The Tale of Krispos (69 page)

“We’ll head there, then,” Krispos said. “Do you know the way?”

“I expect I could find it, but you’ll have men who could do it quicker, I’ll tell you that.”

A few questions called to the soldiers showed Krispos that Mammianos was right. With a couple of locally raised men in the lead, the army pounded toward Antigonos. Krispos spent a while worrying what to do if Petronas was not in the fortress. Then he stopped worrying. His column was heading in the right direction to cut off fugitives anyhow.

The riders ran into several bands from Petronas’ disintegrating army. None included the rival Emperor; none of his men admitted knowing where he had gone. From what they said, he and some of his closest followers had simply disappeared the morning before, leaving the rest of the men to fend for themselves. One trooper said bitterly, “If I’d known the bugger’d run like that, I never would have followed him.”

“Petronas thinks of his own neck first,” Mammianos said. Remembering his own dealings with Anthimos’ uncle, Krispos nodded.

He and his men reached the fortress of Antigonos a little before sunset. The fortress perched atop a tall hill and surveyed the surrounding countryside like a vulture peering out from a branch on top of a high tree. The iron-faced wooden gate was slammed shut; a thin column of cooksmoke rose into the sky from the citadel.

“Somebody’s home,” Krispos said. “I wonder who.” Beside him, Mammianos barked laughter. Krispos turned to the musicians. “Blow
Parley.
”

The call rang out several times before anyone appeared on the wall to answer it. “Will you yield?” Krispos called, a minor magic of Trokoundos’ projecting his voice beyond bowshot. “I still offer amnesty to soldiers and safe passage back to the monastery for Petronas and Gnatios.”

“I’ll never trust myself to you, wretch,” shouted the man on the wall.

Krispos started slightly to recognize Petronas’ voice. It, too, carried;
Well,
Krispos thought,
I’ve known he had a mage along since he broke the spell on his boots.
He touched the amulet he wore with his lucky goldpiece. Petronas used wizards for purposes darker than extending the range of his voice. Without Trokoundos by him, Krispos would have feared to confront his foe so closely.

“I could have ordered you killed the moment I took the throne.” Krispos wondered if he should have done just that. Shrugging to himself, he went on, “I have no special yen for your blood. Only pledge you’ll live quietly among the monks and let me get on with running the Empire.”

“
My
Empire,” Petronas roared.

“Your empire is that fortress you’re huddling in,” Krispos said. “The rest of Videssos acknowledges me—and my patriarch.” If he was stuck with Pyrrhos, he thought, he ought to get some use out of him, even if only to make Petronas writhe in his cage.

“To the ice with your patriarch, the Phos-drunk fanatic!”

Krispos smiled. For once, he and Petronas agreed on something. He had no intention of letting his rival know it. He said, “You’re walled up as tightly here as you would be in the monastery of the holy Skirios. How do you propose to get away? You might as well give up and go back to the monastery.”

“Never!” Petronas stamped down off the wall. His curses remained audible. He must have noticed that and signaled to his magician, for they cut off in the middle of a foul word.

Krispos nodded to Trokoundos, who chanted a brief spell. When Krispos spoke again, a moment later, his voice had only its usual power once more. “He won’t be easy to pry out of there.”

“Not without a siege train, which we don’t have with us,” Mammianos agreed. “Not unless we can starve him out, anyway.”

Rhisoulphos stood close by, looking up at the spot on the wall that Petronas had just vacated. He shook his head at Mammianos’ words. “He has supplies for months in there. He spent the winter strengthening the place against the chance that the war would turn against him.”

“Smart of him.” Mammianos also glanced toward the fortress of Antigonos. “Aye, he’s near as clever as he thinks he is.”

“We’ll send for a siege train, by the good god, and sit round the fortress till it gets here,” Krispos said. “If Petronas wants to play at being Avtokrator inside till the rams start pounding on the walls, that’s all right with me.”

“Your sitting here may be just what he wants,” Trokoundos said. “Remember that he tried once to slay you by sorcery. Such an effort would be all the easier to repeat with you close by. We’ve just seen his mage is still with him.”

“I can’t very well leave before he’s taken, not if I intend to leave men of mine behind here,” Krispos said.

Mammianos and Rhisoulphos both saluted him, then looked at each other as if taken by surprise. Mammianos said, “Majesty, you may not be trained to command, but you have a gift for it.”

“As may be.” Krispos did not show how pleased he was. He turned to Trokoundos. “I trust you have me better warded than I was that night.”

“Oh, indeed. The protections I gave you then were the hasty sort one uses in an emergency. I thank the lord with the great and good mind that they sufficed. But since you gained the throne, I and my colleagues have hedged you round with far more apotropaic incantations.”

“With what?” Krispos wanted to see if the wizard could repeat himself without tripping over his tongue.

But Trokoundos chose to explain instead: “Protective spells. I believe they will serve. With magecraft, one is seldom as sure as one would like.”

“Come to that, we aren’t sure Petronas and his wizard will attack me,” Krispos said.

“He will, Your Majesty,” Rhisoulphos said positively. “What other chance in all the world has he now to become Avtokrator?”

“Put that way—” Krispos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Aye, likely he will. Here I stay, even so. Trokoundos will keep me safe.” What he did not mention was his fear that, if he returned to Videssos the city, Petronas might suborn some soldiers and get free once more.

“Maybe,” Mammianos said hopefully, “he hasn’t had the chance to fill the cisterns in there too full. Summers hereabouts are hot and dry. With luck, his men will get thirsty soon and make him yield.”

“Maybe.” But Krispos doubted it. He’d seen that Petronas could be matched as a combat soldier. For keeping an army in supplies, though, he had few peers. If he’d taken refuge in the fortress of Antigonos, he was ready to stand siege there.

Krispos ringed his own army round the base of the fortress’ hill. He staged mock attacks by night and day, seeking to wear down the defenders. Trokoundos wore himself into exhaustion casting one protective spell after another over Krispos and over the army as a whole. That Petronas’ mage bided his time only made Trokoundos certain the stroke would be deadly when it came.

The siege dragged on. The healer-priests were much busier with cases of dysentery than with wounds. A letter let Krispos know that a train of rams and catapults had set out from Videssos the city for Antigonos. Behind a white-painted shield of truce, a captain approached the fortress and read the letter in a loud voice, finishing “Beware, rebels! Your hour of justice approaches!” Petronas’ men jeered him from the walls.

Trokoundos redoubled his precautions, festooning Krispos with charms and amulets until his chains seemed heavier than chain mail. “How am I supposed to sleep, wearing all this?” Krispos complained. “The ones that don’t gouge my back gouge my chest.”

With a look of martyred patience, Trokoundos said, “Your Majesty, Petronas must know he cannot hope to last long once the siege engines arrive. Therefore he will surely try to strike you down before that time. We must be ready.”

“Not only will I be ready, I’ll be stoop-shouldered, as well,” Krispos said. Trokoundos’ martyred look did not change. Krispos threw his hands in the air and walked off, clanking as he went.

But that night, alone at last in his tent, he tossed and turned until a sharp-pointed amethyst crystal on one of his new amulets stabbed him just above his right shoulder blade. He swore and clapped his other hand to the injury. When he took it away, his palm was wet with blood.

“That fornicating does it!” he snarled. He threw aside the light silk coverlet and jumped to his feet. He took off the offending chain and flung it on the floor. It knocked over one of the other charms that ringed the bed like a fortress’ wall. Finally, breathing hard, Krispos lay down again. “Maybe Petronas’ wizard will pick tonight to try to kill me,” he muttered, “but one piece more or less shouldn’t matter much. And if he does get me, at least I’ll die sound asleep.”

What with his fury, naturally, he had trouble drifting off even after the chain was gone. He tossed and turned, dozed and half woke. His shoulder still hurt, too.

Some time toward morning, a tiny crunch made him open his eyes yet again. He was frowning even as he came fully awake—the crunch had sounded very close, as if it was inside the tent. A servant who disturbed him in the middle of the night—especially the middle of this miserable night—would regret the day he was born.

But the man crouching not three paces away was no servant of his. He was all in black—even his face was blacked, likely with charcoal. His right hand held a long knife. And under one of his black boots lay the crushed remains of one of Trokoundos’ charms. Had he not trod on it, Krispos would never have known he was there until that knife slid between his ribs or across his throat.

The knifeman’s dark face twisted in dismay as he saw Krispos wake. Krispos’ face twisted, too. The assassin sprang toward him. Krispos flung his coverlet in the fellow’s face and shouted as loud as he could. Outside the tent, his Haloga guard also cried out.

While the assassin was clawing free of the coverlet, Krispos seized his knife arm with both hands. His foe kicked him in the shin, hard enough to make his teeth click together in anguish. He tried to knee the knifeman in the crotch. The fellow twisted to one side and took the blow on the point of his hip.

With a sudden wrench, he tried to break Krispos’ grip on his wrist. But Krispos had wrestled since before his beard came in. He hung on grimly. The assassin could do what he pleased, so long as he did not get that dagger free.

Thunnk!
The abrupt sound of blade biting into flesh filled Krispos’ ears and seemed to fill the whole tent. Hot blood sprayed his belly. The assassin convulsed in his arms. A latrine stench said the man’s bowels had let go. The knife dropped from his hands. He crumpled to the ground.

“Majesty!” Vagn cried, horror on his face as he saw Krispos spattered with blood. “Are you hale, Majesty?”

“If my leg’s not broken, yes,” Krispos said, giving it a gingerly try. The pain did not get worse, so he supposed he’d taken no real damage. He looked down at the knifeman and at the spreading pool of blood. He whistled softly. “By the good god, Vagn, you almost cut him in two.”

Instead of warming to the praise, the Haloga hung his head. He thrust his dripping axe into Krispos’ hands. “Kill me now, Majesty, I beg you, for I failed to ward you from this, this—” His Videssian failed him; to show what he meant, he bent down and spat in the dead assassin’s face. “Kill me, I beg you.”

Krispos saw he meant it. “I’ll do no such thing,” he said.

“Then I have no honor.” Vagn drew himself up, absolute determination on his face. “Since you do not grant me this boon, I shall slay myself.”

“No, you—” Krispos stopped before he called Vagn an idiot. Filled with shame as he was, the northerner would only bear up under insults like a man bearing up under archery and would think he deserved each wound he took. Krispos tried to get the shock of battling the assassin out of his mind, tried to think clearly. The harsh Haloga notion of honor served him well most of the time; now he had to find a way around it. He said, “If you didn’t ward me, who did? The knifeman lies dead at your feet. I didn’t kill him.”

Vagn shook his head. “It means nothing. Never should he have come into this tent.”

“You were at the front. He must have got in at the back, under the canvas.” Krispos looked at the assassin’s contorted body. He thought about what it must have taken, even dressed in clothes that left him part of the night, to come down from the fortress and sneak through the enemy camp to its very heart. “In his own way, he was a brave man.”

Vagn spat again. “He was a skulking murderer and should have had worse and slower than I gave him. Please, Majesty, I beg once more, slay me, that I may die clean.”

“No, curse it!” Krispos said. Vagn turned and walked to the tent flap. If he left, Krispos was sure he would never return alive. He said quickly, “Here, wait. I know what I’ll do—I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself in your own eyes.”

“In no way can I do that,” Vagn declared.

“Hear me out,” Krispos said. When Vagn took another step toward the flap, he snapped, “I order you to listen.” Reluctantly the Haloga stopped. Krispos went on, “Here’s what I’d have you do: first, take this man’s head. Then, unarmored if you like, carry it up to the gates of Antigonos and leave it there to show Petronas the fate his assassin earned. Will that give you back your honor?”

Vagn was some time silent, which only made the growing hubbub outside the imperial tent seem louder. Then, with a grunt, the Haloga chopped at the knifeman’s neck. The roof of the tent was too low to let him take big, full swings with his axe, so the beheading required several strokes.

Krispos turned away from the gory job. He threw on a robe and went out to show the army he was still alive. The men whom his outcry had aroused shouted furiously when he told how the assassin had crept into his tent. He was just finishing the tale when Vagn emerged, holding the man’s head by the hair. The soldiers let out such a lusty cheer that the guardsman blinked in surprise. Their approval seemed to reach him where Krispos’ had not; as the cheering went on and on, he stood taller and straighter. Without a word, he began to tramp toward the fortress of Antigonos.

“Wait,” Krispos called. “Do it by daylight, so Petronas can see just what gift you bring him.”

“Aye,” Vagn said after a moment’s thought. “I will wait.” He set down the assassin’s head, lightly prodding it with his foot. “So will he.” The joke struck Krispos as being in poor taste, but he was glad to hear the Haloga make it.