Krispos the Emperor

by Harry Turtledove

  He parried the blue-robe's first wild swipe, and his second. "By the good god, cut him!" Syagrios shouted in disgust. "What do you think—he's going to get tired and go away?"

  Phostis didn't quite parry the third blow. It glanced off his shin, hard enough to make him bite his lip against the pain. He realized with growing dismay that he couldn't just try to hold off the monk, not when the fellow wanted nothing more than to kill him.

  The monk drew back his club for yet another swing. Phostis slashed at him, feeling the blade bite. Behind him, Syagrios roared with glee. Phostis would cheerfully have killed the ruffian for forcing him into a position where he either had to hurt the monk or get himself maimed or killed.

  None of the other raiders had any such compunctions. Several had dismounted, the better to torture the monks they overcame. Screams echoed down the halls that had resounded with hymns of praise to Phos. Watching the Thanasioi at their work—or was it better called sport?—Phostis felt his stomach lurch like a horse stepping into a snow-covered hole.

  "Away! Away!" Themistios shouted. "It'll burn now, and we have more to do before we head home."

  What does he have in mind? Phostis thought. About the only thing that fit in with what the raiders had done at the monastery was torching a home for penniless widows and orphans. Videssos the city had several such; he wondered if Aptos was a big enough town to boast any.

  He never got the chance to find out, for as he and the Thanasioi rode away from the monastery, a troop of imperial soldiers came storming after them from out of Aptos. Faint in the distance but growing louder fast, Phostis heard a wary cry he'd never imagined could sound so welcome: "Krispos! The Avtokrator Krispos! Krispos!"

  A good many of the Thanasioi had bows as well as sabers. They started shooting at the imperials. The garrison troops, like most imperial cavalry, were archers, too. They shot back. The advantage lay on their side, because they wore mail shirts and helmets while almost all the Thanasioi were unarmored.

  Phostis yanked his horse's head around and booted the animal toward the imperials. All he thought about was giving himself up and doing whatever penance the patriarch or some other ecclesiastic set him for his sins in the monastery. Among the things he forgot was the saber he clutched in his right fist.

  To the onrushing cavalrymen, he must have looked like a fanatical Thanasiot challenging them single-handed so he could go straight from death to the gleaming path beyond the sun. An arrow whistled past his ear. Another one buried itself in the ground by the horse's forefoot. Another one hit him in the shoulder.

  At first he felt only the impact, and thought a kicked-up stone had grazed him. Then he looked down and saw the pale ash shaft sticking out of him. His eyes focused on the gray goose feathers of the fletching. How stupid, he thought. I've been shot by my own father's men.

  All at once, the pain struck, and with it weakness. His own blood ran hot down his chest and began to stain his tunic. He swayed in the saddle. More arrows hissed past.

  Syagrios came up beside him at a gallop. "Have you gone out of your head?" he yelled. "You can't fight them all by yourself." His eyes went wide when he saw Phostis was wounded. "See what I'm telling you? We got to get out of here."

  Neither Phostis' wits nor his body was working very well. Syagrios saw that, too. He grabbed the reins away from the younger man and led Phostis' horse alongside his own. The horse was nasty, and tried to balk. Syagrios was nastier, and wouldn't let it. A couple of other Thanasioi came back to cover their retreat.

  The weight of armor on the imperial cavalrymen slowed them in a long chase. The raiders managed to stay in front until darkness let them give the imperials the slip. Several were hurt by then, and a couple of others lost when their horses went down.

  Phostis' world focused on the burning in his shoulder. Everything else seemed far away, unimportant. He scarcely noticed when the Thanasioi halted beside a little stream, though not having to fight to stay in the saddle was a relief.

  Syagrios advanced on him with a knife. "We'll have to tend to that," he said. "Here, lie flat."

  No one dared light a fire. Syagrios held his head close to Phostis to see what he was doing as he cut the tunic away from the arrow. He examined the wound, made an abstracted clucking noise, and pulled something out of the pouch he wore on his belt.

  "What's that?" Phostis asked.

  "Arrow-drawing spoon," Syagrios answered. "Can't just pull the fornicating thing out; the point'll have barbs. Hold still and shut up. Digging in there will hurt, but you won't be as torn up inside this way. Now—"

  In spite of Syagrios' injunction, Phostis groaned. Nor were his the only cries that rose to the uncaring sky as the raiders did what they could for their wounded comrades. Now darkness didn't much matter; Syagrios was working more by feel than by sight as he forced the narrow, cupped end of the spoon down along the arrow's shaft toward the head.

  Phostis felt the spoon grate on something. Syagrios grunted in satisfaction. "Here we go. Now we can get it out. Wasn't too deep—you're lucky."

  The taste of blood filled Phostis' mouth: he'd bitten his lip while the ruffian guddled for the arrow. He could smell his own blood, too. He choked out, "If I were lucky, it would have missed me."

  "Ha," Syagrios said. "Can't say you're wrong there. Hold on, now. Here it comes, here it comes—yes!" He got the spoon out of the wound, and the arrow with it. He grunted again. "No blood spurting—just a dribble. I'd say you'll make it."

  In place of a canteen, the ruffian carried a wineskin on his belt. He poured a stream of wine onto Phostis' wound. After the probing with the spoon and the drawing of the arrow, the abused flesh felt as if it were being bathed with fire. Phostis thrashed and swore and clumsily tried to hit Syagrios left-handed.

  "Easy there, curse you," Syagrios said. "Just hold still. You wash out a wound with wine, it's less likely to rot. You want pus and fever? You may get 'em anyways, mind, but wouldn't you rather bump up your odds?"

  He wadded up a rag, pressed it to Phostis' shoulder to soak up the blood that still oozed from the wound, and tied it in place with another strip of cloth. "Thank you," Phostis got out, a little slower than he should have: he still struggled with the irony of being treated by a man he despised.

  "Any time." Syagrios set a hand on his good shoulder. "I never would've thought it, but you really do want to walk the gleaming path, don't you? You laid out that monk fine as you please, and then you were ready to take on all the imperials at the same time. More brave than smart, maybe, but to the ice with smart, sometimes. You done better'n I would've dreamed."

  "To the ice with smart, sometimes," Phostis repeated wearily. At last he'd found what it took to satisfy Syagrios: be too cowardly to refuse what he was ordered and then botch what he'd intended as a desertion. The moral there was too elusive for him. He let out a long, worn sigh.

  "Yeah, sleep while you can," Syagrios said. "We'll have some fancy riding to do tomorrow before we're sure we've broken loose from the stinking imperials. But I've got to get you back to Etchmiadzin. Now that I know for sure you're with us, we'll have all kinds of things we can use you for."

  Sleep? Phostis wouldn't have imagined it possible. Even though the worst of the agony had left his shoulder now that the arrow was out, it still ached like a rotting tooth and throbbed in time to his pulse. But as the wild excitement of the ride and the fight faded, exhaustion rolled over him like a great black tide. Rough ground, aching shoulder—no matter. He slept hard.

  He woke from a dream where a wolf was alternately biting and kicking him to find Syagrios shaking him back to consciousness. The shoulder still hurt fiercely, but he managed a nod when the ruffian asked if he could ride.

  He did his best to forget as much as he could of the journey back to Etchmiadzin. However much he tried, he couldn't forget the torment of more wine poured into his wound at every halt. The shoulder got hot, but only right around the hole in it so he supposed the treatment, no matter how agonizing, did some good
.

  He wished a healer-priest would look at the wound, but had not seen any such among the Thanasioi. That made theological sense: if the body, like all things of this world, sprang from Skotos. what point to making any special effort to preserve it? Such an attitude was easy enough to maintain as an abstract principle. When it came down to Phostis' personal body and its pain, abstract principles got trivial fast.

  The rising foothills ahead seemed welcome, not because Etchmiadzin was the home the Thanasioi had hoped it would become for him, but because they meant the imperial soldiers would not catch him on the road and finish the job of killing him. And, he reminded himself, Olyvria would be back at the fortress. The aching wound kept him from being as delighted about that as he would have been otherwise.

  When the raiders drew near the valley that cupped Etchmiadzin. Themistios rode up to Syagrios and said, "My men and I will follow the gleaming path against the materialists now. Go as Phos wills you; we cannot follow any farther."

  "I can take him in from here easy enough," Syagrios answered, nodding. "Do what you need to do, Themistios, and may the good god keep his eyes on you and your lads."

  Singing a hymn with Thanasiot lyrics, the zealots wheeled their horses and rode back out of the holy work of slaughter and destruction. Syagrios and Phostis kept on toward the stronghold of Etchmiadzin.

  "We'll get you patched up proper, make sure that arm's all right before we send you out again." Syagrios said as the gray stone mass of the fortress came in view. "Might be just as well I'm here, too, in case we need to settle anything while Livanios is in the field."

  "Whatever you say." All Phostis wanted was a chance to get down from his horse and not have to mount again for, say, the next ten years.

  Etchmiadzin seemed strangely spacious as he and Syagrios rode through the muddy streets toward the fortress. Wits dulled by pain and fatigue. Phostis needed longer than he should have to figure out why. At last he realized that most of the soldiers who had swelled the town through the winter were off glorifying the lord with the great and good mind by laying waste to what they reckoned the creations of his evil foe.

  Only a couple of sentries stood guard at the fortress gate. The inner ward felt empty without warriors at weapons practice or listening to one of Livanios' orations. Most of the heresiarch's chief aides seemed to have gone with him; at least no one came out of the keep to take a report from Syagrios.

  As Phostis soon discovered, that was because the keep was almost empty, too. His footsteps and Syagrios' echoed down the halls that had been crammed with soldiers. At least life did exist inside. A trooper came out of the chamber where Livanios had been wont to hold audiences as if he were Avtokrator. Seeing Phostis leaning on Syagrios, he asked the ruffian, "What happened to him?"

  "What does it look like?" Syagrios growled. "He just found out he's been chosen patriarch and he can't even walk for the joy of it." The Thanasiot gaped; Phostis fought not to giggle as he watched the fellow realize Syagrios was being sarcastic. Syagrios pointed to the stained bandage on his shoulder. "He got shot in a scrape with the imperials—he did good."

  "All right, but why bring him back here?" the soldier said. "He don't look like he's hurt too bad."

  "You likely can't tell under all the dirt and stuff, but this is the Emperor's brat." Syagrios answered. "We need to take a little more care with him than with your regular fighter."

  "Why?" Like any Videssian, the Thanasiot was ready to argue about his faith on any excuse or none. "We're all alike on the gleaming path."

  "Yeah, but Phostis here has special worth," Syagrios returned. "If we use him right, he can help us put lots of new people on the gleaming path."

  The soldier chewed on that: literally, for he gnawed at his lower lip while he thought. At last, grudgingly, he nodded. "The doctrine may be sound."

  Syagrios turned his head to mutter into Phostis' ear, "The clincher is, I'd have chopped him into raven's meat if he said me nay." He gave his attention back to the trooper. "Is anybody left alive in the kitchens? We're starved, and not on purpose."

  "Should be someone there," the fellow answered, though he frowned at Syagrios' levity.

  Phostis had not had much appetite since he was wounded. Now his belly rumbled hungrily at the thought of food. Maybe that meant he was getting better.

  The smell of bean porridge and onions and bread in the kitchens made his insides growl all over again. Bowls were piled in great stacks there, against a need that had for the moment gone. Only a handful of people sat at the long tables. Phostis' heart gave a lurch—one of them was Olyvria.

  She looked around to see who the newcomers were. Phostis must have been as grimy as Syagrios had said, for she recognized the ruffian first. Then her eyes traveled from Phostis' face to the stained bandage on his shoulder and back again. He saw them widen. "What happened?" she exclaimed as she hurried over to the two men.

  "I got shot," Phostis answered. Keeping his tone as light as he could, he went on, "I'll probably live." He couldn't say anything more, but did his silent best to urge her not to give anything away. Having Syagrios find out—or even suspect— they were lovers would be more likely fatal than the shaft the cavalryman had put into him.

  They were lucky. Syagrios evidently didn't suspect, and so wasn't alert for any small clues they might have given him. He boomed, "Aye, he fought well—better'n I had any reason to think he would, my lady. He was riding toward the imperials when one of 'em got him. I drew the arrow myself and cleaned the wound. It seems to be healing well enough."

  Now Olyvria looked at Phostis as if she didn't know what to make of him. She probably didn't: he hadn't gone out intending to fight, let alone well enough to draw praise from Syagrios. But self-preservation had made him swing his sword against the monk with the club, and the ruffian thought he'd been attacking the imperials, not trying to give himself up to them. The world got very strange sometimes.

  "Could I please have some food before I fall over?" he asked plaintively.

  Between them, Syagrios and Olyvria all but dragged him to a table, sat him down, and brought back bread, hard crumbly cheese, and wine he reckoned fit only for washing out wounded shoulders. He knocked back a hefty mug of it anyhow, and felt it mount quickly to his head. In between bites of bread and cheese, he gave Olyvria a carefully edited version of how he'd ended up on the pointed end of an arrow.

  "I see," she said when he was through. He wasn't sure she did, but then he wasn't exactly sure himself of the wherefores of everything that had happened. She turned to Syagrios. Speaking carefully herself, and as if Phostis were not sitting across from her, she said, "When he was ordered to go out raiding, I thought the plan might be to expend him to bring woe to his father."

  "That was in your father's mind, my lady," Syagrios agreed, also ignoring him, "but he doubted the lad's faith in the gleaming path. Since it's real, he becomes worth more to us alive than dead. That's what I figured, anyways."

  "Let's hope you're right," Olyvria said with what Phostis hoped was a good imitation of dispassion.

  He kept munching on the loaf of bread. The falser he was to what Syagrios thought him to be, the better off he did. What was the lesson there? That Syagrios was so wicked being false to him turned good? Then how to explain the way the ruffian had cared for him, brought him back to Etchmiadzin, and now poured more of that vile but potent wine into his mug?

  He raised it left-handed. "Here's to—using my other arm soon."

  Everyone drank.

  X

  SCRIBBLING ON A MAP RUINED IT FOR FUTURE USE. So DID POKing pins into it. Krispos had prevailed upon Zaidas to magic some red-painted pebbles so they behaved like lodestones and clung to their appointed places on the parchment even when it was rolled up. Now he wished he'd chosen some other color: when the map was unrolled, it looked too much as if it were suffering from smallpox.

  And every time he unrolled it, he had to add more stones to show fresh outbreaks of Thanasiot violence. Messengers bro
ught in a constant stream of such reports. Most, as had been true the summer before, were in the northwest quadrant of the westlands, but far from all. He glanced at dispatches and put down two stones in the hill country in the southeastern part of the gnarled peninsula that held the Empire's heartland.

  That the map lay on a folding table in the imperial pavilion rather than his study back at the palaces consoled him little. The mere fact of being on campaign would have sufficed for some Emperors, giving them the impression—justified or not—they were doing something about the religious zealots.

  But Krispos saw in his mind's eye fires rising up from the map where every red pebble was placed, heard screams of triumph and of despair. Even one of those stones should have been too many, yet several dozen measled the map.

  At his side, Katakolon also stared glumly at the scarlet stones. "They're everywhere," he said, shaking his head in dismay.

  "They do seem that way, don't they?" Krispos said. He liked the picture no better than his son did.

  "Aye, they do." Katakolon still eyed the stippled parchment. "Which of these shows where Livanios and his main band of fighters are lurking?"

  "It's a good question," the Avtokrator admitted. "The Empire would be better off for a good answer. I wish I could give you one. Trouble is, the heresiarch is using all the little raids as cover to conceal that main band. They could be almost anywhere."

  Put that way, the thought was especially disquieting. His own army was only a few days out of Videssos the city. If Livanios' fanatics fell on it before it was ready to fight— Krispos shook his head. It wasn't as if he didn't have sentries posted. Anyone who tried surprising him would be roughly handled. If he started jumping at shadows, Livanios was ahead of the game.

  Katakolon looked from the map to him. "So you're going to have yourself another brat, are you, Father? At your age?"

  "I've already had three brats. One more won't wreck Videssos, I expect, not if the lot of you haven't managed it. And yes, at my age, as I told you back in the city. The parts do still work, you see."