Legion of Videssos Read online

  “Slow down, curse you,” Skylitzes whispered frantically. “If I don’t know what you’re talking about, how do you expect them to?”

  “They don’t need to, really,” Goudeles answered under cover of a dramatic gesture. “I’m saying what has to be said at a time like this, that’s all.” He bowed once more to Arghun, and finished, “The people of the clan of the Gray Horse and however many subjects they may have are dear to us; may you not hold our affairs otherwise.” He stepped back a pace to show the oration was done.

  “Very pretty,” Arigh said; his years in Videssos let him appreciate Goudeles’ performance more readily than his father or brother could. “I—” The khagan interrupted him. He nodded, abashed; in Arghun’s presence he was no hotspur, but an obedient son. He said, “My father would like to reply through me. No offense to you, Lankinos, you speak very well, but—”

  “Of course,” Skylitzes said quickly.

  “We are honored to hear the khagan’s remarks,” Goudeles added.

  Gorgidas braced himself for another high-flown speech. Instead, Arghun fell silent after two sentences. His son translated: “My thanks for the presents. As for your embassy, I will decide what to do when I have also heard the man from Yezd.”

  Goudeles frankly gaped. “That’s all?” he squeaked, surprised out of elaborate syntax. He looked as if he had been stabbed, then slowly led the Videssian party to one side. “ ‘My thanks for the presents,’ ” he muttered. “Bah!” He swore with unbureaucratic imagination.

  “You spoke well, but the nomads’ style is different from yours,” Gorgidas told him. “They admire Videssian rhetoric, though—remember Olbiop? And Arghun strikes me as a prudent leader. Would you expect him to say yes or no without listening to both sides?”

  Slightly consoled, Goudeles shook his head. “I wish he would,” Skylitzes said. But Bogoraz of Yezd was already coming up to the khagan’s yurt. Skylitzes’ stare was as intense as if they were meeting on the battlefield.

  The Yezda envoy, like Goudeles, went to one knee before Arghun; the dignity of his salute was marred when the black felt skullcap he wore fell to the ground as he dipped his head. But he quickly regained the advantage when he spoke to the khagan in the Arshaum tongue.

  “A plague!” Gorgidas and Goudeles said together. The Greek went on, “That can’t help influencing Arghun, whether he realizes it or not.”

  “Hush!” said Skylitzes, and after listening for a moment, “Less than you’d think. The soundrel has a mushy Khamorth accent, good for making any Arshaum look down his flat nose.”

  “What’s he saying?” Goudeles asked; he had no more of Arghun’s language than did Gorgidas.

  “Same garbage you were putting out, Pikridios. No, wait, here’s something new. He says Wulghash—Skotos freeze him!—knows what a great warrior Arghun is, and sends him presents fit for a warrior.”

  At Bogoraz’s imperious wave, one of his guardsmen laid a scabbard of enamel-decorated polished bronze before the khagan. With a placating glance at the Arshaum bowmen, the ambassador drew the curved sword to display it to Arghun. It was a rich and perfect product of the swordsmith’s art, from hilt wrapped in gold wire to gleaming blade. After a ceremonial flourish, Bogoraz sheathed it again and presented it to the khagan.

  Arghun drew it himself to test the balance, smiled with genuine pleasure, and buckled it to his belt. Smiling, too, Bogoraz gave similar blades to his sons; they differed only in that their hilts were wrapped with silver rather than gold. Dizabul fairly licked his lips as he took his weapon from the Yezda; even Arigh unhesitatingly wore his.

  For the moment all but forgotten, the Videssian party watched their reaction in dismay. Skylitzes ground his teeth. “We should have thought of that.”

  “Aye,” Goudeles agreed mournfully. “These plains barbarians are fierce folk; they take more kindly to edged metal than robes of state, where our own people, I think, would esteem them equally.”

  Trying as he usually did to find general rules from the examples life offered him, Gorgidas said, “It’s wrong to judge others by one’s own standards. We Greeks burn our dead, while the Indians—” He stopped, reddening, as the others turned to stare; India—Greece, too!—meant nothing here.

  Bogoraz’s parade of costly weaponry continued: daggers with hunting scenes picked out on their blades with gold leaf; double-curved bows reinforced with horn, buffed and waxed till they sparkled; arrows of fragrant cedar fletched with iridescent peacock plumes, in quivers of snakeskin; spiked helmets ornamented with jewels.

  Dizabul chose to wear every item the Yezda gave him; by the time Bogoraz was done, he looked like a walking armory. Caressing the hilt of the new sword, he turned and spoke to his father. His voice carried; plainly he meant it to. Bogoraz gave the Videssian embassy a satisfied smirk.

  Skylitzes, on the other hand, worked his jaws harder than ever. He grated, “The pup is all for throwing us out now, or filling us full of holes with his new toys. He’s calling us ‘the worthless hucksters Arigh brought.’ ”

  Arghun’s elder son bristled at that and began a hot response. The khagan snarled at him and Dizabul both. Dizabul started to say something more, but subsided when Arghun half rose from his throne.

  Collecting himself, Arghun turned back to Bogoraz, who had affected to notice nothing. But some of the Yezda’s top-loftiness fell away when Arghun dismissed him as abruptly as he had Goudeles. “The gifts are splendid, he says,” Skylitzes reported, “but any alliance needs more thought.” The Videssian officer seemed almost unbelieving.

  “He is a clever leader,” Gorgidas said.

  “Indeed he is; he milks both sides impartially,” Goudeles said. He sounded as relieved as Skylitzes. “Well, good for him. The game’s still even.”

  Viridovix dismounted without grace, but with a great groan of relief. Three hard days in the saddle had left him sore and stiff to the point of anguish. As he had before, he marveled at the endurance of the plainsmen; once mounted, they seemed made into—what was the Greek word for beings half man, half horse? Unable to remember, he mumbled a curse.

  The air did not lend itself to such musings; it was thick with the sickly-sweet stench of death. And Targitaus was watching, grim-faced, as the Gaul paced about trying to stomp blood back into his calves and feet. “Another ride like that and I’ll be as bowlegged as you Khamorth laddies.” Not knowing the word for “bowlegged,” he illustrated with gestures.

  He failed to amuse the nomad chieftain, who said, “Save your jokes for the women. Nothing to laugh at here.” Viridovix flushed. Targitaus did not notice; he had already turned back to the carnage spread before him.

  It must have been worse a week before, when his herders found it, still fresh. Yet even after the scavengers had feasted, what was left was quite bad enough. Half a hundred cattle had been lured away from the herd, and then—what? “Slaughtered” was too gentle a word for the massacre here.

  The ground was still dark from the blood that had soaked into it when the cows’ throats were cut. The killing alone would have been enough to make this no ordinary raid. Cattle were for herding and for stealing, not liquidation. The steppe was too harsh to let a tradition of wanton killing grow; even in war, winners simply took herds and flocks from their defeated foes—herds and flocks were war’s object, not its target.

  But not here, not now. These beasts sprawled in death were more pitiful than warriors fallen on a battlefield; beasts have no choice in their fate and no chance to avert it. And that fate had been cruel, viciously so. Great cuts had been made in the carcasses, and filth smeared into them to spoil the meat. The hides were not only gashed, but also rubbed with some potent caustic that made them worthless, too. Targitaus’ clan could have salvaged nothing from the animals even if they had been discovered the hour after they died.

  The chief’s son Batbaian paced from one mutilated cow to the next, shaking his head and tugging at his beard as he tried without success to understand what he saw. He turned helples
sly to his father. “They must be mad, as dogs are, to do this!” he burst out.

  The clan leader said sadly, “I wish you were right, boy. This is Varatesh’s way of trying to make me afraid and make me sorry for sheltering the outlander here.” He bobbed his head, so like Batbaian’s, at Viridovix.

  To the Gaul, though, the savagery he saw here called up another memory, of a body outside the walls of Videssos the city, when the legionaries were helping Thorisin Gavras lay siege to the Sphrantzai within. Along with other torments, poor Doukitzes’ outraged corpse had borne a name sliced into its forehead: Rhavas. As soon came clear, that needed but a rearrangement of letters to reveal the killer.

  “It’s Avshar’s sport I make this,” he said. “I’ve tried to tell you of him till the now and made no headway at it—the which I canna blame you for, as you’d not seen the way of him. But hark, an you will.” In the Khamorth speech as best he could, in Videssian when it failed him, he spoke of Doukitzes and much else: of the wizard-prince’s duel with Scaurus when the Romans first came to Videssos the city; of Maragha and afterward, and Mavrikios Gavras’ head flung into the legionary camp; of the Grand Courtroom in the capital, and Avshar’s sorcery for making the worst of his rogues invulnerable to steel.

  The obscenity and cruelty of that last tale shook the plainsmen. “He made his magic with a woman, you say?” Targitaus demanded, as if he thought his ears were tricking him.

  “Aye, and with her unborn wean ripped from her,” the Celt replied. The plainsman shuddered. Where the slaughter of his beasts left him coldly furious, here was malice worse than he had dreamed possible.

  With youth’s temerity, Batbaian cried, “Let’s be rid of him, then—burn his tent over his head and all who follow him, too!” Looking at their cattle, with Viridovix’ words still hanging over them, the Khamorth shouted, “Aye!”

  And, “Aye,” said Targitaus as well, but softly. Where his clansmen had only caught the horror in the Gaul’s tale, he also saw what it revealed of Avshar’s power. “Aye,” he said again, and added, “if we can.”

  He looked at Viridovix, not happily. “I see it is time to gather the clans against Varatesh and this Avshar of yours.”

  “Past time,” Viridovix said at once, and Batbaian gave a vigorous nod. Despite Targitaus’ ringing promises of war on the outlaw chief, weeks had dragged by without much happening.

  The chief looked uncomfortable. “You come from Videssos, outlander, where the khag—er, the Emperor, tells his men, ‘Do this,’ and they do it or lose their heads. It is not like that on the plains. If I go to Ariapith of the Oglos River clan, or Anakhar of the Spotted Cats, or Krobyz of the Leaping Goats and tell them we should clean out Varatesh together, the first thing they will say is, ‘Who leads?’ What do I answer? Me? They will say I try to set my Wolfskins up as Royal Clan, and have nothing to do with me.”

  “Royal Clan?” the Celt echoed.

  “Sometimes a clan will get the better of all the ones around it and rule the steppe for a while, even for a man’s life, until they get free and pull it down.” Ambition glowed in Targitaus’ eyes. “Every khagan dreams of founding a Royal Clan and has nightmares his neighbor will do it first. So each watches the next, and no one gets too strong.”

  “So that’s the way of it, eh?” Suddenly Viridovix found himself on familiar ground. In Gaul before the Romans came, the tribes were constantly jockeying for position, squabbling and intriguing for all they were worth. The Aedui had held pride of place until the Sequani allied with the Ubii from over the Rhine and usurped their dominant position. In the process, though, they had made Ariovistus the German the most powerful man in Gaul.…

  The Celt’s eyes sparked green; he whooped with glee and clapped his hands together. “How’s this?” he said to Targitaus, who had swung round in surprise, half drawing his sword. “Suppose you’re after telling old Crowbait o’ the Spotted Hamsters, or whatever his fool name is, that Varatesh is aiming to make his piratical spalpeens Royal Clan, the which is nothing less than true. Sure and he’d piss himself or ever he let that happen, now wouldn’t he?”

  He could all but hear the wheels spinning inside the nomad chief’s head. Targitaus looked at Batbaian, who was staring at Viridovix with awe on his face; the young are easily impressed on hearing things they have not thought of for themselves. “Hmm,” said Targitaus, and the Gaul knew he had won.

  Batbaian exclaimed, “Guide your herds right in this, father, and it’d be you who’d be Royal Clan khagan!”

  “Me? Nonsense, boy,” Targitaus said gruffly, but Viridovix saw the thought had struck him before his son voiced it. He chuckled to himself.

  Dizabul stabbed the last strip of broiled rabbit from the boiled-leather bowl he held in his lap, chewed noisily with the good manners of the steppe. He leaned forward; the cook lifted more sizzling meat from the griddle with a pair of wooden tongs, refilled his bowl. He sat back with a smile of thanks. Turning to his left, he murmured something to Bogoraz and flourished the elegant dagger the Yezda envoy had given him. That dazzling smile flashed again.

  Slurping kavass from a golden goblet, Gorgidas covertly admired the young man, whose beauty stirred a pleasant pain in him. In the nomad way, Arghun had provided women for the Videssian embassy, but though Gorgidas was finding he could perform with them for necessity’s sake, they did not satisfy him. After each coupling he felt as a sailor might who turned at sea to a shipmate to relieve his lusts although caring nothing for love of men ashore.

  With a stab of pain and loss, he remembered Quintus Glabrio’s slim, quiet, intent face, remembered the mixed amusement and distaste with which the junior centurion had spoken of his time with a Videssian girl. “Damaris deserved something different from me, I suppose,” he’d said once, adding with a wry laugh, “She certainly thought so after a while.” That liaison had broken up in spectacular style, along with much crockery.

  Thinking of Glabrio helped put Dizabul in perspective. The Roman had been a man, a partner, while the Arshaum princeling showed every sign of being no more than a much-coddled younger son, with spiteful temper to match. Moreover, Gorgidas had learned, he had a son and two daughters of his own by slaves and serving girls.

  The Greek drank again. Still, no denying he was lovely.

  In his musings over Dizabul, Gorgidas had given scant attention to the great banquet tent. That did it less than justice; it was as important to the Arshaum as the Imperial Palace was to Videssos and had proportional splendor lavished on it. The yurt was the largest he had seen on the plains, easily forty feet across and drawn by a team of twenty-two horses.

  Outside, its thick, felt panels had been chalked white to make it stand out against the drab steppe. Now the Greek noticed the silk hangings that lined the stick framework within, work as splendid as any the Empire could boast. The shimmering fabric was dyed saffron and green; the embroidered horses galloping across it were executed with the barbaric vigor that characterized nomad art.

  Arghun, his sons, and the rival embassies sat round the cookfire on rugs of thick, soft wool. The clan’s elders made a couple of larger circles around them. The Arshaum sat cross-legged, with either boot hiked onto the opposite thigh. Their guests sprawled every which way—unless practiced from birth, the nomad posture was fiendishly uncomfortable.

  At his father’s right, Arigh twisted himself into the position for a while, then gave it up with a rueful headshake and a loud creak from his knees. “You’ve been in Videssos too long,” Skylitzes told him.

  The look Dizabul gave his brother said he would have liked it better had Arigh stayed there longer still.

  “Until we got here, I didn’t know you had a brother,” Goudeles said to Arigh; Gorgidas was not the only one who’d seen that poisonous stare.

  “I’d almost forgotten him myself,” Arigh said, dismissing Dizabul with a wave of his hand. “He was just a brat underfoot when I left for the Empire seven or eight years ago—hasn’t changed much, looks like.” He spoke Videssian s
o his brother would not understand, but Gorgidas frowned when Bogoraz whispered behind his hand to Dizabul. A flush climbed the young man’s high cheekbones, and the scowl he sent Arigh’s way made his earlier glower seem loving by comparison.

  Servants scurried back and forth, filling goblets from silver pitchers of kavass and fetching food for the Arshaum not within arm’s length of the cook. Along with the rabbit Dizabul enjoyed, there was an enormous roasted bird. “Eh? It’s a crane,” Arigh said in reply to Gorgidas’ question. “Good, too—haven’t eaten one in years.” With that nomad way he had no trouble; his strong white teeth ripped meat away from a legbone. The Greek controlled his enthusiasm. The bird was tasty, but tough as leather.

  The mutton and tripes were better, as were the cheeses, both hard and soft; some of the last had sweet berries stirred through them. As well as the kavass, there was fresh milk from cows, goats, and horses, none of which tempted Gorgidas. He would have paid a pretty price for real wine or a handful of salted olives.

  When he remarked on that, Arigh shook his head with a grimace of disgust. “Wine is a good thing, but in all the time I was in Videssos I never got used to olives. They taste funny, and the imperials put them in everything. And the oil stinks.” Arshaum lamps burned butter, which to the Greek’s nose had its own pervasive, greasily unpleasant smell.

  Conversation in the banquet tent was halting, and not only because of the language barrier. Arigh had warned the Videssian embassy that Arshaum custom did not allow serious business to be discussed at feasts. It let Gorgidas enjoy his food more, but left him bored with the few snatches of talk he could follow.

  Bogoraz, who had a gift for rousing trouble without seeming to mean to, skated close to the edge of what custom permitted. Without ever mentioning his reasons for coming onto the steppe, he bragged of Yezd’s might and the glory of his overlord the khagan Wulghash. Skylitzes kept translating his boasts and grew angrier by the minute. Satisfaction and sardonic amusement in his eyes, Bogoraz stayed on his course, never saying anything against Videssos in so many words, but hurting its cause with every urbane sentence.