Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (30 page)

“So it would,” Marcus agreed solemnly. What was her name, indeed, he thought. He was sure Gaius Philippus remembered everything there was to remember about Phorkos’ widow, down to what stones she favored in her rings. But the senior centurion was so used to despising women that Scaurus doubted he would ever admit feeling otherwise, even to himself.

The short-hafted axe bit into the black mulberry’s trunk again and again. Chips flew. Bryennios the woodcutter grunted in satisfaction as the tree began to totter. Long years of use had polished the axe handle smooth as a maiden’s skin beneath his callused palms. He walked round to the other side of the mulberry, deepened his undercut with a few strokes, then went back to the main cut. He grunted again. Sure enough, he’d be able to drop the tree in the space where the old alder had stood until the storm three winters past. That would make chopping it into timber so much easier.

The breeze shifted, bringing with it the sharp odor of wood smoke. Bryennios made another wordless noise, this one anything but pleasant—it was not Tralles the charcoal-burner at work. Houses in his hamlet were
going up in flames. He could hear women wailing in the distance, and Namdaleni shouting to each other.

As if thinking of the men of the Duchy had conjured them up, three came riding toward him down the forest track. “You, there!” one shouted; his lazy island accent swallowed the last r. Bryennios sneered, but to himself. The Namdaleni were all armored and carried their long lances at the ready. The woodcutter swung his axe again. The mulberry groaned. A few more strokes and it would fall.

“Belay that!” the islander shouted. The seaman’s word meant nothing to Bryennios, who had seen no water greater than a pond, but the sense was plain. He lowered the axe.

Pretending not to, he eyed the Namdaleni as they approached. Two might have been Videssians for looks had they not shaved; the third was fair-haired, with eyes of a startling green. All of them were big, strapping men, overtopping him by half a head or more, but his shoulders were wider than theirs, his arms thick with muscle from his trade.

“What do you want of me?” he asked. “I have work to do—more work, thanks to the lot of you.” He did not bother hiding his bitterness.

The older of the two dark Namdaleni, their spokesman, wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his green surcoat. Soot and rusty sweat came away in a short clean streak. The rest of his face was filthy. “You want to be spared such visits, eh?” he said.

Bryennios looked at him as at any idiot. “Who would not?”

“A point.” The islander smiled thinly. “Well, we aren’t pleased to have a supply wagon torched and two guards knocked over the head. Have any ideas about whose clever scheme that was? We’d pay well to learn his name.”

The woodcutter shrugged, spread his hands. The Namdalener snarled in disgust, mockingly imitated his gesture. “You see how it is, then. If we can’t find out who these rebels are, we have to teach everyone the price of sheltering them.” Bryennios shrugged again.

“You mi’ as well talk to the clot’s axe,” the blond islander said. “It’d tell you more.” His emerald stare stabbed at Bryennios; the down-pointing bar nasal on his helmet gave him the aspect of a brooding falcon. At last he jerked hard on his horse’s reins, wheeling the beast around. His comrades followed.

Bryennios attacked the mulberry again. After a few savage swings it fell just where he had known it would. He stepped forward to lop off the bigger branches. He muttered a short prayer of thanks that the men of the Duchy had not taken the blond knight’s sour advice and examined his axe. The dark red crusted stain at the top of the handle did not come from sap.

“Why are they pulling out? I haven’t a clue,” the Khatrisher scout said to Scaurus, as cheeky as any of his people. “You want whys, see a magician. Whats I’m pretty good at, and I tell you the Namdaleni are breaking camp.”

The tribune fumbled in his pouch, tossed the horseman a goldpiece. “Whatever the reason, good news deserves a reward.” The Khatrisher made it disappear before Marcus thumped his forehead at his folly. “After Kyzikos, you should be paying me.”

“It won’t go to waste, even so.” The Khatrisher grinned smugly.

The tribune rode back to his vantage point with him. No great horseman, Scaurus blessed the stirrups that gave him a fighting chance to stay on the large, unreliable beast between his thighs.

A glance from the hilltop crag told him the scout was right. Bailli’s Namdaleni had used the legionary camp by Zonaras’ villa as their own main base. Now it lay deserted; Marcus reached the observation post in time to see the last of the Namdalener column ride north out of the valley. Even at some distance, he could see how tightly bunched they were—a hostile countryside was the best argument against straggling.

Watching the retreat as he was, he took a while to notice that a garrison still held Zonaras’ strong-walled home. So it proved over the next few days all along the line the islanders had set up to contain the legionaries. Their striking force was gone, but they still stood strongly on the defensive.

When the riders who did sneak past the Namdalener forts reported that the main body of islanders was hurrying northwest toward Garsavra, Laon Pakhymer looked so pleased with himself that Marcus wanted to throttle him. “You see, even the Yezda can be useful,” the Khatrisher general said. “One man’s trouble is the next fellow’s chance.”

“Hmmp,” Scaurus said. He still hoped the men of the Duchy would smash the Yezda, though he had to admit he would not be brokenhearted to see them weakened in the smashing. He did not mean to sit idly by while they battled. If a couple of the islanders’ motte-and-baileys fell, the way would open for the legionaries to go down into the coastal plain once more. The hills made a good refuge, but nothing would be decided here—and the lush lowlands were much better able to feed any army. He was sick of barley and lentils, and even those were running low.

Naturally, Zonaras wanted his villa to be the first strong point freed, but the tribune had to tell him no—its approaches were too open, and the building itself too strong. The elderly noble shook his head ruefully. “There’s praise I could do without.”

Marcus chose several more likely targets to attack. For himself he picked a fort that was new Namdalener construction, a few miles west of Zonaras’ holding. The valley it sat in was a guerilla center; strife between them and the islander garrison had made many of the local peasants flee, and the men of the Duchy were working their fields. Looking out from between the branches of an almond grove, the tribune thought they were doing a good job of it, too.

There was no signal. When he judged the moment ripe, Pakhymer sent a few dozen horsemen riding hell-for-leather into the valley. They trampled through the rich green fields, slashing the growing grain with their sabers to leave as wide a track of destruction as they could. Some carried smoking torches, which they hurled here and there. Others darted toward the small flock of sheep grazing just outside the motte and started driving them into the hills.

From a quarter mile away, Marcus could hear the roars of outrage in the fort, could see men running about on the wall and shooting a few useless arrows at the pillagers outside. Then a wooden gangboard thudded down over the deep moat. Knights stormed over it, their horses’ hooves echoing thunderously. Peering through the leaves, the tribune counted them as they came. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine … his spies’ best guess was that the castle held fifty or so.

While panicked sheep ran every which way, the Khatrishers regrouped to meet the threat, using their ponies’ quickness and agility for all they were worth. They peppered their heavily armored foes with arrows;
Scaurus saw an islander clap his hands to his face and slide back over his horse’s tail. Two of Pakhymer’s men rushed toward a Namdalener who had gotten separated from his mates, one to either side. Watching from concealment, the tribune bit his lip. What would it take to convince the Khatrishers they could not stand up against islanders in close combat? Covering his left side with his shield, the Namdalener chopped the man on his right from the saddle, then used a clever backhanded stroke to send the other reeling away with a gashed forearm. The rest of the islanders shouted to applaud the feat of arms.

As if their morale was broken, the raiding party sped toward the hills, the men of the Duchy pounding after them. Now the Khatrishers’ light horses were not putting out quite their best speed; they seemed unable to pull away from the islanders’ ponderous chargers. Yelling and brandishing their lances, the Namdaleni held hotly to the pursuit.

Scaurus watched the gap between islanders and fortress increase. He turned to the maniple which had spent an uncomfortable night with him under the almonds. “All right, lads, at the trot!” he shouted. They burst from concealment and rushed toward the castle, carrying hurdles and bundles of brush to fill the moat.

They were almost halfway there before any of the Namdaleni spied them approaching from the side; the riders were intent on the chase, while the handful still inside the fortress had no eyes for anything but their comrades. Then one of the men on the earthwork wall let out a horrified bellow. The tribune was close enough to see mouths drop open in dismay. Islanders darted toward the gangboard, to drag it up before the legionaries reached it. Scaurus bared his teeth in a grin; he had not counted on that much luck.

The thick oak planks were heavy, and the passage of horses and mail-clad knights had driven the wooden bridge deep into the soft earth of the rampart. Marcus heard the islanders grunting and swearing with effort, but the outer edge of the gangboard had hardly moved when his
caligae
thudded onto it.

He dashed forward, doing his best not to think of the moat that yawned below. An islander, his nails broken and hands black with dirt, gave up the futile effort to shift the bridge and stepped out onto it, drawing his sword as he did. Marcus’ own Gallic longsword was already in his
hand. “Horatius, is it?” he panted. But unlike the span the legendary Roman hero had held against the Etruscans, this one was wide enough for three or four men to fight abreast. Before more Namdaleni could join the first quick-thinking one, Scaurus assailed him from the front, Minucius from the left, and another Roman from the right. He defended himself bravely, but three against one was a fight that could only last seconds. The soldier toppled, bleeding at throat, groin, and thigh. Cheering, the legionaries trampled over his corpse and swarmed into the castle’s bailey. A couple of Namdaleni tried to fight; most threw down their arms in despair.

By then the knights chasing the Khatrishers realized the snare they had fallen into. They spun their horses and came galloping back toward the fort, spurring desperately. But the Khatrishers turned round, too, and became pursuers rather than pursued. The islanders, with more at stake than the raiders, ignored their arrows as best they could, though one charger after another rode on riderless.

“Come on, put your backs into it!” Scaurus shouted. With many more hands than the Namdaleni had used, the legionaries strained at the gangboard. They yelled as it pulled free of the clinging earth and went tumbling into the moat. It was well made; the tribune did not hear timbers crack as it hit.

Outside the castle, the islanders milled round in confusion, shut out of their own fortress and at a loss what to do next. The Khatrishers’ archery suggested that lingering was not the wisest course. Looking glumly back over their shoulders, they trotted north, presumably to join their main force. Pakhymer waved to Marcus, who returned it; the assault had gone better than he had dared hope.

He spent the night in the captured fort, waiting for reports from his officers. A rider attached to Gagik Bagratouni’s force came in just after sunset, to announce a success as complete and easy as the tribune’s. Junius Blaesus took his target, too, but at the cost of some hard fighting. “What went wrong?” Marcus asked.

“Started his charge too damned soon,” the Khatrisher scout answered, not shy about criticizing someone else’s officer. “The Namdaleni managed to reverse themselves and hit him before he made it to the castle. He’s brave enough, though—ducked a lance and speared one
right off his horse, he did.” The Katrisher tugged his ear, trying to remember something. “Ah, that’s it—your friend Apokavkos lost the little finger on his right hand.”

“Pity,” Scaurus said. “How is he taking it?”

“Him? He’s angry at himself—told me to tell you he cut instead of thrusting, and the last time he’ll make that mistake, thank you very much.”

That left only Gaius Philippus unaccounted for. Marcus was not much worried; the senior centurion’s target was farthest from his own. But early next morning a rider came in to report flat failure. He was vague about what had happened; Scaurus did not hear the full story until he saw Gaius Philippus back at the Roman camp a few days later. He had pulled the legionaries out of the captured forts, leaving Videssians behind instead, a mixture of nobles’ retainers and irregulars—troops plenty good for garrison duty.

“One of those things,” the senior centurion shrugged. “The Khatrishers went whooping into the fields fine as you please, but the whoresons inside had a couple of stone-throwers in their castle, which we didn’t know about till they opened up. Good aimers, too. They squashed two horses and took the head off a rider neat as you please. That discouraged the rest considerably, and what was supposed to be a fake skedaddle turned real mighty fast.” He spooned up some mutton stew. “Can’t say I blame ’em much. We sat under some peaches till it was dark again, then left. Some of my men have taken a flux from eating green ones, the twits.”

Despite the veteran’s misfortune, Scaurus knew he had gained a solid success. His mouth watered at the prospect of getting down into the plain; a full summer in the hills would leave them picked bare and his troops starving. True, all Drax’ forces together could crush the legionaries, but Drax had problems of his own.

Senpat Sviodo made as if to throw his pandoura away in disgust after producing a chord even Scaurus’ insensitive ear recognized as spectacularly unmusical. “I wish we were back in the highlands,” he said. “It’s too muggy down here; there’s no way to keep gut strings in tune with all this humidity. Ah, my sweet,” he crooned, holding the pandoura as he might
Nevrat, “you deserve strings of finest silver. And,” he added, laughing, “if I lavished money on you thus, perhaps you’d not betray me, fickle hussy.”