Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (50 page)

In a great battle, Avshar commanded the Yezda. By sorcery, he slew the officer who truly commanded the imperial army’s left wing. Ortaias Sphrantzes, suddenly thrust into real command, panicked and fled.

The whole wing collapsed. The battle, till then nearly a draw, turned to disaster. Mavrikios fell fighting, and Thorisin’s desperate counter-attack
from the right failed, though he did manage to escape with a fair part of the army.

Roman discipline let the legionaries hold their ranks. They withdrew in good order and encamped for the night. Toward midnight, Avshar taunted them by throwing Mavrikios’ head into their camp. As Gaius Philippus commented, the wizard should have pursued the forces of Thorisin instead.

The game was not over yet.

T
HE ROMANS
’
TREK EAST FROM THE DISASTROUS BATTLEFIELD WHERE
the Emperor of Videssos lost his life was a journey full of torment. The season was late summer, the land through which they marched sere and burning hot. Mirages shimmered ahead, treacherously promising lakes where a mud puddle would have been a prodigy. Bands of Yezda invaders dogged the fugitives’ tracks, skirmishing occasionally and always alert to pick off stragglers.

Scaurus still carried Mavrikios Gavras’ severed head, the only sure proof the Emperor was dead. Foreseeing chaos in Videssos after Mavrikios’ fall, he thought it wise to forestall pretenders who might claim the imperial name to aid their climbs to power. It would not be the first time Videssos had known such things.

“Sorry I am I wasna there when that black spalpeen Avshar flung you himself’s noddle,” Viridovix said to the tribune, his Latin musically flavored by his native Celtic speech. “I had a fine Yezda one to throw back at him.” True to the fierce custom of his folk, the Gaul had taken a slain enemy’s head for a trophy.

At any other time Marcus would have found that revolting. In defeat’s bitter aftermath, he nodded and said, “I wish you’d been there, too.”

“Aye, it would have given the whoreson something to think on,” Gaius Philippus chimed in. The senior centurion usually enjoyed quarreling with Viridovix, but their hatred for the wizard-prince of Yezd brought them together now.

Marcus rubbed his chin, felt rough whiskers scratch under his fingers. Like most of the Romans, he had stayed clean-faced in a bearded land, but lately there had been little time for shaving. He plucked a whisker; it shone golden in the sunlight. Coming as he did from Mediolanum
in northern Italy, he had a large proportion of northern blood in his veins. In Caesar’s army in Gaul, he had been teased about looking like a Celt himself. The Videssians often took him for a Haloga; many of those warriors forsook their chilly home for mercenary service in the Empire.

Gorgidas worked ceaselessly with the wounded, changing dressings, splinting broken bones, and dispensing the few ointments and medicines left in his depleted store. Although hurt himself, the slim, dark Greek doctor disregarded his pain to bring others relief.

Covered by a screening force of light cavalry from Videssos’ eastern neighbor Khatrish, the legionaries tramped east toward the town of Khliat as fast as their many injuries would allow. Had he led a force in the lands Rome ruled, Scaurus would have moved northwest instead, to join Thorisin Gavras and the right wing of the shattered imperial army. Hard military sense lay there, for the Emperor’s brother—no, the Emperor now, Marcus supposed—had brought his troops away in good order. The fight against the Yezda would center on him.

But here Marcus was not simply a legionary officer, with a legionary officer’s worries. He was also a mercenary captain. He had to deal with the fact that the legionaries’ women, the families they had made or joined since coming to Videssos, were left behind in the Vaspurakaner city that had been the base for Mavrikios’ ill-fated campaign. The Romans would disobey any order to turn away from Khliat. So, even more, would the hundreds of stragglers who had attached themselves to his troop like drowning men clinging to a spar.

For that matter, he never thought of giving such an order. His own partner Helvis, carrying his child, had stayed in Khliat, along with her young son from an earlier attachment.

That was to say, he hoped she had stayed in Khliat. Uncertainty tormented the legionaries as badly as the Yezda did. For all Scaurus knew, the invaders might have stormed Khliat and slain or carried into slavery everyone there. Even if they had not, fugitives would already be arriving with word of the catastrophe that had overtaken the Videssian army.

In the wake of such news; noncombatants might be fleeing eastward now. That was more dangerous than staying behind Khliat’s walls. Marcus ran through the gloomy possibilities time after time: Helvis dead,
Helvis captured by the Yezda, Helvis struggling east with a three-year-old through hostile country … and she was pregnant, too.

At last, with a distinct effort of will, he banished the qualms to the back of his mind. Not for the first time, he was grateful for his training in the Stoic school, which taught him to cast aside useless imaginings. He would know soon enough, and that would be the time to act.

About a day and a half out of Khliat, a scout came riding back to the Roman tribune. “A horseman coming out of the east, sir,” he reported. His staccato Khatrisher accent made him hard for Scaurus to understand—the tribune’s own Videssian was far from perfect.

Interest flared in him when he realized what the scout was saying. “From the east? A lone rider?”

The Khatrisher spread his hands. “As far as we could tell. He was nervous and took cover as soon as he spotted us. From what little we saw, he had the seeming of a Vaspurakaner.”

“No wonder he was leery of you, then. You look too much like Yezda.” The invading nomads had ravaged Vaspurakan over the course of years, until the natives hated the sight of them. The Khatrishers were descended from nomads as well and, despite taking many Videssian ways, still had the look of the plains about them.

“Bring him in, and unhurt,” Marcus decided. “Anyone fool enough to travel west in the face of everything rolling the other way must have a strong reason. Maybe he bears word from Khliat,” the tribune added, suddenly hopeful in spite of himself.

The scout gave a cheery wave—the Khatrishers were most of them free spirits—and kicked his pony into motion. Scaurus did not expect him back for some time; for someone in the furs and leather of a plainsman, convincing a Vaspurakaner of his harmlessness would not be easy. The tribune was surprised when the Khatrisher quickly reappeared, along with another rider plainly not of his people.

The scout’s companion looked familiar, even at a distance. Before the tribune was able to say more than that, Senpat Sviodo cried out in joy and spurred his horse forward to meet the newcomer. “Nevrat!” the Vaspurakaner
yelled. “Are you out of your mind, to journey alone through this wolves’ land?”

His wife parted company from her escort to embrace him. The Khatrisher stared, slack-jawed. In her loose traveling clothes, her curly black hair bound up under a three-peaked Vaspurakaner hat of leather, and with the grime of travel on her, only her beardless cheeks hinted at her sex. She was surely armed like a man. A horseman’s saber hung at her belt, and she carried a bow with an arrow nocked and ready.

She and Senpat were chattering in their throaty native tongue as they slowly rode back to the marching legionaries. The Khatrisher followed, still shaking his head.

“Your outrider has a head on his shoulders,” she said, switching to Videssian as she neared Scaurus. “I took him and his comrades for Yezda, for all their shouts of ‘Friends! Countrymen!’ But when he said, ‘Romans!’ I knew he was no western jackal.”

“I’m glad you chose to trust him,” Marcus answered. He was fond of the intense, swarthy girl. So were many other Romans; scattered cheers rang out as the men realized who she was. She smiled her pleasure, teeth flashing white. Senpat Sviodo, proud of her exploit and glad beyond measure she had joined him safely, was grinning, too.

The question Senpat had shouted moments before was still burning in the tribune’s mind. “In the name of your god Phos, Nevrat, why did you leave Khliat?” A horrid thought forced its way forward. “Has it fallen?”

“It still stood yesterday morning, when I set out,” she answered. The Romans close enough to hear her cheered again, this time with the same relief Scaurus felt. She tempered their delight by continuing, “There’s worse madness inside those walls, though, than any I’ve seen out here.”

Gaius Philippus nodded, as if hearing what he expected. “They panicked, did they, when news came we’d been beaten?” The veteran sounded resigned; he had seen enough victories and defeats that the aftermaths of both were second nature to him.

The Romans crowded round Nevrat, calling out the names of their women and asking if they were all right. She told them. “As I said, I left early yesterday. When last I saw them, they were well. Most of you have
sensible girls, too; I think they’ll have wit enough to keep from joining the flight.”

“There’s flight, then?” Scaurus asked with a sinking feeling.

Nevrat understood his fears and was quick to lay them to rest. “Helvis knows war, Marcus. She told me to tell you she’d stay in Khliat till the first Yezda came over the wall.” The tribune nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to speak. He felt suddenly taller, as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Helvis, he knew, had no such reassurance that he lived.

There were messages from Khliat for some of the other Romans as well. “Is Quintus Glabrio here?” The junior centurion was almost at Nevrat’s side, but as usual quiet nearly to the point of invisibility. He took a step forward; Nevrat laughed in surprise. “I’m sorry. Your lady Damaris also told me she would wait for you in the city.”

“And much else besides, I’m sure,” he said with a smile. The Romans who knew Damaris laughed at that; the hot-tempered Videssian girl was able to talk for herself and Glabrio both.

“Minucius,” Nevrat continued in her businesslike way, “Erene says you should know she’s stopped throwing up. She’s beginning to bulge a bit, too.”

“Ah, that’s fine to hear,” the burly legionary replied. After less than a week without a razor, his beard was coming in thick and black.

Nevrat turned back to Marcus for a moment, amusement in her brown eyes. “Helvis has no such message for you, my friend. I’m afraid she’s green as a leek much of the time.”

“Is she well?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes, she’s fine. There’s nothing at all to worry about. You men are such babies about these things.”

She was so full of comforting, reassuring words from Khliat that someone finally called out, “If all’s so well back there, why are they fleeing the city?”

“All’s
not
well,” she said flatly. “Remember, the messages I bring are from the folk with the wit to stay and the heart to think I’d find you and they’d see you again. All too many are of the other sort—they’ve been scurrying like rabbits ever since Ortaias Sphrantzes came galloping into the city with word all was lost.”

Curses and angry shouts greeted the young noble’s name. Command of the Videssian army’s left wing had been his, and his terror-stricken flight turned an orderly retreat into rout. Nevrat nodded at the Romans’ outburst. She might not have seen Ortaias flee the battlefield, but she had been in Khliat.

She said contemptuously, “He stayed just long enough to change horses—the one he’d ridden died next day of misuse, poor thing—and then he was flying east again. Good riddance, if anyone cares what I think.”

“And right you are, lass.” Gaius Philippus nodded. A professional soldier to the roots of his iron-gray hair, he asked, “On your way hither, what did you see of the Yezda—aye, and of our fellows, in the bargain?”

“Too many Yezda. They’re thicker further east, but there’s no order to them at all—they’re like frogs after flies, striking at anything that moves. The only thing that brought them together was the imperial army. Now they’ve crushed it and they’re breaking up again, looking for new land to push into … and all Videssos this side of the Cattle-Crossing lies open to them.”

Marcus thought of Videssos’ western lands laid waste by the nomads, the rich, peaceful fields put to the torch, cities so long at peace they had no walls now the playthings of invading barbarians, smoking altars heaped high with butchered victims for Yezd’s dark god Skotos. Searching for any straw to contradict that horrid picture, he repeated the second half of Gaius Philippus’ question: “What of the Empire’s troops?”

“Most are as badly beaten as Ortaias. I watched three Yezda chasing a whole squad of horsemen, laughing themselves sick as they rode. One broke off to follow me, but I lost him in rocky ground.” Nevrat dismissed two hours of terror in a sentence.

She went on, “I did see what’s left of the Namdalener regiment still in good order, most of a day’s ride ahead of you. The nomads were giving them a wide berth.”

“That would be the way of it,” Viridovix agreed. “Tough as nails, they are.” The Romans concurred in that judgment. The warriors from the island Duchy of Namdalen were heretics in Videssos’ eyes and as ambitious for themselves as any other mercenary soldiers, but they fought so well the Empire was glad to hire them.

“Did you see anything of Thorisin Gavras?” Scaurus asked. Again he thought of linking with Thorisin’s forces.

“The Sevastokrator? No, nor heard anything, either. Is it true the Emperor’s dead? Ortaias claimed he was.”

“It’s true.” Marcus did not elaborate and did not mention his grisly proof of Mavrikios’ passing.

Gorgidas caught something the tribune missed. The physician said, “How could Sphrantzes know? He was long fled when the Emperor fell.” The Romans growled as they took in the implications of that.

“Perhaps he wished it true so badly, he never thought to doubt it,” Quintus Glabrio suggested. “Men often believe what they most want.”

It was like Glabrio to put as charitable a light as possible on the young noble’s action. Marcus, who had been active in politics in his native Mediolanum, found another, more ominous interpretation. Ortaias Sphrantzes was of a house which had held the imperium itself; his uncle, the Sevastos—or prime minister—Vardanes Sphrantzes, was Mavrikios’ chief rival.