The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  The celebration died very quickly after that.

  THE NEXT FIVE DAYS PASSED IN A BLUR OF APPREHENSION FOR Krispos. That was true of most of the villagers, but Krispos’ dread had two causes. Like everyone else, he was sure the Kubratoi would exact a terrible revenge for the slaughter of their raiding party. But that, for him, was only secondary, for his father’s wounded shoulder had gone bad.

  Phostis, as was his way, tried to make light of the injury. But he could barely use his left arm and quickly came down with a fever. None of the poultices the village women applied to the wound did any good. Phostis had always been burly, but now, with shocking suddenness, the flesh seemed to melt from his bones.

  Thus Krispos was almost relieved when, late that fifth afternoon, a lookout posted in a tall tree shouted, “Horsemen!” Like the rest of the men, he dashed for his weapons—against Kubratoi, at least, he could hit back. And in the heat of fighting, he would have no time to worry about his father.

  The lookout shouted again. “Hundreds of horsemen!” His voice wobbled with fear. Women and children were already streaming into the forest, to hide as best they could. “Hundreds and hundreds!” the lookout cried.

  Some of the farmers threw down spears and bows and bolted with the women. Krispos grabbed at one who ran in front of him, but Idalkos shook his head. “What’s the use?” the veteran said. “If they outnumber us that bad, a few more on our side won’t matter much. We can’t win; all we can do is hurt the bastards as bad as we’re able.”

  Krispos clutched his spear shaft so tight his knuckles whitened on it. Now he did not need the lookout to know the wild men were coming. He could hear the hooves of their horses, quiet now but growing louder with dreadful speed.

  He set himself. Take one out with the spear, he thought, then drag another one off his horse and stab him. After that—if he still lived after that—he’d see what other damage he could do.

  “Won’t be long now, lads,” Idalkos said, calm as if the villagers were drawn up for parade. “We’ll yell ‘Phos!’ again, just like we did the first time, and pray for the good god to watch over us.”

  “Phos!” That was not one of the farmers standing in ragged line in front of their houses. It was the lookout. He sounded so wild and shrill that Krispos wondered if he had lost his mind. Then the man said, “They’re not Kubratoi, they’re Videssian troopers!”

  For a moment, the villagers stared at one another, as if the lookout had shouted in a foreign tongue. Then they cheered louder than they had after they first beat the Kubratoi. Idalkos’ voice rose above the rest. “Stankos!” he said. “Stankos brought us our soldiers back!”

  “Stankos!” everyone shouted. “Hurrah for Stankos!” “Good old Stankos!”

  Stankos, Krispos thought, was getting more praise jammed into a few minutes than he’d had in the past five years. Krispos shouted the farmer’s name, too, over and over, till his throat turned raw. He had stared death in the face since the lookout called. Nothing could ever frighten him worse. Now he, also, knew what reprieve felt like.

  Before long, the Videssian cavalrymen pounded into the village. Stankos was with them, riding a borrowed horse. Half a dozen farmers pulled him off the beast, as if he were a Kubrati. The pounding he got was almost as hard as if he had been.

  Krispos quickly counted the troopers. As best he could tell, there were seventy-one of them. So much for the lookout’s frightened hundreds and hundreds, he thought.

  The horsemen’s captain bemusedly watched the villagers caper about. “You don’t seem to have much need for us,” he remarked.

  “No, sir.” Idalkos stiffened to attention. “We thought we did, when we didn’t know for sure how many Kubratoi were about. You gave us a bad turn there—our lookout mistook you for a band of the wild men.”

  “By the bodies, I saw you’d dealt with the ones you found,” the captain said. “Far as we know, that’s the lot of them. I’d say they were just out for a little thievery. There’s no general invasion, or anything like that.”

  A small band operating on its own, Krispos thought. The day he first picked up a sword, that was what Varades had told him the peasants might be able to handle. The veteran had known what he was talking about.

  The Videssian captain turned to a priest beside him. “Looks like we won’t need you today, Gelasios, except maybe for a prayer of thanksgiving.”

  “Nor am I sorry,” Gelasios answered. “I can heal wounded men, aye, but I also think on the suffering they endure before I come to them, so I am just as well pleased not to ply my trade.”

  “Sir!” Krispos said. He had to repeat himself before the priest looked his way. “You’re a healer, holy sir?”

  “What of it, young man?” Gelasios said. “Phos be praised, you seem hale enough.”

  “Not me,” Krispos said impatiently. “My father. This way.”

  Without looking to see whether Gelasios followed, he hurried toward his house. When he threw open the door, a new smell came out with the usual odors of stale smoke and food, a sweetish, sickly smell that made his stomach want to turn over.

  “Yes, I see,” Gelasios murmured at Krispos’ elbow. The priest’s nostrils flared wide, as if to gauge from the scent of corruption how great a challenge he faced. He went inside, stooping a little to get through the doorway. Now it was Krispos’ turn to follow him.

  Gelasios stooped beside Phostis, who lay near the edge of the straw bedding. Bright with fever, Phostis’ eyes stared through the priest. Krispos bit his lip. In those sunken eyes, in the way his father’s skin clung tight to bones beneath it, he saw the outline of coming death.

  If Gelasios saw it, too, he gave no sign. He pulled Phostis’ tunic aside, peeled off the latest worthless poultice to examine the wound. With the poultice came a thick wave of that rotting smell. Krispos took an involuntary step backward, then checked, hating himself—what was he doing, retreating from his father?

  “It’s all right, lad,” Gelasios said absently, the first sign since he’d come into the house that he remembered Krispos was with him. He forgot him again, an instant later, and seemed to forget Phostis, too. His eyes went upward, as if to see the sun through the thatched roof of the cottage. “We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the great and good mind,” he intoned, “by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

  Krispos echoed his prayer. It was the only one he knew all the way through; everyone in the whole Empire, he supposed, had Phos’ creed by heart.

  Gelasios said the prayer again, and again, and again. The priest’s breathing grew slow and deep and steady. His eyes slid shut, but Krispos was somehow sure he remained very much aware of self and surroundings. Then, without warning, Gelasios reached out and seized Phostis’ wounded shoulder.

  The priest’s hands were not gentle. Krispos expected his father to shriek at that rough treatment, but Phostis lay still, locked in his fever dream. Though Gelasios no longer prayed aloud, his breathing kept the same rhythm he had established.

  Krispos looked from the priest’s set face to his hands, and to the wound beneath them. The hair on his arms and at the nape of his neck suddenly prickled with awe—as he watched, that gaping, pus-filled gash began to close.

  When only a thin, pale scar remained, Gelasios lifted his hands away from Phostis’ shoulder. The flow of healing that had passed from him to Krispos’ father stopped with almost audible abruptness. Gelasios tried to rise; he staggered, as if he felt the force of that separation.

  “Wine,” he muttered hoarsely. “I am fordone.”

  Only then did Krispos realize how much energy the healing had drained from Gelasios. He knew he should rush to fulfill the priest’s request, but he could not, not at once. He was looking at his father. Phostis’ eyes met his, and there was reason in them. “Get him his wine, son,” Phostis said, “and while you’re at it, you might bring some for me.”

  “Yes, Father, of course. And I pray your pardon, holy sir.
” Krispos was glad for an excuse to rummage for clean cups and the best skin of wine in the house: it meant no one would have to see the tears on his face.

  “Phos’ blessings on you, lad,” Gelasios said. Though the wine put some color back in his face, he still moved stiffly, as if he had aged twenty years in the few minutes he’d needed to heal Phostis. Seeing the concern on Krispos’ face, he managed a wry chuckle. “I’m not quite so feeble as I appear—a meal and good night’s sleep, and I’ll be well enough. Even without, at need I could heal another man now, likely two, and take no lasting harm.”

  Too abashed to speak, Krispos only nodded. His father said, “I just praise Phos you were here to heal me, holy sir. I do thank you for it.” He twisted his head so he could peer down at his shoulder and at the wound there that, by the look of it, could have been five years old. “Isn’t that fine?” he said to no one in particular.

  He stood, more smoothly than Gelasios had. They walked out into the sunlight together. The men of the village raised a cheer to see Phostis returned to health. Somebody called, “And Tatze would have been such a tempting widow, too!” They all laughed, Phostis louder than anyone.

  Krispos came out behind the two older men. While most of the villagers were still making much of his father, Idalkos beckoned to him. The veteran had been talking with the commander of the Videssian cavalry force. “I’ve told this gentleman—his name is Manganes—something about you,” he said to Krispos. “He says—”

  “Let me put it to him myself,” Manganes said crisply. “From what your fellow villager here says, Krispos—do I have your name right?—you sound like a soldier the imperial army could use. I’d even offer you, hmm, a five goldpiece enlistment bonus if you rode back to Imbros with us now.”

  Without hesitating, Krispos shook his head. “Here I stay, sir, all the more so since, by your kindness and Gelasios’ healing magic, my father has been restored to me.”

  “As you wish, young man,” Manganes said. He and Idalkos both sighed.

  Chapter III

  KRISPOS CAME BACK FROM THE FIELDS ONE HOT, STICKY summer afternoon to find his mother, his sisters, and most of the other village women gathered round a peddler who was showing off a fine collection of copper pots. “Aye, these’ll last you a lifetime, ladies, may the ice take me if I lie,” the fellow said. He whacked one with his walking stick. Several women jumped at the clatter. The peddler held up the pot. “See? Not a dent in it! Made to last, like I said. None of this cheap tinker’s work you see too often these days. And they’re not too dear, either. I ask only three in silver, the eighth part of a goldpiece—”

  Krispos waved to Evdokia, but she did not notice him. She was as caught up as any of the others by the peddler’s mesmerizing pitch. Krispos walked on, a trifle miffed. He still wasn’t used to her being out of the house, though she’d married Domokos nearly a year ago. She was eighteen now, but unless he made a conscious effort not to, he still thought of her as a little girl.

  Of course, he was twenty-one himself, and the older men in the village still called him “lad” a lot of the time. No one paid any attention to change until it hit him in the head, he thought, chuckling wryly.

  “Dear ladies, these pots—” The peddler broke off with a squeak that was no part of his regular sales pitch. Beneath his tan, blood mounted to his cheeks. “Do excuse me, ladies, I pray.” His walk toward the woods quickly turned into an undignified dash. The women clucked sympathetically. Krispos had all he could do not to guffaw.

  The peddler emerged a few minutes later. He paused at the well to draw up the bucket and take a long drink. “Your pardon,” he said as he came back to his pots. “I seem to have picked up a touch of the flux. Where was I, now?”

  He went back to his spiel with almost as much verve as he’d shown before. Krispos stood around and listened. He didn’t intend to sell pots, but he had some piglets he was fattening up to take to market at Imbros soon, and the peddler’s technique was worth studying.

  Not much later, though, the man had to interrupt himself again. This time he went for the woods at a dead run. He did not look happy when he returned; his face was nearer gray than red.

  “Ladies, much as I enjoy telling you about my wares, I think the time has come to get down to selling, before I embarrass myself further,” he said.

  He looked unhappy again through the bargaining that followed. The breaks in his talk had weakened his hold on the village women, and they dickered harder than he would have liked. He was shaking his head as he loaded pots back onto his mule.

  “Here, stay for supper with us,” one of the women called. “You shouldn’t set out on the road so downcast.”

  The peddler managed a smile and a low bow. “You’re too kind to a traveling man. Thank you.” Before he got his bowl of stew, though, he needed to rush off to relieve himself twice more.

  “I do hope he’s well,” Tatze said that evening to Phostis and Krispos.

  A scream jerked the village awake the next morning. Krispos came running out of his house spear in hand, wondering who’d set upon whom. The woman who had invited the trader to stay over stood by his bedroll, horror on her face. Along with several other men, Krispos ran toward her. Had the wretch repaid her kindness by trying to rape her?

  She screamed again. Krispos noticed she was fully clothed. Then, as she had, he looked down at the bedroll. “Phos,” he whispered. His stomach churned. He was glad it was empty; had he had breakfast, he would have lost it.

  The peddler was dead. He looked shrunken in on himself, and bruised; great violet blotches discolored his skin. From the way the blankets of the bedroll were drenched and stinking, he seemed to have voided all the moisture from his body in a dreadful fit of diarrhea.

  “Magic,” Tzykalas the cobbler said. “Evil magic.” His hand made the sun-sign on his breast. Krispos nodded, and he was not the only one. He could imagine nothing natural that would result in such gruesome dissolution of a man.

  “No, not magic,” Varades said. The veteran’s beard had been white for years, but Krispos had never thought of him as old till this moment. Now he not only looked his years, he sounded them, as well; his voice quivered as he went on, “This is worse than magic.”

  “What could be worse than magic?” three men asked at once.

  “Cholera.”

  To Krispos it was only a word. By the way other villagers shook their heads, it meant little more to them. Varades filled them in. “I only saw it once, the good god be thanked, when we were campaigning against the Makurani in the west maybe thirty years ago, but that once was enough to last me a lifetime. It went through our army harder than any three battles—through the enemy the same way, I suppose, or they would’ve just walked over us.”

  Krispos looked from the veteran to the peddler’s twisted, ruined corpse. He did not want to ask the next question: “It’s…catching, then?”

  “Aye.” Varades seemed to pull himself together. “We burned the bodies of those that died of it. That slowed the spread, or we thought it did. I suppose we ought to do it for this poor bugger here. Something else we ought to do, too.”

  “What’s that?” Krispos said.

  “Fast as we can, ride to Imbros and fetch back a priest who knows healing. I think we’re going to need one.”

  SMOKE FROM THE PEDDLER’S PYRE ROSE TO THE SKY. THE VILLAGERS’ prayers to Phos rose with it. As he had four years earlier when the Kubratoi came, Stankos set off for Imbros. This time, instead of a mule, he rode one of the horses captured from the wild men.

  But for his being gone, and for the black, burned place on the village green, life went on as before. If other people worried every time they felt a call of nature, as Krispos did, they did not talk about it.

  Five days, Krispos thought. Maybe a little less, because Stankos was on a horse now and could get to Imbros faster. Maybe a little more, because a priest might not ride back with the same grim urgency the Videssian troopers had shown—but Phos knew that urgency was real
.

  The healer-priest arrived on the morning of the sixth day after Stankos rode out of the village. He was three days behind the cholera. By the time he got there, the villagers had burned three more bodies, one the unfortunate woman who had asked the peddler to stay. More people were sick, diarrhea pouring out of them, their lips blue, their skin dry and cold. Some suffered from pain and cramps in their arms and legs, others did not. Out of all of them, though, flowed that endless stream of watery stool.

  When he saw the victims who still lived, the priest made the sun-circle over his heart. “I had prayed your man here was wrong,” he said, “but I see my prayer was not answered. In truth, this is cholera.”

  “Can you heal it?” Zoranne cried, fear and desperation in her voice—Yphantes lay in his own muck outside their cottage. “Oh, Phos, can you heal it?”

  “For as long as the lord with the great and good mind gives me strength,” the priest declared. Without stopping even to give his name, he hurried after her. The healthy villagers followed.

  “He’s called Mokios,” Stankos said as he trooped along with the rest of them. “Aii, my arse is sore!” he added, rubbing the afflicted portion of his anatomy.

  Mokios knelt beside Yphantes, who feebly tried to make the sun-sign when he recognized a priest. “Never mind that now,” the priest said gently. He pushed aside the villager’s befouled tunic, set hands on his belly. Then, as Gelasios had when healing Krispos’ father, he recited Phos’ creed over and over, focusing all his will and energy on the suffering man under his fingers.

  Yphantes showed no external wound, as Phostis had. Thus the marvel of watching him grow well again was not there this time. Whether or not it was visible, though, Krispos could feel the current of healing pass from Mokios to the villager.

  At last the priest took away his hands. He slumped back, weariness etching lines deep into his face. Yphantes sat up. His eyes were sunken but clear. “Water,” he said hoarsely. “By the good god, I’ve never been so dry in my life.”