An Emperor for the Legion Read online

  Curses and angry shouts greeted the young noble’s name. Command of the Videssian army’s left wing had been his, and his terror-striken flight turned an orderly retreat into rout. Nevrat nodded at the Romans’ outburst. She might not have seen Ortaias flee the battlefield, but she had been in Khliat.

  She said contemptuously, “He stayed just long enough to change horses—the one he’d ridden died next day of misuse, poor thing—and then he was flying east again. Good riddance, if anyone cares what I think.”

  “And right you are, lass,” Gaius Philippus nodded. A professional soldier to the roots of his iron-gray hair, he asked, “On your way hither, what did you see of the Yezda—aye, and of our fellows, in the bargain?”

  “Too many Yezda. They’re thicker further east, but there’s no order to them at all—they’re like frogs after flies, striking at anything that moves. The only thing that brought them together was the imperial army. Now they’ve crushed it and they’re breaking up again, looking for new land to push into … and all Videssos this side of the Cattle-Crossing lies open to them.”

  Marcus thought of Videssos’ western lands laid waste by the nomads, the rich, peaceful fields put to the torch, cities so long at peace they had no walls now the playthings of invading barbarians, smoking altars heaped high with butchered victims for Yezd’s dark god Skotos. Searching for any straw to contradict that horrid picture, he repeated the second half of Gaius Philippus’ question: “What of the Empire’s troops?”

  “Most are as badly beaten as Ortaias. I watched three Yezda chasing a whole squad of horsemen, laughing themselves sick as they rode. One broke off to follow me, but I lost him in rocky ground.” Nevrat dismissed two hours of terror in a sentence.

  She went on, “I did see what’s left of the Namdalener regiment still in good order, most of a day’s ride ahead of you. The nomads were giving them a wide berth.”

  “That would be the way of it,” Viridovix agreed. “Tough as nails, they are.” The Romans concurred in that judgment. The warriors from the island Duchy of Namdalen were heretics in Videssos’ eyes and as ambitious for themselves as any other mercenary soldiers, but they fought so well the Empire was glad to hire them.

  “Did you see anything of Thorisin Gavras?” Scaurus asked. Again he thought of linking with Thorisin’s forces.

  “The Sevastokrator? No, nor heard anything, either. Is it true the Emperor’s dead? Ortaias claimed he was.”

  “It’s true.” Marcus did not elaborate and did not mention his grisly proof of Mavrikios’ passing.

  Gorgidas caught something the tribune missed. The physician said, “How could Sphrantzes know? He was long fled when the Emperor fell.” The Romans growled as they took in the implications of that.

  “Perhaps he wished it true so badly, he never thought to doubt it,” Quintus Glabrio suggested. “Men often believe what they most want.”

  It was like Glabrio to put as charitable a light as possible on the young noble’s action. Marcus, who had been active in politics in his native Mediolanum, found another, more ominous interpretation. Ortaias Sphrantzes was of a house which had held the imperium itself; his uncle, the Sevastos—or prime minister—Vardanes Sphrantzes, was Mavrikios’ chief rival.

  Gaius Philippus broke into Scaurus’ chain of thought. He demanded, “Have we chattered long enough? The sooner we’re to Khliat, the sooner we can do something more than beating our gums over all this.”

  “Give a body a bit of a blow, will you now?” Viridovix said, wiping his sweaty, sunburned forehead with the back of his hand. “You’re after forgetting not everyone’s like that sleepless bronze giant I once heard a Greek tell of …”

  He looked questioningly at Gorgidas, who gave him the name: “Talos.”

  “That’s it,” the Celt agreed happily. He was excitable, energetic, in short bursts of strength well-nigh unmatchable, but the senior centurion—indeed, many Romans—surpassed him in endurance.

  Despite Viridovix’ groans, Marcus decided Gaius Philippus was right. Progress was too slow to suit him anyway; there were many walking wounded, and others who had to be carried in litters. If Khliat still stood, the Romans had to get there as fast as they could, before the Yezda mounted an assault to overwhelm its feeble and no doubt demoralized garrison.

  That thought led to another. “One last question before we march,” he said to Nevrat: “Is there any word of Avshar?” For he was sure the wizard-prince was trying to organize the unruly nomads he led to deliver just that attack.

  But she shook her head. “None at all, no more than of Thorisin. Curious, is it not?” She herself had seen war and skirmished against the Yezda when they first conquered Vaspurakan; she had no trouble following the tribune’s logic.

  By nightfall the Romans and their various comrades were less than a day from Khliat. Granted a respite by the Yezda, the legionaries erected their usual fortified camp. The protection had served them well more times than Marcus could recall. Men bustled about the campsite, intent on creating ditch, breastwork, and palisade. Eight-man leather tents went up in neat rows inside.

  The Romans showed the Videssians and others who had joined them what needed to be done and stood over them to make sure they did it. At Gaius Philippus’ profane urging, order was beginning to emerge again in the legionary ranks. Now the newcomers, instead of marching where they would, filled the holes fallen Romans had left in the maniples.

  Scaurus approved. “The first step in making legionaries of them.”

  “Just what I thought,” Gaius Philippus nodded. “Some will run away, but give us time to work on the rest, and they’ll amount to something. Being with good troops rubs off.”

  Senpat Sviodo came up to Marcus, an ironic glint in his eye. “I trust you will not object if my wife spends the evening inside our works.” He bowed low, as if in supplication.

  Scaurus flushed. When the Videssian army was intact, he had followed Roman practice in excluding women from his soldiers’ quarters. As a result, Senpat and Nevrat, preferring each other’s company to legionary discipline, always pitched their tent just outside the Roman camp. Now, though—“Of course,” the tribune said. “After we reach Khliat, she’ll have plenty of company.” He refused to say, or even to think, If we reach Khliat.…

  “Good,” Senpat said. He studied the tribune. “You can loosen up a bit after all, then? I’d wondered.”

  “I suppose I can,” Marcus sighed, and the regret in his voice was so plain he and Sviodo both had to laugh. So it’s to be our women with us wherever we go, is it? the tribune thought. One more step along the way from legionary officer to head of a mercenary company. He laughed at himself again, this time silently. In the Empire of Videssos, captain of mercenaries was all he’d ever be, and high time he got used to the notion.

  The Yezda were thick as fleas round Khliat; the last day’s march to the city was a running fight. But Khliat itself, to Scaurus’ surprise, was not under siege, nor was any real effort made to keep the Romans from entering it. As Nevrat had remarked, in victory the nomads forgot the leaders who had won it for them.

  That was fortunate, for Khliat could not have repelled a serious attack. Marcus had expected its walls to be bristling with spears, but only a handful of men were on them. To his shock, the gates were open. “Why not?” Gaius Philippus said scornfully. “There’s so many running, the Yezda would be trampled if they tried to get in.” A gray-brown dust cloud lay over everything eastward, the telltale banner of an army of fugitives.

  Inside, panic still boiled. Plump sutlers, calculating men who could smell a copper through a wall of dung, threw their goods at anyone who would take them, so they could flee unencumbered. Singly and in small groups, soldiers wandered through the city’s twisting streets and alleyways, calling the names of friends and lovers and hoping against hope they would be answered.

  More pitiful yet were the women who crowded close by Khliat’s western gate. Some kept a vigil doomed to heartbreak, awaiting warriors who would co
me to them no more. Others had already despaired of that and stood, bejeweled and gowned, offering themselves to any man who might get them safely away.

  The Khatrishers were first into Khliat. Most of them were without women here, as they had taken service with Videssos for the one campaign alone and thus left wives and sweethearts behind in their forested homeland.

  The tribune passed through the squat gray arch of stone and under the iron-spiked portcullis which warded the city’s west-em gate. He looked up through the murder-holes and shook his head. Where were the archers to spit death at any invader who tried to force an entrance, where the tubs of bubbling oil and molten lead to warm the foe’s reception? Likely, he thought bitterly, the officer in charge of such things fled, and no one has thought of them since.

  Then any concern over matters military was swept from him, for Helvis was holding him tightly, heedless of the pinch of his armor, laughing and crying at the same time. “Marcus! Oh, Marcus!” she said, covering his bristly face with kisses. For her, too, the agony of suspense was over.

  Other women were crying out with joy and rushing forward to embrace their men. Three, comely lasses all, made for Viridovix, then halted in dismay and dawning hostility as they realized their common goal.

  “I’d sooner face the Yezda than a mess like that,” Gaius Philippus declared, but Viridovix met the challenge without flinching. With fine impartiality, the big Gaul had kisses, hugs, and fair words for all; the blithe charm that had won each girl separately now rewon them all together.

  “It’s bloody uncanny,” the senior centurion muttered enviously. His own luck with women was poor, for the most part because he took no interest in them beyond serving his lusts.

  “The Romans! The Romans!” Starting at the western gate, the cry spread through Khliat almost before the last legionary was in the city. Their dependents flocked to them, and many were the joyful meetings. But many, too, were the women who learned, some gently from comrades, others by the simple brutal fact of a loved one’s absence, that for them there would be no reunions. There were Romans as well, who looked in vain for loved faces in the excited crowd and hung their heads, sorrow sharpened by their companions’ delight.

  “Where’s Malric?” Marcus asked Helvis. He had to shout to make himself understood.

  “With Erene. I watched her two girls yesterday while she kept vigil here at the gates. I should go to her, to let her know you’ve come.”

  He would not let her out of their embrace. “The whole city must know that by now,” he said. “Bide a moment with me.” He was startled to realize how much for granted he had come to take her beauty in the short time they had been together. Seeing her afresh after separation and danger was almost like looking at her for the first time.

  Hers were not the sculptured, aquiline good looks to which Videssian women aspired. Helvis was a daughter of Namdalen, snub-nosed and rather wide-featured. But her eyes were deepest blue, her smiling mouth ample and generous, her figure a shout of gladness. It was too soon for pregnancy to mark her body, but the promise of new life glowed from her face.

  The tribune kissed her slowly and thoroughly. Then he turned to Gaius Philippus with orders: “Keep the single men here while those of us with partners find them—the gods willing—and bring them back. Give us, hmm—” He gauged the westering sun. “—two hours, then tell off a hundred or so good, reliable men and rout out anyone fool enough to think he’d sooner go it alone.”

  “Aye, sir.” The grim promise on the centurion’s face was enough to make any would-be deserter think twice. Gaius Philippus suggested, “We could do worse than using some Khatrishers in our patrols, too.”

  “There’s a thought,” Marcus nodded. “Pakhymer!” he called, and the commander of the horsemen from Khatrish guided his small, shaggy horse into earshot. Scaurus explained with he wanted. He phrased it as request; the Khatrishers were equals, voluntary companions in misfortune, not troops formally subject to his will.

  Laon Pakhymer absently scratched his cheek as he considered. Like all his countrymen, he was bearded; he wore his own whiskers full and bushy, the better to cover pockmarks. At last he said, “I’ll do it, if all patrols are joint ones. If one of your troopers gets rowdy and we have to crack him over the head, I want some of your men around to see it was needful. It’s easier never to have a feud than to stop one once started.”

  Not for the first time, Scaurus admired Pakhymer’s cool good sense. In shabby leather trousers and sweat-stained fox-skin cap, he looked the simple nomad, a role many Khatrishers affected. But the folk of that land had learned considerable subtlety since their Khamorth ancestors swept down off the plains of Pardraya to wrest the province from Videssos eight hundred years ago. They were like fine wine in cheap jugs, with quality easy to overlook at a hasty drinking.

  The tribune ordered the buccinators to trumpet “Attention!” The legionaries stiffened into immobility. Marcus gave them his commands, adding at the end, “Some of you may think you can steal away and never be caught. Well, belike you’re right. But remember what’s outside and reckon up how long you’re likely to enjoy your escape.”

  A thoughtful silence ensued. Gaius Philippus broke it with a bellowed, “Dis-missed!” Partnered men scattered through the city; their bachelor comrades stood at ease to await their return. Some moved toward the women clustered at the gates, intent on changing their status, permanently or for a little while. Gaius Philippus cocked an interrogative eyebrow at Scaurus. The tribune shrugged. Let his troops find what solace they could.

  “Minucius,” he said, “come on with Helvis and me? Erene is looking after Malric, it seems.”

  The legionary grinned. “I’ll do that, sir. With three little ones running around, I’m sure of my welcome—seeing me’s bound to be a relief.”

  Marcus chuckled, then translated for Helvis. Among themselves, he and his men mostly spoke Latin, and she had only a few words of it. She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know how right you are,” she said to Minucius.

  “Oh, but I do, my lady,” he answered, switching to Videssian for her. “The little farm I grew up on, I was the oldest of eight, not counting two who died young, and I still don’t know when my mother slept.”

  Even in the most troubled times, some things in Khliat did not change. As Helvis, Marcus, and Minucius walked through the town’s marketplace, they had to kick their way through the pigeons, blackbirds, and sparrows that congregated in cheeping, chirping hordes round the grain merchants’ stalls. The birds were confident of their handouts and just as sure no one meant them any harm.

  “They’ll learn soon enough,” Minucius said, sidestepping to avoid a pigeon which refused to make way for him. “Come a siege, there’ll be a lot of bird pies the first day or two. After that they’ll know their welcome’s gone, and you won’t get within fifty feet of one on the ground.”

  Beggars still lined the edge of the market place, though it seemed most of the able-bodied vagabonds had vanished for safer climes. In an expansive mood, Minucius dug into his pouch for some money to toss to a thin, white-bearded old man with only one leg who lounged in front of an open tavern door.

  “You’d give him gold?” Marcus asked in surprise, seeing the trooper produce a small coin instead of one of the broad bronze pieces Videssos minted.

  “That’s what they’d like you to think, anyway. It’s that pen-pusher Strobilos’ money, and it’s not worth a bloody thing.” Ortaias Sphrantzes’ great-uncle Strobilos had been Avtokrator until Mavrikios Gavras ousted him four years before. His coinage was cheapened even beyond the lows set by previous bureaucratic Emperors; the “goldpiece” on which his pudgy features were stamped was more than half copper.

  Minucius flipped the coin to the beggar, who plucked it out of the air. Debased or no, it was a finer gift than he usually got; he dipped his head and thanked the Roman in halting, Vaspurakaner-flavored Videssian. That completed, he popped the coin into his mouth and dragged himself into the grogshop.


  “I hope the old boy has himself one fine spree,” Minucius said. “He doesn’t look like there’s many left in him.”

  Scaurus gave the legionary an odd look. Minucius had always struck him as sharing Gaius Philippus’ single-minded devotion to the army, without the senior centurion’s years of experience to give a sense of proportion. Such a thoughtful remark was not like him.

  “If you’re as eager to see Erene as she is to see you,” Helvis said to Minucius with a smile, “it will be a happy meeting indeed. She hardly talks about anything but you.”

  Minucius’ thick-bearded Italian peasant’s face lit up in a grin that lightened his hard features. “Really?” he said, sounding shy and amazed as a fifteen-year-old. “These past few months I’ve thought myself the luckiest man alive.…” And he was off, praising Erene the rest of the way to the small house she and Helvis shared.

  Listening to him as they walked along, Marcus had no trouble deciding where his unexpected streak of compassion came from. Here was a man unabashedly in love. In a way, the tribune was a trifle jealous. Helvis was a splendid bed-mate, a fine companion, and no one’s fool, but he could not find the flood of emotion in him that Minucius was releasing. He was happy, aye, but not heart-full.

  Well, he told himself, you’ll never see thirty again, and it’s not likely Minucius has twenty-two winters in him. But am I older, he asked himself, or merely colder? He was honest enough to admit he did not know.

  Helvis wore the key to her lodging on a string round her neck. She drew it up from between her breasts, inserted it into its socket, and drew out the bolt-pin. The door opened inward; Malric shot out, crying, “Mama! Mama!” and reaching up to seize his mother round the waist. “Hello, Papa!” he added as she lifted him and tossed him up in the air.