The matter of guides went as Gaius Philippus had guessed. The Romans were passing through a hardscrabble country, with scores of rocky little valleys running higgledy-piggledy one into the next. The coming of any strangers into such a backwater would have produced a reaction; the coming of an army, even a small, defeated army, came close to raising panic.
Farmers and herders so isolated they rarely saw a tax collector—isolation indeed, in Videssos—wanted nothing more than to get the Romans away from their own home villages before pillage and rape broke loose. Every hamlet had a young man or two willing, nay, eager, to send them on their way … often, Marcus noted, toward rivals who lived one valley further east.
Sometimes the tribune’s men got a friendlier reception. Bands of Yezda, with their nomadic hardiness and mobility, had penetrated even this inhospitable territory. When a timely arrival let the Romans appear as rescuers, nothing their rustic hosts owned was too fine to lavish on them.
“Now this is the life for me, and no mistake,” Viridovix said after one such small victory. The Celt sprawled in front of a campfire. A mug of beer was in his right hand, a little mountain of well-gnawed pork ribs at his feet. He took a long pull at the mug, belched, and went on, “You know, we could do a sight worse than kinging it here for the rest of our days. Who’d be caring enough to say us nay?”
“I, for one,” Gaius Philippus answered promptly. “This place is yokeldom’s motherland. Even the whores are clumsy.”
“There’s more to life than your prick, you know,” the Celt said. His righteous tone drew howls from everyone who heard him; Gaius Philippus mutely held out a hand with three upraised fingers. With the ruddy firelight and his permanently sunburned skin, it was impossible to tell if Viridovix blushed, but he did tug at his sweeping mustaches in chagrin.
“But still,” he persisted, “doesn’t all this”—He reached out a foot and toppled the pile of bones—“make munching marching rations a thought worth puking on? Dusty porridge, stale bread, smoked meat with the taste of a herd of butchered shoes—a day of that would gag a buzzard, and we eat it week after week.”
Gorgidas said, “You know, my Gallic friend, there are times you’re naïve as a child. How often do you think this miserable valley can supply feasts like this?” He waved out into the dark, reminding his listeners of the poor, small, rocky fields they’d come through, fields that sometimes seemed to go straight up a mountainside.
“I grew up in country like this,” the doctor went on. “The folk here will eat poorer this winter for feasting us tonight. If they did it two weeks running, some would starve before spring—and so would some of us, should we stay.”
Viridovix stared at him without comprehension. He was used to the lush fertility of his northern Gallic homeland, with its cool summers, mild winters, and long, gentle rains. Cut firewood sprouted green shoots there; here in the Videssian uplands, rooted trees withered in the ground.
“There are more reasons than Gorgidas’ for going on,” Marcus said, disturbed that the idea Viridovix put forward half jokingly was getting serious attention. “However much we’d like to forget the world, I fear it won’t forget us. Either the Yezda will flatten the Empire—which looks all too likely right now—or Videssos will somehow drive them back. Whoever wins will stretch their rule all through this land. Do you think we could stand against them?”
“They’d have to find us first.” Senpat Sviodo gave Viridovix unexpected support. “To judge from the run of guides we’ve had, even the locals don’t know the land three valleys over.”
There were rumbles of agreement to that from around the campfire. Gaius Philippus muttered, “To judge from the run of guides we’ve had, the locals don’t know enough to squat when they crap.”
No one could dispute that, either. Glad to see the argument diverted, Scaurus said, “This last one is better,” and the centurion had to nod. The Romans’ latest guide was a solidly built middle-aged man with a soldier’s scars; his name was Lexos Blemmydes. He carried himself like a veteran, too, and his Videssian had lost some of its original hill-country accent. Marcus had a nagging feeling he’d seen Blemmydes before, but the guide’s face did not seem familiar to any of his men.
The tribune wondered if Blemmydes was one of the refugees from Videssos’ shattered army. The man had attached himself to the Romans a few days before, coming up to their camp one evening and asking if they needed a guide. Whoever he was, he certainly knew his way through this rocky maze. His descriptions of upcoming terrain, villages, and even village leaders ahead were unfailingly accurate.
He was, in fact, so much superior to earlier escorts that Scaurus looked from one campfire to the next until he spotted Blemmydes shooting dice with a couple of Khatrishers. “Lexos!” he called, and then repeated more loudly when the Videssian did not look up. The guide’s head whipped around; Marcus waved him over.
He picked himself up from the game, though he still had his stiff gambler’s face on when he came to the tribune’s side. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked. His voice had the resigned patience of any common soldier’s before an officer, but the dice muttered restlessly to themselves in his closed right fist.
“Not much, really,” Marcus said. “It’s only that you know so much more of this country than other guides we’ve had, and we’re wondering how you learned it so well.”
Blemmydes could not have been said to change expression, but his eyes grew wary. He answered slowly, “I’ve made it my business to know the best ways through the land I travel. I wouldn’t want to be caught napping.”
Suddenly intent, Scaurus leaned forward. Almost he remembered where this frozen-faced soldier had crossed his path before. But Gaius Philippus was chuckling at Blemmydes’ reply. “Your business and no one else’s, hey? Well, fair enough. Go on, get back to your game.” Blemmydes nodded, still unsmiling, and strode off. Marcus’ half memory stayed stubbornly dark.
The senior centurion was still amused. “He’s probably some sort of smuggler, or a plain horse thief. More power to him, says I; anyone with the imagination to get himself a fifteen-hundred-man armed guard to cover his tracks deserves to do well.”
“I suppose so,” Scaurus sighed, and shelved the matter.
That night the weather finally broke, a reminder summer would not, after all, last forever. The wind shifted; instead of the seemingly endless westerly from the baking plains of Yezd, it blew clean and cool off the Videssian Sea to the north. There was fog in the early morning, and the low gray clouds did not burn away until almost noon.
“Well, hurrah!” Viridovix exclaimed when he emerged from his tent and saw the murky daylight. “My puir roasted hide won’t fry today. No more slathering myself with Gorgidas’ stinking goo, either. Hurrah!” he said again.
“Aye, hurrah,” Gaius Philippus echoed, with a morose look at the sky. “Another week of this and it’ll start raining; and it won’t let up till it snows. I don’t know about you, but I’m not much for slogging my way through mud. We’ll be stuck in the boondocks till spring.”
Marcus heard that with disquiet, still loath to be isolated while uncertainty—and Ortaias Sphrantzes—reigned in Videssos. But Quintus Glabrio remarked, “If we can’t move, odds-on no one else can either.” The manifest truth there cheered the tribune, who had been thinking of his men as an entity unto themselves and forgetting that nature laid its hand on all alike—Roman, Videssian, Namdalener, or Yezda.
As requested, Lexos Blemmydes led Scaurus’ band southeast toward Amorion. The tribune wanted to reach the town on the Ithome River before the fall rains made travel hopeless. Amorion controlled much of the west central plateau and would give him a base for the trouble he expected come spring—if Thorisin Gavras still lived to brew it.
Gorgidas all but held Nepos prisoner. The priest used his healing art on the legionaries and did his best to teach it to the Greek. But his efforts there were fruitless, which drove Gorgidas to distraction. “In my heart I don’t believe I can do i
t,” he moaned, “and so I can’t.”
Scaurus came to rely on Blemmydes more and more. The guide had an uncanny knowledge of which ways were open. Not only was he intimately familiar with the ground himself, but he also questioned everyone whose path he crossed—the few traders still abroad, village headmen, farmers, and herders. Sometimes the route he chose was roundabout, but it was always safe.
At evening a couple of days later, the Romans reached a place where what had been a single valley split into two. The rivers that carved them were dry now, but Marcus knew the fall downpour would soon make torrents of them.
Blemmydes cocked his head down each gap, as if listening. He paused a long time, longer than any similar decision had taken him before. Scaurus gave him a curious glance, waiting for his choice. “The northern one,” he said at last.
Gaius Philippus also noticed the delay and looked a question at the tribune. “He’s been right so far,” Marcus said. The senior centurion shrugged and sent the Romans down the path Blemmydes had chosen.
Scaurus thought at first the guide had betrayed them. The valley was full of lowing cattle and their herdsmen—Yezda, or so they seemed. Dogs followed their masters’ shouted commands, nipping at the cows’ heels and driving them up the rocky mountainsides as the herdsmen saw the column of armed men coming toward them.
But the Romans’ alarm proved unfounded. The herdsmen were Videssians who had taken Marcus’ soldiers for invaders. Once they learned their mistake, they fraternized with the newcomers, though warily. Imperial armies could plunder as ruthlessly as any nomads. But when Scaurus actually paid for some of their beasts, the herders came close to geniality.
“This isn’t the sort of thing you want to do too often,” Senpat Sviodo remarked, watching money change hands.
“Hmm? Why not?” The tribune was puzzled. “The less we take by force, the better we should get along with the locals.”
“True, but some may die from the shock of not being robbed.”
Marcus laughed, but Nepos did not approve. The priest had finally managed to get away from Gorgidas for a few minutes and was wandering about watching the Romans run up their camp. He said to Senpat, “It’s never good to mock a generous heart. Our outland friend shows here the same kindness he used in giving a disgraced man a chance to redeem himself.”
The Vaspurakaner, not usually as cynical as his words suggested, looked contrite. But the last part of what Nepos had said made no sense to Scaurus. “What are you talking about?” he demanded of the priest.
Nepos scratched his head in confusion. He had not had any more chance than the Roman to shave, and the top of his skull was starting to get bristly. He said, “No need for modesty. Surely only a great-souled man would restore to trust and self-respect the soldier he himself ousted from the Imperial Guards.”
“What in the world do you—” Marcus began, and then stopped cold, remembering the pair of guardsmen he had had cashiered for sleeping at their posts in front of Mavrikios’ private chambers. Sure as sure, this was the elder of the two; Scaurus even recalled hearing his name, now that Nepos had made the association for him.
He also remembered the sullen insolence Blemmydes had shown when called to account and the way the snoozing guardsmen were ignominiously banished from the capital when their effort to shift the blame to him fell through. It was hard to imagine Blemmydes having any good will toward the Romans after that.
Which meant … The tribune shouted for a sentry. “Find the guide and bring him to me. He needs to answer some questions.” The legionary gave the closed-fist Roman salute and hurried away.
Nepos and Senpat Sviodo were both staring at Scaurus. The priest said, “You weren’t taking Lexos on faith, then?”
Pretending not to hear his disappointment, Marcus answered, “On faith? Hardly. The truth is, with everything that’s happened in the months since I saw him that once, I forgot the whoreson existed. Why didn’t you speak up a week ago?”
Nepos spread his hands regretfully. “I assumed you knew who he was, and thought the better of you for it.”
“Splendid,” muttered the tribune. He wondered if his lapse would cost the Romans, a worry that abruptly became a certainty when he saw the sentry returning alone. “Well?” he barked, unable to keep from lashing out to hold his own alarm at bay.
“I’m sorry, sir, he doesn’t seem to be anywhere about,” the legionary reported cautiously—unlike Gaius Philippus, the tribune usually did not take out his feelings on his men.
“That tears it,” Marcus said, smacking fist into palm in disgust. “Only a great-souled idiot would take in a man like that.” And if Blemmydes was gone, he must have thought he had his vengeance.
Marcus’ failure to follow up on his half recognition of the guide filled him with self-contempt. He could look at others’ mistakes with the easy tolerance his Stoic background gave him—they were, after all, only men, and perfection could not be expected from them. His own shortcomings, on the other hand, brought a black anger fiercer in some ways than the one he turned against battlefield foes.
With difficulty, he pulled himself free from that useless rage and began thinking what he had to do to set things right. First, plainly, he had to find out what the situation was. “Pakhymer!” he called.
The Khatrisher appeared at his elbow. “I’ve gotten to know that tone of voice,” he said with a lopsided smile. “What’s gone wrong now?”
The tribune’s answering grin was equally strained. “Maybe nothing at all,” he said, not believing it for a minute. “Maybe quite a lot.” He quickly sketched what had happened.
Pakhymer heard him out without comment, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “You think he’s buggered us, then?” he said at last.
“I’m afraid so, anyway.”
Pakhymer nodded. “Which is why you called me. I really should charge for this, you know.” But there was no malice in his words, only the amused mockery with which the Khatrishers so often faced life.
He went on, “All right, I’ll send some of the lads out to see what’s ahead—aye, and another bunch to track down your dear friend Blemmydes, if they can.” Seeing Scaurus wince, he added, “No one can think of everything, not even Phos—if he did, Skotos wouldn’t be here.”
That thought consoled the tribune but dismayed Nepos; the Khatrishers had a theology as free and easy as themselves. Pakhymer left before Nepos could put his protest into words. The priest was a good man, more tolerant than many of his colleagues, but there were limits his tolerance could not overstep.
Marcus wondered how Balsamon would have reacted to the Khatrisher’s remark. Likely, he thought, the patriarch of Videssos would have laughed his head off.
There was nothing to do but wait for the scouts’ return. The party sent out in pursuit of Blemmydes came back first, empty-handed. Marcus was not surprised. The terrain was broken enough to give the disgruntled Videssian a hundred hiding places in plain sight of the camp.
The unusual comings and goings set tongues wagging, as Scaurus had known they would. For once, rumor might be an ally: if the men suspected trouble, they would be quicker to meet it. And if what the tribune was beginning to fear came true, speed would count soon.
He saw the Khatrishers come riding back out of the east, slide off their horses, and jog over to Pakhymer with their news, whatever it was. They said not a word to the soldiers who hurled questions at them. The horsemen might not have the Romans’ stiff discipline, but they were all right, the tribune decided for the hundredth time.
Their commander’s scarred face had no trace of his usual mirth as he came up to the tribune. “As bad as that?” Marcus asked, reading the trouble in his eyes.
“As bad as that,” Pakhymer agreed somberly. “The next valley east is crawling with Yezda; from what my boys say, they must have two or three times as many men as we do, the damned cuillions.”
“It figures,” Scaurus nodded bitterly. “Blemmydes has his revenge, all right—he must have been loo
king for Yezda all along, and run off when he found a band big enough to sink us.”
Pakhymer tried to keep him from falling into despair. “The count’s not very fine, you understand—just a short peek over that ridge ahead to reckon up their tents and fires.”
“Fires, aye,” Marcus said—fires to eat the Romans up. But something else about fire teased at the back of his mind. The sensation was maddening and horribly familiar; he had felt it when he tried without success to remember where he’d seen Lexos Blemmydes. Now he stood stock-still, not forcing whatever it was, but letting it come if it would.
Pakhymer started to say something; seeing Scaurus abstracted, he was sensitive enough to keep silent a little longer.
The tribune drove his fist into his palm for the second time in less than an hour, but now in decision. “The gods be praised I learned to read Greek!” he exclaimed. It had no meaning for Laon Pakhymer, but he saw the Roman was himself again.
He started to leave, but Scaurus stopped him, saying, “I’ll need your men again, and soon. They’re better herders and drovers than the legionaries ever will be.”
“And if they are?” The Khatrisher was mystified.
Marcus started to explain, but Gaius Philippus strode up, demanding, “By Mars’ left hairy nut, what’s going on? The whole camp is seething like a boiled-over pot, but nobody knows why.”
The tribune spelled it out in a few sentences; his second-in-command swore foully. “Never mind all that,” Scaurus said. Now that his wits were working again, haste drove him hard. “Get a couple of maniples out there with Pakhymer’s men. I want every cow in the valley down here at this end inside an hour’s time.”
Khatrisher and centurion stared at him, sure he’d lost his mind after all. Then Gaius Philippus doubled over with laughter. “What a wonderful scheme,” he got out between wheezes. “And we won’t be on the receiving end this time, either.”
Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 Page 42
