Swords of the Legion (Videssos)

by Harry Turtledove

  Viridovix looked down his long, straight nose at the senior centurion. “Sure, and I’d managed to forget what a poisonous beetle y’are.” He leaned forward to stir up the embers of the fire they were sitting around. That done, he resumed, “For all you ken, ’twas purposed we come here.”

  The Gaul spoke in reflex defense of the druids, but Gorgidas broke through Gaius Philippus’ derisive grunt to say, soberly, “Maybe it was. The hermit in the ruins thought so.”

  “What tale is this?” Marcus asked; with so much having happened on both sides, neither was caught up on all the other’s doings.

  The physician and Viridovix took turns telling it. While he listened, Scaurus scratched his chin. Stubble rasped his fingers. One of the first things he had done after regaining his freedom was to borrow Viridovix’ razor and scrape off his beard. He kept at it, though shaving with stale grease left a lot to be desired.

  When they were through, Gaius Philippus, who was also beardless again, commented: “Sounds like just another priest to me, maybe stewed in his own juice too long. He didn’t say what this whacking big purpose was, did he now?”

  “To my way of thinking, men make purposes, not the other way round,” Gorgidas said. He challenged the veteran: “What would you aim for, given the choice?”

  “Ask me a hard one.” The laugh Gaius Philippus gave had nothing to do with mirth. “I want Avshar.”

  “Aye.” Viridovix crooned the word, in his eagerness once more looking and sounding the barbarian he had almost ceased to be. “The head of him over my door.”

  Marcus thought the question hardly worth asking. Beyond what the wizard-prince had done to any of them, he put Videssos in mortal peril. Leaving his own scars—even leaving Alypia—out of the bargain, that alone would have turned the Roman against him forever. For all its faults, Scaurus admired his adopted homeland’s tradition of benign rule; he knew how rare it was.

  He was rubbing his chin again when his hand stopped cold, forgotten. Very slowly, he turned to Viridovix and asked, “How much would you give to bring him down?”

  “Himself?” The Celt did not hesitate. “No price’d be too much.”

  “I hope you mean that. Listen …”

  The Arshaum halted at a branching in the road. Neither path east seemed promising. The northern track ran through more of the barren scrub country with which they had already become too familiar, while the other swerved south into what was frankly desert.

  Marcus and Gaius Philippus urged Arigh toward the southern route. “You’ll enter Videssos sooner, for its border swings further east in the south,” the tribune said. “And the Yezda will be fewer. They leave the waste to the desert nomads; there’s not enough water to keep their herds alive.”

  “Then how will we find enough for ourselves?” Arigh asked pointedly.

  “It’s there, if you know where to look,” Gaius Philippus said, “and Scaurus and I do. This is the way we went west with Tahmasp’s caravan. Aside from the towns, that pirate knows the name of every little well, and its grandmother’s, too. We’re no rookies, Arigh; we kept our eyes open.”

  “A strange route for a caravan master,” the Arshaum chief mused. “The Hundred Cities surely offered richer trade.”

  “Normally, yes, but the fox had wind of invaders turning them upside down.” Marcus grinned. “That would have been you, I suppose.”

  “So it would.” Arigh pondered the coincidence. “Maybe the spirits are granting us an omen. Be it so, then.” Seldom indecisive long, he waved his followers down the road the Romans suggested.

  The air had the smell of hot dust. The sun glared off stretches of sand. Rakio stared through slitted eyes at the baked flatlands he and his comrades were traversing. “Oh, for valleys and streams and cool green meadows!” he said plaintively. “This would be a sorrowful place to die.”

  “As if the where of it mattered,” Viridovix said. “I’ll be dead soon enough, here or someplace else.” As he had since hearing Scaurus’ plan, he sounded more resigned than gloomy. Fey, Gorgidas thought; the Celtic word fit.

  For his part, the tribune did his best not to think about the likely fruits of his ingenuity. His role as guide helped. He quickly found the promises he and Gaius Philippus had given Arigh were easier to make than keep. Landmarks looked different from the way he remembered them. The blowing sand was part of the reason. Sometimes hundreds of yards of road disappeared under it.

  Worse, he had only made the journey coming west. Seen from the opposite side, guideposts went unrecognized. Only after he had passed them and looked back was he sure of them. “A virtue of hindsight I hadn’t realized,” he remarked to the senior centurion after they managed to backtrack the Arshaum to the first important water hole.

  At the Romans’ urging, the plainsmen kept their horses in good order as they let them drink. “If you foul an oasis, the desert men will hunt you down and kill you,” Scaurus warned Arigh.

  The Arshaum chief was doubtful until Skylitzes said, “Think of the care your clans take with fire on the plains.”

  “Ahh. Yes, I see,” Arigh said, making the connection. “Here fire is no risk; where will it go? But wasting or polluting water must be worth a war.”

  Sentries’ alarms tumbled the Arshaum from their bedrolls at earliest dawn. A band of desert tribesmen was shaking itself out into loose array as it approached from the south. Most of the nomads rode light, graceful horses; a few were on camels. Some of the Arshaum ponies snorted and reared, taking the camels’ unfamiliar scent.

  “Will they attack without parleying?” Arigh demanded.

  “I wouldn’t think so, with three of us for their one,” Scaurus said. Behind them, the plainsmen were scrambling to horse.

  “Never trust ’em, though,” Gaius Philippus added. “They turn traitor against each other for the sport of it; outsiders are prey the second they look weak. And have another care, too. Those bows don’t carry far, but sometimes they poison their arrows.”

  Arigh nodded. “I remember that the envoys from their tribes were always at feud with each other in Videssos.” He was so thoroughly a chieftain these days that Marcus had almost forgotten his years as ambassador at the imperial city.

  The Arshaum gave his attention back to the newcomers. “What’s this?”

  The desert men had sent a party forward. They came slowly, their hands ostentatiously visible. “You know more about them than anyone else here,” Arigh said to the Romans. “Come on.” Accompanied by Arshaum archers, they rode out with him toward the approaching nomads.

  The desert tribesmen and men from the steppe studied each other curiously. Instead of trousers and tunics, the horsemen nearing the oasis wore flowing robes of white or brown wool. Some wrapped strips of cloth round their heads, while others protected themselves from the sun with scarves of linen or silk. They were most of them lean, with long, deeply tanned faces, features of surprising delicacy, and deep-set eyes as chilly as their land was hot. A couple had waxed mustaches; most preferred a thin fringe of beard outlining the jaw.

  They waited for Arigh to speak first and lose face. But the startlement they showed when he asked, “Do you know Videssian?” regained it for him.

  “Aye,” one of them said at last. His beard was grizzled, his face dark as old leather. The leader, Marcus guessed, as much from the way the rest of the tribesmen eyed him as from the heavy silver bracelets he wore on each wrist. “I am Shenuta of the Nufud.” He waved at his men. “Who are you, to use the waters of Qatif without our leave? Your strangeness is no excuse.”

  Arigh named himself, then said loudly, “I am at war with Yezd. Is that excuse enough?”

  It was a keen guess; Shenuta could not keep surprise off his face. He spoke rapidly in his own guttural tongue. Several of his followers exclaimed; one shook his fist at the northwest, toward Mashiz. “It is to be thought on,” Shenuta admitted, his features under control again.

  Arigh pressed the advantage. “We have done nothing to Qatif save drink there
. Send men to see if you care to. And in exchange for its water I have a gift for you.” He gave the Nufud chief his spare bow. “See the backing of horn and sinew, here and here? It will easily outrange the best you have. Make more; use them against the Yezda.”

  “You are the oddest-looking man I have ever seen, but you have the ways of a prince,” Shenuta said. “Have you a daughter I might marry, to seal our friendship?”

  “I am sorry, I do not; and if I did, the journey from my land, which lies far to the north, would not be easy.” Arigh spread his hands in regret.

  Shenuta bowed in the saddle. “Then let the thought be taken for the deed. I give you and yours leave to use Qatif as if it were your own. This privilege you share with but three caravan masters: Stryphnos the Videssian, who taught me this speech in return; Jandal, whose mother is of the Nufud; and Tahmasp, who won the right to all my oases from me at dice.”

  “Sounds like him,” Gaius Philippus said with a laugh.

  For the first time, Shenuta swung his gaze toward the Romans. “You know Tahmasp?” He paid particular attention to Scaurus. “I have seen yellow-haired ones in his company once or twice.”

  “They are of a people different from mine,” the tribune answered. “My comrade here and I served only one tour as guards with him, when he was on the road to Mashiz earlier this year. This is the fastest route we know to Videssos, which is why we told our friend Arigh of it. As he said, we meant no harm to what is yours.”

  “That is well spoken,” Shenuta said. “If I had to choose between Videssos and Yezd, I think I would choose Videssos. But I do not have to choose; neither of them will ever master the desert. Perhaps one day they will destroy each other. Then the Nufud and the other tribes of free men shall come into their own.”

  “Maybe so,” Marcus said politely, though his thought was that the desert nomads, for all their dignified ways, were no less barbarians than the Khamorth or Arshaum. Still, the Khamorth had conquered much of Videssos once.

  The Nufud leader and Arigh exchanged oaths; Shenuta swore by sun, moon, and sand. Scaurus thought the encounter was done, but as Arigh was wheeling his pony to return to the oasis, Shenuta said, “When you catch up to Tahmasp, tell him I still think his dice were flats.”

  “Tahmasp is still in Mashiz gathering a cargo, we thought,” Gaius Philippus said. “He told us he’d be months at it.”

  Shenuta shrugged. “He watered his animals at the Fadak water hole south of here day before yesterday.” Marcus did not know that oasis. The desert nomad went on, “He said, though, that he planned to swing more north once he was further east. Your horses look good and you are not burdened by wares; my guess would be that you will meet him soon. Do not forget my message.” He bowed again to Arigh, nodded to the tribesmen with him, and rode back to the rest of the Nufud. At his shouted command, they trotted off to the south.

  “Wonder what made Tahmasp pull out so quick,” Gaius Philippus said. “It doesn’t seem like him.”

  “Would you want to stay in a city Avshar had just seized?” Marcus asked.

  The veteran considered, briefly. “Not a chance.”

  When the Arshaum left Qatif, they traveled with double patrols in case the Nufud took their oaths lightly. But, though a couple of desert nomads stayed in sight to keep a similar eye on the plainsmen, Shenuta proved a man of his word.

  Marcus and Gaius Philippus gradually grew hardened to the saddle, undergoing the same toughening Viridovix, Gorgidas, and Goudeles had endured when they went to the steppe the year before. At every rest halt the senior centurion would rub his aching thighs. When the Arshaum snickered at him, he growled, “If you were on a forced march in the legions, you’d laugh from the other side of your faces, I promise you that.” They paid no attention, which only annoyed him more.

  After Scaurus got the plainsmen to the next oasis, he felt his confidence begin to return. And when they came upon the signs of a recently abandoned camp and a trail leading east, excitement coursed through him. “Tahmasp, sure enough!” he exclaimed, finding a scrap of yellow canvas impaled on a thornbush. Holes in the ground where pegs had been driven showed the size of the caravaneer’s big tent.

  Pacing it off, Arigh was impressed. “Not bad, for one not a nomad born. Few yurts are larger.”

  Viridovix gave Marcus a sly glance. “A good thing, I’m thinking. Once we’re after having this trader to hand, now, we’ll no more be at the mercy o’ these Romans for directions, with them so confused and all.”

  So much for confidence, the tribune thought. He said, “It’ll be a relief for me, too, let me tell you.”

  He was astonished when the mercurial Celt cried angrily, “Och, a bellyful o’ these milksop answers I’ve had from the Greek already!” and stalked off. Viridovix stayed in his moody huff all night.

  The desert wind had played with the caravan’s trail, but the Arshaum clung to it. And as they gained, the signs grew clearer. The sun was sinking at their backs when they spotted Tahmasp’s rear guard. They were spotted in turn; by the time they caught up with the caravan itself, it was drawn up for defense, with archers crouched behind hastily dumped bales of cloth. Merchants scrambled this way and that; Marcus heard Tahmasp’s familiar bellow roaring out orders.

  The tribune said to Arigh, “Let us talk with him.”

  “You’d better. I don’t think he’d listen to me.” The Arshaum chief allowed himself a dry laugh. His slanted eyes were gauging the caravan’s preparations. “Looks like he knows his business. Go on, calm him down.”

  Unexpectedly, Pikridios Goudeles said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you. Perhaps I shall be able to render some assistance.”

  “Not with one of your long speeches,” Gorgidas said in alarm, remembering the grandiloquent orations the pen-pusher had delivered on the steppe. “From what the Romans have said, I don’t think this Tahmasp is one to appreciate rhetoric.”

  Goudeles sniffed. “Permit me to remind you that I know what I’m about. Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.”

  With that his comrades had to be content. Shrugging, Arigh said, “As you please.” The tribune, centurion, and imperial bureaucrat urged their horses out from the Arshaum around them and walked the beasts forward until they were well within range of the caravan’s bows.

  No one shot at them. Scaurus called, “Tahmasp! Kamytzes!” Gaius Philippus echoed with the name of the lieutenant under whom he’d served: “Muzaffar!” They shouted their own names.

  “You two, is it?” Tahmasp yelled back furiously. “Another step closer and you’ll be buzzards’ meat, the both of you. I told you what we do to spies.”

  “We weren’t spies,” the tribune returned. “Will you listen, or not?”

  Goudeles spoke for the first time: “We’ll make it worth your while.” Marcus wondered at that; the Arshaum had little past horses, clothes and weapons. But the bureaucrat’s self-assurance was unruffled.

  Scaurus heard Kamytzes’ voice raised in expostulation. Knowing the turn of the grim little Videssian’s mind, he guessed Tahmasp’s aide was arguing against a parley. But the numbers at Marcus’ back had a logic of their own, and Tahmasp, beneath his bluster, was an eminently practical man. He yielded gruffly, but he yielded. “All right, I’m listening. Come ahead.”

  The Romans’ former comrades-in-arms met them with icy glares as they entered the perimeter of the improvised camp. Tahmasp stumped forward, closing the last catch on a chain-mail shirt Scaurus and Gaius Philippus could both have fit into. A spiked Makuraner-style helmet sat slightly askew on his shaved head. Kamytzes hovered a couple of steps behind him, his hands near a brace of throwing-knives at his bejeweled belt.

  The caravan master folded his arms across his massive chest. “Thought you’d be in Videssos by now,” he accused the Romans. “Or is this more of what you call ‘business’?”

  “We thought you were still in Mashiz,” Marcus returned. “Or couldn’t you stomach Avshar?” He hoped his guess was right. When Tahmasp�
�s eyes shifted, he knew it was. He said, “Neither could we,” and tugged his tunic over his head.

  At the sight of the scar, Tahmasp pursed his lips. Several troopers who had been friendly with the Romans swore in a handful of tongues. But Tahmasp’s first concern, as always, was for his caravan. “So—we have reasons for disliking the same man. But what has that to do with those robbers out there?” He jabbed a thumb at the Arshaum, a vague but threatening mass in the deepening twilight.

  “That’s a long story,” Gaius Philippus said. “Remember why you chose not to go through the Hundred Cities on your way west?”

  “Some barbarian invasion or—” The caravaneer juggled facts as neatly as he did bills of lading. “Them, eh? Don’t tell me you were mixed up in that.”

  “Not exactly.” Marcus told the story quickly, finishing, “You’re heading into Videssos and so are we, but you know all the short cuts and best roads. Show them to us and you’ll have the biggest guard force any caravan ever dreamed of. The Yezda won’t dare come near you.”

  “And if I don’t …” Tahmasp began. His voice trailed away. The answer there was obvious. He took off his helmet and kicked it as far as he could; it flew spinning into the darkness. “What can I say but yes? Maybe your bastards’ll plunder me later, but you’ll sure plunder me now for a no. The pox take you, outlanders. My old granddad always told me to run screaming from anything that smelled like politics, and here you’re dragging me in up to my neck.”

  “Not all politics are evil,” Goudeles said. “Nor will you suffer for aiding us.”

  In his Arshaum suede and leather, with his beard untrimmed and his hair long and not very clean, the pen-pusher cut an unprepossessing figure. Tahmasp rumbled, “Who are you to make such promises, little man?”

  The bureaucrat had learned on the plains to make do with what he had. When he drew himself up and declared haughtily, “Sirrah, you have the privilege of addressing Pikridios Goudeles, minister and ambassador of his Imperial Majesty Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator of the Videssians.” It did not occur to Tahmasp to doubt him.