An Emperor for the Legion Read online

  THE HIGH PRIEST

  OF HELL

  As Marcus pushed forward against the usurpers, he came to the iron pot from which they had dipped their magic against iron weapons. He glanced into it and found himself looking at horror. Floating in the boiling, scum-filled water was a dead baby—or what would have been a human baby in a few more months. His eyes slipped down to the serving wench’s opened belly, back in disbelief to the cauldron, and he was sick where he stood.

  Cold in him was the knowledge that there was, after all, evil worse than he had ever known before. Surely in the sorcerer Rhavas, Skotos, god of Hell, walked on earth.

  “Rhavas!” he shouted, the name as putrid as the vomit on his tongue. Then he suddenly solved the anagram and cried another name: “Avshar!”

  For it was Avshar, priest of the god of Hell and Videssos’ greatest foe—and it was to him that the Pretender had turned as chief upholder of his rule!

  By Harry Turtledove

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Departures

  Guns of the South

  How Few Remain

  Krispos Rising

  The American Empire Saga:

  Blood and Iron

  The Center Cannot Hold

  The Colonization Series:

  Second Contact

  Down to Earth

  Aftershocks

  The Great War:

  American Front

  Walk in Hell

  Breakthroughs

  The Videssos Cycle:

  Misplaced Legion

  An Emperor for the Legion

  Legion of Videssos

  Swords of the Legion

  The World War Saga:

  In the Balance

  Tilting the Balance

  Upsetting the Balance

  Striking the Balance

  Edited by Harry Turtledove

  Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century

  Counting Up, Counting Down

  Edited with Martin H. Greenberg

  Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1987 by Harry Turtledove

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Map by Shelly Shapiro

  Del Rey and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.delreydigital.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-91657

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78984-6

  v3.1

  To Judy-Lynn del Rey, for calling

  to let me know they sold.

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE:

  A scouting column of three cohorts of Roman legionaries, led by military tribune Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and senior centurion Gaius Philippus, was returning to Julius Caesar’s main army when they were ambushed by Gauls. To prevent mass slaughter, the Gallic commander Viridovix offered single combat, and Marcus accepted. Both men bore druids’ swords, that of Marcus being battle spoil. When the blades crossed, a dome of light sprang up around them. Suddenly the Romans and Viridovix were in an unfamiliar world with strange stars.

  They soon discovered they were in the war-torn Empire of Videssos, a land where priests of the god Phos could work real magic. They were hired as a mercenary unit by the Empire and spent the winter in the provincial town of Imbros, learning the language and customs.

  When spring came, they marched to Videssos the city, capital of the Empire. There Marcus met the soldier-Emperor Ma-vrikios Gavras, his brother Thorisin, and the prime minister, Vardanes Sphrantzes, a bureaucrat whose enmity Marcus incurred. At a banquet in the Romans’ honor, Marcus met Mavrikios’ daughter Alypia and accidentally spilled wine on the wizard Avshar, envoy of Yezd, Videssos’ western enemy. Avshar demanded a duel. When the wizard tried to cheat with sorcery, Marcus’ druid sword neutralized the spell, and Marcus won.

  Avshar tried for revenge with an enchanted dagger in the hands of a nomad under his spell. The Videssian priest Nepos was horrified at the use of evil magic. Avshar forfeited the protection granted envoys.

  Marcus was sent to arrest Avshar, accompanied by Hemond and a squad of Namdaleni, mercenaries from the island nation of Namdalen. But Avshar had fled, leaving a sorcerous trap that killed Hemond. Marcus was given Hemond’s sword to take to his widow, Helvis.

  Avshar’s offenses served as justification for Videssos to declare war on Yezd, which had been raiding deep into the western part of the Empire. Troops—native and mercenary—flooded into the capital as Videssos prepared for war. Tension rose between Videssians and the growing number of Namdaleni because of differences in their worship of Phos. To the religiously liberal Romans, the differences were minor, but each side considered the other heretics. The Videssian patriarch Balsamon preached a sermon of toleration, which eased the tension for the moment.

  But fanatic Videssian monks stirred up trouble again. Rioting broke out, and Marcus was sent with a force of Romans to help quell it. Going into a dark courtyard to break up a rape, he discovered that the intended victim was Helvis. Caught up in the moment, they made love. And after the riots subsided, she and her son joined him in the Romans’ barracks. Other Romans had already found partners.

  At last the unwieldy army moved west against Yezd, accompanied by women and dependents. Marcus was pleased to learn Helvis was pregnant, but shocked to discover Ortaias Sphrantzes commanded the army’s left wing; he was only slightly mollified on finding the young man was a figurehead, hostage for Vardanes Sphrantzes’ good behavior.

  More troops joined the army in the westlands, including those of Baanes Onomagoulos and Gagik Bagratouni, a noble driven from his home in mountainous Vaspurakan by Yezda. Two other Vaspurakaners, Senpat Sviodo and his wife Nevrat, were acting as guides for the Romans. All Vaspurakaners were hated as heretics by a local priest, Zemarkhos, Zemarkhos cursed Bagratouni, who threw him and his dog into a sack, then beat the sack. Fearing a pogrom, Marcus interceded for him.

  The Yezda began hit-and-run raids against the imperial army as it moved closer to Yezd. Then an advance force of Onomagoulos’ troops was pinned down near the town of Maragha. Leaving the army’s dependents behind at Khliat, the Emperor moved forward to rescue them.

  In a great battle, Avshar commanded the Yezda. By sorcery, he slew the officer who truly commanded the imperial army’s left wing. Ortaias Sphrantzes, suddenly thrust into real command, panicked and fled.

  The whole wing collapsed. The battle, till then nearly a draw, turned to disaster. Mavrikios fell fighting, and Thorisin’s desperate counterattack from the right failed, though he did manage to escape with a fair part of the army.

  Roman discipline let the legionaries hold their ranks. They withdrew in good order and encamped for the night. Toward midnight, Avshar taunted them by throwing Mavrikios’ head into their camp. As Gaius Philippus commented, the wizard should have pursued the forces of Thorisin instead.

  The game was not over yet.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

 
Chapter XIII

  About the Author

  I

  THE ROMANS’ TREK EAST FROM THE DISASTROUS BATTLE field where the Emperor of Videssos lost his life was a journey full of torment. The season was late summer, the land through which they marched sere and burning hot. Mirages shimmered ahead, treacherously promising lakes where a mud puddle would have been a prodigy. Bands of Yezda invaders dogged the fugitives’ tracks, skirmishing occasionally and always alert to pick off stragglers.

  Scaurus still carried Mavrikios Gavras’ severed head, the only sure proof the Emperor was dead. Foreseeing chaos in Videssos after Mavrikios’ fall, he thought it wise to forestall pretenders who might claim the imperial name to aid their climbs to power. It would not be the first time Videssos had known such things.

  “Sorry I am I wasna there when that black spalpeen Avshar flung you himself’s noddle,” Viridovix said to the tribune, his Latin musically flavored by his native Celtic speech. “I had a fine Yezda one to throw back at him.” True to the fierce custom of his folk, the Gaul had taken a slain enemy’s head for a trophy.

  At any other time Marcus would have found that revolting. In defeat’s bitter aftermath, he nodded and said, “I wish you’d been there, too.”

  “Aye, it would have given the whoreson something to think on,” Gaius Philippus chimed in. The senior centurion usually enjoyed quarreling with Viridovix, but their hatred for the wizard-prince of Yezd brought them together now.

  Marcus rubbed his chin, felt rough whiskers scratch under his fingers. Like most of the Romans, he had stayed clean-faced in a bearded land, but lately there had been little time for shaving. He plucked a whisker; it shone golden in the sunlight. Coming as he did from Mediolanum in northern Italy, he had a large proportion of northern blood in his veins. In Caesar’s army in Gaul, he had been teased about looking like a Celt himself. The Videssians often took him for a Haloga; many of those warriors forsook their chilly home for mercenary service in the Empire.

  Gorgidas worked ceaselessly with the wounded, changing dressings, splinting broken bones, and dispensing the few ointments and medicines left in his depleted store. Although hurt himself, the slim, dark Greek doctor disregarded his pain to bring others relief.

  Covered by a screening force of light cavalry from Videssos’ eastern neighbor Khatrish, the legionaries tramped east toward the town of Khliat as fast as their many injuries would allow. Had he led a force in the lands Rome ruled, Scaurus would have moved northwest instead, to join Thorisin Gavras and the right wing of the shattered imperial army. Hard military sense lay there, for the Emperor’s brother—no, the Emperor now, Marcus supposed—had brought his troops away in good order. The fight against the Yezda would center on him.

  But here Marcus was not simply a legionary officer, with a legionary officer’s worries. He was also a mercenary captain. He had to deal with the fact that the legionaries’ women, the families they had made or joined since coming to Videssos, were left behind in the Vaspurakaner city that had been the base for Mavrikios’ ill-fated campaign. The Romans would disobey any order to turn away from Khliat. So, even more, would the hundreds of stragglers who had attached themselves to his troop like drowning men clinging to a spar.

  For that matter, he never thought of giving such an order. His own partner Helvis, carrying his child, had stayed in Khliat, along with her young son from an earlier attachment.

  That was to say, he hoped she had stayed in Khliat. Uncertainty tormented the legionaries as badly as the Yezda did. For all Scaurus knew, the invaders might have stormed Khliat and slain or carried into slavery everyone there. Even if they had not, fugitives would already be arriving with word of the catastrophe that had overtaken the Videssian army.

  In the wake of such news; noncombatants might be fleeing eastward now. That was more dangerous than staying behind Khliat’s walls. Marcus ran through the gloomy possibilities time after time: Helvis dead, Helvis captured by the Yezda, Helvis struggling east with a three-year-old through hostile country … and she was pregnant, too.

  At last, with a distinct effort of will, he banished the qualms to the back of his mind. Not for the first time, he was grateful for his training in the Stoic school, which taught him to cast aside useless imaginings. He would know soon enough, and that would be the time to act.

  About a day and a half out of Khliat, a scout came riding back to the Roman tribune. “A horseman coming out of the east, sir,” he reported. His staccato Khatrisher accent made him hard for Scaurus to understand—the tribune’s own Videssian was far from perfect.

  Interest flared in him when he realized what the scout was saying. “From the east? A lone rider?”

  The Khatrisher spread his hands. “As far as we could tell. He was nervous and took cover as soon as he spotted us. From what little we saw, he had the seeming of a Vaspurakaner.”

  “No wonder he was leery of you, then. You look too much like Yezda.” The invading nomads had ravaged Vaspurakan over the course of years, until the natives hated the sight of them. The Khatrishers were descended from nomads as well and, despite taking many Videssian ways, still had the look of the plains about them.

  “Bring him in, and unhurt,” Marcus decided. “Anyone fool enough to travel west in the face of everything rolling the other way must have a strong reason. Maybe he bears word from Khliat,” the tribune added, suddenly hopeful in spite of himself.

  The scout gave a cheery wave—the Khatrishers were most of them free spirits—and kicked his pony into motion. Scaurus did not expect him back for some time; for someone in the furs and leather of a plainsman, convincing a Vaspurakaner of his harmlessness would not be easy. The tribune was surprised when the Khatrisher quickly reappeared, along with another rider plainly not of his people.

  The scout’s companion looked familiar, even at a distance. Before the tribune was able to say more than that, Senpat Sviodo cried out in joy and spurred his horse forward to meet the newcomer. “Nevrat!” the Vaspurakaner yelled. “Are you out of your mind, to journey alone through this wolves’ land?”

  His wife parted company from her escort to embrace him. The Khatrisher stared, slack-jawed. In her loose traveling clothes, her curly black hair bound up under a three-peaked Vaspurakaner hat of leather, and with the grime of travel on her, only her beardless cheeks hinted at her sex. She was surely armed like a man. A horseman’s saber hung at her belt, and she carried a bow with an arrow nocked and ready.

  She and Senpat were chattering in their throaty native tongue as they slowly rode back to the marching legionaries. The Khatrisher followed, still shaking his head.

  “Your outrider has a head on his shoulders,” she said, switching to Videssian as she neared Scaurus. “I took him and his comrades for Yezda, for all their shouts of ‘Friends! Countrymen!’ But when he said, ‘Romans!’ I knew he was no western jackal.”

  “I’m glad you chose to trust him,” Marcus answered. He was fond of the intense, swarthy girl. So were many other Romans; scattered cheers rang out as the men realized who she was. She smiled her pleasure, teeth flashing white. Senpat Sviodo, proud of her exploit and glad beyond measure she had joined him safely, was grinning, too.

  The question Senpat had shouted moments before was still burning in the tribune’s mind. “In the name of your god Phos, Nevrat, why did you leave Khliat?” A horrid thought forced its way forward. “Has it fallen?”

  “It still stood yesterday morning, when I set out,” she answered. The Romans close enough to hear her cheered again, this time with the same relief Scaurus felt. She tempered their delight by continuing, “There’s worse madness inside those walls, though, than any I’ve seen out here.”

  Gaius Philippus nodded, as if hearing what he expected. “They panicked, did they, when news came we’d been beaten?” The veteran sounded resigned; he had seen enough victories and defeats that the aftermaths of both were second nature to him.

  The Romans crowded round Nevrat, calling out the names of their women and asking i
f they were all right. She told them. “As I said, I left early yesterday. When last I saw them, they were well. Most of you have sensible girls, too; I think they’ll have wit enough to keep from joining the flight.”

  “There’s flight, then?” Scaurus asked with a sinking feeling.

  Nevrat understood his fears and was quick to lay them to rest. “Helvis knows war, Marcus. She told me to tell you she’d stay in Khliat till the first Yezda came over the wall.” The tribune nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to speak. He felt suddenly taller, as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Helvis, he knew, had no such reassurance that he lived.

  There were messages from Khliat for some of the other Romans as well. “Is Quintus Glabrio here?” The junior centurion was almost at Nevrat’s side, but as usual quiet nearly to the point of invisibility. He took a step forward; Nevrat laughed in surprise. “I’m sorry. Your lady Damaris also told me she would wait for you in the city.”

  “And much else besides, I’m sure,” he said with a smile. The Romans who knew Damaris laughed at that; the hot-tempered Videssian girl was able to talk for herself and Glabrio both.

  “Minucius,” Nevrat continued in her businesslike way, “Erene says you should know she’s stopped throwing up. She’s beginning to bulge a bit, too.”

  “Ah, that’s fine to hear,” the burly legionary replied. After less than a week without a razor, his beard was coming in thick and black.

  Nevrat turned back to Marcus for a moment, amusement in her brown eyes. “Helvis has no such message for you, my friend. I’m afraid she’s green as a leek much of the time.”

  “Is she well?” he asked anxiously.

  “Yes, she’s fine. There’s nothing at all to worry about. You men are such babies about these things.”

  She was so full of comforting, reassuring words from Khliat that someone finally called out, “If all’s so well back there, why are they fleeing the city?”

  “All’s not well,” she said flatly. “Remember, the messages I bring are from the folk with the wit to stay and the heart to think I’d find you and they’d see you again. All too many are of the other sort—they’ve been scurrying like rabbits ever since Ortaias Sphrantzes came galloping into the city with word all was lost.”