Swords of the Legion (Videssos)

by Harry Turtledove

  “Well, what about it?” Goudeles asked the physician a few minutes later, when the breakout was contained. The bureaucrat somehow managed to look jaunty even though his face was gray-brown with dust and tracked by streams of sweat. He gave Gorgidas a conspiratorial wink.

  “What about what?” the Greek said, his mind back on the hunt.

  “You don’t play the innocent well,” Goudeles told him; he had the Videssian gift for spotting duplicity whether it was there or not. But when he said, “Tell me you weren’t wondering whether that shaft was meant for the wolf or you,” Gorgidas had to toss his head in a Hellenic no. Dizabul had no reason to love him. He had backed Bogoraz until Gorgidas foiled the Yezda’s try at poisoning his father; his pride suffered for finding himself so drastically in the wrong. Then, too, he might well have become khagan if the poisoning had succeeded.…

  “You’re not wrong,” Gorgidas admitted. The pen-pusher wet his finger and drew a tally-mark in the air, pleased at his own cleverness.

  As the light began to fail, the nomads opened their lines and let the trapped beasts they had not slain escape. They dismounted, drove off the gathering carrion birds, and set about butchering their kills. “Faugh!” said Viridovix, wrinkling his nose. The slaughterhouse stench oppressed Gorgidas, too, but it was hardly worse than battlefields he had known.

  The Arshaum set fires blazing in long straight trenches and began to smoke as much of the meat as they could. Arghun hobbled from one to the next with Irnek, supervising the job. “A pity our women and yurts aren’t here,” Gorgidas heard him say.

  “Aye, it is,” the younger plainsman agreed. “So many hides, so much bone and sinew wasted because we haven’t time to deal with them as we should.” Steppe life was harsh; not making the greatest possible use of everything they came across went against the nomads’ grain.

  While the sweaty work went on, the hunters carved off choice gobbets and roasted them for their day’s meal. “Not a bit peckish, are they now?” Viridovix said, between bites of the plump goose he’d taken.

  “You do pretty well yourself,” Gorgidas replied, gnawing on a leg from the same bird; the Celt had a good-sized pile of bones in front of him. But he was right; the nomads out-ate him without effort. Used to privation, they made the most of plenty when they had it. Seeing them somehow gulp down huge chunks of half-cooked meat reminded the Greek of a time when, as a boy, he had watched a small snake engulfing a large mouse.

  Batbaian ate by himself, his back to the fires. As Gorgidas’ emptiness faded and he began to be able to think of other things than food, he got up to invite the Khamorth over to talk. When Viridovix saw where he was going, he reached out and held the physician back. “Let the lad be,” he said quietly.

  Irritated, Gorgidas growled, “What’s your trouble? He’ll be happier here than brooding all alone.”

  “That’s not so at all, I’m thinking. Unless I miss my guess, the blazes are after reminding him o’ the ones Avshar used to snare him. That they do me, and I wasna caught by ’em. If he has somewhat to say, he’ll be by, and never you fret over that.”

  The Greek sat down again. “You may be right. You said something of the same thing to Arigh a few days ago, didn’t you?” He eyed Viridovix curiously. “I wouldn’t have expected you to be so careful of another’s feelings.”

  Viridovix toyed with his mustaches, as if wondering whether his manhood was questioned. He finally said, “Hurting a body without call is Avshar’s sport, and after a bit o’ him, why, I’ve fair lost the stomach for it.”

  “You’re growing up at last,” Gorgidas said, to which the Celt only snorted in derision. The physician thought of something else. “If Avshar somehow does not know how large an army has crossed into Pardraya, these fires will give us away.”

  “He knows,” Viridovix said with gloomy certainty. “He knows.”

  * * *

  Coincidence or not, two days later a Khamorth rode into the Arshaum camp under sign of truce, a white-painted shield hung from a lance. As he was brought before Arghun and his councilors, he looked about with an odd blend of arrogance laid over fear. He would flinch when the Arshaum scowled at him, then suddenly straighten and glower back, seeming to remember the might he himself represented.

  Certainly his bow before the khagan was perfunctory enough to fetch black looks from the plainsmen. He ignored them, asking in his own language, “Does anyone here speak this tongue and yours both?”

  “I do.” Skylitzes took a long step forward.

  The Khamorth blinked at finding an imperial at Arghun’s side, but recovered well. He was perhaps forty-five, not handsome but shrewd-looking, with eyes that darted every which way. Half of one of his ears was missing. By steppe standards, he wore finery; his cap was sable, his wolfskin jacket trimmed with the same fur, his fringed trousers of softest buckskin. A red stone glittered in the heavy gold ring on his right forefinger; his horse’s trappings were ornamented with polished jet.

  “Well, farmer,” he said, putting Skylitzes in his place with the nomad’s easy contempt for folk who lived a settled life, “tell the Arshaum I am Rodak son of Papak, and I come to him from Varatesh, grand khagan of the Royal Clan and master of all the clans of Pardraya.”

  The Videssian officer frowned at the insult, but began to translate. Batbaian broke in, shouting, “You filthy bandit, you drop dung through your mouth when you call Varatesh a khagan, or his renegades a clan!” He would have sprung for Rodak, but a couple of Arshaum grabbed him by the shoulders and held him back.

  Rodak had presence; he looked down his prominent nose at Batbaian, as if noticing him for the first time. Turning back to Arghun, he said, “So you have one of the outlaws along, do you? Well, I will make nothing of it; he’s been marked as he deserves.”

  “Outlaw, is it?” Batbaian said, twisting in the grip of the Arshaum. “What did your clan, your real clan, outlaw you for, Rodak? Was is manslaying, or stealing from your friends, or just buggering a goat?”

  “What I was is of no account,” Rodak said coolly; Skylitzes translated both sides of the exchange. “What I am now counts.”

  “Yes, and what are you?” Batbaian cried. “A puffed-up piece of sheep turd, making the air stink for your betters. Without Avshar’s black wizardry, you’d still be the starving brigand you ought to be, you vulture, you snake-hearted lizard-gutted cur, you green, hopping, slimy frog!”

  That was the deadliest affront one Khamorth could throw at another; the men of Pardraya loathed and feared frogs. Rodak’s hand flashed toward his saber. Then he froze with it still untouched, for two dozen arrows were aimed at him. Moving very slowly and carefully, he drew his hand away.

  “Better,” Arghun said dryly. “We have experience with treacherous envoys; they do not go well with weapons.”

  “Or with insults,” Rodak returned. His lips were pale, but from anger this time, Gorgidas thought, not fear.

  “Insult?” Batbaian said. “How could I make you out fouler than you are?”

  “That is enough,” Arghun said. “I will settle what he is.” Batbaian held his tongue; Arghun framed his orders mildly, but expected them to be obeyed. The khagan returned to Rodak. “What does your Varatesh want with us?”

  “He warns you to turn round at once and go back to your own side of the river Shaum, or face the anger of all the clans of Pardraya.”

  “Unless your khagan makes a quarrel with me, I have none with him,” Arghun said. At that, Batbaian cried out again. “Be silent,” Arghun told him, then turned to Rodak once more. “My quarrel is with Yezd—this is but the shortest road to Mashiz. Tell that to Varatesh very plainly, yes, and to your Avshar as well. So long as I am not attacked, I will not look for trouble with you Khamorth. If I am …” He let the sentence trail away.

  Rodak licked his lips. The wars with the Arshaum were burned into the memory of his people. “Avshar comes from Yezd, they say, and is adopted into the Royal Clan; indeed, he stands next to Varatesh there.”

 
“What is that to me?” Arghun’s voice was bland. Batbaian suddenly smiled, not a pleasant sight; Viridovix was reminded of a wolf scenting blood. Arghun continued, “You have my answer. I will not turn back, but I make war on Yezd, not on you, unless you would have it so. Take that word to your master.”

  Skylitzes hesitated before he rendered the khagan’s last sentence into the Khamorth speech. “How would you have me translate that?”

  “Exactly as I said it,” Argun said.

  “Very well.” The word the Videssian used for “master” meant “owner of a dog.”

  Rodak glowered at him and Arghun from under heavy brows. “When my chief—” He came down hard on the proper term. “—hears of this, we will see how funny he finds your little joke. Think on one-eye here; before long you may be envying his fate.”

  He wheeled his horse and rode away. Behind him, Arigh yipped like a puppy. A chorus of laughing Arshaum took up the call, yapping and baying Rodak out of camp. He roweled his horse savagely as he galloped northeast. Batbaian walked over to Arigh and slapped him on the back in wordless gratitude. Chuckling nomads kept barking at each other until it was full dark.

  But back at the tent he shared with Viridovix, Gorgidas was less cheerful. He scrawled down what had happened at Rodak’s embassy, noting, “The Khamorth are caught between two dreads, the ancient fear of their western neighbors and the new terror raised by Avshar. As the one is but the memory of a fright and the other all too immediate, the force of the latter, I think, shall prevail among them.”

  As he sometimes did, Viridovix asked the Greek what he’d written. “You’re after thinking the shindy’s coming, then?”

  “Very much so. Why should Avshar let Yezd be ravaged if he can block the attack with these plainsmen, who are but tools in his hand? And I have no doubt he will be able to move them against us.”

  “Nobbut a tomnoddy’d say you’re wrong,” Viridovix nodded. He drew his sword, checked the blade carefully for rust, and honed away a couple of tiny nicks in the edge—as tame a reaction to the prospect of a fight as Gorgidas had seen from him. Since Seirem had perished in the massacre of Targitaus’ camp, the big Gaul saw war’s horror as well as its excitement and glory.

  When he was satisfied with the state of the blade, he sheathed it again and stared moodily into the fire. At last he said, “We should thrash them, I’m thinking.”

  “Then sound as if you believed it, not like a funeral dirge!” Gorgidas exclaimed in some alarm. The mercurial Celt seemed sunk in despair.

  “You ha’ me, for in my heart I dinna,” he said. “Indeed and we’re the better fighters, but what’s the use in that? Yourself said it a few days ago: it’s Avshar’s witchering wins his battles for him, not his soldiers.”

  Gorgidas pursed his lips, as at a bad taste. All Avshar’s troops needed to do was hold fast, draw their foes in until they were fully engaged, and the wizard-prince’s magic would find a weakness or make one. To hold fast … his head jerked up. “Autò ékhō!” he shouted. “I have it!”

  Viridovix jumped, grumbling crossly, “Talk a language a man can understand, not your fool Greek.”

  “Sorry.” Words poured from the physician, a torrent of them. He forgot himself again once or twice and had to backtrack so the Gaul could follow him. As Viridovix listened, his eyes went wide.

  “Aren’t you the trickiest one, now,” he breathed. He let out a great war whoop, then fell back on his wolfskin sleeping blanket, choking with laughter. “Puddocks!” he got out between wheezes. “Puddocks!” He dissolved all over again.

  Gorgidas paid no attention to him. He was already sticking his head out the tent flap. “Tolui!” he yelled.

  III

  “THAT’S THE ONE,” MARCUS SAID, POINTING, “HIS NAME’S Iatzoulinos.”

  “Third from the back on the left, is it?” Gaius Philippus growled. The tribune nodded, then regretted it. There was a dull, pounding ache in his head, from too much wine and not enough sleep. The senior centurion strode forward, saying, “His name doesn’t matter a fart to me and it’ll be so much dog dung to him, too, when I’m through with him.”

  He stamped down the narrow aisleway between the rows of desks. His high-crested helm nearly brushed the ceiling; his scarlet cloak of rank billowed about his shoulders; his shirt of mail clanked at every step. Scaurus leaned against the doorpost, watching bureaucrats look up in horror from their tax rolls, memoranda, and counting boards at the warlike apparition loosed in their midst.

  Intently bent over his book of accounts, Iatzoulinos did not notice the Roman’s approach even when Gaius Philippus loomed over his desk like a thundercloud. The secretary kept transferring numbers from one column to another, checking each entry twice. Though hardly past thirty, he had an older man’s pallor and fussy precision.

  Gaius Philippus scowled at him for a few seconds, but he remained oblivious. The senior centurion rasped his gladius free. Marcus sprang toward him—he had not brought him here to see murder done.

  But Gaius Philippus brought the flat of the blade crashing down on Iatzoulinos’ desk. The bureaucrat’s ink pot leaped into the air and overturned; beads flew from his counting board.

  He leaped himself, staring about wildly like a man waking to a nightmare. With a cry of dismay, he snatched his ledger away from the spreading puddle of ink. “What is the meaning of this madness?” he exclaimed, voice cracking in alarm.

  “You shut your sniveling gob, you worthless sack of moldy tripes.” Gaius Philippus’ bass roar, trained to be heard through battlefield din, was fearsome in an enclosed space. “And sit down!” he added, slamming the pen-pusher back into his chair when he tried to scuttle away. “You’re bloody well going to listen to me.”

  He spat into the ink spot. Iatzoulinos shriveled under his glare. No shame there, Marcus thought. That glower was made for turning hard-bitten legionaries to mush. “So you’re the fornicating cabbagehead’s been screwing over my men, eh?” the senior centurion barked, curling his lip in contempt.

  Iatzoulinos actually blushed; the red was easy to see on his thin, sallow features. “It may possibly be the case that, due to some, ah unfortunate, ah, oversight, disbursement has experienced, ah, a few purely temporary delays—”

  “Cut the garbage,” Gaius Philippus ordered. Likely he had not understood half the pen-pusher’s jargon. He noticed he was still holding his sword and sheathed it so he could poke a grimy-nailed finger in Iatzoulinos’ face. The bureaucrat’s eyes crossed as he regarded it fearfully.

  “Now you listen and you listen good, understand me?” the veteran said. Iatzoulinos nodded, still watching the finger as though he did not dare look at the man behind it. Gaius Philippus went on, “It was you god-despised seal-stampers first took to hiring mercenaries because you decided you couldn’t trust your own troops any more, ’cause they liked their local nobles better than you. Right?” He shook the secretary. “Right?”

  “I, ah, believe something of that sort may have been the case, though this policy was, ah, implemented prior to the commencement of my tenure here.”

  “Mars’ prick, you talk that way all the time!” The Roman clapped his hand to his forehead. He took a few seconds to pick up his chain of thought. “For my money, you were thinking with your heads up your backsides when you came up with that one, but forget that for now. Listen, you mud-brained bastard son of an illegitimate bepoxed she-goat, if you have to have troops that fight for money, what in the name of a bald-arsed bureaucrat do you think they’ll do if there’s no bloody money?” His voice rose another couple of notches, something Scaurus would not have guessed possible. “If they weren’t kind and gentle like me, they’d tear your fornicating head off and piss in the hole, that’s what! You’d probably remember better that way anyhow.”

  Iatzoulinos looked about ready to faint. Deciding things had gone far enough, Marcus called, “Since you are kind and gentle, Gaius, what will you do instead?”

  “Eh? Oh. Hrrm.” The centurion was thrown off s
tride for a second, but recovered brilliantly. Shoving his face within a couple of inches of the pen-pusher’s, he hissed, “I give you four days to round up every goldpiece we’re owed—and in old coin, too, none of this debased trash from Ortaias’ mint—or I start saving up piss. Understand me?”

  It took three tries, but Iatzoulinos got a “Yes” out.

  “Good.” Gaius Philippus glared round the room. “Well, why aren’t the rest of you lazy sods working?” he snarled, and tramped out.

  “A very good day to you all, gentlemen,” Marcus said to the stunned bureaucrats, and followed him. He had an afterthought and stuck his head back in. “Don’t you wish you were dealing with the nobles again?”

  Alypia Gavra laughed when the tribune told her the story. “And did he get the pay for your soldiers?” she asked.

  “Every bit of it. It went off to Garsavra by courier, let me see, ten days ago. He’s staying in the city until the receipt comes back from Minucius. If it’s not here pretty soon, or if it’s even a copper short, I would not care to be wearing Iatzoulinos’ sandals.”

  “Rocking the bureaucrats every so often is not a bad thing,” Alypia said seriously. “They’re needed to keep the Empire running on an even keel, but they are trained in the city and they serve here and begin to think that everything comes down to entries in a ledger. Bumping up against reality has to be healthy for them.”

  Marcus chuckled. “I think Gaius Philippus was rather realer than Iatzoulinos cared for.”

  “From what I’ve seen of him, I’d say you’re right.” Alypia got out of bed. It was only a few steps to the jug of wine on the table against the far wall. She poured for both of them. The wine was the best this inn offered, but none too good. Compared even to Aetios’ tavern, the place was dingy and cramped. The din of hammers on copperware of every sort came unceasingly through the narrow window.