Krispos the Emperor k-3

by Harry Turtledove

  "Aye, Father!" Eyes snapping with excitement, Katakolon dug spurs into the horse's side. It squealed an indignant protest at such treatment, but bounded off with such celerity that Katakolon almost went over its tail.

  The Avtokrator's youngest son returned faster than Krispos would have thought possible. His anger faded when he saw Katakolon had in tow a messenger he recognized as one of Noetos' men. "Well?" he barked.

  The messenger saluted. "May it please your Majesty, we were attacked by a band of perhaps forty. They came close enough to shoot arrows at us; when we rode out to drive them off, most fled but a few stayed behind and fought with the saber to help the others escape."

  "Casualties?" Krispos asked.

  "We lost one killed and four wounded, your Majesty," the messenger answered. "We killed five of theirs, and several more were reeling in the saddle as they rode away."

  "Did we capture any of them?" Krispos demanded.

  "We were still in pursuit when I left to bring this word to you. I know of no prisoners, but my knowledge, as I say, is incomplete."

  "I'll ride back and find out for myself." Krispos turned to Katakolon. "Tell the musicians to order the advance." As his son hurried off to obey, he told the messenger, "Take me to Noetos. I'll hear his report of the action directly."

  Krispos fumed as he rode toward the rear of the army. Forty men had held him up for a solid hour. A few more such pinpricks and the army would go hungry before it got to Aptos. Better cavalry screens, he told himself. Raiders had to be beaten back before they reached the main body. Screening parties could fight and keep moving, or fall back on their comrades if hard-pressed.

  He hoped the rear guard had managed to lay hold of some Thanasioi. One interrogation was worth a thousand guesses, especially when he knew so little about the enemy. He knew the methods his men would use to wring truth out of any captives. They did not please him, but any man taken in arms against the Avtokrator of the Videssians was on the face of it a traitor and rebel, not to be coddled if that meant danger to the Empire.

  One of the wounded imperials lay on a wagon, a blue-robed healer-priest bent over him. The soldier thrashed feebly; an arrow protruded from his neck. Krispos reined in to watch the healer-priest at work. He wondered why the blue-robe hadn't drawn the arrow, then decided it was all that kept the wounded man from bleeding to death in moments. This would be anything but an easy healing.

  The priest repeated the creed again and again. "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor." As he used the prayers to sink down toward the healing trance, he set one hand on the trooper's neck, the other on the arrow that bobbed back and forth as the fellow fought to breathe.

  All at once, the blue-robe jerked the arrow free. The trooper let out a bubbling shriek. Bright blood spurted, splashing against the priest's face. So far as breaking his concentration went, it might have been water, or nothing at all.

  As abruptly as if the blue-robe had turned a spigot, the spurting stopped. Awe prickled through Krispos, as it always did when he watched a healer-priest at work. He thought the air above the injured trooper should have shimmered, as if from the heat of a fire, so strong was the force of healing that passed between priest and soldier. But the eye, unlike other, less easily nameable senses, perceived nothing.

  The healer-priest released his hold on the injured man and sat up. The blue-robe's face was white and drained, a token of what the healing had cost him. A moment later, the soldier sat, too. A pale scar marred the skin of his neck; by its seeming, he might have worn it for years. Wonder filled his face as he picked up the bloodstained arrow the priest had pulled from his neck.

  "Thank you, holy sir," he said, his voice as unhurt as the rest of him. "I thought I was dead."

  "As I think I am now," the healer croaked. "Water, I pray you, or wine." The trooper pulled free the flask that still dangled from his belt, handing it to the man who had saved him. The blue-robe's larynx worked as he threw back his head and gulped down great drafts.

  Krispos urged his horse forward, glad the soldier was hale. Healer-priests were better suited to dealing with the consequences of skirmishes than battles, for they quickly exhausted their powers—and themselves. In large conflicts, they helped only the most desperately hurt, leaving the rest to those who fought wounds with sutures and bandages rather than magic.

  Noetos rode toward Krispos. Saluting, he said, "We drove the bastards off with no trouble, your Majesty. Sorry we had to slow you down to do it."

  "Not half so sorry as I am," Krispos answered. "Well, the good god willing, that won't happen again." He explained his plan to extend the cavalry screen around the army. Noetos nodded with sober approval. Krispos went on, "Did your men capture any of the rebels?"

  "Aye, we got one in the pursuit after I sent Barisbakourios to you," Noetos said. "Shall we squeeze the Thanasiot cheese till the whey runs out of him?" A couple of his lieutenants were close by; they chuckled grimly at the rearguard commander's truth in jest's clothing.

  "Presently, at need," Krispos said. "Let's see what magic can do with him first. Bring him here. I want to see him."

  Noetos called orders. Some of his troopers frogmarched a young man in peasant homespun into the Avtokrator's presence. The captive must have taken a fall from his horse. His tunic was out at both elbows and over one knee; he was bloody in all three of those places and a couple of others, as well. Serum oozed down into one eye from a scrape on his forehead.

  But he remained defiant. When one of the guards growled, "Down on your belly before his Majesty, wretch," he bent his head, sure enough, but only to spit between his feet as if in rejection of Skotos. All the soldiers snarled then, and roughly forced him into a proskynesis in spite of his struggles.

  "Haul him to his feet," Krispos said, thinking the cavalrymen were likely to have done worse to their prisoner had they not been under his eye. When the ragged, battered youth—he" might have been Evripos' age, more likely Katakolon's—i Krispos asked him, "What have I done to you, that you treat me like the dark god?"

  The prisoner worked his jaw, perhaps preparing to spit once more. "You don't want to do that, sonny," one of the troopers said.

  The young man spat anyhow. Krispos let his captors shake him a little, but then raised a hand. "Hold on. I want this question answered as freely as may be, given what's happened here. What have I done, to be hated so? We've been at peace most of the years since he was born; taxes are lower now than then. What does he have against me? What do you have against me, sirrah? You may as well speak your mind; the headsman's shadow already falls across your fate."

  "You think I fear death?" the prisoner said. "By the good god, I laugh at death—it takes me out of this trap of Skotos, the world, and sends me on to Phos' eternal light. Do your worst to me; that's but for a moment. Then I shake free of the dung we call a body, like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon."

  His eyes blazed, though he kept blinking the one beneath the scrape. The last set of eyes Krispos had seen burning with such fanaticism had belonged to the priest Pyrrhos, first his benefactor, then his ecumenical patriarch, and at last such a ferocious and inflexible champion of orthodoxy that he'd had to be deposed.

  Krispos said, "Very well, young fellow—" He realized he was speaking as if to one of his sons who'd been foolish. "—you despise the world. Why do you despise my place in it?"

  "Because you're rich, and wallow in your gold like a hog in mud," the young Thanasiot answered. "Because you choose the material over the spiritual, and give over your soul to Skotos in the process."

  "Here, you speak to his Majesty with respect, or it'll go the harder for you," one of the cavalrymen growled. The prisoner spat on the ground again. His captor backhanded him across the face. Blood started from the corner of his mouth.

  "Enough of that," Krispos said. "He'll be one of many who feel that way. He's eaten up bad doctrine and sic
kened on it."

  "Liar!" the young man shouted, careless of his own fate. "You're the one with false teachings poisoning your mind. Abandon the world and the things of the world for the true and lasting life, the one yet to come." He could not raise his arms, but lifted his eyes to the heavens. "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind—"

  Hearing the heretic pray to the good god with the identical words he himself used, Krispos wondered for a moment if the fellow could be right. Pyrrhos, in his day, might have come close to saying yes, but not even the rigorously ascetic Pyrrhos could have countenanced destroying all the things of this world for the sake of the afterlife. How were men and women to live and raise families if they wrecked their farms or shops, abandoned parents or children?

  He put the question to the prisoner: "If you Thanasioi had your way, wouldn't you soonest let mankind die out in a single generation's time, so no one would be left alive to commit any sins?"

  "Aye, that's so," the youth answered. "It won't be so simple; we know that—most folk are too cowardly, too much in love with materialism—"

  "By which it sounds as if you mean a full belly and a roof over one's head," Krispos broke in.

  "Anything that ties you to the world is evil, is from Skotos," the prisoner insisted. "The purest among us stop taking food and let themselves starve, the better to join Phos as soon as they may."

  Krispos believed him. That streak of fanatic asceticism ran deep in many Videssians, whether orthodox or heretic. The Thanasioi, though, seemed to have found a way to channel that religious energy to their own ends, perhaps more effectively than the comfortable clergy who came from Videssos the city.

  "Me, I aim to live in this world as long and as well as I can," the Avtokrator said. The Thanasiot laughed scornfully. Krispos did not care. Having known privation in his youth, he saw no point to embracing it when he did not have to. He turned to the men who had hold of the youngster. "Tie him onto a horse. Don't let him escape or harm himself. When we encamp tonight, I'll have Zaidas the wizard question him. And if magic doesn't get me what I need to know ..."

  The guards nodded. The young heretic just glared. Krispos wondered how long that defiance would last if confronted with fire and barbed iron. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out.

  Late in the afternoon, the Thanasioi again tried to raid the imperial army. A courier carried a dripping head back to Krispos. His stomach lurched; the hacking was as crude as that of any farmer who slaughtered a pig, while the iron smell of fresh blood also brought back memories of butchering.

  If the courier had any such memories, they didn't bother him. Grinning, he said, "We drove the whoresons off, your Majesty—spreading us wider was a fine plan. Junior here, he didn't run fast enough."

  "Good," Krispos said, trying not to meet Junior's sightless eyes. He dug in the pouch at his belt and tossed the courier a goldpiece. "This is for the good news."

  "Phos bless you, majesty," the fellow exclaimed. "Shall we put this lad on a pike and carry him ahead of us for a standard?"

  "No," Krispos said with a shudder. An army that seemed bent on wanton killing would be just what the countryside needed to throw it into the rebels' camp. Controlling his features as best he could, the Avtokrator went on, "Bury it or toss it in a ditch or do whatever you please, as long as you don't display it. We want the people to know we've come to root out the heretics, not to glory in gore."

  "However you'd have it, your Majesty," the courier said cheerfully. He rode off happy enough with his reward, even though the Emperor had turned down the suggestion he'd made. Krispos knew some Avtokrators—not the worst of rulers Videssos had ever had, either—would have taken him up on it, or had the idea for themselves. But he did not have the stomach for it.

  After the army made camp, he went over to Zaidas' pavilion. He found the Thanasiot prisoner tied to a folding chair and the mage looking frustrated. Zaidas gestured to the apparatus he'd set up. "You are familiar with the two-mirror spell for determining truth, your Majesty?"

  "I've seen it used, yes," Krispos answered. "Why? Are you having trouble with it?"

  "That would be putting it mildly. It yields me nothing— nothing, do you hear?" Normally among the gentlest of men. Zaidas looked ready to tear the answer to his failure out of the prisoner with red-hot pincers.

  "Can it be shielded against?" Krispos asked.

  "Obviously it can." Zaidas gave the Thanasiot another glare before continuing. "This I knew before. But I never thought to find such shielding on a fleabitten trooper like this. If all the rebels are warded in like fashion, interrogation will become less certain and more bloody."

  "The good god's truth armors me," the young captive declared. He sounded proud, as if he failed to realize his immunity would only cause him to be given over to torment.

  "Any chance he's telling the truth?" Krispos asked.

  Zaidas made a scornful noise, then suddenly turned thoughtful. "Maybe his fanaticism does afford some protection," the mage said. "One of the reasons sorcery so often fails in battle is that men at a high pitch of excitement are less vulnerable to its effects. Fervent belief in the righteousness of his cause may raise this fellow to a similar, less vulnerable, plane."

  "Can you learn whether this is so?"

  "It would take some time." Zaidas pursed his lips and seemed on the point of retreating into one of his brown studies.

  Krispos forestalled him. Whenever magic touched the Thanasioi, something went wrong. Zaidas hadn't been able to learn where the heretics had taken Phostis—whose absence, unexpectedly, was an ache that only the endless work of the campaign held at bay—he hadn't been able to learn why he couldn't learn that, and now he couldn't even squeeze truth from an ordinary prisoner. To him, that made the young Thanasiot an intriguing challenge. To Krispos, it made the rebel an obstacle to be crushed, since he would not yield to gentler methods.

  Harshly the Avtokrator said, "Let the men in red leather have him." Interrogators who used no magic wore red to hide the stains of their trade.

  In his youth, Krispos would have been slower to give that order. He knew his years on the throne—and his desire to remain there for more years—had hardened him; even corrupted might not have been too strong a word. But he was also introspective enough to recognize that hardening and resist it save in times of dire need. This, he judged, was one of those times.

  The Thanasiot's shrieks kept him awake long into the night. He was a ruler who did what he thought he had to do; he was no monster. Some time past midnight, he downed a beaker of wine and let the grape put a blurry curtain between him and the screaming. At last he slept.

  V

  After a lifetime spent within hearing of the sea, Phostis found the hill country he traveled through strange in more ways than he could count. The moaning wind sounded wrong. It even smelled wrong, carrying the odors of dirt and smoke and livestock, but not the salt tang he'd never noticed till he met it no more.

  Instead of being able to look out from a tall window and see far across blue water, he now found his horizon limited to a few hundred yards of gray rock, gray-brown dirt, and gray-green brush. The wagon in which he rode bumped along over winding trails so narrow he wouldn't have thought a horse able to use them, let alone a vehicle with wheels.

  And, of course, no one had ever used him as Syagrios and Olyvria did now. All through his life, people had jumped to obey, even to anticipate, his every whim. "Die only exceptions he'd known were his father, his mother when she was alive, and his brothers—and, being the eldest, he was pretty good at getting his way with Evripos and Katakolon. That a rebel officer's daughter and a ruffian could not only disobey him but give orders themselves had never crossed his mind, even in nightmare.

  That they could do anything else had never crossed their minds. As the road took another of its innumerable twists, Syagrios said, "Down flat, you. Anybody who sees you is likely to be one of us, but ain't nobody gets old on 'likely.' "

  Phostis scrambled down in
to the wagon bed. The first time 121

  Syagrios told him to do that, he'd balked—whereupon Syagrios clouted him. He couldn't jump out of the wagon and run; a stout rope bound his ankle to a post. He could stand up and yell for help, but as Syagrios had said, most of the people hereabouts were themselves Thanasioi.

  Syagrios had said something else, too, when he tried to disobey: "Listen, boy, you may think you can pop up like a spring toy and get us killed. You may even be right. But you better think about this, too: I promise you won't be around to see our heads go up on the Milestone."

  Was he bluffing? Phostis didn't think so. A couple of times, other wagons or horsemen had trotted past, but he'd lain quiet. Most of the times he was ordered into the wagon bed, as now, no one came round the blind corner. After a minute or two, Syagrios said, "All right, kid, you can come back up."

  Phostis returned to his place between the burly driver and Olyvria. He said, "Where are you taking me, anyhow?"

  He'd asked that question ever since he was kidnapped. As usual, Olyvria answered, "What you don't know, you can't tell if you're lucky enough to get away." She brushed back a curl that had slipped out to tickle her cheek. "If you decide you want to try to get away, that is."

  "I might be less inclined to. if you'd trust me more," he said. In his theology he was not far from the Thanasioi. But he had a hard time loving people who'd drugged, kidnapped, beaten, and imprisoned him. He considered that from a theological point of view. Should he not approve of them for removing him from the obscenely comfortable world in which he'd dwelt?

  No. Maybe he was imperfectly religious, but he still thought of those who tormented him as his enemies.

  Olyvria said, "I'm not the one who can decide whether you're to be trusted. My father will do that when you come before him."

  "When will that be?" Phostis asked for at least the dozenth time.

  Syagrios answered before Olyvria could: "Whenever it is. You ask too bloody many questions, you know that?"