The Sarantine Mosaic (30 page)

In the unfolding of events, of a man's life, so many things can intervene. Just as he was not to see his torch of Heladikos in the chapel outside Varena by glittering candlelight, so this, too, was a task Crispin was never to perform, though his intentions in that moment were deeply sincere and nearly pious. Nor did they, in fact, end up spending that night in the dormitory of the ancient sanctuary.

The cleric slipped the brown tessera into his robe. But before anyone could speak again, they heard a distant and then a growing thunder of horses from the road.

The cleric looked to the doors, startled. Crispin exchanged a sharp glance with Vargos. Then they heard, even through the doors and well back from the road, a loudly shouted command to halt. The hoofbeats stopped. There was a jingling, then boots on the path and the voices of men.

The doors burst open admitting a spearshaft of daylight and half a dozen cavalry soldiers. They strode forward, heavy steps on stone. None of them looked up at the dome. Their leader, a burly, black-haired, very tall man, carrying his helmet under one arm, stopped before the four of them. He nodded to the cleric, stared at Crispin.

‘Carullus, tribune of the Fourth Sauradian. My respects. Saw the mule. We are looking for someone on this road. Would you be named Martinian of Varena, by any chance?'

Crispin, unable to think of any adequate reason to do otherwise, nodded his head in agreement. He was, in fact, speechless.

Carullus of the Fourth's formal expression gave way on the instant to mingled disdain and triumph—a remarkable conjunction, in fact, a challenge ever to render in tesserae. He levelled a thick, indicting finger at Crispin. ‘Where the
fuck
have you been, you shit-smeared Rhodian slug? Sticking it into every poxed whore on the road? What are you
doing
on the road instead of at sea? You've been awaited in the fucking City for
weeks
now by his thrice-exalted Majesty, His Imperial Magnificence, the fucking Emperor Valerius II himself. You turd.'

‘You are a mentally defective idiot of a Rhodian, you know.'

An entirely unexpected memory came to Crispin with the words, forming slowly, retrieved from some lost
corner of childhood. It was amazing, really, what the mind could dredge forth. At the most absurd moments. He had been stunned unconscious when he was about nine years old, playing ‘Siege' with friends around and on top of a woodshed. He'd failed to repel a ferocious Barbarian assault from two older boys and had pitched from the shed roof, landing on his head among logs.

From that morning until the guardsmen of Queen Gisel had clapped a sack of flour over his head and clubbed him into submission the experience had not been repeated.

It had now, Crispin grasped through the miasma of an excruciating headache, been duplicated twice in the same autumn season. His thoughts were extremely muddled. For a moment he'd attributed the obscene words he'd just heard to Linon. But Linon was sardonic not profane, she called him
imbecile
not
idiot
, spoke Rhodian not Sarantian, and she was gone.

Recklessly, he opened his eyes. The world shifted and heaved, appallingly. He closed them again quickly, near to throwing up.

‘A genuine fool,' the heavy voice went on implacably. ‘Ought never to be allowed out of doors. What in holy thunder do you
expect
to happen when a foreigner—a
Rhodian
at that!—calls a Sarantine cavalry tribune a fartfaced goat-fucker in the presence of his own men?'

It wasn't Linon. It was the soldier.

Carullus. Of the Fourth Sauradian. That was the swine's name.

The swine went on, his tone a gross exaggeration of patience now. ‘Have you the least idea of the position you put me in? The Imperial army is
entirely
dependent on respect for authority … and regular payment, of course … and you left me next to no choice at all. I couldn't draw a sword in a chapel. I couldn't strike you
with my fist … giving you far too much dignity. Flattening you with a helm was just about the only
possible
course. I didn't even swing hard. Be grateful that I'm known for a kindly man, you snot-faced Rhodian prig, and that you've a beard. The bruise won't show as much before it heals. You'll be as ugly as you've always been, not more than that.'

Carullus of the Fourth chuckled. He actually chuckled. He'd been slugged with a helmet. It was coming back to him. On the cheekbone and jaw. Crispin had a memory of a swift, heavy arm coming across, then nothing more. He attempted to move his jaw up and down, and then from side to side. A searing pain made him gasp, but movement was possible, it seemed. He continued to try opening his eyes at intervals, but the world insisted upon moving about in a sick-making fashion whenever he did.

‘Nothing's broken,' Carullus said easily. ‘Told you, I'm a good-natured man. Bad for discipline, but there it is. There it is. The god made me what I am. You really must not think you can walk the roads of the Sarantine Empire making insults—however clever—to the face of military officers in the presence of their troops, my western friend. I have fellow tribunes and chiliarchs who would have dragged you straight outside and run you through in the graveyard to save lugging your corpse anywhere. I, on the other hand, do not entirely subscribe to the general loathing and contempt for the sanctimonious, cowardly, shit-smeared Rhodian catamites that most soldiers of the Empire profess. I actually find you people amusing at times and, as I said before, I'm a kindly man. Ask my troops.'

Carullus, a tribune of the Sauradian Fourth, liked the cadences of his own voice, it appeared. Crispin wondered how and how soon he could kill this kindly man.

‘Where … am I?' It hurt to talk.

‘In a litter. Travelling east.'

This information brought no inconsiderable relief: it seemed the world was indeed moving, and the perception of a weaving landscape and an up-and-down-bobbing military conversationalist beside him was not merely a product of his braincase having being rearranged again.

There was something urgent to be said. He struggled and then remembered what it was. Forced his eyes open again, finally grasping that Carullus was riding beside him, on a dark grey horse. ‘My man?' Crispin asked, moving his jaw as little as possible. ‘Vargos.'

Carullus shook his head, his own mouth a thin line in a smooth-shaven face. ‘Slaves who strike a soldier—any soldier, let alone an officer—are torn apart in a public execution. Everyone knows that. He nearly knocked me down.'

‘He's not a slave, you contemptible shit!'

Carullus said, mildly enough, ‘Careful. My men might hear you, and I'd have to respond. I know he isn't a slave. We looked at his papers. He'll be whipped and castrated when we get to camp, but not killed between the horses.'

Crispin felt his heart thump then, hard. ‘He's a free man, an Imperial citizen and my hired servant. You touch him at absolute peril. I mean it. Where's the girl? What's happened to her?'

‘She
is
a slave, from one of the inns. And young enough. We can use her at camp. She spat in my face, you know.'

Crispin forced himself to be calm; anger would make him nauseated again, and useless. ‘She was sold from the inn. She belongs to me. You will know this, having gone through those papers, too, you pustulent excrescence. If she is touched or harmed, or if the man is harmed in any way, my first request of the Emperor will
be your testicles sliced off and bronzed into gaming dice. Be clear about this.'

Carullus sounded amused. ‘You really are an idiot, aren't you? Though
pustulent excrescence
is good, I must say. How do you tell anything to the Emperor at all if it is reported that you and your companions were found by our company to have been robbed, sexually penetrated in various ways, and foully murdered by outlaws on the road today? I repeat, the man and the girl will be dealt with in the usual manner.'

Crispin said, still struggling to keep his composure, ‘There is an idiot here, but he's on the horse not in the litter. The Emperor will receive a precise report of our encounter from the Sleepless Ones, along with their earnest petition that I return to supervise the restoration of the image of Jad on the dome, as we were discussing when you burst in. We were neither robbed nor killed. We were accosted in a holy place by slovenly horsemen under an incompetent dungfaced tribune, and a man personally summoned by Valerius II to Sarantium was struck by a weapon in the face. Do you prefer a reprimand leavened by my conceding I provoked you, or castration and death, Tribune?'

There was a satisfying period of silence. Crispin brought up a hand and tenderly touched his jaw.

He looked over and up at the horseman, squinting into the light. Odd specks and colours danced erratically in his vision. ‘Of course,' he added, ‘you could turn back west, kill the clerics—all of them will know the story by now—and claim we were
all
robbed and violated and killed by those evil brigands on the road. You could do that, you dried-out rat dropping.'

‘Stop insulting me,' Carullus said, but without force this time. He rode some further distance in silence. ‘I had forgotten about the fucking cleric,' he admitted, at length.

‘You forgot about who signed my Permit, too,' Crispin said. ‘And who requested me to come to the City. You've read the papers. Get on with it, Tribune: give me half a reason to be forgiving. You might consider begging.'

Instead, Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian began to swear. Impressively, in fact, and for quite some time. Finally he swung down from his horse, gestured at someone Crispin couldn't see, and handed off the reins to the soldier who hurried up. He began walking alongside Crispin's litter. ‘Rot your eyes, Rhodian. We
can't
have civilians—especially foreigners—insulting army officers! Can't you
see
that? The Empire is six months behind in their pay. Six months, with winter coming! Everything's going for
buildings
.' He said the word like another obscenity. ‘Have you any notion what morale is like?'

‘The man. The girl,' Crispin said, ignoring this. ‘Where are they? Are they hurt?'

‘They're here, they're here. She's not been touched, we've no time for play. You are
late
, I told you. That's why we were riding to look for you. An undignified, Jad-cursed order if ever there was one.'

‘Oh, shit yourself! The
courier
was late. I wrapped up affairs and left five days after he came! It was past the season for sailing. You think I
wanted
to be on this road? Find
him
and ask questions. Titaticus, or something. An idiot with a red nose. Kill him with your helmet. How is Vargos?'

Carullus looked back over his shoulder. ‘He's on a horse.'

‘What? Riding?'

The tribune sighed. ‘Tied across the back of one. He was … worked over a little. He
struck
me after you fell. He can't
do
that!'

Crispin tried to sit up, and failed, miserably. He closed his eyes and opened them again when this seemed practical.
‘Listen to me carefully. If that man has been seriously injured, I
will
have your rank and your pension revoked, if not your life. This is an oath. Get him in a litter and have him tended to. Where's the nearest physician who doesn't kill people?'

‘At camp. He
struck
me,' Carullus repeated, plain-tively. But he turned, after a moment, and gestured again, behind him. When another soldier trotted up on his horse, Carullus murmured a rapid volley of instructions, too softly for Crispin to hear. The cavalryman muttered unhappily but turned to obey.

‘It is done,' Carullus said, turning back to Crispin. ‘They say he's had nothing broken. Won't walk or piss easy for a while, but nothing that won't pass. Are we friends?'

‘Fuck yourself with your sword. How far to your camp?'

‘Tomorrow night. He's all right, I'm telling you. I don't lie.'

‘No, you just shit all over your uniform when you realize you've made the mistake of your life.'

‘Jad's blood! You swear more than I do! Martinian, there is fault here both ways. I am being reasonable.'

‘Only because a holy man saw what happened, you bloated fart, you pantomime buffoon.'

Carullus laughed suddenly. ‘True enough. Number it among the great blessings of your life. Give money to the Sleepless Ones until the day you die.
Bloated fart
is also good, by the way. I like it. I'll use it. Do you want a drink?'

The situation was outrageous, and he was only moderately reassured about Vargos's condition, but it did begin to appear that Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian was not entirely a lout, and he did want a drink.