The Legion of Videssos (34 page)

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 so 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.

After a while, Skylitzes’ knuckles grew white on the stem of his goblet. The clan councilors were beginning to chuckle among themselves at the fury he had to hold in. “I’ll tell that sleazy liar something!” he growled.

“No!” Arigh and Goudeles said together. The pen-pusher went on, “Don’t you see, he’ll have you in the wrong if you answer him.”

“Is this better, to be nibbled to death with his sly words?”

Surprised at his own daring, Gorgidas said, “I know a story that might put him in his place.”

Skylitzes, Goudeles, and Arigh all stared at the Greek. To the Videssians he was almost as much a barbarian as the Arshaum, not to be taken seriously; Arigh tolerated him largely because he was Viridovix’ friend. “You won’t break custom?” he warned.

Gorgidas tossed his head. “No, it’s just a story.” Goudeles and Skylitzes looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded, at a loss for any better idea.

Bogoraz, whose Videssian was certainly better than the Greek’s, had listened to this exchange with amiable disdain, seeing that Gorgidas’ companions did not put much faith in him. His heavy-lidded eyes screened his contempt as Gorgidas dipped his head to Arghun and, with Arigh translating, said,
“Khagan, this man from Yezd is a fine speaker, no doubt of it. His words remind me of a tale of my own people.”

Beyond what was required for politeness, the Arshaum chieftain had not paid Gorgidas much attention either. Now he looked at him with fresh interest; in a folk that did not read, a tale-teller was someone to be respected. “Let us hear it,” he said, and the elders fell quiet to listen.

Pleased Arghun had swallowed the hook, Gorgidas plunged in: “A long time ago, in a country called Egypt, there was a great king named Sesostris.” He saw men’s lips moving, fixing the strange names in their memories. “Now this Sesostris was a mighty warrior and conqueror, just as our friend Bogoraz says his master Wulghash is.” The smile slipped on the Yezda’s face; the sarcasm he relished was not so enjoyable coming back at him.

“Sesostris conquered many countries, and took their princes and kings as his slaves to show how powerful he was. He even put them in harness and made them pull his, er, yurt.” As the Greek had heard the story, it was a chariot; he made the quick switch to suit his audience.

“One day he noticed that one of the princes kept looking back over his shoulder at the yurt’s wheels. He asked the fellow what he was doing.

“And the prince answered, ‘I’m just watching how the wheels go round and round, and how what was once at the bottom is now on top, and what used to be high is brought low.’ Then he turned round again and put his shoulder into his work.

“But Sesostris understood him, and they say that, for all his pride, he stopped using princes to haul his yurt.”

The strange sounding mutter of conversation in a foreign tongue picked up again as the Arshaum considered the tale, talked about it among themselves. One or two of them sent amused glances toward Bogoraz, thinking back to his boasts. As befit his station, Arghun held his face expressionless. He said a few words to his elder son, who turned to Gorgidas. “He thanks you for an, ah, enjoyable story.”

“I understood him.” Repeating his half bow to the khagan, the Greek tried to say that in the Arshaum speech. Arghun did smile, then, and corrected his grammar.

Bogoraz, too, wore a diplomat’s mask, set so hard it might have been carved from granite. He aimed his hooded eyes at Gorgidas like a snake charming a bird. The Greek was not one to be put in fear by such ploys, but knew he had made an enemy.

G
ARSAVRA, ONCE REACHED, MADE ALL THE FACTIONAL
strife Marcus had seen in Videssos seem as nothing. On the march west the legionaries had captured and sent back to the capital upwards of a thousand Namdaleni, fleeing their defeat at the hands of the Yezda in the small, disordered bands any beaten army breaks into. A hundred or so still held the motte-and-bailey outside Garsavra, defying Roman and Yezda alike. The tribune did not try to force them out; they were more useful against the nomads nosing down from the plateau than dangerous to his own men.

There were already Yezda in Garsavra when the legionaries got there. The town was not under their control; before Scaurus’ troops arrived, it was under no one’s control—which meant no one kept them out, either. Attacking them hardly seemed politic while haggling with their chief, so the tribune pretended not to notice them.

The nomads caused little trouble, going through the town like tourists and marveling at the huge buildings. Compared to Videssos the city or Rome, it was a sleepy provincial capital, but to men who lived their lives in tents it was strange and exotic beyond belief. The Yezda traded in the marketplace for
civilization’s luxuries and fripperies. Marcus saw one of them proudly wearing a white-glazed chamberpot on his head in place of the ubiquitous nomad fur cap. He would have told the nomad what he had, but the fellow’s comrades were so admiring he did not have the heart. Quite a few local Videssians saw it, too; it gave the Yezda a new nickname, which might make trouble later.

That was the least of the tribune’s problems with the locals. Faced as they were with the threat of attack from the central highlands, he had expected them to join together in receiving the legionaries favorably. Moreover, he needed them to do so. Even with Pakhymer’s contribution, he was still eight thousand gold pieces short of the twenty thousand Yavlak demanded for his important captives. He had dispatched messages to the capital, but had no confidence they would bring the quick results he needed. With Thorisin Gavras fighting in the east, no one in Videssos had the driving will to hurry the imperial bureaucracy along. Scaurus knew that bureaucracy too well; he planned to raise the money he needed from the people of Garsavra and repay them when the pen-pushers finally got around to shipping gold west.

Expecting any large number of Videssians to agree about anything, however, as he should have remembered, was so much wishful thinking. True, many Garsavrans favored Thorisin—or said so, loudly, while the Emperor’s troops held their city. But almost as many still held to the lost cause of Baanes Onomagoulos; the rebellious noble Drax had crushed before revolting in his turn had held huge estates not far south of Garsavra. Dead, especially dead at foreign hands, no one remembered his faults. The arrogant, liverish, treacherous little man was magically transformed into a martyr.

By contrast, a third party was sorry to see the Namdaleni beaten and imperial rule restored. Antakinos had warned Marcus the islanders were popular in the cities they had taken, and his warning was true. Drax had a smaller state to run than the Empire and so did not tax his towns as heavily as the imperials had. From novelty if nothing else, that was enough to gain him a good-sized following.

As subject people will, some of the Garsavrans had gone over to their conquerors’ ways, even to the extent of worshiping at the temple Drax had converted to the Namdalener rite
for his own men to use. The idea infuriated Styppes, who got into a shouting match with a Namdalener priest he happened to run into in the city marketplace.

Scaurus, who had been dickering with a tremor over the price of a new belt, looked up in alarm at the bellow of, “Seducer! Greaser of the skid to Skotos’ ice!” Face crimson with rage, fists clenched in righteous wrath, the healer-priest shouldered his way toward the man of the Duchy, who held a fat mallard under each arm.

“By the Wager, conceited Cocksure, yours is the path to hell, not mine!” the islander yelled back, facing up to him. His priestly robe was a grayer shade of blue than Styppes’; he did not shave his head, as Videssian priests did. But his faith in his own righteousness was as strong as any imperial’s.

“Excuse me,” Marcus whispered to the leather seller. At a trot, as if heading into battle, he hurried toward the two priests, who were swearing at each other like a couple of cattle drovers. If he could get Styppes away before argument turned to riot … Too late. A crowd was already gathering. But they were crying, “Debate! Debate! Come hear the debate!” This was a diversion they had enjoyed before, with local clerics against the Namdaleni. Now they came running to hear what the new priest had to offer.

Styppes glared about as if not believing his ears. Scaurus was equally surprised, but much happier. They might get away without bloodshed after all. The tribune winced as Styppes clapped a dramatic hand to his forehead and declared, “Misbelief is to be rooted out, not discussed.”

“Heh! I’ll talk to
you
,” the Namdalener said. He was about forty, with tough, square, dogged features that seemed better suited to an infantry underofficer than a priest. Almost as heavy as Styppes, he bore his weight better, more like an athlete gone to seed than a simple glutton. He gave an ironic bow. “Gerungus of Tupper, at your service.”

Styppes coughed and fumed, but the crowd, to Marcus’ relief, kept shouting for a debate. With poor grace, the healer-priest told Gerungus his name. “As you are the heretic, I shall begin,” the Videssian said, “and leave you to defend your false doctrines as best you can.”

Gerungus muttered something unpleasant under his breath,
but shrugged massive shoulders and said, “One of us has to.” His Videssian was only slightly accented.

“Then I shall commence by asking how you islanders come to pervert Phos’ creed by appending to it the clause ‘on this we stake our very souls.’ What authority have you for this addition? What synod sanctioned it, and when? As handed down from our learned and holy forefathers, the creed was perfect, as it stood, and should receive no valueless codicils.” Marcus raised his eyebrows. Here in his area of expertise, Styppes showed more eloquence than the tribune had thought in him. Cries of approval rang from the crowd.

But every Videssian priest who disputed with Gerungus challenged him so. His answer was prompt: “Your ancient scholars lived in a fool’s paradise, when the Empire ruled all the way to the Haloga country and Skotos’ evil seemed far away. But you Videssians were sinners, and Skotos gained the chance to show his power. That is how the barbarians came to wrest Khatrish and Thatagush from you, aye, and Kubrat that was. For Skotos inspired the wild Khamorth from the steppe and corrupted you so you could not resist. And it grew plain Skotos’ power is all too real, all too strong. Who knows whether Phos will prevail in the end? It could turn out otherwise.”

Now Styppes was white, not red. “A Balancer!” he exclaimed, and the crowd growled menacingly. To the imperials, Khatrish’s belief in the evenness of the struggle between good and evil was a worse heresy than the one the Namdaleni professed.