The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “That’s the way of it when one side breaks,” Mammianos said. “Remember, Agapetos and Mavros paid in this coin for us.”

  “I remember,” Krispos said. “Oh, yes, I remember.”

  The Videssians ranged over the field. They dragged and carried their wounded countrymen back to their healer-priests. Most of the Halogai not yet dead got shorter shrift. Some—those who had been seen to fight with special bravery and those who looked rich enough to be worth ransoming—were spared.

  Horse leeches went here and there, doing what they could for injured animals. Other soldiers went here and there, too, plundering the dead. Piles of Haloga shields, too big and bulky to be of use to horsemen, grew and grew. Krispos saw so many that he ordered a count made, to give him some idea of how many northerners had fallen. He also wondered what his horsemen would do with the war axes and heavy swords they were happily taking away.

  “Some will be inlaid with gold, and so worth something,” Geirrod said when he spoke that thought aloud. “As for the others, well, Majesty, even you southrons deem it worth recalling that you overcame brave men.” Krispos had to nod.

  Burial parties began their work—a pit that would make a mass grave for the fallen Halogai, individual resting places for the far smaller number of Videssians who had died. Krispos told the soldiers to dig a special grave for Tanilis, apart from all the others. “Set a wooden marker over it for now,” he said. “When this land is ours and peaceful once more, the finest marble will be none too good for her.”

  The men counting northern shields came to him with their total: over twelve thousand. He knew fewer Halogai than that had died; some would have discarded their shields to flee the faster. It was still a great total, especially when set against imperial losses, which were under two thousand.

  That evening, as the army rested in camp, Krispos went to see some of the Haloga prisoners. Archers stood guard over them as they dejectedly sat around in their linen drawers and undertunics—their armor was already booty. They stirred with interest as he approached. Some of them glowered at their countrymen who guarded him.

  He ignored that, announcing “I need a man who understands Videssian to listen to my words and take them to your comrades in Pliskavos. Who will do this for me?” Several northerners raised their hands. He chose a solid-looking fellow with gray mixed in his golden hair and beard. He asked the man, “What is your name?”

  “I am Soribulf, Videssian emperor,” the Haloga said, politely but without the elaborate respect imperials used.

  “Well, Soribulf, tell this to your chiefs in Pliskavos: if they yield the city and set free any Videssian prisoners they are holding, I will let them cross to the north shore of the Astris without ordering my fleet to burn their boats.”

  “We are the Halogai,” Soribulf said, drawing himself up proudly. “We do not yield.”

  “If we weren’t already burying them, you could see all the Haloga corpses on today’s field,” Krispos said. “If you don’t yield, every one of you inside Pliskavos will die, too. Do you think we can’t take the town with our siege engines and our ships that shoot fire?”

  Soribulf’s mouth puckered, as if he were chewing on something sour. “How do we trust you not to burn us even so, when we are on the water and cannot ward ourselves?”

  “My word is good,” Krispos said. “Better than that of the evil mage you followed.”

  “Aye, you speak truth there, Videssian emperor. He told us you would burn with the wall, but our warriors were the ones the bright blaze bit. And then after, he helped us no more; some say he fled. I know not the truth of that, but we saw none of him today when swords struck.”

  “Pass on what I say, then, and my warning,” Krispos urged.

  Soribulf swayed back and forth. “He mourns,” a guardsman whispered to Krispos. Soribulf spoke in his own language. The guard translated: “The glory of Haloga arms is dead. Will we now yield ingloriously to Videssos and travel back to our homeland in defeat? Never have we done so—braver to conquer or die.”

  “Die you will, if you fight on,” Krispos said. “Shall I choose someone else as my messenger?”

  “No.” Soribulf returned to the imperial speech. “I will bear your words to my people. Whether they choose to hear, I could not guess.”

  Krispos nodded to a couple of the archers who guarded the Haloga prisoners. “You men take him to the rampart and let him go to Pliskavos.” He turned back to Soribulf. “If your chiefs are willing to speak of yielding, tell them to show a white-painted shield above the central gate first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I shall tell them,” Soribulf said. The guards led him away.

  Krispos sent an order to Kanaris the grand drungarios of the fleet: to have his dromons sailing back and forth on the Astris by dawn, as a warning that the trapped northerners had no way out unless the imperials granted it to them. Then, while the rest of the army celebrated the great victory they had won, Krispos went to bed.

  When he woke the next morning, he looked to the walls of Pliskavos. Halogai marched along them, but he saw no truce shield. Glowering, he ordered the engineers to ready their dart-shooters and stone-throwers. “Don’t make any secret of what you’re doing, either,” he told them.

  The Halogai watched from the walls as the artisans ostentatiously checked the ropes and timbers of their engines, made sure they had plenty of stones and sheaves of outsized arrows close at hand, and squinted toward Pliskavos as if checking range and aim for the catapults. Dew was still damp on the grass when a shield went up over the gate.

  “Well, well.” Krispos let out a long sigh of relief. Even without magic used against his men, storming the town would have been desperately expensive. “Have Progress saddled up for me,” he said to his guardsmen. “I’ll parley with their chief.”

  “Not alone!” the guards said in one voice. “If the foe sallies—”

  “I hadn’t intended to go out there alone,” Krispos answered mildly, “not for fear of treachery and not for my dignity’s sake, either.”

  He approached Pliskavos in the midst of a full company of Haloga guards. Another company, this one of Videssian horse-archers, flanked the guards on either side. The horsemen had arrows nocked and ready in their bows.

  He reined in about a hundred feet from the wall. “Who will speak with me?” he called.

  A Haloga stood atop one of the low stretches of battlement. “I am Ikmor,” he called back. “Those inside will obey me.” His Videssian was good; a moment later he explained why: “Years ago, in my youth, I served in the city as guard to the Avtokrator Rhaptes. I learned your speech then.”

  “You served Anthimos’ father, eh? Good enough,” Krispos said. “Soribulf brought you my terms. Will you take them, or will you go on with a fight you cannot win?”

  “You are a hard man, Videssian Emperor, harder than Rhaptes who was,” Ikmor answered. “I grieved the whole night long at the ruin of our grand army, struggling with my spirit over whether to yield or battle on. But I saw in the end that I must give over, though it is bitter as wormwood to me. Yet a war leader must not surrender to sorrow, but try in every way to save the lives of the warriors under him.”

  “Spoken like a wise man,” Krispos said. Spoken like a man who indeed spent time in Videssos, he thought. A Haloga fresh from his native land would have been unlikely to take such a long view.

  “Spoken like a man who finds himself without choice,” Ikmor answered bleakly. “To show I am in earnest, I will send out the captives from your people whom we hold.”

  The Haloga chieftain turned, shouting in his own language. The portcullis beneath him creaked up. One by one dark-haired men came through the gateway, most of them in rags, many pale and thin as only longtime prisoners become. Some rubbed at their eyes, as if unused to sunlight. When they saw the imperial banner that floated above Krispos’ head, they cheered and pelted toward him.

  His own eyes filled with tears. He called to the officer who led the cavalry company.
“Take them back to our camp. Feed them, get clothes for them. Have the healer-priests check them, too, those who aren’t too worn from work with our wounded.” The captain saluted and told off a squad to take charge of the newly released Videssians.

  No sooner was the last imperial out of Pliskavos than the portcullis slammed down again. Ikmor said, “Videssian Emperor, if we come out ourselves, how do we know you will not treat us as…as—” He hesitated, but had to say it: “—as we treated Imbros?”

  “Do you not trust my pledge?” Krispos said.

  “Not in this,” Ikmor answered at once. After a moment’s anger, Krispos reluctantly saw his point: having done deeds that deserved retribution, no wonder the Halogai feared it. Ikmor went on, “Let us come forth in arms and armor, to ward ourselves at need.”

  “No,” Krispos said. “You could start the battle over then, looking to take us by surprise.” He stroked his beard as he thought. “How’s this, Haloga chief? Wear your swords and axes, if you will. But leave shields behind and carry your mail shirts as part of your baggage, rolled up on your backs.”

  It was Ikmor’s turn to ponder. At last he said. “Let it be as you will. We shall need our weapons against the Khamorth nomads as we trek north over the plains to Halogaland.”

  With luck, Krispos thought, the nomads would take a good bite out of the Halogai before they made it back to their own cold country. That might them think twice about moving south against Videssos again. Come to that, he might help luck along. Aloud, he said, “One other thing, brave Ikmor.”

  “What would you, Videssian Emperor?”

  “When you northerners come out of Pliskavos, you will all come through this same gate through which you let out your Videssian prisoners. I want to post wizards there, to make sure Harvas Black-Robe doesn’t sneak out among you.”

  Ikmor’s laugh was unkind. “Then you should have checked the captives, too, eh?” Krispos ground his teeth—the Haloga chieftain was right. Ikmor continued, “But we will do as you say once more, though for our own sake rather than yours. If you do find Harvas, let our axes drink his blood, for he betrayed us.” He spoke in his own tongue to the men on the wall with him. They growled and hefted their weapons in a way that left no doubt of what they thought of Harvas.

  Krispos said, “If you love him so well, why didn’t you turn on him before?”

  “Before, Videssian Emperor, he led us to victory and helped us settle this fine new land. Even a war leader with the soul of a carrion crow will hold his followers thus,” Ikmor said. “But when his fires turned against his own folk, when after that he vanished from our ken instead of staying to battle on as a true man would, he showed us he had not even a carrion crow inside himself, only the splattered white turd one leaves behind after it has fed and flown on.”

  Some of the Halogai on the wall—the ones who followed Videssian, Krispos supposed—nodded vigorously. So did some of the soldiers with Krispos, impressed by Ikmor’s ability to revile without actually cursing.

  “If you agree, Ikmor, we will bring the wizards into place tomorrow,” Krispos said.

  “No, give us four days’ time,” Ikmor answered. “We will use timber from the town to knock together rafts and go out through the river gates to put them at the quays.”

  “If you try to escape on them before the day we agreed to, the dromons will burn you,” Krispos warned.

  “We have seen the fire they fling, the fire they spit. We will hold to these terms, Videssian Emperor.”

  “Good enough.” Krispos gave Ikmor a Videssian salute, clenched fist over his heart. He was not surprised to see the Haloga return it. As quickly as ceremony permitted, or maybe a little quicker, he withdrew to the camp. The first thing he did there was to summon Zaidas.

  By the time he was done talking, the young mage’s face mirrored the concern he knew his own showed. “Aye, Your Majesty, I’ll attend to it directly,” Zaidas said. “It would be a dreadful blow if Harvas the accursed profited thus from the misery of our own people. But if he is among them, I shall sniff him out.” The picture of determination, he started away from the imperial tent.

  “Take a squad of soldiers, in case you need to do more than sniff,” Krispos called after him. Zaidas did not turn around but waved to show he had heard.

  Krispos spent the rest of the day worrying, half afraid he would hear of trouble from where the liberated Videssians sat and ate and talked and marveled at being free, half afraid he wouldn’t because Harvas had managed to outfox Zaidas. But toward sunset Zaidas reported, “He is not among those who are there, Your Majesty. On that I would take oath by the lord with the great and good mind. If no other captives came from Pliskavos, we may rest easy. The officers and men who have dealt with them believe them to be all the ones the Halogai released.”

  “The good god be praised,” Krispos said. He could not be perfectly sure Harvas hadn’t been among the freed captives, but the older he got, the less he was perfectly sure of anything. With a nod toward Zaidas, he said, “Ready yourself and your comrades to study the Haloga when they leave Pliskavos.”

  “We shall be fully prepared,” Zaidas promised. “Harvas hale could hope to stand against us. Harvas as he is after the lady Tanilis smote him”—his voice softened as he spoke her name, but his eyes flashed—“is small beer, as the saying goes. If he is there, we will smoke him out.”

  “Good.” Krispos was not usually vindictive, but he wanted to lay hands on Harvas, to make him suffer for all the suffering he had inflicted on Videssos. Then he remembered a saying himself: “To make rabbit stew, first catch a rabbit.”

  The Halogai inside Pliskavos gave no sign of breaking the terms to which Ikmor had agreed. Kanaris brought word that the northerners really were building rafts. All the same Krispos held off sending word of his victory south to the city. Once he’d caught his rabbit—or, in this case, seen it across the Astris—would be time enough.

  On the fourth morning, he ordered his army to advance on Pliskavos. The soldiers came fully armed and ready for battle. He had strong forces covering each gate, not merely the one through which Ikmor had promised the Halogai would march. Mammianos nodded at that. “If we show ’em we’re set for everything, they’re less likely to try anything.”

  Zaidas and the rest of the wizards took their place outside the central gate. They waved to Krispos to show they were ready. He peered into the town through the grid of the portcullis. A lot of men looked to be lined up there. Then the portcullis rose, screeching in its track every inch of the way.

  One man came through alone. He tramped past the Videssian mages without sparing them a glance and made straight for the imperial banner. He saluted Krispos. “I am Ikmor. For my folk I stand before you. Do as you will with me if we play you false.”

  “Go with your people,” Krispos said. “I did not ask this of you.”

  “I know that. I give it to you, for my honor’s sake. I shall stay.”

  Krispos had learned better than to argue about a Haloga’s prickly sense of honor. “As you will, northern sir.” He undid his canteen, swigged, and passed it to Ikmor. “Share wine with me.”

  “Aye.” Ikmor drank. A couple of drops splashed on his white tunic, which was already none too clean. The Haloga was a well-made man of middle height, snub-nosed and gray-eyed. He was bald on top of his head, but let the hair above his ears grow long. His mustaches were also long, though the rest of his beard was rather thin. In each ear he wore a thick gold ring set with pearls—Iakovitzes would have wanted a pair of them, Krispos thought irrelevantly. When he handed the canteen back to Krispos, it was empty.

  The Halogai filed out of Pliskavos a few at a time, walking between Zaidas and the other wizards. Most of the northerners made Ikmor seem immaculate by comparison. More than a few showed the marks of burns from when the wall caught fire, wounds from the latest battle, or both. They glared at the imperials who had overcome them, as if they still could not believe the campaign had gone against them.

 
Looking at them, Krispos also wondered how he’d won. The Halogai were big, fierce men who might have been specially made for war. Fighting came less naturally to Videssians. In the end, though, trained skill had overcome ferocity.

  Mammianos was thinking along similar lines. He remarked, “They want another chance at us. You can see it in their eyes.”

  “They won’t have such an easy time trying again,” Krispos answered. “Now that we rule all the way up to the Astris again, I expect we’ll keep a flotilla of dromons patrolling the river. I wouldn’t want to try crossing it in the face of them.”

  He spoke as much to Ikmor as to Mammianos. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Haloga chief’s mouth turn down. The message had got through, then.

  A few minutes later a warrior broke ranks and strode toward Krispos. He touched his sword. His guardsmen tensed, readying themselves to cut the fellow down. But he paused at a safe distance and spoke loudly in his own language. Krispos glanced at Ikmor. “What does he say?”

  Ikmor looked even less happy. “He wants to take service with you, Videssian Emperor.”

  “What? Why?”

  Ikmor spoke to the Haloga, then listened to his reply. “He says his name is Odd the son of Aki, and that he will only fight among the best soldiers in the world. Till now he thought those were his own people, but you have beaten us, so he must have been wrong.”

  “For that I’ll find him a place,” Krispos said, grinning. Ikmor translated. Odd the son of Aki dipped his head to Krispos, then stepped aside. A Videssian officer took charge of him.

  As the day went on, more Halogai broke ranks and asked leave to join the imperial army. Most of them gave the same reason Odd had. By the time the last northerner filed out of Pliskavos, Krispos found he had recruited a good-sized company. Ikmor turned his back on the men who had gone over.

  The Halogai marched around Pliskavos toward the quays. More evidence of imperial might awaited them there: Kanaris’ warships, holding their place against the current of the Astris like so many sparrowhawks hovering above a mousehole.