Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  The outlaw chief quailed as Avshar’s wrath fell on him, but his own anger sustained him. “The red-haired one is mine,” he said. “You may not have him.”

  “You speak to me of ‘may not,’ grub? Remember who I am.”

  That memory would stay with Varatesh forever. But he summoned all that was left of his own pride and flung it back at Avshar: “And you, sorcerer, remember who I am.” Afterwards, he thought it the bravest thing he had ever done.

  The wizard-prince measured him with that terrible unseen stare. “So,” he said at last, “another tool turns and bites me, does it? Well, for all that your mother was a cur, you make a better one than that scrannel Vardanes, who thought only of his prick in the end.” He spread his hands in ironic generosity. “Take the red-haired one, then, if you can. I make you a present of him.”

  “He is not yours to give,” Varatesh said, but only to himself.

  As fighters on both sides began running out of arrows, the battle lines drew closer. Shamshirs flashed in the autumn sun; a nomad near Viridovix gaped at the spouting blood where two fingers of his left hand had been sheared away. “Tie ’em up!” Targitaus shouted. The rider came out of his stupor. Cursing furiously, he wrapped a strip of wool over the wound and tied it tight with a leather thong.

  An outlaw rode straight for the Gaul; Viridovix booted his horse on to meet him. Straight sword rang off curved one. With the lighter weapon, the Khamorth slashed again before Viridovix had recovered. He leaned away from the stroke, turned the next one with his shield. His own cut laid the nomad’s leg open. The rider cursed and dropped his guard. Viridovix brought his blade round in a backhand swipe. It crunched into the renegade’s cheek. Blood spattered; the Khamorth’s fur cap flew from his head. Dead or unconscious, he fell from the saddle, to be trampled by his own horse.

  Rambehisht had cannily saved his arrows till the fighting came to close quarters. At point-blank range his bow, reinforced with horn, could drive a shaft right through a man, or pin him to his horse. Then his own animal toppled, shot just below the eye. Lithe as a cat, he kicked free of the stirrups before it fell, and faced an oncoming bandit sword in hand.

  Mounted man against one afoot, though, was a contest with an ending likely grim. Viridovix, who was not far away, howled out a wild Gallic war cry. It froze the outlaw for the moment the Celt needed to draw close. Rambehisht ran forward, too. Suddenly it was two against one; the horseman tried to flee, but in the press he could not. Seizing his left calf, Rambehisht pitched him off his beast. Viridovix leaned down to finish him off. Rambehisht leaped onto the steppe pony before it got away. He drew, fired, and hit a nomad riding up behind the Gaul.

  Viridovix jerked his head round at the bandit’s cry of pain. “Thank you, Khamorth darling. That one I hadna seen.”

  “Debts are for paying,” the dour plainsman answered. Viridovix frowned, wondering if Rambehisht intended to pay back his beating one day as well.

  No time to fret over might-be’s. Three brigands spotted Viridovix at once. By luck, one of Targitaus’ men took the closest out of the fight with a well-cast javelin. The other two bored in on the Gaul. He let out another ululating shriek, but it did not daunt them. Thinking fast, he spurred toward one, then clapped his bronze-studded leather cap from his head and hurled it in the other’s face. He wheeled his horse with a skill he hardly knew he had, smashed his sword down on the head of the distracted renegade’s beast. The luckless horse dropped, stone dead. Viridovix never knew what happened to its rider. He was already whirling back to face the other bandit, but the outlaw fled before him.

  He laughed gigantically. “Back to your mother, you skulking omadhaun! Think twice or ever you play a man’s game again!” Blood flew from his sword as he brandished it overhead. This was what the battlefield was for, he thought—bending the foe to your mastery, whether by steel or force of will alone. Intoxicating as strong kavass, the power tingled in his veins.

  He brushed his long hair back from his eyes, looked round to see how the bigger fight was going. It was hard to be sure. These cavalry battles took up an ungodly lot of room and ebbed and flowed like quicksilver. Worse, he had trouble telling his own side from the outlaws at any distance.

  There was, he saw, a battle within a battle in the center of the field, with Anakhar’s Spotted Cats in a wild melee with Krobyz’ Leaping Goats. Most of Varatesh’s nonoutlaw allies seemed to be bunched there, from the standards waving over them. They might fight along with his blank black banner, but were not eager to join too closely with the renegades who followed it.

  As a result, Anakhar’s men were outnumbered and hard-pressed. Targitaus waved to his son to ride to their rescue. Batbaian led a company leftward. Unlike Viridovix, he knew friend from foe at a glance. His horsemen plugged what had been a growing gap, making the enemy give ground. Heartened, the Spotted Cats fought with fresh vigor.

  Targitaus took the rest of his men on a flanking move round the outlaws’ left. Avshar met them head-on, leading half a hundred of Varatesh’s hardest brigands, scarred rogues who knew every trick of fighting, fair and foul. They were steeped in evil but far from cowards, giving no quarter and asking none.

  On his huge stallion, Avshar stood out from the Khamorth around him like a war galley among rowboats. His fearsome bow was slung over his shoulder; he swung a long straight sword with deadly effect. “Another oaf!” he cried as one of Targitaus’ riders drove at him. The blade hissed as it cleaved air and bit into the plainsman’s neck. “That for your stupidity, then, and Skotos eat your soul forever!”

  Viridovix raised his voice to carry through the battle clamor: “Avshar!” The wizard-prince’s head came up, like a dog taking a scent. “Here, you kern!” the Celt yelled. “You wanted Scaurus, but I’ll stand for him the now!”

  “And fall, as well!” Avshar spurred past one of his own men. “Out of my way, ravens’ meat!” He brought his sword up in mock salute as he neared the Gaul. “You will make Varatesh angry, gifting me with your life so.”

  Viridovix barely beat the wizard’s first stroke aside, turning the flat of the blade with his shield—the edge would have torn through it. The heavy horse Avshar rode let him carry the full panoply he always wore beneath his robes—his shield was a kite-shaped one, faced with metal, on the Namdalener pattern. The gear made the Gaul’s boiled leather seem flimsy as linen.

  You’ll not beat this one on strength, the Gaul thought as he turned his horse for the next pass, nor on fear either. That left wit. He remembered the lesson he had learned in his fight with Varatesh: a horse was as important as a sword. It was doubly true of Avshar’s huge charger, which reared to dash the brains from a dismounted nomad with its iron-shod hooves.

  The wizard-prince brought it down and sent it charging at Viridovix, who dug spurs into his own mount. When they met, his slash was aimed not at Avshar in his mail, but at the stallion. He had intended to deliver the same crushing blow he had used against the outlaw’s mount, but misjudged the speed the charger could deliver. Instead of crashing down between the beast’s eyes, the sword tore a great flap of skin from the side of its neck.

  That served nearly as well as the stroke he had intended, for the wounded animal screamed in shock and pain and bucked frantically, almost throwing Avshar. Bellowing in rage, the wizard-prince had to clutch its mane to keep from going over its tail. And even though he held his seat, the wounded animal would not answer the reins; it ran off at full gallop, carrying him out of the fight.

  “Come back, ye blackguard!” Viridovix howled gleefully. “It’s only just begun that I have.”

  Avshar spun in his saddle, shouting a curse. For a moment the battlefield swayed and darkened before the Gaul’s eyes. Then the druids’ marks on his blade flashed golden as they turned aside the spell. His vision cleared. He squeezed the sword hilt gratefully, as if it were a comrade’s hand.

  The battle hung, undecided, for some endless time, with no lull long enough to let the fighters do much more than sob in a few
quick breaths or swig at skins of water or kavass. The sun had passed west of south before Viridovix fully realized he was moving forward more often than back.

  “Press ’em, press ’em!” Targitaus shouted. “They’re going to break.”

  But as his horsemen gathered themselves for the charge that would finish the outlaws, yells of alarm came from the center and left, the most dreaded cry on the steppe: “Fire!” Clouds of thick black smoke leaped into the air, obscuring the renegades. Targitaus’ face purpled with rage. “Filthy cowards! Better to die like men than cover a retreat that way.”

  Then Viridovix heard Avshar’s gloating laughter and knew all his hopes were undone, for the flames spread faster than any natural fire, and at the direction of a malignant will. Horses shrieked and men screamed as the advancing walls of fire swept over them. But they were merely caught by accident in the web of the wizard-prince’s design. He used his blaze to net his foes as a hunter would drive hares into his meshes, trapping them in small pockets between fiery sheets that raced between and behind horses faster than any beast could hope to run.

  As the main body of their enemies was caught, Varatesh’s brigands took fresh heart, while the clans that rode with them saw Avshar’s prowess with mingled awe and terror. They drove against the untrapped remnants of Targitaus’ army with redoubled force. Now all the weight of numbers was on their side. There was no checking them. The retreat that followed was close to rout.

  Viridovix tried to stem it singlehanded, slashing his way through the enemy ranks toward Avshar. The wizard-prince was afoot, having dismounted from his wounded charger the better to direct his sorcery. The Gaul’s desperation burned bright as the wizard’s flames; few outlaws dared stand against him.

  Varatesh and a band of outlaws rode to Avshar’s rescue, but the wizard needed no protection. He gave Viridovix a quick glance, gestured, sent a tongue of flame licking his way through the grass. The Celt spurred toward it regardless, confident his sword would carry him past the magic. The druids’ marks on the blade glowed as he thundered toward the fire.

  But his mount knew nothing of sorcery and shied at the flames ahead, its eyes rolling with panic. For all his roweling, it would go no further. He cried out to Epona, but the Celtic horse-goddess held no power in this world. Avshar’s image wavered through the flames, tauntingly out of reach.

  “All right, then, I’ll go my ain self,” the Celt growled, fighting to steady the beast enough to let him climb down. But Varatesh chose that moment to loose a hoarded arrow at him. It missed, but sank deep into his horse’s rump. The beast squealed and leaped into the air, almost throwing him. It bolted away, out of control. That was, perhaps, as well for Viridovix; goaded by pain, the steppe pony outran the bandits pursuing it. Avshar’s vengeful laughter burned in the Gaul’s ears.

  When he finally made his horse obey him, he could only join the fragments of Targitaus’ shattered army in their retreat. The renegades and their allies let them go. They were hovering like carrion flies round Avshar’s prisoning walls of fire, which burned on, fierce as ever, long after the grass that should have been their only fuel was gone.

  Black as despair, smoke filled all the autumn sky.

  Krobyz bowed low in the saddle as Varatesh rode by. Exhausted as he was, the outlaw chief flushed with pleasure at the acknowledgement of his prowess from a legitimate khagan. This, he told himself, was what he had been reaching toward for so many years. At last he had earned the place which belonged to him by right, and that despite the foes he did not deserve. His lip curled—they had seen his might today.

  The crackling flames ahead reminded him the triumph had not been entirely his. As if to reinforce that reminder, Avshar came up beside him. But the wizard-prince only waved toward the warriors trapped in his blazing cells. “What is your pleasure with them?”

  Varatesh was ready to be magnanimous in victory. “Let them surrender, if they will.”

  Shrugging, Avshar called to the plainsmen in the nearest fiery box. “Yield yourselves to Varatesh, grand khagan of the Royal Clan of Pardraya!” The unexpected title made the outlaw chieftain blink. Why, so I am, he thought proudly.

  The box held Oitoshyr and his three or four surviving clansmen, their white fox caps dark with dust and soot. Oitoshyr was wounded, but not ready to quit. “Bugger Varatesh, the grand pimp of the plains,” he shouted, “aye, and you, too, you hulking turd!”

  The wizard-prince looked a question to Varatesh. Furious at the rebuff, he spat in the dirt. Avshar took that as answer and gestured with his left hand. One wall of flame holding the White Foxes turned transparent, then died. Varatesh waved a hundred bandits in. Grinning, they set about the butchery they had been waiting for. Oitoshyr took a long time to die.

  After that, surrenders came one on the other. Varatesh was staggered by the victory he had won. No bard sang of, no enaree remembered, a battle with so many prisoners taken. There must have been a thousand in all; as each flame pocket opened, his men swarmed over them like locusts, taking weapons, armor, and horses as spoils of war. He wondered how long he could feed them.

  “Why should you?” Avshar said. “Give them back to their own worthless clans.”

  “And have them take up arms against me again the next day? I did not think you such a trusting soul.”

  The sorcerer laughed, deep in his throat. “Well said! But if you could get them off your hands, and at the same time prove your supremacy to every petty chief on the steppe?” He paused, waiting for Varatesh’s response.

  “Go on,” the plainsman urged, intrigued.

  Avshar laughed again and did.

  “I thank you, but no,” Gorgidas told Arghun for what must have been the twentieth time. “When the imperial embassy goes back to Videssos, I intend to go with it. I am a man made for cities, just as you belong here on the plain. I could no more be happy following the flocks than you could in the Empire.”

  “We will speak of this again,” the khagan said, as he did each time Gorgidas declined to stay with the Arshaum. Arghun leaned back against a pile of cushions in the Videssian embassy’s yurt and stretched a blanket of rabbit fur over his legs. Feeling had returned to them, but not full use. The khagan needed two sticks to walk and still could not sit a horse.

  His gratitude for his life, though, knew no bounds. He had showered the Greek with presents: a knee-length coat of marten’s fur so soft it almost did not register to the fingers; a string of fine horses; a falcon with blood-colored eyes—no hawker, Gorgidas had been able to decline that in good conscience; a splendid bow and twenty arrows in a quiver covered in gold leaf, which he discreetly passed on to Skylitzes, who could use it; and, perhaps at Tolui’s urging, a supply of all the herbs the nomads reckoned medicinal, each in a little bone jar with a stopper carved from horn.

  “You are starting to speak our language well,” Arghun went on.

  “My thanks,” Gorgidas said, rather insincerely. Like most Greeks, he thought his own supple, subtle tongue the one proper speech for a civilized man. Learning Latin had been a concession to serving in the Roman army, Videssian a necessity in this new world. In a generous moment, he might have admitted each had a few virtues. But the Arshaum speech was fit only for barbarians. As he had written, “It is a tongue with more words for the state of a cow’s hoof than for that of a man’s soul. No more need be said.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance; Arghun curled his fingers in a protective sign. Rain pounded against the yurt’s tight-stretched felt. In a normal year, the plainsmen would have been moving toward their winter pastures. This fall, though, the flocks went south with boys and graybeards, while warriors gathered to avenge the attack on the Gray Horse khagan.

  A pony splashed up to the yurt, which slowed to let the rider swing himself up onto it. Dripping, Arigh slithered through the tent flap. He sketched a salute to his father. “The standard is ready,” he reported.

  Goudeles cocked a sly eyebrow at Gorgidas. “Here’s something for your history, now; you
can style this the War of Bogoraz’ Coat.”

  The Greek rubbed his chin; he hardly noticed the feel of his whiskers any more. “You know, I like that,” he said. He rummaged in his kit for tablet and stylus, then scribbled a note in the wax. To unite the Arshaum clans, they had chosen to fight, not behind any tribal banner, but under the symbol of their reason for going to war.

  The exchange had been in Videssian, but Arghun, catching the Yezda’s name, asked to have it translated. When Arigh rendered it into the plains speech, his father let out a short, grim laugh. “Ha! If any more of him was left, that would go up on a lance instead of his coat.”

  “And rightly so,” Lankinos Skylitzes said. He hesitated, then went on carefully, “You are building a potent army here, khagan.”

  “Yes,” Arghun said, pride in his voice. “Are you not glad to have friends so strong?”

  The imperial officer looked uncomfortable. “Er, of course. Yet traveling to Prista in such force might alarm the Pardrayan Khamorth—”

  “As if that mattered,” Arigh snorted. He drew a finger across his throat and made a ghastly gurgling noise. “This to them if they dare turn on us. I hope they try.”

  Skylitzes nodded, but he was a dogged man and plowed on with his chain of thought. “And should such an army reach Prista, it would be hard to find shipping enough to transport it easily to Videssos.”

  Angry and baffled, Arigh said, “What’s chewing on you, Lankinos? You come all this way for men and now you have them and don’t want them.”

  But Arghun was eyeing Skylitzes with new respect. “Ride lightly on him there, son.”

  “Why should I?” Arigh looked resentfully at the Videssian.

  “Because he knows his business.” Seeing his son still mutinous, Arghun began to explain: “He came to us for soldiers for his own khagan.”

  “Well, of course,” Arigh broke in. “What of it?”

  “This army here is mine, as he sees. He has the right to wonder how I will use it, and if it might be more dangerous to him than the enemies he already has.”