The Tale of Krispos (68 page)

“I come from Petronas’ estates. He is my master. He was always good to me; I figured he’d be good for the Empire.” He studied Krispos, his head cocked to one side. “I still reckon that might be so, but looks to me now like he’s not the only one.”

“I hope not.” Krispos wondered how many men throughout the Empire of Videssos could run it capably if they somehow found themselves on the throne. He’d never had that thought before. More than a few, he decided, a little bemused. But he was the one with the job, and he aimed to keep it.

“What is it, Majesty?” Narvikka asked. “By the furrow of your brow, I’d guess a weighty thought.”

“Not really.” Laughing, Krispos explained.

Narvikka said, “Bethink yourself on your good fortune, Majesty: of all those might-be Avtokrators, only Petronas wears the red boots in your despite.”

“Even Petronas is one man too many in them.” Krispos turned to go back to his tent, then stopped. A grin of pure mischief slowly spread over his face. “I know just how to get him out of them, too.” His voice rose. “Trokoundos!”

The mage hurried over to him. “How may I serve Your Majesty?” he asked, bowing.

Krispos told Trokoundos what he needed, then said anxiously, “This isn’t battle magic, is it?”

Trokoundos’ heavy-lidded eyes half closed as he considered. At last he said, “It shouldn’t be. And even if Petronas’ person is warded, as it’s sure to be, who would think of protecting his boots?” His smile was a slyer version of Krispos’. “The more so as we won’t do them a bit of harm.”

“So we won’t,” Krispos said. “But, the lord with the great and good mind willing, we’ll do some to Petronas.”

Chapter
V

P
ETRONAS, AS WAS HIS HABIT, WOKE SOON AFTER DAWN. HIS
back and shoulders ached; too many years of sleeping soft in Videssos the city—aye, and even when he took the field—left him unused to making do with a single blanket for a bedroll. At that, he was luckier than most of the men who still clove to him, for he had a tent to shelter him from the nighttime chill. Theirs were lost, booty now for the army that followed Krispos.

“Krispos!” Petronas mouthed the name, making it into a curse. He cursed himself, too, for he had first taken Krispos into his own household, then introduced him into Anthimos’.

He’d never imagined Krispos’ influence with his nephew could rival his own—till the day he found himself, his head shorn, cast into the monastery of the holy Skirios. He ran a hand through his hair. Only now, most of a year after he’d slipped out of the monastery, did he have a proper man’s growth once more.

He’d never imagined Krispos would dare seize the throne, or that Krispos could govern once he had it—everyone, he’d been sure, would flock to his own banner. But it had not happened so. Petronas cursed himself again, for putting that fat fool of a Mammianos in a place that had proven so important.

And with that fat fool, Krispos had beaten him twice now—and by the good god, Petronas had never imagined
that
! Just how badly he’d underestimated Krispos, and Krispos’ knack for getting other people to do what he needed, was only now sinking in, when it was on the very edge of being too late.

Petronas clenched a fist. “No, by Phos, not too late!” he said out loud. He pissed in a chamber pot—likely the last of those left to his army—then decked himself in the full imperial regalia. Seeing him in the raiment rightfully his could only hearten his men, he told himself.

He stooped to go out through the tent flap and walked over to his horse, which was tied nearby. He sprang onto the beast’s back with a surge of pride—he might be nearing sixty, but he could still ride. He smiled maliciously to think of Gnatios, who quivered atop anything bigger than a mule.

But as Petronas rode through the camp, his smile faded. Years of gauging armies’ tempers made him worry about this one. The men were restive and discouraged; he did not like the way they refused to meet his eye. When a soldier did look his way, he liked the fellow’s stare even less. “By the ice, what are you gaping at?” he snarled.

The trooper looked apprehensive at being singled out. “B-begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but why did you don black boots to wear with your fine robe and crown?”

“Are you mad?” Petronas took his left foot from the stirrup and kicked his leg up and down. “This boot’s as red as a man’s arse after a week in the saddle.”

“Begging your pardon again, Majesty, but it looks black to me. So does the right one, sir—uh, sire. May the ice take me if I lie.”

“Are you telling me I don’t know red when I see it?” Petronas asked dangerously. He looked down at his boots. They were both a most satisfactory crimson, the exact imperial shade. Petronas had seen it worn by his father, by his brother, and by his nephew; it was as familiar to him as the back of his hand—more familiar than his own face, for sometimes he did not see a mirror for weeks at a stretch.

Instead of answering him directly, the trooper turned to his mates. “Tell his Majesty, lads. Are those boots red or are they black?”

“They’re black,” the soldiers said in one voice. Now it was Petronas’ turn to stare at them; he could not doubt they meant what they said. One man added, “Seems an unchancy thing to me, wearing a private citizen’s boots with all that fancy imperial gear.”

Another said, “Aye, there’s no good omen in that.” Several troopers drew Phos’ sun-circle over their hearts.

Petronas glanced at his boots again. They still looked red to him. If his men did not see them so—he shivered. That omen seemed bad to him, too, as if he had no right to the imperial throne. He clenched his teeth against the idea that Phos had turned away from him and toward that accursed upstart Krispos…

The moment his rival’s name entered his mind, he knew Phos was not the one who had arranged the omen. He shouted for his wizard. “Skeparnas!” When the mage did not appear at once, he shouted again, louder this time.
“Skeparnas!”

Skeparnas picked his way through the soldiers. He was a tall, thin man with a long, lean face, a beard waxed to a point, and the longest fingers Petronas had ever seen. “How may I serve you, Your Majesty?”

“What color are my boots?” Petronas demanded.

He’d seldom seen Skeparnas taken aback, but now the wizard blinked and drew back half a step. “To me, Your Majesty, they look red,” he said cautiously.

“To me, too,” Petronas said. But before the words were out of his mouth, the soldiers all around set up a clamor, insisting they were black. “Shut up!” he roared at them. To Skeparnas he went on, more quietly, “I think Krispos magicked them, the stinking son of a spotted snake.”

“Ahh.” Skeparnas leaned forward, like a tower tilting after an earthquake. “Yes, that would be a clever ploy, wouldn’t it?” His hands writhed in quick passes; those spidery fingers seemed almost to knot themselves together.

Suddenly Petronas’ soldiers called out: “They’re red now, Your Majesty!”

“There, you see?” Petronas said triumphantly.

“A lovely spell, most marvelously subtle,” Skeparnas said with a connoisseur’s appreciation. “Not only did it have no hold on you, it was also made to be invisible to anyone who perceived it with a mage’s eye, thus perhaps delaying its discovery and allowing it to work the maximum amount of confusion.”

“Very fornicating lovely,” Petronas snapped. He raised his voice to address his men. “You see, my heroes, there’s no omen here. This was just more of Krispos’ vile work, aiming to make you think something’s wrong when it’s not. Just a cheap, miserable trick, not worth fretting over.”

He waited, hoping for an answering cheer. It did not come. Determinedly, though, he rode through the army as if it had. He waved to the men, making his horse rear and caracole.

“How do we know those boots weren’t really black till the mage spelled ’em red again?” one soldier asked another as he came by. He rode on, but keeping his face still after that was as hard as if he’d taken a lance in the guts.

T
ROKOUNDOS STAGGERED, THEN STEADIED HIMSELF. “THEY’VE
broken the spell,” he gasped. “By the good god, I could do with a cup of wine.” Greasy sweat covered his fine-drawn features.

Krispos poured with his own hand. “How much good do you think it’s done?”

“No way to guess,” Trokoundos said, gasping again after he’d drained the cup at a single long draft. “You know how it is, Majesty: If the soldiers are truly strong for Petronas, they’ll stay with him come what may. If they’re wavering, the least little thing could seem a bad omen to ’em.”

“Aye.” More and more, Krispos was coming to believe the art of leading men was a kind of magic, though not one sorcerers studied. What folk thought of a ruler, oftentimes, seemed more important than what he really was.

“Shall I try the spell again this afternoon, Majesty, or maybe tomorrow morning?” Trokoundos asked.

After some thought, Krispos shook his head. “That would make them sure it was our sorcery, I think. If it only happens the once, they can’t be certain quite what it is.”

“As you wish, of course,” Trokoundos said. “What then?”

“I’m going to let Petronas stew in his own juice for a couple of days,” Krispos answered. “When I do hit him again, I’ll hit hard. People who know this country have already told me of other passes through the hills, and he doesn’t have enough men to cover them all. If he stays where he is, I can leave enough men here to keep him from bursting out onto the plain again, while I take the rest around to hit him from behind.”

“What if he flees?”

“If he flees now, after losing to me twice, he’s mine,” Krispos said. “Then it’s just a matter of running him to earth.”

While Petronas—he hoped—stewed, Krispos spent the next few days catching up on the dispatches that never stopped coming from the capital. He approved a commercial treaty with Khatrish, scribbled minor changes on an inheritance law before he affixed his seal to it, commuted one death sentence where the evidence looked flimsy, and let another stand.

He wrote to Mavros of his second victory, then read through his foster brother’s gossipy reports of doings in Videssos the city. From them, and from Dara’s occasional shorter notes, he gathered that Phostis, while still small, was doing well. That filled him with sober satisfaction; whether a baby lived to grow up was always a roll of the dice.

Mavros also forwarded dispatches from the war against Harvas Black-Robe. Krispos read and reread those. Agapetos’ preemptive attack had bogged down, but he still stood on enemy soil. Maybe, Krispos thought, the peasants near the northern border would be able to get in a crop in peace.

Other documents also came from the city. Krispos began to dread opening the ones sealed with sky-blue wax. Every time he did, he read that Pyrrhos had deposed another priest or abbot for infractions that seemed ever more trivial. Casting a man from his temple for trimming his beard too close, for instance, left Krispos shaking his head. He wrote a series of increasingly blunt notes to the patriarch, urging Pyrrhos to show restraint.

But restraint did not seem to be part of Pyrrhos’ vocabulary. Letters of protest also came to Krispos from ousted clerics, from clerics afraid they would be ousted, and from delegations of prominent citizens from several towns seeking protection for their local priests.

More and more, Krispos wished he could have retained Gnatios as ecumenical patriarch. He’d never imagined that one of his strongest allies could become one of his greatest embarrassments. And yet Pyrrhos remained zealous in his behalf. With Petronas and Gnatios still to worry about, Krispos put off a decision on his rigorist patriarch.

He sent a holding force under Sarkis against the pass through which Petronas had fled, then led the rest of the army north and west through another gap to get behind his rival. His part of the army was just entering that second pass when a courier from Sarkis galloped up on a blowing, foam-spattered horse. The man was panting as hard as if he’d done all that running himself. “Majesty!” he called. “Rejoice, Majesty! We’re through!”

“You’re through?” Krispos stared at him. “Sarkis forced the pass, you mean?” That was good luck past all expectation. Petronas knew how to find defensive positions. A handful of determined men could have held the pass for days, so long as they were not outflanked.

But the courier said, “Looks like Petronas’ army’s gone belly-up, the lord Sarkis told me to tell you. Some have fled, more are yielding themselves up. The fight isn’t in ’em anymore, Majesty.”

“By the good god,” Krispos said softly. He wondered what part—if any—the magic he’d suggested had played.
Have to ask some prisoners,
he told himself before more urgent concerns drove the matter from his mind. “What’s become of Petronas, then? Has he surrendered?”

“No, Majesty, no sign of him, nor of Gnatios, either. The lord Sarkis urges speed on you, to help round up as many flying soldiers as we may.”

“Yes.” Krispos turned to Thvari, the captain of his Haloga guards. “Will you and your men ride pack horses, brave sir, to help us move the faster?”

Thvari spoke to the guardsmen in their own slow, rolling speech. They shouted back, grinning and waving their axes. “Aye,” Thvari said unnecessarily. He added, “We would not miss being in at the kill.”

“Good.” Krispos called orders to the army musicians. The long column briefly halted. The baggage-train handlers shifted burdens on their animals, freeing up enough to accommodate the Halogai. They waved away soldiers who wanted to help; men without their long-practiced skill at lashing and unlashing bundles would only have slowed them down.

The musicians blew
At the trot.
The army started forward again. The Halogai were no horsemen, but most managed to stay on their mounts and keep them headed in the right direction. That was plenty, Krispos thought. If they needed to fight, they would dismount.

“Where do you think Petronas will go if his army has broken up?” Krispos asked Mammianos.

The fat general tugged at his beard as he thought. “Some failed rebels might flee to Makuran, but I can’t see Petronas as cat’s-paw for the King of Kings. He’d sooner leap off a cliff, I think. He might do that anyway, Your Majesty, to keep you from gloating over him.”

“I wouldn’t gloat,” Krispos said.

Mammianos studied him. “Mmm, maybe not. But he would if
he
caught
you,
and we always reckon others from ourselves. Likeliest, though, Petronas’ll try and hole himself up somewhere, do what he can against you. Let me think…There’s an old fortress not too far from here, place called—what in the name of the ice
is
the place called? Antigonos, that’s what it is. That’s as good a guess as any, and better than most.”