Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 (53 page)

As their foes blew out, Nepos’ projections swung to the attack, and it was his enemy’s turn to draw his powers around himself for defense. But Marcus’ blade, enchanted by vanished Gaul’s druids, had shown itself proof against the spells of Avshar himself; an underling’s magic was no match for it. The tribune pushed forward remorselessly, striking the Yezda’s wraithly warriors out of existence.

Even when the last of them was gone, the red-robe proved neither coward nor weakling. His spells were still potent enough to hold off Nepos’ assault; no phantom Videssian sword reached him, though they missed now by hairbreadths. Growling an oath in his own harsh tongue, he snatched out a dagger and leaped forward to grapple with Scaurus.

That was a contest with but one possible ending, despite the Yezda’s courage. The Roman turned the wizard’s stab with his shield, thrust out and up with the killing stroke of the legionaries. His blade bit flesh, not the filmy figments that had so far stood against him. Blood ran from the Yezda’s mouth, to drown his dying curse half-uttered.

Nepos’ seemings vanished when their creator’s foe fell. The little Videssian priest staggered himself, a man in the last throes of exhaustion. Sweat was pouring from his shaven crown; drops sparkled in his beard. He came up to clasp the tribune’s arm. “Praise Phos, who sends the light, for sending you to me in my desperate need.” The priest’s voice was a ragged, croaking caricature of his usual firm tenor.

He looked down at the crumpled form of the dead Yezda wizard, murmuring, “He would have killed me, I think, had you not come when you did.”

“How did you get into a sorcerers’ duel?” Marcus asked.

“We were dodging each other through these rocks. I saw he had a knife and wanted to frighten him off with phantoms. But he fought back—and he was strong.” Nepos shook his head. “And yet he seemed but a shaman like a thousand others, while I, I am a mage of the Videssian Academy. Can it be true, then—is his dark Skotos a mightier god than mine? Is my life’s work one long futility?”

Scaurus thumped his shoulder; Nepos was normally a jolly soul, but liable to fits of gloom when things went bad. The tribune said, “Buck up. He and all his kind are riding the hem of Avshar’s robe—one win and they think they bestride the world.” He studied the draggled priest. “And you, my friend, are not at your best.”

“That’s so,” Nepos admitted. He scrubbed at the sweat-streaked dirt on his face with a grimy sleeve and shook his head in dismay. It was as if he was looking at himself for the first time in days. He managed a feeble smile. “I’m not in fine fettle, am I?”

“Hardly,” Marcus said. “I can’t promise you any elegant accommodations with my men, but they do beat straggling home alone.”

Nepos’ smile grew broader. “I should certainly hope so.” He sighed, then turned to the legionaries. “I suppose that means I’ll have to tramp back with you long-shanked gentlemen.” The Romans grinned at him; they were all taller—and leaner—than the tubby little priest.

He did his valiant best to keep pace with them, his short legs churning over the ground. “Not bad,” one of the soldiers commended him as they approached the Roman column. The trooper’s smile turned sly. “There’s plenty of Videssians with us already. Maybe we’ll find you a coat of mail and a pack and make a real legionary out of you.”

“Phos forfend!” Nepos panted, rolling his eyes.

“Or we could just lay you down and roll you along,” another Roman suggested. The look the priest sent Marcus was so full of indignant appeal that the tribune coughed and put an end to his troopers’ fun.

Gaius Philippus had been pulling out a full maniple of soldiers to come to Scaurus’ rescue. He waved when he saw the squad coming back
down into the valley. As soon as they were in earshot, he bellowed, “Everything all right?”

Marcus answered with the upraised thumb of the gladiatorial arena. The senior centurion gave back the signal and returned the maniple to the ranks. Despite Gaius Philippus’ mutterings over amateurs and personal leadership, Scaurus saw no signs that anyone but the centurion was going to take that maniple forward.

A spare figure in chlamys and sandals loped out from the Roman column toward the returning squad. Gorgidas ignored Marcus; as for the legionaries, they might as well not have been there. The Greek doctor’s attention was solely on Nepos. “Do you know your people’s healing art?” he demanded. He leaned forward, as if willing an aye out of the priest.

“Why, yes, a bit, but—”

Gorgidas allowed no protest. He and Nepos had had many soul-searching talks, but the intense Greek would not spare time for them now. He clutched the priest’s shoulder and dragged him toward the litters of the seriously wounded, saying, “The gods know I’ve been praying for days to run across a blue-robe with his wits about him. I’ve had to watch men die, beyond the power of my medicine to cure. But you lads, now—” He stopped short and shook his head, a rational man compelled to acknowledge the power of forces past reason.

Curious Romans, Marcus among them, followed the oddly matched pair. He had seen a healer-priest save Sextus Minucius and another legionary just after the Romans came to Videssos. But miracles, he thought, did not go stale with repetition.

Nepos was still protesting his unworthiness as Gorgidas tugged him onward. His expostulations faded when he came face-to-face with the horrid facts of injury. The worst-hurt soldiers were already dead, either of their wounds or from the sketchy care and jolting they had received during the Romans’ grinding retreat.

Many who still clung to life would not for long. Shock, infection, and fever, coupled with scant water and constant baking sun, made death almost an hourly visitor. The stench of septic wounds turned the stomach even through the aromatic ointments Gorgidas had applied. Men
witless from fever shivered in the noonday heat or babbled anguished gibberish. Here was war’s aftermath at its grimmest.

In the face of such misery, Nepos underwent a transformation nearly as great as the one Gorgidas hoped he would work on the wounded. The rotund priest’s fatigue fell from him. When he drew himself upright, he seemed inches taller. “Show me the worst of them,” he said to Gorgidas, and suddenly it was his voice, not the Greek doctor’s, that was filled with authority.

If Gorgidas noticed the reversal, it did not faze him. He was content to play a secondary role, should that be required to save his patients. “The worst?” he said, rubbing his chin with a slim-fingered hand. “That would be Publius Flaccus, I think. Over this way, if you will.”

Publius Flaccus was beyond thrashing and delirium; only the low, rapid rise and fall of his chest showed he was still alive. He lay unmoving on his litter, the coarse stubble of his beard stark and black against tight-drawn, waxen skin. A Yezda saber had laid his left thigh open from groin to knee. Somehow Gorgidas managed to stanch the flow of blood, but the wound grew inflamed almost at once, and from mere inflammation quickly passed to mortification’s horror.

Greenish-yellow pus crusted the bandages wrapping the gashed limb. Drawn by the smell of corruption, flies made a darting cloud around Flaccus. They scattered, buzzing, as Nepos stooped to examine the wounded Roman.

The priest’s face was grave as he said to Gorgidas, “I will do what I can. Unbandage him for me, please; there must be contact between his flesh and mine.” Gorgidas knelt beside Nepos, deftly undoing the dressings he had applied the day before.

Battle-hardened soldiers gagged and drew back as the huge gash was bared. Its stench was more than most men could stand, but neither priest nor physician flinched from it.

“Now I understand the
Philoktetes
,” Gorgidas said to himself. Nepos looked at him without comprehension, for the doctor had fallen back into Greek. Unaware that he had spoken at all, Gorgidas did not explain.

Marcus also realized the truth in Sophokles’ play. No matter how vital a man was, with this foul a wound his presence could become intolerable
enough to force his comrades to abandon him. The thought flickered and blew out, for Nepos was leaning forward to take Publius Flaccus’ thigh in his hands.

The priest’s eyes were closed. He gripped the mangled leg so tightly his knuckles whitened. Had Flaccus been conscious, he would have shrieked in agony. As it was, he did not stir. Fresh pus welled up over the swollen lips of the wound to foul Nepos’ hands. The priest ignored it, his spirit and will focused on the injury alone.

Back at Imbros, a year before, Gorgidas had spoken of a flow of healing from priest to patient. The words were vague, but Scaurus had found none better then, nor did he now. The short hairs on the nape of his neck tried to rise, for he could feel the current passing between Nepos and Flaccus, though not with any sense he could name.

To aid his concentration, Nepos whispered an endless series of prayers. The Videssian dialect he used was so archaic Scaurus only caught a word now and again. Even the name of the priest’s god shifted. The divine patron of good was Phos in the modern tongue, but sounded more like “Phaos” in Nepos’ elder idiom.

At first Marcus wondered if it was his hopeful imagination, but soon he had no doubt: the evil-smelling pus was disappearing from the filthy gash, its swollen, inflamed lips visibly shrinking. “Will you look there?” a Roman muttered, awe in his voice. Other legionaries called on gods they had known longer than Phos.

Nepos paid no attention. Everything around him might have vanished in a clap of thunder, and he would have crouched, oblivious, before the still form of Publius Flaccus.

The wounded legionary moaned and stirred, his eyes fluttering open for the first time in two days. They were sunk deep in their sockets, but had reason in them. Gorgidas slipped a steadying arm behind Flaccus’ shoulder and offered him a canteen. The Roman drank thirstily. “Thank you,” he whispered.

When nothing else had, his words penetrated Nepos’ shell of concentration. The priest relaxed his clenched grip on Flaccus’ thigh; like the legionary, he, too, seemed to become aware of his surroundings once more. He reached out to take one of Flaccus’ hands in his own. “Phos be
praised,” he said, “for allowing me to act as his instrument in saving this man.”

Marcus and the rest of the Romans looked with marvel at the wonder Nepos had wrought. The rotting, stinking wound which had been about to kill Publius Flaccus was suddenly clean, free of corruption, and showing every sign of being able to heal normally. And Flaccus himself, the killing fever banished from his system, was trying to sit and trading gibes with the soldiers crowding near him. Only the fly-swarming pile of pus-soaked bandages gave any evidence of what had just happened.

His face alight, Gorgidas came around Flaccus to help Nepos up. “You must teach me your art,” he said. “Anything I have is yours.”

The priest was wobbly on his feet; fatigue was flooding back into him. Nonetheless he smiled wanly, saying, “Speak not of payment. I will show you if I can. If the talent lies within you, Phos’ servants ask nothing but that it be wisely used.”

“Thank you,” Gorgidas said softly, as grateful for the boon Nepos offered as Flaccus had been for the simpler gift of water. Then the physician grew brisk once more. “But for now there is only the one of you, and many more men who need your help. Cotilius Rufus, I think, is next worst off—his litter is over here.” He tugged Nepos through the crowd round Flaccus.

The priest took three or four steps before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slid gently to the ground. Gorgidas stared in consternation, then bent over his prostrate form. He peeled back an eyelid, felt for Nepos’ pulse. “He’s asleep,” the physician said indignantly.

Marcus laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve seen that this healing of theirs takes as much from the healer as it puts into the sufferer. And Nepos had been drawing heavily on his powers before you grabbed him. Let the poor fellow rest.”

“Oh, very well,” Gorgidas conceded with poor grace. “He is a man, after all, not a scalpel or a stick of collyrium to grind up for eyewash. I suppose it wouldn’t do to kill off my chief healing tool from overwork. But he’d better wake up soon.” And the physician settled himself beside the softly snoring Nepos to wait.

Soli, when the Romans and their companions reached it a few days later, had already had a visit from the Yezda. The ruins of the wall-less new town by the bank of the Rhamnos River had been sacked yet again, probably for the dozenth time in the two-score or so years since Yezd’s nomads began pushing into Videssos. Little gray eddies of smoke still spiraled into the air, though Scaurus was hard-pressed to understand what the invaders had found to burn.

On the bluff overlooking the river, the partially rebuilt Old Soli had survived behind its walls. Cries of alarm and trumpet blasts came echoing from those walls when lookouts spied the approaching force. Marcus had trouble convincing the watchmen his troops were friendly, the more so as the Yezda had driven Videssian prisoners ahead of them to masquerade as an imperial army.

When the town’s stout gates swung open at last, its
hypasteos
or city governor came out through them to greet the Romans. He was a tall, thin man of about forty, with stooped shoulders and a permanently dyspeptic expression. The tribune had not seen him on the army’s westward march, but remembered he was called Evghenios Kananos.