The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “What is it, Father?” Katakolon sounded like a martyr about to be slain for the true faith.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep your trousers on a bit longer, my boy,” Krispos said, at which his son looked as if the fatal dart had just struck home. Ignoring the virtuoso mime performance, Krispos went on, “I need an accounting of the contents of all the storehouses in this town, and I need it tonight. See the excellent Asdrouvallos here; no doubt he’ll have a map to send you on your way from one to the next as fast as you can go.”

  “Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” Asdrouvallos said. Even the short sentence was enough to set him coughing again. By his expression, Katakolon hoped the eparch wouldn’t stop. Unfortunately for him, Asdrouvallos drew in a couple of deep, sobbing breaths and managed to break the spasm. “If the young Majesty will just accompany me—”

  Trapped, Katakolon accompanied him. Krispos watched him go with a certain amount of satisfaction—which, he thought, was more in the way of satisfaction than Katakolon would get tonight: now all three of his sons, however unwillingly, were doing something useful. If only the Thanasioi would yield so readily.

  He feared they wouldn’t. That they’d known just where he was storing his supplies forced him to relearn a lesson in civil war he hadn’t had to worry about since he vanquished Anthimos’ uncle Petronas at the start of his reign: the enemy, thanks to spies in his camp, would know everything he decided almost as soon as he decided it. He’d have to keep moves secret until just before he made them, and so would his officers. He’d have to remind them about that.

  Forgetting his thought of a moment before that all his sons were usefully engaged, he looked around for one to yell at. Then he remembered, and laughed at himself. He also remembered he’d sent Phostis out on precisely that mission. His laugh turned sour. How was he supposed to beat the Thanasioi if he found himself turning senile before he ever met them in battle?

  SARKIS REMINDED PHOSTIS OF A PLUMP BIRD OF PREY. THE Vaspurakaner cavalry commander was one of Krispos’ longtime cronies, and close to Krispos in years—which, to Phostis’ way of thinking, made him about ready for the boneyard. A great hooked beak of a nose protruded from his doughy face like a big rock sticking out of a mud flat. He was munching candied apricots when Phostis came into his quarters, too, which did not improve the young man’s opinion of him.

  As he already had a score of times that afternoon and evening, Phostis repeated the message with which Krispos had charged him; he’d give Krispos no chance to accuse him of shirking a task once accepted. Sarkis paused in his methodical chewing only long enough to shove the bowl of apricots toward him. He shook his head, not quite in disgust but not quite politely, either.

  Sarkis’ heavy-lidded eyes—piggy little eyes, Phostis thought distastefully—glinted in mirth. “Your first campaign, isn’t it, young Majesty?” he said.

  “Yes,” Phostis said shortly. Half the officers he’d seen had asked the same question. Most of them seemed to want to score points off his inexperience.

  But Sarkis just smiled, showing orange bits of apricot between his heavy teeth. “I wasn’t much older than you are now when I first served under your father. He was still learning how to command then; he’d never done it before, you know. And he had to start at the top and make soldiers who’d been leading armies for years obey him. It couldn’t have been easy, but he managed. If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here listening to me flapping my gums.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Phostis said. He knew Krispos had started with nothing and made his way upward largely on his own; his father went on about it often enough. But from his father, it had just seemed like boasting. Sarkis made it feel as if Krispos had accomplished something remarkable, and that he deserved credit for it. Phostis, however, was not inclined to give Krispos credit for anything.

  The Vaspurakaner general went on, “Aye, he’s a fine man, your father. Take after him and you’ll do well.” He swigged from a goblet of wine at his elbow, then breathed potent fumes into Phostis’ face. The throaty accent of his native land grew thicker. “Phos made a mistake when he didn’t let Krispos be born a prince.”

  The folk of Vaspurakan followed Phos, but heretically; they believed the good god had created them first among mankind, and thus they styled themselves princes and princesses. The anathemas Videssian prelates flung their way were one reason most of them were well enough content to see their mountainous land controlled by Markuran, which judged all forms of Phos worship equally false and did not single out Vaspurakaners for persecution. Even so, many folk from Vaspurakan sought their fortune in Videssos as merchants, musicians, and warriors.

  Phostis said, “Sarkis, has my father ever asked you to conform to Videssian usages when you worship?”

  “What’s that?” Sarkis dug a finger into his ear. “Conform, you say? No, never once. If the world won’t conform to us princes, why should we conform ourselves to it?”

  “For the same reason he seeks to bring the Thanasioi to orthodoxy?” By the doubt in his voice, Phostis knew he was asking the question as much of himself as of Sarkis.

  But Sarkis answered it: “He doesn’t persecute princes because we give no trouble outside of our faith. You ask me, the Thanasioi are using religion as an excuse for brigandage. That’s evil on the face of it.”

  Not if the material world is itself the evil, Phostis thought. He kept that to himself. Instead, he said, “I know some Vaspurakaners do take on orthodoxy to help further their careers. You call them Tzatoi in your language, don’t you?”

  “So we do,” Sarkis said. “And do you know what that means?” He waited for Phostis to shake his head, then grinned and boomed, “It means ‘traitors,’ that’s what. We of Vaspurakan are a stubborn breed, and our memories long.”

  “Videssians are much the same,” Phostis said. “When my father set out to reconquer Kubrat, didn’t he take his maps from the imperial archives where they’d lain unused for three hundred years?” He blinked when he noticed he’d used Krispos as an example.

  If Sarkis also noticed, he didn’t remark on it. He said, “Young Majesty, he did just that; I saw those maps with my own eyes when we were planning the campaign, and faded, rat-chewed things they were—though useful nonetheless. But three hundred years—young Majesty, three hundred years are but a fleabite on the arse of time. It’s likely been three hundred eons since Phos shaped Vaspur the Firstborn from the fabric of his will.”

  He grinned impudently at Phostis, as if daring him to cry heresy. Phostis kept his mouth shut; Krispos had baited him too often to make it so easy to get a rise out of him. He did say, “Three hundred years seems a long enough time to me.”

  “Ah, that’s because you’re young,” Sarkis exclaimed. “When I was your age, the years seemed to stretch like chewy candy, and I thought each one would never end. Now I haven’t so much sand left in my glass, and I resent every grain that runs out.”

  “Yes,” Phostis said, though he’d pretty much stopped listening when Sarkis started going on about his being young. He wondered why old men did that so much; it wasn’t as if he could help being the age he was. But if he had a goldpiece for every time he’d heard that’s because you’re young, he was sure he could remit a year’s worth of taxes to every peasant in the Empire.

  Sarkis said, “Well, I’ve kept you here long enough, young Majesty. When you get bored with chatter, just press on. That’s the advantage of rank, you know: you don’t have to put up with people you find tedious.”

  Only my father, Phostis thought: a single exception that covered a lot of ground. But that was not the sort of thought he could share with Sarkis, or indeed with anyone save possibly Digenis. He was somehow sure the priest would understand, though to him any concern not directly related to Phos and the world to come was of secondary importance.

  Having been given an excuse to depart, he took advantage of it.

  Even with an army newly arrived and crowding its streets, Nakoleia seemed a tiny town to anyone used to Vi
dessos the city. Tiny, backwater, provincial…the scornful adjectives came readily to Phostis’ mind. Whether or not they were true, they would stick.

  Nakoleia was sensibly laid out in a grid. He made his way back to Krispos through deepening dusk and streaming soldiers without undue difficulty. His father’s quarters were at the eparch’s residence, across the town square from the chief temple to Phos. Like many throughout the Empire, that building was modeled after the High Temple in the capital. Phostis’ first reaction was that it was a poor, cheap copy. His second, contrary one was to wish fewer goldpieces had been spent on the structure.

  He stopped in his tracks halfway across the square. “By the good god,” he exclaimed, careless of who might hear him, “I’m on my way to being a Thanasiot myself.”

  He wondered why that hadn’t occurred to him sooner. Much of what Digenis preached was identical to the doctrines of the heretical sect, save that he made those doctrines seem virtuous, whereas to Krispos they were base and vicious. Given a choice between his father’s opinions and those of anyone else, Phostis automatically inclined to the latter.

  The irony of his position suddenly struck him. What business had he sallying forth to crush the vicious heretics when he agreed with most of what they taught? He imagined going to Krispos and telling him that. It was the quickest way he could think of to unburden himself of all his worldly goods.

  It would also forfeit the succession if anything would. Suddenly that mattered a great deal. The Avtokrator was a great power in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. If he were Avtokrator, he could guide Videssos toward Digenis’ teachings. If someone stodgy or orthodox—Evripos sprang to mind—began to wear the red boots, persecution would continue. It behooved him, then, not to give Krispos any reason to supplant him.

  With that thought in mind, he hurried across the cobblestones toward the eparch’s mansion. The Halogai newly posted outside it stared suspiciously until they recognized him, then swung up their axes in salute.

  His father, as usual, was wading through documents when he came into the chamber. Krispos looked up with an irritated frown. “What are you doing back here already? I sent you out to—”

  “I know what you sent me out to do,” Phostis said. “I have done it. Here.” He pulled a parchment from the pouch on his belt and threw it down on the desk in front of Krispos. “These are the signatures of the officers to whom I transmitted your order.”

  Krispos leaned back in his seat so he could more easily scan the names. When he looked up, the frown had disappeared. “You did well. Thank you, son. Take the rest of the evening as your own; I have no more tasks for you.”

  “As you say, Father.” Phostis started to walk away.

  The Avtokrator called him back. “Wait. Don’t go off angry. How do you think I’ve slighted you now?”

  The way Krispos put the question only annoyed Phostis more. Forgetting he intended to keep on his father’s good side, he growled, “You might sound happier that I did what you wanted.”

  “Why should I?” Krispos answered. “You did your duty well; I said as much. But the task was not that demanding. Do you want special praise every time you piddle without getting your boots wet?”

  They glowered at each other in mutual incomprehension. Phostis wished he’d just shown Krispos the parchment instead of giving it to him. Then he could have torn it up and thrown it in his face. As it was, he had to content himself with slamming the door behind him as he stamped out.

  Full darkness had fallen by the time he was out on the plaza again. The Haloga guards gave him curious looks, but his face did not encourage questions. Only when he’d put the eparch’s residence well behind him did he realize he had no place to go. He paused, plucked at his beard—a gesture very like his father’s—and tried to figure out what to do next.

  Drinking himself insensible was one obvious answer. Torches blazed in front of all the taverns he could see, and doubtless on ones he couldn’t, as well. He wondered if the innkeepers had imported extra wine from the countryside while the imperial army’s quartermasters brought their supplies into Nakoleia. It wouldn’t have surprised him; to sordid materialists, the arrival of so many thirsty soldiers had to look like a bonanza.

  He didn’t take long to decide against the taverns. He had nothing against wine in its place; it was healthier to drink than water, and less likely to give you the flux. But drunkenness tore the soul away from Phos and left it base and animalistic, easy meat for the temptations of Skotos. The state of his soul mattered a great deal to him at the moment The less he did to corrupt it, the surer his hope of heaven.

  He glanced across the square to the temple. Its entrance was also lit, and men filed in to pray. Some, by the way they walked, had got drunk first. Phostis’ lip curled in contempt. He didn’t want to pray with drunks. He didn’t want to pray in a building modeled after the High Temple, either, not when he discovered himself in sympathy with the Thanasioi.

  A breeze from off the Videssian Sea had picked up with the coming of evening. It was not what sent a chill through him. So long as his father held the throne, he was in deadly danger—had placed himself there, in fact, the instant he understood what Digenis’ preaching implied. The odds that Krispos would turn away from materialism were about as slim as those of oranges sprouting from stalks of barley. Having been born with nothing—as he never tired of repeating—Krispos put about as much faith in things as he did in Phos.

  So what did that leave? Phostis didn’t want to drink and he didn’t want to pray. He didn’t feel like fornicating, either, though the whores of Nakoleia were probably working even harder than the taverners—and probably cheating their customers less.

  In the end, he went back aboard the Triumphant and curled up in the bunk inside his tiny cabin. After a few hours ashore, even the small motion of the ship as it rocked back and forth beside the dock felt strange. Before long, though, it lulled him to sleep.

  HORNS BLARED, PIPES SHRILLED, AND DEEP-TONED DRUMS thumped. Videssos’ banner, gold sunburst on blue, flew tall and proud at the head of the army as it marched forth from Nakoleia’s land gate. Many of the horsemen had tied blue and yellow strips of cloth to their mounts’ manes. The sea breeze stirred them into a fine martial display.

  People packed the walls of Nakoleia. They cheered as the army rode out of the city. Some of the cheers, Krispos thought, had to be sincere. Some were probably even regretful, from tavernkeepers and merchants whose business had soared thanks to the soldiers. And a few—Krispos hoped only a few—were lies from the throats of Thanasioi spying out his strength.

  He turned to Phostis, whose horse stood beside his as they watched the troops ride past. “Go back to Noetos, who commands the rear guard. Tell him to have his men be especially alert to anyone sneaking out of Nakoleia. We don’t want the heretics to know exactly what all we have along with us.”

  “Not everyone leaving the city is sneaking out,” Phostis answered.

  “I know,” Krispos said sourly. Like every army, this one had its camp followers, women and occasional men of easy virtue. Also following the imperial force was a larger number of sutlers and traders than Krispos was happy about. He went on, “What can I do? With our bases at Harasos and Rogmor burned out, I’ll need all the help I can get feeding the troops.”

  “Harasos and Rogmor?” Phostis said, raising an eyebrow. “I’d not heard that.”

  “Then you might be the only one in the whole army who hasn’t.” Krispos gave his eldest an exasperated glare. “Don’t you take any notice of what’s going on around you? They hit both caches while we were still asea; by the good god, they seemed to know what we were up to almost before we did.”

  “How do you suppose they managed to learn where we were storing supplies?” Phostis asked in a curiously neutral voice.

  “As I’ve said over and over”—Krispos rubbed Phostis’ nose in his inattention—“we have traitors among us, too. I wish I knew who they were, by Phos; I’d make them regret their treachery. B
ut that’s the great curse of civil war: the foe looks just like you, and so can hide in your midst. D’you see?”

  “Hm? Oh, yes. Of course, Father.”

  Krispos sniffed. Phostis hadn’t looked as if he was paying attention; his face had a withdrawn, preoccupied expression. If he wouldn’t give heed to something that was liable to get him killed, what would hold his interest? Krispos said, “I really wish I knew how the heretics heard about my plans. They’d have needed some time to plan their attacks, so they must have known my route of march about as soon as I decided on it—maybe even before I decided on it.”

  He’d hoped the little joke would draw some kind of reaction from Phostis, but the youngster only nodded. He turned his horse toward the rear of the army. “I’ll deliver your order to Noetos.”

  “Repeat it back to me first,” Krispos said, wanting to make sure Phostis had done any listening to him at all.

  His eldest reacted to that, with a scowl. He gave back the order in a precise, emotionless voice, then rode away. Krispos stared after him—something about the set of his back wasn’t quite right. Krispos told himself he was imagining things. He’d pushed Phostis too far there, asking him to repeat a command as if he were a raw peasant recruit with manure on his boots.

  Of course, raw peasant recruits had more incentive to remember accurately than did someone who could aspire to no higher station than the one he already held. It was, in fact, difficult to aspire to a lower station than raw peasant recruit: about the only thing lower than peasant recruit was peasant. Krispos knew about that. Sometimes he wished his sons did, too.

  THE ARMY WAS RIDING FORWARD, PHOSTIS BACK. THAT BROUGHT him toward Noetos twice as fast as he would have gone otherwise and cut in half his time to think. He had a pretty good idea how the Thanasioi had learned where the imperial army would set up its supply dumps: he’d named them for Digenis. He hadn’t intended to betray his father’s campaign, but would Krispos believe that?