An Emperor for the Legion

by Harry Turtledove

  “Why, yes, a bit, but—”

  Gorgidas allowed no protest. He and Nepos had had many soul-searching talks, but the intense Greek would not spare time for them now. He clutched the priest’s shoulder and dragged him toward the litters of the seriously wounded, saying, “The gods know I’ve been praying for days to run across a blue-robe with his wits about him. I’ve had to watch men die, beyond the power of my medicine to cure. But you lads, now—” He stopped short and shook his head, a rational man compelled to acknowledge the power of forces past reason.

  Curious Romans, Marcus among them, followed the oddly matched pair. He had seen a healer-priest save Sextus Minucius and another legionary just after the Romans came to Videssos. But miracles, he thought, did not go stale with repetition.

  Nepos was still protesting his unworthiness as Gorgidas tugged him onward. His expostulations faded when he came face to face with the horrid facts of injury. The worst-hurt soldiers were already dead, either of their wounds or from the sketchy care and jolting they had received during the Romans’ grinding retreat.

  Many who still clung to life would not for long. Shock, infection, and fever, coupled with scant water and constant baking sun, made death almost an hourly visitor. The stench of septic wounds turned the stomach even through the aromatic ointments Gorgidas had applied. Men witless from fever shivered in the noonday heat or babbled anguished gibberish. Here was war’s aftermath at its grimmest.

  In the face of such misery, Nepos underwent a transformation nearly as great as the one Gorgidas hoped he would work on the wounded. The rotund priest’s fatigue fell from him. When he drew himself upright, he seemed inches taller. “Show me the worst of them,” he said to Gorgidas, and suddenly it was his voice, not the Greek doctor’s, that was filled with authority.

  If Gorgidas noticed the reversal, it did not faze him. He was content to play a secondary role, should that be required to save his patients. “The worst?” he said, rubbing his chin with a slim-fingered hand. “That would be Publius Flaccus, I think. Over this way, if you will.”

  Publius Flaccus was beyond thrashing and delirium; only the low, rapid rise and fall of his chest showed he was still alive. He lay unmoving on his litter, the coarse stubble of his beard stark and black against tight-drawn, waxen skin. A Yezda saber had laid his left thigh open from groin to knee. Somehow Gorgidas managed to stanch the flow of blood, but the wound grew inflamed almost at once, and from mere inflammation quickly passed to mortification’s horror.

  Greenish-yellow pus crusted the bandages wrapping the gashed limb. Drawn by the smell of corruption, flies made a darting cloud around Flaccus. They scattered, buzzing, as Nepos stooped to examine the wounded Roman.

  The priest’s face was grave as he said to Gorgidas, “I will do what I can. Unbandage him for me, please; there must be contact between his flesh and mine.” Gorgidas knelt beside Nepos, deftly undoing the dressings he had applied the day before.

  Battle-hardened soldiers gagged and drew back as the huge gash was bared. Its stench was more than most men could stand, but neither priest nor physician flinched from it.

  “Now I understand the Philoktetes,” Gorgidas said to himself. Nepos looked at him without comprehension, for the doctor had fallen back into Greek. Unaware that he had spoken at all, Gorgidas did not explain.

  Marcus also realized the truth in Sophokles’ play. No matter how vital a man was, with this foul a wound his presence could become intolerable enough to force his comrades to abandon him. The thought flickered and blew out, for Nepos was leaning forward to take Publius Flaccus’ thigh in his hands.

  The priest’s eyes were closed. He gripped the mangled leg so tightly his knuckles whitened. Had Flaccus been conscious, he would have shrieked in agony. As it was, he did not stir. Fresh pus welled up over the swollen lips of the wound to foul Nepos’ hands. The priest ignored it, his spirit and will focused on the injury alone.

  Back at Imbros, a year before, Gorgidas had spoken of a flow of healing from priest to patient. The words were vague, but Scaurus had found none better then, nor did he now. The short hairs on the nape of his neck tried to rise, for he could feel the current passing between Nepos and Flaccus, though not with any sense he could name.

  To aid his concentration, Nepos whispered an endless series of prayers. The Videssian dialect he used was so archaic Scaurus only caught a word now and again. Even the name of the priest’s god shifted. The divine patron of good was Phos in the modern tongue, but sounded more like “Phaos” in Nepos’ elder idiom.

  At first Marcus wondered if it was his hopeful imagination, but soon he had no doubt: the evil-smelling pus was disappearing from the filthy gash, its swollen, inflamed lips visibly shrinking. “Will you look there?” a Roman muttered, awe in his voice. Other legionaries called on gods they had known longer than Phos.

  Nepos paid no attention. Everything around him might have vanished in a clap of thunder, and he would have crouched, oblivious, before the still form of Publius Flaccus.

  The wounded legionary moaned and stirred, his eyes fluttering open for the first time in two days. They were sunk deep in their sockets, but had reason in them. Gorgidas slipped a steadying arm behind Flaccus’ shoulder and offered him a canteen. The Roman drank thirstily. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  When nothing else had, his words penetrated Nepos’ shell of concentration. The priest relaxed his clenched grip on Flaccus’ thigh; like the legionary, he, too, seemed to become aware of his surroundings once more. He reached out to take one of Flaccus’ hands in his own. “Phos be praised,” he said, “for allowing me to act as his instrument in saving this man.”

  Marcus and the rest of the Romans looked with marvel at the wonder Nepos had wrought. The rotting, stinking wound which had been about to kill Publius Flaccus was suddenly clean, free of corruption, and showing every sign of being able to heal normally. And Flaccus himself, the killing fever banished from his system, was trying to sit and trading gibes with the soldiers crowding near him. Only the fly-swarming pile of pus-soaked bandages gave any evidence of what had just happened.

  His face alight, Gorgidas came around Flaccus to help Nepos up. “You must teach me your art,” he said. “Anything I have is yours.”

  The priest was wobbly on his feet; fatigue was flooding back into him. Nonetheless he smiled wanly, saying, “Speak not of payment. I will show you if I can. If the talent lies within you, Phos’ servants ask nothing but that it be wisely used.”

  “Thank you,” Gorgidas said softly, as grateful for the boon Nepos offered as Flaccus had been for the simpler gift of water. Then the physician grew brisk once more. “But for now there is only the one of you, and many more men who need your help. Cotilius Rufus, I think, is next worst off—his litter is over here.” He tugged Nepos through the crowd round Flaccus.

  The priest took three or four steps before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slid gently to the ground. Gorgidas stared in consternation, then bent over his prostrate form. He peeled back an eyelid, felt for Nepos’ pulse. “He’s asleep,” the physician said indignantly.

  Marcus laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve seen that this healing of theirs takes as much from the healer as it puts into the sufferer. And Nepos had been drawing heavily on his powers before you grabbed him. Let the poor fellow rest.”

  “Oh, very well,” Gorgidas conceded with poor grace. “He is a man, after all, not a scalpel or a stick of collyrium to grind up for eyewash. I suppose it wouldn’t do to kill off my chief healing tool from overwork. But he’d better wake up soon.” And the physician settled himself beside the softly snoring Nepos to wait.

  Soli, when the Romans and their companions reached it a few days later, had already had a visit from the Yezda. The ruins of the wall-less new town by the bank of the Rhamnos River had been sacked yet again, probably for the dozenth time in the two-score or so years since Yezd’s nomads began pushing into Videssos. Little gray eddies of smoke still spiralea into the air, though Scau
rus was hard-pressed to understand what the invaders had found to burn.

  On the bluff overlooking the river, the partially rebuilt Old Soli had survived behind its walls. Cries of alarm and trumpet blasts came echoing from those walls when lookouts spied the approaching force. Marcus had trouble convincing the watchmen his troops were friendly, the more so as the Yezda had driven Videssian prisoners ahead of them to masquerade as an imperial army.

  When the town’s stout gates swung open at last, its hypasteos or city governor came out through them to greet the Romans. He was a tall, thin man of about forty, with stooped shoulders and a permanently dyspeptic expression. The tribune had not seen him on the army’s westward march, but remembered he was called Evghenios Kananos.

  Kananos studied the newcomers with wary curiosity, as if still unsure they were not Yezda in disguise. “You’re the first decent-sized bunch of our troops I’ve seen. Was starting to think there weren’t none left,” he said to Marcus. He had an up-country twang that matched his dour mien.

  “Some regiments did get free,” the tribune answered. “We—”

  Kananos kept right on, as if Scaurus had not spoken. “Ayuh,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve seen hardly a one, but for the miserable little band that rode in with the Emperor yesterday. On his way to Pityos, he was, and then by sea to the capital, I suppose.”

  Marcus stared at the hypasteos, his mouth falling open. Everyone close enough to hear stood similarly frozen in his tracks. “The Emperor?” It was Zeprin the Red who asked the question, elbowing his way up through the Roman ranks. The burly Haloga had been one of the commanders of Mavrikios’ Imperial Guard, and his failure to save his overlord had plunged the once-ebullient northerner so deep into depression that he marched along day after day with hardly a word. Suddenly his face and voice were alive again. “The Emperor?” he repeated eagerly.

  “That’s what I said,” Kananos agreed. He used his words sparingly; it seemed to pain him to have to go back over ground once covered.

  To the point as always, Gaius Philippus demanded, “How could Thorisin Gavras have come through here without us getting word he was close? And I’d hardly call the troops he had with him a ‘miserable little band’—he got clear in pretty fair order.”

  “Thorisin Gavras?” Evghenios Kananos stared at the centurion in surprise and a little suspicion. “Didn’t say a word about Thorisin Gavras. I was talking about the Emperor—the Emperor Ortaias. Far as I know, there ain’t no other.”

  II

  “YOUR HONOR, YOU’RE A RARE STUBBORN MAN,” VIRIDOVIX told Scaurus the day after Kananos’ shattering news, “but you can march the legs off the lot of us, and we’ll still never catch up to that omadhaun of a Sphrantzes.”

  Weary and frustrated, the tribune halted. His outrage over Ortaias’ gall in assuming the imperial title had made him fling his small army north to drag the usurper to earth. But Viridovix was right. When looked at rationally and not through the red haze of anger, the Romans had no chance to overtake him. Sphrantzes was mounted, had no women and wounded to encumber him, and had a day’s lead. Moreover, the further north Scaurus led his men, the more Yezda they met, and the more hostile the nomads were.

  The legionaries clearly saw the futility of pursuit. Roman discipline kept them pushing toward Pityos, but their hearts were not in it. They were harder to get moving after every halt, and slower on the march. And only the fear that leaving would be worse kept the men they had added since Maragha with them. Everyone despised Ortaias Sphrantzes, but they all knew they could not catch him.

  Laon Pakhymer sensed this stop was different from the ones before. He rode back to Marcus, asking, “Finally had enough?” His voice held sympathy—he had no more use than the Romans for Sphrantzes—but also a certain hardness, warning that he, too, was running out of patience with this useless hunt.

  Marcus looked from him to the Gaul, then, as a last hope, to Gaius Philippus, whose contempt for the would-be Emperor knew no bounds. “Are you asking what I think?” the senior centurion said.

  Marcus nodded.

  “All right, then. There’s not a prayer of catching up with the worthless son of a sow. In your heart you must know that as well as I do.”

  “I suppose so,” the tribune sighed. “But if that’s what you think, why didn’t you say so when we set out?” Roman discipline or no, Scaurus rarely had doubts about Gaius Philippus’ opinion.

  “Simple enough—whether or not we nailed Sphrantzes, I thought Pityos a good place to head for. If Ortaias could sail back to Videssos the city, so could we, and save ourselves having to fight across the westlands. But from the look of things, there are too bloody many Yezda between us and the port to let us get there unmangled.”

  “I fear you’re right. I wish we knew how Thorisin stands.”

  “So do I—or if he stands. Too many Yezda westward, though, to swing back and find out.”

  “I know.” Marcus clenched his fist. Now more than ever, he wished for any word of the slain emperor’s brother, but the choice he was forced to only made getting that word more unlikely. “We have to turn east, away from them.”

  They had spoken Latin; when the tribune saw Pakhymer’s blank look, he quickly translated his decision into Videssian. “Sensible,” the Khatrisher said. He cocked his head at the Romans in a gesture his people often used. “Do any of you know where you’re headed? ‘East’ covers a lot of ground, and you’re not from these parts, you know.” In spite of his gloom, Marcus had to smile at the understatement.

  Gaius Philippus said, “The Yezda can’t have run everyone off the land. There’s bound to be a soul or two willing to show us the way—if for no better reason than to keep us out of his own valley.”

  Laon Pakhymer chuckled and spread his hands in defeat. “There you have me. I wouldn’t want this ragtag mob of ruffians camped near me any longer than I could help it.”

  The senior centurion grunted. He might have been pleased at gaining the Khatrisher’s agreement, but hardly by his unflattering description of the legionaries.

  * * *

  The shrill sound of a squabble woke Marcus before dawn the next morning. He cursed wearily as he sat up in his bedroll, still worn from the previous day’s march through broken country. Beside him Helvis sighed and turned over, fighting to stay asleep. Malric, who never seemed to sleep when the tribune and Helvis wanted him to, did not stir now.

  Scaurus stuck his head through his tent flap. He was just in time to see Quintus Glabrio’s companion Damaris stamp from the junior centurion’s tent. She was still shouting abuse as she angrily stode away: “—the most useless man I can imagine! What I saw in you I’ll never know!” She disappeared out of the tribune’s line of vision.

  In fact, Scaurus was more inclined to wonder what had attracted the Roman to her. True, she was striking enough in the strong-featured Videssian way, with snapping brown eyes. But she was skinny as a boy and had all the temper those eyes foretold. She was, the tribune realized, as hotheaded as Thorisin’s lady Komitta Rhangawe—and that was saying a great deal. Nor did Glabrio have Thorisin’s quick answering contentiousness. It was a puzzler.

  Glabrio, rather in the way of a man who pokes his head out the door to see if a thunderstorm is past, looked out to see which way Damaris had gone. He caught sight of Marcus, shrugged ruefully, and withdrew into his tent once more. Embarrassed at witnessing his discomfiture, the tribune did the same.

  Damaris’ last outburst had succeeded in rousing Helvis, though Malric slept on. Brushing sleep-snarled brown hair back from her face, she yawned, sat up, and said, “I’m glad we don’t fight like that, Hemond—” She stopped in confusion.

  Marcus grunted, his lip quirking in a lopsided smile. He knew he should not be bothered when Helvis absently called him by her dead husband’s name, but he could not help the twinge that ran through him every time she slipped.

  “You might as well wake the boy,” he said. “The whole camp will be stirring now.” The effort to k
eep annoyance from his voice took all emotion with it, leaving his words flat and hard as a marble slab.

  The unsuccessful try at hiding anger was worse than none at all. Helvis did as he asked her, but her face was a mask that did as little to hide her hurt as had his coldly dispassionate tone. Looks like a fine morning already, just a fine one, the tribune thought as he laced on his armor.

  He threw himself into his duties to take his mind off the almost-quarrel. His supervision of breaking camp was so minute one might have supposed his troops were doing it for the first time rather then the three-hundredth or, for some, the three-thousandth. He heard Quintus Glabrio swearing at the men in his maniple—something rare from that quiet officer—and knew he was not the only one with nerves still jangling.

  The matter of guides went as Gaius Philippus had guessed. The Romans were passing through a hardscrabble country, with scores of rocky little valleys running higgledy-piggledy one into the next. The coming of any strangers into such a backwater would have produced a reaction; the corning of an army, even a small, defeated army, came close to raising panic.

  Farmers and herders so isolated they rarely saw a tax collector—isolation indeed, in Videssos—wanted nothing more than to get the Romans away from their own home villages before pillage and rape broke loose. Every hamlet had a young man or two willing, nay, eager, to send them on their way … often, Marcus noted, toward rivals who lived one valley further east.

  Sometimes the tribune’s men got a friendlier reception. Bands of Yezda, with their nomadic hardiness and mobility, had penetrated even this inhospitable territory. When a timely arrival let the Romans appear as rescuers, nothing their rustic hosts owned was too fine to lavish on them.

  “Now this is the life for me, and no mistake,” Viridovix said after one such small victory. The Celt sprawled in front of a campfire. A mug of beer was in his right hand, a little mountain of well-gnawed pork ribs at his feet. He took a long pull at the mug, belched, and went on, “You know, we could do a sight worse than kinging it here for the rest of our days. Who’d be caring enough to say us nay?”