An Emperor for the Legion (35 page)

The tribune was not paying much attention to the Celt, looking instead from face to grinning face around him. “This is the crew you’ve gathered to carouse with?” he said to Viridovix. Grinning too, the Celt nodded.

“Then the gods look to Videssos tonight!” Marcus exclaimed, and drew a cheer from everyone.

There was Taso Vones, arm in arm with a buxom Videssian woman several inches taller than he was. Gawtruz of Thata-gush stood beside him, working hard on a wineskin. “How about some for the rest of us?” Gaius Philippus said pointedly.

“What’s a skin of wine, among one man?” Gawtruz retorted, and kept drinking. He lowered the skin again a moment later, but only to belch.

Soteric had brought Fayard and Turgot of Sotevag with him. Turgot needed no help from Gawtruz’s wineskin; he was already unsteady on his feet. His companion was a very blond Namdalener girl named Mavia. Scaurus doubted she was out of her teens. In a dark-haired land, her bright tresses gleamed like a goldpiece among old coppers.

Fayard greeted Helvis in the island dialect; her dead husband had been his captain. She smiled and answered in the same speech.

Arigh Arghun’s son was in the middle of telling a dirty story to all three of Viridovix’ lemans. Marcus wondered
again how the Celt kept them from catfights. Probably the happy-go-lucky Gaul’s own lack of jealousy, he thought. Viridovix seemed altogether unconcerned when they exploded into laughter at the end of Arigh’s tale.

Quintus Glabrio said something low-voiced to Gorgidas, who smiled and nodded. Next to them, Katakolon Kekaumenos of Agder stirred impatiently. “Are we then assembled?” he asked. “An it be so, let’s to the revels.” His accent was almost as archaic as the sacred liturgy; Agder, though once part of the Empire, had been severed from Videssos’ more quickly changing currents of speech for many years. Kekaumenos himself was a solidly built, saturnine man whose jacket of creamy snow-leopard pelts was worth a small fortune in the capital.

Marcus also thought him something of a prig; as the party trooped out of the barracks hall, he asked Taso Vones, “Who invited the dog in the manger?”

Aesop meant nothing to the Khatrisher, as Scaurus should have known. He sighed. There were times, most often brought on by such trivial things, when he was sure he would never fit this world. He explained himself
sans
metaphor.

“As a matter of fact,
I
invited him,” Vones said. The Roman’s embarrassment seemed to amuse him; he shared with Balsamon a fondness for discomfiting people. “I have my reasons. Agder’s a far northern land, you know, and the turn of the sun at midwinter means more to them than to the Videssians or me—they’re always half afraid it won’t come back. When they see it start north again they wassail hard, believe me.”

Videssos might not have feared for the sun’s return, but it celebrated all the same. The two midwinter fests Marcus had seen before were in provincial towns. The captial’s holiday was perhaps less boisterous than their uninhibited rejoicing, but made up for it with more polish. And the city’s sheer size let the tribune imagine himself in the middle of a world bent solely on pleasure.

Winter’s early night was falling fast, but torches and candles everywhere gave plenty of light. Bonfires blazed on many street corners; it was reckoned lucky to jump through them.

Helvis slid free of Marcus’ arm round her waist. She ran for one of the fires, jumped. Her hair flew out around her head like a dark halo; despite the hand she kept by her side, her
skirt billowed away from her legs. Someone on the far side of the fire cheered. The tribune’s pulse quickened, too. She came back to him flushed from the run and the cold, her eyes bright. When he put his arm around her again, she pressed his hand tight against the top of her hip.

Nothing escaped Taso Vones’ birdlike gaze. With a smile up at his own lady—whose name, Scaurus learned, was Plakidia Teletze—he said, “Better than crawling through codices, isn’t it?”

“You’d best believe it,” the tribune answered, and tipped Helvis’ chin up for a quick kiss. Her lips were warm and alive against his.

“It’s a public disgrace you’ll make of yourselves,” Viridovix complained. To show how serious he was, he planted good, thorough kisses on all his lady friends. They seemed perfectly content with his gallant impartiality. From long practice, it had almost a polish to it, like a conjuror plucking his ten-thousandth gold ring out of the air.

Waves of laughter came rolling out of the Amphitheater, a sound like a god’s mirth. Videssos’ mime troupes, naturally, were the best the Empire could offer. Eyeing the failing day, Gorgidas said, “It’s probably too dark for them to squeeze in another show. What say we find an eatery now, before the crowd coming out fills them all to overflowing?”

“Always is a good idea, food,” Gawtruz said in the heavy Khamorth-flavored accent he affected most of the time. The envoy from Thatagush slapped his thick belly. His appetite was real, but Scaurus knew the boorishness was an act to lull the unwary. A clever diplomat hid beneath that piggish exterior.

Gorgidas’ good sense got his comrades into an inn a few blocks off the plaza of Palamas while the establishment was still only half full. The proprietor and a serving girl shoved two tables together for them. Before they had finished their first round of wine—Soteric, Fayard, and Katakolon Kekaumenos chose ale—the room was packed. The owner hauled a couple of battered tables from the kitchens out into the street to serve a few more customers, planting fat candles on them to give his guests light. “I wish I’d bought that bigger place,” Marcus heard him say to himself as he bustled back and forth.

Delicious odors wafted out of the kitchen. Scaurus and his friends nibbled on sweetmeats and drank, waiting for their
dinner to cook. At last a servingmaid, staggering a little under its weight, fetched a fat, roast goose to the table. Steel flashed in the torchlight as she expertly carved the bird.

The tribune liked most Videssian cooking, and when the eatery’s owner proclaimed goose “our specialty” he had gone along without a qualm. His first bite gave him second thoughts. The goose was smothered in a sauce of cinnamon and sharp cheese, a combination piquant enough to bring tears to his eyes. There were times when the Empire’s sophisticated striving for pleasure through contrasting tastes went beyond what his palate could tolerate.

Gaius Philippus seemed similarly nonplussed, but the rest ate with every sign of enjoyment. Stifling a sigh, the tribune took a handful of shelled almonds from a dish by the half-demolished goose. They were sprinkled with garlic powder. The sigh became a groan; why hadn’t the garlic gone on the meat instead?

“You’re not eating much,” He vis said.

“No.” Perhaps it was just as well. Being chairbound day in and day out had made him gain weight. And, he thought, raising his cup to his lips, he had more room for wine.

“Here, pretty one, would you care to sit by me?” That was Gauis Philippus, greeting a courtesan in a clinging dress of thin yellow stuffs. He stole a chair from a nearby table; its owner had gotten up to go to the jakes. The fellow’s companions glowered at the senior centurion. He stared them down; long years of command gave him a presence none of the city men could match.

The woman saw that, too. There was real interest on her face as she sat, not just a whore’s counterfeit passion. She helped herself to food and drink. A pretty thing, Marcus thought, and was glad for Gaius Philippus, whose luck in such matters was usually poor.

The shade of yellow she wore reminded the tribune of the diaphanous silk gown Vardanes Sphrantzes had forced on Alypia Gavra, and of her slim body unconcealed beneath it. The thought warmed and annoyed him at the same time. There should have been no room for it with Helvis beside him, her fingers teasing the nape of his neck.

Turgot stretched across the table to reach for the dish of almonds. He popped a handful into his mouth, then tried to curse around them. “Stinking garlic!” he said, washing out the
taste with a hefty swig of wine. “Back in the Duchy we wouldn’t foul good food with the stuff.” He drank again, his face losing its soldier’s hardness as he thought of his home.

“Well, I like it,” Mavia said with a flip of her head. Her hair flashed gold-red in the torchlight, almost the color of flame itself. To prove the truth of her words, she ate an almond, then another one. Marcus guessed she’d come to the Empire long ago as a mercenary’s small daughter and learned Videssian tastes as well as the Duchy’s. Turgot, sitting hunched over his wine cup, suddenly seemed sad and tired and old.

The Videssian whose chair Gaius Philippus had annexed returned. He stood in confusion for a moment, while his friends explained what had happened. He turned toward the Roman—an unsteady turn, for he had considerable wine on board. “Now you shee—
see
—here, sir—” he began.

“Go home and sober up,” the senior centurion said, not unkindly. He had other things on his mind than fighting. His eyes kept slipping hungrily to the courtesan’s dark nipples, plainly visible through the fabric of her dress.

Viridovix’s admiring gaze followed his. Only when the drunken Videssian started a further protest did the Celt seem to notice him. He burst out laughing, saying to Gaius Philippus, “Sure and the poor sot’s clean forgotten a prick’s good for more things than pissing through.”

He spoke in the Empire’s language so everyone round the party’s two tables could share the joke. They laughed with him, but the man he’d insulted understood him, too. With a grunt of sodden rage the fellow swung at him, a wild haymaking right that came nowhere near the Gaul.

Viridovix sprang to his feet, quick as a cat despite all he’d drunk himself. His green eyes glowed with amusement of a new sort. “Your honor shouldn’t ought to have done that, now,” he said. He grabbed the luckless Videssian, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him down
splash!
into the great tureen of sea-turtle stew that stood as the centerpiece of his comrades’ table.

The sturdy table did not collapse, but greasy greenish stew and bits of white meat splattered in all directions. The drunk feebly kicked his legs as he tried to right himself; his friends, drenched by their dinners, swore and spluttered and wiped at their faces.

“What are you doing, you loose fish, you clapped-out poxy blackguard, you beggarly, lousy, beetle-headed knave!” Gaius Philippus’ courtesan screeched as she daubed futilely at herself. A good-sized chunk of meat was stuck in her hair above the gold hoop she wore in her right ear, but she did not notice it.

Nor did the Celt pay her bravura curses any mind. The men he’d swashed were coming at him, with determination if no great skill. Viridovix flattened the first of them, but the next one dashed a cup of wine in his face. While he choked and gasped, the fellow jumped on him, followed a second later by a companion.

Gaius Philippus and Gawtruz of Thatagush hauled them off. “Two against one’s not fair,” the senior centurion said, still mildly, flinging his man in one direction. Gawtruz wasted no words on his, but tossed him in the other. If they had hoped to quell the fight, they could hardly have done a worse job of it. The hurled men went careening into tables, bowling over two men seated at one and a woman at the other. Food flew. What had been a private quarrel instantly became general.

Viridovix’s banshee howl of fighting glee rose over the anguished cries of the inn’s owner and the sound of smashing crockery. The two tables were a bastion under siege, and it seemed everyone else in the eatery was trying to storm them.

Marcus had heard reports of Viridovix’s tavern brawling, but until now had never been caught up in it himself. A mug whizzed past his head, to shatter against the wall. A fat Videssian punched him in the belly. “Oof!” he said, and doubled over. He swung back, felt his fist sink into flab.

“You will excuse me, I pray,” Taso Vones said, and dove under the table, pulling Plakidia Teletze with him. She let out an unladylike squawk of protest as she disappeared.

It was, Marcus thought, the most good-natured fight he had been in. Perhaps all the battlers were in holiday spirits, or was it simply that Viridovix, at heart a good-natured soul, had set the stamp of his character on the brawl he’d started? Whatever it was, none of the scrappers showed the slightest desire to reach for the knives that hung at most of their belts. They pounded each other with high gusto, but no serious blood was spilled.

“Yipe!” said Scaurus, thrashing frantically. Someone had pulled open his tunic and poured a bowlful of syrup-sweetened
snow down his back. It felt like a million frozen, crawling ants.

The eatery’s owner ran from one little knot of fighting to the next, shouting, “Stop this! Stop this at once, Ï tell you!” No one paid him any mind until the fat Videssian, annoyed at his noise, hit him in the side of the head. He stumbled out into the night. “The guard! The guard!” His cries faded as he ran down the street.

A city man, fists flailing, charged Arigh Arghun’s son, who was not much more than half as big. There was a flurry of arms and legs—Marcus could not see all that went on, because he was trading punches with a man who reeked of wine—and the Videssian thudded to the ground. He lay still; whatever Arigh’s handfighting technique was, it worked well.

A plate broke, almost in the tribune’s ear. He whirled round to see a Videssian stagger away clutching his head. Helvis still had a piece of the plate in her hand. “Thank you, dear,” he said. She smiled and nodded.

Nor was she the only Namdalener woman able to handle herself in a ruction. Ma via and Gaius Philippus’ tart were going at it hammer and tongs, screeching and clawing and pulling hair, and it was easy to see the blonde was getting the better of the battle. But her foe was still game; when the senior centurion tried to drag her out of the fray she raked her nails down his cheek, missing his eye by no more than an inch. “Stay and fight, then, you mangy trollop!” he yelled, all vestiges of chivalry forgotten.

Katakolon Kekaumenos sat sipping his wine, a bubble of calm in the brabble around him. One of the brawlers was rash enough to mistake his quiet for cowardice and started to tip his chair over backward. Kakaumenos was on his feet and spinning toward the Videssian almost before it began to move. He punched him once in the face and once in the belly, then lifted his sagging body over his head and threw him through a window. That done, he straightened the chair and returned to his wine, quiet as a snow leopard just after it has fed.