“Who’ll take whom unawares?” the senior centurion said with a scornful laugh. “The palace, is it? My guess is the son of a whore’s not five tunnels behind us, and his guards with him, magicking their way past the spiked pit back there.”
That reached Wulghash, though not for the reason Gaius Philippus had expected. “You came this way past the pit?” he demanded in disbelief. “How, without wizardry? That is the deadliest snare in all the tunnels.”
“We have this,” Scaurus reminded him, motioning with his sword. “It bared the trap before we fell into it—the same way it showed your footprints,” he added.
Wulghash’s jaw muscles jumped. “Strong sorcery,” he said. “Strong enough to draw Avshar were he blind as a cave-fish.” He scowled at Gaius Philippus. “You have reason, damn you. With Avshar close by and his magic primed and ready, I cannot hope to beat him now. Best we flee, though saying so gags me.”
Still scowling, he turned back to Marcus. “What point in flying, if you carry a lantern calling the huntsmen after you? Leave the sword here.”
“No,” the tribune said. “When he took me, Avshar feared to touch it. I will not abandon the best weapon I have, or let him put it to the test at his leisure.”
“Ill was the day I met you,” Wulghash said balefully, “and I would I had never named you friend.”
“Cut the horseshit,” Gaius Philippus snapped. “If you’d never met us, you’d be dead yourself, and Avshar running your stinking country anyway.”
“So forward a tongue is ripe for the cropping.”
The hue and cry from the Roman’s pursuers gave a sudden surge. “The wizard’s men are past the pit,” Marcus said to Wulghash. “You talk like Avshar; maybe you’re thinking like him, too, and hoping to buy your own life from them with ours.”
“By whatever gods may be, I will never deal in peace with him or his, so long as breath is in me.” The khagan paused to think. He set down his saber. His hands flashed through passes; he muttered in the same archaic Videssian dialect Avshar used.
“Your magic will not touch me or my blade,” Scaurus reminded him.
“I know,” Wulghash said when he could speak normally. “But I can set a spell round you and it both, to befog one seeking it through sorcery. The magic does not touch you, you see; if it did, it would perish. But because of that it only befogs. It will not blind. So, my friends” he said, his tone making it an accusation to flinch from, “can you run with me, since you have proven running the greater wisdom?”
They ran.
X
“THERE IT SITS, MASHIZ ITS AIN SELF, AND DAMN ALL WE can do about it,” Viridovix said glumly. He peered through evening twilight toward the Yezda capital from the jumbled hills at the edge of the mountains of Dilbat.
“Aye, one glorious, sweeping charge, and it’s ours,” Pikridios Goudeles said in ringing tones that went poorly with his dirty buckskin tunic and bandaged shoulder. Sour laughter floated up from the edge of the Arshaum camp where the survivors of the Videssian embassy party and their few friends congregated.
Gorgidas found he could not blame the plainsmen for their bitterness toward the imperials. Despite Arigh’s steadfast friendship, most of the nomads felt they had been drawn into a losing campaign for the Empire’s sake. And Mashiz, so close yet utterly unattainable, symbolized their frustration.
The cloud of noxious smoke rising from the granite pyramid in the western part of the city did not hide the throng of yurts and tents and other shelters that daily grew greater as Yezd’s strength flowed in to the capital. Campfires glittered like stars. At its freshest the Arshaum army would have lost to such a host. Fragmented as the plainsmen were, a determined assault would have swept them away.
The Greek wondered why it had not come. After the blows that broke the Arshaum apart, their foes seemed to have lost interest in them. Daily patrols made sure the scattered bands stayed away from Mashiz, but past that they were ignored. The Yezda even let them make contact with each other, though the mountain country was too broken and too poor for them to regroup as a single force.
“Who comes?” Prevalis Haravash’s son barked nervously when an Arshum approached; things were at the point where the imperial trooper from Prista was as leery of his allies as he would have been of the enemy. Then the young sentry relaxed. “Oh, it’s you, sir.”
Arigh leaned against a boulder set into the side of the hill and looked from Goudeles to Viridovix to Skylitzes to Gorgidas to Agathias Psoes. He slammed a fist down on his thigh. “I don’t propose living out my life as an outlaw skulking through these mountains, thinking I’m a hero because I’ve stolen five sheep or an ugly wench.”
“What do you aim to do instead, then?” Psoes asked. The Videssian underofficer had a Roman air of directness to him.
“I don’t know, the wind spirits curse it,” Arigh glared at the winking field of campfires in the distance.
Skylitzes followed his gaze. He said, “If we skirt them, we can ride for the Empire.”
“No,” Arigh said flatly. “Even if I could jolly my men into it, I will not turn away from Mashiz while I can still strike a blow. My father’s ghost would spurn me if I gave up a blood-feud so easily.”
Familiar with the customs of the plains, the Videssian nodded. He tried a different tack. “You would not be abandoning your vendetta, simply getting new allies for it as you did in Erzerum. Seeking the Empire’s aid would bring your soldiers round.”
“That may be so, but I still will not. In Erzerum I was master of the situation. With Thorisin I would be a beggar.”
Gorgidas said, “Gavras is as much Yezd’s enemy as you. It’s not as if you would be forgetting your fight by seeking his aid.”
“No,” Arigh repeated. “Thorisin has his own kingdom to rule; his concerns and mine are different. He might have reason to make peace with Yezd for now—what if the Namdaleni still hang over him, as they did last year? I am too weak to be able to take such chances. They would cost me my last freedom of action. If I had something to offer Gavras, now, something to deal with, it might be different. As is, though …”
He sighed. “You mean well, all of you, but mercenary captain has no more appeal to me than robber chief as a lifelong trade. What will become of my clan, with Dizabul as their khagan? I must find a way back to Shaumkhiil with my people.”
His clipped Arshaum accent added to the urgency of his words. Viridovix marveled at how his friend had grown from a roistering young blood in Videssos to a farsighted chieftain over the course of a year. “Indeed and he’s outgrown me,” the Gaul murmured to himself in surprise. “I’d go for my revenge and be damned to what came next. Och, what a braw prince he’ll make for his people, for he’s ever after thinking on the good o’ them all.”
To Gorgidas, though, Arigh showed the doomed grandeur of a tragic hero. The physician wondered how many defeated lords had been driven into the uplands of Erzerum, vowing to return with victory. But Erzerum was a distant backwater. In Dilbat the Arshaum could only be hunted down.
“What does your shaman say of the omens?” Psoes asked. Having served so long at the edge of the steppe and on it, he was more ready than the other imperials to find value in the nomads’ rites. Skylitzes frowned at him.
“He’s taken them several times and got no meaning from them. Too close to that—” Arigh pointed at the smoking pyramid. He did not need to elaborate. Gorgidas knew the odor that rode those fumes; once he had helped carry corpses from a charred building. Arigh went on, “The very ground is full of pits beneath our feet, Tolui says.”
“Heathen superstition.” Skylitzes’ frown deepened, but he admitted, “One could, I suppose, take that as metaphor for the reek of evil that hangs over Mashiz.” He, too, recognized the stench of burned human flesh; the Videssian army used incendiary mixes fired from catapults.
“Metaphor?” Goudeles raised an eyebrow in mocking surprise. “I’d not thought a bluff soldier type like you would know a metaphor if one strolled up and
bit your foot, Lankinos.”
“Then whose ignorance is showing, mine or yours?”
Viridovix drew a tally mark in the air. “A hit, that.” Irritated, Goudeles scowled at him. It irked the bureaucrat that Skylitzes, in his taciturn way, gave as good as he got.
A low, grating sound came from the boulder against which Arigh was leaning. Pebbles and small stones spattered around his feet. He yelped and leaped away. “What’s this? Do the rocks walk in this stinking country?”
“Earthquake!” Rakio said it first, with Gorgidas, Skylitzes, and Goudeles a beat behind. But the ground was not really shaking, and no stones fell anywhere but around the gray granite boulder. Gorgidas bit back a startled exclamation. The boulder itself was quivering, as if alive.
“Meta-whatever, eh?” Arigh said triumphantly to Skylitzes. The Arshaum reached for his sword. “Seems more like an ordinary snare to me. Now to close it on the ones who set it—they aimed too well for their own good this time.” His companions also drew their blades.
After that grinding beginning, the boulder moved more smoothly. “There is a path for it to run in,” Rakio said, pointing. Sure enough, a shallow trench let the great stone move away from the hillside. Blackness showed behind it. “They try to befool us with a secret doorway, eh?” The Yrmido sidled forward on the balls of his feet.
Viridovix started. He remembered Lipoxais the enaree in doomed Targitaus’ tent. The Khamorth shaman had seen fifty eyes, a door in the mountains, and two swords. The first part of the prophecy had proven such a calamity that the Gaul wanted no part of the second.
The opening in the side of the hill was almost wide enough to admit a man. “Whoever it is lurking in there, I’ll cleave him to his navel,” Viridovix cried. He pushed past Rakio, his sword upraised.
As he approached the moving chunk of stone, the marks stamped down the length of his blade came to golden life. “ ‘Ware,” he called to his companions. “It’s Avshar or one of his wizards.”
Behind the stone, someone spoke. “I’m losing it, Scaurus. I thought I just heard that great Gallic chucklehead out there.”
At the familiar rasp, Viridovix had to make a quick grab to keep from dropping his sword. He and Gorgidas traded wild stares. Then the Celt was shoving the stone out with all his strength. The physician rushed up to help him. The stone overbalanced and fell on its side. Blinking against the glare of the campfires, the two Romans and their comrade stumbled out of the tunnel.
With a whoop of joy, Viridovix flung open his arms. Gaius Philippus returned his embrace without a qualm. Marcus, though, flinched at his touch. “A wound,” he explained, courteous even if both he and the senior centurion were bruised, hollow-cheeked, and filthy.
“Phos save me, it is Scaurus,” Pikridios Goudeles whispered. For the first time Gorgidas could remember, he sketched the sun-circle over his heart.
The Greek hardly noticed, nor did he pay attention to Arigh shouting to his men that these were, past all expectation, friends. He needed to be no physician to see the Romans were badly battered. “What are you doing here?” he all but shouted at them as he helped ease them down by a fire.
Neither Scaurus nor Gaius Philippus tried to resist his ministrations. “Khaire,” the tribune said, his voice slow and tired: “Greetings.” Gorgidas had to turn his head to hide tears. No one else in this world could have hailed him in Greek. It was like the tribune to do it, exhausted though he was.
Marcus looked from the physician to Viridovix, still hard pressed to understand he was seeing them. “This is a long way from the steppes,” he managed at last, an inane effort but the best he had in him.
“A long way from Videssos, too,” Gorgidas pointed out. He was also too taken aback to come up with anything deep.
“Is that really you, quack?” Gaius Philippus said. “You look bloody awful with a beard.”
“It’s better than that face-mange you’re sprouting,” the Greek retorted. Gaius Philippus sounded exactly as he always had; it helped Gorgidas believe the Romans were really there in front of him. He also had not lost the knack for getting under the physician’s skin.
The man who had emerged from the tunnel with Scaurus and Gaius Philippus knelt by the tribune. He was a Yezd, Gorgidas saw, an officer from his gear, but dirty even by the slack standards the Greek had grown used to, and with his face bloody. He used the Empire’s tongue, though, with accentless fluency. “Arshaum and Videssians, by whatever gods there be,” he said angrily, looking around. Then, to Marcus: “You know these people?”
Provoked by his rough tone, Viridovix put a hand on his shoulder. “Dinna be havering at him so, you. And who might ye be, anyhow? Is it friend y’are, or gaoler?”
The Yezda knocked the Celt’s hand aside and looked up at him, unafraid. “If you touch me again without my leave, you will see who I am.” The warning was winter-cold. Viridovix’ sword came up a couple of inches.
“He’s a friend,” Marcus said quickly. “He helped us escape. He’s called—” He paused, not sure if Wulghash wanted to make himself known.
“Sharvesh,” the khagan broke in, so smooth the hesitation was imperceptible. “I was taken when Avshar overthrew Wulghash, but I got free. I spent a while wandering the tunnels, then met these two doing the same.” Scaurus admired his presence of mind; but for the name he gave, nothing he said was quite untrue.
Moreover, the news he casually tossed out made everyone forget about him. “Avshar what?” Skylitzes, Goudeles, and Arigh exclaimed, each louder than the next.
Wulghash told the tale, creating the impression that he had been one of his own bodyguards who failed to succumb to the wizard-prince’s sorcery.
“And so Avshar has a firm grip on Mashiz,” he finished. “You are his enemies, yes?” The growl that rose from his listeners was answer enough. “Good. May I beg a horse from you? I have kin to the northwest who may be endangered because of me and I would warn them while I may.”
“Choose any beast we have,” Arigh said at once. “I would have asked you to ride with us, but it’s plain you know your own needs best.”
Wulghash gave a stiff nod of thanks. As he started toward the tethered ponies, Marcus got painfully to his feet, despite Gorgidas’ protests. “Ah—Sharvesh!” he called.
The khagan of Yezd was too shrewd to miss his alias. He turned and waited for the Roman to join him.
“A favor,” Scaurus said, soft enough that only Wulghash could hear. “Treat Viridovix’—he’s the tall man with the red hair and mustaches—treat his sword the same way you did mine, so Avshar cannot follow us by it.”
“Why should I? I did not name him friend. I have no obligation to him.”
“He is my friend.”
“So is Thorisin Gavras, I gather, and I am no friend of his,” Wulghash said coldly. “That argument has no weight with me. And if Avshar pursues you, he cannot come after me. That is how I would have it. No, I will not do what you ask.”
“Then why should you go free now? We could hold you with us.”
“Go ahead. If you think you can wring magic out of me, how can I stop you from trying?” Every line of Wulghash’s body showed his contempt for anyone who would break the bond of friendship. Marcus felt his ears grow hot. After all the khagan had suffered on account of the Romans, he could not force what Wulghash did not want to give.
“Do as you please,” the tribune said, and stepped aside.
A little life came into the khagan’s face. “Were we to meet again one day, you and I, I could wish you were my friend as well as my friend.” Intonation made his meaning clear. He bobbed his head at Scaurus and went off toward the line of horses.
When the Arshaum whose animal he picked protested, Arigh gave the man one of his own ponies as compensation. Satisfied, the nomad gave Wulghash a leg up. He had no trouble riding bareback. With a wave to Arigh, he kicked the horse into a trot and rode up the valley into the mountains.
The tribune returned to the fire; sitting proved no easier than
rising had been. “Lay back,” Gorgidas told him. “You’ve earned it.”
Scaurus started to relax, then sat up again, quickly enough to wrench a gasp from him. “By the gods,” he exclaimed, pointing at the tunnel-mouth, “Avshar himself may be coming out of that hole any minute.”
“Ordure!” That was Gaius Philippus. “With all this, I clean forgot the shriveled he-witch. He may have half of Yezd with him, too.”
Arigh weighed the choice, to move or fight. “We move,” he decided.
The Arshaum broke camp with a speed that impressed even the Romans. Of course, Scaurus thought, there was a great deal less involved than with a legionary encampment—fold tents, mount horses, and travel.
They did not ride far, three or four miles through a pass, south and a bit west so that Mashiz, now northeast of them, was screened from sight by the Dilbat foothills. Though the journey was short, jouncing along on the backs of a couple of rough-gaited steppe ponies left Marcus and Gaius Philippus white-lipped.
When at last they dismounted, Scaurus’ distress was so plain that Gorgidas said in peremptory tones, “Shuck off those rags. Let me see you.”
No less than officers, physicians learn the voice of command; Marcus obeyed without thinking. The tribune saw Gorgidas’ eyes widen slightly, but the Greek was too well schooled to reveal much. His hands moved down the length of the slash, marking Scaurus’ reaction at every inch. He muttered to himself in his own tongue, “Redness and swelling, heat and pain,” then spoke to Scaurus: “Your wound has inflammation in it.”
“Can you give me a drug to check it? We’ll be doing more riding than this, I’m sure, and I have to be able to sit a horse.”
He thought Gorgidas had not heard him. The Greek sat staring into the fire. But for his deep, regular breathing, he might have been cast from bronze; his features were calm and still. Marcus had just realized he was not even blinking when he turned and laid his hands on the tribune’s chest.
Swords of the Legion (Videssos) Page 32
