Agent of Byzantium

by Harry Turtledove

  “Let me inside first. If Goarios learns I’ve come, we’re all done for. We may be anyhow.”

  “Are you going to open the gate for her?” Despite Mirrane’s alarming words, Corippus plainly did not like the idea. “No telling who’s lurking there out past our torchlight.”

  Argyros nodded. Trusting Mirrane was harder than wanting her. He remembered, though, her supple dancer’s muscles. “Can you climb a rope if we throw one out to you?” he called over the fence.

  She laughed again, not in the least offended. “Of course I can.” A moment later she proved good as her word, dropping into the courtyard as lightly and quietly as a veteran raider. She was dressed like one, too, in nondescript men’s clothes, with her fine hair pulled up under a felt hat that looked like an inverted flowerpot. Few marauders, however, smelled of attar of roses.

  Ignoring the curious glances the men in the courtyard were giving her, she baldly told Argyros, “Goarios knows you were in the marketplace where the riot started this afternoon. In fact, he thinks you’re the person who got it started.”

  “Mother of God!” The magistrianos crossed himself. “Why does he think so?”

  “You can’t deny you were there—one of my, ah, little birds saw you.” Mirrane sounded very pleased with herself. “As for why he thinks you threw that knife at the Kirghiz, well, I told the little bird to tell him that.” She grinned as if she had done something clever and expected Argyros to see it too.

  All he saw was disaster. Those of his men who heard shouted in outrage. “I should have let Constantine shoot you,” he ground out, his voice as icy as Corippus’s eyes.

  “Ah, but then you’d never have known, would you, not till too late. Now you—we—still have the chance to get away.”

  “I suppose you expect my men to give you an armed escort back to Persia.”

  Mirrane paid no attention to the sarcasm. “Not at all, because I’m not planning to go south.” She paused. “You do know, don’t you?”

  “Know what?” Argyros’s patience was stretched to the breaking point, but he would sooner have gone under thumbscrews than reveal that to Mirrane.

  “That the whole Kirghiz army is through the Caspian Gates and heading for Dariel.”

  “No,” Argyros said woodenly. “I didn’t know that.” With the chaos inside the town, that at first seemed a less immediate trouble than many closer at hand. Then the magistrianos ran Mirrane’s words through his head again. “You’re going to the Kirghiz?”

  “To stop them, if I can. And you and yours are coming with me.”

  Argyros automatically began to say no, but checked himself before the word was out of his mouth. The pieces of the puzzle were falling together in his mind. “That’s why your man fed Goarios that lying fairy tale!”

  “To make you work with me, you mean? Well, of course, dear Basil.” She reached out to stroke his cheek, which warmed and infuriated him at the same time. He hoped that did not show on his face, but suspected it did; Mirrane’s smile was too knowing. But she held mockery from her voice as she continued, “I told you once that the nomads endanger both our states. Besides, you have a weapon we may be able to turn against them.”

  “The superwine, you mean?”

  “Of course. The more Kirghiz who are drunk, and the drunker they are, the better the chance my plan has.”

  Being caught in her web himself, the magistrianos had a certain amount of sympathy for the nomads. There were some thousands of them and only one of her, but he was not sure that evened the odds. “We’ll load the wagons,” he said resignedly. He did not mention the hellpowder. He had used a little at Daras, but only a little. Mirrane would have trouble imagining how powerful more than half a ton of the stuff could be.

  As Argyros set his men to work, Supsa came rushing up. “You leaving?” the innkeeper wailed. “No leave!”

  “I fear I have very little choice,” the magistrianos said. He glared at Mirrane. She smiled sweetly, hoping to annoy him further. He stamped away.

  It was nearly midnight before the miniature caravan—wagons, packhorses, and all—rumbled out of the courtyard. The men on horseback looked less like traders than they had coming into Dariel. Some of them had worn mail shirts then too, but that was not where the difference lay. It was in their posture, their eyes, the hard set of their mouths. They were no longer pretending to be anything but soldiers. Even drunken rioters took one look and got out of their way.

  “A good crew you have,” Mirrane remarked. She was sitting by Argyros, who drove the lead wagon. It was full of yperoinos. In the last wagon of the four came Eustathios Rhangabe—as far as everyone else was concerned, he was welcome to baby the hellpowder along all by himself. If by some disaster that wagon went up, the magistrianos thought, it would take the flank guards and everything else with it, but sometimes the illusion of safety was as important as the thing itself.

  Argyros’s mouth twisted; that could also be said for the illusion of command. “They’re dancing to your tune now,” he growled. He would have lost his temper altogether had she come back with some clever comment, but she merely nodded. She was, he reminded himself, a professional too.

  He had worried about whether the gate crew would let them pass (for that matter, he had wondered if there would be a gate crew, or if they had left their posts to join the looting). They were there and alert, but their officer waved Argyros through. “Getting out while the getting’s good, are you?” he said. “Don’t blame you a bit—in your shoes, I’d do the same.”

  “Not if you knew where we were going you wouldn’t,” the magistrianos said, once the fellow was out of earshot. Mirrane giggled.

  Argyros called a halt a couple of miles outside Dariel. “This is far enough,” he said. “None of the trouble from town will follow us here, and we need rest to be worth anything come morning. We also need to find out just what this scheme is that we’re supposed to be following.” He gave Mirrane a hard look.

  So did Corippus. “Why?” he asked bluntly. “Now that she doesn’t have Goarios protecting her, why not turn her into dogmeat and go about our business?” Several men grunted agreement.

  Mirrane stared back, unafraid. She said, “I might point out that, were it not for me, Goarios’s soldiers would have you now.”

  “Were it not for you,” Corippus retorted, “Goarios’s soldiers would never have been interested in us in the first place.” Again many of his comrades paused in the business of setting up camp to nod.

  “She could have given us to the Alan king any time she chose,” Argyros said. “She didn’t.”

  “Till it served her purpose,” Corippus said stubbornly.

  “True enough, but are you saying it fails to serve ours too? Do you really want the Kirghiz rampaging through Mesopotamia, or grazing their flocks in Kappadokia from now on? They endanger us as well as Persia. And if you’re so eager to be rid of Mirrane, let us hear your plan for holding the nomads back.” He hoped the north African would not have one.

  When Corippus dropped his eyes, the magistrianos knew he had won that gamble. His subordinate, though, did not yield tamely. He said, “Maybe we could use the yperoinos to get the buggers drunk, and then—” He ran dry, as a water clock will when someone forgets to fill it.

  “And then what?” Argyros prodded. “Sneak through their tents slitting throats? There are a few too many of them for that, I’m afraid. If you have no ideas of your own, getting rid of someone who does strikes me as wasteful.”

  Corippus saluted with sardonic precision, shook his head, and stalked off to help get a fire started.

  Mirrane touched Argyros’s arm. In the darkness, her eyes were enormous. “I thank you,” she whispered. “In this trade of ours, one gets used to the notion of dying unexpectedly, but I’d not have cared for what likely would have happened before they finally knocked me over the head.”

  Having been a soldier, Argyros knew what she meant. He grunted, embarrassed for a moment at what men could do—and too often di
d—to women.

  “Why did you choose to save me?” Mirrane still kept her voice low, but the newly kindled fire brought an ironic glint to her eye. “Surely not for the sake of the little while we were lovers?” She studied the magistrianos’s face. “Are you blushing?” she asked in delighted disbelief.

  “It’s only the red light of the flames,” Argyros said stiffly. “You’ve been saying you know how to stop the Kirghiz. That’s more than anyone else has claimed. You’re worth keeping for that, if nothing else.”

  “If nothing else,” she echoed with an upraised eyebrow. “For that polite addition, at least, I am in your debt.”

  The magistrianos bit back an angry reply. Mirrane had a gift for making him feel out of his depth, even when, as now, power lay all on his side. No woman since his long-dead wife had drawn him so, but Mirrane’s appeal was very different from Helen’s. With Helen he had felt more at ease, at peace, than with anyone else he had ever known. The air of risk and danger that surrounded Mirrane had little to do with the settings in which he met her; it was part of her essence. Like his first cup of yperoinos, it carried a stronger jolt than he was used to.

  To cover his unease, he returned to matters at hand. “So what is this precious plan of yours?” She stayed silent. He said, “For whatever you think it worth, I pledge I won’t slit your throat after you’ve spoken, or harm you in any other way.”

  She watched him. “If your hard-eyed friend gave me that promise, I’d know what it was worth. You, though … with that long, sad face, you remind me of the saints I’ve seen painted in Christian churches. Should I believe you on account of that? It seems a poor reason.”

  “Sad to say, I am no saint.” As if to prove his words, memories of her lips, her skin against his surged in him. Angrily, he fought them down.

  Her lazy smile said she was remembering too. But it faded, leaving her thoughtful and bleak. “If I tell you, I must trust you, and your land and mine are enemies. May you fall into the fire in the House of the Lie if you are leading me astray.”

  “I will swear by God and His Son, if you like.”

  “No, never mind. An oath is only the man behind it, and you suit me well enough without one.” Still she said nothing. Finally Argyros made a questioning noise. She laughed shakily. “The real trouble is, the plan is not very good.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “All right. We spoke of it once, in fact, in Goarios’s palace. You said you remembered how the White Huns lured Peroz King of Kings and his army to destruction—how they dug a trench with but a single small opening, then concealed it. They fled through the gap, then fell on his army when it was thrown into confusion by the first ranks charging into the ditch. I had hoped to do something like that to the Kirghiz. They have little discipline at any time, and if they were drunk on your superwine, drunker even than they knew—”

  Argyros nodded. The scheme was daring, ruthless, and could have been practical—all characteristics he had come to associate with Mirrane. “You do see the flaw?” he said, as gently as he could.

  “Actually, I saw two,” she replied. “We don’t have enough people to dig the ditch, and we don’t have an army to use to fight even if it should get dug.”

  “That, ah, does sum it up,” the magistrianos said.

  “I know, I know, I know.” Bitterness as well as firelight shadowed Mirrane’s features. “At the end, I kept telling Goarios he was giving his country away by not keeping a tighter check on the nomads; I was hoping to use the Dariel garrison to do what I had in mind. But he still thinks he’ll ride on the backs of the Kirghiz to glory—or he did, until the riots started. For all I know, he may believe it even now. He’s had less use for me outside the bedchamber since I stopped telling him things he wanted to hear.” She cocked her head, peered at Argyros. “And so here I am, in your hands instead.”

  He did not answer. His eyes were hooded, far away.

  Mirrane said, “With most men, I would offer at once to go to their tents with them. With you, somehow I don’t think that would help save me.”

  It was as if he had not heard her. Then he came far enough out of his brown study to reply, “No, it would be the worst thing you could do.” Her glare brought him fully back to himself. He explained hastily, “My crew would mutiny if they thought I was keeping you for my own pleasure.”

  She glanced toward Corippus, shivered. “Very well. I don’t doubt you’re right. What then?”

  “I’ll tell you in the morning.” The magistrianos’s wave summoned a couple of his men. “Make sure she does not escape, but don’t harass her either. Her scheme has more merit than I thought.” They saluted and led Mirrane away.

  Argyros called Corippus to him and spoke at some length. If defects lurked in the plan slowly taking shape in his mind, the dour north African would find them. Corippus did, too, or thought he did. Argyros had to wake up Eustathios Rhangabe to be sure. Through a yawn wide enough to frighten a lion, Rhangabe suggested changes, ones not so drastic as Corippus had thought necessary. The artisan fell asleep where he sat; Corippus and the magistrianos kept hammering away.

  At last Corippus threw his hands in the air. “All right!” he growled, almost loud enough to wake Rhangabe. “This is what we came for—we have to try it, I suppose. Who knows? We may even live through it.”

  A small wagon train and a good many packhorses plodded north toward the Caspian Gates. The riders who flanked the packhorses seemed bored with what they were doing: a routine trip, their attitude seemed to say, that they had made many times before. If I see Constantinople again, Argyros thought half seriously, I’ll have to do some real acting, maybe the next time someone revives Euripides.

  A glance up from beneath lowered brows showed the magistrianos Kirghiz scouts. He had been seeing them for some time now, and they his band. He had enough horsemen with him to deter the scouts from approaching by ones and twos. For his part, he wanted to keep pretending he did not know they existed.

  For as long as he could, he also kept ignoring the dust cloud that lay ahead. When he saw men through it, though, men who wore furs and leathers and rode little steppe ponies, he reined in, drawing the wagon to a halt.

  “We’ve just realized that’s the whole bloody Kirghiz army,” he called to his comrades, reminding them of their roles as any good director would. “Now we can be afraid.”

  “You’re too late,” someone said. The men from the Empire milled out in counterfeit—Argyros hoped it was counterfeit—panic and confusion. His own part was to leap down from the wagon, cut a packhorse free of the string, then scramble onto the beast and boot it after the mounts his men were riding desperately southward.

  The Kirghiz scouts gave chase. A few arrows hissed past. Then one of the nomads toppled from the saddle; Corippus was as dangerous a horse-archer as any plainsman. That helped deter pursuit, but Argyros did not think it would have lasted long in any case. The Kirghiz scouts were only human—they would want to steal their fair share of whatever these crazy merchants had left behind.

  Argyros looked back over his shoulder—cautiously, as he was not used to riding without stirrups. One of the nomads was bending to examine the broken jars the magistrianos’s horse had been carrying. Some of the contents must still have been cupped in a shard, for the Kirghiz suddenly jumped up and began pointing excitedly at the packhorses and wagons. Argyros did not need to hear him to know what he was shouting. Nomads converged on the abandoned yperoinos like bees on roses.

  The poor fools who had provided such a magnificent windfall were quickly forgotten. Before long, they were able to stop and look back with no fear of pursuit. Corippus gave the short bark that passed for laughter with him. “After a haul like that, most of those buggers will have all the loot from civilization they ever dreamed of.”

  “Something to that,” Argyros admitted. The thought made him sad.

  One of his men put hand to forehead to shield his eyes from the sun as he peered toward the Kirghiz. He swore in frustra
tion all the same and turned to Argyros. “Can you get a better view, sir?”

  “Let’s see.” At his belt, along with such usual appurtenances as knife, sap, and pouch, Argyros carried a more curious device: a tube fitting tightly into another, with convex glass glittering at both ends. He undid it from the boss on which it hung, raised it to his eye, and pulled the smaller tube partway out of the larger one.

  The image he saw was upside down and fringed with false colors, but the Kirghiz seemed to jump almost within arm’s length. The artisans in Constantinople still had trouble making lenses good enough to use—most far-seers belonged to Roman generals, though the savants at the imperial university had seen some things in the heavens that puzzled them and even, it was whispered, shook their faith. Only because Argyros had learned of the far-seer in the first place was he entitled to carry one now.

  He watched the Kirghiz nobles, some of whom had sampled superwine in Dariel, trying to keep their rank and file away from the wagons. They were too late. Too many ordinary nomads had already tasted the potent brew. The ones who’d had some wanted more; the ones who’d had none wanted some. Even under the best of circumstances, the nomads obeyed orders only when they felt like it. These circumstances were not the best. Argyros smiled in satisfaction.

  “They all want their share,” he reported.

  “Good,” Corippus said. The rest of the men nodded, but without great enthusiasm. If this part of the plan had failed, it could not have gone forward. The more dangerous portions lay ahead.

  The Romans rode back toward Dariel. Eustathios Rhangabe was bringing up the last wagon, the one so different from the rest. A couple of outriders were with him; Mirrane’s horse was tethered to one of theirs. Argyros had told them to shoot her if she tried to escape, and warned her of his order. All the same, he was relieved to see her with his men. Orders were rarely a match for the likes of her.

  “You have your spots chosen?” the magistrianos asked Rhangabe.