The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  Krispos wondered whether that showed Phostis was in fact a cuckoo’s egg in his nest. But no: the magic Zaidas worked sought Phostis for himself, not on account of his relation—if any—to the Avtokrator. Krispos said, “Have you progressed toward learning what sort of sorcery conceals his whereabouts?”

  Zaidas bit his lip; not even a friend casually tells his Avtokrator he has failed to accomplish something. The wizard said, “Your Majesty, I must confess I have continued to devote most of my efforts toward locating Phostis rather than on analyzing why I cannot locate him.”

  “And what sort of luck have you had in those efforts?” The question was rhetorical; had Zaidas had any luck other than bad, he would have proclaimed it with trumpet and drum. Krispos went on, “Eminent and sorcerous sir, I strongly urge you to give over your direct efforts, exactly because they’ve not succeeded. Learn what you can about the mage who opposes you. If you have any better fortune there, you can go back to seeking out Phostis.”

  “It shall of course be as Your Majesty suggests,” Zaidas said, understanding that an imperial recommendation was tantamount to a command. The wizard hesitated, then continued, “You must be aware I would still have no guarantee of success, especially here in the field. For this delicate work, the tomes and substances accumulated within the Sorcerers’ Collegium are priceless assets.”

  “So you’ve said,” Krispos answered. “Do your best. I can ask no more of any man.”

  “I shall,” Zaidas promised, and reached for a codex as if about to start incanting on the spot. Before he could demonstrate such diligence, Krispos left the tent and headed back to his own pavilion. He was disappointed in his chief mage, but not enough to say anything more to Zaidas than he’d already said: Zaidas had been doing the best he could, by his own judgment. An emperor who castigated the men he’d chosen for their expert judgment would not long retain such experts around him.

  Rain drummed on the oiled silk; mud squelched underfoot. The tent was a joyless place. Krispos felt the weight of every one of his years. Even with the luxuries his rank afforded him—enough room to stand and walk around, a cot rather than just a bed roll—campaigning was hard on a man as old as him. The only trouble was, not campaigning would in the long run prove harder still.

  So he told himself, at any rate. as he blew out the lamps, lay down, and tried to sleep. So men always told themselves when they went off to war. So, no doubt, Livanios was telling himself somewhere not far enough away. Only by looking backward through the years could anyone judge who had been right, who wrong.

  Outside the entrance to the tent, the Haloga guards chatted back and forth in their own slow, sonorous speech. Krispos wondered if they ever had doubts when they lay down at night. They were less simple than many Videssians made them out to be. But they did actively like to fight, where Krispos avoided battle when he could.

  He was still wishing life could be less complicated when at last he surrendered to exhaustion. When he woke up the next morning, his mind bit down on that as if he’d never slept. He dressed and went out to share a breakfast as dank and miserable as the supper the night before.

  Getting the army moving helped kick him out of his own gloom, or at least left him too busy to dwell on it. By now the soldiers were more efficient than they had been when they set out from Nakoleia. Knocking down tents, then loading them onto horses and mules and into wagons, took only about half as long as it had earlier. But, as if to make sure no blessing went unmixed, the rain made travel slower and tougher than Krispos had counted on. He’d planned to reach Pityos six or seven days after he set out from Aptos. That would stretch now.

  The army rode through a village. But for a couple of dogs splashing through the mud between houses, the place was deserted. The peasants and herders who called it home had fled into the hills. That was what peasants and herders did when a hostile army approached. Krispos bit his lip in frustrated anger and sorrow that his subjects should reckon forces he led hostile.

  “They’re most of them Thanasioi, is my guess,” Evripos answered when he said that aloud. “They know what they have to look forward to when we stamp out this heresy of theirs.”

  “What would you do with them after we win?” Krispos asked, interested to learn how the youth would handle a problem whose solution he did not clearly see himself.

  Evripos was confident, if nothing else: “Once we beat the rebel army in the field, we peel this land like a man stripping the rind off an orange. We find out who the worst of the traitors are and give them fates that will make the rest remember for always what opposing the Empire costs.” He shook his fist at the empty houses, as if he blamed them for putting him here on horseback in the cold rain.

  “It may come to that,” Krispos said, nodding slowly. Evripos’ answer was one a straightforward soldier might give—was, in fact, not very different from what Sarkis had proposed. The lad could have done worse, Krispos thought.

  Confident in his youth that he’d hit on not just an answer but the answer, Evripos spoke out in challenge: “How could you do anything but that, Father?”

  “If we can lure folk back to the true faith by persuasion rather than fear, we cut the risk of having to fight the war over again in a generation’s time,” Krispos answered. Evripos only snorted; he thought in terms of weeks and months, not generations.

  Then Krispos had to stop thinking about generations, or even weeks: a scout from the vanguard came splattering back, calling, “The bastards aim to try and hold the pass up ahead against us!”

  Open fighting at last, Krispos thought—Phos be praised. Already, at Sarkis’ bawled orders, the musicians were ordering the imperial army to deploy. While it traveled as a strung-out snake, it could not fight that way. It began to stretch out into line of battle.

  But, as Krispos saw when he rode forward to examine the ground for himself, the line of battle could not stretch wide. The Thanasioi had cunningly chosen the place for their stand: the sides of the pass were too steep for cavalry, especially in the rain, while at the narrowest point the enemy had erected a rough barricade of logs and rocks. It would not stop the attackers, but it would slow them down…and here and there, behind the barrier, cloth-covered awnings sprouted like drab toadstools.

  Krispos pointed to those as Sarkis came up beside him. “They’ll have archers under there, or I miss my guess. The barricade to hold us in place, the bowmen to hurt us while we’re held.”

  “Likely you’re right, Your Majesty,” the cavalry commander agreed glumly. “Livanios, curse him, is a professional.”

  “We’ll send some infantry around the barricade to either side to see if we can’t push them back, then,” Krispos decided. It was the only maneuver he could think of, but not one in which he had great confidence. The foot soldiers were the poorest troops in his force, both in fighting quality and literally: they were the men who could not afford to outfit themselves or be outfitted by their villages with horse and cavalry accouterments.

  Being a horseman himself, Sarkis shared and more than shared the Avtokrator’s distrust of infantry. But he nodded, not having any better plan to offer. A courier hurried off to the musicians. At their call, the infantry went forward to outflank the Thanasioi, who waved spears and yelled threats from behind their barricade.

  “We’ll send the horse forward at the same time, Your Majesty, if that’s all right with you,” Sarkis said, and Krispos nodded in turn. Keeping as many of the enemy as possible busy would go a long way toward winning the fight.

  Shouting “Phos with us!” and “Krispos!” the imperials advanced. As the Emperor and Sarkis had thought they would, bowmen under cover from the rain shot at soldiers who had trouble answering back. Here and there along the line, a man crumpled or a wounded horse screamed and broke away from its rider’s control.

  Then the enemy’s awnings shook, as if in a high breeze—but there was no breeze. Several of them fell over, draping Thanasiot archers in yards of soaked, clinging cloth. The stream of arrows slacke
ned. Krispos’ men raised a cheer and advanced. The Avtokrator looked round for Zaidas. He did not see the sorcerer, but had no doubt he’d caused the collapse. Battle magic might have trouble touching men, but things were another matter.

  Yet the Thanasioi, even with their strategem spoiled, were far from beaten. Their men swarmed forward to fight the foot soldiers who sought to slide around their barrier. The heretics’ war cry was new to Krispos: “The path! The gleaming path!”

  Their ferocity was new, too. They fought as if they cared nothing whether they lived or died, so long as they hurt their foes. Their impetuous onslaught halted Krispos’ infantry in its tracks. Some of his men kept fighting, but others scrambled out of harm’s way, skidding and falling in the muck as they ran.

  Krispos cursed. “The ice take them!” he shouted. “The good god knows I didn’t expect much from them, but this—” Fury choked him.

  “Maybe the rebels will make a mistake,” Sarkis said, seeking such solace as he could find. “If they come out to chase our poor sorry lads, the cavalry’ll nip in behind ’em and cut ’em off at the knees.”

  But the Thanasioi seemed content to hold off the imperial army. Again Krispos saw the hand of a well-trained soldier in their restraint: raw recruits, elated at success, might well have swarmed forward to take advantage of it and left themselves open to a counterblow like the one Sarkis had proposed. Not here, though. Not today.

  The imperial cavalry tried to force its way through the barrier the rebels had thrown up. On a clear day, they could have plied their poorly armored foes with arrows and made them give ground. With the sky weeping overhead, that didn’t work. They fought hand to hand, slashing with sabers and using light spears against similarly armed opponents who, while not mounted, used the barricade as if it were their coat of mail.

  “They’ve got more stick in them than I looked for,” Sarkis said with a grimace. “Either they put the real soldiers who defected in the middle or…” He let that hang. Krispos finished it mentally: or else we’re in more trouble than we thought.

  Unlike the infantry, the imperial horsemen stayed and fought. But they had no better luck at dislodging the stubborn heretics. Curses rose above the clash of iron on iron and the steady drumming of the rain. Wounded men and wounded horses shrieked. Healer-priests labored to succor those sorest hurt until they themselves dropped exhausted into the mud.

  Time seemed stuck. The gray mat of clouds overhead was so thick, Krispos had no better way to gauge the hour than by his stomach’s growls. If his belly did not lie, afternoon was well advanced.

  Then, not far away, shouts rang out, first in the squadron of Haloga guards and then from the Thanasioi. Through the confused uproar of battle came a new cry: “To me! For the Empire!”

  “By the good god!” Krispos exclaimed. “That’s Evripos!”

  At the head of a couple of dozen horsemen, the Avtokrator’s second son forced a breach in the heretic’s barrier. In amongst them, he lay about him with his saber, making up in fury what he lacked in skill. Half the Halogai poured into that gap, as much to protect him as to take advantage of it in any proper military sense.

  The result was satisfactory enough. At last driven back from their barricade, the heretics became more vulnerable to the onslaught of the better-disciplined imperial troops. Their confident yells turned suddenly frantic. “Push them hard!” Krispos shouted. “If we break them here, we have an easy road on to Pityos!” With its major city taken, he thought, how could the revolt go on?

  But the Thanasioi kept fighting hard, even in obvious defeat. Krispos thought about the prisoner he’d ordered tortured, about the contempt the youth had shown for the material world. That, he saw, had not been so much cant. Rear guards sold themselves more dearly than he would have imagined, fighting to the death to help their comrades’ retreat. Some men who had safety assured even abandoned it to hurl themselves at the imperials and their weapons, using those to remove themselves forever from a worldly existence they judged only a trap of Skotos’.

  Because of that fanatical resistance, the imperial army gained ground more slowly than Krispos wanted. Not even more daredevil charges from Evripos could break the heretics’ line.

  Sarkis pointed ahead. “Look, Your Majesty—they’re filing over that bridge there.”

  “I see,” Krispos answered. Ten months out of the year, the stream spanned by that ramshackle wooden bridge would hardly have wet a man’s shins as he forded it. But with the fall rains, it not only filled its banks but threatened to overflow them. If Krispos’ men could not seize the bridge, they’d have to break off pursuit.

  “They took a long chance here, provoking battle with their backs to the river,” Sarkis said. “Let’s make them pay for it.”

  More and more of the Thanasioi gained the safety of the far bank. Yet another valiant stand by a few kept the imperial soldiers away from the bridge. Just when they were about to gain it in spite of everything the heretics could do to stop them, the wooden structure exploded into flame in spite of the downpour.

  “Magic?” Krispos said, staring in dismay at the heavy black smoke that poured from the bridge.

  “It could be, Your Majesty,” Sarkis answered judiciously. “More likely, though, they painted it with liquid fire and just now touched it off. That stuff doesn’t care about water when it gets to burning.”

  “Aye, you’re right, worse luck,” Krispos said. Made from naphtha, sulfur, the foul-smelling oil that seeped up between rocks here and there in the Empire, and other ingredients—several of them secret—liquid fire was the most potent incendiary Videssos’ arsenal boasted. A floating skin of it would even burn on top of water. No wonder it took no notice of the rain.

  The last handful of Thanasioi still on the eastern side of the stream went down. “Come on!” Evripos shouted to the impromptu force he led. “To the ice with this fire! We’ll go across anyhow.”

  Not all the men followed him, and not only men but also horses failed him. His own mount squealed and reared in fright when he forced it near the soddenly crackling flames. He fought the animal back under control, but did not try again to make it cross.

  That proved as well, for the bridge collapsed on itself a couple of minutes later. Charred timbers splashed into the river and, some, still burning, were swept away downstream. The Thanasioi jeered from the far bank, then began vanishing behind the curtain of rain.

  Krispos sat glumly on his horse, listening to the splash and tinkle of the storm and, through it, the cries of wounded men. He squared his shoulders and did his best to rally. Turning to Sarkis he said, “Send companies out at once to seize any nearby routes east that remain open.”

  “Aye, Your Majesty, I’ll see to it at once.” After a moment, Sarkis said, “We have a victory here, Your Majesty.”

  “So we do.” Krispos’ voice was hollow. As a matter of fact, Sarkis’ voice was hollow, too. Each seemed to be doing his best to convince the other everything was really all right, but neither appeared to believe it. Krispos put worry into words: “If we don’t find another route soon, we’ll have a hard time going forward.”

  “That’s true.” Sarkis seemed to deflate like a pig’s bladder poked with a pin. “A victory that gets us nothing is scarcely worth the having.”

  “My thought exactly,” Krispos said. “Better we should have stayed in Videssos the city and started this campaign in the spring than be forced to cut it off in the middle like this.” He forced himself away from recrimination. “Let’s make camp, do what we can for our hurt, and decide what we try next.”

  “A lot of that will depend on what the scouting parties turn up,” Sarkis said.

  “I know.” Krispos did his best to stay optimistic. “Maybe the Thanasioi won’t have knocked down every bridge for miles around.”

  “Maybe.” Sarkis sounded dubious. Krispos was dubious, too. Against a revolt made up simply of rebellious peasants, he would have had more hope. But Livanios had already proved himself a thoroughgoing prof
essional. You couldn’t count on him to miss an obvious maneuver.

  Krispos put the future out of his mind. He couldn’t even plan until the scouts came back and gave him the information he needed. He rode slowly through the army, praising his men for fighting well, and congratulating them on the victory. They were not stupid; they could see for themselves that they hadn’t accomplished as much as they might have. But he put the best face he could on the fight. “We’ve driven the bastards back, showed them they can’t stand against us. They won’t come yapping round our heels again like little scavenger dogs any time soon.”

  “A cheer for his Majesty!” one of the captains called. The cheer rang out. It was not one to make the hillsides echo, but it was not dispirited or sardonic, either. All things considered, it satisfied Krispos.

  He rode up close to the bridge. Some of its smoldering support timbers still stood. Evripos looked across the river toward the now-vanished Thanasioi. He turned his head to see who approached, then nodded, one soldier to another. “I’m sorry, Father. I did my best to get over, but my stupid horse wouldn’t obey.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” Krispos answered. “You would have been trapped on the far side when the bridge went down. I can’t afford to lose sons so prodigally.” He hesitated, then reached out to whack Evripos on his mailed back. “You fought very well—better than I’d looked for you to do.”

  “It was—different from what I expected.” A grin lightened Evripos’ face. “And I wasn’t afraid, the way I thought I’d be.”

  “That’s good. I was, my first time in battle. I puked up my guts afterward, as a matter of fact, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” Krispos studied his son in some bemusement. “Have I gone and spawned a new Stavrakios? I’ve always expected good things from you, but not that you’d prove a fearsome warrior.”

  “Fearsome?” Evripos’ grin got wider; all at once, in spite of his beard and the mud that streaked his face, he reminded Krispos of the little boy he’d been. “Fearsome, you say? By the good god, I like it.”