An Emperor for the Legion (17 page)

Marcus never wanted to know another fight like this battle in the darkness. To tell friend from foe was all but impossible,
and it was not easy even to strike a blow. The beach sand was as treacherous as the combat, sliding and shifting so a man could hardly keep his feet planted under him.

An attacker slashed at Scaurus; his saber hissed past the tribune’s ear. He stumbled back, wishing for a cuirass or shield. To hold the man off, he lunged out in a stop-thrust, and his opponent, intent on finishing an enemy he thought at his mercy, rushed forward to skewer himself on the blade he never saw. He grunted, coughed wetly, and died.

If none of Gavras’ companions wore armor, the same seemed true of their assailants; few men who traveled by sea would risk its perilous weight. And Thorisin’s followers were masters of war, soldiers who had come to their high ranks through years of honing their fighting skills. When coupled with their fury at this betrayal-caused battle, that balanced the advantage their enemies’ numbers gave them.

Soon the would-be assassins sought escape, but they found no more than they would have granted. Three tried to launch the longboat once more, but they were cut down from behind.

Long legs churning through the sand, Soteric raced down the beach after the last of the fleeing bravoes. Finding flight useless, the warrior whirled to defend himself. Steel rang on steel. It was too black for Marcus to see much of that fight, but the Namdalener beat down his foe’s guard with hammer-strokes of his sword and stretched him bleeding and lifeless on the soft white strand.

Scaurus’ eyes jumped everywhere looking for more enemies, but there were none. A worse task began—seeing who among Thorisin’s men had fallen. Indakos Skylitzes was down, as were two Vaspurakaner officers the tribune did not know well and a Namdalener who had accompanied Utprand and Soteric. The tribune wondered who would receive the dead man’s sword, and what lives would suddenly be wrenched askew.

Gavras was jubilant. “Well fought, well fought!” he yelled, his glee filling the beach. “Thus always to murderers! They—here, stop that! What in Phos’ holy name are you doing?”

Baanes Onomagoulos had been stumping up and down, methodically slitting the throats of those attackers who still moved. His hands gleamed, wet, black, and slick in the stars’ pale light.

“What do you think?” Onomagoulos retorted. “That accursed
Leimmokheir’s marines will be here any time. Should I leave these whoresons to tell ’em where we’ve gone?”

“No,” Thorisin admitted. “But you should have saved one for questioning.”

“Too late now.” Onomagoulos spread his bloody hands. “Nepos,” he called, “make a light. I’d wager we’ll have the answer to any questions soon enough.”

The priest came up to Onomagoulos’ side. His breathing grew deep and steady. Gavras’ officers muttered in awe as a pale, golden radiance sprang into being round his hands. Marcus was less wonder-struck than some; this was a miracle he had seen before, from Apsimar the prelate of Imbros.

For all the amazement Baanes Onomagoulos showed, Nepos might have lit a torch. The half-crippled noble painfully bent by one of the fallen attackers. His knife snicked out to slit a belt-pouch. Goldpieces—a surprising number of goldpieces—spilled onto the sand. Onomagoulos scooped them up, held them close to Nepos’ glowing palms. Thorisin’s marshals crowded close to look.

“ ‘Ort. the 1st Sphr., Avt. of Vid.,’ ” Onomagoulos read from a coin, not bothering to stretch the abbreviation full length. “Here’s Ort. the first again—again.” He turned a goldpiece over. “And again. Nothing but Phos-curse Ort. the first, in fact.”

“Aye, ahnd ahll fresh-minted, too.” That flat-voweled accent had to belong to Utprand Dagober’s son.

“What else would Leimmokheir use to pay his hired killers?” Onomagoulos asked rhetorically.

“How could the Sphrantzai have infected him with their treachery?” Thorisin wondered. “Vardanes must be leagued with Skotos, to have suborned Taron Leimmokheir.”

No one answered him; the crackle of brush pushed aside, loud in the midnight stillness, came from the south. Swords flew up instinctively. Nepos’ light vanished as he took his concentration from it. “The son of a manurebag did land marines!” Onomagoulos growled.

“I don’t think so,” Gaius Philippus said. Woods-wise, he went on, “I think the noise was closer to us, made by something smaller than a man—a fox, maybe, or a badger.”

“You are right, I think,” Utprand said.

Not even the centurion of the Namdalener, though, seemed eager to wait and test their guess. With their comrades, they
hurried back to their mounts. Soteric, Scaurus, and Nepos quickly lashed the bodies of Gavras’ slain commanders to their horses. Moments later, they were trotting north through the orchard. Branches slapped at the tribune before he knew they were there.

If Leimmokheir’s marines were behind the officers, they never caught them up. When Thorisin and his followers emerged from the fragrant rows of trees, the Emperor galloped his horse a quarter of a mile in sheer exuberance at being alive. He waited impatiently for his men to join him.

When they reached him at last, he had the air of a man who had come to a decision. “Very well, then,” he declared. “If we cannot cross with Leimmokheir’s let, we shall in his despite.”

“ ‘In his despite,’ ” Gorgidas echoed the next morning. “A ringing phrase, no doubt.” The Roman camp was full of excitement as word of the night’s adventure raced through Gavras’ army. Viridovix, as was his way when left out of a fight, was wildly jealous and sulked for hours until Scaurus managed to jolly him from his sour mood.

The tribune’s men bombarded him and Gaius Philippus with questions. Most were satisfied after one or two, but Gorgidas kept on, trying to pull from the Romans every detail of what had gone on. His cross-questioning was sharp as a jurist’s, and he soon succeeded in annoying Gaius Philippus.

A more typical Roman than the thoughtful Scaurus, the senior centurion had little patience for anything without obvious practical use. “You don’t want us,” he complained to the doctor. “You want one of the buggers Onomagoulos let the air out of, to go at him with pincers and hot iron.”

The Greek took no notice of his griping, but said, “Onomagoulos, eh? Thank you, that reminds me of something else I wanted to ask: how did he know he’d find Ortaias’ monies in the dead men’s pouches?”

“Great gods, that should be plain enough even to you.” Gaius Philippus threw his hands in the air. “If their drungarios hired murderers, he’d have to pay in his master’s coins.” The centurion gave a short, hard laugh. “It’s not likely he’d have any of Thorisin’s. And don’t think you can ignore me and have me go away,” he went on. “You still haven’t said the first thing about why you’re flinging all these questions at us.”

The usually voluble Greek stood mute. He arched one eyebrow
and tried to stare Gaius Philippus down, but Marcus came in on the senior centurion’s side. “Anyone would think you were writing a history,” he told the physician.

A slow flush climbed Gorgidas’ face. Scaurus saw that what he had meant for a joke was in grim earnest to the Greek. “Your pardon,” he said, and meant it. “I did not know. How long have you been working on it?”

“Eh? Since I learned enough Videssian to ask for pen and parchment—you know as well as I there’s no papyrus here.”

“What language is it in?” the tribune asked.

“Hellenisti, ma Dia!
In Greek, by Zeus! What other tongue is there for serious thought?” Gorgidas slipped back into his native speech to answer.

Gaius Philippus stared at him in amazement. His own Greek consisted of a couple of dozen words, most of them foul, but he knew the name of the language when he heard it. “In Greek, you say? Of all the bootless things I’ve heard, that throws the triple six! Greek, in Videssos that’s never heard the word, let alone the tongue? Why, man, you could be Homer or what’s-his-name—the first history writer, I heard it once but I’m damned if I recall it—” He looked to Scaurus for help.

“Herodotos,” the tribune supplied.

“Thanks; that’s the name. As I say, Gorgidas, you could be either of those old bastards, or even both of ’em together, and who’d ever know it, here? Greek!” he repeated, half-contemptuous wonder in his voice.

The doctor’s color deepened. “Yes, Greek, and why not?” he said tightly. “One day, maybe, I’ll be easy enough in Videssian to write it, or I might have one of their scholars help translate what I write. Manetho the Egyptian and Berosos of Babylon wrote in Greek to teach us Hellenes of their nations’ past glories; it wouldn’t be the worst deed to make sure we are remembered in Videssos after the last of us has died.”

He spoke with the same determination he might have shown when facing a difficult case, but Marcus saw he had not impressed Gaius Philippus. What happened after his own end was of no concern to the senior centurion. He sensed, however, that he had chaffed Gorgidas about as much as he could. In his rough way he was fond of the doctor, so he shrugged and gave up the argument, saying, “All this gabbing
is a waste of time. I’d best go drill the men; they’re fat and lazy enough as is.” He strode off, still shaking his head.

“The Videssians will be interested in your work, I think,” Marcus said to Gorgidas. “They have historians of their own; I remember Alypia Gavra saying she read them, and I think—though I’m not sure—she might have been taking notes for a book of her own. Why else would she have been at Mavrikios’ council of war?” Something else occurred to the tribune. “She might be able to help you get yours translated.”

He saw gratitude flicker in the doctor’s eyes, but Gorgidas was prickly as always. “Aye, so she might—were she not on the far side of the Cattle-Crossing, married to the wrong Emperor. But who are we to boggle at such trivia?”

“All right, all right, your point’s made. I tell you this, though—if Alypia were on the far side of the moon, I’d still want to see that history of yours.”

“That’s right, you read some Greek, don’t you? I’d forgotten that.” Gorgidas sighed, said ruefully, “Truly, Scaurus, one reason I started the thing in the first place was to keep myself from losing my letters. The gods know I’m no, ah, what’s-his-name?” The physician’s chuckle had a hollow ring. “But I find I can put together understandable sentences.”

“I’d like to see what you’ve done,” Scaurus said, and meant it. He had always found history, with its dispassionate approach, a more reliable guide to the conduct of affairs than the orators’ high-flown rhetoric. Thucydides or Polybios was worth twenty of Demosthenes, who sold his tongue like a woman her virtue and sometimes composed speeches for prosecution and defense in the same case.

Gorgidas broke into his musing. “Speaking of Alypia and the Cattle-Crossing,” he said, “did Gavras say anything of how he planned to pass it by? I’m not asking as a historian now, you understand, merely as someone with certain objections to being killed out of hand.”

“I have a few of those myself,” Marcus admitted. “No, I don’t know what’s in his mind.” Still thinking in classical terms, he went on, “Whatever it is, it may well work. Thorisin is like Odysseus—he’s
sophron
.”

“Sophron
, eh?” Gorgidas said. “Well, let’s hope you’re right.” The Greek word meant not so much having superior wits but getting the most distance from those one had. Gorgidas
was not so sure it fit Gavras, but he thought it a fine description for Scaurus himself.

Black-capped terns wheeled and dipped, screeching their disapproval at the armed men scrambling down a splintery ladder into the waist of a fishing boat that had seen better days. “A pox on you, louse-bitten sea crows!” Viridovix shouted up at them, shaking his fist. “I like the notion no better than yourselves.”

All along the docks and beaches of Videssos’ western suburbs, troops were boarding by squads and platoons as motley a fleet as Marcus had ever imagined. Three or four grain carriers, able to embark a whole company, formed the backbone of Thorisin Gavras’ makeshift armada. There were fishing craft aplenty; those the eye could not pick out at once were immediately obvious to the nose. There were smugglers’ boats, with great spreads of canvas and lines greyhound-lean. There were little sponge-divers’ vessels, some hardly more than rowboats, with masts no thicker than a spearshaft. There were keel-less barges taken from the river trade; how they would act on the open sea was anyone’s bet. And there were a great many ships whose functions the tribune, no more nautical than most Romans, could not hope to guess.

He helped Nepos down onto the fishing boat’s deck. “I thank you,” the priest said. Nepos sagged against the boat’s raised cabin. Timbers creaked under his weight, but he made no move to stand free. “Merciful Phos, but I’m tired,” he said. His eyes were still merry, but there were dark circles under them and his words came slowly, as if getting each one out took effort.

“Well you might be,” Scaurus answered. Aided by three other sorcerers, the priest had spent the past two and a half weeks, weaving spells round the odd assortment of boats Thorisin had gathered from up and down the western coastlands. Most of the work had fallen on Nepos’ shoulders, for he held a chair in sorcery at the Videssian Academy in the capital while his colleagues were local wizards without outstanding talent. At its easiest, sorcery was as exhausting as hard labor; what the priest had accomplished was hardly sorcery at its easiest.

Gorgidas descended, graceful as a cat; a moment later
Gaius Philippus came down beside him, planting himself on the gently rocking deck as if daring it to shake him.

“Viridovix!” It was a soft hail from the next boat down the dock, a lateen-rigged fishing craft even smaller and grubbier than the one the Celt was sharing with the Roman officers.

“Aye, Bagratouni?” Viridovix called. “Is your honor glad to be on the ocean, now?” Coming from landlocked Vaspurakan, Gagik Bagratouni had professed regret that he knew nothing of the sea.

The
nakharar
‘s leonine features were distinctly green. “Does always it move about so?” he asked.

“Bad cess to you for reminding me,” Viridovix said, gulping.