The Tale of Krispos (74 page)

The mountains themselves…
I’ve always been happier to see them getting smaller,
Krispos thought. They were not getting smaller now, worse luck. Krispos peered up and ahead. Now he could see the opening of the pass that led to Kubrat.
Agapetos got through with less force than I have,
he thought.
I will, too.

When he said that aloud, Mammianos grunted. “Aye, Agapatos got through, but he couldn’t maintain himself north of the mountains. And Harvas beat him again on this side, then came down first on Imbros and then onto Mavros’ army. Strikes me he’s been able to defeat us in detail, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t attack?” Krispos asked, scowling. “After all he’s done to us, how can I halt now?”

The image of thousands of bodies, each gruesomely buggered by its own stake, shoved itself forward in his mind. With it came a new vision, that of hundreds of men matter-of-factly cutting and sharpening those stakes. How could they have kept to their work, knowing what the stakes would be used for? Even Kubratoi would have gagged on such cruelty, he thought. And Halogai, judging by long experience with the imperial guards, were harsh but rarely vicious. What made Harvas’ men so different?

Mammianos’ reply brought him back to the here and now. “All I’m saying, Your Majesty, is that Harvas strikes me as dangerous enough to need hitting with everything the Empire has. The more I see, the more I think that. What we have with us is strong, aye, but is it strong enough?”

“By the good god, Mammianos, I aim to find out,” Krispos said. Mammianos bowed his head in submission. He could suggest, but when the Avtokrator decided, his lot was to obey.
Or to mutiny,
Krispos thought. But Mammianos had seen plenty of better chances than this for mutiny. His disagreement with Krispos lay in how best to hurt Harvas, not whether to.

The army camped just out of bowshot of the foothills that night. Peering north in the darkness, Krispos saw the slopes of the mountains ahead dimly illuminated by orange, flickering light. He summoned Mammianos and pointed. “Does that mean what I think?”

“Bide a moment, Majesty, while the campfire glare leaves my eyes.” Like Krispos, Mammianos stood with his back to the imperial camp. At last he said, “Aye, it does. They’re encamped there, waiting for us.”

“Forcing the pass won’t be easy,” Krispos said.

“No, it won’t,” the general agreed. “All kinds of things can go wrong when you try to barge through a defended pass. A holding force at the narrowest part will plug it up while they roll rocks down from either side, or maybe come charging down from ambush—that’d be easy for Harvas’ buggers, because they’re foot soldiers.”

“Perhaps I should have listened to you before,” Krispos said.

“Aye, Majesty, perhaps you should,” Mammianos said—as close to criticism of the Emperor as he would let himself come.

Krispos plucked at his beard. He could not pull back, not having come so far, not having seen Imbros, not unless he wanted to forfeit the army’s faith in him forevermore. Going blindly forward, though, was a recipe for disaster. If he had some idea of what lay ahead…He whistled to one of his guardsmen. “Fetch me Trokoundos,” he said.

The wizard was yawning when he arrived, but cast off sleepiness like an old tunic when Krispos explained what he wanted. He nodded thoughtfully. “I know a scrying spell that should serve, Your Majesty, one subtle enough that no barbarian mage, no mage not formally trained, should even be able to detect it, let alone counteract it. Against Petronas it would not have sufficed, for Skeparnas was my match, near enough. But against Harvas it should do very well; however strong in magic he may be, he is bound to be unschooled. If you will excuse me—”

When Trokoundos returned, he held in his hand a bronze bracelet. “Haloga workmanship,” he explained as he showed it to Krispos. “I found it outside of Imbros; I think we may take it as proven that one of Harvas’ raiders lost it. By the law of contagion, it is still bonded to its onetime owner, a bond we may now use to our advantage.”

“Spare the lecture, sir mage,” Mammianos said. “So long as you learn what we need to know, I care not how you do it.”

“Very well,” Trokoundos said stiffly. He held the bracelet out at arm’s length toward the north, then started a slow, soft chant. The chant went on and on. Krispos was beginning to get both worried and annoyed when Trokoundos finally lowered the bracelet. As he turned, the campfire shadowed the lines of puzzlement on his face. “Let me try again, with a variant of the spell. Perhaps the owner of the bracelet was slain; nonetheless, it remains affiliated, albeit more loosely, with the army as a whole.”

He began to chant once more. Krispos could not tell any difference between this version of the spell and the other, but was willing to believe it was there. But he found no difference in the result: after some time, Trokoundos halted in baffled frustration.

“Majesty,” he said, “so far as I can tell by my sorcery, there’s no one at all up ahead.”

“What? That’s absurd,” Krispos said. “We can see the fires—”

“They could be a bluff, Your Majesty,” Mammianos put in.

“You don’t believe that,” Krispos said.

“No, Your Majesty, I don’t, but it could be so. I tell you what, though: I’ll send out a couple of scouts. They’ll come back with what we need to know.”

“Good. Do it,” Krispos said.

“Aye, do it,” Trokoundos agreed. “By the good god, excellent sir, I hope it is a bluff ahead, as you say. The alternative is believing that Harvas has a renegade Videssian mage in his service, and after Imbros I would sooner not believe that.” The wizard made a sour face, decisively shook his head. “No, it can’t be. I’d have sensed that my spell was being masked. I didn’t have that feeling, only the emptiness I’d get if there truly were no men ahead.”

The scouts slipped out of camp. They looked to be ideal soldiers for their task; had Krispos met them on the streets of Videssos the city, he would have unhesitatingly guessed they were thieves. Small, lithe, and wary, they carried only daggers and vanished into the night without a sound.

Yawning, Krispos said, “Wake me as soon as they get back.” Worn though he was, he did not sleep well. Thoughts of Imbros would not leave his mind or, worse, his dreams. He was relieved when a guardsman came in to rouse him and tell him the scouts had returned.

A thin crescent moon had risen in the east; dawn was not far away. The scouts—there were three of them—prostrated themselves before him. “Get up, get up,” he said impatiently. “What did you see?”

“A whole great lot of Halogai, Your Majesty,” one of them answered in a flat, upcountry accent like the one Krispos had had before he came to Videssos the city. The other two scouts nodded to confirm his words. He went on, “And you know how the pass jogs westward so you can’t see all the way up it from here? Just past the jog, they’ve gone and built themselves a breastwork. Be nasty getting past there, Your Majesty.”

“Their army’s real, then,” Krispos said, more than a little surprised. Trokoundos would not be pleased to learn his sorcery had gone astray.

“Majesty, we sneaked close enough to smell the shit in their slit trenches,” the scout answered. “You don’t get a whole lot realer than that.”

Krispos laughed. “True enough. Two goldpieces to each of you for your courage. Now go get what rest you can.”

The scouts saluted and hurried off toward their tents. Krispos thought about going back to bed, too, decided not to bother. Better to watch the sun come up than to toss and turn and think about stakes…

The eastern rim of the sky grew gray, then the pale bluish-white that seems to stretch the eye to some infinite distance, then pink. When the sun crawled above the horizon, Krispos bowed to it as if to Phos himself, recited the creed, and spat between his feet to show he rejected Skotos. Most of the time, he hardly thought about that part of the ritual. Not now. Imbros reminded him of what he was rejecting.

The camp stirred with the sun, at first slowly, blindly, like a plant’s silent striving toward light, but then with greater purpose as horns rang out to rout sleepers from tents and prod them into the routine of another day. They lined up with bowls in front of cookpots where barley porridge bubbled; gnawed at hard bread, cheese, and onions; gulped wine under the watchful eyes of underofficers who made sure they did not gulp too much; and tended to their horses so the animals would also be ready for the day’s work ahead.

Krispos went back to his tent and armed himself. He swung himself up onto Progress and rode over to the musicians. At his command, they played
Assemble.
The troopers gathered before them. Krispos raised a hand for silence and waited until he had it.

“Soldiers of Videssos,” he said, hoping everyone could hear him, “the enemy waits for us ahead. You’ve seen the kind of foe he is, how he loves to slay those who can’t fight back.” A low growl ran through the army. Krispos went on, “Now we can pay Harvas back for everything, for the slaughters in Develtos last year and Imbros now, and for Agapetos’ men, and Mavros’, too. Will we turn aside?”

“No!” the men roared. “Never!”

“Then forward, and fight bravely!” Krispos drew his saber and held it high overhead. The soldiers whooped and cheered. They were eager to fight; Krispos needed no fancy turns of phrase to inspire them today. That was as well—he knew Anthimos, for instance, had been a far better speaker than he would ever be. He owned neither the gift nor the inclination for wrapping around his ideas of the flights of fancy that Videssian rhetoric demanded. His only gift, such as it was, was for plain thoughts plainly spoken.

As the army left camp, Krispos told Sarkis, “We’ll want plenty of scouts out in front of us, and farther ahead than usual.”

“It’s taken care of, Your Majesty,” the Vaspurakaner officer said with a small, tight smile. “The country ahead reminds me all too much of the land where I grew up. You soon learn to check out a pass before you send everyone through, or you die young.” He chuckled. “I suppose, over the generations, it improves the breed.”

“Dismount some of those scouts, too,” Krispos said as a new worry struck him. “We’ll want to spy out the sides of the pass, not just the bottom, and they can’t do that from horseback.” He stopped, flustered. So much for plain thoughts plainly spoken. “You know what I mean.”

“Aye, Your Majesty. It’s taken care of,” Sarkis repeated. He sketched a salute. “For one who came so late to soldiering, you’ve learned a good deal. Have I told you of the saying of my people, ‘Sneaky as a prince—?’”

Krispos cut him off. “Yes, you have.” He knew he was rude, but he was also nervous. The scouts had just followed the western jog of the pass and disappeared from sight. He clucked to Progress, leaned forward in the saddle, and urged the gelding up to a fast trot with the pressure of knees and heels.

Then he rounded that jog himself. The breastwork, of turf and stones and brush and whatever else had been handy, stood a few hundred yards ahead, blocking the narrowest part of the pass. Behind it, Krispos saw at last the warriors who had ravaged the Empire so savagely.

The big, fierce, fair-haired men saw him, too, or the imperial banner that floated near him. They jeered and brandished—weapons? No, Krispos saw; Harvas’ men were holding up stout stakes carved to a point at both ends—impaling stakes.

Fury filled him, rage more perfect and absolute than any he had ever known. He wanted to slay with his own sword every marauder in front of him. Only a wild charge by all his men seemed a bearable second best. He filled his lungs to cry out the order.

But something cold and calculating dwelt within him, too, something that would not let him give way to impulse, no matter how tempting. He thought again and shouted, “Arrows!”

Bowstrings thrummed as the Videssian archers went to work from horseback. Instead of their stakes, the Halogai lifted yardwide shields of wood to turn aside the shafts. They were not bowmen; they could not reply.

Here and there, all along the enemy line, men crumpled or lurched backward, clutching at their wounds and shrieking. But the raiders wore mail shirts and helms; even shafts that slipped between shields and over the rampart were no sure kills. And however steeped in wickedness they might have been, Harvas’ followers were not cowards. The archery stung them. It could do no more.

By the time he saw that, Krispos had full control of himself once more. “Can we flank them out?” he demanded of Mammianos.

“It’s steep, broken ground to either side of that breastwork,” the general answered. “Better going for foot than for horse. Still, worth a try, I suppose, and the cheapest way to go about it. If we can get in their rear, they’re done for.”

Despite his doubts, the general yelled orders. Couriers dashed off to relay them to the soldiers on both wings. Several companies peeled off to try the rough terrain on the flanks. Harvas’ Halogai rushed men up the slopes of the pass to head them off.

The northerners had known what they were about when they built their barricade; they had walled off all the ground worth fighting on. The horses of their Videssian foes had to pick their way forward step by step. Afoot, Harvas’ men were rather more agile, but they, too, scrambled, stumbled, and often fell.

Some did not get up again; now that the foe was away from cover and concerned more with his footing than his shield, he grew more vulnerable to archery. But the Videssians could not simply shoot their way to victory. They had to force the northerners from their ground. And at close quarters, the foot soldiers gave as good as they got, or better.

Saber and light lance against axe and slashing sword—Krispos watched his men battle the Halogai who followed Harvas. Sudden pain made him wonder if he was wounded until he realized he had his lip tight between his teeth. With a distinct effort of will, he made himself relax. A moment later the pain returned. This time he ignored it.

For all the encouragement he shouted, for all the courage the Videssian cavalry displayed, the terrain proved too rugged for them to advance against determined foes. Krispos wished Harvas’ northerners were less brave than his own guardsmen. They did not seem so. He watched a Haloga with a lance driven deep into his side hack from the saddle the man who had skewered him before he, too, toppled.