Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  “That I will,” Viridovix said, and began at the point of his kidnaping.

  The chief stopped him. “No, wait. What you doing Pardraya in first place? You no Empire man, no Khamorth, no Arshaum either—that plain enough, by wind spirits!” His laugh had a wheeze in it.

  With a sinking feeling, Viridovix told the truth. As Lipoxais translated, an angry muttering rose from the plainsmen round the fire. “You go to lead Arshaum through Pardraya and you want my thanks and help?” Targitaus growled. He touched his saber, as if to remind himself where it was.

  “And why not? I deserve the both of ’em.” Targitaus stared; Lipoxais raised a plucked eyebrow. Outface the lot of them, Viridovix told himself; if they see you yielding so much as a digit, it’s all up. He stood straighter, looking down his long nose at the Khamorth chief. “The more o’ the Arshaum are after fighting in Videssos, the fewer to tangle with you. Is it not so?”

  Targitaus scratched his chin. Lipoxais’ smooth, high voice finished rendering the Gaul’s words into the plains tongue. Viridovix did not dare look around to see how the nomads were taking what he said, but the hostile rumbling died away. “All right. You go on,” Targitaus said at last.

  The hurdle leaped, Viridovix warmed to his tale and won his listeners to him when they understood he and Varatesh were foes. “The brother-slayer, eh?” Targitaus said, and spat in the dirt in front of his couch. “Few years gone by, he try to join clan. His story even worse than yours—he not just leave things out, he tell lies, too.” He looked Viridovix full in the face, and the Celt could not help flushing. “Go on,” Targitaus said. “What next?”

  Viridovix started to warn the nomads of Avshar, but they did not know the wizard-prince’s name and so did not fear him. The gods grant they don’t find out, the Gaul thought, and went on to tell of his escape from Varatesh. That brought shouts from the plainsmen as it was interpreted, and a “Not bad,” from Targitaus. Viridovix grinned; he suspected the Khamorth was short with praise.

  “In the dark and all I rode east instead of west and came on your lads here,” the Celt finished. “Belike you’d sooner have the tale o’ that from them.”

  Interrupting each other from time to time, the nomads told their side of the meeting with Viridovix. Early on, Targitaus’ jaw fell. “Naked?” he said to the Gaul.

  “It’s a way my people have betimes.”

  “Could be painful,” was all the chief said. His men went on to describe the fight with Rambehisht. Targitaus snapped a question at the stern-featured nomad. “What do you have to say for yourself, losing to a naked man?” Lipoxais translated.

  The Gaul tensed. Rambehisht was fairly important in the clan; if he shouted denunciations now, it might not be pleasant. But he answered his chief with a shrug and a short phrase. “He beat me,” Lipoxais rendered tersely. Rambehisht added another, slightly longer, sentence: “My head still hurts—what more can I say?”

  “So.” After that single syllable, Targitaus was quiet for a long time. At last the Khamorth chief turned to Viridovix. “Well, outlander, you are a fighter if nothing else. You have gall, to meet a man like that.”

  “Have gall? Indeed and I am one.”

  “So,” the plainsman repeated, scratching his head. “What next?”

  “If I were after asking you for an escort to the Arshaum country, you’d have my head for fair, I’ll wager,” Viridovix said. He did not need the nomads’ growls as Lipoxais translated; he had put out the idea to let it be knocked down and make his real proposal the more attractive. “How’s this, then, your honor? It’s a nasty neighbor you have in this kern of a Varatesh, the which ye can hardly say nay to. Now you’ve a grudge against him, and I’ve one, too, the gods know—” No Videssians were here to shout “Heresy!” at that. “—and like enough some o’ your other clans hereabouts, too. Would it not be a fine thing to put the boot to him once for all, aye, and the mangy curs as run with him?” And Avshar, too, he thought, but did not name him again.

  Guttural mumbles round the fire as the listening nomads considered. “Grudge?” Targitaus said softly. “Oh my yes, grudge.” He leaped to his feet, shouted something in the plains speech. “Does it please you, brothers?” Lipoxais gave the words to Viridovix. The roar that came back could only be “Aye!” A meat-eater’s smile on his face, Valash slapped the Gaul on the back.

  But Targitaus, as leader, had learned caution. “Enaree!” he said, and Lipoxais stood beside him. “Take your omens, say if this will be good or bad for clan.”

  Lipoxais bowed his head and put both hands over his face in token of obedience. Then he turned to Viridovix, saying quietly, “Come round here behind me and put your hands on my shoulders.” The enaree’s flesh was very warm and almost as soft as a feather cushion.

  From inside his robe Lipoxais drew a piece of smooth white bark two fingers wide and about as long as his arm. He cut it into three equal lengths, wrapped it loosely round his hands. Viridovix felt him suddenly go rigid; his head snapped back, as a man’s will in the throes of lockjaw. The Celt could look down at the enaree’s face. His mouth was clenched shut, his eyes open and staring, but they did not see Viridovix. Lipoxais’ hands moved as if they had a will of their own, twisting and untwisting the lengths of bark round his fingers.

  The mantic fit went on and on. Viridovix had no idea how long it should last, but saw from the worry growing in Targitaus’ eyes that this was not normal. He wondered whether he should shake Lipoxais out of his trance, but hesitated, afraid to interfere with a magic he did not understand.

  The enaree returned to himself about when Viridovix was making up his mind to shake him whether it ruined the charm or not. Sweat dripped from his face; his robe was wet under the Gaul’s hands. He staggered, righted himself with the air of someone getting his land legs after a long time at sea. This time no longing was on his face when he looked at Viridovix, only awe and a little fear. “There is strong magic around you,” he said, “your own and others.” He shook his head, as if to clear it.

  Targitaus barked something at Lipoxais, who answered at some length before turning back to Celt. “I could see little,” he explained, “through so much sorcery, and that little was blurred: fifty eyes, a doorway in the mountains, and two swords. Whether these are signs of goods or ill I do not know.”

  Plainly unhappy at not learning more, Targitaus reflected, his chin in his hand. At last he straightened, stepping forward to clasp Viridovix’ hand. “As much chance for good as for bad,” he said, “and Varatesh’s ears need trimming—down to the neck, I think.” He sounded jovial, but the Gaul thought he would not be a good enemy to have.

  “So,” the Khamorth chieftain went on; he seemed to use the word as a pause to gather his thoughts. “You swear oath with us, yes?”

  “Whatever pleases your honor,” Viridovix said at once.

  “Good.” Targitaus switched to the plains tongue. A young man who had his eyes and his prominent nose—the later unkinked—brought a large earthenware bowl and a full skin of kavass. No ordinary nomad brew was this, but dark, strong, and heady, with a rich aroma like ale’s. “Karakavass—black kavass,” Targitaus said, pouring it into the bowl. “The lords’ drink.”

  But he did not drink of it yet; instead, he pulled a couple of arrows from a quiver and put them point-down in the bowl, then followed them with his shamshir. “Your sword, too,” he said to Viridovix. The Celt drew it and put as much of the blade as would fit—a bit more than half—into the bowl. Targitaus nodded, then unsheathed his dagger and took Viridovix’ hand. “Do not flinch,” he warned, and made a small cut on the Celt’s forefinger. Viridovix’ blood dripped into the bowl. “Now you me,” Targitaus said, giving him the knife. He might have been carved from stone as the Gaul cut him. Their bloods mingled now—a strong magic, Viridovix thought approvingly.

  Lipoxais began a chanted prayer; the gutturals of the Khamorth language sounded strange in his high voice. From time to time Targitaus spoke in response. As the enaree prayed o
n, Targitaus said to Viridovix, “Swear by your powers to act always as a brother to this clan and never to betray it or any man of it.”

  The Gaul paused only a moment, to think which of his gods would best hear his oath. “By Epona and Teutates I swear it,” he said loudly. Horse-goddess and war-god—what better powers to call on with the nomads? As he spoke their names, the druids’ marks on his enchanted blade glowed golden. Lipoxais’ eyes were closed, but Targitaus saw.

  “Magics of your own, yes,” he muttered, staring at his new-sworn ally.

  When Lipoxais’ chant was done, the Khamorth chief took his weapons from the bowl. Viridovix did the same, drying his sword on his shirttail before putting it back in its sheath. Targitaus stooped, carefully lifted the bowl to his lips. He drank, then handed it to the Celt. “We share blood, we share fate,” he said, with the air of one translating a proverb. Viridovix drank, too; the karakavass was mouth-filling, smooth on his tongue as fine wine, warm and comforting in his belly.

  Once the Gaul’s drinking sealed him to them, Targitaus’ lieutenants rose from their sitting-cloths and came up to share the bowl. Servants rolled the cloths into tight cylinders so not a crumb of precious food would be spilled.

  “You are one with us now,” Targitaus said, punctuating the remark with a belch. “More kavass!” he called, and new skins were broached: not the dark, earthy brew in the ceremonial bowl, but strong enough. Viridovix drank deep, passed the skin to Valash next to him. Another came his way a moment later, then another. His ears began to buzz.

  Targitaus’ wolfskin cap kept wanting to slide down over the chief’s left eye. He pushed it back, looked owlishly at Viridovix. “You one with us,” he said again, his accent rougher than it had been a few minutes before. “You should be glad; it is the right of a man. Do you see a wench who pleases you?”

  “Well, fry me for a sausage!” the Gaul exclaimed. “I never looked.” That he had paid no attention to the women in the tent was a measure of his anxiety.

  Now he made amends for the lapse. There were times when loneliness stabbed like a knife, remembering the pale Celtic women with hair sun-colored or red to match his own. But he was not one to live in the past for long and took his chances where he found them. He grinned, thinking of Komitta Rhangavve.

  It was not that he expected any such high-strung beauties in Targitaus’ tent. Like the Vaspurakaners, the Khamorth were heavier-featured than the Videssians. The faces of their men often held great character, but the women tended to have a stern, forbidding aspect to them. Their clothes did not soften their appearance, either; they wore trousers, tunics, and cloaks identical in cut to those of the plainsmen, and of the same furs and leathers. In place of the men’s inevitable fur caps, though, they wore conical headdresses of silk, ornamented with bright stones, and topped by crests of iridescent feathers from ducks and pheasants. That helped, but not enough.

  Worse still, Viridovix thought as his eye roved, a good many of the women on the southern side of the tent had to be the wives of Targitaus’ officers: chunky, far from young, and some of them looking as used to command as the nomad chief. He had had enough of that last from Komitta. They were surveying him, too, with a disconcerting frankness; he was as glad he could not understand their comments.

  Then he paused. Not far from Targitaus’ couch was a girl whose strong features, as with Nevrat Sviodo, had their own kind of beauty. It was her eyes, the Celt decided—they seemed to smile even when the rest of her face was still. She met his glance as readily as did the older women by her, but without their coarse near-mockery. “That’s a likely-looking lass,” he said to Targitaus.

  The Khamorth’s thick eyebrows went up like signal flags. “Glad you think so,” he said dryly, “but pick again, a serving-girl, if you please. That is Seirem, my daughter.”

  “Och, begging your pardon I am,” Viridovix said, reddening. He was very much aware of his fragile place here. “How is it I’m to tell the wenches from some laird’s lady?”

  “By the bughtaq, of course,” Targitaus answered. When he saw the Gaul did not know the word, he gestured to show he meant the Khamorth women’s headdress. Viridovix nodded, chiding himself for not noticing that detail. Along with jade and polished opals, Videssian goldpieces ornamented Seirem’s bughtaq; she was plainly no slavey.

  The Celt’s gaze settled on a woman of perhaps twenty-five, without Seirem’s lively face, but attractive enough and nicely rounded. Except for a few reddish stones and a very small piece of jade, her headdress was plain. “She’ll do me, an it suit you,” he said.

  “Who?” Targitaus put down the skin of kavass from which he had been slurping. “Oh, Azarmi. Aye, why not? She serves my wife Borane.”

  Viridovix waved her over to him. One of the richly adorned women, a particularly heavy-set one, said something that set all her companions rolling in helpless mirth. Azarmi shook her head, which only made the old women laugh harder.

  The Gaul offered her kavass from the skin Targitaus had laid aside. With no language in common, it was hard to put her at ease. She did not pull away when he touched her, but did not warm to him either.

  So it proved later, too, when the bedding was spread round the banked fire. She was compliant and did not seem resentful, but he could not excite her. Piqued and disappointed, he thought hungrily of Seirem asleep a few feet away until he drifted off himself.

  “My father has it from his grandfather,” Arigh said, “that when the Arshaum first saw the Shaum, they took it for an arm of the sea.”

  “I believe it,” Gorgidas said, looking down at the slate-blue river flowing majestically southwest toward the distant Mylasa Sea. He shaded his eyes; the reflection of the afternoon sun sparkled dazzlingly bright. He tried to guess how wide the river was, and failed—a mile and a half? Two miles? Whatever the answer, the Shaum made the Kouphis, the Arandos, any stream Gorgidas had seen in Gaul or Italy or Greece, into a pygmy by comparison.

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, felt grit rasp his skin. Goudeles, still foppish even in plains costume, brushed a bit of dry grass from his sleeve. “As if reaching this stream was not trial enough, however shall we cross it?” he asked no one in particular.

  A good question, the Greek thought. The nearest ford would be hundreds of miles north. It would take a demigod to bridge the Shaum, and who on the wood-scarce steppe knew anything of boatbuilding?

  Skylitzes bared his teeth in a smile. “How well do you swim, Pikridios?”

  “Over that distance? At least as well as you, by Phos.”

  “The horses are better than either of you,” Arigh said. “Come on.” He led them down to the bank of the Shaum, dismounted and stripped, then climbed back on his horse. The rest of the embassy party did likewise. Arigh directed, “Ride your lead beast out until he has to swim, then slide off and keep a good grip round his neck. I’ll go last; here, Psoes, you lead my string with yours. I’ll take just the one animal and make sure nobody else’s horses decide to stay on land.” He drew his saber, tested the point with his thumb.

  Gorgidas hefted the oiled leather sack in which he kept his precious manuscript. Catching the Arshaum’s eye, he said, “I’ll hold on with one hand—this has to stay dry.” The nomad shrugged; if the Greek cared to take chances for the sake of some scratchings, that was his affair.

  Surveying Goudeles’ pudgy form, Lankinos Skylitzes said, “You’ll float better than I do, anyhow, pen-pusher.” Goudeles sniffed.

  Gorgidas twitched the reins and urged his mount forward. It tried to swerve when it realized he wanted it to go in the river, but he kicked it in the ribs and kept it on a straight course. It swung its head back resentfully. He booted it again. Like a bather testing the water with one toe, it stepped daintily in, then paused once more. “Ithi!” the exasperated Greek shouted in his own tongue. “Go on!” As he swung a foot free of the stirrups for another kick, the horse did.

  It gave a frightened snort when its hooves no longer touched ground, but then stru
ck out strongly for the far bank. Seen from only a few inches above the water, that seemed impossibly far away. Back on the eastern bank, a trooper’s remount balked at entering the Shaum. Arigh prodded it with his sword. It neighed shrilly and bolted in, dragging the two beasts behind it along willy-nilly.

  The Shaum’s current was not as strong as Gorgidas had expected. It pulled the swimming horses and their masters south somewhat, making the journey across the river longer than it would have been, but did not really hamper their swim. The water was cool and very clear. The Greek could look down to the rocks and river plants on the bottom. About halfway through the crossing he started in alarm—the dun-colored fish rooting about on the bottom was longer from nose to wickedly forked tail than his horse was. “Shark!” he shouted.

  “Nay, no sharks in the Shaum,” Skylitzes reassured him. “They call it a mourzoulin hereabouts; the Videssian name is sturgeon.”

  “I don’t care what they call it,” the Greek said, frightened out of curiosity. “Does it bite?”

  “No, it only has a little toothless sucker-mouth for worms and such.”

  “Salted, the eggs are very fine,” Goudeles said with relish. “A rare delicacy.”

  “The flesh is good smoked,” Prevails Haravash’s son added. “And from the swim bladder we make—what is the word for letting some light through?”

  “Translucent,” Goudeles supplied.

  “Thank you, sir. Yes, we make translucent windows to fit into tent panels.”

  “And if it had a song, I suppose you’d use that, too,” Gorgidas said darkly. The ugly brute still looked dangerous.

  Prevails took the Greek seriously. “On the plains we use everything. There is too little to waste.” Gorgidas only grunted, keeping an eye on the sturgeon, or mourzoulin, or whatever it was. It paid him no attention. After a while, he could not see it any more.

  By the time the western bank drew near, his arms were exhausted from holding the mouth of his leather bag above water, even though he had taken to switching it from one to the other. That also meant his grip on his horse was not what it should have been. The shore was only about thirty yards away when he and the animal parted company. He thrashed frantically—and felt his feet scrape bottom; the steppe pony was still too short to touch. Now it was his turn to help his horse. Sighing with relief, he did so, and led the beast and his remounts up onto the land of Shaumkhiil. Save that the river was behind him, it seemed no different from Pardraya to the east.