Legion of Videssos

by Harry Turtledove

  He cursed, first in the guttural Khamorth speech, then in archaic Videssian, slow and full of hate. “Winter, then, shall my work complete,” he said in the same language. “Skotos will aid his servant thus, I trow.” He swung himself back into the saddle, wheeled his horse, and rode east.

  The wolves were a long time returning.

  Tied together so they would not lose each other in the storm, Batbaian and Viridovix slogged west. Shaumkhiil was as featureless as the Pardrayan plain, but there was no danger of wandering in circles. As long as they kept the wind blowing against their right sides, they knew they could not be far wrong.

  They had yet to see an Arshaum, which left Viridovix angry and frustrated and Batbaian, as far as the Gaul could tell, secretly relieved; down deep he still seemed to believe they were ten feet tall and armed with fangs.

  Maybe the Arshaum ate sheep at a gulp and spat out the bones, but eat sheep they did. The Gaul and Khamorth came on a dozen or so that must have strayed from their main herd. Viridovix ate mutton until he missed the horsemeat he had had to make himself choke down. Batbaian, a skillful jackleg tailor, sewed scraped sheepskins together into cloaks the two wanderers wore over their greatcoats.

  They needed the extra layer of warmth; the weather was the worst Batbaian had seen. To Viridovix it was appalling beyond belief: snow, ice, ravening wind, endless days without glimpse of sun or stars through thick black clouds. The storms on the Videssian plateau had been bitter, but they were storms, each with beginning and end. This went on and on, as if summer left the world for good.

  “It’s dogging us, I’m thinking,” Viridovix shouted through the screaming gale.

  “What’s that?” Batbaian yelled back. He was only a yard in front of the Celt, but the wind flung words away.

  “I say the blizzard’s after dogging us, to pounce when it’s worn us down.” Viridovix had meant it as a figure of speech, but suddenly wondered if it were not truth. Batbaian turned round and mouthed a name. The Gaul could not hear it, but he knew what it was. His shudder, for once, had nothing to do with cold. He thought again about throwing away his sword, this time more seriously than he had before.

  The storm blew harder, as though it acknowledged Avshar as its parent. The wind hurled stinging snow into Viridovix’ eyes. He shielded them with his hands as best he could, stumbling ahead all but blind. The icy blast fought his every forward step; it was like trying to walk through ocean waves.

  A savage gust stopped him and Batbaian in their tracks. “The tent!” the plainsman shouted. “This will kill us if we stay in it!” Viridovix cursed as he tried to drive the pegs; the ground had frozen so hard it did not want to take them. Somehow he and Batbaian forced the felt over its framework. Like animals darting into a nest, they scrambled for shelter.

  The raging wind seemed to scream louder once they were out of it. Viridovix rubbed at his legs, stamped his feet; his boots were thick and lined with several layers of felt, but his toes turned to ice each day regardless. “Sure and I understand the now why you were mooning over horseapples back there,” he said. “A sheepshit fire’s better than none.”

  “This is the last of it, worse luck,” Batbaian said. Fat caught more easily, but once alight the uncured dung burned longer and, to the Celt’s surprise, cleaner than the drippings the Khamorth always caught from his meat. Viridovix had hesitated almost a day over eating anything cooked on a dung fire, but hunger broke down his qualms.

  He sighed in relief as the fire began to give off a little warmth. The snow and ice clinging to his mustaches started melting; he wiped his face on his cloak. The wool was rank and greasy, but he did not mind. “Mutton again,” he grumbled.

  “We’re almost to the end of that, too,” Batbaian said. “You’ll like it better than empty, I’d bet.”

  “Truth that.” Viridovix skewered a hunk on his dagger, held it over the flames. His belly rumbled at the smell. “Sure and my insides think so.”

  A poorly planted tent peg tore out of its hole. The wind smacked it against the side of the tent like a flung stone. Batbaian’s head came up in alarm. “We’ve got to set that again,” he exclaimed, “before—” The second peg came loose as he was scrambling to his feet. The gale roared in under the bottom of the tent, lifted the felt free of its framework. Viridovix clutched it for a moment. Then, with what sounded like mocking laughter, the storm ripped it from his hands and sent it flapping away over the steppe.

  “After it!” Batbaian screamed. “We won’t last a day without it!” He flung the last words over his shoulder as he vanished into the blowing snow.

  Viridovix plunged after him. He had not gone twenty paces when he knew he was in trouble. Ahead, Batbaian might have been snatched from the face of the earth. The fire was lost behind him. He cried the Khamorth’s name again and again, howled out Gallic war cries. If there was any answer, the wind blew it away.

  Still shouting, he ran with the wind at his back for a while. In the blizzard, Batbaian could have been almost at his elbow, and would not have known it. He stopped, irresolute. If Batbaian had caught the runaway tent fabric, what would he do with it? Stay and wait for Viridovix or try to bring it back to what was left of the frame? “Och, a murrain take it,” the Celt muttered. “Whichever way I guess’ll turn out wrong.”

  He dug in his pouch and found the square Haloga coin he had won. He tossed it in the air, caught it with both hands. When he uncovered it, a dragon leered at him. “To the tent, then.” He turned to face the bitter wind. It stung like fire against his face; he was glad of his new beard, and wished it were heavier.

  He tried to follow his own footprints back, but the storm was already blowing snow over them. They grew fainter as he watched. He thought he was getting close when they finally gave out altogether. He fought panic. There had to be some way—the wind! If it had held steady, he could use it to steer his way back.

  It must have shifted. After a while he knew he had gone too far. He cast about blindly then, hoping luck would serve where wit had failed. It did not. He stood shivering, pounding his hands together and wondering what to do next. No food, no fire, no shelter—he could feel the heat draining from his body and knew Batbaian had been right; the storm could kill quickly.

  “If only the cursed snow’d stop so a body could use the eyes of him,” he said, shaking his head like a baffled bear. It seemed ready to snow forever, though, thick gusts of white powder blowing by almost horizontally.

  Realizing he had to shield himself from the ravening gale, he knelt and began pushing up a heap of snow as a windbreak. The storm swept it away about as fast as he piled it up, but at last he had a waist-high wall that blocked the worst of the wind. He crouched behind it, knowing his makeshift would do no good if the storm did not blow itself out soon.

  The numbness came insidiously; he hardly noticed when he could no longer feel his nose, his feet, his forearms. In a way it was a relief, for they did not hurt any more. His mind grew numb, too, slipping into a frigid lassitude in which he knew he was dying but lacked the will to care. He had always thought he would fight death to the end, but the irresistible cold stripped his defenses one by one and left him nothing to strike back at. He did not notice closing his eyes; what was there to see, in any case?

  He slept.

  * * *

  “Bloody ghastly,” Goudeles shouted over the shrieking wind.

  “What are you complaining about, Pikridios?” Skylitzes said beside him. “With your blubber you’re likely warmer than any of us.” The officer rode hunched over the right side of his pony’s neck to gain a little protection from the blizzard.

  The brute power of the plains winter chilled Gorgidas’ heart as much as it did his body. A child of the sunny Mediterranean, he was ill-equipped to face miles of snow and ice; they daunted him worse than sudden death on the battlefield. No wonder the Videssians gave Skotos a frozen lair, he thought.

  He turned to Arghun, asking, “Is it always so fierce?”

  The khagan�
��s face, like his own, was smeared so thick with grease that it glistened even in this murky light. “I have seen storms as bad as this, a few,” he answered, “but never one that lasted so long. And it grows worse as we ride east, which is strange. Usually the fouler weather stays to the west.” A gust kicked snow into his face. He coughed and bundled his robe of long-haired goatskin tighter around him. Since his poisoning he felt the cold more than his followers, and the Greek could only guess the hardship he was enduring. No complaint passed his lips, though, nor a suggestion that the Arshaum army slow its advance.

  A pair of scouts came riding back through the nomads toward the khagan, one a few yards ahead of the other. The leader bobbed his head in salute, spoke with faint distaste: “We found a Hairy, sir, freezing in the snow, and some other foreigner with him.”

  Arghun’s brows shot up. “A Khamorth? On our side of the river?”

  “Outlaw?” Skylitzes rapped.

  “That or a madman, or maybe both. No horse, and he’s lost an eye sometime not long ago—not pretty. Just an idiot Khamorth, rolled in felt.”

  “Oh, a pox on him,” the second scout burst out as he came abreast of his companion. He was younger than the other man, with lively, humorous eyes. “Tell them about the fire-demon.”

  The first picket made a rude noise. “You and your fire-demons. If he is one, this storm’s put him out for good. Even money he’s frozen dead by now—he didn’t look to be far from it, and I shouldn’t wonder, either, lying in the snow in only his coat.”

  “Well, I still say he’s no natural breed of man,” the younger Arshaum insisted. “Or will you tell me you’ve seen his like before, with hair and whiskers and great long mustache the color of polished bronze?”

  Gorgidas, Skylitzes, and Goudeles shouted together. The scout started; Arghun’s horse shied at the outcry. “Our this friend is,” Gorgidas said to the khagan, losing grammar in his excitement.

  Skylitzes nodded. “That could only be one man.”

  Gorgidas swung round on the scouts. “You left him there to freeze, you idiots?”

  “And up your arse, too,” the leader of the two retorted. “What do we want with foreigners on Arshaum land?” That included the Greek, his glare said.

  But Arghun roared, “Hold your tongue, you! These foreigners here are our allies, and this one saved my life. If their friend dies in the snow, you’ll wish you had, too.” The khagan’s temper was usually mild; the plainsmen quailed at his outburst.

  “Take me to him,” Gorgidas said. The outriders obeyed without a word. “Gallop, damn you!” the Greek shouted. The three spurred their horses forward, snow flying. Goudeles and Skylitzes in their wake, they pounded through and then past the Arshaum army.

  Gorgidas wondered how the nomads knew just where to ride in this howling white wilderness. Steering by the wind, no doubt, and by landmarks they recognized but which meant nothing to his untrained eyes. His own eyes stung and watered from the headlong pace, and his nose, despite the coating of fat that covered it, felt like an icicle in the center of his face. These flat-featured nomads were better suited than he to life in a steppe winter.

  “There,” the younger scout said, pointing ahead through the swirling snow. The Greek spied the ponies first, then the dismounted Arshaum beside them—no, he saw as he drew near, one of the squatting figures had to be a Khamorth, from its heavy beard. He dismissed the man from Pardraya from his thoughts. If the fellow was well enough to move around like that, he was not going to freeze in the next few minutes.

  “Out of my way!” Gorgidas shouted, leaping down from his horse. The three Arshaum huddled round the shape in the snow jumped to their feet, reaching for swords. The scouts who had fetched the Greek were shouting, too, explaining to their comrades who he was.

  He paid them no attention, bending down over Viridovix’ prone form. When he pulled him over onto his back, he thought the Celt was dead. His flesh was pale and cold; his head rolled limply on his neck. He did not seem to be breathing.

  The Greek cradled Viridovix’ face in his hands. Just so had he held Quintus Glabrio when an arrow killed his lover, helpless for all his skill. And now another one dear to him—true, in a different and lesser way—he could not save. Futile rage and frustration tore at him; would he never be of any use?

  Then he jumped—was that a pulse in the Gaul’s throat? It came again, so slow and faint he hardly dared believe he felt it.

  Afterwards, he never remembered thinking what to do next. His dogged rationality had been Nepos’ despair when the priest-mage tried to teach him the Videssian healing art. “Never mind how or why,” Nepos had shouted once. “Know that you must—and you will.” But for the Greek that was worse than no explanation, and he never did succeed.

  His lover’s wound could have been the trigger to free him from the grip of reasoned thought and let the healing gift burst forth, but Glabrio had died before he hit the ground. Not even the Videssian art could raise the dead. And so Gorgidas had turned his back on it in his anguish over the failure—for good, he thought.

  Now, though, desperation lifted him outside himself, stripped away everything but the need to save his friend. Seeing him suddenly stiffen above Viridovix, Goudeles pushed aside an Arshaum who was about to take him by the shoulder. The nomad spun round in anger. “Shaman,” the bureaucrat said, pointing to the Greek. “Let him be.” The Arshaum’s slanted eyes went wide. He nodded and stepped back.

  Gorgidas, staring down at the Celt’s white face, never noticed the byplay. He felt his will gather into a single hard point, like the sun’s rays focused by a burning glass. This was where he had always fallen short, trying to force that focused will outward. But it leaped forward before he consciously tried to project it.

  A conduit, a channel—he sensed Viridovix’ failing body as if it were his own; sensed the ravages of cold and exposure that froze fingers and cheeks, reached deep into entrails; sensed the chilled blood in its thick, sluggish motion through the Gaul’s veins.

  In that first dizzying rush of perception the Greek was almost swept away, almost lost himself in the Celt’s distress. But his stubborn reason would not let him be submerged; he knew who he truly was, no matter what sense impressions his mind was receiving. And the conduit ran both ways—in the same instant he felt Viridovix flood in on him, he was also reaching out to reverse, repair, revive.

  Quicken the heart; send warmth surging into belly, streaming into arms and legs. Strengthen lungs, and speed them, too—they had barely been sipping the frigid air. More delicate work: feel the damage of frost in fingers, toes, cheeks, ears, eyelids—melt it gently, gradually, let the new flow of blood work with his power. The poor makeshift words for what he did came later. In the crisis they meant nothing. The healing went on at a level far below words.

  The Celt stirred under his hands like a restless sleeper, muttered some drowsy protest in his own musical speech. His eyes, green as the Gallic forests, came open, and there was intelligence in them. Then Gorgidas truly realized what he had accomplished. Joy leaped in him, joy and as crushing a weariness as he had ever known: the price of the healer’s art.

  Viridovix had not thought he would wake again, surely not with this new hot tide of strength flowing through him. As he stretched and—oh, miracle!—felt all his limbs answer him, he thought for a moment he had passed to the afterworld; he could not imagine feeling so well in this one. The hands gently touching his face, then, might belong to some immortal maid, to make him glad through eternity.

  But when he looked up, the face he saw was a man’s, thin, tense, etched with lines of triumph and harsh fatigue. “Foosh!” he said. “No lassy you, more’s the pity.”

  Gorgidas rolled his eyes and laughed. “No need to ask whether you’re healed. By the dog, do you think of nothing else, you satyr?”

  Viridovix’ sudden flinch of pain made the Greek wonder if he was in fact healed, but all the Gaul said, very quietly, was, “Aye, betimes I do.” Viridovix struggled to sit. The
blood roared in his ears, but he fought his dizziness down. “Batbaian!” he exclaimed. “Is he after being found?”

  Hearing his name, Batbaian hurried over to the Celt, still swaddled in the thick felt fabric of the tent. He seemed glad for any excuse to sidle away from the Arshaum, who were eyeing him like a pack of wolves sizing up a stray hound. Skylitzes and Goudeles crouched by Viridovix, too; the Videssian officer steadied him with a strong right arm, while the bureaucrat pressed Gorgidas’ hand in congratulation.

  “Are you all right, now?” Viridovix said to Batbaian, dropping into the Khamorth speech. Gorgidas followed it with difficulty; he had not used that language in months.

  “I’m well enough, thanks to this,” the nomad answered, shaking snow from the felt. He looked in wonder at Viridovix. “But how is it you’re here to ask me? You shouldn’t be, not after being out in the blizzard with no cover.”

  “Truth that.” There was wonder on Viridovix’s face, too, but aimed at Gorgidas. “He healed me, must be.” Almost accusingly, he said to the physician, “I didna think you could.”

  “Neither did I.” Now that it was done, the Greek longed for nothing so much as the warm inside of a tent, a deep draught of kavass, and his bedroll to take him through the long winter night—and most of the next day, if he could get away with it.

  But Viridovix was saying, “If it’s a druid of leechcraft you are now, Gorgidas dear, have a look at Batbaian and the eye of him, and see if there’s somewhat to be done for the puir lad.”

  The Greek sighed, a long, frosty exhalation; no doubt Viridovix was right. “I’ll do what I can.” He leaned toward the young Khamorth, who drew back in suspicion, still full of mistrust for anyone who had anything to do with the Arshaum. “Hold still,” Gorgidas said in Videssian. Though he hardly spoke the imperial tongue, Batbaian understood it enough to obey.

  Gorgidas sucked in his breath sharply when he took a good look at the nomad’s ruined socket. Not having paid any real attention to Batbaian, he had assumed the Khamorth’s eye lost to sword or arrow in some steppe skirmish. But the scar he saw was wrong for that: too large, too round, too neat, with the look of cautery to it. His gently probing fingers confirmed the impression. “How did you come by this?” he asked.