Legion of Videssos Read online

  “Me?”

  “Indeed. When I first set eyes on you, I knew you would make a fine model for portraying the holy Kveldulf the Haloga.”

  “The holy who?” Marcus said in surprise. The Halogai lived in the cold lands far to the north of Videssos. Some served the Empire as mercenaries, but more often they were raiders and pirates. As far as Scaurus knew, they followed their own grim gods, not Phos. “How did a Haloga become a Videssian holy man?”

  “Kveldulf exalted the true faith in the reign of Stavrakios of revered memory.” Styppes made the sign of the sun over his heart. “He preached it to his kinsmen in their icebound fjords, but they would not hear him. They would have bound him to a tree to spear him to death, but he stood still for their weapons, choosing to die in a way that served Phos’ glory.”

  No wonder the Halogai had not accepted Kveldulf, the tribune thought. Stavrakios had conquered their province of Agder from them, and they must have seen Kveldulf as a stalking-horse for greater encroachment; Videssos often used religion to further political goals. Scaurus did not share that line of reasoning with Styppes. Instead he said, “Why me? I don’t really look like a Haloga.”

  “True; feature for feature you might almost be a Videssian. All the better. You are blond like the northern savages, and through you I can depict the holy Kveldulf so as to make his origin clear even to unlettered worshipers, but symbolically represent his acceptance of the Empire’s true faith.”

  “Oh.” Marcus started to scratch his head, then stopped in mid-gesture, unwilling to show his confusion to the healer-priest. He wished Gorgidas was at his side to make sense of Styppes’ prototypes and symbols; if anyone could, it would be a Greek. To the hardheaded Romans, a portrait was a portrait, to be judged by how closely it resembled its original.

  Still bemused, he nodded vaguely when Styppes again pressed him to pose, and gave Vorenus and Pullo only a quarter of the blistering they deserved. Hardly believing their luck, they saluted and disappeared before he stopped woolgathering.

  If Kveldulf preached like Styppes, he thought, his fellow barbarians had another good reason for martyring him.

  * * *

  Despite Styppes’ interference, the legionaries’ preparations went forward smoothly enough. The surviving Romans were old hands at breaking winter quarters and, under their watchful eyes, the recruits who had joined them since they came to Videssos performed well. The spirit that ran through Scaurus’ men was powerful; the newcomers wanted to meet the standards the Romans set.

  Their performance satisfied even Gaius Philippus, who chivvied them no worse than he did men who sprang from Latium or Apulia. The senior centurion had a different problem to drive him to distraction, one not so easily dealt with as an unruly trooper.

  Three days before the Videssian army was due to leave the capital, the veteran came up to Marcus and brought himself to rigid attention. That was a danger sign in itself; he did not bother with such formality unless he was going to say something he did not think Scaurus would want to hear. When the tribune saw the bruise he carried under one eye, his apprehension doubled—had some soldier been stupid enough to swing at Gaius Philippus? If so, the centurion might be about to report a dead legionary.

  “Well?” Scaurus said when Gaius Philippus stayed mute.

  “Sir,” Gaius Philippus acknowledged, and paused so long again Marcus feared his first hasty guess was right. Then, as if some dam inside the senior centurion went down, he burst out, “Sir, is there any way we can leave the damned tarts behind? The men’ll be better soldiers for it, really they will, not thinking about the futtering they’ll get tonight or whether their brats spit up dinner.”

  “I’m sorry, but no,” Scaurus answered immediately. He knew Gaius Philippus had never truly accepted the Romans taking partners. It went against every tradition of the legions, and also against the veteran’s nature. His only use for women was quick pleasure; anything beyond that seemed beyond his comprehension as well.

  But Videssos’ customs differed from Rome’s. Mercenary companies that served the Avtokrators routinely brought their wives and lemans with them on campaign; Marcus had felt unable to deny his men a privilege the rest of the army enjoyed.

  “What went wrong?” the tribune asked.

  “Wrong?” Gaius Philippus cried, fairly howling the word in his frustration. “Not a bloody fornicating thing goes right with those idiot women; and when it does, they botch it again just for the fun of it. Scaurus, you should have seen what the slut who gave me this—” He gingerly touched his cheek. “—was up to.”

  “Tell me.” Marcus knew the senior centurion had to work the anger out of his system somehow and was willing to be a handy ear.

  “By one of Jove’s special miracles, this bitch named Myrrha—she’s Publius Flaccus’ woman, if you don’t know—managed—in five days, mind you—to pack up her gear in three sacks, each of ’em big enough to rupture any donkey ever born. But that’s as may be; at least she was packed.

  “And then her little darling started whining for a sweet, and may the gods shrivel my balls if she didn’t dump every bit of her trash on the floor till she found a honeydrop. I was watching all this, you know. It must have taken a good quarter of an hour—and I let her have it. That’s when I picked up my shiner here.”

  Gaius Philippus’ parade-ground bellow could peel whitewash off walls; Myrrha, Scaurus decided, had to be a strong-spirited girl to stand up under it. Used to the harsh discipline of the legions, the senior centurion had long forgotten softer ways. Worse, he was furious at being defied without a chance for revenge.

  “Come on, enough of this,” Marcus said. He put his arm round the older man’s shoulder. “You were doing your duty, which was right. Is it worth letting someone who is misled and ignorant of what is proper distract you?”

  “Bet your arse it is,” Gaius Philippus growled. Scaurus winced; so much for the soothing power of Stoicism.

  Despite the veteran’s fit of temper—and largely because of his hard work—the legionaries were ready well before Thorisin’s deadline. It came and went, though, without the army sailing. Not only were some detachments—mostly Khamorth mercenaries, but a few Videssian units as well—unprepared, but shipping was still inadequate to transport them, despite the best efforts of the drungarios of the fleet, Taron Leimmokheir. Onomagoulos’ revolt had split the Videssian fleet down the middle; here, too, its aftereffects were still being felt.

  “Leimmokheir’s trying for jail again.” Senpat Sviodo laughed, but there was truth behind the joke. The drungarios had spent months in prison when Thorisin Gavras wrongly thought him involved in an assassination plot. If he truly failed the irascible Emperor, he might well return.

  Ships of all sizes and descriptions, from great, beamy transports that normally shipped grain to little lateen-rigged fishing smacks, gathered in Videssos’ harbors. It seemed the capital held as many sailors as soldiers. The seamen, Videssians all, swarmed into the city’s taverns and eateries. They brawled with the mercenaries, sometimes in sport, sometimes for blood.

  Marcus thought of Viridovix and wondered how he’d fared sailing to Prista. If the gusty Celt knew what he was missing, he’d likely head back if he had to swim; he had never been known to back away from a tavern row.

  With Videssos’ docks jammed with ships berthed gunwale to gunwale, the arrival of one more merchantman out of Kypas in the westlands should have made no difference. But it carried more in its hold than a cargo of wine; the news it bore raced through the capital with the speed of fire. In Videssos, what two men knew, everyone knew.

  Phostis Apokavkos brought the word to the legionaries’ barracks. He was well connected, having scratched out a living in the thieves’ quarter of the city before Scaurus adopted him as a Roman. Now he came rushing in, his long face working with anger. “Curse the filthy foreigners!” he shouted.

  Heads jerked up and hands reached instinctively for swords. Videssos was cosmopolitan and xenophobic at the same time
; a cry like that too often was the rallying call for a mob. The troopers relaxed when they saw it was only Apokavkos and swore at him for startling them.

  “Are you including us, Phostis?” Scaurus asked mildly.

  “What? Oh, no, sir!” Apokavkos said, shocked. His hand came up in a smart legionary-style salute. There were times, the tribune thought, when he was more Roman than the Romans. They had given him the chance he’d never had on his farm in the far west or in the capital, and won his total allegiance in return. These days he shaved his face like a Roman, cursed in accented Latin, and, alone among all the recruits who had joined Marcus’ men in Videssos, had his hand branded with the legionary mark.

  “It’s the Phos-detested Namdalener heretics, sir,” he started to explain. In some ways he was a Videssian still.

  “Utprand’s men?” Scaurus’ alertness returned, as did his troopers’. The Romans had done riot duty before, holding the city rabble and the men of the Duchy apart. It was soldiering of a kind to turn any man’s stomach.

  But Apokavkos shook his head. “No, not them buggers—there’s enough honest men about to keep ’em in line.” He spat on the floor in disgust. “I’m talkin’ ’bout Drax’ crew.”

  “What do you mean?” “Let it out, man!” legionaries called to Apokavkos, but Marcus felt his heart sink. He had a horrid feeling he knew what was coming.

  “The whoreson pirate,” Apokavkos was saying. “Send him over the Cattle-Crossing to put down a rebel, and he thinks he’s a king. The dung-chewing Skotos’ spawn’s stolen the westlands from us!”

  II

  “LAND!” THE LOOKOUT CALLED FROM HIS PERCH HIGH ON the Conqueror’s mast.

  “Och, the gods be praised!” Viridovix croaked. “I thought them after forgetting the word.” The Gaul’s normally ruddy face was sallow and drawn; cold sweat slicked his red hair and long, sweeping mustaches. He clutched the Conqueror’s starboard rail, waiting for the next spasm of seasickness to rack him.

  He did not wait long. A puff of breeze brought the stink of hot oil and frying fish from the ship’s galley astern. It set him retching again. Tears ran down his cheeks. “Three days now! A dead corp I’d be if it was a week.”

  In his anguish he spoke Celtic, which no one on board—no one in this entire world—understood. That, though, was not why the crew and the diplomats he accompanied eyed him with curiosity and pity. The waters of the Videssian Sea were almost glassy calm; it was a wonder anyone could be taken sick in such fine weather. Viridovix cursed his feeble stomach, then broke off when it took its revenge.

  Gorgidas emerged from the galley with a steaming bowl of beef broth. The Greek might claim to renounce medicine for history, but he was still a physician at heart. Viridovix’ misery alarmed him, the more so since he did not share and could not understand the strapping Gaul’s frailty.

  “Here, soak this up,” he said.

  “Take it away!” Viridovix said. “I dinna want it.”

  Gorgidas glared at him. If anything could be counted on to kindle his wrath, it was a deliberately foolish patient. “Would you sooner have the dry heaves instead? You’ll keep spewing till we reach port—give yourself something to spew.”

  “Sure and the sea is a hateful place,” the Gaul said, but under Gorgidas’ implacable stare he slurped the broth down. A few minutes later he gave most of it back. “A pox! Bad cess to the evil kern who thought of boats. The shame of it, me being on one on account of a woman.”

  “What do you expect, when you fall foul of the Emperor’s mistress?” Gorgidas asked rhetorically—Viridovix’ foolishness annoyed him. Komitta Rhangavve had a temper fit to roast meat, and when Viridovix refused to abandon his other women for her, she threatened to go to Thorisin Gavras with a tale of rape; thus the Celt’s sudden departure from Videssos.

  “Aye, belike you’re right, teacher; you’ve no need to lecture me on it.” Viridovix’ green eyes measured Gorgidas. “At least it’s not myself I’m running from.”

  The doctor grunted. Viridovix’ remark had too much truth in it for comfort—he was a barbarian, but far from stupid. After Quintus Glabrio died under Gorgidas’ hands, his lifelong art came to look futile and empty. What good was it, he thought bitterly, if it could not save a lover? History gave some hope for usefulness without involvement.

  He doubted he could explain that to the Gaul and did not much want to. In any case, Viridovix’ one sentence summed up his rationalizations too well.

  Arigh Arghun’s son strolled across the deck to them and saved him from his dilemma. Even the nomad from the far steppe beyond the River Shaum had no trouble with his sea legs. “How is he?” he asked Gorgidas, his Videssian sharp and clipped with the accent of his people.

  “Not very well,” the Greek answered candidly, “but if land’s in sight we’ll make Prista this afternoon. That should cure him.”

  Arigh’s flat, swarthy face was impassive as usual, but mischief danced in his slanted eyes. He said, “A horse goes up and down, too, you know, V’rid’rix. Do you get horsesick? There’s lots of riding ahead of us.”

  “Nay, I willna be horsesick, snake of an Arshaum,” Viridovix said. He swore at his friend with all the vigor in his weakened frame. “Now begone with you, before I puke on your fancy sheepskin boots.” Chuckling, Arigh departed.

  “Horsesick,” Viridovix muttered. “There’s a notion to send shudders into the marrow of a man. Epona and her mare’d not allow it.”

  “That’s your Celtic horse-goddess?” Gorgidas asked, always interested in such tidbits of lore.

  “The same. I’ve sacrificed to her often enough, though not since I came to the Empire.” The Gaul looked guilty. “Sure and it might be wise to make amends for that at Prista, an I live to reach it.”

  Prista was a town of contrasts, an outpost of empire at the edge of an endless sea of grass. It held fewer than ten thousand souls, yet boasted fortification stouter than any in Videssos save the capital’s. For the Empire it was a watchpost on the steppe from which the wandering Khamorth tribes could be played off against each other or cajoled into imperial service. The plainsmen needed it to trade their tallow, their honey, their wax, their furs and slaves for wheat, salt, wine, silk, and incense from Videssos, but many a nomad khagan had coveted it for his own—and so the stonework. Walls were not always enough to hold them at bay; Prista’s past was stormy.

  Every sort of building could be found inside those walls. Stately homes of the local gray-brown shale in classical Videssian courtyard style stood next to rough-timbered shacks and houses built of slabs of sod from the plain. On unused ground, nomads’ tents of hides or brightly dyed felt sprang up like toadstools.

  Though Prista held a Videssian governor and garrison, much of its population was of plains blood. The loungers on the dock were squat, heavy-set men with unkempt beards. Most of them wore linen tunics and trousers instead of the steppe’s furs and leathers, but almost all affected the low-crowned fur caps the Khamorth wore in cold weather and hot. And when Pikridios Goudeles asked one of them to help carry his gear to an inn, the fellow sat unmoving.

  Goudeles raised an eyebrow in annoyance. “My luck to pick a deaf-mute,” he said and turned to another idler, this one baring his broad hairy chest to the sun. The man ignored him. “Dear me, is this the country of the deaf?” the bureaucrat asked, beginning to sound angry; in Videssos he was used to being heeded.

  “I’ll make them listen, the spirits fry me if I don’t,” Arigh said, stepping toward the knot of men. They glowered at him; there was no love lost between Arshaum and Khamorth.

  Lankinos Skylitzes touched Arigh’s arm. The officer was a man of few words and had no liking for Goudeles. He was quite willing to watch the pen-pusher make an ass of himself. But Arigh could cause riot, not embarrassment, and that Skylitzes would not brook.

  “Let me,” he said, striding forward in Arigh’s place. The dock-rats watched him, not much impressed. He was a large man with a soldier’s solid frame, but there were enough o
f them to deal with him and his comrades, too … and he kept company with an Arshaum. But their scowls turned to startled grins when he addressed them in their own speech. After a few seconds of chaffering, four of them jumped up to shoulder the envoys’ kits. Only Arigh carried his own—and seemed content to do so.

  “What a rare useful thing it must be, to be able to bespeak the people wherever you go,” Viridovix said admiringly to Skylitzes. The Gaul was already becoming his usual exuberant self once more. Like the giant Antaios in the myth, Gorgidas thought, he drew strength from contact with the earth.

  Economical even in gestures, Skylitzes gave a single nod.

  That seemed to frustrate Viridovix, who turned to the Greek. “With your history and all, Gorgidas dear, would you no like to have these folk talk your own tongue so you could be asking them all the questions lurking in your head?”

  Gorgidas ignored the sarcasm; Viridovix’ question touched a deep hurt in him. “By the gods, Gaul, it would give me pleasure if anyone in this abandoned world spoke my tongue, even you. Here the two of us are as closest kin, but I can no more use Hellenic speech with you than you your Celtic with me. Does it not grate you, too, ever speaking Latin and Videssian?”

  “It does that,” Viridovix said at once. “Even the Romans are better off than we, for they have themselves to jabber with and keep their speech alive. I tried teaching my lassies the Celtic, but they had no thought for sic things. I fear I chose ’em only for their liveliness under a blanket.”

  And so were you sated but alone, Gorgidas thought. As if to confirm his guess, the Gaul suddenly burst into a torrent of verse in his native tongue. Arigh and the Videssians gaped at him. The local bearers had been stealing glances at him all along, curious at his fair, freckled skin and fiery hair. Now they shrank back, perhaps afraid he was reciting some spell.

  Viridovix rolled on for what might have been five or six stanzas. Then he stumbled to a halt, cursing in Celtic, Videssian, and Latin all mixed together.