Swords of the Legion (Videssos)

by Harry Turtledove

  The tent city was already in an uproar when the Romans reached it. The first wave of rioters had come just ahead of them; they were running from one vendor to the next, snatching what they could. The buyers already there were catching the fever, too, and joining the mob. Several bodies, most of them locals, lay bleeding in the dirt.

  But the mob’s onset was not the only thing sowing confusion. Merchants were frantically shutting up displays, taking down tents, and loading everything onto their horses, donkeys, and camels. Some were nearly done; they must have started at first light, long before Scaurus touched off the scramble at Amorion.

  “Now where was Tahmasp lurking?” Gaius Philippus growled. The Romans had counted on finding him by his main tent, which was an eye-searing saffron that had glowed even in the twilight of the night before. But it was already down.

  “There, that way, I think,” Marcus said pointing. “I remember that blue-and-white striped one wasn’t far from him.”

  They rode forward. “Right you are,” Gaius Philippus said, spotting the yellow canvas baled up on horseback. There was no sign of the caravan master, though traders who traveled with him were still dashing about finishing their packing.

  Despite the chaos, the mob left Tahmasp’s caravan alone. A good forty armored guardsmen, most of them mounted, formed a perimeter to daunt the most foolhardy rioters. Some had drawn bows, others carried spears or held sabers at the ready. They had the mongrel look of any such company, with no matching gear and men who ranged from a blond Haloga through Videssians and Makuraners to robed desert nomads and even a couple of Yezda. They were all scarred, several missing fingers or an ear, and probably four-fifths of them outlaws, but they looked like they could fight.

  They bristled as the Romans approached. “Where’s Tahmasp?” Marcus shouted to the man he figured for their leader, a short, dark, hatchet-faced Videssian who wore his wealth—his hands glittered with gold rings, his arms with heavy bracelets. His sword belt and scabbard were crusted with jewels, and the torque round his neck would have raised the envy of Viridovix or any Gallic chieftain. Baubles aside, he looked quick and dangerous.

  “He’s bloody well busy,” he snapped. “What’s it to you?”

  Gaius Philippus spoke up, in piping falsetto: “Oh, the wicked fellow! He’s got me in trouble, and my daddy’s coming after him with an axe!” The guard chief’s jaw dropped; several of his men doubled over in laughter. In normal tones, the centurion rasped, “Who are you, dung-heel, to keep people from him?”

  The other purpled. Marcus said hastily, “He said for us to come see him if we were looking for spots in your troop. We are.”

  That got them a different kind of appraisal from Tahmasp’s rough crew. Suddenly the gaudy little troop leader was all business. His darting black eyes inspected the puckered scar on the tribune’s right forearm, his sleeveless mail shirt. “Funny gear,” he muttered. He gave Gaius Philippus a hard once-over. “Well, maybe,” he said. He called to the Haloga, “Go on, Njal, fetch the boss.”

  “What idiocy is this?” Tahmasp boomed as he came up at a heavy run. He glared at his guard chief. “This had better be good, Kamytzes. These boneheads with me this trip couldn’t figure out how to put a prick where it goes, let alone—” He broke off, recognizing the Romans. “Ha! Done with your precious ‘business,’ are you?”

  Somewhere behind Marcus, a rioter yelled as a merchant slammed a box closed on his hand. “You might say so,” the tribune said.

  Tahmasp’s eyes glinted, but he rolled his shoulders in a massive shrug. “The fewer questions I ask, the fewer lies I get back. So you two want to join me, eh?” Receiving nods, he went on, “You’ve soldiered before—no, don’t tell me about it; I’d sooner not know. That makes things easier. You know what orders are. Pay and all I told you about already. Steal, and we’ll stomp you the first time; stomp you again, harder, and kick you out naked the next. Try and run out on us, and we’ll kill you if we can. We don’t like bandits planting spies.”

  “Fair enough,” Marcus said. Gaius Philippus echoed him.

  “Good.” The caravaneer’s bushy eyebrows went down as he frowned. “I forgot to ask—what do I call you?”

  They gave their praenomens. “Never heard those before,” Tahmasp said. “No matter. You, Markhos, from now on you are in Kamytzes’ band. Once we are on the move, that is right flank guard. And you, Gheyus—” His Makuraner accent made the veteran’s name a grunt. “—you belong to Muzaffar and left flank patrol.” He pointed to a countryman of his, a tall, thin man with coal-black hair going gray at the temples and an aristocratic cast of features marred by a broken nose.

  Tahmasp saw the Romans look at each other. He laughed until his big belly shook—not like so much jelly, as Balsamon’s did, but like a boulder bouncing up and down. “I don’t know you bastards,” he pointed out. “Think I’ll let you stay together and maybe plot who knows what? Not frigging likely.”

  He might not be a Videssian, Marcus thought, but his mind worked the same way. No help for it; taking precautions kept Tahmasp alive.

  Gaius Philippus asked the caravaneer, “What’s all your hurly-burly about? Seems you were going to get out even before the riot started—and ’most everybody else up here with you.” As if to punctuate his words, another merchant company pulled away, the traders lashing their animals ahead. The lash fell on looters, too, driving them away with curses and yelps.

  “I’d have to have my head stuffed up my backside to stay. A rider came in this morning with news of a thundering big army pushing east up the Ithome toward us. That says Yezda to me, and I’m not blockhead enough to sit still and wait for ’em.”

  “You called it,” Scaurus said to Gaius Philippus. The approaching force had to be the nomads, he thought. Thorisin had hardly begun mobilizing when Marcus was expelled from the city; he doubted whether an imperial force could even have reached Garsavra.

  “Enough of this jibber-jabber,” Tahmasp declared. “We’ve got to get out of here fast, and standing around chinning don’t help. Some of the stupid sods with me would hang around to sell a Yezda the sword he’d take their heads with the next second. Kamytzes, Muzaffar, these two are your headache now. If they give trouble, scrag ’em; we got on without ’em before, and I’ll bet we can again.” He turned and clumped away, shouting, “Isn’t that bleeding tent down yet? Move it, you daft buggers!”

  Kamytzes ordered Marcus forward with a brusque gesture. Muzaffar smiled at Gaius Philippus, his teeth white against swarthy skin. When he spoke, his voice was soft and musical: “Tell me, what do you call that steed of yours?”

  “This maundering old wreck? The worst I can think of.”

  “A man of discernment, I see. That would seem none too good.” He beckoned to the veteran to join him. “If you are one of us, you are facing the wrong way.”

  Tahmasp’s caravan pulled out less than an hour after the Romans took service with him. Forty guards seemed an impressive force when the caravan was gathered together, but, even eked out by merchants, grooms, and servants, they were pitifully few once it stretched itself along the road. Divided into three-man squads, Kamytzes’ troop patrolled its side of the long row of wagons, carts, and beasts of burden, while Muzaffar’s took the other.

  Marcus looked for Gaius Philippus, but could not see him.

  What might have been a bad moment came just outside Amorion, when the rioters were still thick as fleas on a dog. A double handful of them attacked Scaurus and the squadmates he had been assigned, Njal the Haloga and a lean, sun-baked desert nomad who spoke no Videssian at all. The tribune heard his name was Wathiq.

  Some of the looters tried to keep the guards in play while the rest went for the donkeys behind them. Against their own kind, the simple plan would have worked. But Njal, wielding his axe with a surgeon’s precision, sliced off one rioter’s ear and sent him running away shrieking and spurting blood. Marcus cut down another before the fellow could jump in to hamstring his horse. Wathiq turned in the saddle
and shot one of the men who had run past them in the back. The rioters gave it up as a bad job and fled, while the three professionals grinned at each other.

  Njal and Wathiq could talk to each other after a fashion in broken Makuraner. Through the Haloga, the tribune learned Wathiq had backed the wrong prince in a tribal feud and had to flee. Njal himself was exiled for being too poor to pay blood-price over a man he had killed. Scaurus gave out that he was a wandering mercenary down on his luck, a story the other two accepted without comment. He had no idea whether they believed him.

  The Roman thought nothing of it when Tahmasp led his charges west; with enemies coming from the opposite direction, he would have gone the same way to get maneuvering room.

  They camped by the Ithome. With summer’s heat drawing near, the river was already low in its bed, but it would flow the year around. On the parched central plateau, that made it more precious than rubies.

  Each squad of guards shared a tent; Marcus gave up the idea of any private planning with Gaius Philippus. Still, he thought, with Latin between them, their talk would be safe enough from prying ears. But when he went looking for the centurion at the cookfires, he discovered his comrade’s squad had picket duty the first watch of the night. Kamytzes had given him, Wathiq, and Njal the mid-watch. From what he had seen of Tahmasp’s methods, he suspected that was no accident.

  The blocky caravaneer hired the best, though. His cook somehow managed a savory stew out of travelers’ fare of smoked meats, shelled grain, chick-peas, and onions. The very smell of it had more substance than the thin, sorry stuff Thorisin Gavras’ jailers had dished out.

  The tribune settled down by a fire to enjoy the stew, but before he got the spoon to his lips, one of the other guardsmen stumbled over him. Marcus’ bowl went flying. The trooper was a Videssian, thicker through the shoulders than most imperials, with a gold hoop dangling piratically from his left ear. “Sorry,” he said, but his mocking grin made him out a liar.

  “You clumsy—” Marcus began, but then he saw the rest of the guards watching him expectantly and understood. Any new recruit could look forward to a hazing before veterans would accept him.

  His tormentor loomed over him, fists bunched in anticipation. Without standing up, the tribune hooked his foot back of the other’s ankle. The Videssian went down with a roar of rage; Scaurus sprang on top of him.

  “No knives!” Kamytzes shouted. “Draw one, and it’s the last thing you’ll do!”

  The two fighters rolled in the dirt, pummeling each other. The Videssian rammed a knee at Marcus’ groin. He twisted aside just enough to take it on the point of the hip. He grabbed his opponent’s beard and pulled his face down into the dust. When the other tried for a like hold on him, his hand slipped off the tribune’s bare chin.

  “Ha!” someone exclaimed. “Some point to this shaving business after all.”

  The Roman saw sparks when the guard’s fist smashed into his nose. Blood streamed down his face; he gulped air through his mouth. He punched the Videssian in the belly. The fellow was so muscular it was like hitting a slab of wood, but one of the tribune’s blows caught him in that vulnerable spot at the pit of the stomach. The guard folded up, the fight forgotten as he struggled to breathe.

  Marcus climbed to his feet, gingerly feeling his nose. There was no grate of bone, he noted with relief, but it was already swelling. His voice sounded strange as he asked Kamytzes, “Have I passed, or is there more?”

  “You’ll do,” the little captain said. He nodded at the tribune’s foe, who was finally starting to do more than gasp. “Byzos there is no lightweight.”

  “Too true,” Scaurus agreed, touching his nose again. He helped Byzos up and was not sorry to see he had scraped a good piece of hide off the Videssian’s cheek. But the guard took his hand when he offered it. The fight had been fair and was no tougher an initiation rite, the tribune decided, than the branding that sealed a man to a Roman legion.

  “Pay up, chief,” one of the guards said. Kamytzes, looking sour, pulled off a ring and gave it to him.

  Marcus frowned, not caring to have his new commander resentful at having lost money on account of him. “If you want to get your own back,” he said, “bet on my friend Gaius when his turn comes after he gets off watch.”

  “With his head full of gray?” Kamytzes stared. “He’s an old man.”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that,” the tribune said. “Tell you what; make your bets. If you lose, I’ll make them good for you—and here are your witnesses to see I said so.”

  “The bigger fool you, but I’m glad to take you up on it. Never turn down free money or a free woman, my father always told me, and money won’t give you the clap.”

  When the squad rode out on picket duty, Njal said, “You’d best be richer t’an you look, outlander. T’at Kamytzes, he might almost be a Namdalener for gambling.” He said something to Wathiq, who nodded vigorously and pantomimed a man rolling dice.

  “I’m not worried,” Marcus said, and hoped he meant it.

  The watch passed without incident; only the buzz of insects and a nightjar’s chuckling call broke the stillness. Videssos’ constellations, still alien to the tribune after nearly four years, rolled slowly across the heavens. Making idle talk with Njal, he learned the Halogai recognized constellations altogether different from the patterns the imperials saw in the sky. Wathiq, it turned out, had another set still.

  It seemed a very long time before the late-watch squad came to relieve them. They shook their heads when Scaurus asked whether they knew how Gaius Philippus had done. “We sacked out soon as our tent was up,” one said for all. “Take more than a brawl to wake us, too—hate this bloody last watch of the night.”

  As Marcus was yawning himself, he could hardly argue. Back at the camp, the fires had died into embers; even gossipers and men who had stayed up for a last cup or two of wine were long since abed. “Come morning you’ll know,” Njal consoled Scaurus as they slid into their bedrolls. The tribune fell asleep in the middle of a grumble.

  Tahmasp announced the dawn not with trumpets, but with a nomad-style drum whose deep, bone-jarring beat tumbled men out of bed like an earthquake. Bleary-eyed, Marcus splashed water on his face and groped for his tunic. He was still mouth-breathing; his nose felt twice its proper size.

  After the sweaty closeness of the tent, the smell of wheatcakes sizzling was doubly inviting. Marcus stole one from the griddle with his dagger, then tossed it up and down till it was cool enough to hold. He devoured it, ignoring the cook’s curses. It was delicious.

  A nudge in the ribs made him whirl. There stood Kamytzes, looking like a fox who had just cleaned out a henhouse. The troop leader handed him a couple of pieces of silver. “I made plenty more,” he said, “but this for the tip.”

  “Thanks.” Marcus pocketed the coins. He looked round for Gaius Philippus, but Muzaffar’s half of the guard troop was billeted at the far end of the camp. Turning back to Kamytzes, he asked, “How did he do it?”

  “They picked a big hulking bruiser to go at him, all muscles and no sense. From the way he came swaggering over, a blind idiot would have known what he had in mind. Your friend hadn’t had time to sit down to his supper yet. He made as if he didn’t notice what was going on until the lout was almost on top of him. Then he spun on his heel, cold-cocked the bugger, dragged him over to the latrine trench, and dropped him in—feet first; he didn’t want to drown him. After that he got his stew and ate.”

  Scaurus nodded; the encounter had the earmarks of the senior centurion’s efficiency. “Did he say anything?” he asked Kamytzes.

  “I was coming to that.” The cocky officer’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “After a couple of bites he looked up and said to nobody in particular, ‘If anything like that happens again, I may have to get annoyed.’ ”

  “Sounds like him. I doubt he need worry much.”

  “So do I.” Filching a wheatcake the same way Marcus had, Kamytzes bustled away to help Tahmasp get
the caravan moving.

  They were on the road by an hour and a half after sunrise—not up to the standard of the legions, but good time, the tribune thought, for a private band of adventurers. Tahmasp went up and down the line of merchants who traveled with him, blasphemously urging them to keep up. “What do you think you are, a eunuch in a sedan chair?” he roared at one who was too slow to suit him. “You move like that, we’ll fornicating well go on without you. See how fast you’ll run with Yezda on your tail!” The trader mended his pace; the caravaneer had no more potent threat than leaving him behind.

  As they had the day before, they traveled west. Marcus waved to Tahmasp as he came by on his unceasing round of inspections. “What is it?” the flamboyant caravaneer asked genially. “Kamytzes tells me you carved yourself a place,” he said, chuckling, “though you’ll not gain favor by making your nose as big as mine.”

  “As I wasn’t born with it that way, I’ll be as glad when it’s not,” the tribune retorted. Happy to find Tahmasp in a good mood, he asked when the caravan would swing north toward the Empire’s ports on the coast of the Videssian Sea.

  Tahmasp dug a finger in his ear to make sure he had heard correctly. Then he threw back his head and laughed till tears streamed down his leathery cheeks. “North? Who’s ever said a word about north? You poor, stupid, sorry son of a whore, it’s Mashiz I’m bound for, not your piss-pot ports. Mashiz!” He almost choked with glee. “I hope you enjoy the trip.”

  VIII

  “SURRENDER!” LANKINOS SKYLITZES BAWLED UP TO THE Yezda officer atop the mud-brick wall.

  The Yezda put his hands on his hips and laughed. “I’d like to see you make me,” he said. He spat at the Videssian, who was interpreting for Arigh.