and held the bow until Scaurus left his shop. He waved as the tribune walked past the window. Well pleased, the Roman returned the salute.

He walked west along Middle Street toward the plaza of Palamas. Videssians bustled all around him, paying him no mind. Most of the men wore thick, plainly cut tunics and baggy woolen trousers like his own. Despite the chilly weather, a few favored the long brocaded robes that were more often used as ceremonial garb than street wear. Town toughs swaggered along in their own costume: tunics with great billowing sleeves pulled tight at the wrists and clinging hose dyed in as many bright colors as they could get. Some of them shaved the backs of their heads. The Namdaleni—sometimes mercenaries, sometimes deadly foes for Videssos—had that style, too, but with them it served a purpose: to let their heads fit their helmets more snugly. For Videssos’ ruffians it was simply a fad.

The tribune jumped when one of the roughnecks shouted his name and came up to him, hand outstretched. Then he recognized the fellow, more by his bad teeth than anything else. “Hello, Arsaber,” he said, clasping hands. The bravo had been one of the men who threw open the gates to the city when Thorisin Gavras took the imperial throne from the usurper Ortaias Sphrantzes, and had fought bravely enough on the Romans’ side.

“Good to see you, Ronam,” Arsaber boomed, and Marcus gritted his teeth—that idiot usher’s mispronunciation at a long-ago banquet looked to be immortal. Cheerfully oblivious, the Videssian went on, “Meet my woman, Zenonis, and these three lads are my sons: Tzetzes, Stotzas, and Boethios. Love, boys, this is the famous Scaurus, the one who beat the Namdaleni and the bureaucrats both.” He winked at the tribune. “My bet is, the pen-pushers’re tougher.”

“Some ways,” Marcus admitted. He nodded to Zenonis, a small, happy-looking woman of about thirty in flowered silk headscarf, rabbit-fur jacket, and long wool skirt; gravely shook hands with Tzetzes, who was about six. The other two boys were too young to pay much attention to him—Stotzas was two or so, while Zenonis carried Boethios, a tiny babe swaddled in a blanket.

Arsaber stood by, beaming, as the tribune made small talk with his
family. The ruffian would have been the very picture of domesticity but for his outlandish clothes and the stout bludgeon that hung on his belt. After a while he said, “Come on, dear, we’ll be late to cousin Dryos’. Roast quails,” he explained to Scaurus, pumping his hand again.

The tribune caught himself looking down at his fingers; it was a good idea to count them after shaking hands with Arsaber. He surreptitiously patted his chest to make sure the smiling rogue had not managed to filch away his necklace.

The chance meeting saddened him; it took a while to figure out why. Then he realized that Arsaber’s family reminded him achingly of the one he had built up until Helvis found her native Namdalener ties more important than the ones that bound her to him and deserted him, helping her brother Soteric and several other important prisoners escape in the process. The child they had been expecting would only be a little younger than Boethios—but Helvis was in Namdalen now, and Scaurus did not know if it was boy or girl.

In vanished Italy, in a youth he would never see again, he had trained in the Stoic school of philosophy, had been taught to stay untroubled in the face of sickness, death, slander, and intrigue. The sentiment was noble, but, he feared, past his attainment after her betrayal of their love.

The thought of Italy brought to mind the remaining Romans, the survivors of everything this world could throw at them. In many ways he missed them more even than Helvis and his children. They alone shared with him a language, indeed an entire past that was alien to Videssos and all its neighbors. He knew they had spent an easy winter at their garrison duty in the western town of Garsavra; that much Gaius Philippus’ three or four brief notes had made clear. But the senior centurion, though a soldier without peer, was only sketchily literate, and his scrawled words did not call up the feeling of being with the legionaries that Scaurus needed in his semi-exile in the capital.

Boots squelching through dirty, half-melted snow, he walked past the block-long red granite pile of a building that housed the imperial archives, various government ministries, and the city prison. His somber mood lifted; he smiled and reached inside his tunic to touch the necklace once more. For all he knew, Alypia Gavra might be going through the archives now, looking for material to add to her history. So
she had been doing on Midwinter’s Day a few months past, when she happened to encounter the tribune as she left the government offices.

That night a friendship had become much more. Their meetings since, though, were far fewer than Marcus would have wanted. As Thorisin’s niece, Alypia was hemmed round with the elaborate ceremonial of an ancient empire, the more so since the Emperor had no legitimate heir.

The Roman tried not to think of the danger he courted along with her. If discovered, he could expect scant mercy. Thorisin sat none too secure on his throne. The Emperor would only see him as an ambitious mercenary captain seeking to improve his own position through an affair with the princess. Scaurus had done great service for him, but he had also flouted Thorisin’s will more than once—and, worse perhaps, proved right in doing so.

The plaza of Palamas drove such worries from his head. If Videssos the city was a microcosm of the polyglot Empire of Videssos, then its great square made a miniature of a miniature. Goods from every corner of the world appeared there, and merchants from every corner of the world to sell them. A few nomadic Khamorth crossed the Videssian Sea from the imperial outpost at Prista to hawk the products of the Pardrayan steppe—tallow, honey, wax—at the capital. A couple of huge Halogai, their hair in yellow braids, had set up a booth for the furs and amber of their northern home. Despite the war with Yezd, caravans still reached Videssos from the west with silks and spices, slaves and sugar. A Namadalener trader spat at the feet of a bored-looking Videssian who had offered him a poor price for his cargo of ale; another was displaying a table of knives. A Khatrisher, a lithe little man who looked like a Khamorth but acted like an imperial, dickered with a factor over what he could get for the load of timber he had brought to the city.