Videssos Cycle, Volume 1

by Harry Turtledove

  Under his tirade, the Videssians went from amazement to sullenness. The older one, a stocky, much-scarred veteran, muttered to his companion, “Who does this churlish barbarian think he is?”

  A moment later he was on the ground, flat as he’d been while napping. Marcus stood over him, rubbing a sore knuckle and watching the other sentry for any move he might make. Save for backing away, he made none.

  Seeing the still-standing guard was safe to ignore, Marcus hauled the man he had felled to his feet. He was none too gentle about it. The sentry shook his head, trying to clear it. A bruise was already forming under his left eye.

  “When do your reliefs arrive?” Scaurus snapped at the two of them.

  “In about another hour, sir,” the younger, milder guard answered. He spoke very carefully, as one might to a tiger which had asked the time of day.

  “Very well, then. Tell them what happened to you and let them know someone will be by to check on them sometime during their watch. And may your Phos help them and you if they get caught sleeping!”

  He turned his back on the sentries and stalked off, giving them no chance to question or protest. In fact, he did not intend to send anyone to spy on the next watch. The threat alone should be enough to keep them alert.

  As he walked back past the barracks hall belonging to the mercenaries from the Duchy of Namdalen, he heard his name called. Helvis was leaning out of a top-story window, holding something in her hand. The Roman was too far away to see what it was until the sun gave back the bright glint of gold—probably some trinket she’d bought with what she’d won betting on him. She smiled and waved.

  Grinning himself, he waved back, his anger at the sentries forgotten for the moment. She was a friendly lass, and he had only himself to blame for thinking her unattached the night before. Hemond was a good sort, too; Marcus had liked him from their first meeting at the Silver Gate. His grin turned wry as he reflected that the two women who had interested him most in Videssos both seemed thoroughly unapproachable. It’s hardly the end of the world, you know, he told himself, seeing that you’ve been in the city less than a week.

  His mood of gentle self-mockery was suddenly erased by the sight of the tall, white-robed figure of Avshar. His hand reached the hilt of his sword before he knew he had moved it. The envoy of Yezd, though, did not appear to see him in return. Avshar was some distance away in deep conversation with a squat, bowlegged man in the furs and leather of the Pardrayan nomads. The tribune had the feeling he’d seen the plainsman before, but could not recall when or where—maybe at last night’s banquet, he thought uncertainly.

  He was so intent on Avshar that he forgot to pay attention to where his feet were taking him. The first knowledge he had that he was not alone on his pathway came when he bounced off a man coming in the opposite direction. “Your pardon, I pray!” he exclaimed, taking his eye off the Yezda to see whom he’d staggered.

  His victim, a short chubby man, wore the blue robes of the priesthood of Phos. His shaven head gave him a curious ageless look, but he was not old—gray had not touched his beard, and his face was hardly lined. “Quite all right, quite all right,” he said. “It’s my own fault for not noticing you were full of your own thoughts.”

  “That’s good of you, but it doesn’t excuse my clumsiness.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself about it. Am I not right in recognizing you as the leader of the new company of outland mercenaries?”

  Marcus admitted it.

  “Then I’ve been wanting to meet you for some time.” The priest’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “Though not so abruptly as this, perhaps.”

  “You have the advantage of me,” the tribune observed.

  “Hmm? Oh, so I do—no reason you should know me, is there? I’m called Nepos. I wish I could claim my interest in you was entirely unselfish, but I fear I can’t. You see, I hold one of the chairs in sorcery at the Videssian Academy.”

  Scaurus nodded his understanding. In a land where wizardry held so strong a place, what could be more logical than its taking its place alongside other intellectual disciplines such as philosophy and mathematics? And since the Romans were widely known to have come to Videssos by no natural means, the Empire’s sorcerers must be burning with curiosity about their arrival. For that matter, so was he—Nepos might be able to make him better understand the terrifying moment that had whisked him to this world.

  He gauged the setting sun. “It should be about time for my men to sit down to supper. Would you care to join us? After we’ve eaten, you can ask questions to your heart’s content.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” Nepos answered, beaming at him. “Lead on, and I’ll follow as best I can—your legs are longer than mine, I’m afraid.”

  Despite his round build, the little priest had no trouble keeping up with the Roman. His sandaled feet twinkled over the ground, and as he walked, he talked. An endless stream of questions bubbled from him, queries not only about the religious and magical practices of Rome and Gaul, but about matters social and political as well.

  “I think,” the Roman said, wondering at the relevance of some of the things Nepos was asking, “your faith plays a larger part in everything you do than is true in my world.”

  “I’d begun to reach that conclusion myself,” the priest agreed. “In Videssos you cannot buy a cup of wine without being told Phos will triumph in the end, or deal with a jeweler from Khatrish without hearing that the battle between good and evil is evenly matched. Everyone in the city fancies himself a theologian.” He shook his head in mock annoyance.

  At the Roman barracks Marcus found the sentries alert and vertical. He would have been astounded had it been otherwise.

  Far less dangerous for a legionary to face an oncoming foe than Gaius Philippus’ wrath, which fell unerringly on shirkers.

  Inside the hall, most of the legionaries were already spooning down their evening meal, a thick stew of barley, boiled beef and marrowbones, peas, carrots, onions, and various herbs. It was better food than they would have had in Caesar’s barracks, but of similar kind. Nepos accepted his bowl and spoon with a word of thanks.

  Marcus introduced the priest to Gaius Philippus, Viridovix, Gorgidas, Quintus Glabrio, Adiatun, the scout Junius Blaesus, and several other Romans. They found a quiet corner and talked while they ate. How many times now, the tribune wondered, had he told some Videssian his tale? Unlike almost all the others, Nepos was no passive audience. His questions were good-natured but probing, his constant effort aimed toward piecing together a consistent account from the recollections of his table companions.

  Why was it, he asked, that Gaius Philippus and Adiatun both remembered seeing Scaurus and Viridovix still trading swordstrokes inside the dome of light, yet neither the tribune nor the Gaul had any such memory? Why had it been hard for Gorgidas to breathe, but for no one else? Why had Junius Blaesus felt piercing cold, but Adiatun broken into a sweat?

  Gaius Philippus answered Nepos patiently for a time, but before long his streak of hard Roman practicality emerged. “What good does it do you, anyway, to learn that Publius Flaccus farted while we were in flight?”

  “None whatever, very possibly,” Nepos smiled, taking no offense. “Did he?”

  Amid general laughter, the centurion said, “You’d have to ask him, not me.”

  “The only way to understand anything in the past,” Nepos went on in a more serious vein, “is to find out as much as one can about it. Often people have no idea how much they can remember or, indeed, how much of what they think they know is false. Only patient inquiry and comparing many accounts can bring us near the truth.”

  “You talk like a historian, not a priest or a wizard,” Gorgidas said.

  Nepos shrugged, as puzzled by the Greek doctor’s comment as Gorgidas was by him. He answered, “I talk like myself and nothing else. There are priests so struck by the glory of Phos’ divinity that they contemplate the divine essence to the exclusion of all worldly concerns, and
reject the world as a snare Skotos laid for their temptation. Is that what you mean?”

  “Not exactly.” Priest and physician viewed things from such different perspectives as to make communication all but impossible, but each had a thirst for knowledge that drove him to persist.

  “To my mind,” Nepos continued, “the world and everything in it reflects Phos’ splendor, and deserves the study of men who would approach more nearly an understanding of Phos’ plan for the Empire and all mankind.”

  To that Gorgidas could make no reply at all. To his way of thinking, the world and everything in it was worth studying for its own sake, and ultimate meanings, if any, were likely unknowable. Yet he had to recognize Nepos’ sincerity and his goodness. “ ‘Countless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man,’ ” he murmured, and sat back with his wine, soothed as always by Sophokles’ verse.

  “Being a wizard, what have you learned from us?” Quintus Glabrio asked Nepos; until then he’d sat largely silent.

  “Less than I’d have liked, I must admit. All I can tell you is the obvious truth that the two blades, Scaurus’ and yours, Viridovix, brought you hither. If there is a greater purpose behind your coming, I do not think it has unfolded yet.”

  “Now I know you’re no ordinary priest,” Gorgidas exclaimed. “In my world, I never saw one admit to ignorance.”

  “How arrogant your priests must be! What greater wickedness than claiming to know everything, arrogating to yourself the privileges of godhood?” Nepos shook his head. “Thanks be to Phos, I am not so vain. I have so very much to learn! Among other things, my friends, I would like to see, even to hold, the fabled swords to which we owe your presence here.”

  Marcus and Viridovix exchanged glances filled with the same reluctance. Neither had put his weapon in another’s hands since coming to Videssos. There seemed no way, though, to decline such a reasonable request. Both men slowly drew their blades from their scabbards; each began to hand his to Nepos. “Wait!” Marcus said, holding out a warning hand to Viridovix. “I don’t think it would be wise for our swords to touch, no matter what the circumstance.”

  “Right you are,” the Gaul agreed, sheathing his blade for the moment. “One such mischance cools the appetite for another, indeed and it does.”

  Nepos took the Roman’s sword, holding it up to a clay lamp to examine it closely. “It seems altogether plain,” he said to Marcus, some perplexity in his voice. “I feel no surge of strength, nor am I impelled to travel elsewhere—for which I have no complaint, you understand. Save for the strange characters cut into the blade, it is but another longsword, a bit cruder than most. Is the spell in those letters? What do they say?”

  “I have no idea,” Scaurus replied. “It’s a Celtic sword, made by Viridovix’s people. I took it as battle spoil and kept it because it fits my size better than the shortswords most Romans use.”

  “Ah, I see. Viridovix, would you read the inscription for me and tell me what it means?”

  The Gaul tugged at his fiery mustache in some embarrassment. “Nay, I canna, I fear. With my folk letters are no common thing, as they are with the Romans—and with you too, I should guess. Only the druids—priests, you would say—have the skill of them, and never a druid I was, nor am I sorry for it. I will tell you, my own blade is marked as well. Look, if you will.”

  But when his sword came free of its scabbard the runes set in it were gleaming gold, and those on the other blade sprang to glowing life with them. “Sheathe it!” Marcus shouted in alarm. He snatched his own sword from Nepos’ hand and crammed it back into its sheath. There was a bad moment when he thought it was fighting against his grip, but then it was securely back in place. Tension leaked from the air.

  Sudden sweat beaded Nepos’ forehead. He said to Gorgidas, “Of such a thing as that I was indeed ignorant, nor, to quote your red-haired friend, am I sorry for it.” His laugh was shaky and rang loud in the awed and fearful hush that had fallen over the barracks. He soon found an excuse to make an early departure, disappearing after a few quick good-byes.

  “There goes a fellow who set his nets for rabbit and found a bear sitting in them,” Gaius Philippus said, but even his chuckle sounded forced.

  Almost all the Romans, and Marcus with them, sought their pallets early that night. He snuggled beneath his blanket and slowly drifted toward sleep. The coarse wool made him itch, but his last waking thought was one of relief that he still had a blanket—and a barracks, for that matter—over him.

  The tribune woke early the next morning to the sound of an argument outside the barracks hall. He flung on a mantle, belted his sword round his middle, and, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, went out to see what the trouble was.

  “No, sir, I’m sorry,” a Roman guard was saying, “but you cannot see my commander until he wakes.” He and his mate held their spears horizontally across their bodies to keep their unwanted guest from entering.

  “Phos fry you, I tell you this is urgent!” Nephon Khoumnos shouted. “Must I—oh, there you are, Scaurus. I have to talk to you at once, and your thickskulled sentries would not give me leave.”

  “You cannot blame them for following their standard orders. Don’t worry about it, Gnaeus, Manlius—you did right.” He returned his attention to Khoumnos. “If you wanted to see me, here I am. Shall we stroll along the path and give my men a chance to go back to sleep?”

  Still fuming, Khoumnos agreed. The Roman sentries stepped back to let their commander by. The path’s paving stones were cool on his bare feet. He gratefully sucked in the early morning air. It was sweet after the close, smoky atmosphere inside the hall.

  A gold-throated thrush in a nearby tree greeted the sun with a burst of sparkling notes. Even as unmusical a soul as Scaurus found it lovely.

  The Roman did not try to begin the conversation. He ambled along, admiring now the delicate flush the early light gave to marble, now the geometric precision of a dew-spangled spiderweb. If Khoumnos had so pressing a problem, let him bring it up.

  He did, rising to the bait of Marcus’ silence. “Scaurus, where in Phos’ holy name do you get the authority to lay your hands on my men?”

  The Roman stopped, hardly believing he’d heard correctly. “Do you mean the guards outside the Emperor’s dwelling yesterday?”

  “Who else could I possibly mean?” Khoumnos snapped. “We take it very ill in Videssos when a mercenary assaults native-born soldiers. It was not for that I arranged to have you come to the city; when I saw you and your men in Imbros, you struck me as being out of the common run of barbarians.”

  “You take it ill, you say, when a mercenary strikes a native Videssian soldier?”

  Nephon Khoumnos gave an impatient nod.

  Marcus knew Khoumnos was an important man in Videssos, but he was too furious to care. “Well, how do you take it when your fine Videssian soldiers are snoozing the afternoon away in front of the very chambers they’re supposed to guard?”

  “What?”

  “Whoever was telling you tales out of school,” the tribune said, “should have gone through the whole story, not just his half of it.” He explained how he had found both sentries napping in the sun as he left his audience with the Emperor. “What reason would I have for setting upon them? Did they give you one?”

  “No,” Khoumnos admitted. “They said they were attacked from behind without warning.”

  “From above would be more like it.” Marcus snorted. “They can count themselves lucky they were your troops, not mine; stripes are the least they could have hoped for in Roman service.”

  Khoumnos was not yet convinced. “Their stories hang together very well.”

  “What would you expect, that two shirkers would give each other the lie? Khoumnos, I don’t much care whether you believe me or not. You ruined my sleep, and, from the way my guts are churning right now, I’d wager you’ve ruined my breakfast as well. But I’ll tell you this—if those guards were the best men Videssos can offer, no wonder you n
eed mercenaries.”

  Thinking of Tzimiskes, Mouzalon, Apokavkos—yes, and Khoumnos himself—Scaurus knew how unfair he was being, but he was too nettled to watch his tongue. The incredible gall the sentries had shown—not merely to hide their guilt, but to try to put it on him! He shook his head in wonder.

  Anger cloaked by expressionless features, Khoumnos bowed stiffly from the waist. “I will look into what you’ve told me, I promise you that,” he said. He bowed again and strode away.

  Watching his rigid back, Marcus wondered if he had made another enemy. Sphrantzes, Avshar, now Khoumnos—for a man who’d aspired to politics, he told himself, you have a gift for the right word at the wrong time. And if Sphrantzes and Khoumnos are both your foes, where in Videssos will you find a friend?

  The tribune sighed. As always, it was too late to unsay anything. All he could do now was live with the consequences of what he’d already done. And in that context, he thought, breakfast did not seem such a bad idea after all. He walked back toward the barracks.

  Despite his Stoic training, despite his efforts to take things as they came, the rest of that morning and early afternoon were hard for him to wait through. To try to drown his worries in work, he threw himself into the Romans’ daily drill with such nervous energy that he flattened everyone who stood against him. At any other time he would have been proud. Now he barked at his men for lying down against their commander. “Sir,” one of the legionaries said, “if I was going to lie down against you, I would have done it sooner.” The man was rubbing a bruised shoulder as he limped away.

  Scaurus tried to unburden himself to Viridovix, but the big Celt was scant help. “I know it’s a bad thing,” he said, “but what can you do? Give ’em half a chance and the men’d sooner sleep nor work. I would myself, if there’s no fighting or women to be had.”

  Gaius Philippus had come up during the last part of this speech and listened to it with obvious disagreement. “If your troops won’t obey orders you have a mob, not an army. That’s why we Romans were conquering Gaul, you know. Man for man, the Celts are as brave as any I’ve seen, but you can’t work together worth a turtle turd.”