Videssos Cycle, Volume 1

by Harry Turtledove

  The tribune felt his heart race and the sweat spring from his brow as he trotted through the city. The troopers with him suffered far more than he, for he was in mantle and sandals while they loped along fully armored. One Namdalener could not stand the pace and fell back, his face flushed lobster-red.

  As he ran, Scaurus was spurred on by the knowledge that so cold-blooded a calculator as Avshar could blunder—and blunder badly. Not only had his attempt at assassination gone for nought, but when he set about destroying his papers the most crucial one of all, the route of his escape, failed to burn and gave his pursuers another chance at him. If only he knew, Marcus thought—he’d gnash his teeth behind those veils of his.

  The path turned down, bringing the sea wall of Videssos into sight. “That one!” Khoumnos panted, pointed at the square tower straight ahead. But when he sucked in wind, the middle-aged officer had enough breath to shout, “Ho the tower guards! Any sign of Avshar the Yezda?”

  No answering shout came. When the soldiers wove their way through the last of the buildings between themselves and the wall, they saw the four-man watch contingent lying motionless in front of the guard tower’s open gate. Khoumnos swore horribly. To Marcus he said, “The past five years I can recall no dozing sentries. Now I find them twice in two days, and you as witness both times. In Phos’ holy name, I stand ashamed before you.”

  But the sprawled-out guards suggested only one thing to the tribune—the magic Avshar’s nomad tool had used to get into the Roman barracks. He explained quickly, adding, “I don’t think they are asleep through any fault of their own; it’s some spell the westerner knows. His map did not lie—there may still be time to catch him before he can get down the seaward side of the wall.”

  Nephon Khoumnos reached out to press his arm. “Outlander, you are a man of honor.”

  “Thank you,” Marcus said, surprised and touched.

  “Come on, the two of you!” Hemond exclaimed, tugging his straight sword free of its scabbard. “Time enough for pretty speeches later!” He charged toward and through the gate, the rest of the warriors close behind. Nepos fell behind for a moment to revive the guardsmen Avshar had entranced.

  Marcus was almost blind for a few seconds in the sudden gloom of the tower’s interior. He stumbled up the tight spiral staircase; the only light in the stairwell came from small arrow slits let into the wall.

  “Hold up!” Hemond called from above him. Men cursed as they bumped and tripped trying to stop quickly.

  “What is it?” asked Khoumnos, who was several men below the Namdalener.

  “I’m at the mouth of a corridor,” Hemond replied. “It must lead to a weapons store, or something like that—and, square in the strip of sun from a firing slit, there’s a scrap of white wool, just what might get torn from a nomad’s robes if he ran past something stickery. We have the bastard hooked!” He laughed aloud in sheer exultation.

  An excited hum ran up and down the spiral line of hunters. More swords slid from their scabbards. One by one, the men stepped into the passage Hemond had found.

  The narrow corridor within the wall ran about fifty feet before ending in a single doorway. Clutching his sword hilt, Marcus moved forward with the rest of the warriors. He no longer saw Avshar as the dreaded evil mage Nepos had depicted, but as a wicked, frightened fool who had slipped at every turn in his escape attempt and, at the end, managed to close himself in a chamber with but one entrance. He could nearly pity the trapped Yezda on the other side of the door.

  Hemond gave that door a tentative push. It swung open easily. The mercenary had been right in his guess at the chamber’s function; it was indeed an armory. Through the doorway Marcus could see neat sheaves of arrows, piled spears, rows of maces and swords, and, as he came nearer and gained a wider view, the tip of an outstretched foot upon the floor.

  Along with the rest of the soldiers, Scaurus pushed into the storeroom to see better. Unlike most of them, he recognized the dead man lying by the back wall—it was Mebod, Avshar’s ever-frightened body servant. His head was twisted at an impossible angle, his neck broken like that of the dove on Skotos’ altar in the Yezda’s private chamber.

  The senselessness and wanton cruelty of slaying this inoffensive little man bewildered the tribune. So did something else—Avshar had surely been here, but was no longer. There was no place to hide among the glittering weapons. Where, then, was the fugitive emissary of Yezd?

  At nearly the same moment that thought crossed his mind, the door slammed shut behind them. Though it had opened invitingly to Hemond’s lightest touch, now it would not yield to the frantic tugging of all the warriors caught behind it. Suddenly trapped instead of trapper, Marcus felt dread course through his veins.

  “Ah, how pleasant. My guests have arrived.” At the sound of that deep voice, full of chilly hate, the soldiers’ hands fell from the bronze doorlatch. They turned as one, in disbelief and terror. Head still lolling on its right shoulder, eyes blind and staring, the corpse of Mebod was on its feet, but through its dead lips came Avshar’s voice.

  “You were so kind—and so clever—to answer the invitations I left for you,” the wizard went on, bending his servant to his will in death as in life, “that I thought I should prepare fitting hospitality for you.” With the jerky grace of a stringed puppet, what had been Mebod threw its hands wide. At their motion the weapons of the armory came alive, flying against the stunned men who, minutes before, had thought themselves about to seize Yezd’s wizard-envoy.

  One of the Videssians fell at once, a spear driven through chain mail and flesh alike. An instant later a Namdalener was on the ground beside him, his neck pierced from behind by a dagger. Another screamed in fear and pain as a mace laid open his arm.

  Never had Marcus imagined—never had he wanted to imagine—a fight like that one, men against spears and swords that hovered in the air and struck like giant angry wasps. It did no good to strike back against them; there was no wielder to lay low. Worse, there was no shuffle of foot, no telltale shift of eye, to give a clue where the next blow would fall. The warriors were reduced to a purely defensive fight and, thus constrained in their very thoughts, suffered wounds from strokes they would have turned with ease had a body been behind them.

  With his usual quickness of thought, Hemond slashed at Mebod’s animate lich, but his blow did no good—the weapons still came on.

  At first clash of enchanted steel, the druids’ marks on Scaurus’ blade flamed into fiery life. The sword his brand had met clattered to the floor and did not rise again. The same things happened again and yet again. So many blades were hovering for a chance to bite, though, that the un-armored Roman had all he could do to stay alive. He gave the best protection he could to his mates, but when he tried to follow Hemond’s lead and strike down Mebod with his potent sword, the disembodied weapons kept him at bay and drove him back, bleeding from several cuts.

  Someone was pounding on the door from the outside. Marcus shouted a warning to whoever it was, but his shout was drowned by a bellow of anguish from Hemond. A sword stood hilt-deep in the Namdalener’s chest. His hands grabbed at the hilt, then fell limply to his side as he went down.

  From the other side of the door came a cry louder even than Hemond’s. “Open, in Phos’ holy name!” Nepos roared, and the portal sprang back as if kicked. The priest-mage bounded into the weapons store, his arms upraised. He was a short man, but the power crackling from his rotund frame seemed to give him inches he did not possess.

  Recognizing the danger in Nepos, Avshar’s swooping armory abandoned the mere men-at-arms to dart at this new foe. But the priest was equal to them. He moved his hands in three swift passes, shouting a fraction of prayer or spell with each. Before the blades could touch him, they fell, inert, to the floor. As they did so, Mebod’s body sank with them, to become again nothing more than a corpse.

  It was like waking from a nightmare. The soldiers still on their feet held their guard for several seconds, hardly daring to believe
the air empty and quiet. But quiet as it was, the weapons strewn like jackstraws and the bodies on the ground showed it had been no dream.

  As the dazed survivors of the sorcerous assault bent to the fallen, they learned four were dead: the Videssian killed in the first instant of attack and three Namdaleni, Hemond among them. The mercenary officer had died as rescue stood outside the door. Marcus shook his head as he closed Hemond’s set eyes. Had he not happened on the Namdalener in his search for Nephon Khoumnos, a good soldier who was becoming a good friend would still be alive.

  Still looking down at Hemond’s body, the tribune flinched when someone touched his arm. It was Nepos, his chubby features haggard and drawn. “Let me tie those up for you,” he said.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, go ahead.” Lost in his thoughts, Scaurus had almost forgotten his own wounds. Nepos bandaged them with the same dexterity Gorgidas might have shown.

  As the priest worked, he talked, and Marcus learned he was not the only one carrying a burden of self-blame. Nepos could have been talking to anyone or no one; as it happened, the Roman heard his struggle to understand the why of what had taken place.

  “Had I not paused to end a small enchantment,” the priest said bitterly, “I could have checked this far more wicked one. Phos knows his own ways, but it is an untasty thing to rouse four men from sleep only to see four others die.”

  “You did what was in your nature, to help wherever you first saw it needed,” Marcus told him. “You could not be what you are and have done otherwise. What happened afterwards could not be helped.”

  Nepos did not agree. “You feel as do the Halogai, that there is a fate no man can hope to escape. But we who follow Phos know it is our god who shapes our lives and we seek to make out his purposes. There are times, though, when those are hard, hard to understand.”

  Moving slowly, as if still caught up in the bad dream from which they had just escaped, the warriors bound one another’s wounds. Almost in silence, they lifted their fallen comrades’ bodies—and that of Mebod as well—and awkwardly brought them down the watchtower’s spiral stair and out into the sunlight once more.

  The sentries Nepos had awakened met them there. One of the watchmen, alarm on his face, said to Marcus, “Please do not blame us for failing, sir. One moment we were all standing to arms, and the next this priest was bending over us, undoing the magic that laid us low. We didn’t doze by choice.”

  At any other time the Roman would have been gladdened by the way his reputation had shot through the Videssian army. As it was, he could only say tiredly, “I know. The wizard who tricked you gulled us all. He got clean away, and I don’t doubt many throughout the Empire will have cause to regret it.”

  “The son of nobody’s not safe yet,” Nephon Khoumnos declared. “Though he’s crossed the strait, he has five hundred miles of travel through our western provinces before he reaches his accused borders. Our fire-beacons can flash word to seal the frontiers long before even a wizard could reach them. I’ll go have the beacons fired now; we’ll see what kind of welcome our akritai ready for that fornicating sorcerer!” And Khoumnos was off, shoulders hunched forward like a determined man walking into a gale.

  Scaurus could only admire his tenacity, but did not think much would come of it. If Avshar could get free of the most strongly fortified city this world knew, the Roman did not believe Videssos’ border troops, no matter how skilled, would keep him from slipping across the frontier into his own dark land.

  He turned to the Namdaleni. Though he shrank from it, there was something he felt he had to do, something for which he needed the good will of these men. He said, “It was an unlucky chance that led me to you this morning. Now three of you have died, thanks to that unlucky chance. I had not known him long, but I was happy to call Hemond my friend. If it is not against your customs, it seems only right for me to be one of those who carries news of his loss to his lady. I bear the blame for it.”

  “A man lives as long as he lives and not a day more,” said one of the men of the Duchy. Whether or not he followed the cult of Phos, some of the ways of his Haloga ancestors still lived in him. The Namdalener went on, “You were doing the best you could for the state that bought your sword. So were we. Service honorably done may cause hurt, but it is no matter for blame.”

  He paused for a moment to read his countrymen’s eyes. Satisfied by what he saw, he said, “There is nothing in our usages to keep you from being the man who brings Hemond’s sword to Helvis.” Seeing Scaurus’ lack of understanding, he explained, “That is our way of saying without word what words are too painful to carry. No blame rests with you,” the mercenary repeated, “but were it there, what you are doing now would erase it. I am called Embriac Rengari’s son and I am honored to know you.”

  The other six Namdaleni nodded soberly; one by one, they spoke their names and gave the tribune the two-handed clasp all men of northern descent seemed to share. That brief formality over, they lifted their burdens once more and began the somber journey back to their quarters.

  News of what had happened spread like windblown fire, as always in Videssos. Before the soldiers had finished half their short course, the first cries of “Death to Yezd!” began ringing through the city. Scaurus saw a band of men armed with clubs and daggers dash down an alley after some foreigner or other—whether a Yezda or not, he never knew.

  As he trudged toward the palace complex, the dead weight of Hemond’s body made the tribune’s shoulders ache, though he shared it with a Namdalener. He and his companions were all wounded. They slowly made their way to the mercenaries’ barracks, pausing more than once to lay down the bodies of the dead and rest for a moment. Their load seemed heavier after each halt.

  Marcus kept turning over in his mind why he had taken on himself the task of telling Hemond’s woman of his death. What he had said to the Namdalener was true, but he was uneasily aware it was not the entire truth. He remembered how attractive he had found Helvis before he knew she was attached and had a guilty suspicion he was letting that attraction influence his behavior.

  Stop it, lackwit, he told himself, you’re only doing what has to be done. But … she was very beautiful.

  The barracks of the Namdaleni were an island of ironic peace in the ferment rising in Videssos. Because they were outlanders and heretics, the men of the Duchy had few connections with the city’s ever-grinding rumor mill and had no notion of the snare Avshar had sprung on their countrymen. A couple of men were wrestling outside the barracks. A large crowd cheered them on, shouting encouragements and bets. Two other soldiers practiced at swords, their blades clanging off one another. From a nearby smithy, Marcus heard the deeper ring of a hammer on hot steel. Several islanders were on their knees or haunches shooting dice. It occurred to Marcus that he had seen dicing soldiers whenever he passed their barracks, and they were quick to bet on almost anything. Gambling appealed to them, it appeared.

  Someone in the back of the crowd looked up from the half-naked wrestlers and saw the approaching warriors and their grim burden. His startled oath lifted more eyes; one of the fencers whipped his head around and dropped his sword in surprise and shock. His opponent’s blade was beginning its victory stroke when its owner, too, caught sight of the bodies the returning troopers bore. The stroke went undelivered.

  The Namdaleni rushed up, crying out questions in the broad island patois they spoke among themselves. Marcus could hardly make out their dialect at the best of times; now he was too full of his own misery to make the effort. He and the mercenary who had helped him carry Hemond put down their burden for the last time. The Roman freed Hemond’s sword and scabbard from his belt and made his way through the Namdaleni toward their barracks.

  Most of the mercenaries stood back to let him pass when they saw what he bore, but one came up and grasped his arm, shouting something in his own speech. Scaurus could not catch more than a word or two, but Embriac replied, “He took it on himself, and his claim to it is good.” He spoke in clear Videssian so
his countryman and the tribune could both understand him. The islander nodded and let Marcus go.

  The barracks of the Namdaleni were, if anything, even more comfortable than the Romans’ quarters. Part of the difference, of course, was that there had been a Namdalener contingent in the Videssian army for many years, and over those years the men of the Duchy had lavished much labor on making their dwelling as homelike as they could. By contrast, the Romans had not yet made their hall their own.

  Because many of the mercenaries spent a large portion of their lives in Videssian service, it was not surprising that they formed families in the capital, either with women of the Empire or with wives or sweethearts who had accompanied them from Namdalen. Their barracks reflected this. Only the bottom floor was a common hall like that of the Romans, a hall in which dwelt warriors who had formed no household. The upper story was divided into apartments of varying size.

  Remembering Helvis waving to him from a window above—was it only a couple of days before?—Marcus climbed the stairway, a wide, straight flight of steps nothing like the spiral stair that had led to Avshar’s trap. He felt more misgivings now than he had on the wizard’s trail; Hemond’s sword in his hand was heavy as lead.

  Thanks to his memory of Helvis displaying for him the jewelry she’d brought with her winnings, the tribune knew about which turns to take through the upper story’s corridors. From an open doorway ahead, he heard a clear contralto he knew. “Now stay there for a few minutes,” Helvis was saying firmly. “I want to find out what the commotion down below is all about.”

  He and she came into the doorway at the same moment. Helvis drew back a pace, laughing in surprise. “Hello, Marcus!” she said. “Are you looking for Hemond? I don’t know where he is—he should have been back from the drillfield some time ago. And what’s going on outside? My window won’t let me see.”