“Ah, we can set them free after all,” Avshar said. “How noble for us.” He sipped kavass with a hollow reed that went through a slit in his visored helm. Somehow he still managed the proper nomad slurp.
Varatesh had been drinking hard for days. He wished he had never given the orders that went with the prisoner release. Far too late for regrets or turning back now, he thought. “Yes, let them go,” he said. The thing was done, and he had to live with it. His hand shook as he lifted the skin to his mouth; he gulped without tasting what he drank.
“They’re coming!” the rider called as he rode into camp. The Khamorth cheered; everyone was milling about among the tents, the men armed, the women in holiday best, wearing their finest bughtaqs and long flounced festival shirts of wool dyed in horizontal bands of bright color. The day cooperated with their celebration. It was cold but clear, the last storm having blown itself out the night before.
Tension and fear mingled with the joy. Wives, daughters, brothers of missing men, all hoped their loved ones were prisoners and knew some of those hopes would be broken.
“The bastards tied them together, it looks like,” Targitaus’ scout was reporting. “They’re in lines of twenty or so, one bunch next to the other.”
There was an angry rumble from the nomads, but Targitaus quelled it. “So long as they’re coming,” he said. “Ropes come off, aye, and other bonds as well.” His clansmen growled eagerly at that, like the wolves that were their token.
From beside Viridovix, Seirem called, “How do they look?” Her hand held the Gaul’s tight enough to hurt. He knew how much she wanted to ask for word of Batbaian, and admired her for holding back to keep the scout from being deluged in similar questions. He squeezed back; she accepted the pressure gratefully.
“I didn’t ride close, I fear,” the plainsman said “As soon as I saw them, I turned round and came here to bring word.” Seirem bit her lip, but nodded in understanding.
“Let’s go out to meet them!” someone shouted. The Khamorth started to surge forward, but Targitaus checked them, saying, “The agreement was to receive them here, and we shall. For now we are weak; we cannot afford to break any part of it. Yet …” he added, and the nomads nodded, anticipating the day.
Waiting stretched. Then a great cry went up as the first heads appeared over a low swell of ground a few hundred yards from the camp. Heedless of the khagan now, his people pelted toward them. He trotted with them, not trying to hold them back any longer. Still hand in hand, Viridovix and Seirem were somewhere near the center of the crowd. He could have been at the front, but slowed to match her shorter strides.
More and more freed captives stumbled into view, roped together as the scout had said. Viridovix whistled in surprise as he saw their numbers. “Dinna tell me the blackguard’s after keeping his promise,” he muttered. Seirem looked up at him curiously; he realized he had spoken Gaulish. “Never you mind, love,” he said in the plains speech. “Seems your father had the right of it, and glad I am for it.”
“So am I,” she said, and then, with a little gasp, “Look, it’s Batbaian, there at the front of a line!” They were still too far away for Viridovix to recognize him, but Seirem had no doubts. She called her brother’s name and waved frantically. Batbaian’s head jerked up. He spotted Viridovix, if not his sister, and wagged his head to show he had heard; with his hands tied behind him, he could not wave back.
As they hurried closer, Seirem suddenly flinched, as if struck. “His eye—” she faltered. Her own filled with pain; there was only an inflamed empty socket under Batbaian’s left brow, the lid flapping uselessly over it.
“Och, lass, it happens, it happens,” Viridovix said gently. “The gods be praised he has the other, and home again to heal, too.” Seirem’s hand was cold in his, but she managed a nod. She had seen enough of war’s aftermath to know how grim it could be.
The returning captives only added more proof of that as they shambled forward. Many limped from half-healed wounds; more than one had only a single hand to be roped behind his back.
Seirem was recognizing more plainsmen now. “There’s Ellak, heading up another column. The spirits be kind to him; he’s lost an eye, too. And Bumin over there—you can always tell him because he’s so bowlegged—oh, no, so has he. And so has Zabergan, and that tall man from the Spotted Cats, and Nerseh there—” She looked up at Viridovix, fear on her face. It congealed in him, too, like a lump of ice under his heart. He recalled what sort of gifts Avshar gave.
The rush from the camp reached the prisoners, and welcoming shouts turned to cries of horror. Women screamed and wailed and fainted, and men with them. Others reeled away to spew up their guts on the muddy ground. One man drew his saber, cut his brother from a file of captives, then cut him down. Before anyone could stop him, he drew the blade across his own throat and fell, spouting blood.
For what Seirem had seen at the columns’ heads was such mercy as Avshar and Varatesh had shown. The file leaders had been left with an eye apiece, to guide their lines over the steppe. Every man behind them was blinded totally; their ruined eyes dripped pus or thick yellow serum in place of the tears they would never shed again. It took time for the atrocity to sink in: a thousand men, with half a hundred eyes among them.
Lipoxais, his usually pink face dead pale, went from column to column, pressing soothing herbs on the most cruelly mutilated nomads and, perhaps as important, offering a kindly voice in their darkness. But the hopeless magnitude of the task exhausted the enaree’s medicines and overwhelmed his spirit. He went to his knees in the mud, weeping with the deep, racking spasms of a man not used to tears. “Fifty eyes! I foretold it and knew not what I saw!” he cried bitterly. “I foretold it!”
The short hairs on the back of Viridovix’ neck prickled up as he remembered the enaree’s mantic trance. What else had Lipoxais seen? A mountain doorway and a pair of swords. The Gaul shivered. He spat to avert the omens, wanting no part of the rest of Lipoxais’ prophecies.
Targitaus was staring about like a man who knew he was awake but found himself trapped in nightmare all the same. “My son!” he groaned. “My clan! My—” He groaned again, surprise and pain together, and clutched at his head—or tried to, for his left arm would not answer his will. He swayed like an old tree in a storm, then toppled, face down.
Seirem shrieked and rushed to his side, Viridovix close behind. Borane was already there, gently wiping mud from Targitaus’ cheeks and beard with the sleeve of her festive blouse. And Lipoxais, torn from his private grief, came at the run.
“Cut me loose, curse it!” Batbaian shouted. Someone slashed through the rope that held him to his fellow captives. Deprived of their one sighted comrade, they froze in place, afraid to move. Batbaian, his hands still tied behind him, pushed through the crowd and clumsily knelt beside his father.
The right side of Targitaus’ face was still screwed up in anguish, the left slack and loose as if made from half-melted wax. One pupil was tiny, while the other filled its iris. The chieftain’s breath rattled in his throat. While his family, the rest of the Khamorth, and Viridovix watched and listened helplessly, it came slower and slower till it stopped. Lipoxais closed his staring eyes. With a moan, Borane clutched at Targitaus, trying to squeeze life into him once more and trying in vain.
XIII
ALTHOUGH MARCUS PASSED THE ORDEAL OF THE DRUG, THE Emperor did not summon him again. Thorisin lacked the front of a Vardanes Sphrantzes, to savor dealing with a man he had shamed. The tribune was as pleased to be left alone. Eventually he finished his report and sent it to the Avtokrator by messenger. A scrawled acknowledgement returned the same way.
Gaius Philippus kept Garsavra under control. Yavlak’s Yezda tried raiding farms near the town not long after Scaurus reached the capital. The report the senior centurion sent him was a model of terseness: “They came. We smashed ’em.”
The tribune was glad to hear of the victory, but less so than he would have imagined possible a few weeks before.
The constant murmurous shuffle of parchment insulated the bureaucrats’ wing of the Grand Courtroom from such struggles. And knowing the Romans had done well without him only made Marcus feel more useless.
He stayed at his desk or in his room most of the time, narrowing his world as much as he could. There were few people in Videssos he wanted to see. Once, rounding a corner, he found one of Alypia’s servants knocking at his door. He ducked back out of sight. The servant left, grumbling. Scaurus shrank from facing the princess after revealing himself to her under Nepos’ elixir, all his private griefs private no more.
Without Senpat and Nevrat Sviodo, he would have been altogether reclusive. And the first time they came calling, he did not intend to answer. “I know you’re there, Scaurus,” Senpat called through the door. “Let’s see if I can pound longer than you can stand.” Aided by his wife, he beat out such a tattoo that the tribune, his ears ringing, had to give in.
“Took you long enough,” Nevrat said. “I thought we’d have to stand here and drip all night.” The finery the two Vaspurakaners were wearing was rather the worse for rain.
“Sorry,” Marcus mumbled untruthfully. “Come in; dry off.”
“No, you come out with us,” Senpat said. “I think I’ve found a tavern with wine dry enough to suit you. Or if not, drink enough and you won’t care.”
“I soak up enough wine by myself, thanks, dry or sweet,” Marcus said, still trying to decline. Along with the patter of raindrops against his window, the grape eased him toward such rest as he got.
But Nevrat took his arm. “Drinking by yourself is not the same,” she declared. “Now come along.” Left with only the choice of breaking away by force, the tribune came.
The tavern was not far from the palace compound. Scaurus gulped down a cup of wine, grimaced, and glowered at Senpat Sviodo. “Only a Vaspurakaner would call this syrup dry,” he accused. The “princes” favored even sweeter, thicker vintages than the Videssians drank. “How is it different from any other wine hereabouts?”
“As far as I can tell, it isn’t,” Senpat said breezily. While Scaurus stared, he went on, “But the lure of it pried you out of your nest, not so?”
“I think your wife laying hold of me had more to do with it.”
“You dare imply she has charms I lack?” Senpat mimed being cut to the quick.
“Oh, hush,” Nevrat told him. She turned to Marcus. “What’s the use of having friends, if they don’t help in time of trouble?”
“I thank you,” the tribune said. He reached out to touch her hand, let go of it reluctantly—any small kindness could move him these days. Her smile was warm.
“Another thing friends are good for is noticing when friends’ mugs are empty,” Senpat said. He waved to the tap-man.
Scaurus found Nevrat was right. When he holed up in his cubicle with a bottle, all he got was stuporous and sad. With Senpat and Nevrat, though, wine let him receive the sympathy he would have rejected sober. He even tried to join in when one of the men at the bar started a round of drinking songs, and laughed at the face Senpat made to warn him his ear and voice were no truer than usual.
“We must do this again,” he heard himself saying while he stood, a little unsteadily, outside his doorway.
“So long as you promise not to sing,” Senpat said.
“Harumph.” With drunken expansiveness, Marcus embraced both Vaspurakaners. “You are good friends indeed.”
“Then as good friends should, we will let you rest,” Nevrat said. The tribune sadly watched them go. They, too, were swaying as they made their way down the corridor toward the stairs. Senpat’s arm slid round his wife’s waist. Marcus bit his lip and hurried into his room.
That small sting at the end did not badly mar the evening. Scaurus’ sleep was deep and restful, not the sodden oblivion that was the most he dared hope for since Helvis left him. The headache he woke with seemed a small price to pay. When he went up to the office where he worked, he nodded to the bureaucrats he was overseeing, the first friendly gesture he had given them.
He found the pen-pushers easier to supervise than they had been the year before. None had Pikridios Goudeles’ talent for number-shuffling, and they all knew Marcus had managed a draw with their wily chief. They did not have the nerve to try sneaking much past him.
Going through page after page, scroll after scroll of tax accounts without finding a silver bit out of place was encouraging in a way, but also dull. The tribune worked away with mechanical competence; he was not after excitement.
Seeing Scaurus in a mood rather less dour than he had shown before, one of the bureaucrats came up to his desk. “What is it, Iatzoulinos?” the tribune asked, looking up from his counting board. Even without his eyes to guide them, his fingers flicked through an addition with blurring speed; long practice with the beads had made him adept as any clerk.
“This has the possibility of providing you with some amusement, sir,” Iatzoulinos said, holding out a scroll. The pen-pusher was a lean, sallow man of indeterminate age. He spoke the jargon of the chancery even on matters that had nothing to do with finance; he probably used it when he made love, Marcus thought scornfully.
He wondered what so bloodless a man would find funny. “Show me.”
“With pleasure, sir.” Iatzoulinos unrolled the strip of parchment. “You will note first that all required seals have been affixed; to all initial appearances, it is a proper document. Yet note the inexpert hand in which it is written and the childishly simple syntax. Finally, it purports to be a demand on the capital for funds from a provincial town—” Iatzoulinos actually laughed out loud; he saw the joke there as too obvious to need spelling out.
Scaurus studied the document. Suddenly he, too, began to laugh. Iatzoulinos looked gratified, then grew nervous as the tribune did not stop. At last the pen-pusher said, “I pray your pardon, sir, but you appear to have discovered more risibility here than I had anticipated. Do you care to impart to me the source of your mirth?”
Marcus still could not speak. Instead, he pointed to the signature at the bottom of the parchment.
Iatzoulinos’ eyes followed his finger. The color slowly faded from his narrow cheeks. “That is your name there,” he said in a tiny voice. He glanced fearfully at Scaurus’ sword—he was not used to overtly deadly weapons in the chancery, which dealt with the subtler snares of pen and ink.
“So it is.” The tribune finally had control of himself. He continued, “If you check the file, you’ll also find an imperial rescript endorsing my request here. The citizens of Garsavra did the Empire a great service in contributing their own funds to obtain the Namdalener prisoners from Yavlak. Simple justice required repayment.”
“Of course, of course. I shall bend every effort toward the facilitation of the reimbursement process.” In his dismay, Iatzoulinos was practically babbling. “Illustrious sir, you will, I hope, grasp that I intended no offense in any remarks that may perhaps have appeared at first hearing somewhat slighting.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Scaurus got up and patted the unfortunate bureaucrat on the shoulder. There was no way to explain he actually felt grateful to Iatzoulinos; not even with Senpat and Nevrat had he laughed so hard.
“I shall draft the memorandum authorizing the dispatch of funds posthaste,” Iatzoulinos said, glad of an excuse to edge away from the Roman.
“Yes, do,” Marcus called after him. “Gaius Philippus, who heads the Garsavra garrison these days, lacks my forbearance.” Iatzoulinos’ sidling withdrawal turned into a trot.
Shaking his head, the tribune sat again. Even the relief his laughter brought was mixed with misery. He would rather have been at Garsavra himself, with his countrymen, than lonely and under a cloud at the capital. And thinking of how he had acquired the men of the Duchy only reminded him how he lost them afterward.
A few days later, the chamber was rocking with merriment when he came in the door. He caught snatches of the bad jokes the pen-pushers were throwing back and forth
: “… knows which side his bread is buttered on, all right.” “Buttered-Bun would be a better name for him.” “No, you fool, for her—”
Silence fell as the bureaucrats saw him. After Iatzoulinos’ disaster, they did not include him in their glee. He walked past clerks who avoided his eyes, listened to their conversation abruptly turn to business.
Stung, he sat down, opened a ledger, and began adding a long column of figures. This once, he wished he needed conscious thought to work the abacus. It would have taken his mind away from the hurt he felt.
“Play some more tunes, Vaspurakaner!” someone called through shouted applause. A score of throats took up the cry, until the tavern rang with it.
Senpat Sviodo let his pandoura rest in his lap for a moment, flexed his hands to loosen them. He sent a comic look of dismay toward the corner table where Marcus and Nevrat were sitting.
Nevrat called something to him in their own language. He nodded ruefully and rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to Scaurus, dropping back into Videssian. “I told him he could have been here drinking with us if he’d left the lute at home.”
“He enjoys playing,” the tribune said.
Nevrat raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, indeed, and I enjoy sugarplums, but I’d burst if I tried eating a bushel basket full.”
“All right.” Marcus yielded the point. Senpat had only intended playing a song or two, more for his own amusement than anyone else’s. But he found a wildly enthusiastic audience, not least among them the taverner, who had all but dragged him to his current seat atop the bar. His Vaspurakaner cap lay beside him, upside down. He had been singing a couple of hours now, with the crowd around him too thick and too keen to let him go.
They cheered all over again at the first chords of a familiar tune and roared out the chorus: “The wine gets drunk, but you get drunker!”
“He should spin that one out as long as he can,” Marcus said. “Maybe they’ll all pass out and give him a chance to get away.”
Legion of Videssos Page 40
