The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  Some time toward morning, a tiny crunch made him open his eyes yet again. He was frowning even as he came fully awake—the crunch had sounded very close, as if it was inside the tent. A servant who disturbed him in the middle of the night—especially the middle of this miserable night—would regret the day he was born.

  But the man crouching not three paces away was no servant of his. He was all in black—even his face was blacked, likely with charcoal. His right hand held a long knife. And under one of his black boots lay the crushed remains of one of Trokoundos’ charms. Had he not trod on it, Krispos would never have known he was there until that knife slid between his ribs or across his throat.

  The knifeman’s dark face twisted in dismay as he saw Krispos wake. Krispos’ face twisted, too. The assassin sprang toward him. Krispos flung his coverlet in the fellow’s face and shouted as loud as he could. Outside the tent, his Haloga guard also cried out.

  While the assassin was clawing free of the coverlet, Krispos seized his knife arm with both hands. His foe kicked him in the shin, hard enough to make his teeth click together in anguish. He tried to knee the knifeman in the crotch. The fellow twisted to one side and took the blow on the point of his hip.

  With a sudden wrench, he tried to break Krispos’ grip on his wrist. But Krispos had wrestled since before his beard came in. He hung on grimly. The assassin could do what he pleased, so long as he did not get that dagger free.

  Thunnk! The abrupt sound of blade biting into flesh filled Krispos’ ears and seemed to fill the whole tent. Hot blood sprayed his belly. The assassin convulsed in his arms. A latrine stench said the man’s bowels had let go. The knife dropped from his hands. He crumpled to the ground.

  “Majesty!” Vagn cried, horror on his face as he saw Krispos spattered with blood. “Are you hale, Majesty?”

  “If my leg’s not broken, yes,” Krispos said, giving it a gingerly try. The pain did not get worse, so he supposed he’d taken no real damage. He looked down at the knifeman and at the spreading pool of blood. He whistled softly. “By the good god, Vagn, you almost cut him in two.”

  Instead of warming to the praise, the Haloga hung his head. He thrust his dripping axe into Krispos’ hands. “Kill me now, Majesty, I beg you, for I failed to ward you from this, this—” His Videssian failed him; to show what he meant, he bent down and spat in the dead assassin’s face. “Kill me, I beg you.”

  Krispos saw he meant it. “I’ll do no such thing,” he said.

  “Then I have no honor.” Vagn drew himself up, absolute determination on his face. “Since you do not grant me this boon, I shall slay myself.”

  “No, you—” Krispos stopped before he called Vagn an idiot. Filled with shame as he was, the northerner would only bear up under insults like a man bearing up under archery and would think he deserved each wound he took. Krispos tried to get the shock of battling the assassin out of his mind, tried to think clearly. The harsh Haloga notion of honor served him well most of the time; now he had to find a way around it. He said, “If you didn’t ward me, who did? The knifeman lies dead at your feet. I didn’t kill him.”

  Vagn shook his head. “It means nothing. Never should he have come into this tent.”

  “You were at the front. He must have got in at the back, under the canvas.” Krispos looked at the assassin’s contorted body. He thought about what it must have taken, even dressed in clothes that left him part of the night, to come down from the fortress and sneak through the enemy camp to its very heart. “In his own way, he was a brave man.”

  Vagn spat again. “He was a skulking murderer and should have had worse and slower than I gave him. Please, Majesty, I beg once more, slay me, that I may die clean.”

  “No, curse it!” Krispos said. Vagn turned and walked to the tent flap. If he left, Krispos was sure he would never return alive. He said quickly, “Here, wait. I know what I’ll do—I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself in your own eyes.”

  “In no way can I do that,” Vagn declared.

  “Hear me out,” Krispos said. When Vagn took another step toward the flap, he snapped, “I order you to listen.” Reluctantly the Haloga stopped. Krispos went on, “Here’s what I’d have you do: first, take this man’s head. Then, unarmored if you like, carry it up to the gates of Antigonos and leave it there to show Petronas the fate his assassin earned. Will that give you back your honor?”

  Vagn was some time silent, which only made the growing hubbub outside the imperial tent seem louder. Then, with a grunt, the Haloga chopped at the knifeman’s neck. The roof of the tent was too low to let him take big, full swings with his axe, so the beheading required several strokes.

  Krispos turned away from the gory job. He threw on a robe and went out to show the army he was still alive. The men whom his outcry had aroused shouted furiously when he told how the assassin had crept into his tent. He was just finishing the tale when Vagn emerged, holding the man’s head by the hair. The soldiers let out such a lusty cheer that the guardsman blinked in surprise. Their approval seemed to reach him where Krispos’ had not; as the cheering went on and on, he stood taller and straighter. Without a word, he began to tramp toward the fortress of Antigonos.

  “Wait,” Krispos called. “Do it by daylight, so Petronas can see just what gift you bring him.”

  “Aye,” Vagn said after a moment’s thought. “I will wait.” He set down the assassin’s head, lightly prodding it with his foot. “So will he.” The joke struck Krispos as being in poor taste, but he was glad to hear the Haloga make it.

  Trokoundos plucked at Krispos’ sleeve. “We were right in guessing Petronas aimed to treacherously slay you,” he said, “wrong only in his choice of stealth over sorcery. But had we relied on his using stealth, he surely would have tried with magic.”

  “I suppose so,” Krispos said. “And as for that, you can cheer up. Without your magecraft, I’d be a dead man right now.”

  “What do you mean?” Trokoundos scratched his shaven head. “After all, Petronas did but send a simple knifeman against you.”

  “I know, but if the fellow hadn’t stepped on one of those charms you insisted on scattering everywhere, I never would have woke up in time to yell.”

  “Happy to be of service, Your Majesty,” Trokoundos said in a strangled voice. Then he saw how hard Krispos’ face was set against laughter. He allowed himself a dry chuckle or two, but still maintained his dignity.

  Too bad for him, Krispos thought. He laughed out loud.

  WHEN THE SIEGE TRAIN REACHED THE FORTRESS OF ANTIGONOS, Krispos watched the soldiers on the walls watching his artisans assemble the frames for stone-throwing engines, the sheds that would protect the men who swung rams against stones or boiling oil from above.

  The assassin’s head still lay outside the gate. Petronas’ men had let Vagn come and go. By now even the flies had tired of it.

  As soon as the first catapult was done, the craftsmen who had built it recruited a squad of common soldiers to drag up a large stone and set it in the leathern sling at the end of the machine’s throwing arm. Winches creaked as the crew tightened the ropes that gave the catapult its hurling power.

  The throwing arm jerked forward. The catapult bucked. The stone flew through the air. It crashed against the wall of the fortress with a noise like thunder. The soldiers began to haul another rock into place.

  Krispos sent a runner to the engines’ crew with a single word: “Wait.” Then one of his men advanced toward the fortress with a white-painted shield of truce. After some shouting back and forth, Petronas came up to the battlements.

  “What do you want of me?” he called to Krispos, or rather toward Krispos’ banner. As at the last parley, his wizard amplified his voice to carry so far.

  Trokoundos stood by Krispos to perform the same service for him. “I want you to take a good look around, Petronas. Look carefully—I give you this last chance to yield and save your life. See the engines all around. The rams and stone-throwers will pound down your wal
ls while the dart-shooters pick off your men from farther than they can shoot back.”

  Petronas shook his fist. “I told you I would never yield to you!”

  “Look around,” Krispos said again. “You’re a soldier, Petronas. Look around and see what chance you have of holding out. I tell you this: once we breach your walls—and we will—we’ll show no mercy to you or anyone else.” Maybe, he thought, Petronas’ men would force him to give up even if he did not want to.

  But Petronas led his tiny empire still. He made a slow circuit of the wall, then returned at last to the spot from which he had set out. “I see the engines,” he said. By his tone, he might have been discussing the heat of the day.

  “What will you do, Petronas?” Krispos asked.

  Petronas did not answer, not with words. He scrambled up from the walkway to the wall itself and stood there for most of a minute looking out at the broad expanse of land that, so unaccountably, he did not rule. Then, slowly and deliberately, with the same care he gave to everything he did, he dove off.

  Inside and outside the fortress of Antigonos, men cried out in dismay. But when some of Krispos’ soldiers rushed toward the crumpled shape at the base of the wall, Petronas’ men shot at them. “The truce is still good,” Krispos shouted. “We won’t hurt him further, by the good god—we’ll save him if we can.”

  “There’s a foolish promise,” Mammianos observed. “Better to put him out of his misery and have done. I daresay that’s what he’d want.”

  Krispos realized he was right. The pledge, though, was enough to give the rebels an excuse to hold their fire. When his own men did nothing but crowd round Petronas, Krispos thought they were only showing their share of Mammianos’ rough wisdom. Then a sweating, panting trooper ran up to him and gasped out, “Majesty, he landed on his head, poor sod.”

  Of itself, Krispos’ hand shaped the sun-circle over his heart. “The war is over,” he said. He did not know what to feel. Relief, yes, that so dangerous a foe was gone. But Petronas had also raised him high, in his own household and then in Anthimos’. That had been in Petronas’ interest, too, but Krispos could not help remembering it, could not help remembering the years in which he and Petronas had worked together to manage Anthimos. He sketched the sun-sign again. “I would have let him live,” he murmured, as much to himself as to the men around him.

  “He gave you his answer to that,” Mammianos said. Krispos had to nod.

  Without their leader, Petronas’ men felt the urge to save their lives. The strong gate to the fortress of Antigonos opened. A soldier came out with a shield of truce. The rest of the garrison filed slowly after him. Krispos sent in troopers to make Antigonos his own once more.

  The gleam of a shaven pate caught his eye. He smiled, not altogether kindly. To his bodyguards, he said, “Fetch me Gnatios.”

  Now in sandals and a simple blue monk’s robe rather than the patriarchal regalia Krispos would have bet he’d had inside the fortress, Gnatios looked small, frail, and frightened between the two burly Halogai who marched him away from his fellows. He cast himself down on the ground in front of Krispos. “May Your Majesty’s will be done with me,” he said, not lifting his face from the dust.

  “Get up, holy sir,” Krispos said. As Gnatios rose, he went on, “You would have done better to keep faith with me. You would still wear the blue boots now, not Pyrrhos.”

  A spark of malicious amusement flared in Gnatios’ eyes. “From all I’ve heard, Majesty, your patriarch has not succeeded in delighting you.”

  “He’s not betrayed me, either,” Krispos said coldly.

  Gnatios wilted again. “What will you do with me, Your Majesty?” His voice was tiny.

  “Taking your head here and now would likely cause me more scandal than you’re worth. I think I’ll bring you back to the city. Recant—say, in the Amphitheater, with enough people watching so you can’t go back on your word again—and publicly recognize Pyrrhos as patriarch, and for all of me you can live out the rest of your days in the monastery of the holy Skirios.”

  Gnatios bowed in submission. Krispos had been sure he would. Pyrrhos now, Pyrrhos would have gone to the headsman singing hymns before he changed his views by the breadth of a fingernail paring. That made him stronger than Gnatios; Krispos was less ready to say it made him better. It certainly made him harder to work with.

  “If ever you’re outside the monastery without written leave from me and Pyrrhos both, Gnatios, you’ll meet the man with the axe then and there,” Krispos warned.

  “That walls me up for life,” Gnatios said, a last, faint protest.

  “Likely it does.” Krispos folded his arms. He was ready to summon an executioner at another word from Gnatios. Gnatios saw that. He bit his lip till a bead of blood showed at the corner of his mouth, but he nodded.

  “Take him away,” Krispos told the Halogai. “While you’re about it, put him in irons.” Gnatios made an indignant noise. Krispos ignored it, continuing, “He’s already escaped once, so I’d sooner not give him another chance.” Then he turned to Gnatios. “Holy sir, I pledged I would not harm you. I said nothing of your dignity.”

  “I can see why,” Gnatios said resentfully.

  “A chopped dignity grows back better than a chopped neck,” Krispos said. “Remember that. Soon enough you’ll be back at your chronicle.”

  “There is that.” Krispos was amused to see Gnatios brighten at the thought. Political priest and born intriguer though he was, he was also a true scholar. He went off with the Halogai without another word of complaint.

  Krispos scanned the men still emerging from the fortress of Antigonos. When at last they stopped coming, he frowned. He walked toward them. Halogai fell in around him. “Where’s Petronas’ wizard?” he demanded.

  The men looked around among themselves, then back toward the fortress. “Skeparnas?” one said with a shrug. “I thought he was with us, but he doesn’t seem to be.” Others spoke up in agreement.

  “I want him,” Krispos said. He wondered if he looked as savagely eager as he felt. Petronas’ wizard had cost him a season of lying in bed limp as a dead fish; only Trokoundos’ countermagic kept the fellow from taking his life. Sorcery that aimed at causing death was a capital offense.

  When Krispos summoned him, Trokoundos studied with narrowed eyes the group of ragged, none too clean men who had come out of the fortress. “He might be hiding in plain sight,” he explained to Krispos, “using another man’s semblance to keep from being seen.”

  The mage took out two coins. “The one in my left hand is gilded lead. When I touch it against the true goldpiece in my right hand while reciting the proper spell, by the law of similarity other counterfeits will also be exposed.”

  He began to chant, then touched the two coins, false and true, together. A couple of men’s hair suddenly went from black to gray, which made the Halogai round Krispos guffaw. But other than that, no one’s features changed. “He is not here,” Trokoundos said. He frowned, his eyes suddenly doubtful. “I do not think he is here—”

  He touched the coins of gold and lead against each other once more and held them in his closed fist. Now he used a new chant, harsh and sonorous, insisting, demanding.

  “By the good god,” Krispos whispered. In the crowd of soldiers and others who had come out of the fortress, one man’s features were running like wax over a fire. Before his eyes, the fellow grew taller, leaner. Trokoundos let out a hoarse shout of triumph.

  The disguised wizard’s face worked horribly as he realized he was discovered. His talonlike fingers stabbed at Trokoundos. The smaller mage groaned and staggered; goldpiece and lead counterfeit fell to the ground. But Trokoundos, too, was a master mage: had he been less, Anthimos would never have chosen him as instructor in the sorcerous arts. He braced himself against empty air and fought back. A moment later Skeparnas bent as if under a heavy weight.

  The sorcerers’ duel caught up both men—they were so perfectly matched that neither could work great harm u
nless the other blundered. Neither had any thought for his surroundings; each, of necessity, focused solely on his foe.

  Krispos shoved his Halogai toward Skeparnas. “Capture or slay that man!” The imperial guardsmen obeyed without question or hesitation.

  They were almost upon the wizard before he knew they were there. He started to send a spell their way, but in tearing his attention from Trokoundos, he left himself vulnerable to the other mage’s sorcery. He was screaming as he turned and tried to run. The axes of the Halogai rose and fell. The scream abruptly died.

  Trokoundos lurched like a drunken man. “Wine, someone, I beg,” he croaked. Krispos undid his own canteen and passed it to the mage. Trokoundos drained it dry. He sank to his knees, then to his haunches. Worried, Krispos sat beside him. He had to lean close to hear Trokoundos whisper, “Now I understand what getting caught in an avalanche must be like.”

  “Are you all right?” Krispos asked. “What do you need?”

  “A new carcass, for starters.” With visible effort, Trokoundos drew up the corners of his mouth. “He was strong as a plow mule, was Skeparnas. Had the northerners not distracted him…well, Your Majesty, let me just say I’m glad they did.”

  “So am I.” Krispos glanced over to Skeparnas’ body. The rest of the men from the fortress had pulled back as if the wizard were dead of plague. “I think we can guess his conscience was troubling him.”

  “He didn’t seem anxious to meet you, did he?” Trokoundos’ smile, though still strained, seemed more firmly attached to his face now. He got to his feet, waving off Krispos’ effort to help. Trokoundos’ gaze also went to Skeparnas’ sprawled corpse. He wearily shook his head. “Aye, Your Majesty, I’m very glad the Halogai distracted him.”

  KRISPOS LOOKED OVER THE CATTLE-CROSSING EAST TO VIDESSOS the city. Behind its seawalls, nearly as massive as the great double rampart that shielded its landward side, the city reared on seven hills. Gilded spheres atop the spires of innumerable temples to Phos shone under the warm summer sun, as if they were so many tiny suns themselves.