Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  Tunelessly humming a hymn to Phos, the executioner put the tip of a thin pointed iron in the fire. He lifted it every so often to gauge its color; his thick gloves of crimson leather protected him from the heat. Finally he grunted in satisfaction and turned to Scaurus. “Which of ’em first?”

  “As you wish.”

  “You, then.” Bailli happened to be closest to the executioner, who went on, not unkindly, “Try to hold as steady as you can; ’twill be easier for you so.”

  “Easier,” Bailli mocked through clenched teeth; sweat poured down his face. Then the iron came down, once, twice. Tight-jawed no longer, the snub-nosed Namdalener screamed and screamed. The scent of charring meat filled the air.

  Pausing between victims to reheat his iron, the executioner moved on to Turgot and Drax, and then at last to Soteric. Helvis’ brother’s cries were all curses aimed Marcus’ way. He stood unmoved over the fallen Namdaleni and answered only, “You brought this upon yourselves.” The burned-meat smell was very strong now, as if someone had forgotten a roasting joint of pork.

  The legionaries helped their groaning, sobbing prisoners sit, pulling thick black veils over their eyes to hide the hot iron’s work. “Show them to the people,” Scaurus commanded. “Let them see what they earn by defying their rightful sovereign.” The troopers who formed the hollow square opened lanes to let the crowd look on the Namdaleni.

  “Now take them away,” the tribune said. No one raised a hand to stop the islanders from being guided back to their captivity in the governor’s hall. They stumbled against each other as they staggered between their Roman guards.

  “Ansfrit,” Marcus called. The Namdalener captain approached, fear and rage struggling on his pale face. Scaurus gave him no time to compose himself: “Surrender your castle to me within the day, or when we take it—and you know we can—everyone of your men will suffer the same fate as these turncoats. Yield now, and I guarantee their safety.”

  “I thought you above these Videssian butcheries, but it seems the dog apes his master.”

  “That’s as may be,” the tribune shrugged, implacable. “Will you yield, or shall I have this fellow—” He jerked his head toward the red-clad executioner. “—keep his irons hot?” Under his shiny leather mask, the man’s mouth shaped a smile at Ansfrit.

  The Namdalener flinched, recovered, glared helplessly at Scaurus. “Aye, damn you, aye,” he choked out, and spun on his heel, almost running back toward the motte-and-bailey. Behind his retreating back, Gaius Philippus nodded knowingly. Marcus smiled himself. Another pair of troubles solved, he thought.

  The druids’ marks on his blade flared into golden life, scenting wizardry, but it was scabbarded, and he did not see.

  Far to the north, Avshar laid aside the black-armored image of Skotos he used to focus his scrying powers. A greater seer than any enaree, he cast forth his vision to overleap steppe and sea, as a man might cast a fishing line into a stream. The power in Scaurus’ sword was his guide; if it warded the hated outlander from his spells, it also proclaimed the Roman’s whereabouts and let Avshar spy. Though he could not see the tribune himself, all around him was clear enough.

  The wizard-prince leaned back against a horsehair-filled cushion of felt. Even for him, scrying at such a distance was no easy feat. “A lovely jest, mine enemy,” he whispered, though no one was there to hear him. “Oh yes, a lovely jest. Yet perhaps I shall find a better one.”

  News somehow travels faster than men. When Scaurus got back to the legionary camp, Helvis met him with a shriek. “Animal! Worse than animal—foul, wretched, atrocious brute!” Her face was dead white, save for a spot of color high on each cheek.

  Legionaries and their women pretended not to hear—a privilege of rank, Marcus thought. They would have gathered round to listen to any common trooper scrapping with his leman.

  He took Helvis by the elbow, tried to steer her back toward their tent. “Don’t flare at me,” he warned. “I left them alive, and more than they deserved, too.”

  She whirled away from him. “Alive? What sort of life is it, to sit in a corner of the marketplace with a chipped cup in your lap, begging for coppers? My brother—”

  She dissolved in tears. The tribune managed to guide her into the tent, away from the camp’s watching eyes. Malric, he guessed, was out playing; Dosti, napping in his crib, woke and started to cry when his mother came in sobbing. Marcus tried to comfort her, saying, “There’s no need for that, darling. Here, I’ve brought a present for you.”

  Helvis stared at him, wild-eyed. “So I’m your slut now, to be bought with trinkets?”

  He felt himself reddening and damned his clumsy words; the Videssian oratory was turgid, but at least it could be rehearsed. This, now—“See for yourself,” he said brusquely, and tossed her a small leather pouch.

  She caught it automatically, tugged the drawstring open. “This is a gift?” she stuttered, confusion routing fury for a moment. “Chunks of half-burned fat?”

  “I hoped you might think so,” Scaurus said, “since each of your precious islanders—aye, your honey-mouthed brother, too—clapped them over his eyes as my troopers fought ’em in the dirt.”

  Her mouth moved without sound, something the tribune had heard of but never seen. At last she whispered, “They’re not blind?”

  “Not a bit of it,” Marcus said smugly, “though Turgot flinched and got an eyebrow seared off, the poor mournful twit. A pretty joke, don’t you think?” he went on, unaware he all but echoed his deadliest foe. “All the riots and plots in town have collapsed like a popped bladder, and Ansfrit’s panicked into giving up lest he earn what Drax got.”

  But Helvis was not listening to him any more. “They’re not bl—” she started to scream, and then bit the palm of his hand as he clapped it over her mouth.

  “You don’t know that,” he said, stern again. “You’ve never heard that. Apart from the legionaries who wrestled them down and a few others close enough to see what happened, the only one who knows is that butcher in his suit of blood, and he’s well paid to keep quiet. D’you understand me?” he asked, cautiously taking his hand away.

  “Yes,” she said in so small a voice they both laughed. “I’d pretend anything, anything, to keep Soteric safe. Oh, hush, you,” she added to Dosti, plucking him out of the crib. “Everything is all right.”

  “All right?” Dosti said doubtfully, and followed it with a hiccup. Marcus scratched his head; every time he looked at his son, it seemed, Dosti had something newly learned to show him.

  “All right,” Helvis said.

  X

  THE SIEGE TOWER RUMBLED ACROSS THE BOARD. “GUARD your Emperor, now!” Viridovix said, scooping up a captured foot soldier—no telling when he might be useful, coming back into play on the Gaul’s side.

  Seirem twisted her mouth in annoyance, blocked the threat with a silverpiece. He pulled the siege tower back out of danger. She advanced her other silverpiece a square, reaching the seventh rank of the nine-by-nine board. With a smile, she turned the flat piece over to reveal the new, jeweled character on its reverse. “Promote to gold,” she said.

  “Dinna remind me,” he said mournfully; as a more powerful goldpiece, the counter attacked his prelate and a horseman at the same time. The prelate was worth more to him; he moved it. Seirem took the horseman. It was like the Videssians, Viridovix thought, to have money fight for them in their board game—and to grow more valuable deep in enemy territory.

  He wondered how long the board and men had wandered with the nomads, an unplayed curiosity. No doubt some plainsman had brought the set back with him from Prista, taken by the rich grain of the oaken game board, by the inset lines of mother-of-pearl that separated square from square, and by the ivory pieces and the characters on them, made from emeralds and turquoise and garnets. In Videssos the Gaul had learned the game on a stiff leather board, with counters crudely hacked from pine. He admired it tremendously, most of all because luck played no part in it.

  I
n the Empire he had only been a fair player; here he was teaching the game, and still ahead of his pupils. Seirem, though, was catching on fast. “Too fast by half,” he muttered in his own Celtic speech; she had turned the captured horseman against him, with wicked effect.

  It took a sharp struggle before he finally subdued her, trapping her emperor in a corner with his siege tower, prelate, and a goldpiece. She frowned, more thoughtfully than in anger. “Yes, I see,” she said. “It was a mistake to weaken the protection around him to throw that attack at you. You held me off, and there I was in the open with no help around to save me.” Her fingers reset the board. “Shall we try again? You take first move this time; my defense needs work.”

  “Och, lass, for the wee bit you’ve played, you make a brave show of it.” He advanced the foot soldier covering a silverpiece’s file, opening the long diagonal for his prelate. Seirem frowned again as she considered a reply.

  Watching her concentrate, he thought how different she was from Komitta Rhangavve. Once he had managed to steal a whole day with Thorisin Gavras’ volcanic mistress; the gameboard was a pleasant diversion between rounds. Or it should have been, but the Celt had never learned the courtier’s art of graceful losing. One game Komitta beat him fairly; the next he managed to win. She’d screeched curses and hurled the board, pieces and all, against a wall. He never did find one of the spearmen.

  Here was Seirem, by contrast, paying the price of trouncings to learn the game, her fine dark eyes full of thought while she waited for his next move. She also had a sweet, low voice and was equally skilled with the pipes and the light women’s bow. Yet Komitta, with her passion for rank, would have called her barbarian, or worse. “Honh!” the Celt snorted, again in his own language. “The bigger fool her, the vicious trull!”

  “Will you be all night?” Seirem asked pointedly.

  “Begging your pardon, lass; my wits were wandering.” He moved a foot soldier and promptly regretted it. He tugged at his mustaches. “Sure and that was a rude thing to do!”

  From the fireside where she was gossiping with a couple of other women, Borane glanced over at the game-players. She recognized the tone Viridovix used toward her daughter, perhaps better than he did; after so many casual amours, he was not ready to admit to himself that he might feel something more for Seirem. But for those with ears to hear, his voice gave him away.

  Targitaus stamped into the tent, face like thunder. He, too, was bright enough to see how Seirem had become the outlander’s favorite partner at the gameboard. But when he growled, “Put your toys away!” and followed that with an oath that made Borane’s friends giggle, the Gaul was not panic-stricken; he had seen this fury before.

  “Who’s said us nay the now?” he asked.

  “Krobyz, the wind spirits blow sleet up his arse! May his ewes be barren and his cows’ udders dry. What did you call his clan, V’rid’rish, the Hamsters? You were right, for he has the soul of a hamster turd in him.” He spat into the fire in absolute disgust.

  “What excuse did he offer?” Seirem asked, trying to pierce her father’s anger.

  “Eh? Not even a tiny one, the shameless son of a snake and a goat.” Targitaus was not appeased. “Just a no, and from what Rambehisht says, he counts himself lucky not to come back with a hole in him for his troubles.”

  Viridovix grimaced as he helped Seirem put the pieces away, hardly noticing that their hands brushed more than once. “That’s not good at all. Every one o’ these spalpeens should be seeing the need to put the fornicating bandits down, and too many dinna for me to think the lot of ’em fools. A pox on Varatesh, anyhow; the omadhaun’s too clever by half. Belike he’s got his hooks into some o’ the nay-sayers.”

  “You have it, I think,” Targitaus said heavily. “The rider I sent to Anakhar said the whole clan was shaking in their boots to move against the outlaws. I doubt we’ll see help from them, any more than from Krobyz. We have better luck with the clans east of the Oglos, where fear of the whoreson doesn’t reach. That Oitoshyr, of the White Foxes, fell all over himself promising help.”

  “Easy enough to promise,” the Gaul said. “What he does’ll count for more. He’s far enough away to say, ‘Och, the pity of it. We didna hear o’ the shindy till too late,’ and have no one to make him out a liar.”

  Targitaus scaled his wolfskin cap across the tent, grunted in somber satisfaction when it landed on the leather sack nearest the pile of bedding. “A point. Should I thank you for it?”

  Lipoxais the enaree, who had been quietly grinding herbs with a brass mortar and pestle, spoke up now. “Think of the animal’s tail as well as its head.” A Videssian would have said, “Look at the other side of the coin,” Viridovix mused. The enaree went on, “Oitoshyr runs less risk of you dominating him if you win than your neighbors do, because he is far away. That should make him more likely to join us.”

  “Do you say that as a seer?” Targitaus asked eagerly.

  “No, only as one who’s seen a good deal,” Lipoxais answered, smiling at the distinction with as much pleasure as an imperial might have taken over such wordplay.

  “Still not bad,” Viridovix said. He had gained a great deal of respect for the enaree’s shrewdness in the weeks since he came to Targitaus’ clan. He was still not sure whether Lipoxais was a whole man—unlike most of the Khamorth, he kept his modesty, even in the cramped conditions of nomadic life. Whole or not, nothing was lacking from his wits.

  A pessimist by nature, Targitaus had no trouble finding new worries. “For all the allies we may bring in, what good will they do us, V’rid’rish, if your Avshar is as strong as you say? Will he not help Varatesh’s renegades ride over us no matter what we do?”

  The Celt chewed at his lower lip; he lived with that fear, too. But he answered, “It’s a tricksy thing, battle magic, indeed and it is. Even himself may have it turn and bite him.” Lipoxais nodded vigorously, his chins hobbling. Sorcery frayed all too often in the heat of combat.

  A fresh thought struck Viridovix. “Sure and it was a braw scheme, for all the Romans thought of it,” he exclaimed, and then remembered: “Nay, they said ’twas first used against ’em.” He reddened when he realized that, of course, his listeners had no idea what he was talking about. Targitaus was standing with folded arms, impatiently drumming his fingers on his elbows.

  The Gaul explained how the legionaries had frightened a band of Yezda out of a valley one night by tying fagots to the horns of a herd of cattle, then lighting the sticks and stampeding the crazed beasts at the nomads. He did not make light of his own role either, for he had ridden at the head of the herd and sworded down one Yezda who did not panic. “But the rest o’ the kerns were running for their lives, shrieking like so many banshees,” he finished happily. “They must have thought it was a flock o’ demons after ’em—and likely so would Varatesh’s rogues.”

  All of the Khamorth, though, even Seirem, even Borane’s gossip partners, looked at him in horror. When Targitaus made as if to draw his sword, Viridovix saw how badly he had blundered, but did not know why. Lipoxais reminded his chief, “He is not of us by blood and does not know our ways.”

  Muscle by muscle, the khagan relaxed. “That is so,” he said at last, and then to Viridovix, “You fit well with us; I forget how foreign you are in truth.” Viridovix bowed at the implied compliment, but Targitaus was speaking to him now as to a child. “Here on the plains, we do not let fire run wild.” The nomad’s wave encompassed the vast, featureless sea of grass all around. “Once started, how would it ever stop again?”

  Coming as he did from damp, verdant Gaul, Viridovix had not thought of that. He hung his head, muttering, “Begging your pardon, I’m sorry.” But he had the quick wits to see that the ploy might still be used, or something like it. “How would this be, now?” he said, and gave them his new idea.

  Targitaus ran his hand through his beard as he thought. “I’ve heard worse,” he said—highest praise.

  Seirem nodded in brisk satisfaction,
as if she had expected no less.

  His sons flanking him, councilors grouped around him, Arghun found the key question and asked it directly of the rival embassies: “Why should my people take service with one of you instead of the other?”

  Perhaps Goudeles had expected some polite conversation before getting down to business, for he did not have his answer instantly ready. When he hesitated, Bogoraz of Yezd seized the chance to speak first. Forehead furrowed in annoyance, Goudeles—and Gorgidas with him—listened to Skylitzes’ whispered translation: “Because Videssos is a cow too tired and old to stay on its legs. When a beast in your own herds—may they increase—cannot keep up, do you rope another to it to help it along for its last few days? No, you slaughter it at once, while it still has flesh on its bones. We invite you to help with the butchering and share the meat.”

  Against his will, Gorgidas found himself respecting Bogoraz’ talents. His argument was nicely couched in terms familiar to the Arshaum and doubly effective because of it.

  Yet Goudeles, though robbed of the initiative, thought quickly on his feet. “Having seen his own Makuran collapse at the first shout, Bogoraz may perhaps be forgiven for his delusion that such decay has befallen us as well. He ministers to his new masters well.”

  Arigh interpreted for his father and the elders. “Your pun didn’t translate,” Skylitzes muttered when the plainsman’s version was through.

  “Never mind. I meant it for Bogoraz,” the bureaucrat answered. The shot went home, too; the Yezda envoy gave him a fierce glower. Goudeles was not bad at finding weaknesses himself, Gorgidas thought. Serving overlords only a generation off the steppe had to be humiliating for Bogoraz, who was as much a man of culture as the Videssian.

  “I give Wulghash all my loyalty,” the ambassador said, rather loudly, as if to convince himself. He must have succeeded, for he returned to the attack: “Yezd is now a young, strong land, filled with the vigor fresh blood brings. Its time is come, while Videssos falls into shadows.”