An Emperor for the Legion (15 page)

There was no time for more speechmaking than that; the enemy was very close. In the daybreak glare, it was still hard to see just what manner of men they were. Some had the scrubby look of nomads—Khamorth or even Yezda—while others … lanceheads gleamed briefly crimson as they swung down in a disciplined flurry. Namdaleni, Marcus thought grimly. The Sphrantzai hired the best.

“Drax! Drax! The great count Drax!” shouted the men of the Duchy, using their commander’s name as war cry.

“At them!” Thorisin Gavras yelled, and his own horsemen galloped forward to meet the charge. Bowstrings snapped. A Namdalener tumbled from his saddle, unluckily hit below the eye at long range.

The enemy’s light horse darted in front of the Namdaleni to volley back at Thorisin’s men. But the field was now too tight for their hit-and-run tactics to be used to full effect. More sturdily mounted and more heavily armed, the Videssians and Vaspurakaners who followed Gavras hewed their way through the nomads toward the men of the Duchy who were the opposing army’s core.

The count Drax was new-come from the Duchy. The only foot worth its pay he’d seen was that of the Halogai. Of Romans he knew nothing. He took them for peasant levies Thorisin had scraped up from Phos knew where. Crush them quickly, he decided, and then deal with Gavras’ outnumbered cavalry at leisure. With a wave of his shield to give his men direction, he spurred his mount at the legionaries.

Dry-mouthed, Scaurus waited to receive the charge. The pounding hooves, the rhythmic shouting of the big men rushing toward him like armored boulders, the long lances that all seemed aimed at his chest … he could feel his calves tensing with the involuntary urge to flee. Longs word in hand, his right arm swung up.

Drax frowned in sudden doubt. If these were drafted farmers, why were they not running for their paltry lives?

“Loose!” the tribune shouted. A volley of
pila
flew forward, and another, and another. Horses screamed, swerved, and fell as they were hit, pitching riders headlong to the ground. Other beasts stumbled over the first ones down. Namdaleni who caught Roman javelins on their shields cursed and threw them away; the soft iron shanks of the
pila
bent with ease, fouling the shields beyond use.

Still, the legionaries sagged before the slowed charge’s momentum. Trumpets blared, calling squads from the flank to hold the embattled center. The mounted surge staggered, stalled, turned to melee.

The knight who came at Scaurus was about forty, with a
cast in his right eye and a twisted little finger. Near immobile in the press, he jabbed at the tribune with his lance. Marcus parried, ducking under the thrust. His strong blade bit through the wood below the lancehead, which flew spinning. Eyes wide with fear, the Namdalener swung the ruined lance as he might a club. Scaurus ducked again, stepped up and thrust, felt his point pierce chain and flesh. Sphrantzes’ mercenary gave a shriek that ended in a bubbling moan. Scarlet foam on his lips, he slid to the ground.

Close by, Zeprin the Red raised his long-hafted Haloga war axe high above his helmet, to bring it crashing down on a horse’s head. Brains flew, pink-gray. The horse foundered like a ship striking a jagged rock. Pinned under it, its Namdalener rider screamed with a broken ankle, but not for long. A second stroke of the great axe silenced him for good.

An unhorsed mercenary slashed at Scaurus, who took the blow on his shield. His
scutum
was bigger and heavier than the horseman’s lighter shield. Marcus shoved out with it. The man of the Duchy stumbled backwards, tripped on a corpse’s upthrust foot. A legionary drove a stabbing-sword into his throat.

Though the Namdalener charge was checked, they still fought with the skill and fierceness Marcus had come to know. Foul-mouthed Lucilius stood staring at his broken sword, the hard steel snapped across by a cunning lance stroke. “Well, fetch me a whole one!” he shouted, but before anybody could, a man of the Duchy rode him down.

“By all the gods, why aren’t these bastards on our side? They’re too bloody much work to fight,” Gaius Philippus panted. There was a great dent in the right side of his helmet, and blood flowed down his face from a cut over one eye. The tide of battle swept them apart before Scaurus could answer.

A Namdalener stabbed down at someone writhing on the ground before him. He missed, swore, and brought his blade back for another stroke. So intent was he on his kill that he never noticed Marcus until the tribune’s Gallic longs word drank his life.

Marcus pulled the would-be victim up, then stared in disbelief. “Grace,” said Nevrat Sviodo, and kissed him full on the mouth. The shock was as great as if he’d taken a wound. Slim saber in hand, she slipped back into battle, leaving him gaping after her.

“Watch your left, sir!” someone cried. The tribune jerked up his shield in reflex response. A lancehead glanced off it; the Namdalener swept by without time for another blow. Marcus shook himself—surprise had almost cost him his neck.

With a banshee whoop, Viridovix leaped up behind a mounted mercenary and dragged him from his horse. He jerked up the luckless man’s chin, drew sword across his throat like a bow over a viol’s strings. Blood fountained. The Gaul shouted in triumph, sawed through windpipe and backbone. He lifted the dripping head and hurled it into the close-packed ranks of the Namdaleni, who cried out in horror as they recoiled from the grisly trophy.

The count Drax was not altogether sorry to see retreat begin. These foot soldiers of Thorisin’s, whoever they were, fought like no foot he had met. They bent but would not break, rushing men from quiet spots along the line to meet threats so cleverly that no new points of weakness appeared. Quite professional, he thought with reluctant admiration.

From his left wing, the Khatrishers were spraying his bogged-down men with arrows and then darting away, just as he had hoped his hireling nomads would to Thorisin Gavras’ heavy horse. But his clans of plainsmen were squeezed between his own men and the oncoming enemy. Soon they would break and run—to stand against this kind of punishment was not in them.

With a wry smile, Drax of Namdalen realized it was not in him, either. When Gavras’ cavalry broke through the nomads and stormed into his stalled knights, the result would be unpleasant. And in the end, a mercenary captain’s loyalty was to himself, not to his paymaster. Without men, he would have nothing to sell.

He reined in, tried to wheel his horse among his tight-packed countrymen. “Break off,” he shouted, “and back to our camp! Keep your order, by the Wager!”

Marcus heard the count’s shout to his men but was not sure he understood it; among themselves, the Namdaleni used a broad patois quite different from the Videssian spoken in the Empire. Yet he soon realized what Drax must have ordered, for pressure eased all along the line as the men of the Duchy
broke off combat. It was skillfully done; the Namdaleni knew their business and left the legionaries few openings for mischief.

The tribune did not pursue them far. In part he was ruled by the same concern that governed Drax: not to spend his men unwisely. Moreover, the notion of infantry chasing horsemen did not appeal. If the Namdaleni spun round and counterattacked, they could cut off and destroy big chunks of his small force. In loose order the Romans would be horribly vulnerable to the tough mounted lancers.

Gavras’ cavalry and the Khatrishers followed Sphrantzes’ men for a mile or two, harassing their retreat, trying to turn it to rout. But when the Romans were not added in, the Namdaleni and their nomad outriders probably outnumbered the forces opposed to them. They withdrew in good order.

Scaurus looked up in the sky, amazed. The sun, which had but moments before—or so it seemed—blazed straight into his face as it rose, was well west of south. Marcus realized he was tired, hungry, dry as the Videssian plateau in summer, and in desperate need of easing himself. A slash on his sword hand he did not remember getting began to throb, the more so when sweat ran down his arm into it. He flexed his fingers. They all moved—no tendon was cut.

Legionaries were plundering the corpses of their fallen opponents. Others cut the throats of wounded horses, and of those Namdaleni so badly hurt as to be beyond hope of recovery. Foes with lesser injuries got the same rough medical treatment the Romans did—they could be ransomed later and hence were more valuable alive than dead.

Seriously wounded Romans were carried back into camp on litters for such healing as Gorgidas and Nepos could give. Marcus found the fat priest directing a double handful of women as they cleaned and bandaged wounds. Of Gorgidas there was no sign.

Surprised at that, Scaurus asked where the Greek doctor was. “Don’t you know?” one of Nepos’ helpers exclaimed, and began to giggle.

The tribune, worn out as he was, could make no sense of that. He stared foolishly. Nepos said gently, “You’ll find him at your own tent, Scaurus.”

“What? Why is he—? Oh!” Marcus said. He began to run,
though a moment before simply standing on his feet had been almost beyond him.

In fact Gorgidas was not in the tribune’s tent, but coming back the way Scaurus was going. Dodging the tribune, he said, “Greetings. How went your stupid battle?”

“We won,” Marcus answered automatically. “But—but—” he sputtered, and ran out of words. For once there were more urgent things than warfare.

“Rest easy, my friend. You have a son.” His spare features alight, Gorgidas took the tribune’s arm.

“Is Helvis all right?” Marcus demanded, though the smile on the physician’s face told him nothing could be seriously amiss.

“As well as could be expected—better, I’d say. One of the easier births I’ve seen, less than half a day. She’s a big-hipped girl, and it was not her first. Yes, she’s fine.”

“Thank you,” Scaurus said, and would have hurried on, but Gorgidas kept the grip on his arm. The tribune turned round once more. Gorgidas was still smiling, but his eyes were pensive and far away. “I envy you,” he said slowly. “It must be a marvelous feeling.”

“It is,” Marcus said, startled at the depth of sadness in the doctor’s voice. He wondered if Gorgidas had meant to lay himself so bare, yet at the same time was touched by the physician’s trust. “Thank you,” he said again. Their eyes met in a moment of complete understanding.

It passed, and Gorgidas was his astringent self once more. “Go on with you,” he said, lightly pushing the tribune forward. “I have enough to do, trying to patch the fools who’d sooner take life than give it.” Shaking his head, he made his way down to the injured men not far away.

Minucius’ companion Erene was with Helvis, her own daughter, scarcely two months old, asleep in the crook of her arm. The inside of the tribune’s tent smelled of blood, the hot, rusty scent as thick as Scaurus had ever known it on the field. Truly, he thought, women fought battles of their own.

Perhaps expecting to see Gorgidas again, Erene started when Marcus, still sweating in his armor, pulled open the tentflap. She knew at once why he had come, but had her own concerns as well. “Is Minucius safe?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, he’s fine,” Marcus answered, unconsciously echoing
Gorgidas a few minutes before. “Hardly a scratch—he’s a clever fighter.”

His voice woke Helvis, who had been dozing. Scaurus stooped beside her, kissed her gently. Erene, her fears at rest, slipped unnoticed from the tent.

The smile Helvis gave the tribune was a tired one. Her soft brown hair was all awry and still matted with sweat; purple circles were smudged under her eyes. But there was a triumph in them as she lifted the small blanket of soft lambswool and offered it to Scaurus.

“Yes, let me see him,” Marcus said, carefully taking the light burden from her.

“ ‘Him’? You’ve already seen Gorgidas,” Helvis accused, but Marcus was not listening. He looked down at the face of his newborn son. “He looks like you,” Helvis said softly.

“What? Nonsense.” The baby was red, wrinkled, flat-nosed, and almost bald; he looked scarcely human, let alone like anyone in particular. His wide gray-blue eyes passed across the tribune’s face, then returned and seemed to settle for a moment.

The baby wiggled. Scaurus, unaccustomed to such things, nearly dropped him. An arm came free of the swaddling blanket; a tiny fist waved in the air. Marcus cautiously extended a finger. The groping hand touched it, closed in a grasp of surprising strength. The tribune marveled at its miniature perfection—palm and wrist, pink-nailed fingers and thumb, all compressed into a space no longer than the first two joints of his middle finger.

Helvis misunderstood his examination. “He’s complete,” she said; “ten fingers, ten toes, all where they should be.” They laughed together. The noise startled the baby, who began to cry. “Give him to me,” Helvis said, and snuggled him against her. In her more knowing hold, the baby soon quieted.

“Do we name him as we planned?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” the tribune sighed, not altogether happy with a bargain they’d made months before. He would have preferred a purely Roman name, with some good Latin praenomen ahead of the Aemilii Scauri’s long-established nomen and cognomen. Helvis had argued, though, and with justice, that such a name slighted her side of their son’s ancestry. Thus they decided the child’s use-name would be Dosti, after her
father; when heavier style was needed, he had a sonorous patronymic.

“Dosti the son of Aemilius Scaurus,” Marcus said, rolling it off his tongue. He suddenly chuckled, looking at his tiny son. Helvis glanced up curiously. “For now,” he explained, “the little fellow’s name is longer than he is.”

“You’re out of your mind,” she said, but she was smiling still.

T
HE EARLY SUMMER SUN STOOD TALL IN THE SKY
. T
HE CITY
Videssos, capital and heart of the Empire that bore its name, gleamed under the bright gaze. White stucco and marble, tawny sandstone, brick the color of blood, the myriad golden globes on Phos’ temples—all seemed close enough to reach out and touch, even when seen from the western shore of the strait the Videssians called the Cattle-Crossing.