An Emperor for the Legion (23 page)

“Well, what have we here?” Thorisin said impatiently, drumming his fingers on the table in front of him. He had more urgent things on his mind than whatever trouble this stripling had found for himself.

“Your Highness—” the lieutenant quavered, but Gavras silenced him with a look, turned his eyes questioningly to the senior guardsman.

“Sir, the prisoner, one Pastillas Monotes, last evening did most wickedly and profanely revile your Majesty in the hearing of his troops.” The soldier’s voice was an emotionless, memorized drone as he recited the charge against the luckless Monotes.

The Videssian officers at the table grew still, and Thorisin Gavras alert. To the Namdaleni, to the Khamorth, to the Romans, a free tongue was taken for granted, but this was the Empire, an ancient land steeped in ceremonial regard for the
imperial person. Not even an Emperor so unconventional as Thorisin, perhaps, could take lèse-majesté lightly without forfeiting his respect among his own people. Marcus felt sympathy for the frightened young man before him, but knew he dared not interfere in this matter.

“In what way did this Monotes revile me?” the Emperor asked. His voice, too, took on the formal tone of a court.

“Sir,” the guard repeated, still from memory, “the prisoner did state that, in failing to do more than blockade the city of Videssos, you were a spineless cur, a eunuch-hearted blockhead, and a man with a lion’s roar but the hindquarters of a titmouse. Those were the prisoner’s words, sir. In mitigation, sir,” he went on, and humanity came into his voice at last, “the prisoner had consumed an excess of liquors.”

Thorisin cocked his head quizzically at Monotes, who seemed to be doing his best to sink through the floor. “Like animals, don’t you?” he remarked. Scaurus’ hopes rose; the Emperor’s comment was hardly one to precede a routine condemnation. Honest curiosity in his voice, Gavras asked, “Boy, did you really say all those things about me?”

“Yes, your Highness,” the lieutenant whispered miserably, his face pale as undyed silk. He took a deep breath, then blurted, “I likely would’ve come up with worse, sir, if I’d had more wine.”

“Disgraceful,” Baanes Onomagoulos muttered, but Thorisin was grinning openly and coughing in his efforts not to snicker. After a moment he gave up and laughed out loud.

“Take him away,” he said to the guards. “Run the wine-fumes out of him, and he’ll do just fine. Titmouse, indeed!” he snorted, wiping his eyes. “Go on, get out,” he said to Monotes, who was trying to splutter thanks, “or I’ll make you wish I was one.”

Monotes almost fell as the guards let him go; he scurried for the tent flap and was gone. Gavras’ brief good humor disappeared with him. “Where is everyone?” he growled. Actually, only a few seats were still unfilled.

When the last Khamorth chieftain sauntered in, Thorisin glared him into his chair. The nomad was unperturbed—no farmer’s anger could reach him, not even a king’s.

“Good of you to join us,” Gavras told him, but sarcasm was as wasted as wrath. The Emperor’s next words, though, seized the attention of everyone up and down the long table.
Still taken with Pastillas Monotes’ phrase, he said, “I propose to move my feathered hindquarters against the city’s works at sunrise, two days hence.”

There was a moment’s silence, then a babble louder than any Scaurus had heard from Thorisin’s marshals. Above it rose Soteric’s cry: “Then you are a blockhead and you’ve lost whatever wits you had!”

Utprand Dagober’s son echoed him a second later: “Ya, what brings on t’is madness?” Where Soteric sounded furious, a cold curiosity rode the older Namdalener’s words. He gave Thorisin the same careful attention he would a difficult text in Phos’ scriptures.

“Trust the islanders not to know what’s going on,” Gaius Philippus said to Marcus, the uproar covering his voice. It had faint contempt in it; to a professional, knowledge was worth lives. The Namdaleni, mercenaries by trade, were taken by surprise too often to measure up to the senior centurion’s high standards.

Scaurus understood his lieutenant’s disapproval, but, more sophisticated in the ways of intrigue than the blunt centurion, also understood why the men of the Duchy were sometimes caught short. Not only were they heretics in Videssian eyes, but also subjects of a duke who would fall upon the Empire himself if he thought the time right. No wonder news reached them slowly.

Thorisin Gavras waited till the tumult subsided; Marcus knew he was at his most dangerous when his anger was tightly checked. “Lost my wits, have I?” the Emperor said coldly, measuring Soteric as an eagle might a wolf cub on the ground below.

Soteric’s eyes eventually flinched away from that confrontation, but the tribune still had to admire his brother-in-law’s spirit, if not his sense. “By the Wager, yes,” the Namdalener replied. “How many weeks is it of sitting on our behinds to starve the blackguards out? Now, out of the blue, it’s up sword and at ’em. Idiocy, I call it.”

“Watch your tongue, islander,” Baanes Onomagoulos growled, his dislike for Namdaleni counting for more than his mixed feelings toward Thorisin. Other Videssian officers rumbled agreement.

Had Soteric spoken to Mavrikios Gavras thus in Thorisin’s hearing, the younger of the brothers would have exploded.
When thorny speech came his own way, though, Thorisin met it straight on—just as his brother had, Marcus remembered.

“Not ‘out of the blue,’ Dosti’s son,” the Emperor said, and Soteric looked startled to hear his patronymic. Recalling the elder Gavras’ use of his own full name, Scaurus knew Thorisin was borrowing another of Mavrikios’ tricks.

“Listen,” Thorisin went on, and in a few crisp sentences laid out his plight. He stared into Soteric’s face once more. “So, hero of the age,” he said at last, “what would you have me do?” He sounded very tired and finally out of patience.

The young Namdalener, sensitive to the mockery that made up so much of Videssian wit, bit his lip in anger and embarrassment. The words dragged from him: “Storm the city—if we can.” He did not say—he did not need to say—that no one, Videssian or foreign foe, had taken those walls by assault. Everyone at the table knew that.

Utprand said to Thorisin, “Aye, storm t’city. You say that, and it sounds so easy. But we from t’Duchy, we pay the bill to win your Empire for you, and pay in blood.” Scaurus could not help nodding; a mercenary captain who wasted his troops soon had nothing left to sell.

“To Skotos’ frozen hell with you, then,” Gavras snapped, his temper lost now. “Take your Namdaleni and go home, if you won’t earn your keep. You say you pay in blood? I pay double, outlander—every man jack who falls on either side of this war diminishes me, friend and foe alike, for I am Avtokrator of all Videssos, and all its people are my subjects. Go on, get out—the sight of you sickens me.”

After that tirade Marcus looked to see Utprand stalk from the tent. Indeed, Soteric pushed back his chair and began to rise, but a glance from the older Namdalener stopped him. In Thorisin’s hot words was a truth that had not occurred to him before, and he paused to give it the thought it deserved. “Be it so, then,” he said at last. “Two days hence.” He sketched a salute and was gone, sweeping Soteric along in his wake.

The council broke up swiftly, officers leaving a few at a time, gabbling over what they had heard like so many washerwomen. As Marcus turned sideways to ease through the open tent flap, his eyes happened to meet those of Thorisin, who was still plotting strategy with Bouraphos the admiral. Thorisin’s glance held unmistakable triumph in it. Scaurus suddenly wondered how angry the Emperor had really been and how
much he had made the Namdaleni talk themselves into doing just what he had planned for them in the first place.

Gavras’ army readied itself for the attack. Stone- and arrow-throwers moved forward, ready to give covering fire for the assault on the walls. Every archer’s quiver was filled, to the same purpose. Inside sheds covered with green hides, rams swung on their chains.

“Very impressive,” Gorgidas murmured, watching the bustle of military preparation. “And inside, I suppose, they’re heating up their oil to give us the warm reception we deserve.”

“Absit omen,”
Marcus said, but it was only too likely. Too much of the readying process was visible from the walls to leave Videssos’ defenders in much doubt over what was about to happen, despite the army’s best efforts at secrecy.

“If there was a commander in there with his wits about him and an ounce more guts than he needs to turn beans into wind, he’d sally now and set us back a week,” Gaius Philippus said. He watched soldiers marching four abreast on the capital’s battlements, insect-small in the distance.

Scaurus said, “I don’t think it’s likely. The pen-pushers inside must have their generals under their thumbs, or they’d’ve hit us long before this. Ortaias may play at being a warrior, but Vardanes’ way of ruling is by taxes and tricks, not steel. He distrusts soldiers too much to turn them loose, I think.”

“I hope you’re right,” the senior centurion said. Marcus noticed him doubling patrols and sentry postings all the same. He did not change the dispositions; watchfulness was seldom wasted.

The Romans, then, were not surprised when at twilight a raiding party came storming from a sally port all but hidden by one of the outer wall’s towers. The marauders carried flaming brands, as well as swords and bows, and flung them at any pieces of matériel they saw. Flames clung and spread, unnaturally bright; the Videssians were skilled incendiary-makers.

Shouts of “Ortaias!” and “The Sphrantzai!” flew with the raiders’ missiles. So did the sentries’ cries of alarm, their answering yells of “Gavras!” and the first shrieks of the wounded. Another war cry was in the air, too, one that made
Scaurus, who normally faced battle without delight, jam his helmet down over his ears and rush to the fight: “Rhavas!” the marauders cheered, “Rhavas!”

Many of the attackers stopped short at the earthen breastwork that sealed the city Videssos from Videssos the Empire. These skirmished with the Roman pickets there, threw their torches and shot fire arrows, then fell back when they saw the defense ready for them. They fought, indeed, much like the bandits Outis Rhavas was said to lead: a brave onset, but no staying power.

One determined band, though, came scrambling over the chest-high rampart to trade swordstrokes with the Romans beyond and hack at their siege engines with axes, crowbars, and mauls. At their head was a tall, strongly built man who had to be Rhavas himself. With a cry of, “Stand and fight, murderer!” Marcus rushed at him.

To the tribune’s disappointment, his foe wore a bascinet with its visor down; he wanted to see this man’s eyes as he killed him. Whatever else he was, Rhavas was no coward. He loped toward Scaurus, his longs word held high. The two blades met with a ring of steel. Marcus felt the jolt clear to his shoulder. The druids’ marks on his Gallic sword flared golden. They were hotter and brighter than he had seen them since his duel with Avshar the wizard-prince just after he came to the capital. His lips tightened—so Rhavas bore an enchanted blade, did he? It would do him no good.

But the fighting separated them after another inconclusive passage. Before the tribune could come to grips with Rhavas once more, Phostis Apokavkos attacked Ortaias’ captain. In his fury to avenge Doukitzes, all the careful swordplay the legionaries had drilled into him was forgotten. He slashed and chopped with his
gladius
, a blade far too short for such work. Rhavas toyed with him like a cat with a baby squirrel, all the while laughing cruel and cold.

At length he tired of his sport and decided to make an end. His sword hurtled toward Apokavkos’ helm. But the stroke was not quite true; Phostis reeled away, hand clapped to his head, but that head still rode his shoulders. With a bellow of fury, Rhavas leaped after him.

Gaius Philippus stepped deliberately into his path. “Stand aside, little man,” Rhavas hissed, “or it will be the worse for you.” Behind the senior centurion, Apokavkos was down on
his knees, blood running from one ear. Gaius Philippus planted his feet to await the onslaught. He spat over the edge of his shield.

A storm of blows rained down on him, furious as the fall cloudbursts in the westland plateaus. The Roman, though, was wiser by years of hard fighting than Phostis Apokavkos and did not try to match Rhavas stroke for stroke. He stood on the defensive, his own sword flicking out in counterattack only when the thrusts brought no danger to himself.

Rhavas feinted, tried to spring around him. But the senior centurion side-stepped quickly and kept himself between the giant warrior and his prey. Then Marcus was hurrying forward to give him aid, a dozen legionaries close behind. Viridovix, as always an army in himself, stretched two of the skirmishers in the dirt and bore in on Rhavas from another direction.

Still snarling curses, Rhavas had to retreat. He led the rear-guard that held the Romans at bay while the rest of his raiders made their way back over the besieging rampart. He was the last to vault over it and, once on the other side, favored Scaurus with a mocking salute. “There will be other times,” he called, and the grim certainty in his voice sent a thrill of danger down the tribune’s back.

“Shall we give him a chase?” Gaius Philippus asked. The bandit chieftain was standing there in no man’s land, fairly daring the Romans to pursue.

Marcus answered regretfully, “No, I think not. All he wants to do is lure us into range of the engines on the walls.”

“Aye, more lives than the whoreson’s worth,” Gaius Philippus conceded. He flexed his left shoulder, winced and said, “He’s strong as a bear, curse him. A couple of the ones he hit me, I thought he broke my arm. This
scutum
will never be the same again either.” The bronze facing of the shield’s upper rim was all but hacked away, while the thick boards of the frame beneath were chipped and split from the fierceness of Rhavas’ attack.

Water would not douse the fires the raiders had managed to set; they had to be smothered with sand. Half a dozen dart-throwers and one big stone-throwing engine were destroyed, and several others had been wrecked by Rhavas’ axemen and crowbar swingers. Scaurus was surprised the damage was not worse; luckily, the marauders had only had a few minutes to carry out their assault.