The Legion of Videssos (12 page)

Zigabenos barked an order. Dart-throwers bucked and crashed. Javelins whizzed at the palisade, making Drax’ men keep their heads down. The Namdaleni would pop up, fire at whatever they thought they could hit, and duck behind their earthwork again.

Stone-flingers went into action a few minutes later, hurling rocks as heavy as a man against the tower. They scarred it, and now and then a timber cracked, but it showed no signs of collapse. The islanders had built well. Engineers winched their weapons’ twisted gut cords back over and over; oaths filled the air whenever one snapped.

But the machines that hurled darts and stones were only a side show, as were the arrows the Videssians and Khamorth
sent flying into the bailey. The Videssian engineers began loading some of their catapults with thin wooden casks full of an incendiary mixture and lobbing them at the tower on the motte.

In their siege warfare the Romans often flung burning pitch or tallow at wooden works. The Empire’s fire-brew was deadlier yet. It was compounded of sulfur, quicklime, and a black, foul-smelling oil that seeped up from the ground here and there in imperial territory. As the casks smashed against the tower, sheets of liquid fire dripped down its sides.

The archers inside screamed in terror as the flames took hold. Namdaleni leaped down from the palisade and dashed across the bailey to fight the fire. Marcus heard their dismayed cries as the first buckets of water splashed onto the blaze. Thanks to the quicklime, it burned as enthusiastically wet as dry.

The catapults kept firing; as their cords stretched, the barrels of incendiary they hurled began falling short. Several burst at the top of the motte, splattering flame over the islanders battling the burning tower. Men ran shrieking, blazing like so many torches. The liquid fire dripped under mail shirts and clung to flesh, to hair, to eyes, burning and burning. A Namdalener plunged his sword into a comrade writhing on the ground beside him, afire from head to knees. Thick, black, greasy smoke rose straight into the sky, as sure a message to Drax as any his riders might bring.

Trumpets blared outside the doomed castle. Covered by archery, the legionaries rushed forward, hurling their bundles of brush into the ditch; whether or not he trusted them, Zigabenos held his own islanders out of this first fight with their countrymen. Though no battle-lover, Marcus was glad to run forward at the head of his men. Standing by while Drax’ soldiers burned was harder than fighting.

Almost no one was left on the earthwork to hold the legionaries at bay. A spear hurtled past the tribune, but then his
caligae
were chewing at the soft dirt of the palisade’s outer face. Shouting at the top of their lungs, the rest of the storming party were close behind.

The Namdalener who had thrown the spear stood at the top of the rampart to engage Scaurus, a big, beefy man with gray stubble on his face. He swung his heavy sword two-handed.
Marcus took the blow on his shield. He grunted at the impact and almost slid down the slope. The islander easily parried his awkward counterthrust, then raised his blade for another swipe.

A
pilum
bit into his neck. The sword flew from his hands. They clutched for a moment at the Roman spear’s long iron shank, then slid limply away as his knees buckled and he began to topple. Scaurus charged over his body; already legionaries were dropping down into the bailey.

Only a handful of islanders fell at the rampart. Once it was lost, they wasted little time in dropping swords and helmets in token of surrender. Longtime mercenaries, they saw no point in fighting to the death in a hopeless cause. “Think the Emperor’ll take us on again, maybe on the Astris to watch the plainsmen?” one of their officers asked Marcus seriously, not a bit abashed by his revolt.

The tribune could only spread his hands in front of him. Strapped for men, Thorisin might do just that.

“Look out! Heads up!” Namdaleni and Romans cried together. The tower on the motte came crashing down, scattering charred timbers and red-hot embers in all directions. A legionary gasped and swore as a blazing chunk of wood seared his leg; one islander was crushed beneath a falling log. He had already been hideously burned; perhaps, Marcus thought, it was for the best.

A Namdalener healer-priest did what he could for the victims of the rain of fire. That was not much; no healer-priest could call the dead back to life. The islanders’ clerics stood out less than their Videssian counterparts. Unlike the Empire’s priests, they wore armor and fought alongside other soldiers, a gross barbarism in the imperials’ eyes.

Marcus climbed to the top of the earthwork once more. An arrow whistled over his head; he glared out, trying without success to spot the overeager archer who’d loosed it. “Hold up! The place is ours!” he shouted, and gave the thumbs-up signal of the gladiatorial games. The Videssians did not use it, but they understood. The soldiers cheered. Zigabenos waved to the tribune, who returned the salute.

Inside the fortress, islanders recovered their fallen comrades’ swords to pass on to their kin, a melancholy ceremony Scaurus knew only too well: he had brought Hemond’s
sword to Helvis after Avshar’s magic killed the islander. Fourteen Namdaleni had died here, most from burns. To the tribune’s relief, no legionaries were lost, and only a couple hurt.

As they led their prisoners out of the castle, troopers on both sides were exchanging names and bits of military lore. The legionaries were becoming as much mercenaries as the men of the Duchy, plying their trade with skill but without animosity. And ever since they came to Videssos, the Romans had gotten on well with the Namdaleni, sometimes to the alarm of the Videssians themselves.

When Drax’ men saw the Namdaleni in the imperial army, though, they showered abuse on them: “Turncoats! Cowards! You scum are on the wrong side!” The officer who had talked to Scaurus—his name, the tribune had learned, was Stillion of Sotevag—spied a captain he knew and shouted, “Turgot, you should be ashamed!” Turgot looked sheepish and did not answer.

Then Utprand strode forward; his icy glare froze the ragging to silence. “Turncoats you speak of?” he said, not loud but very clear. “T’ose as follow Drax know the word, yes, very well.” He turned his back on them, calm and contemptuous.

Mertikes Zigabenos sent the captured rebels back to the capital with a guard of Videssian horsemen. “Very nicely done,” he complimented Marcus. “So much for the vaunted Namdalener fortress; taken without losing a man. Yes, nicely done.”

“Aye, so much indeed,” Gaius Philippus said when Zigabenos had gone off to get the army moving once more. “It held us up for a day and cost us whatever surprise we had. I’d say Drax made a fair bargain.”

Styppes dealt capably with one of the Roman casualties, a trooper with a badly gashed calf. As always, the act of healing awed Scaurus. The priest held the cut closed with his hands. Murmuring prayers to focus his concentration, he brought all his will to bear on the wound. The tribune, watching, felt the air—thicken? congeal? Latin lacked the concept, let alone the word—around it as the healing current passed through the priest. And when Styppes drew away his hands, the gaping cut was no more than a thin white scar on the soldier’s leg.

“Much obliged, your honor,” the legionary said, getting to his feet. He walked with no trace of a limp.

For the second seriously injured soldier, a Vaspurakaner whose skull had been broken by a falling timber when the tower collapsed, Styppes had less to offer. After examining the man, the priest said only, “He will live or die as Phos wills; he is beyond my power to cure.” Though disappointed, Marcus did not think he was slacking. Gorgidas could not have helped the luckless trooper, either.

The tribune came up to Styppes, who was—inevitably, Scaurus thought—refreshing himself from a wineskin. In fairness, his craft was exhausting; Scaurus had seen healer-priests fall asleep on their feet.

Styppes wiped his mouth and then his sweat-beaded forehead on the sleeve of his robe. “You took hurt in the fighting, too?” he asked the tribune. “I see no blood.”

“Er, no,” Scaurus said hesitantly. He held out his wrist to the healer-priest. Helvis’ nails had dug deep; the gouges were red and angry-looking. “Our former physician would have given me some salve or other for these. I was hoping you might—”

“What?” Styppes roared, furious. “You want me to squander the substance of my strength on your doxy’s claw marks? Get you gone—Phos’ service is not to be demeaned by such fribblings, nor do healers waste their time over trifles.”

“The poor Vaspurakaner is too much for you, and I too little, eh?” the tribune snapped back, angry in return. Styppes unfailingly found a way to grate on him. “What good are you, then?”

“Ask your Roman,” the healer-priest retorted. “If your cursed scratches mortify, I’ll see to them. Otherwise leave me be; it wears me no less to heal small hurts than great.”

“Oh,” Scaurus said in a small voice. He had not known that. There was, he realized, a lot he did not know about the healer-priests’ art. Styppes and his kind could work cures that had left Gorgidas in envious despair, but it seemed the Greek also had skills they lacked.

Thinking back to Gaius Philippus’ remark of a little while before, the tribune wondered what sort of bargain Styppes was.

* * *

That evening Helvis did not appear. Marcus waited inside his tent until the legionary camp slept around him, hoping she would come. At last, knowing she would not, he blew out the lamp and tried to sleep himself. It was not easy. When Helvis and he were first partnered, sharing the sleeping-mat with her had made it hard for him to doze off. Now, alone, he missed her warm presence beside him.

All what you’re used to, he thought. He tossed irritably. What he was getting used to was not sleeping.

Videssos’ coastal plain was as flat a land as any, but to the tribune the next day’s march was all uphill. There was a brief flurry of excitement late in the afternoon when a couple of Namdalener scouts emerged from a clump of woods to take a long look at the imperial army, but neither the Khatrishers’ yells as they gave chase nor Gaius Philippus’ lurid oaths after Drax’ men escaped succeeded in rousing Scaurus from his torpor.

Munching absently on a husk-filled chunk of journeybread, he walked down the
via principalis
as dusk fell. As always, his own tent was midway between the two entrances on the camp’s main street, with the surveyors’ white flag just in front of it. He was about to lift the canvas tent flap when the sound of a familiar voice made him spin on his heel.

Yelling, “Papa! Papa!” Malric swarmed down the
via principalis
toward him. Because the Roman camp was always built to the same simple formula, even a five-year-old could find his way in it with confidence.

“I missed you, Papa,” Malric said as Marcus bent to hug his stepson. “Where were you? Mama said you were in the fighting yesterday. Were you very brave?”

“I missed you, too,” Marcus said, adding, “and your mother,” as Helvis, carrying both Dosti and her traveling chest, came up to him. Seeing the tribune, Dosti wriggled in her arms until she set the toddler down. He staggered over to Scaurus; his legs grew steadier under him every day. The tribune gathered his son in.

“Papa,” Dosti announced importantly.

“So I am.” Marcus stood up; Dosti started undoing the leather straps of one of his
caligae
, reached up to bat at his scabbarded sword.

“You might say hello to me as well,” Helvis said.

“Hello,” he said cautiously, but she tilted her face up to be kissed as if nothing was wrong. A knot came undone in his chest; he had not known how tight it was till it loosened. Risking a smile, he raised the tent flap. Malric darted in, shouting, “Come on, slowcoach!” to Dosti, who followed as best he could. Helvis stooped to enter. Marcus went in after her.

The talk was deliberately ordinary for a long time: bits of gossip Helvis had picked up among the women, the tribune’s account of the storming of the castle. At last he asked it straight out: “Why did you come back?”

She looked at him sidelong. “It’s not enough I did? Must you always dig down under everything?”

“Habit,” he said, waving at the camp all around them. “I have to.”

“The plague take your habits,” Helvis flared, “aye, and your senseless love for creaking Videssos, too.” Marcus waited for the fire to grow hotter, but instead she laughed, more at herself than to him. “Why did I come back? If it was once, it was five thousand times from Malric: ‘Where’s Papa? When is he coming back? Well, why don’t you know?’ And Dosti fussed and cried and wouldn’t stop.” Even in the flickering lamplight, she looked worn.

“Is that all?”

“What do you want me to say? That I missed you? That I wanted to come back because I cared about you?”

“If that’s so, I want very much for you to say it,” he answered quietly.

“What does it matter to you, with your precious Empire to care about?” she said, but her face softened. “It is so. Oh, this is hard. There you were fighting against my people—my kinsmen even, for all I know—and what was I doing? Praying to Phos you’d come through safe. I thought I didn’t care—until you went into danger. A heart’s easy to harden with nothing at stake, but—damn it anyway!” she finished, caught between conflicting feelings.

“Thank you,” he said. He went on, “When I was sixteen I was sure everything was simple. Here I am twenty years later and, by the gods, twenty times more confused.” Helvis smiled and frowned at the same time, not quite pleased by his automatic
translation of the Latin oath. Even there, he thought, I have to be careful. Still … “We stumble on somehow, don’t we?”

“So far,” she said. “So far.”

There were more of Drax’ men the next day, not scouts but a good fifty hard-looking horsemen who rode, lances couched, not far out of bowshot on the army’s flank. They shouted something at Utprand’s Namdaleni, but distance blurred their voices so no words were clear. “Bold-faced sods, aren’t they?” Gaius Philippus said.

Zigabenos thought so, too. He sent off the Khatrishers to drive the rebel mercenaries away. Drax’ men pulled back to forest cover in good order. Laon Pakhymer did not order his archers into the woods after them, unwilling to sacrifice the mobility that was their chief advantage. After a while his men rode off to catch up to the rest of the imperials. Drax’ troopers emerged and took up their dogging post once more.