Marcus could only nod and listen; there was enough truth in Zeprin’s self-blame to make consolation hard. With bleak quickness, the Haloga finished his tale: “I was fighting my way back to the Emperor when I got this.” He touched his swollen face. “Next I knew, I was staggering along with one arm draped over your little doctor’s shoulder.” The tribune did not recall noticing Gorgidas supporting the massive northerner, but then the Greek would not have been easy to see under Zeprin’s bulk.
“Not even a warrior’s death could I give Mavrikios,” the Haloga mourned.
At that, Scaurus’ patience ran out. “Too many died today,” he snapped. “The gods—yours, mine, the Empire’s, I don’t much care which—be thanked some of us are left alive to save what we can.”
“Aye, there will be a reckoning,” Zeprin said grimly, “and I know where it must start.” The chill promise in his eyes would have set Ortaias Sphrantzes running again, were he there to see it.
The Roman camp was not so far from the battlefield as to leave behind the moans of the wounded. So many lay hurt that the sound of their suffering traveled far. No single voice stood out, nor single nation; at any moment, the listeners could not tell if the anguish they heard came from the throat of a Videssian grandee slowly bleeding to death or a Yezda writhing around an arrow in his belly.
“There’s a lesson for us all, not that we have the wit to heed it,” Gorgidas remarked as he snatched a moment’s rest before moving on to the next wounded man.
“And what might that be?” Viridovix asked with a mock-patient sigh.
“In pain, all men are brothers. Would there were an easier way to make them so.” He glared at the Celt, daring him to argue. Viridovix was the first to look away; he stretched, scratched his leg, and changed the subject.
Scaurus found sleep at last, a restless sleep full of nasty dreams. No sooner had he closed his eyes, it seemed, than a legionary was shaking him awake. “Begging your pardon, sir,” the soldier said, “but you’re needed at the palisade.”
“What? Why?” the tribune mumbled, rubbing at sticky eyes and wishing the Roman would go away and let him rest.
The answer he got banished sleep as rudely as a bucket of cold water. “Avshar would have speech with you, sir.”
“What?” Without his willing it, Marcus’ hand was tight round his swordhilt. “All right. I’ll come.” He threw on full armor as quickly as he could—no telling what trickery Yezd’s wizard-prince might intend. Then, blade naked in his hand, he followed the legionary through the fitfully slumbering camp.
Two Khatrisher sentries peered out into the darkness beyond the watchfires’ reach. Each carried a nocked arrow in his bow. “He rode in like a guest invited to a garden party, your honor, he did, and asked for you by name,” one of them told Scaurus. With the usual bantam courage of his folk, he was more indignant over Avshar’s unwelcome arrival than awed by the sorcerer’s power.
Not so his comrade, who said, “We fired, sir, the both of us, several times. He was so close we could not have missed, but none of our shafts would bite.” His eyes were wide with fear.
“We drove the whoreson back out of range, though,” the first Khatrisher said stoutly.
The druids’ marks graven into Marcus’ Gallic blade glowed yellow, not fiercely as they had when Avshar tried spells against him, but still warning of sorcery. Fearless as a tiger toying with mice, the wizard-prince emerged from the darkness that was his own, sitting statue-still atop his great sable horse. “Worms! You could not drive a maggot across a turd!”
The bolder-tongued Khatrisher barked an oath and drew back his bow to shoot. Scaurus checked him, saying, “You’d waste your dart again, I think—he has a protecting glamour wrapped round himself.”
“Astutely reasoned, prince of insects,” Avshar said, granting the tribune a scornful dip of his head. “But this is a poor welcome you grant me, when I have but come to give back something of yours I found on the field today.”
Even if Marcus had not already known the quality of the enemy he faced, the sly, evil humor lurking in that cruel voice would have told him the wizard’s gift was one to delight the giver, not him who received it. Yet he had no choice but to play Avshar’s game out to the end. “What price do you put on it?” he asked.
“Price. None at all. As I said, it is yours. Take it, and welcome.” The wizard-prince reached down to something hanging by his right boot, tossed it underhanded toward the tribune. It was still in the air when he wheeled his stallion and rode away.
Marcus and his companions skipped aside, afraid of some last treachery. But the wizard’s gift landed harmlessly inside the palisade, rolling until it came to rest at the tribune’s feet. Then Avshar’s jest was clear in all its horror, for staring sightlessly up at Scaurus, its features stiffened into a grimace of agony, was Mavrikios Gavras’ head.
The sentries did shoot after the wizard-prince then, blindly, hopelessly. His fell laugh floated back to tell them how little their arrows were worth.
With his gift for scenting trouble, Gaius Philippus hurried up to the rampart. He wore only military kilt and helmet, and carried his gladius naked in his hand. He almost stumbled over Avshar’s gift; his face hardened as he recognized it for what it was. “How did it come here?” was all he said.
Marcus told him, or tried to. The thread of the story kept breaking whenever he looked down into the dead Emperor’s eyes.
The senior centurion heard him out, then growled, “Let the damned wizard have his boast. It’ll cost him in the end, you wait and see. This—” He gave Mavrikios a last Roman salute. “—doesn’t show us anything we didn’t already know. Instead of wasting time with it, Avshar could have been finishing Thorisin. But he let him get away—and with a decent part of army, too, once they start pulling themselves together.”
Scaurus nodded, heartened. Gaius Philippus had the right of it. As long as Thorisin Gavras survived, Videssos had a leader—and after this disaster, the Empire would need all the troops it could find.
The tribune’s mind went to the morning, to getting free of the field of Maragha. The legionaries’ discipline would surely pay again, as it had this afternoon; overwhelming triumph left the Yezda almost as disordered as defeat did their foes. Now he had the Khatrisher horse, too, so he could hope to meet the nomads on their own terms. One way or another, he told himself, he would manage.
He stared a challenge in the direction Avshar had gone, said quietly, “No, the game’s not over yet. Far from it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Turtledove was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of Caltech, he earned a PhD. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and he has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle, as well as several scholarly articles.
He is also a Hugo Award-winning and critically acclaimed full-time writer of science fiction and fantasy. His alternate history works have included several short stories and the novels A World of Difference, The Guns of the South (a speculative novel of the Civil War), How Few Remain, and the Worldwar tetralogy that began in 1994 with Worldwar: In the Balance. He is currently working on his next project: an alternate history series about the Great War.
He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.
HOW FEW REMAIN
The dramatic novel by
HARRY TURTLEDOVE
The Master of Alternate History
In 1862, key Confederate orders nearly fell into Union hands. But those orders were saved, the Rebels swept into Pennsylvania, smashed the Army of the Potomac, and assured Southern independence.
A generation later, America writhed once more in the throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the U.S. again declared war on the Confederacy, and in 1881 the fragile peace was shattered.
This new war was fought on a lawless frontier where the
blue and gray battled not only each other but the Apache, the outlaw, and even the redcoat. For along with France, England entered the fray on the side of the South.
Out of this tragic struggle emerged historic figures. A disgraced Abraham Lincoln crisscrossed the nation championing Socialist ideals. Cocky Theodore Roosevelt bickered with George Custer. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson again soared to the heights of military genius, while the North struggled to find a leader who could prove his equal.
Thanks to such journalists as Samuel Clemens, the nation witnessed the clash of human dreams and passions in this, a Second War Between the States.
Published by Del Rey Books.
Available at a bookstore near you.
Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) Page 38
