Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (29 page)

“That’s the way of it!” Gaius Philippus approved. “And don’t be ashamed to do it, either. Unless the odds are all with you, don’t get gay with the islanders. They have better gear than you and they know what to do with it, too. Just like me.” He grinned a lazy grin.

Watching the lesson, Marcus saw the veteran’s would-be marauders sober as they remembered his demonstration of a couple of days before. In full panoply, he had invited any four of his pupils to come at him with the hand-weapons they had. The fight did not last long. Reversing his
pilum
, he knocked the wind out of one assailant, ducked the scythe-stroke of another and broke the spearshaft over his head. Whirling, he let the third Videssian’s club whack into his shield, then hit him under the chin with the
scutum
’s metal-faced edge. Even as the man sank, Gaius Philippus was drawing his sword and sidling toward his last foe, who
carried a short pike. The fellow was brave enough, rushing forward to jab at the Roman, but Gaius Philippus, graceful as a dancer, stepped inside the thrust and tapped him on the chest with his sword. Two men unconscious, one helpless on the ground, the fourth white-faced and shaking—not bad, for a minute’s work.

A good dozen men slipped out of camp that night.

But for the ones who stayed, the senior centurion was proving a better teacher than Scaurus had expected. In fact, he showed a zest for the assignment he did not always bring to his ordinary duties. Like any job, those had become largely routine as the years went by. The new role seemed to take him back to his youth, and he plunged into it with more enthusiasm than the tribune had seen from him since they knew each other.

The veteran was saying, “Make your strike, do as much mischief as you can, and get away fast. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to ditch your weapons.” That would have been blasphemous advice to give to full-time soldiers. But to guerillas, it made sense. “Without ’em, who’s to know who you are?”

“And when they chase us?” someone asked.

“Scatter, of course. And if you get out of sight for a minute or two, you can stop running. Just bend down in a field and pull weeds like you belonged there. They’ll ride past you every time.” Gaius Philippus’ smile was altogether without the cynical cast it usually bore. “You can have a lot of fun at this business.”

Marcus dug a finger into his ear. The senior centurion, as hardened a professional as ever lived, calling soldiering fun? Reliving one’s youth was all very well, but from Gaius Philippus that seemed like second childhood.

Ruelm Ranulf’s son was pleased with himself as he and his squad of Namdaleni rode south toward the hills where resistance still simmered against his liege lord Drax. Not for a moment did he think of himself as subject to any Emperor Zigabenos. That piece of play-acting was for the Videssians to chew on.

He paused to light a torch. Twilight was almost gone, but he wanted to keep moving. With luck, he could join Bailli by midnight. That was what pleased him; when he’d set out from Kyzikos, he had expected to be on the road another day, but the ford over the Arandos that gaffer had shown him saved hours skirting the bank looking for a bridge and then doubling back. He touched his wallet. It had been well worth the goldpiece, and the old man looked as though he hadn’t seen many lately.

A moth flew in tight circles round his torch. The night was warm and very still; he could hear the faint whirr of its wings. A bat swooped out of the blackness, snatched the bug, and was gone almost before he was sure he’d seen it.

“Damned flittermouse,” he said, making the sun-sign on his breast to ward off the evil omen. His men did the same. The Namdaleni called bats “Skotos’ chickens,” for without the dark god’s help, how could they see to fly so unerringly by night?

As the hills came nearer, stands of brush and shadowy clumps of trees grew more common than they had been north of the Arandos. That rich low plain was the most intensively farmed and most productive land Ruelm had ever seen. By the austere standards of the duchy, even this was plenty fine enough.

A lapwing piped in the undergrowth to the side of the roads. “Peewit!” it said, following the call with a long whistle. Ruelm was mildly surprised to hear a day bird so long after dusk. Then the first arrow whispered out of the night, and the knight behind him swore in startlement and pain as it stuck in his calf.

For a second Ruelm sat frozen—no enemies were supposed to be here. The Romans and the Videssian and Khatrisher ragtag and bobtail clinging to their skirts had been driven well up into the hills.

Another arrow hissed past his face, so close a rough feather of the fletching tickled his cheek. Suddenly he was soldier again. He threw the torch as far as he could—whoever these night-runners were, no sense lighting a target for them. He was drawing his sword as they broke cover and rushed.

He slashed out blindly, still half dazzled by the torchlight, felt the blade bite. Behind him, the trooper who was first wounded yelled as he
was dragged from the saddle; his cry cut off abruptly. Others replaced it—backcountry Videssian voices shouting in mixed triumph and, he would have taken oath, fear.

The darkness gave the savage little fight a nightmare quality. Whirling his horse round to go to the aid of his men, Ruelm saw his foes as shifting black shadows, impossible to count, almost impossible to strike.

“Drax!” he shouted, and tasted sour fear in his mouth when only two men answered.

A hand pulled at his thigh. He kicked at his assailant; though his boot met only air, the man skipped back. He roweled his horse’s flank with his spurs. The gelding reared, whinnying. Well-trained as a war-horse, it lashed out with iron-shod hooves. A man’s skull shattered like a smashed melon; a bit of brain, warm, wet, and sticky, splashed on Ruelm’s forehead, just below his helmet.

Then, with a great scream, the gelding foundered. As he kicked free of the stirrups, Ruelm heard a Videssian cry, “Hamstrung, by Phos!” Boots and bare feet scuffed in the dirt of the roadway as more came running up like so many jackals.

The islander lit rolling and started to scramble to his feet, but a club smashed against the chain-mail neckguard that hung from his helm. Stunned, he fell to his knees and then to his belly. His sword was torn away; greedy hands ripped at the fastenings of his hauberk. He groaned and tried to reach for his dagger. “ ’Ware!” someone shouted. “He’s not done yet!”

A harsh chuckle. “We’ll fix that!” Still dazed, he felt rough fingers grope under his chin, jerk his head back. “Jist like a sheep,” the Videssian said. The knife stung, but not for long.

Accompanied by Sittas Zonaras and Gaius Philippus, Scaurus walked toward the truce-site Bailli of Ecrisi had suggested. “Here, Minucius,” the tribune said, pausing, “this is close enough for you and your squad.” The young underofficer saluted; they were a good bowshot away from where Bailli and a pair of his lieutenants were waiting. A double handful of dismounted Namdaleni lounged on the ground a similar distance north of their leaders.

“Hello, islander,” Scaurus called as he came up. “What do we need to talk about?”

But Bailli was not the suave, self-assured officer who had delivered Drax’ proclamation a few weeks before. “You scum,” he snarled, his neck corded with fury. “For two coppers I’d stake you out for the crows. I thought you a man of honor.” He spat at the Roman’s feet.

“If I’m not, why risk a parley with me? We’re enemies, true, but there’s no need to hate each other.”

“Go howl, you and your pretty talk,” Bailli said. “We took you and yours for honest mercenaries, men who’d do their best for him who pays them, aye, but not stoop to such foulness as you’re wading in. Murders in the night, tavern stabbings, maimed horses, thefts to drive a man mad—”

“Why blame us?” Marcus asked. “First off, you know we Romans don’t war like that—as I say, you must, or you’d not be here talking with me. And second, even if we did, we couldn’t, for it’s you who pinned us back in these hills.”

“Seems someone in the flatlands isn’t fond of you,” Gaius Philippus said, as casually as if remarking on the weather.

Bailli was near the bursting point. “All right! All right! Loose your stupid peasants, if that’s how you care to play this game. We’ll root them out if we have to chip down every tree and burn every cottage from here back to the city. And then we’ll come back to deal with you, and you’ll wish for what we gave your cowardly skulkers.”

Gaius Philippus said nothing, but an eyebrow twitched. To Bailli it could have meant anything; to Marcus, it showed he was not worried by the threat.

“Will there be anything more, Bailli?” the tribune asked.

“Just this,” the Namdalener officer said heavily. “At the Sangarios you fought your men as well as you could and as cleanly, too. Then afterwards in the talks over your exchange scheme, you were gracious even when they did not turn out as you wanted. So why this?”

The honest perplexity in his voice deserved a straight answer. Marcus thought for a moment, then said, “ ‘Doing me best,’ as you call it, is all very well, but it’s not my job. My job is to hold things together, and one way or another I intend to do it.”

He treasured the look of unreserved approval Gaius Philippus gave him, but knew he had made no sense to Bailli. Roman stubbornness was a trait without counterpart in this world; neither sly Videssians, happy-go-lucky Khatrishers, nor proud upstart Namdaleni fully appreciated it.

Yet Bailli was no fool. Just as Scaurus had quoted him, now he threw the tribune’s words back in his face. “ ‘One way or another,’ is it? How much thanks do you think you’ll win from the Empire’s nobles, outlanders, if you teach the assassin’s trade to peasants with manure between their toes?” He looked Zonaras in the eye. “And you, sirrah. When you go out to collect your rents, will you feel safe riding past any bush big enough for a man to hide behind?”

“Safer than when your bravoes set on me,” the Videssian retorted, but he tugged thoughtfully at his beard all the same.

“You remind me of the man in the story, who threw himself on the fire because he was chilly. On your head be it—and it probably will.” Bailli turned back to Scaurus. “We buried that northbound rider of yours—Antakinos, wasn’t it?”

If he knew the name, he was not bluffing. Marcus wondered how many couriers had been taken before they ever reached him. “Did you?” he said. “Well,
vale
—farewell!”

Bailli grunted, plainly hoping for some larger reaction. He nodded to his lieutenants, who had been glowering at the tribune and his comrades with even less liking than their leader showed. “Come on; we’ve given him his warning, and more than he deserves.” With almost legionary precision, the Namdaleni turned on their heels and tramped back to their waiting knights.

As Scaurus, Gaius Philippus, and Zonaras moved toward Minucius’ guard squad, the senior centurion had all he could do to keep from smirking. “That one’ll be the best recruiter we ever had. There’s nothing like seeing your farm torn to bits and your neighbors killed to give you the idea of which side you should be on.”

“Aye, likely so,” Marcus said, but abstractedly. Bailli’s jab over the consequences of encouraging a guerilla among the Videssian peasantry troubled him more than he had shown the islander. When he gave Gaius Philippus a free hand, he had not thought past the immediate goal of
making Drax’ life miserable. He was doing that, no doubt; Bailli’s spleen was a good measure of it. But the Namdalener, blast him, was right—the marauders who took up arms against the men of the Duchy would not magically unlearn their use once the war was done. How long before they realized a disliked landowner or imperial tax-agent bled as red as an islander?

Zonaras might have been reading his thoughts. He clapped the tribune on the back, saying, “I don’t expect to be bushwhacked tomorrow, Scaurus, no, nor next year either.”

“I’m glad,” Marcus answered. He consoled himself by thinking that in Videssos, as in Rome, the great landowners were too powerful. Their grip needed loosening. The Empire had been stronger when it relied on its freeholding peasantry than now, with the provincial nobles at odds with the pen-pushers in the capital, and with the state’s defenses in the hands of unreliable mercenaries like the Namdaleni—or the Romans.

But that evening Pakhymer laughed at him when he retorted what Bailli had said. “And you were the one who got huffy at me for doing what needed doing with the Yezda.”

“There’s a difference,” Marcus insisted.

“In a pig’s arse,” the Khatrisher said cheerfully; the tribune had known he would not see it. “You load your side of the Balance as heavily as you can, then hope for the best.” Orthodox Videssian thought held that Phos would one day vanquish his wicked rival Skotos. Pakhymer’s folk, whose very nation sprang from the chaos of barbarian invasion, were not so optimistic. In their view the fight between good and evil was evenly matched, thus the metaphor of the balance. To the imperials, even to the Namdaleni, it was foul heresy. Independent as always, the Khatrishers clung to it regardless.

Marcus was glad he was indifferent to theology.

Gaius Philippus had come to respect Pakhymer’s opinions; the pockmarked little cavalry commander had a habit of being right. Picking a bit of raisin out from between his teeth, he said to Scaurus, “You’re the one who keeps track of these cursed imperial politics, sir. Will they see us as ogres for using their clients to fight the islanders?”

“Only the ones who are ogres themselves, is my guess. They’re the
ones who have something to fear.” Marcus eyed the veteran curiously; such worries were unlike him. “Why should it trouble you?”

“No reason, really,” the senior centurion said, but his sheepish smile rang false. Marcus waited. Gaius Philippus stumbled on, “After all, what with the Yezda and Zemarkhos’ fanatics between here and Aptos, likely no trouble from this would ever reach there.”

“Aptos?” The Romans had wintered there after Maragha, but it was more than a year since they left the small town, and Scaurus had hardly thought of it since.

Gaius Philippus seemed to regret opening his mouth in the first place. The tribune thought he was going to clam up, but he plunged ahead: “The local noble’s widow there—what was her name? Nerse Phorkaina, that was it—is a fine lady. What with raising up her son, and the Yezda, and Zemarkhos’ holy war against everything, I’d rather she didn’t think we’d given her a new headache. That would be a poor return for good guesting.”