Swords of the Legion (Videssos)

by Harry Turtledove

  “You had been sleeping with Gorgidas for a year.” Rakio set out what seemed to him too obvious to need explaining. “It only natural is for you to be jealous, with me taking him away from you. Why you aren’t?”

  All that kept the Gaul from laughing out loud was that it would draw the Yezda. “Och, what a grand ninny y’are. ’Twas nobbut sleeping in the tent of us, that and some powerful talk. A finer friend nor the Greek there couldna be, for all his griping, but the next man’s arse I covet’ll be the first.”

  “Really?” It was Rakio’s turn for amusement. No matter what he knew intellectually of other peoples’ ways, emotionally the Sworn Fellowship’s customs were the only right and proper ones to him. “I am sorry for you.”

  “Why are you sorry for him?” Gorgidas asked; Rakio had forgotten to keep his voice down.

  “Never you mind,” Viridovix told him. “Just shut up and climb. The losels ahint us’ll be here all too quick.”

  But when the Greek looked back to see how close the Yezda were, he watched, dumfounded, as they trotted east past the mound. From their shouts to one another, they still thought they were in hot pursuit of Rakio and his rescuers. Mynto said something in the Yrmido tongue. Rakio translated: “A good time for them to lose their wits, but why?”

  The question was rhetorical, but answered nonetheless. From the top of the hillock a thin voice called, “Come join me, my friends, if you would.” At first Gorgidas thought he was hearing Greek, then Videssian. From the muffled exclamations of the others, he was sure they felt the same confusion; Viridovix gave a startled answer in his musical Celtic speech. In whatever language they heard the summons, none of them thought of disobeying, any more than they might a much-loved grandfather.

  Before long they had to tether their horses and help each other with the last rugged climb to the hill’s crest. The same jumble of eroded mud-brick walls and buildings Gorgidas had seen at the would-be Yezda ambush presented itself here, made worse because no fires lit it. The voice came again: “This way.” They stumbled through the ruins of what might once have been the town marketplace and came at last to work that was not ancient—a lean- to of brush and sticks, propped against a half-fallen fence.

  There was motion as they approached. A naked man emerged, at first on hands and knees before painfully getting to his feet. He raised his left hand in a gesture of blessing that was new to Gorgidas and Viridovix, but which Rakio and Mynto returned. “In the names of a greater Four, I welcome the four of you.”

  Gorgidas wondered how the hermit knew their number; his eyes were white and blind. But that wonder was small next to the physician’s amazement that he could stand at all. He was the most emaciated human being the Greek had ever seen. His thighs were thinner than his knees; the skin fell in between his sharply etched ribs, or what could be seen of them behind a matted white beard. But for his blindness, his face might once have been princely; now he resembled nothing so much as a starved hawk.

  While Gorgidas was taking the measure of the physical man, Viridovix penetrated at once to his essence. “A holy druid he is,” the Gaul said, “or more like one nor any priest I’ve yet found here.” Bowing to the hermit, he asked respectfully, “Was it your honor kept the Yezda from chasing us here?”

  “A mere sending of phantoms,” the other said. Or so the Celt understood him; watching, he did not see the holy man’s lips move.

  He was surprised when the hermit bowed to him in turn, then looked him full in the face with that disconcerting, empty gaze. He heard, “I have broken my rule of nonintervention in the affairs of the world for your sake; you carry too much destiny to be snuffed out in some tiny, meaningless scuffle.”

  They were all looking at Viridovix now, the two Yrmido in bewilderment, Gorgidas appraisingly. He could feel the truth emanating from the man. So could Viridovix, who protested, “Me? It’s nobbut a puir lone Celt I am, trying to stay alive—for the which I maun thank you, now. But wish no geases on me.”

  Gorgidas cut in, “What destiny do you speak of?” This was no time, he thought, for Viridovix to have an uncharacteristic fit of modesty.

  For the first time the hermit showed uncertainty. “That I may not—and cannot—tell you. I do not see it clearly myself, nor is the outcome certain. Other powers than mine cloud my view, and the end, for good or ill, is balanced to within a feather’s weight. But without this stranger, only disaster lies ahead. Thus I chose to meddle in the ways of man once more, though this is but one of the two required pieces.”

  “Och, a druid indeed,” Viridovix said, “saying more than he means. Is it so with your oracles, too, Greek?”

  “Yes,” Gorgidas said, but he caught the nervousness in the Gaul’s chuckle.

  Rakio spoke in the Yrmido language; with his gift of tongues, the holy man understood. Gorgidas caught only a couple of words; one was “Master,” the title priests of the Four Prophets bore. The physician waited impatiently for the hermit’s reply.

  “I have made this hill my fortress against temptation since before the Yezda came,” he said, “seeking in negation the path the sweet Four opened to a better life ahead. But I failed; my faith tottered when the murderers swept out of the west and laid waste my land and my fellow believers with no sign of vengeance being readied against them. Often I wondered why I chose to remain alive in the face of such misery; how much easier it would have been to let go my fleshly husk and enjoy bliss forever. Now at last I know why I did not.”

  He tottered forward to embrace Viridovix. The Celt had all he could do to keep from shying; not only was it like being hugged by a skeleton, but he did not think the holy man had washed himself since he took up his station a lifetime ago. Still worse, that confident touch told again of the holy man’s certainty about his fate. He was worse afraid than in any battle, for it tore his freedom from him as death never could.

  He pulled away so quickly the hermit staggered. Mynto righted the old man, glaring at the Celt. “Begging your honor’s pardon,” Viridovix said grudgingly. He looked to his comrades. “Should we not be off with us the now, with the Yezda so befooled and all?”

  They started to agree, but the holy man quivered so hard Viridovix thought he would shake himself to pieces. He grasped the Celt’s arm with unexpected strength. “You must not go! The fiends yet prowl all about, and will surely destroy you if you venture away. You must stay and wait before you try to return to your friends.”

  Mynto and Rakio were convinced at once. Gorgidas shrugged at Viridovix’ unvoiced appeal. “Whatever else the man may be,” the physician pointed out, “we’ve found him wizard enough to outfox the Yezda. Dare we assume he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”

  “Put that way, nay,” the Gaul sighed, “but och, I wish we did.”

  Had he known the wait would stretch through four days, Gorgidas would have taken his chances on the Yezda. With Mynto there, he did not feel easy with Rakio, the more so because Rakio seemed to enjoy teasing him by playing up to his onetime lover. Nor was Viridovix, kicking against what the holy man insisted was to be his destiny, any better company. The Gaul, by turns somber and angry, either moped about in moody silence or snarled defiance at the world.

  That left the hermit. Gorgidas did his best to draw the man out, but he was as faith-struck as the most fanatical Videssian priest. The Greek learned more than he really wanted to know about the cult of the Four Prophets, as much by what the hermit did not say as by what he did. Like Rakio and Mynto, he never mentioned his god or gods, reckoning the divinity too sacred to pollute with words, but he would drone on endlessly about the Prophets’ attributes and aspects. Caught for once without writing materials, Gorgidas tried to remember as much as he could.

  The first morning they were there, he asked the holy man his name, to have something to call him by. The hermit blinked, in that moment looking like an ordinary, perplexed mortal. “Do you know,” he answered, “I’ve forgotten.” He did not seem to mind when Gorgidas followed Rakio’s usage and call
ed him “Master.”

  He refused in horror to share the field rations the Greek and his comrades had with them. With ascetic zeal, he ate only the roots and berries he grubbed from the ground himself. His water came from the one well that had not fallen in since the dead city he lived in was abandoned. It was warm, muddy, and gave all four of his guests a savage diarrhea.

  “No wonder the wight’s so scrawny,” Viridovix said, staggering up the hill after a call of nature. “On sic meat and drink I’d be dead in a week, beshrew me if I wouldn’t.”

  Despite everything, though, the Celt did not urge his fellows to leave before the hermit said it was safe. For the first two days, Yezda constantly trotted past the mound. One band had a red-robed sorcerer with it. Gorgidas’ heart was in his mouth lest the wizard penetrate the defenses of the place, but he rode on.

  When the holy man finally gave them leave to go, the physician felt he was being released from gaol. And, like a warden cautioning freed prisoners against new crimes, the hermit warned: “Ride straight for the main body of your companions and all will be well with you. Turn aside for any reason and you will meet only disaster.”

  “We scarcely would do anything else,” Rakio remarked as the hillock grew smaller behind them. “In this flat, ugly land there precious few distractions are.” Perhaps seeking one, he winked at Mynto. Gorgidas ground his teeth and pretended not to see.

  Following the Arshaum army did not rate the name of tracking. War’s flotsam was guide enough: unburied men and horses swelling and stinking under the merciless sun, trampled canal banks where scores of beasts had drunk, a burnt-out barn that had served as a latrine for a regiment, discarded boots, a broken bow, a stolen carpet tossed aside as too heavy to be worth carrying.

  The four riders drove their horses as hard as they dared; the Arshaum, unburdened now by many allies, would be picking up the pace. They saw no Yezda, save as distant specks. “You had the right of it,” Viridovix admitted to Gorgidas. “Himself knew whereof he spoke. But for the draff and all, we might be cantering in the country.”

  The next morning rocked their confidence in the hermit’s powers. Dust warned of the approaching column before it appeared out of the south, but they were in a stretch of land gone back to desert after the Yezda wrecked the local irrigation works, and the baked brown earth offered no cover. The column swerved their way.

  “Out sword!” Viridovix cried, tugging his own free. “Naught for it but to sell oursel’s dear as we may.”

  Mynto drew his saber, a handsome weapon with gold inlays on the hilt. He patted the empty boss on the right side of his saddle and said something to Rakio. “He wishes he had his spear,” Rakio translated. Irrepressible, he added an aside to Gorgidas: “It was a long one.”

  “Oh, a pest take Mynto and his spear, and you with them,” the physician snapped. He could feel his sweat soaking into the leather grip of his gladius. The shortsword fit his hand as well as any surgical knife, and he was beginning to gain some skill with it. But the size of the oncoming troop only brought despair at the prospect of a hopeless fight.

  He could see men in armor through the swirling dust, their lances couched and ready. What that meant escaped him until Viridovix let out a wordless yowl of glee and slammed his blade into its sheath. “Use the eyes of you, man,” he called to the Greek. “Are those Yezda?”

  “No, by the dog!” Along with his comrades, Gorgidas booted his horse toward the Erzrumi.

  Rakio identified them. “It is Gashvili’s band from Gunib.”

  Though he kept shouting and waving to show the mountain men he was no enemy, trepidation stirred in Viridovix. Frightful oaths had bound Gashvili to ride with the Arshaum. If he was forsaking them, would he leave witnesses to tell of it? The Gaul did not draw his sword again, but he made sure it was loose in the scabbard.

  His alarm spiked when the men of Gunib almost rode him and his companions down in spite of their cries of friendship. Only as the Erzrumi finally pulled up could he see them as more than menacing figures behind their lanceheads. They were reeling in the saddle, red-eyed with fatigue; every one was filthy with the caked dust of hard travel. Scraps of grimy cloth covered fresh wounds. Clouds of flies descended to gorge on oozing serum or new blood. Most of the troopers did not bother slapping them away.

  “They’re beaten men,” the Celt said softly, in wonder. He looked in vain for Gashvili’s gilded scale-mail. “Where might your laird be?” he asked the nearest Erzrumi.

  “Dead,” the fellow replied after a moment, as if he had to force himself to understand the Khamorth tongue Viridovix had used.

  “The gods smile on him when he meets them, then. Who leads you the now?”

  Vakhtang made his way through his men toward the newcomers. He surveyed them dully. “I command,” he said, but his voice held no authority. He was a million miles from the coxcomb who had come out to confront Arigh’s men in front of Gunib. His two-pointed beard made an unkempt tangle down the front of his corselet, whose gilding was marred by sword stroke and smoke and blood. The jaunty feather was long gone from his helm. Out of a face haggard and sick with defeat his eyes stared, not quite focused, somewhere past Viridovix’ right ear.

  He was worse than beaten, the Gaul realized; he was stunned, as if clubbed. “What of your oath to Arigh?” he growled, thinking to sting the ruined man in front of him back to life. “Gone and left him in the lurch, have you now, mauger all the cantrips and fine words outside your precious castle?”

  As lifelessly as before, Vakhtang said, “No. We are not forsworn.” But in spite of himself, his head lifted; he met Viridovix’ eyes for the first time. His voice firmed as he went on. “Arigh himself and his priest Tolui absolved us of our vow when the army began to break up.”

  “Tell me,” Viridovix said, overriding cries of dismay from Gorgidas and then in turn from Rakio and Mynto as Vakhtang’s words were rendered into Videssian and the Yrmido speech.

  The story had an appalling simplicity. Yezda in numbers never before seen had come rushing up out of the south to repeat on a vastly larger scale the pincer tactics they had tried in front of Dur-Sharrukin. They were better soldiers than the Arshaum had seen before, too; a prisoner boasted that Wulghash the khagan had picked them himself.

  All the same, Arigh held his own, even smashing the Yezda left wing to bits against a tributary of the Tib. “No mean general, that one,” Vakhtang said, growing steadily more animated as he talked. But his face fell once more as newer memories crowded back. “Then the flames came.”

  Viridovix went rigid in the saddle. “What’s that?” he barked. He jerked at a sudden pain in his hands. Looking down, he willed his fists open and felt his nails ease out of his flesh.

  He did not need the Erzrumi’s description to picture the lines of fire licking out to split apart and trap their makers’ foes; Avshar had shown him the reality in Pardraya. As Vakhtang continued, though, he saw that Arigh had not had to face the full might of the spell. The noble said, “It was battle magic; our priests and shamans fought it to a standstill, in time. But it was too late to save the battle; by then our position was wrecked past repair. That was when your Arshaum gave us leave to go. The gods be thanked, we mauled the Yezda enough to make them think twice about giving chase.”

  “Begging your pardon, I’m thinking you saw nobbut the second team,” Viridovix said. “Had himself been working the fires and not his mages—a murrain take them—only them as he wanted would ever ha’ got clear.”

  “As may be,” Vakhtang said. A few of his men bristled at the suggestion that less than Yezd’s best had beaten them, but he was too worn to care. “All I hope now is to see Gunib again. I am glad we came across you; every sword will help on our way home.”

  Gorgidas and then Rakio finished translating; silence fell. The two of them, the Gaul, and Mynto looked at each other. Wisdom surely lay with retreat in this well-armed company, but they could not forget the hermit’s warning that changing course would bring misfortune. In
the end, though, that was not what shaped Viridovix’ decision. He said simply, “I’ve come too far to turn back the now.”

  “And I,” Gorgidas said. “For better or worse, this is my conflict, and I will know how it ends.”

  As nothing else had, their choice tore the lethargy from Vakhtang. “Madmen!” he cried. “It will end with an arrow through your belly and your bones baking under this cursed sun.” He turned to the two Yrmido, his hands spread in entreaty, and spoke to them in the Vaspurakaner tongue.

  Mynto gave a sudden, sharp nod. He and Rakio got into a low-voiced dispute; from what little Gorgidas could follow, he was echoing Vakhtang’s arguments. Rakio mostly listened, indecision etched on his features. When at last he answered, Mynto’s lips thinned in distress. Rakio shifted to Videssian: “I will travel south. To disregard the words of the holy hermit after he his gifts from the Four has shown strikes me as the greater madness.”

  When Mynto saw he could not sway his countryman, he embraced him with the tenderness any lover would give his beloved. Then he rode forward to join the men of Gunib. Vakhtang brought both fists to his forehead in grateful salute.

  “I wish you the luck I do not expect you to have,” he told the other three. He waved to his battered company. They started north on their lathered, blowing horses, the jingle of their harness incongruously gay.

  Soon dust and distance made Mynto impossible to pick out from the men of Gunib around him. Rakio let out a small sigh. “He is a fine, bold fellow, and I him will miss,” he said. His eyes danced at Gorgidas’ expression.

  Viridovix caught the byplay. He rounded on the Ymrido. “Is it a puss-cat y’are, to make sic sport? Finish the puir wight off or let him be.”

  “Will you shut up?” Gorgidas shouted, scarlet and furious.

  Laughing, Rakio looked sidelong at the Gaul. “You are sure it is not jealousy?” He went on more seriously: “Should I tell Mynto all my reasons for going with you two? That only would hurt him to no purpose.”

  Having reduced both his companions to silence, he set out south along the trail Vakhtang’s men had left. They followed. Neither met the other’s eye.