Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle)

by Turtledove, Harry

  The barracks of the Namdaleni were, if anything, even more comfortable than the Romans’ quarters. Part of the difference, of course, was that there had been a Namdalener contingent in the Videssian army for many years, and over those years the men of the Duchy had lavished much labor on making their dwelling as homelike as they could. By contrast, the Romans had not yet made their hall their own.

  Because many of the mercenaries spent a large portion of their lives in Videssian service, it was not surprising that they formed families in the capital, either with women of the Empire or with wives or sweethearts who had accompanied them from Namdalen. Their barracks reflected this. Only the bottom floor was a common hall like that of the Romans, a hall in which dwelt warriors who had formed no household. The upper story was divided into apartments of varying size.

  Remembering Helvis waving to him from a window above—was it only a couple of days before?—Marcus climbed the stairway, a wide, straight flight of steps nothing like the spiral stair that had led to Avshar’s trap. He felt more misgivings now than he had on the wizard’s trail; Hemond’s sword in his hand was heavy as lead.

  Thanks to his memory of Helvis displaying for him the jewelry she’d brought with her winnings, the tribune knew about which turns to take through the upper story’s corridors. From an open doorway ahead, he heard a clear contralto he knew. “Now stay there for a few minutes,” Helvis was saying firmly. “I want to find out what the commotion down below is all about.”

  He and she came into the doorway at the same moment. Helvis drew back a pace, laughing in surprise. “Hello, Marcus!” she said. “Are you looking for Hemond? I don’t know where he is—he should have been back from the drillfield some time ago. And what’s going on outside? My window won’t let me see.”

  She came to a halt, really seeing him for the first time. “Why so grim? Is anything the …” Her voice faltered as she finally recognized the sheathed blade he carried. “No,” she said. “No.” The color faded from her face; her knuckles whitened as her hand clutched at the doorlatch, seeking a support it could not give her.

  “Who is this man, Mama?” A naked boy of about three came up to peer at Scaurus from behind Helvis’ skirts. He had her blue eyes and Hemond’s shock of blond hair. Marcus had not imagined he could be more wretched, but then he had not known Hemond had a son. “Aren’t you going downstairs?” the tot asked his mother.

  “Yes. No. In a minute.” Helvis searched the tribune’s features, her eyes pleading with him to give her some other, any other explanation than the one she feared for Hemond’s sword in his hands. He bit his lip until the pain made him blink, but nothing he could say or do would erase his mute message of loss.

  “Aren’t you going downstairs, mama?” the child asked again.

  “Hush, Malric,” Helvis said absently. “Go back inside.” She stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her. “It’s true, then?” she said, more wonder in her voice than anything else. Though she said the words, it was plain she did not believe them.

  Marcus could only nod. “It’s true,” he answered as gently as he could.

  Not looking at the tribune, moving in a slow, dreamlike fashion, she took Hemond’s sword from his hands into her own. She caressed the blade’s worn, rawhide-wrapped hilt. Her hand, Marcus noticed in one of those irrelevant flashes he knew he would remember forever, though large for a woman’s, was much too small for the grip.

  Her head still bent, she leaned the sword against the wall by the closed door of her rooms. When at last she looked at the tribune, tears were running down her cheeks, though he had not heard her start to weep. “Take me to him,” she said. As they walked down the hall, she clasped his arm like a drowning man seizing a spar to keep himself afloat a few minutes longer.

  She was still looking for small things she did not understand to keep from facing the great incomprehensibility that lay, cold and stiffening, outside the barracks. “Why did you bring me his sword?” she asked the tribune. “I mean no harm, no insult, but you are not of our people or our ways. Why you?”

  Scaurus heard the question with a sinking feeling. He would have given a great deal for a plausible lie but had none ready; in any case, such false kindness was worse than none. “It seemed only right I should,” he said, “becasue it is all too much my fault he fell.”

  She stopped as short as if he had struck her; her nails were suddenly claws digging into his flesh. Only by degrees did the misery on the Roman’s face and in his voice reach her. Her face lost the savage look it had assumed. Her hand relaxed; Marcus felt blood trickle down his arm from where her nails had bitten him.

  “Tell me,” she said, and as they walked down the stairs he did so, hesitantly at first but with growing fluency as the tale went on.

  “The end was very quick, my lady,” he finished lamely, trying to find such consolation as he could. “He could hardly have had time to feel much pain. I—” The upwelling futility of any apology or condolence he might make silenced him effectively as a gag.

  Helvis’ touch on his arm was as gentle as it had been fierce a minute before. “You must not torment yourself for doing what was only your duty,” she said. “Had your roles been reversed, Hemond would have asked the same of you. It was his way,” she added softly, and began to cry again as the truth of his death started forcing its way past the defenses she had flung up.

  That she could try to comfort him in her own anguish amazed Marcus and made him feel worse at the same time. Such a woman did not deserve to have her life turned upside down by a chance meeting and a wizard’s scheme. Another score against Avshar, he decided, as if more were needed.

  After the dimness of the interior of the barracks, the bright sun outside dazzled the Roman. Seeing the crowd still ringing the bodies of Hemond and his squadmates, Helvis dropped Scaurus’ arm and ran toward them. Suddenly alone among strangers, the tribune felt another burst of empathy for Viridovix’ plight. As quickly as he could, he found an excuse to get away and, wishing he had this day back to live over in some other way, went back to the Roman barracks.

  As he stood sweating in his full regalia on the elevated central spine of Videssos’ amphitheater, Scaurus decided he had never seen such a sea of people gathered together in one place. Fifty thousand, seventy thousand, a hundred twenty thousand—he had no way to guess their numbers. For three days criers ran through the city to proclaim the Emperor would speak this noon; the great arena had begun to fill at dawn and now, a few minutes before midday, almost every inch of it was packed with humanity.

  The only clear spaces in all that crush were a lane leading from the Emperor’s Gate at the western end of the amphitheater’s long oval to its spine and that spine itself. And the clearing of that latter was only relative. Along with statues of marble, bronze, and gold, along with a needle of gilded granite reaching for the sky, the spine held scores of Videssian functionaries in their gaudy robes of state, priests of various ranks in blue regalia, and contingents of troops from every people who soldiered for the Empire. Among them, Scaurus and the maniple he led had pride of place this day, for they stood just below the elevated rostrum from which Mavrikios Gavras would soon address the throng.

  To either side of the Romans were squadrons of tall Halogai, unmoving as the statuary they fronted. All the discipline in the world, though, could not keep resentment from their faces. The place of honor the Romans were usurping was at most times theirs, and they were not happy to be displaced by these newcomers, men who would not even show proper respect for the Emperor they served.

  But today that central place was rightfully the Romans’; they, indeed, were the reason this assemblage had been called. News of Avshar’s sorcerous assault on Scaurus and the deadly snare he had set to make good this escape had raced through the city like fire through parched woodlands. The mob Marcus saw chasing a fleeing foreigner was but the start of troubles. Many Videssians concluded that, if Yezd could reach into their capital to assail them, it was their Phos-given ri
ght to take vengeance on anyone they imagined a Yezda—or, at a pinch, on any other foreigners they could find.

  Nearly all the folk from what was now Yezd who lived in Videssos were of trading houses that had been in the capital since the days when the Empire’s western neighbor was still called Makuran. They hated their ancestral homeland’s nomadic conquerors more bitterly than did the people of the Empire. Their hatred, however, was of no avail when the Videssian rabble came roaring up to loot and burn their stores. “Death to the Yezda!” was the mob’s cry, and it did not ask questions of its victims.

  It had taken troops to quell the riots and douse the flames—native Videssian troops. Knowing his people, the Emperor had known the sight of outlanders trying to quell them would only inflame them further. And so the Romans, the Halogai, the Khamorth, and the Namdaleni kept to their barracks while Khoumnos used his akritai to restore order to the city. Marcus gave him credit for a good, professional job. “Well, why not?” Gaius Philippus had said. “He’s probably had enough practice at it.”

  Those three days had not been altogether idle. An imperial scribe came to record depositions from all the Romans who had been a part of subduing Avshar’s luckless pawn of a plainsman. Another, higher-ranking scribe questioned Marcus minutely over every tiny detail he could recall about the nomad, about Avshar himself, and about the spell the Yezda had unleashed in the sea-wall armory. When the tribune asked what point the questions had, the scribe shrugged, blandly said, “Knowledge is never wasted,” and returned to the interrogation.

  The gabble in the amphitheater rose suddenly as a pair of parasol-carriers stepped from the shadows behind the Emperor’s Gate into the sight of the crowd. Another pair emerged, and another, and another, until twelve silk flowers of varied hues bloomed in the narrow passage which twin lines of akritai kept open. Rhadenos Vourtzes had been proud of the two sunshades to which his provincial governor’s rank entitled him; the imperial retinue was more splendid by six-fold.

  The cheering which had begun at first glimpse of the parasol bearers rose to a crescendo of shouting, clapping, and stamping as the Emperor’s party proper came into view. Marcus felt the arena’s spine quiver beneath his feet; the noise the crowd put forth transcended hearing. It could only be felt, stunning the ears and the mind.

  First behind the escort was Vardanes Sphrantzes. It might have been Marcus’ imagination, but he did not think many of the cheers went to the Sevastos. Far more beloved by the people was their patriarch Balsamon. In matters of ceremony he outranked even the prime minister, and thus had his place between Sphrantzes and the imperial family itself.

  The fat old priest flowered in adulation like a lilac in the sun. His shrewd eyes crinkled into a mischievous grin; he beamed out at the crowd, his hands raised in blessing. When people reached between the tight ranks of guardsmen to touch his robes, more than once he stopped to take hold of their hands for a moment before moving on.

  Thorisin Gavras, too, was popular in the city. He was everyone’s younger brother, with all the amused toleration that went with that status. Had the Emperor brawled in a tavern or tumbled a serving wench, he would have forfeited all respect due his office. The Sevastokrator, without his brother’s burdens, could—and did—enjoy himself to the fullest. Now he strode along briskly, with the air of a man fulfilling an important task he nonetheless found boring and wanted to finish quickly.

  His niece, Mavrikios’ daughter Alypia, came just before her father. From her demeanor, the amphitheater might as well have been still and empty, not packed to its rearmost benches with screaming citizens. The same air of preoccupation she had shown entering the banquet held her now. Marcus wondered if shyness was at its root rather than indifference; she had been far less reserved in the closer setting of the banquet table and in the imperial chambers.

  Several times now the tribune had thought the tumult in the arena could not grow greater, and several times was wrong. And with the entrance of the Emperor, he found himself mistaken once more. The noise was a real and urgent pain, as if someone were driving dull rods through his ears and into his brain.

  Mavrikios Gavras was not, perhaps, the ideal Emperor for a land in turmoil. No long generations strengthened his family’s right to the throne; he was but a usurping general more successful than his predecessors. Even as he ruled, his government was divided against him, with his highest civil ministers standing to profit most from his fall and doing their best to stifle any reforms which might weaken their own positions.

  But ideal or not, Mavrikios was what Videssos had, and in the hour of crisis its people rallied to him. With every step he took, the crescendo of noise rose. Everyone in the amphitheater was standing and screaming. A group of trumpeters followed the Emperor, but in the bedlam they must have been inaudible even to themselves.

  Behind the Sevastos, the patriarch, and his family, the Emperor mounted the twelve steps up onto the arena’s spine. Each compay of soldiers presented arms to him as he passed, the Khamorth and native Videssians drawing empty bows, the Halogai lifting their axes in salute, and the Namdaleni and at last the Romans holding their spears out at arm’s length before them.

  Thorisin Gavras gave Marcus an eager, predatory grin as he walked by. His thoughts were easy to read—he wanted to fight Yezd, Scaurus had furnished a valid reason for fighting, and so the Roman stood high in his favor. Mavrikios was more complex. He said something to Scaurus, but the crowd’s din swept it away. Seeing he could not hope to make himself understood, the Emperor shrugged almost sheepishly and moved on.

  Gavras halted for a few seconds at the base of his speaking platform while his retinue, parasols bobbing, arranged themselves around it. And when the Emperor’s foot touched its wooden step, Marcus wondered whether Nepos and his wizardly colleagues had worked a potent magic or whether his ill-used ears had given out at last. Sudden, aching silence fell, broken only by the ringing in his head and the thin shout of a fishmonger outside the arena: “Fre-esh squi-id!”

  The Emperor surveyed the crowd, watching it settle back into its seats. The Roman thought it hopeless for one man to be heard by so many, but he knew nothing of the subtlety Videssian craftsmen had invested in their amphitheater. Just as the center of the spine was the focus where every sound in the arena reverberated, so words emanating from that one place were plain throughout.

  “I’m not the man for fancy talk,” the Emperor began, and Marcus had to smile, remembering how, in a Gallic clearing not so long ago, he had used a disclaimer like that to start a speech.

  Mavrikios went on, “I grew up a soldier, I’ve spent all my life among soldiers, and I’ve come to prize a soldier’s frankness. If it’s rhetoric you’re after, you don’t have far to look today.” He waved his hand to take in the rows of seated bureaucrats. The crowd chuckled. Turning his head, Scaurus saw Vardanes Sphrantzes’ mouth tighten in distaste.

  Though unable to resist flinging his barb, the Emperor did not sink it deeply. He knew he needed such unity as he could find in his divided land and spoke next in terms all his subjects could understand.

  “In the capital,” he said, “we are lucky. We are safe, we are well fed, we are warded by walls and fleets no land can match. Most of you are of families long-settled in the city and most of you have lacked for little in your lives.” Marcus thought of Phostis Apokavkos, slowly starving in Videssos’ slums. No king, he reflected, not even one so recent and atypical as Mavrikios, could hope to learn of all his country’s troubles.

  The Emperor was only too aware of some of them, however. He continued, “In our western lands, across the strait, they envy you. For a man’s lifetime now, Yezd’s poisons have spilled into our lands, burning our fields, killing our farmers, sacking and starving cities and towns, and desecrating the houses of our god.

  “We’ve fought the followers of Skotos whenever we could catch them laden with their plunder. But they are like so many locusts; for every one that dies, two more spring up to take his place. And now, in the person
of their ambassador, they spread their canker even into Videssos itself. Avshar the Phos-forsaken, unable to withstand one soldier of the Empire in honest combat, cast his web of deception over another and sent him like a viper in the night to murder the man he dared not face in open battle.”

  The multitude he addressed growled ominously, a low, angry sound, like the rumble just before an earthquake. Mavrikios let the rumble build a moment before raising his arms for silence.

  The anger in the Emperor’s voice was real, not some trick of speechmaking. “When his crime was found out, the beast of Yezd fled like the coward he is, with more of his unclean magic to cover his trail—and to once more kill for him so he need not face danger himself!” This time the crowd’s ire did not subside at once.

  “Enough, I say, enough! Yezd has struck too often and taken too few blows in return. Its brigands need a lesson to learn by heart: that while we are patient with our neighbors, our memory for wrongs is also long. And the wrongs Yezd has given us are far beyond forgiveness!” His last sentence was almost drowned by the rancor of the crowd, now nearly at the boil.

  Scaurus’ critical side admired the way the Emperor had built up his audience’s rage step by step, as a mason erects a building with course after course of bricks. Where the Roman had drawn on the speeches he made before becoming a soldier to hearten his troops, Gavras was using his memory of field orations to stir a civilian crowd. If the bureaucrats were the models the people of the city were used to, Mavrikios’ gruff candor made for an effective change.

  “War!” the assemblage shouted. “War! War!” Like the savage tolling of an iron bell, the word echoed and re-echoed in the amphitheater. The Emperor let the outcry last as long as it would. Perhaps he was enjoying to the fullest the rare concord he had brought into being; perhaps, thought Marcus, he was trying to use this outpouring of hatred for Yezd to overawe the bureaucrats who opposed his every action.