An Emperor for the Legion

by Harry Turtledove

  “A big part of what we can do out there will depend on your men and the covering fire they can give us,” Marcus was saying to Laon Pakhymer. The Khatrisher had brought his archers back from their foraging duties to join in the effort against the capital.

  “I know,” Pakhymer said. “Our quivers are full, and we’ve been driving the fletchers crazy with all the shafts we’ve asked for.” He looked around, eyeing the murky weather with distaste. “We can’t hit what we can’t see, though, you know.”

  “Of course,” Scaurus said, suddenly less glad of the fog than he had been. “But if you keep the top of the wall well-swept, it won’t matter that your bowmen aren’t aiming at anyone in particular.”

  “Of course,” Pakhymer echoed ironically, and the tribune felt himself flush—a fine thing, him lecturing the Khatrisher on the tricks of the archer’s trade, when Pakhymer had undoubtedly had a bow in his hand since the age of three. He changed the subject in some haste.

  The voice of a trumpet rang out, high and thin in the early morning stillness. Marcus recognized the imperial fanfare, the signal for the attack. Much of his apprehension disappeared. No more waiting now. The event, whatever it held, was here.

  The trumpet’s last note was still in the air when the buccinator’s horns blasted into life. The Romans, shouting, “Gavras!” at the top of their lungs, rushed for the Silver Gate and the postern gate through which Rhavas’ sally party had come. More legionaries flung hurdles, bundles of sticks, and spadesful of earth into the ditch that warded Videssos, trying to widen the front on which they could bring their arms to bear.

  The first protection the capital’s gates had was a chest-high work not much different from the one Gavras’ men had thrown up, save that it was faced with stone. The few pickets manning it were quickly killed or captured; the Sphrantzai were not about to throw open the gates to rescue them, not with the enemy close behind.

  High over the Silver Gate stood icons of Phos, reminders that Videssos was his holy city. They were being rudely treated now; buzzing over the Romans’ heads like a swarm of angry gnats came the arrow barrage the Khatrishers were laying down, along with the more intermittent crack of dart-casting engines and the thump of the stone-throwers’ hurling arms smacking into their rests.

  “Reload there! Come on, wind ’em tight!” an artilleryman screamed to his crew—the perfect Videssian incarnation, Marcus thought, of Gaius Philippus. The senior centurion was crying the legionaries on, ordering the rams forward to pound at the Silver Gate’s ironbound portals. The slope-sided sheds, covered with hides to foil fire, hot oil, and sand, ponderously advanced.

  Looking up at the crenelated battlements over the gates, Scaurus felt a surge of hope. Much against his expectations, the missiles had briefly managed to drive the defenders from their posts. The rams took their positions unhindered. The passageway behind the gates echoed their first booms like a great drum.

  Gaius Philippus wore a wolfish grin. “The timbers may last forever,” he said, “but the hinges can only take so much.” Boom-boom, boom-boom went the rams.

  But the Khatrishers could only keep up their murderous fire so long; arms tired, bowstrings weakened, and arrows began to run short. Soldiers appeared on the walls again. One of Bagratouni’s Vaspurakaners shrieked as bubbling oil found its way through the joints of his armor to roast the flesh beneath. Another defender was about to tip his cauldron of sizzling fat down on the Romans when a Khatrisher shaft caught him in the face. He staggered backward, spilling the blazing load among his comrades. The Romans below cheered to hear their cries of pain and fear.

  Stones and missiles shot from the towers of the inner wall were now beginning to fall on the legionaries. There were not enough Khatrishers, nor could they shoot far enough, to silence the snipers and catapults atop those towers.

  Loud even through the din of fighting, the cry of “Ladders! Ladders!” came from the north. Scaurus stole a glance that way, saw men climbing for their lives and knowing they would lose them if the enemy tipped those ladders into space before they reached the top. The legionaries carried no scaling ladders—too risky by half, was the tribune’s cold-blooded appraisal.

  The rams still pounded away. A chain with a hook on the end snaked down to catch at one of the heads as it drove forward, but the Romans, alert for such tricks, knocked it aside. The huge iron clasps joining gate to wall creaked and groaned at every stroke; the thick oak portals began to bend inwards.

  “Sure and we have ’em now!” Viridovix cried. His eyes blazed with excitement. He waved his sword at the Videssians on the walls, hot to come to grips with them at last. This fighting at long range and the duel of ram and catapult were a poor substitute for the hand-to-hand combat he craved.

  Marcus was less eager, but still felt his confidence rising. Ortaias’ men were not putting up a strong defense. By rights, he thought, the Romans should never have been able to get their rams near the Silver Gate, let alone be on the point of battering it down. He wondered how many men Elissaios Bouraphos’ ships were drawing off to ward the sea wall. There were times when navies had their uses.

  The fight at the sally port was not going so well for the legionaries. A sharp dogleg in the wall protected it from engines and let the troops inside fire at the attackers’ flanks. As casualties mounted, Scaurus pulled most of his soldiers back, leaving behind a couple of squads to keep the besieged Videssians from using the postern gate against them.

  One last stroke of the rams, working in unison now, thudded into the battered timbers of the Silver Gate. They sagged back like tired old men. The Romans surged past the rams’ protecting mantlets, shouting that the city was taken.

  It was not. The passage between inner and outer portals was itself walled and roofed, and a stout portcullis barred the way. From behind it, archers poured death into the legionaries at point-blank range.

  Brave as always, Laon Pakhymer’s Khatrishers ran up to return their fire. In their light armor they suffered for it, Ortaias’ bowmen on the walls taking a heavy toll. Watching his men fall, Pakhymer remained expressionless, but his pock-marks stood shadowy on a face gone pale. He sent his countrymen forward nonetheless.

  More archers shot down at the Romans from the murder-holes above the passageway; unlike the ones at panicked Khliat the summer before, these were manned and deadly. “Testudo!” Gaius Philippus shouted, and scuta went up over the legionaries’ heads to turn the hurtling darts. But worse than arrows rained down. Boiling water, sputtering oil, and red-hot sand poured through the death-holes, and the interlocked shields could not keep the soldiers beneath them altogether safe. Men cursed and screamed as they were burned.

  Still more terrible were the flasks of vitriol the defenders cast down on the legionaries. The very facings of their shields bubbled and smoked, and whenever a drop touched flesh it seared it away to the bone.

  Scaurus ground his teeth in an agony of frustration. Having forced the Silver Gate, his men were caught in a cruder trap than if they had failed at once. The rams, protected by their mantlets, were still inching forward and might yet batter down the portcullis, though, as he watched, a man inside the mantlet fell, pierced by an arrow that found its way over his shield.

  But after the portcullis lay the second set of gates, stronger even than the ones already fallen. Could he ask his men to claw their way through that gauntlet and have any hope they could fight Ortaias’ still-fresh troops afterward?

  With unlimited manpower behind him, he might have tried it. His force, though, was anything but unlimited, and once gone, was gone for good. However much he wanted to aid Thorisin, the mercenary captain’s creed came first: protect your men. Without them you can do nothing to help or hurt.

  “Pull back,” he ordered, and signaled the buccinators to blow retreat. It was a command the legionaries were not sorry to obey; they had charged to the attack in high excitement, but they recognized an impossibility when they saw one.

  Again the Khatrishers did yeoman duty in
covering the Romans, especially the withdrawal of the rams and their heavy shielding mantlets, of necessity a slow, painful business. Laon Pakhymer brushed thanks aside when Marcus tried to give them, saying only, “You did more for us, one day last year.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “Could we beg use of your fractious doctor?”

  “Of course,” Scaurus said.

  “Then I thank you. That arrow-pulling gadget of his is a clever whatsit, and his hands are soft, for all his sharp tongue.”

  “Gorgidas!” Marcus called, and the Greek physician came trotting up, a length of bandage flapping in his left hand.

  “What do you want now, Scaurus? If you must put out a fire by throwing bodies on it, at least give me leave to cobble them back together. Don’t waste my time with talk.”

  “Tend to the Khatrishers too, would you? The arrow-fire’s hurt them worse than our men because they wear lighter panoplies, and Pakhymer here thinks well of your arrow-drawer.”

  “The spoon of Diokles? Aye, it’s a useful tool.” He pulled one from his belt; the smooth bronze was covered with blood. Gorgidas held the instrument up to the two officers. “Can either of you tell whose gore’s been spilled on this—Roman, Khatrisher, or imperial for that matter?” He did not wait for an answer, but went on, “Well, neither can I; I haven’t really stopped to look—nor will I. I’m a busy man, thanks to you two, so kindly let me ply my trade.”

  Pakhymer stared at his retreating back. “Did that mean yes?”

  “It meant he has been tending them all along. I should have known.”

  “There are demons on that man’s trail,” Pakhymer said slowly. His eyes held a certain superstitious awe; he intended his words to be taken literally. “Demons everywhere today,” he murmured, “pulling the Balance down against us.” In Videssian eyes, the Khatrishers were sunk deeper in heresy than even the Namdaleni. Where the men of the Duchy spoke of Phos’ Wager with at least the hope that Phos would at last overcome Skotos, Pakhymer’s people held the struggle between good and evil to be an even one, its ultimate winner impossible to know.

  Scaurus was too tired and too full of disappointment to exercise himself over the fine points of a theology he did not share. With some surprise, he realized the sky was bright and blue—where had the fog gone? His shadow was pointing away from Videssos’ works; the sun was in his eyes as he looked toward them. The assault had lasted most of the day. For all it had accomplished, it might as well not have been made.

  Jeers flew from the wall as the Romans retreated, loudest among them the booming, scorn-filled laugh of Outis Rhavas. “Go back to your mothers, little boys,” the bandit chieftain roared, his voice loaded with hateful mirth. “You’ve played where you don’t belong and got a spanking for your trouble. Go home and be good and you won’t get hurt again!”

  Marcus swallowed hard. He had thought he was beyond feeling worse, but found he was wrong. Defeat was five times more bitter at the hands of Rhavas. His head hung as he led the weary, painful trudge back to camp.

  Inside Videssos the soldiers of the Sphrantzai celebrated their defense far into the night. They had reason to rejoice; none of Thorisin’s other attacks had come as close to success as the Romans’, and Scaurus knew how far from victory the legionaries had been.

  The sound of the revels only made Gavras’ defeated army more sullen as it licked its wounds back behind its rampart. The tribune heard angry talk round the Roman campfires and did not blame his soldiers for it. They had fought as well as men could fight; but stone, brick, and iron were stronger than flesh and blood.

  When the Namdalener came up to the Roman camp, nervous sentries almost speared him before he could convince them he was friendly. He asked for Scaurus, saying he would speak to no one else. The tribune’s sword was drawn as he walked to the north gate; apart from his own troops, he was not prepared to take anyone on trust.

  But the islander proved to be a man he knew, a veteran mercenary named Fayard who had once been under the command of Helvis’ dead husband Hemond. He stepped forward out of the darkness to take the tribune’s hand between his two, the usual Namdalener clasp. “Soteric asks you to share a cup of wine with him at our camp,” he said. Years in the Empire had left his Videssian almost accent-free.

  “This is a message you were bidden to give to me alone?” Scaurus asked in surprise.

  “I had my orders,” Fayard shrugged. He had the resigned air of a soldier used to carrying them out whether or not he found sense in them.

  “Of course I’ll come. Give me a moment, though.” Marcus quickly found Gaius Philippus, told him of Soteric’s request. The senior centurion’s eyes narrowed. He stroked his chin in thought.

  “He wants something from us,” was his first comment, echoing Scaurus’ guess. Gaius Philippus followed it a moment later with, “He’s not very good at these games, is he? By now the whole camp’ll know you’re off on some secret meeting, where if his man had just sung out what he wanted to the gate crew, nobody would have thought twice about it.”

  “Maybe I should take you off combat duty,” Marcus said. “You’re getting to be a fine intriguer yourself, you know.”

  Gaius Philippus snorted, knowing the tribune’s threat was empty. “Ha! You don’t need to be a cow to know where milk comes from.”

  Scaurus fought temptation and lost. “You’re right—that would be udderly ridiculous.” He walked off whistling, somehow feeling better than he had since the ill-fated attack began.

  He and Fayard drew three challenges in the ten-minute trip to the Namdalener camp and another at its palisade. Guardsmen who would have ignored a platoon the night before now reached for spear or bow at the smallest movement. Defeat, Marcus thought, made men jump at shadows.

  Yet another sentry stood, armed, in front of Soteric’s tent. A trifle shortsighted, he peered closely into the tribune’s face before standing aside to let him pass. Fayard ceremoniously held the tent flap open. “You aren’t coming, too?” Marcus said.

  “Me? By the Wager, no,” the man of the Duchy answered. “Soteric pulled me out of a game of dice to fetch you, and just when I was starting to win. So by your leave—” He was gone before the sentence was complete.

  “Come in, Scaurus, or at least let the flap drop,” Soteric called. “The wind will put out the candles.”

  If Marcus had had any doubts that Soteric’s invitation was not merely social, the company Helvis’ brother kept would have erased them. A bandage on his forearm, Utprand Dagober’s son sat on the sleeping mat by Soteric, his bearing and his cold eyes wolfish as always. Next to him were a pair of Namdaleni the tribune did not know, save by name: Clozart Leatherbreeches and Turgot of Sotevag, whose native town was on the eastern shore of the island Duchy. The four of them together spoke for most of the islanders who followed Gavras.

  They shifted to give Scaurus room to sit. Turgot swore softly as he moved. “My arse is bandaged,” he explained to the Roman. “Took an arrow right in the cheek, I did.”

  “He doesn’t care a moldy grape for your arse,” Clozart rumbled. Marcus thought he looked foolish in the tight leather trousers he affected—he was nearing fifty, and his belly bulged over their fastening—but his square face was hard and capable, the face of a man who acts and lets consequences sort themselves out afterward.

  “Have some wine,” Turgot said, pouring from a squat pitcher. “We wouldn’t want Fayard forsworn, would we?” Marcus shook his head, sipped politely. For all their ostentatious contempt for Videssian ways, some Namdaleni played the game of indirection even more maddeningly than the imperials who had taught it to them.

  Soteric, though, was not one of those. Tossing his own cup back at a gulp, he demanded bluntly, “Well, what did you think of today’s fiasco?”

  “About what I thought before,” the tribune answered. “With those walls, a handful of lame old men could hold off an army, so long as they weren’t too old to remember to keep dropping rocks on its head.”

  “Ha! Well said, t’at,�
�� Utprand said, baring his teeth in the grimace that served him for a chuckle. “But t’question has more behind it. Gavras sent us forward to be killed, against works he had no hope of taking. Why should we serve such a man as that?”

  “So you’re thinking of going over to the Sphrantzai?” Marcus asked carefully. If their answer was aye, he knew he would have to use all his guile to leave the islanders’ camp, for that was a choice he could never make. And if guile failed … He shifted his weight, bringing his sword to a position where it would be easier to seize.

  But Clozart spat in fine contempt. “I fart in Ortaias Sphrantzes’ face,” he said.

  “A pox on the twit,” Soteric nodded. “The seal-stamping fop’s a worse bargain than Gavras ever would be, him and his pot-metal ‘goldpieces.’ ”

  “What then?” Scaurus said, puzzled. “What other choice is there?”

  “Home,” Turgot said at once, and longing filled his eyes at the word. “The lads have had a bellyful, and so have I. Let the damned imperials bake in their own oven, and may both sides burn. Give me cool Sote vag again and the long waves rolling off the endless gray ocean, and if the Empire’s recruiters come my way again I’ll set the hounds to ’em like your Vaspurakaner friend did to the Videssian priest.”

  The tribune felt no longing, only a jealousy that by now itself was tired. In this world he and his had no home, nor were they likely to. “You make it sound simple,” he said dryly. “But what do you propose to do, march through the Empire’s eastlands until you come to your own country?”

  His intended sarcasm fell on deaf ears. “Aye,” Clozart said, “or rather the sea across from it. Why not? What do the imperials have between here and there to stop us?”

  “It should be easy,” Utprand agreed. “T’Empire stripped t’garrisons bare to fight the Yezda, and then again for t’is civil war. Once we get clear of Videssos, there would be no army dare come near us. And T’orisin has to let us go—if he tries to hold us, the Sphrantzai come out and eat him up.”