Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 Read online

  Gaius Philippus gave a wolfish grin. “I’ll see to that, never fear.” Scaurus nodded, but wondered how well-drilled the rest of the Imperial Guards were.

  He had some of his answer within minutes, for cornets blared while the Romans were still stowing their possessions. A plump functionary appeared in the doorway and bawled, “His Highness the Sevastos Vardanes Sphrantzes! His Majesty the Sevastokrator Thorisin Gavras! All abase themselves for his Imperial Majesty, the Avtokrator of the Videssians, Mavrikios Gavras!”

  The cornets rang out again. Over them Gaius Philippus yelled, “Whatever you’ve got, drop it!” The Romans, used to snap inspections, sprang to attention.

  Preceded by a dozen Halogai, the rulers of the Empire came into the barracks hall to examine their new warriors. Before they set foot in it, Marcus stole a glance at their guardsmen and was favorably impressed. For all the gilding on their cuirasses, for all the delicate inlaywork ornamenting their axes, these were fighting men. Their eyes, cold as the ice of their northern home, raked the barracks for anything untoward. Only when he was satisfied did their leader signal his charges it was safe to enter.

  As they did so, Tzimiskes went to his knees and then to his belly in the proskynesis all Videssians granted their sovereign. Marcus, and his men after his example, held to their stiff brace. It did not occur to him to do otherwise. If the Videssians chose to prostrate themselves before their lord, it was their privilege, but not one the Romans, a republican people for four and a half centuries, could easily follow.

  The Haloga captain stared at Scaurus, his face full of winter. But now the tribune had no time to try to face him down, for his attention was focused on the triumvirate in the doorway.

  First through it, if they were coming in the order announced, was Vardanes Sphrantzes, whose title of Sevastos was about that of prime minister. Heavyset rather than fat, he wore his gem-encrusted robes of office with a dandy’s elegance. A thin line of beard framed his round, ruddy face. His eyes did not widen, but narrowed in surprise when he saw the Romans still on their feet.

  He turned to say something to the Emperor, but was brushed aside by Mavrikios’ younger brother, the Sevastokrator Thorisin Gavras. In his late thirties, the Sevastokrator looked as if he would be more at home in mail than the silks and cloth-of-gold he had on. His hair and beard were carelessly trimmed; the sword at his side was no ceremonial weapon, but a much-used saber in a sheath of plain leather.

  His reaction to the sight of the standing Romans was outrage, not surprise. His bellowed, “Who in Phos’ holy name do these baseborn outland whoresons think they are?” cut across Sphrantzes’ more measured protest: “Your Majesty, these foreigners fail to observe proper solemnity …”

  Both men stopped in confusion; Scaurus had the impression they had not agreed on anything in years. From behind them he heard the Emperor’s voice for the first time: “If the two of you will get out of my way, I’ll see these monsters for myself.” And with that mild comment the Avtokrator of the Videssians came in to survey his newest troop of mercenaries.

  He was plainly Thorisin’s brother; they shared the same long face, the same strong-arched nose, even the same brown hair that thinned at the temples. But at first glance Marcus would have guessed Mavrikios Gavras fifteen years older than his brother. Lines bracketed his forceful mouth and creased his forehead; his eyes were those of a man who slept very little.

  A second look told the Roman much of the apparent difference in age between the two Gavrai was illusion. Like the massy golden diadem he wore on his head, Mavrikios bore responsibility’s heavy weight, and it had left its mark on him. He might once have shared Thorisin’s quick temper and headlong dash, but in him they were tempered by a knowledge of the cost of error.

  As the Emperor approached, Tzimiskes rose to stand beside Marcus, ready to help interpret. But Mavrikios’ question was direct enough for Scaurus to understand: “Why did you not make your obeisance before me?”

  Had Sphrantzes asked that, Marcus might have talked round the answer, but this, he felt instinctively, was a man to whom one gave truth. He said, “It is not the custom in my land to bend the knee before any man.”

  The Avtokrator’s eye roved over the Romans as he considered Scaurus’ reply. His gaze stopped on a battered shield; on the stiff peasant face of a young legionary; on Viridovix, who stood out because of his inches and his Celtic panoply.

  At last he turned to the waiting Sevastos and Sevastokrator, saying quietly, “These are soldiers.” To Thorisin Gavras that seemed to explain everything. He relaxed at once, as did the Haloga guardsmen. If their overlord was willing to let these outlanders keep their rude habits, that was enough for them.

  Sphrantzes, on the other hand, opened his mouth for further protest before he realized it would do no good. His eyes locked resentfully with the tribune’s, and Marcus knew he had made an enemy. Sphrantzes was a man who could not stand to be wrong or, more to the point, to be seen to be wrong. If he made a mistake, he would bury it … and maybe its witnesses, too.

  He covered his slip adroitly, though, nodding to Marcus in a friendly way and saying, “At sunset tomorrow evening we have tentatively scheduled a banquet in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, in honor of your arrival. Would it be convenient for you and a small party of your officers to join us then?”

  “Certainly,” Marcus nodded back. The Sevastos’ smile made him wish he could bring, not his officers, but a food-taster instead.

  The Hall of the Nineteen Couches was a square building of green-veined marble not far from the actual living quarters of the imperial family. There had been no couches in it for generations, Marcus learned, but it kept its name regardless. It was the largest and most often used of the palace compound’s several reception halls.

  When Scaurus and his companions—Gaius Philippus, Quintus Glabrio, Gorgidas, Viridovix, and Adiatun, the captain of slingers, along with Tzimiskes—came to the Hall’s double doors of polished bronze and announced themselves, a servitor bowed and flung the doors wide, crying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Ronams!”

  There was a polite spatter of applause from the guests already present. Scaurus suppressed an urge to kick the bungling fool and resigned himself to being called a Ronam for the next year.

  The Videssian custom was to talk, nibble, and drink for a time before settling down to serious eating. Marcus took a chilled cup of wine from the bed of snow on which it rested, accepted a small salted fish from a silver tray proffered by the most bored-looking servant he had ever seen, and began to circulate through the crowd.

  He soon became aware that four distinct groups were present, each largely—and sometimes pointedly—ignoring the other three.

  In the corner by the kitchens, civil servants, gorgeous in their bright robes and colorful tunics, munched hors d’oeuvres as they discussed the fine art of government by guile.

  They sent supercilious glances toward the crowd of army officers who held the center of the hall like a city they had stormed. Though these sprang from several nations, they, too, had a common craft. Their shoptalk was louder and more pungent than that of the bureaucrats, whose sneers they returned. “Plague-taken pen-pushers,” Marcus heard a young Videssian mutter to a Haloga clutching a mug of mead almost as big as his head. Already half-drunk, the northerner nodded solemnly.

  Over half the Roman party vanished into this group. Gaius Philippus and Nephon Khoumnos were talking about drill fields and training techniques. Glabrio, gesturing as he spoke, explained Roman infantry tactics to a mixed audience of Videssians, Namdaleni, and Halogai. And Adiatun was trying to persuade a buckskin-clad Khamorth that the sling was a better weapon than the bow. The nomad, a better archer than any Adiatun had imagined, was obviously convinced he’d lost his mind.

  If the councilors were peacocks and the soldiers hawks, then the ambassadors and envoys of foreign lands who made up the third contingent were birds of various feathers. Squat, bushy-bearded Khamorth wore the wolfskin jackets and leather
trousers of the plains and mingled with a couple of other, more distant, plainsmen whose like Marcus had not seen before: slim, swarthy, flat-faced men with draggling mustaches and thin, wispy beards. The tribune learned they were known as Arshaum.

  Marcus recognized desert nomads from the southwest, and more from the distant lands across the Sailors’ Sea. There were several envoys in strange costumes from the valleys of Erzerum, north and west from Videssos’ western borders. There were Haloga princelings, and one man the tribune would have guessed a Videssian but for his northern clothing and the perpetually grim expression Scaurus had come to associate with the Halogai.

  A giant in the swirling robes of the desert was so swathed even his face was obscured. He sipped wine through a straw and moved in a circle of silence, for even his fellow ambassadors gave him a wide berth. Marcus understood when he found out the man was an emissary out of Mashiz, the capital of Videssos’ deadly western foe, Yezd.

  With his insatiable curiosity, Gorgidas had naturally gravitated toward the ambassadors. He was in earnest conversation with a rabbity little man who would have made a perfect Videssian ribbon clerk had he not affected the unkempt facial foliage of the Khamorth.

  That takes care of just about all my men, Marcus thought, and when he turned his head at a burst of laughter to his left he found Viridovix was rapidly making himself popular with the last group at the banquet: its women. Looking quite dashing with his cape of scarlet skins flung back over his wide shoulders, the big Gaul had just finished an uproariously improper tale his brogue only made funnier. A pretty girl was clinging to each arm; three or four more clustered round him. He caught Scaurus’ eye over the tops of their heads and threw him a happy tomcat’s smile.

  The tribune returned it, but did not feel like emulating the Celt. Nor did the other groups attract him any more. The bureaucrats snubbed soldiers on principle, but Scaurus himself was not enough of a professional warrior to delight in discussing the fine points of honing a broadsword. And unlike Gorgidas, he could not turn his inquisitiveness to distant lands when he was still so ignorant of Videssos. Thus, while he spent a minute here and two more there in polite small talk, he was bored before the evening was very old.

  Feeling like the spare wheel on a wagon, he drifted over to get more wine. He had just taken it when a voice behind him asked, “The music tonight is very fine, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm?” He wheeled so fast the wine slopped in its cup. “Yes, my lady, it’s very fine indeed.” In fact he had no ear for music and had ignored the small tinkling orchestra, but a “no” would have ended the conversation, and that he suddenly did not want at all.

  She was as tall as many of the men there. She wore her straight black hair bobbed just above the shoulder, a far simpler style than the elaborate piles of curls most of the women preferred, but one that suited her. Her eyes were very blue. Her gown was a darker shade of the same color, with a bodice of white lace and wide, fur-trimmed sleeves. A fine-looking woman, Marcus thought.

  “You Romans”—He noticed she said the name correctly, despite the botched announcement at the door.—“are from quite far away, it’s said. Tell me, is your homeland’s music much like what’s played here?”

  Wishing she would find another topic, Scaurus considered the question. “Not a great deal, my lady—?”

  “Oh, I crave your pardon,” she said, smiling. “My name is Helvis. You are called Marcus, is that right?”

  Marcus admitted it. “From Namdalen, are you not?” he asked. It was a reasonable guess. Her features were less aquiline than the Videssian norm, and she certainly did not bear a Videssian name.

  She nodded and smiled again; her mouth was wide and generous. “You’ve learned a good deal about this part of the world,” she said, but then, as the tribune had feared, she returned to her original thought. “In what ways do your music and ours differ?”

  Scaurus grimaced. He knew little of Roman music and less of the local variety. Worse, his vocabulary, while adequate for the barracks, had huge holes when it came to matters musical.

  At last he said, “We play—” He pantomimed a flute.

  Helvis named it for him. “We have instruments of that kind, too. What else?”

  “We pluck our stringed instruments instead of playing them with the thing your musicians use.”

  “A bow,” Helvis supplied.

  “And I’ve never seen anything like the tall box that fellow is pounding.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “You don’t know the clavichord? How strange!”

  “He’s two days in the city, darling, and you’re tormenting him about the clavichord?” The guards’ officer Hemond came up to put his arm round Helvis’ waist with a casual familiarity that said they had been together for years.

  “I wasn’t being tormented,” Scaurus said, but Hemond dismissed his protest with a snort.

  “Don’t tell me that, my friend. If you let this one carry on about music, you’ll never get your ears back. Come on, love,” he said to Helvis, “you have to try the fried prawns. Incredible!” He was licking his lips as they walked off together.

  Marcus finished his wine in one long gulp. He was bitter and resentful, the more so because he knew his feelings had no justifiable basis. If Helvis and Hemond were a pair, then they were, and no point worrying about it. It was only that she had seemed so friendly and open and not at all attached … and she really was beautiful.

  Many Namdalener men, Hemond among them, shaved their scalps from the ears back so their heads would fit their helmets better. It was a remarkably ugly custom, the tribune decided, and felt a little better.

  Sphrantzes the Sevastos came in a few minutes later. As if his arrival was a signal—and it probably was—servants leaped forward to remove the tables of hors d’oeuvres and wine, substituting long dining tables and gilded straight-backed chairs.

  They worked with practiced efficiency and had just finished putting out the last place setting when the doorman cried, “His Majesty the Sevastokrator Thorisin Gavras and his lady, Komitta Rhangavve! Her Majesty the Princess Alypia Gavra!” Then, in the place his rank deserved, “His Imperial Majesty, Avtokrator of the Videssians, Mavrikios Gavras!”

  Marcus expected the entire room to drop to the floor and braced himself to shock everyone in it. But as the occasion was social rather than formal, the men in the hall merely bowed from the waist—the Romans among them—while the women dropped curtsies to the Emperor.

  Thorisin Gavras’ companion was an olive-skinned beauty with flashing black eyes, well matched to the hot-blooded Sevastokrator. She quite outshone the Princess Alypia, Mavrikios’ only surviving child by a long-dead wife. Her lineage was likely the reason Alypia was still unwed—she was a political card too valuable to play at once. She was not unattractive, with an oval face and eyes of clear green, rare among the Videssians. But her attention appeared directed inward, and she walked through the dining hall scarcely seeming to notice the feasters in it.

  Not so her father. “The lot of you have been standing around munching while I’ve had to work,” he boomed, “and I’m hungry!”

  Scaurus had thought he and his men would be seated with the other mercenary captains, well down the ladder of precedence. A eunuch steward disabused him of the notion. “This festivity was convened in your honor, and it would be less than appropriate were you to take your place elsewhere than at the imperial table.”

  As his knowledge of elegant Videssian manners was small, the tribune would willingly have forgone the distinction, but, of course, the gently irresistible steward had his way. Instead of soldiers, the tribune found himself keeping company with the leading nobles and foreign envoys in Videssos’ court.

  The straight-backed chairs were as hard as they looked.

  Marcus found himself between the skinny little fellow with whom Gorgidas had been talking and the tall dour man who looked like a Videssian in Haloga clothing. The latter introduced himself as Katakolon Kekaumenos. Going by the name, the
tribune asked, “You are of Videssos, then?”

  “Nay, ’tis not so,” Kekaumenos replied in his archaic accent. “I am his Majesty King Sirelios of Agder’s embassy to Videssos; in good sooth, his blood is higher than most in this mongrel city.” The man of Agder looked round to see if anyone would challenge his statement. The smaller fragment of the Empire of old had learned more from its Haloga neighbors than wearing snow-leopard jackets: its ambassador spoke with a bluntness rare in the city. He was also taciturn as any northerner, subsiding into moody silence after speaking his piece.

  Marcus’ other seatmate nudged him in the ribs. “You’d think old Katakolon had a poker up his arse, wouldn’t you?” he stage-whispered, grinning slyly. “Ah, you don’t know who I am, do you, to get away with such talk? Taso Vones is my name, envoy of Khagan Vologes of Khatrish, and so I have a diplomat’s privilege. Besides, Kekaumenos has reckoned me daft for years—isn’t that right, you old scoundrel?”

  “As well for you I do,” Kekaumenos rumbled, but his stern features could not hide a smile. Evidently he was used to making allowances for Vones.

  The fast-talking ambassador gave his attention back to Scaurus. “I saw you admiring my beard a few minutes ago.”

  That was not the emotion Marcus had felt for the untidy growth. “Yes, I—”

  “Horrible, isn’t it? My master Vologes thinks it makes me look a proper Khamorth, instead of some effete Videssian. As if I could look like that!” He pointed across the table at the emissary of the Khaganate of Thatagush. “Ha, Gawtruz, you butterball, are you drunk yet?”

  “Not yet I am,” Gawtruz replied, looking rather like a bearded boulder. His Videssian was heavily accented. “But will I be? Haw, yes, to be sure!”

  “He’s a pig,” Taso remarked, “but a pleasant sort of pig, and a sharp man in the bargain. He can also speak perfectly good Videssian when he wants to, which isn’t often.”