Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  “Unless they choose against us, and offer us up to Skotos to seal their foul bargain,” Skylitzes said. He patted his sword. “I’ll not go alone.”

  Changing into his own meager finery, Gorgidas reflected on the inconsistencies that could dwell in a man. Skylitzes got on well with the Arshaum, liked them better than he did Goudeles, some ways. But in anything touching religion, he kept all the aggressive intolerance that characterized Videssians. The pen-pusher was far more broad-minded there, though to him the plainsmen were so many savages.

  “Well, let’s be off,” Goudeles said with forced lightness. The suave calm he cultivated was frayed.

  Gorgidas felt himself the center of all eyes as the Videssian party walked toward the feast. Agathias Psoes and his men anxiously watched the embassy, while the Arshaum themselves seemed as curious as its members about whether they would be friends or foes.

  The evening was cool, with a smell of rain in the air. As well, the Greek thought, that the Arshaum had made their choice at last; another week or so and the fall storms would begin in earnest—and good luck to an outdoor feast then!

  The leaping flames in the fire pits gave an inviting promise of warmth. Goudeles might have been reading Gorgidas’ mind, for he said, “Tonight I almost would not mind tramping through the coals.” He pulled his robe more tightly about him. After months in tunic and trousers, Videssian ceremonial costume was drafty.

  The Greek scowled when he saw Bogoraz climb down from his yurt. Wulghash’s emissary, urbane as always, waved and hailed his rivals. “Wait for me, if you would. We shall learn our fate together.” A smile was on his full lips as he came up. It did not reach his eyes, but that meant nothing. It never did.

  The Yezda diplomat’s small talk, though, was its usual polished self. “See what an eminent audience we shall perform before tonight,” he said, and the sneer in his voice was delicate enough to make Goudeles lift an envious eyebrow.

  Most of the Arshaum were already in their places; some had begun to eat, and the skins of kavass were traveling among them. They grew quiet as they spied the two embassies approaching out of the twilight. With a nod to his sons to follow him, Arghun rose to meet them.

  Gorgidas looked from one face to the next, trying to find his answer before the khagan gave it. Arghun was unreadable and seemed faintly amused, as if savoring the suspense he was creating. Nor was anything to be gleaned from Arigh, who stood impassive, yielding the moment to his father. But when the Greek saw Dizabul’s ill-concealed pout, he began to hope.

  Arghun stepped forward, embraced Goudeles, Skylitzes, and Gorgidas in turn. “My good friends,” he said. He greeted the Yezda envoy with a nod, civil but small. “Bogoraz.” He paused for a moment to make sure he was understood, then said, “Come. The food is waiting.”

  Behind the Videssian embassy, Psoes whooped with joy. “All you can drink tonight, lads!” he shouted, and then it was his men’s turn to cheer. Bogoraz’ guards, wherever they were, were silent.

  The Yezda envoy managed a courteous bob of the head for Goudeles. “I would have won, without so clever an opponent,” he said. Beaming, the Videssian bowed in return. He would have had equally insincere compliments for his rival had their places been reversed, and they both knew it.

  When Dizabul started to say something, Bogoraz hushed him. “I know you did all you could for our cause, gracious prince. Now let us enjoy the fare your father offers. This custom your people have of not speaking of important matters at meals is wise, I think.” Taking the arm of Arghun’s younger son, he sat by the fire and fell to with good appetite.

  Sitting in turn, Gorgidas gave him a slit-eyed look. He was still only catching about one word in three of the Arshaum speech, but tone was something else. Bogoraz did not sound like a defeated man.

  “Aye, no doubt he has front,” Skylitzes allowed, dipping a strip of roast mutton into dark-yellow mustard. The Videssian officer’s eyes went wide when he tasted it. “Kavass,” he wheezed, and gulped to put out the fire.

  Warned just in time, the Greek offered his own similarly anointed hunk of meat to Arigh, who said, “Thanks,” and devoured it. “Too hot for you, eh?” he chuckled. “Well, I never got used to that vile Videssian fish sauce, either.” Gorgidas, who was fond of liquamen, nodded, taking his point.

  The kavass was flowing fast; their decision made, the Arshaum saw no reason to hold back. Gorgidas did not feel like waking up to a pounding head come morning. In Greek style, he was used to watering his wine when he wanted to stay close to sober. The serving girl looked at him as if he was mad, but fetched him a pitcher and a mixing cup anyway. The fermented mares’ milk was not improved for being diluted to half strength.

  “A useful trick, that,” said Goudeles, who did not miss much. “You give the look of drinking twice as much as you really do.” His eyes sparkled with triumph. “Tonight, though, I don’t care how much I put down.”

  On Arghun’s left, Bogoraz was eating and drinking with a fine show of unconcern. Dizabul matched him draught for draught and, being young, soon grew drunk. “Things would have been different if I had been khagan,” he said loudly.

  “You’re not, nor likely to be,” Arigh snarled.

  “Quiet, both of you,” Arghun said, scandalized. “Have you no respect for custom?” His sons obeyed, glaring at each other, Arigh suspicious of Dizabul for threatening his position, Dizabul hating Arigh—whose existence he had almost forgotten—for returning and destroying his. Strife fit for a tragedian, Gorgidas thought—Euripides, perhaps, for there was no easy right and wrong here.

  Despite Arghun’s warning to his sons, the feast bent Arshaum propriety to the breaking point. It was, after all, the occasion for announcing an alliance, and one by one the envoys from the neighboring clans found their way over to the central firepit to meet the Videssian ambassadors. Some spoke to Bogoraz as well, but most seemed ready to follow Arghun’s lead; the Gray Horse clan held the widest pastures and was thus the most influential on the plains of Shaumkhiil.

  The succession of tipsy barbarians soon bored Gorgidas, who did not envy his companions for having to be cordial toward each of them in turn. Sometimes being unimportant had advantages.

  The only nomad who briefly managed to rouse the Greek’s interest was the envoy of the Black Sheep clan, the most powerful next to Arghun’s. His name was Irnek; tall and, for an Arshaum, heavily bearded, he carried himself with an air of sardonic intelligence. Gorgidas feared he might favor Bogoraz simply from ill will between his clan and that of the Gray Horse, but Irnek, after a long, cool, measuring stare, ignored the Yezda diplomat.

  That slight and others like it seemed to reach Bogoraz at last. Where before he had kept his wits about him at all times, tonight he drank himself clumsy. After almost emptying a skin of kavass with one long draught, he dropped it and had to fumble about before he was able to pick it up and pass it on to Arghun. “My apologies,” he said.

  “No need for them.” The khagan drained it, smacked his lips thoughtfully. “Tangy.” He called for another.

  Gorgidas was gnawing meat from a partridge wing when Arghun uncoiled from his cross-legged seat and stomped in annoyance. “My cursed foot’s fallen asleep.”

  Arigh laughed at him. “If I’d said that, you’d say I was still soft from Videssos.”

  “Maybe so.” But the khagan stamped again. “A plague! It’s both of them now.” He tried to stand and had trouble.

  “What’s wrong?” Gorgidas asked, not following the Arsham speech.

  “Oh, nothing.” Arigh was still chuckling. “His feet are asleep.” Arghun rubbed the back of one calf, his face puzzled.

  Gorgidas’ eye swept to Bogoraz, who had opened his coat and was wiping his forehead as he talked with Dizabul. Suspicion exploded in the Greek. If he was wrong he would have much to answer for, but if not—he seized the dish of mustard in front of Arigh, poured in water till it made a thin, pasty soup, and pressed the bowl into the Arshaum prince’s hands.

  �
�Quick!” he cried. “Give this to your father to drink, for his life!”

  Arigh stared. “What?”

  “Poison, you fool!” In his urgency, politeness was beyond Gorgidas; it was all he could do to speak Videssian instead of Greek. “Bogoraz has poisoned him, just as he did Onogon!”

  The Yezda ambassador leaped to his feet, fists clenched, face red and running with sweat. He bellowed, “You lie, you vile, pox-ridden—” and then stopped, utter horror on his features. The expression lasted but a moment, and haunted Gorgidas the rest of his life.

  Then everyone was crying out, for Bogoraz burst into blinding white flame, brighter by far than the bonfire by him. His scream cut off almost before it began. He seemed to burn from the inside out, a blaze more furious with every passing second. And yet, as he kicked and writhed and tried to run from the fate he had called down on himself, his flaming body gave off no heat, nor was there any stench of burning. Onogon’s magic and the protective oath he had extracted from Bogoraz had not been enough to save himself, but they served his khagan still.

  “Oath-breaker!” cried Tolui, the new shaman, from among the clan elders. “See the oath-breaker pay his price!”

  Mouth working in terror, Dizabul scrambled away from the charring ruins of what had been his friend.

  Arghun stood transfixed, gaping at the appalling spectacle. Gorgidas had no time for it. He seized the mustard from Arigh once more, thrust it on the khagan. “Drink!” he shouted, by a miracle remembering the Arshaum word. Automatically, Arghun obeyed. He suddenly bent double as the emetic took hold, spewed up kavass and food.

  Under the sour smell of vomit was another, sharper, odor, the telltale scent of hemlock. Gorgidas barely noted it; Bogoraz’ hideous end had banished any doubts he might have had.

  After vomiting, Arghun went to his knees and stayed there. He touched his thighs as if he had no feeling in them. Gorgidas’ lips tightened. If the poison reached the khagan’s heart he would die, no matter that he had thrown most of it up. “Keep him sitting!” the Greek barked at Arigh, who jumped to support his father with arm and shoulder.

  The physician shouted for Tolui, who came at the run, a short, middle-aged nomad with a surprisingly deep voice. Through Arigh, Gorgidas demanded, “Have you any potions to strengthen a man’s heart?”

  He almost cried out for joy when the shaman answered, “Yes, a tea made from foxgloves.”

  “The very thing! Brew some quick and fetch it!”

  Tolui darted away. Gorgidas thrust a hand under Arghun’s tunic; the skin at the khagan’s groin was starting to grow cool. The Greek swore under his breath. Arghun, bemused a moment before, was turning angry; hemlock left the victim’s mind clear to the end.

  Dizabul hesitantly approached his father, knelt to take his hand. Against every Arshaum custom, there were tears in his eyes. “I was wrong, father. Forgive me, I beg,” he said. Arigh snarled something short and angry at his brother, but Gorgidas could guess how much that admission had cost the proud young prince.

  Before Arghun could reply, a handful of concubines rushed toward him, shrieking. He shouted them away with something close to his healthy vigor, grumbling to Arigh, “The last thing I need is a pack of women wailing around me.”

  “Will he pull through?” Goudeles asked Gorgidas. He was suddenly full of respect; they were in the Greek’s province now, not his.

  The physician was feeling for Arghun’s pulse and did not answer. His fingers read a disquieting story; the khagan’s heartbeat was strong, but slow and getting slower. “Tolui! Hurry, you son of a mangy goat!” the Greek shouted. To get more speed, he would have called the shaman worse, had he known how.

  Tolui came trotting up, holding a steaming two-eared cup in both hands. “Give that to me!” Gorgidas exclaimed, snatching it away from him. The shaman did not protest. A healer himself, he knew another when he saw one.

  “Bitter,” Arghun said when the Greek pressed the cup to his lips, but he drank it down. He sighed as the warm brew filled his stomach. Gorgidas seized his wrist again. The foxglove tea was as potent in this world as in his own; the khagan’s heartbeat steadied, then began to pick up.

  “Feel how far the coldness has spread,” Gorgidas ordered Tolui.

  The shaman obeyed without question. “Here,” he said, pointing. It was still below Arghun’s navel—an advance, but a tiny one.

  “If he dies,” Arigh said, voice chill with menace, “it will not be a horse sacrificed over his tomb, Dizabul; it will be you. But for you, this cursed Bogoraz would have been run out long since.” Sunk in misery, Dizabul only shook his head.

  Arghun cuffed at his elder son. “I don’t plan on dying for a while yet, boy.” He turned to Gorgidas. “How am I doing?” The physician palpated his belly. The hemlock had moved no further. He told the khagan so.

  “I can feel that for myself,” Arghun said. “You seem to know this filthy poison—what does it mean? Will I get my legs back?” The khagan’s eyebrows shot up. “By the wind spirits! Will I get my prick back? I don’t use it as much as I used to, but I’d miss it.”

  The Greek could only toss his head in ignorance. Men who puked up hemlock were not common enough for him to risk predictions. As yet he was far from sure Arghun would survive; he had not thought past that.

  Lankinos Skylitzes held a wool coat, a long light robe, and a black felt skullcap in front of him. “What is this, a rummage sale?” Gorgidas snapped. “Don’t bother me with such trash.”

  “Sorry,” the Videssian officer said, and sounded as if he meant it; like Goudeles, he was taking a new look at the physician. “I thought you might be interested. It’s all that’s left of Bogoraz.”

  “Oh.”

  Gorgidas felt Arghun’s pulse again. The khagan’s heart was still beating steadily. “Get me more of that foxglove tea, if you would,” the Greek said to Tolui. Arigh smiled as he translated. He knew Gorgidas well enough to realize his return to courtesy was a good sign. The physician added, “And bring back some blankets, too; we should keep the poisoned parts as warm as we can.”

  Gorgidas stayed by Arghun through the night. Not until after midnight was he sure he had won. Then at last the chill of the hemlock began, ever so slowly, to retreat. As the sky grew light in the east, the khagan had feeling halfway down his thighs, though his legs would not yet answer him.

  “Sleep,” Arghun told the Greek. “I don’t think you can do much more for me now—and if you prod me one more time I may wring your neck.” The twinkle in his eye gave the lie to his threatening words.

  The physician yawned until his jaw cracked; his eyes felt full of grit. He started to protest, but realized Arghun was right. His judgment would start slipping if he stayed awake much longer. “You rout me out if anything goes wrong,” he warned Tolui. The shaman nodded solemnly.

  Waking Skylitzes and Goudeles, who had dozed off by the fire, Gorgidas headed back with them toward the Videssian embassy’s yurt. “I’m very glad indeed old Arghun chose us over the Yezda,” the pen-pusher said.

  “I should hope so,” Skylitzes said. “What of it?”

  Goudeles looked round carefully to make sure no one who understood Videssian was in earshot. “I was just thinking that if he had not, I might have been foolish enough to essay something drastic to change his mind.” The plump bureaucrat patted his paunch. “Somehow I don’t think I would have burned so neatly as Bogoraz. Too much fat to fry, you might say. Rrrr!” He shuddered at the very notion.

  XI

  “A MESSENGER?” SCAURUS REPEATED. PHOSTIS APOKAVKOS nodded. The tribune muttered to himself in annoyance, then burst out, “I don’t want to see any bloody messenger; they only come with bad news. If he’s not from Phos himself, I tell you, I’ll eat him without salt. If some tin-pot noble wants to complain that my men have lifted a couple of sheep, let him do it himself.”

  Apokavkos grinned self-consciously at the near-sacrilege. “Next best thing to Phos, sir,” he said in careful Latin; though he clung to the Emp
ire’s religion, he acted as Roman as he could, having got a better shake from the legionaries than his own folk ever gave him. He rubbed his long, shaven chin, continuing, “From the Emperor, he is.”

  “From Thorisin?” Marcus perked up. “I’d almost given up on getting word from him. Go on, fetch the fellow.” Apokavkos saluted and hurried out of what had been the provincial governor’s suite of offices. Raindrops skittered down the windowpane behind the tribune.

  The messenger squelched in a few minutes later. Despite his wide-brimmed leather traveling hat, his hair and beard were soaked; there was mud halfway up his knee-high boots. He smelled of wet horse.

  “This is a bad storm, for so early in the season,” Marcus remarked sympathetically. “Care for some hot wine?” At the man’s grateful nod, the Roman used a taper to light the olive oil in the small brazier that sat at a corner of his desk. He set a copper ewer of wine atop the yellow flame, wrapped his hand in a protective scrap of cloth when he was ready to pick it up and pour.

  The imperial messenger held his cup to his face, savoring the fragrant steam. He drank it off at a gulp, to put something warm in his stomach. “Have another,” Marcus said, sipping his own. “This one you’ll be able to enjoy.”

  “I do thank you. If you’ll let me have that rag—ah, thanks again.” The Videssian poured, drank again, this time more slowly. “Ah, yes, much better now. I only wish my poor horse could do the same.”

  Scaurus waited until the courier set this cup down empty, then said, “You have something for me?”

  “So I do.” The man handed him a tube of oiled silk, closed at either end with a wooden plug and sealed with the imperial sunburst. “Waterproof, you see?”

  “Yes.” Marcus broke the seal and unrolled the parchment inside it. He set it on the polished marble desktop with his cup at one end and the corner of an abacus at the other to keep it from spiraling up again.