An Emperor for the Legion (20 page)

“It looks well, yes,” the older noble said shortly, not caring for the criticism. “What of it? Outlanders have some few skills: the Khamorth with the bow, the lance to the Namdaleni, and these fellows with their moles’ tricks. A useful talent now, I grant.”

He spoke offhandedly, not caring if the tribune heard, his unconscious assumption of superiority proof against embarrassment. Nettled, Marcus opened his mouth to make some hot reply. Before the words passed his lips, he remembered himself in a Roman tent in Gaul, listening to one of Caesar’s legates saying, “Now, gentlemen, we all know the Celts are headstrong and rash. If we hold the high ground, we can surely lure them into charging uphill.…”

His mouth twisted into a brief, wry grin—so this was how it felt, to be reckoned a barbarian. Helvis was right again, it seemed.

But no, not altogether; catching the sour flicker on his face, Thorisin said quickly, “One day Baanes will choke, shoving that boot of his down his throat.”

Scaurus shrugged. Thorisin’s apology felt genuine, but at the same time the Emperor was using him to score a point off the powerful lord at his side. Nothing in this land ever wore but one face, the tribune thought with a moment’s touch of despair.

He brought himself back to the business at hand. “We’re properly dug in,” he said, “from here to the sea.” He waved to the walls of Videssos the city, their shadow in the late afternoon sun reaching almost to where he stood. “Next to that, though, all we’ve done is no more than a five-year-old playing at sand castles along the beach.”

“True enough,” Gavras said. “It matters not so much, though. They may have their castles, but they can’t eat ’em, by Phos.”

“As long as they rule the sea, they don’t have to,” Marcus said, letting his chief fret loose. “They can laugh at us while they ship in supplies. Ships are the key to cracking the city, and we don’t have them.”

“The key, aye,” Thorisin murmured, his eyes far away.
Scaurus realized after a few seconds that the Emperor was not lost in contemplation. He was looking southeast into the Sailors’ Sea, at the island lying on the misty edge of vision from Videssos. With abrupt quickening of interest, the Roman recalled the Videssian name for that island: it was called the Key.

But when he asked Gavras what was in his mind, the Emperor only said, “My plans are still foggy.” He smiled, as if at some private joke. Onomagoulos, Marcus saw, had no more idea of what his overlord meant than did the tribune. Somehow, that reassured him.

By coincidence, that night was one of the misty ones common on the coast even in high summer, moon and stars swallowed up by the thick gray blanket rolling off the sea at sunset. Videssos’ towers and crenelated walls disappeared as if they had never been. Torch-carrying sentries moved in hazy haloes of light; the taste of the ocean came with every indrawn breath.

Viridovix prowled along the earthwork, torch in his left hand and drawn sword in his right. “Sure and they can’t be failing to take a whack at us in this porridge, can they?” he demanded when he ran into Scaurus and Gaius Philippus. “If that were me all shut up in there, I’d give the tails of the omadhauns outside a yank they’d remember awhile.”

“So would I,” Gaius Philippus said. His ideas of warfare rarely marched with the Gaul’s, but this was such a time. He took the fog almost as a personal affront; it changed war from a game of skill, a professional’s game, into one where any cabbagehead could make himself a genius with an hour’s luck.

Marcus, though, saw what the centurion in his nervousness and the aggressive Celt missed: it was as foggy inside the city as out. “I’d bet Ortaias’ marshals are pacing the walls themselves,” he said, “waiting to hear scaling ladders shoved against them.”

Viridovix blinked, then laughed. “Aye, belike that’s the way of it,” he said. “Two farmers, the each of ’em staying up of nights to watch his own henhouse for fear the other raid it. A sleepless, thankless job they both think it, too, and me along with ’em.”

“It may be so,” Gaius Philippus conceded. “The Sphrantzai haven’t the imagination for anything risky. But what of
Gavras? This should be a night to suit him—he’s a gambler born.”

“There you have me,” Scaurus said. “When the fog came down, I expected something lively would happen, but it seems I was wrong.” He recounted the afternoon’s conversation to the Roman and the Celt.

“There’s deviltry somewhere, right enough,” Gaius Philippus said. He yawned. “Whatever it is, it’ll have to get along without me until morning. I’m turning in.” His torch held waist-high so he could see the ground ahead, he headed for his tent; the Roman camp itself was set near the sea on the flat stretch of land that had been the Videssian army’s exercise ground.

Scaurus followed him to bed a few minutes later and, to his annoyance, had trouble falling asleep. The gods knew it was peaceful almost to a fault without Dosti waking up several times a night. But the tribune missed Helvis warm on the sleeping-mat beside him. It was hardly fair, he thought as he turned restlessly: not so long ago he’d found it hard to sleep with a woman in his bed, and now as hard without one.

At the officers’ conference the next morning Thorisin Gavras seemed pleased with himself, though Marcus had no idea why; as far as the Roman knew, nothing had changed since yesterday.

“He probably found himself a bouncy girl who’d say yes and not much more,” was Soteric’s guess after the meeting broke up. “Compared to poison-tongued Komitta, that’d be pleasure enough.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Marcus laughed. “You may well be right.”

Businesslike but slow, the siege proper got under way. A few of the military engineers who had accompanied Mavrikios Gavras’ army still survived to follow his brother. Under their direction, Thorisin’s men felled trees and knocked down a few houses to get timber for the engines and ladders they would presently need. The legionaries proved skilled help for the artisans, as they were used to aiding their own engineer platoons.

Save for the countermarching men visible on the walls, Videssos did its best to ignore the siege. Ships moved freely in and out of her harbors, bringing in supplies and men. Scaurus wanted to grind his teeth every time he saw one.

“Next thing you know, the Sphrantzai will try to stir up a storm behind us and use it to hammer us on the city’s anvil. That’s the way Vardanes thinks, and it’s far from a bad plan,” the tribune said to Gaius Philippus.

The senior centurion, though, was for once an optimist. “Let them try. We’re getting more troops coming over to us than they are.”

That, Marcus had to admit, was probably true. The nobles of Videssos’ eastern dominions were not such great magnates as their counterparts in the westlands, but all the grandees, great or small, hated the bureaucrats who had seized the capital. They flocked to Thorisin’s banner, this one leading seventy retainers, that one forty, the next a hundred and fifty.

“Of course,” Gaius Philippus went on, following Scaurus’ unspoken thought, “how useful such bumpkins will prove in the fighting remains to be seen.”

After four or five clear nights the fog came again, if anything thicker than it had before. Again the tribune wondered whether the besieged Sphrantzai would try to sally under its cover, and doubled the sentries facing the capital.

It must have been near midnight when he heard shouts of alarm coming from the north. “Buccinators!” he shouted. The horns’ bright music ripped through the murk. Cursing as they scrambled from their bedrolls, legionaries poured out of the tents in camp and, still buckling on armor, began to form up.

Hoofbeats pounded toward the camp. “Are all our lads up there asleep? Sure and the spalpeens’re behind himself’s rampart, and it so much trouble to make and all,” Viridovix said.

“How would you know that?” Gaius Philippus said. “You didn’t do a lick of work on it.”

“And why should I, like some hod-toting serf? If you want to work like a kern, ’tis your own affair entirely, but you’ll not see me at it. Give me a real fight, any day.”

“I don’t think those are Ortaias’ men at all,” Quintus Glabrio said suddenly, a statement startling enough to quell the brewing quarrel at once. “There’s no sound of fighting and no more challenges from our sentries, either.”

The young officer was proved right a few minutes later, when a troop of about a hundred of Thorisin Gavras’ best Videssian cavalry rode south past the Roman camp. “Sorry about the start we gave you,” their captain called to Scaurus as
he went by. “We almost trampled one of your men up there in this Phos-cursed gloom.” The tribune believed that; even with torches held high, the horsemen disappeared before they had gone another fifty yards.

“Blow ‘stand down,’ ” Marcus ordered his trumpeters. The legionaries stood for a moment as if suspecting a trick, then, shaking their heads in annoyance, went back to their still-warm blankets.

“Wish he’d make up his bloody mind,” grumbled one. And another: “A good night’s sleep buggered right and proper.” With a veteran’s knack for making the best of things, a third said cheerily, “No matter. I had to get up to piss anyway.”

The camp settled back into peace. Scaurus yawned. It was near high tide, and the boom of surf on the nearby beach was lulling as smooth wine, as soft deep drums in the distance.

The tribune paused, half-stooped, a hand on his tentflap. Why had he thought of drums, from the sound of sea meeting sand? He jerked upright as he recognized the noise for what it was: waves on wood. Ships offshore, and close!

The fear of treachery flooding through him, he shouted for the buccinators once more. This time his men came forth growling, as at any drill they disliked. He did not care; his alarm blazed brighter than the mist-shrouded torchlight.

“Peel me off two maniples, quick,” he said to Gaius Philippus. “I think the Sphrantzai are landing on the beach. Set the rest of the men to defend here and send a runner to Gavras—I think we’re betrayed. In fact, send Zeprin the Red—Thorisin’s most likely to listen to him.”

“I’ll see to it he does,” the burly Haloga promised, understanding Marcus’ reasoning. Because of his former high rank in Mavrikios’ Imperial Guards, he was well-known both to the younger Gavras and his men. Throwing a wolfskin cape over his mail shirt, he vanished into the mist.

The senior centurion was barking orders. As the legionaries rushed to the places they were assigned, he turned back to Scaurus. “Betrayed, is it? You think those dung-faced horse-boys are there for a welcoming party?”

“What better reason?”

“Not a one, worse luck. What’s the plan—hold them until we get enough reinforcements to fling ’em back into the sea?”

“If we do. If we can.” The tribune wished he knew more of
what he would face; ignorance’s fog could be more dangerous than the gray clammy stuff billowing around him.

Viridovix hurried up. He leaned his shield against his hip to give himself two free hands with which to fasten his helmet strap under his chin. “You’ll not get away with another shindy without me,” he said to Scaurus.

“Well, come along then. From the way you talk, anyone would think I did it on purpose.”

“So they would,” Viridovix agreed darkly. But when Marcus looked to see if he was as serious as he sounded, the Celt was grinning at him.

The legionaries quick-marched south, following the Videssian cavalry. Marcus felt something soft squash under his sandal; even in the fog and dark he did not have to ask what it was. He heard Viridovix swear in Gaulish, caught the name of the Celtic horse-goddess Epona.

The tribune slid and almost fell as his feet went from dirt to shifting sand. The Videssians were still invisible in the swirling mist ahead, but he heard their captain call, “Come ashore!”

“Are you daft, landlubber?” a sailor’s answer came thinly back. “My leadsmen near wet their breeches getting this close. We’ll send boats!”

“Battle line!” the tribune said softly. Smooth as if on parade, the legionaries deployed from their marching column. “Yell ‘Gavras’ when we charge,” Scaurus ordered. “Let the traitors know we know what they’re at.”

He feared he was come just too late. Already he could hear oars splashing toward shore, hear the scrape of light boats beaching. Well, no help for it. “Forward!” he said.

“Gavras!” The shout roared from two hundred throats. Swords drawn,
pila
ready to fling, the Romans slogged forward through the sand.

Down at the waterline there was a sudden chaos. Most of the Videssians were dismounted, walking up and down the beach holding torches to guide the boats in. Faintly through the fog, Scaurus saw some of those torches drop when his men bellowed out their war cry. A horse screamed off to one side; some Roman had seen movement in the mist and let fly with his javelin.

Full of asperity and command, an unseen voice demanded
of the Videssian cavalry leader, “What sort of welcome have you prepared for us, captain?”

“Hold up! Hold up! Hold up!” the tribune shouted frantically, and blessed the legionaries, good discipline for bringing them to a ragged halt.

“What now?” Gaius Philippus snarled. “So they’ve a bitch with them—what of it? Sometimes I think the imperials can’t fight without their doxies alongside ’em.”

The senior centurion’s harsh voice ripped through the fog; Marcus thanked the gods whose existence he doubted that his comrade had spoken Latin. He answered in the same tongue; “Bitch she may well be, but that’s Komitta Rhangawe out there, or I’m a Celt.”

Gaius Philippus’ teeth came together with an audible click. “Thorisin’s woman? Oh, sweet Jupiter! Wait, though—she’s on the other side of the Cattle-Crossing with all the other skirts and their brats … begging your pardon, sir,” he added hastily.

Marcus waved the apology aside; in his confusion, he hardly heard the words that made it necessary. Those ships out there could not be Sphrantzes’—Komitta was a hellcat, but never a traitor. But they could not be Thorisin’s, either. The boats in his makeshift flotilla had long since gone back to their usual tasks. That left nothing … except the reality just offshore.

Two torches bobbed toward the Romans. Marcus stepped out ahead of his men to meet them. The Videssian captain stumped along under one, a short, stocky, red-faced man with upsweeping eyebrows and an iron-gray beard. Carrying the other was indeed Komitta Rhangawe, her pale, narrow face beautiful and fierce as a falcon’s.