The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “Even though that means giving up women, as well?” Dara asked slyly. She slid her thigh over till it brushed against his.

  He blinked at her. “Which of us missed the other more?”

  “I don’t know. That we missed each other at all strikes me as a good sign. We have to live with each other; more pleasant if we’re able to enjoy it.”

  “Something to that,” Krispos admitted. He took stock of himself. “If you wait just a bit longer, I might manage another round of proof.”

  “Might you indeed?” Dara got up on hands and knees, bent her head over him. “Maybe I can help speed that wait along.”

  “Maybe you can…Oh, yes.” He reached out to stroke her. Her curls twisted round his fingers like black snakes.

  Later, he lay back and watched the bedchamber grow shadowy as afternoon slid toward evening. Hunger eventually overcame his lassitude. He started to reach up to the scarlet bellpull, then stopped and got into his robe first. He was not Anthimos, after all.

  Moving just as slowly, Dara also dressed. “What will you do after supper?” she asked once he’d told Barsymes what he wanted.

  “Spend the night staring at maps with my generals,” Krispos said. To please her, he tried to sound glum. But he looked forward, not to the campaign that lay ahead, but to the planning that went into it. He’d never seen a map before he came to Videssos the city. That there could be pictures of the world fascinated him; establishing on one of those pictures where he would be day by day gave him a truly imperial feeling of power.

  “Think what you could be doing instead,” Dara said.

  “If you think so, you flatter me,” he told her. “I’m surprised I can walk.” She stuck out her tongue at him. He laughed. Despite the hard news that began it, this had not been a bad day.

  Chapter VI

  KRISPOS SHADED HIS EYES WITH A HAND AS HE LOOKED NORTHWARD. The horizon ahead was still smooth. He sighed and shook his head. “When I start seeing the mountains, I’ll know I’m close to the country where I grew up,” he said.

  “Close also to where the trouble is,” Sarkis observed.

  “Aye.” Krispos’ brief nostalgia deepened to true pain and anger. The summer before, Harvas’ raiders had gone through the village where he’d grown up. His sister, her husband, and their two girls had still lived in the village. No one lived there now.

  Ungreased wheels squeaked—sometimes screamed—as supply wagons rattled along. Horses, mules, and men afoot kicked up choking clouds of dust. Soldiers sang and joked. Why not? Krispos thought. They’re still in their own country. If they sang as they came home again, he would have done something worth remembering.

  Sarkis said, “The riders we sent ahead toward Mavros’ army should get back to us in the next couple of days. Then we’ll know how things stand.”

  “They’ll get back to us in a couple of days if all’s gone well and Mavros has pressed forward,” Mammianos said. “If he’s taken a reverse, they won’t have had so far to travel to meet up with him, so they’ll be back sooner.”

  But none of them—Mammianos, Sarkis, or Krispos—expected the riders to begin coming back that afternoon, the third of their march out from Videssos the city. Yet come back they did, with horses driven to bloody-mouthed exhaustion and with faces grim and drawn. And behind them, first by ones and twos, then in larger groups, came the shattered remains of Mavros’ army.

  Krispos ordered an early halt for his troops as evening neared. Advancing farther would have been like trying to make headway against a strong-flowing stream. A stream, though, did not infect with fear the men who moved against it. Seeing what had befallen their fellows, Krispos’ soldiers warily eyed every lengthening shadow, as if screaming northern warriors might erupt from it at any moment.

  While the army’s healer-priests did what they could for the wounded, Krispos and his generals questioned haler survivors, trying to sift fragments of order from catastrophe. Not much was to be found. A young lieutenant named Zernes told the tale as well as anyone. “Majesty, they caught us by surprise. They waited in the brush along either side of the road south of Imbros and hit us as we passed them by.”

  “By the good god!” Mammianos exploded. “Didn’t you have scouts out?” He muttered something into his beard about puppies who imagined they were generals.

  “The scouts were out,” Zernes insisted. “They were, by the lord with the great and good mind. The Sevastos knew he was not fully trained to command and left all such details to his officers. They might not have been so many Stavrakioi come again, but they knew their craft. The scouts found nothing.”

  Mammianos wheezed laughter at the lieutenant’s youthful indiscretion. Krispos had ears only for the long string of past tenses the man used. “The Sevastos knew? He left these details? Where is Mavros now?”

  “Majesty, on that I cannot take oath,” Zernes said carefully. “But I do not think he was one of the people lucky enough to break free from the trap. And from what we saw, the Halogai wasted time with few prisoners.”

  “May he bask in Phos’ light forevermore,” Mammianos said. He sketched the sun-sign over his breast.

  Mechanically Krispos did the same. The young officer’s words seemed to reach him from far away. Even with the foreboding he’d had since he learned Mavros was on campaign, he could not believe his foster brother dead. Mavros had been always at his side for years, had fought Anthimos with him, had been first to acknowledge him as Avtokrator. How could he be gone?

  Then he found another question, a worse one because it dealt with the living. How was he to tell Tanilis?

  While he grappled with that, Mammianos asked Zernes, “Were you pursued? Or don’t you know, having fled so fast no foes afoot could keep up with you?”

  The lieutenant bristled as he set a hand to the hilt of his saber. He forced himself to ease. “There was no pursuit, excellent sir,” he said icily. “Aye, we were mauled, but we hurt the northerners, too. When they broke off with us, they headed back toward the mountains, not south on our tails.”

  “Something,” Mammianos grunted. “What of Imbros, then?”

  “Excellent sir, that I could not say, for we never reached Imbros,” Zernes answered. “But since Agapetos was beaten north of the town and we to the south, I fear the worst.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. You may go,” Krispos said, trying to make himself function in the face of disaster. First Mavros throwing his life away, now Imbros almost surely lost…Imbros, the only city he’d ever known till he left his village and came south to the capital. He’d sometimes sold pigs there, and thought it a very grand place, though the whole town was not much larger than the plaza of Palamas in Videssos the city.

  “What do we do now, Your Majesty?” Mammianos asked.

  “We go on,” Krispos said. “What other choice have we?”

  AS THE ARMY ADVANCED, SCOUTS NOT ONLY EXAMINED STANDS of brush and other places that might hold an ambush—they also shot arrows into them. Some of the lesser mages who served under Trokoundos rode with the scouting parties to sniff out sorcerous concealments. They found none. As Zernes said, Harvas’ army had headed back to its northern home after crushing Mavros.

  Flocks of ravens and vultures and crows, disturbed from their feasting, rose into the air like black clouds when Krispos’ men came to that dolorous field. The birds circled overhead, screeching and cawing resentfully. “Burial parties,” Krispos ordered.

  “It will cost us the rest of the day,” Mammianos said.

  “Let it. I don’t think we’ll catch them on this side of the frontier anyhow,” Krispos said. Mammianos nodded and passed the command along. As the soldiers began their grim task, a twist of breeze brought Krispos the battlefield stench, worse than he had ever smelled it before. He coughed and shook his head.

  He walked the field despite the stench, to see if he could find Mavros’ body. He could not tell it by robes or fine armor; Harvas’ men had stayed long enough to loot. After several days of hot sun and carrion
birds, no corpse was easy to identify. He saw several that might have been his foster brother, but was sure of none.

  The soldiers were quiet in camp that night, so quiet that Krispos wondered if pausing to bury Mavros’ dead had been wise. A sudden attack might well have broken them. But the night passed peacefully. When morning came, priests led the men in prayers of greeting to Phos’ new-risen sun. Perhaps heartened by that, they seemed in better spirits than they had before.

  Before the morning was very old, a pair of scouts came galloping back to the main body of men. They rode straight to Krispos. Saluting, one said, “Majesty, ahead is something you must see.”

  “What is it?” Krispos asked.

  The scout spat in the dust of the roadway, as if to show his rejection of Skotos. “I won’t dirty my tongue with the words to tell you, Your Majesty. My eyes have been soiled; let my mouth stay clean.” His comrade nodded vigorously. Neither would say more.

  Krispos traded glances with his officers. After a moment he nodded and urged Progress forward. The Halogai of the imperial guard came with him. So did Trokoundos. The wizard muttered to himself, choosing charms and readying them in advance against need.

  “How far is it?” Krispos asked the scouts.

  “Round this bend in the road here, Your Majesty,” answered the horseman who had spoken before. “Just past these oaks.”

  While the fellow was not watching, Krispos made sure his saber was loose in its scabbard. A troop of guardsmen pushed ahead of him as the party swung past the trees. Even so, from atop his horse he could see well enough.

  First he noticed only the bodies, a hundred or so, and that their gear proclaimed them to be Videssian soldiers. Then he saw that each man’s hands had been tied behind his back. The dead soldiers’ feet were toward him, so he needed a few seconds more than he might have otherwise for his eyes to travel beyond the bodies to the neat pyramid of heads that lay beyond them.

  “You see, Your Majesty,” said the scout who liked to talk.

  “I see,” Krispos answered. “I see helpless prisoners butchered for the sport of it.” He clutched Progress’ reins so hard, his knuckles whitened.

  “Butchered, aye. That is well said, Majesty.” Krispos had never heard a Haloga recoil from war and its consequences. Now Geirrod did. Without prompting, the guardsman explained why: “Where is the honor, where even is the rightness, in using captives so? This is the work of one more used to slaying cattle than men.”

  “It’s of a piece with what we’ve seen from Harvas and those who follow him.” Krispos hesitated before he went on, but what he had to say needed saying sooner or later. “Most of those who follow Harvas come out of Halogaland. Will you have qualms about fighting them?”

  The guardsmen shouted angrily. Geirrod said, “Majesty, we knew this. We talked among ourselves, aye we did, on how such a fight might be, swapping axe strokes with our own kind. But no man who could slaughter so, or stand by to see others slaying, is kin of mine.” The other northerners shouted again, this time in loud agreement.

  “Shall we start burying this lot, Majesty?” the scout asked.

  Krispos slowly shook his head. “No. Let the whole army see them, and with them the sort of foe we fight.” He knew he was running a risk. The massacred prisoners had been set in the road to terrify, and his men were none too steady after listening to the survivors from Mavros’ force. But he thought—he hoped—this cold-blooded killing would raise in all his soldiers the same fury he and the Halogai felt.

  A few minutes later the head of the long column rounded that bend in the road. Krispos gave the guards quick orders. They formed up in the roadway and directed the leading horsemen off the track and onto the grass and shrubs that grew alongside. Some of the troopers began to argue until they saw Krispos with the Halogai, also waving them off.

  He watch closely as his men came upon the grisly warning Harvas had left behind. They all stared. Horror filled their faces, as was only natural, but on most outrage soon ousted it. Some soldiers swore, others sketched the sun-sign; not a few did both at once.

  Their eyes swung from the bodies—and from that ghastly pyramid beyond them—to Krispos. He raised his voice. “This is the enemy we have loose in our land. Shall we run back to Videssos the city now, with our tails between our legs, and let him do as he likes in the northlands?”

  “No.” The word came, deep and determined, from many throats at once, like the growl of some enormous wolf. Krispos wished Harvas could have heard it. Soon enough, in effect, he would. Krispos set clenched right fist over his heart to salute his soldiers.

  He stayed by the slain Videssians until the last wagon jounced past. The troops from the middle and back of the column had an idea of what lay ahead of them; if armies traveled at the speed of whispers, they could cross the Empire in a day and a night. But knowing and seeing were not the same. Company by company, men stared at the sorry spectacle—first, even knowing, in disbelief, then with ever-growing anger.

  “Now we may bury them,” Krispos said when everyone had seen. “They’ve given us their last service by showing what our enemy is like.” He saluted the dead men before he rode on to retake his place in the advance.

  The mood in camp that night was savage. No speech Krispos made could have inspired his troops like the fate of their fellows. Hoping against hope, he asked his generals, “Is there any chance we’ll catch up with Harvas’ men on our side of the mountains?”

  Mammianos plucked at his beard as he examined the map. “Hard to say. They’re foot soldiers, so we move faster than they do. But they have some days’ start on us, too.”

  “Much depends on what’s happened at Imbros,” Sarkis added. “If the garrison there still holds firm, that might help delay the raiders’ retreat.”

  “I think Imbros still stands,” Krispos said. “If it had fallen, wouldn’t we be seeing fugitives from the sack, the way we did from Mavros’ army?” Even now, a day after he knew the worst, he found himself forgetting his foster brother was dead, only to be brought up short every so often when he was reminded of it: As if he had taken a wound, he thought, and the injured part pained him every time he tried to use it.

  Rhisoulphos said, “My best guess is that you’re right, Your Majesty. There are always refugees from a city that falls: the lucky; the old; sometimes the young, if an enemy has more mercy than Harvas looks to own.” His mouth tightened as he went on, “That we’ve seen no one from Imbros at all tells me its people are still safe behind their wall.” He waved to a plan of the town. “It seems well enough fortified.”

  “It’s like your holding, Rhisoulphos,” Mammianos said. “On the border, we still need our walls. Some of the towns in the lowlands in the west, though, where they haven’t seen war for a couple of hundred years, they’ve knocked most of ’em down and used the stone for houses.”

  “Fools,” Rhisoulphos said succinctly.

  Krispos turned the talk back to the issue at hand. “Suppose we find Harvas’ men, or some of them, still besieging Imbros? What’s the best way to hurt them then?”

  “Pray to Phos the Lord who made the princes first that we catch them so, Your Majesty,” Sarkis said; the strange epithet he used for the good god made Krispos recall his Vaspurakaner blood. He went on, “If we do, they’ll be smashed between our hammer and an anvil of the garrison.”

  “May it be so,” Krispos said. All the generals murmured in agreement.

  Pragmatic as usual, Rhisoulphos had the last word. “One way or the other, we’ll know for certain in a couple of days.”

  HALF A DAY SOUTH OF IMBROS, THE LAND BEGAN TO LOOK FAMILIAR to Krispos. That was as far as he’d ever traveled, back in the days before he set out for Videssos the city. He took it as a signal to order the army to full battle alert. That brought less change than it might have under other circumstances, for the men had kept themselves ready to fight since they’d seen the slaughtered prisoners.

  Scouts darted ahead to sniff out the enemy. When they return
ed, their news brought a sober smile to Krispos’ face, for they’d spied hundreds, perhaps thousands of people outside Imbros. “What could that be, save Harvas’ besieging force?” he exulted. “We have them!”

  Trumpets shouted. Krispos’ army knew what that meant, knew what it had to mean. The Videssian soldiers, thoroughgoing professionals the lot of them, waved their lances and yowled like so many horse nomads off the steppes of Pardraya. Against a foe like Harvas, even professionals grew eager to fight.

  Smooth with long practice, the troops swung themselves from column to line of battle. Forward! cried horns and drums. The army surged ahead, wild and irresistible as the sea. Officers shouted, warning men to keep horses fresh for combat.

  “We have them!” Krispos said again. He drew his saber and brandished it over his head.

  Mammianos stared, a trifle goggle-eyed at the ferocity the soldiers displayed. “Aye, Majesty, if Harvas truly did sit down in front of Imbros, we just may. I’d not reckoned him so foolish.”

  The general’s words set off a warning bell in Krispos’ mind. Harvas had shown himself cruel and vicious. Never yet, so far as Krispos could see, had he been foolish. Counting on his stupidity now struck Krispos as dangerous.

  He said as much to Mammianos. The fat general looked thoughtful. “I see what you mean, Majesty. Maybe he wants us to come haring along so he can serve us as he did Mavros. If we miss an ambush—”

  “Just what I’m thinking,” Krispos said. He called to the musicians. Soldiers cursed and shouted when At a walk rang out. Krispos yelled for Trokoundos. When the mage rode up, he told him, “I want you out in front of the army. If you can’t sense sorcerous screening for an ambush, no one can.”

  “As may be so, Your Majesty,” Trokoundos answered soberly. “Harvas has uncommon—and unpleasant—magical skill. Nevertheless, I shall do what I can for you.” He clucked to his horse, using reins and his boot heels to urge the animal into a trot. With the rest of the army walking, he was soon up among the scouts. The advance continued, though more slowly than before.