Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (97 page)

His alarm spiked when the men of Gunib almost rode him and his companions down in spite of their cries of friendship. Only as the Erzrumi finally pulled up could he see them as more than menacing figures behind their lanceheads. They were reeling in the saddle, red-eyed with fatigue; every one was filthy with the caked dust of hard travel. Scraps of grimy cloth covered fresh wounds. Clouds of flies descended to
gorge on oozing serum or new blood. Most of the troopers did not bother slapping them away.

“They’re beaten men,” the Celt said softly, in wonder. He looked in vain for Gashvili’s gilded scale-mail. “Where might your laird be?” he asked the nearest Erzrumi.

“Dead,” the fellow replied after a moment, as if he had to force himself to understand the Khamorth tongue Viridovix had used.

“The gods smile on him when he meets them, then. Who leads you the now?”

Vakhtang made his way through his men toward the newcomers. He surveyed them dully. “I command,” he said, but his voice held no authority. He was a million miles from the coxcomb who had come out to confront Arigh’s men in front of Gunib. His two-pointed beard made an unkempt tangle down the front of his corselet, whose gilding was marred by sword stroke and smoke and blood. The jaunty feather was long gone from his helm. Out of a face haggard and sick with defeat his eyes stared, not quite focused, somewhere past Viridovix’ right ear.

He was worse than beaten, the Gaul realized; he was stunned, as if clubbed. “What of your oath to Arigh?” he growled, thinking to sting the ruined man in front of him back to life. “Gone and left him in the lurch, have you now, mauger all the cantrips and fine words outside your precious castle?”

As lifelessly as before, Vakhtang said, “No. We are not forsworn.” But in spite of himself, his head lifted; he met Viridovix’ eyes for the first time. His voice firmed as he went on. “Arigh himself and his priest Tolui absolved us of our vow when the army began to break up.”

“Tell me,” Viridovix said, overriding cries of dismay from Gorgidas and then in turn from Rakio and Mynto as Vakhtang’s words were rendered into Videssian and the Yrmido speech.

The story had an appalling simplicity. Yezda in numbers never before seen had come rushing up out of the south to repeat on a vastly larger scale the pincer tactics they had tried in front of Dur-Sharrukin. They were better soldiers than the Arshaum had seen before, too; a prisoner boasted that Wulghash the khagan had picked them himself.

All the same, Arigh held his own, even smashing the Yezda left wing to bits against a tributary of the Tib. “No mean general, that one,” Vakhtang
said, growing steadily more animated as he talked. But his face fell once more as newer memories crowded back. “Then the flames came.”

Viridovix went rigid in the saddle. “What’s that?” he barked. He jerked at a sudden pain in his hands. Looking down, he willed his fists open and felt his nails ease out of his flesh.

He did not need the Erzrumi’s description to picture the lines of fire licking out to split apart and trap their makers’ foes; Avshar had shown him the reality in Pardraya. As Vakhtang continued, though, he saw that Arigh had not had to face the full might of the spell. The noble said, “It was battle magic; our priests and shamans fought it to a standstill, in time. But it was too late to save the battle; by then our position was wrecked past repair. That was when your Arshaum gave us leave to go. The gods be thanked, we mauled the Yezda enough to make them think twice about giving chase.”

“Begging your pardon, I’m thinking you saw nobbut the second team,” Viridovix said. “Had himself been working the fires and not his mages—a murrain take them—only them as he wanted would ever ha’ got clear.”

“As may be,” Vakhtang said. A few of his men bristled at the suggestion that less than Yezd’s best had beaten them, but he was too worn to care. “All I hope now is to see Gunib again. I am glad we came across you; every sword will help on our way home.”

Gorgidas and then Rakio finished translating; silence fell. The two of them, the Gaul, and Mynto looked at each other. Wisdom surely lay with retreat in this well-armed company, but they could not forget the hermit’s warning that changing course would bring misfortune. In the end, though, that was not what shaped Viridovix’ decision. He said simply, “I’ve come too far to turn back the now.”

“And I,” Gorgidas said. “For better or worse, this is my conflict, and I will know how it ends.”

As nothing else had, their choice tore the lethargy from Vakhtang. “Madmen!” he cried. “It will end with an arrow through your belly and your bones baking under this cursed sun.” He turned to the two Yrmido, his hands spread in entreaty, and spoke to them in the Vaspurakaner tongue.

Mynto gave a sudden, sharp nod. He and Rakio got into a low-voiced
dispute; from what little Gorgidas could follow, he was echoing Vakhtang’s arguments. Rakio mostly listened, indecision etched on his features. When at last he answered, Mynto’s lips thinned in distress. Rakio shifted to Videssian: “I will travel south. To disregard the words of the holy hermit after he his gifts from the Four has shown strikes me as the greater madness.”

When Mynto saw he could not sway his countryman, he embraced him with the tenderness any lover would give his beloved. Then he rode forward to join the men of Gunib. Vakhtang brought both fists to his forehead in grateful salute.

“I wish you the luck I do not expect you to have,” he told the other three. He waved to his battered company. They started north on their lathered, blowing horses, the jingle of their harness incongruously gay.

Soon dust and distance made Mynto impossible to pick out from the men of Gunib around him. Rakio let out a small sigh. “He is a fine, bold fellow, and I him will miss,” he said. His eyes danced at Gorgidas’ expression.

Viridovix caught the byplay. He rounded on the Ymrido. “Is it a puss-cat y’are, to make sic sport? Finish the puir wight off or let him be.”

“Will you shut up?” Gorgidas shouted, scarlet and furious.

Laughing, Rakio looked sidelong at the Gaul. “You are sure it is not jealousy?” He went on more seriously: “Should I tell Mynto all my reasons for going with you two? That only would hurt him to no purpose.”

Having reduced both his companions to silence, he set out south along the trail Vakhtang’s men had left. They followed. Neither met the other’s eye.

M
ONEY CLINKED IN
M
ARCUS
’
PALM.
“F
OUR AND A HALF,”
T
AHMASP
said. “One for your month with us, the rest your fair share of the pot.” Two of the goldpieces were Yezda, stamped with Yezd’s leaping panther and a legend in a script the tribune could not read. The rest came from Videssos. Even in Mashiz, imperial gold was good.

Gaius Philippus stepped up to take his pay. “We’d have earned more in time served if you’d not taken the southern route,” he said.

Tahmasp made a sour face. “More in profit, too.” The lands between the Tutub and the Tib would have given him twice the trade his desert-skirting track yielded, but a barbarian invasion had thrown the Hundred Cities into confusion.

The caravaneer folded each Roman in turn into a beefy embrace. “You bastards sure you won’t stick around till I set out again?”

“A couple of months from now?” Marcus shook his head. “Not likely.”

“Not that I care a flying fart what happens to you,” Tahmasp said, a frown giving his gruff words the lie, “but two men riding through the Yezda by themselves stand the same chance of coming out whole as two eggs about to be scrambled.”

“Actually, I think we may do better alone,” the tribune answered. “At least we won’t draw nomads the way your traveling madhouse does.” The Yezda had swarmed thick as flies the first two weeks out of Amorion. To ride away then would have been death, even without Tahmasp’s vow of destruction to deserters.

Later they might have escaped with ease, but by then the shared dangers of three desperate fights and endless hours of picket duty and talk around campfires had welded them indissolubly to the company. It was easy to abandon strangers; not so, friends. And so, Scaurus thought, here we are in the heart of Yezd, all for loyalty’s sake.

It seemed strange and not very fair.

Tahmasp pumped Gaius Philippus’ hand, slapped Marcus on the back. As always, he set himself; as always, he staggered. “You have the wits of a couple of sun-addled jackasses, but good luck to you. If you live—which I doubt—maybe we’ll meet again.” The caravaneer turned away. To him they were finished business.

They led their horses out of the fortified warehouse into the shadows of Mashiz’ afternoon. Marcus could look east and see the sun still shining brightly, but the peaks of Dilbat brought an early twilight to the city. In a way it was a blessing, for it cut the Yezda summer’s heat. Yezd made Videssos’ central plateau temperate by comparison.

“What now?” Gaius Philippus asked, his mind firmly on the problem of the moment. “Me, I’m for shagging out of here right away. Tahmasp is welcome to this place.”

Marcus nodded slowly. More shadows than the ones cast by the mountains of Dilbat hung over Mashiz. He looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of his unease. It was not the buildings; he was sure of that much. The eye grew used to thin towers topped by onion domes, to spiral ramps instead of stairways, to pointed arches wider than the doors beneath them, and to square columns covered with geometric mosaics. Mashiz seemed fantastically strange, but Makuraner architecture was only different, not sinister.

The Yezda, but two generations off the steppe, were not builders. They had put their mark on Mashiz all the same. The tribune wondered what the sack had been like when the city fell. Every other block, it seemed, had a wrecked building, and every other structure needed repair. That air of decay, of a slow falling into ruin, was part of the problem, Scaurus thought.

But only part. A disproportionate number of ravaged buildings had been shrines of the Four Prophets; the Yezda had been as savage toward Makuran’s national cult as they were to the worship of Phos. As the Romans headed for the city’s market, they passed only a couple of surviving shrines. Both were small buildings that had probably once been private homes, and mean ones at that.

Further west, toward the edge of Mashiz, stood another temple once dedicated to the Four: a marvelous red granite pyramid, no doubt the
Makuraner counterpart to Phos’ High Temple in Videssos. The Yezda, though, had claimed it for their own. Scored into every side, brutally obliterating the reliefs that told the story of the Four Prophets, were Skotos’ twin lightningbolts. A cloud of thick brown smoke rose above the building. When the breeze shifted and sent a tag end of it their way, Marcus and Gaius Philippus both coughed at the stench.

“I know what meat that is,” the senior centurion said darkly.

The people of Mashiz, Scaurus reflected, lived with that cloud every day of their lives. No wonder they were furtive, sticking to the deeper shadows of buildings as they walked along the street, looking at strangers out of the corners of their eyes, and rarely talking above a whisper. No wonder a born swaggerer like Tahmasp spent most of his time on the road.

In Mashiz, the Yezda swaggered. Afoot or on horse, they came down the middle of the road with the arrogance of conquerors and expected everyone else to stay out of their way.

The Romans saw priests of Skotos for the first time; they seemed a ghastly parody of the clergy who served Phos. Their robes were the color of drying blood—to keep the gore of their sacrifices from showing, Marcus thought grimly. Their dark god’s sigil was blazoned in black on their chests; their hair was shorn into the double thunderbolt. The locals ducked aside whenever a pair of them came by; even the Yezda appeared nervous around them.

They did not speak to Scaurus, which suited him.

To his relief, something like normality reigned in the marketplace. The sights and sounds of commerce were the same wherever men gathered. He needed no knowledge of the guttural Makuraner tongue to understand that this customer thought a butcher was cheating him, or that that one was going to outhaggle a wool merchant if it took all night.

Marcus was afraid he would have to bargain by dumb show, but most of the venders knew a few words of Videssian: numbers, yes, no, and enough invective to add flavor to no. He bought hard cheese, coarse-ground flour, and a little griddle on which to cook wheatcakes. As a happy afterthought, he added a sackful of Vaspurakaner-style pastries, a rich mixture of flour, minced almonds, and ground dates, dusted with sugar.

“ ‘Princes’ balls,’ ” the baker said, chuckling, as he tied the neck of the sack. Marcus had heard the joke before, but his answering laugh got a couple of coppers knocked off the price.

“Anything else we need?” he asked Gaius Philippus.

“A new canteen,” the centurion said. “The solder’s come loose from the seam on this one, and it leaks. Maybe a patch’ll do, but something, anyway. The kind of country this is, losing water could kill you in a hurry.”

“Let’s find a tinker, then, or a coppersmith.” To Marcus’ surprise, there did not seem to be any tinkers wandering through the square, nor did the baker understand the Videssian word. “Not something they have here, I gather. Oh, well, a smith it is.”

The coppersmiths’ district was not far from the marketplace. The baker pointed the way. “Three blocks up, two over.”

The Romans heard a scuffle down a sidestreet. So did several locals, who paid no attention; if it was not happening to them, they did not want to know about it. But when Scaurus and Gaius Philippus came to the alleyway, they saw a single man, his back to a mud-brick wall, desperately wielding a cudgel against four attackers.

They looked at each other. “Shall we even up the odds?” Marcus asked. Without waiting for an answer, he sprang onto his horse. Gaius Philippus was already mounting. He had a better beast than the gray these days, a sturdy brown gelding with a white blaze between the eyes.

The robbers whirled as the drumroll of hoofbeats filled the narrow street. One fled. Another threw a dagger at the tribune, a hurried cast that went wild. Scaurus’ horse ran him down. The third bravo swung a mace at Gaius Philippus, who turned the stroke with his
gladius
and then thrust it through the fellow’s throat. The last of the robbers grappled with him and tried to pull him from the saddle, but their would-be victim sprang out to aid his unexpected rescuers. His club caved in the back of the bandit’s skull.