Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (7 page)

Now Sivas answered, “Who but shrouds himself in robes so his very eyes are unseen? Who but stirs discord in his wake as the wind stirs waves on the sea? And who but rides a great black charger in a land of ponies? On the plains, that were enough to name him without the other two.”

“Sure and it’s the spalpeen, all right,” Viridovix agreed. “Still and all, my good Celtic blade should do to let the mischief out of him.” Methodios Sivas raised a politely skeptical eyebrow, but Gorgidas knew Viridovix was not idly boasting. His sword was twin to the one Scaurus bore, both of them forged and spell-wrapped by Gallic druids and both uncannily mighty in this land where magic flourished.

“Yet another matter has reached me since my last dispatches to Videssos,” Sivas said. By his voice, it was one he would rather not have heard. He paused for a moment before going on: “You will understand this is rumor alone, and unsupported, but it’s said Varatesh has thrown in his lot with your cursed wizard.”

Again Gorgidas was conscious of something important slipping past him; again Viridovix and Goudeles were as mystified. Even Arigh seemed unsure of the name. But Lankinos Skylitzes knew it. “The outlaw,” he said, and it was not a question.

“It’s but a voice on the breeze, you understand,” Sivas repeated.

“Phos grant it stay such,” Skylitzes answered, and drew the sun-sign on his breast. Seeing his comrades’ incomprehension, he said, “The man is dangerous and wily, and his riders are no bargain. A great clan against us would be worse, but not much.”

His obvious concern reached Gorgidas, who did not think Skylitzes one to alarm himself over trifles. Arigh was less impressed. “A Khamorth,” he said contemptuously. “Next you’ll have me hiding from baby partridges in the grass.”

“He’s one to be reckoned with, and growing stronger,” Sivas said. “You may not know it, but this winter when the rivers froze he raided west over the Shaum.”

Arigh gaped, then hissed a curse in his own language. The Arshaum were convinced of their superiority to the Khamorth, and with justice; had they not driven the bushy-beards east over the river? It had been decades since Khamorth, even outlaws, dared strike back.

Sivas shrugged. “He’s a ready-for-aught, you see.” Arigh was still stormy, so the
hypepoptes
called to his serving maid, “Filennar, why don’t you detach yourself from your brick-whiskered friend and fetch us a full skin?”

She swayed away, Viridovix following her hungrily with his eyes.

“A skin?” Arigh said eagerly. He forgot his anger. “Kavass? By the three wolf tails of my clan, it’s five years since I set tongue to it. You benighted farmer-folk make do with wine and ale.”

“A new tipple?” That was Pikridios Goudeles, sounding intrigued. Gorgidas remembered the Arshaum boasting of the plains drink before, but had forgotten what the nomads brewed it from. Viridovix, a toper born, no longer seemed so dismayed over Filennar’s disappearance.

She soon returned, carrying a bulging horsehide with the hair still on the outside. At Sivas’ gesture, she handed it to Arigh, who took it as tenderly as he might an infant. He undid the rawhide lace that held the drinking-mouth, raised the skin to his face. He drank noisily; it was good manners on the plains to advertise one’s enjoyment.

“Ahhh!” he said at last, pinching the mouth closed after a draught so long his face had begun to darken.

“There’s dying scarlet!” Viridovix exclaimed—city slang for drinking deep. He raised the skin for a swig of his own, but at the first taste his anticipation was replaced by a surprised grimace. He spat a large mouthful out on the floor. “Fauggh! What a foul brew! What goes into the making of it, now?”

“Fermented mares’ milk,” Arigh answered.

Viridovix made a face. “Sure and it tastes like the inside of a dead snail.” The Arshaum glowered at him, irritated at hearing his beloved drink maligned.

Lankinos Skylitzes and Methodios Sivas, both long familiar with the steppe brew, showed no qualms at drinking and smacked their lips in best nomad style. When the skin came to Goudeles he swallowed enough for politeness’ sake, but did not seem sorry to pass it on to Gorgidas.

“Get used to it, Pikridios,” Skylitzes said, amusement just below the surface of his voice.

“That is a phrase with which I could easily grow bored,” the bureaucrat said tartly. More than a little warmed by all he’d drunk, Skylitzes chuckled.

Gorgidas gave a suspicious sniff as he hefted the horsehide, now half empty. He expected a sour, cheesy odor, but the kavass smelled much more like a light, clear ale. He drank. Actually, he thought, it had surprisingly
little flavor of any kind, but it put a quick warm glow in his belly. For potency it matched any wine he knew.

“It’s not bad, Viridovix. Try it again,” he urged. “If you were looking for something as sweet as wine it’s no wonder you were startled, but surely you’ve had worse.”

“Aye, and better, too,” the Gaul retorted. He reached for a flagon of wine. “On the steppe I’ll have no choice, but the now I do and I’m for the grape, begging your pardon, Arigh. Pass him his snail-squeezings, Greek, sith he’s so fond of ’em and all.” Viridovix’ larynx bobbed as he swallowed.

Sivas gave the embassy a token guard of ten men. “Enough to show you’re under the Empire’s protection,” he explained. “Prista’s whole garrison wouldn’t be enough to save you from real trouble, and if I did send them out, every clan on the plains would unite to burn the town round my ears. They find us useful, but only so long as we don’t seem dangerous to them.”

The
hypepoptes
did let the envoys choose horses and remounts from the garrison’s stables. His generosity saved them from the mercies of their fellow guests at the inn, who had proved to be horse traders. True to Viridovix’ prediction, they were also gamblers. Gorgidas sensibly declined to game with them; Arigh and Pikiridios Goudeles were less cautious. The Arshaum lost heavily, but Goudeles held his own.

When Skylitzes heard that he smiled a rare smile, observing, “Seal-stampers are bigger bandits than mere horse copers dream of being.”

“To the ice with you, my friend,” Goudeles said. Gold clinked in his belt-pouch.

In another area the bureaucrat was wise enough to take expert advice. Like Gorgidas and Viridovix, he asked Arigh to choose a string of horses for him. Only Skylitzes trusted his own judgment enough to pick his beasts, and did so well that the plainsman looked at him with new respect. “There’s a couple there I wouldn’t mind having for myself,” he said.

“Och, how can he be telling that?” Viridovix complained. “I know summat o’ horseflesh, at least as we Celts and the Videssians reckon it,
and such a grand lot of garrons I’ve never seen before, like as so many beans in the pod.”

With its Gallic flavor, the word was an apt one to describe the rough-coated steppe ponies. They were small, sturdy beasts, unlovely and not very tame—nothing like the highbred steeds the Videssians prized. But Arigh said, “Who needs a big horse? The plains beasts’ll run twice as long and find forage where one of those oat-burners would starve. Isn’t that right, my lovely?” He stroked one of his horses on the muzzle, then jerked his hand away as the beast snapped at him.

Gorgidas laughed with the rest, but nervously. He was at best an indifferent horseman, having practiced the art only rarely. Well, then, you can’t help getting better, he told himself; but Arigh’s promise of months in the saddle made his legs twinge in anticipation.

A week after the
Conqueror
put into Prista, the embassy and its accompanying guards rode out the town’s north gate. Though the party numbered only fifteen, from any distance it looked far larger. In steppe fashion, each man rode at the head of five to seven horses, some carrying gear and iron rations, the rest unloaded. The nomad custom was to ride a different animal each day so as not to wear down any of them.

The morning sun shone silver off the Maiotic Bay. The pinched-off arm of the Videssian Sea was several miles to the east, but there were no hills to screen it from view. Beyond the bay a darkness marked another promontory of land jutting south into the ocean. That horizon line, too, was low, flat, and smooth, another portion of the steppe that rolled west—how far? No man knew.

Gorgidas gave such things irregular thought. Most of his attention rested on staying aboard his horse; as beasts will, the cursed animal sensed his inexperience and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in missteps that almost threw him from the saddle. That, luckily, was of the style both Videssians and plainsfolk favored: high-cantled, with pommels before and behind, and with that marvelous invention, stirrups. Without such aids the Greek would have been tossed more than once.

All the improvements, though, did nothing to dull the growing ache in his thighs. He was in good hard shape, able to keep up with the Roman
legionaries on march, but riding plainly made different demands. His discomfort was only made worse by the short stirrup leathers the nomads used, which made him draw his knees up and cramped his legs the more.

“Why keep them so short?” he asked the squad leader heading the embassy’s guardsmen.

The underofficer shrugged. “Most things in Prista we do Khamorth-style,” he said. “They like to stand tall in the saddle for archery.” He was a Videssian himself, a lean dark man with heavily muscled forearms. His name was Agathias Psoes. Three or four of his men also looked to have come from across the sea. The rest, like the soldier who had greeted the ambassadors, were obviously locals. Among themselves all the troopers spoke a strange jargon, so thickly laced with Khamorth phrases and turns of syntax that Gorgidas could hardly follow it.

“I have some longer strips,” Arigh said. “We Arshaum don’t need to get up to know what we’re shooting at.” He won scowls from his escorts, but ignored them. So did Gorgidas. He took the leathers gratefully. They helped—somewhat.

The Greek’s distress was nothing compared to that of Pikridios Goudeles. The seal-stamper was an influential man, but not one who had ever been required to push his body much. When the day’s ride ended and he awkwardly scrambled down from his horse, he tottered about like a man of ninety. His hands were soft, too, and chafed from holding the reins. Collapsing to the ground with a groan, he said, “Now I understand Gavras’ ploy in making me a legate; he expects my exhausted corpse to be buried on these plains, and may well get his wish.”

“He might have wanted you to see the price the Empire pays for your comforts in the city,” Lankinos Skylitzes said.

“Hrmmp. Without comforts, what’s the point of civilization? When you’re in Videssos, my sober friend, you sleep in a bed, too, not rolled in your blanket on the street.” Goudeles’ bones might ache, but his tongue was still sharp. Skylitzes grunted and went off to help the cavalrymen gather brush for the night’s watchfire.

It blazed hot and bright, the only light as far as the eye could reach. Gorgidas felt naked and alone on the vast empty plain. He missed the comforting earthworks and ditches the Romans threw up wherever they
went; a whole army could be skulking in the darkness just beyond the sentries’ vigilance. He jumped as a nightjar flashed briefly into sight, drawn by the insects the fire lured.

Breakfast the next morning was smoked mutton, hard cheese, and thin, flat wheatcakes one of the troopers cooked on a portable griddle. The nomads seldom ate bread. Ovens were too bulky for a people ever on the move. The cakes were chewy and all but flavorless; Gorgidas was sure he would grow mightily tired of them in short order. Well, he thought, with such fare you need hardly fear a flux of the bowels—more likely the opposite. The climate spoke for that, too—folk in lands with harsh winters and a prevailing north wind tended to constipation, or so Hippokrates taught.

His medical musings annoyed him—that should be over and done. To set his conscience at ease, he jotted a note on the soldier’s cooking methods.

Viridovix had been unusually quiet on the first day’s journey out of Prista. He was again as the embassy left camp behind. He rode near the rear of the company and kept looking about in all directions, now left, now right, now back over his shoulder. “There’s nothing there,” Gorgidas said, thinking he was worried they were being followed.

“How right you are, and what a great whacking lot of nothing it is, too!” the Celt exclaimed. “I’m feeling like a wee bug on a plate, the which is no pleasure at all. In the forests of Gaul it was easy to see where the world stopped, if you take my meaning. But here there’s no end to it; on and on it goes forever.”

The Greek dipped his head, feeling some of the same unhappiness; he, too, had come to manhood in a narrow land. The plains showed a man his insignificance in the world.

Arigh thought them both daft. “I only feel alive on the steppe,” he said, repeating his words back in Prista. “When I first came to Videssos I hardly dared walk down the street for fear the buildings would fall on me. How folk cramp themselves in cities all their lives is past me.”

“As Pindar says, convention rules all,” Gorgidas said. “Give us time, Arigh, and we’ll grow used to your endless spaces.”

“Aye, I suppose we will,” Viridovix said, “but I’m hanged if I’ll like ’em.” The Arshaum’s shrug showed his indifference.

In one way the broad horizon worked to the traveler’s advantage: game was visible at an extraordinary distance. Frightened by the horses, a flock of gray partridges leaped into the air. They flew fast and low, coasting, flapping frantically, coasting again. Several troopers nocked arrows and spurred their mounts after the fleeing birds. Their double-curved bows, strengthened with horn, sent arrows darting faster than any hawk.

“We should have nets,” Skylitzes said as he watched three shafts in quick succession miss one dodging bird, but the horsemen were archers trained from childhood, and not every shot went wide. They bagged eight partridges; Gorgidas’ mouth watered at the thought of the dark, tender meat.

“Good shooting,” Viridovix said to one of Agathias Psoes’ men. The soldier, from his looks almost pure Khamorth, held two birds by the feet. He grinned at the Celt. Viridovix went on, “It’s a fine flat path your shafts have, too. What’s the pull on your bow?”