An Emperor for the Legion (25 page)

Marcus swallowed hard. He had thought he was beyond feeling worse, but found he was wrong. Defeat was five times more bitter at the hands of Rhavas. His head hung as he led the weary, painful trudge back to camp.

Inside Videssos the soldiers of the Sphrantzai celebrated their defense far into the night. They had reason to rejoice; none of Thorisin’s other attacks had come as close to success as the Romans’, and Scaurus knew how far from victory the legionaries had been.

The sound of the revels only made Gavras’ defeated army more sullen as it licked its wounds back behind its rampart. The tribune heard angry talk round the Roman campfires and did not blame his soldiers for it. They had fought as well as men could fight; but stone, brick, and iron were stronger than flesh and blood.

When the Namdalener came up to the Roman camp, nervous sentries almost speared him before he could convince them he was friendly. He asked for Scaurus, saying he would speak to no one else. The tribune’s sword was drawn as he walked to the north gate; apart from his own troops, he was not prepared to take anyone on trust.

But the islander proved to be a man he knew, a veteran mercenary named Fayard who had once been under the command of Helvis’ dead husband Hemond. He stepped forward out of the darkness to take the tribune’s hand between his two, the usual Namdalener clasp. “Soteric asks you to share a cup of wine with him at our camp,” he said. Years in the Empire had left his Videssian almost accent-free.

“This is a message you were bidden to give to me alone?” Scaurus asked in surprise.

“I had my orders,” Fayard shrugged. He had the resigned air of a soldier used to carrying them out whether or not he found sense in them.

“Of course I’ll come. Give me a moment, though.” Marcus quickly found Gaius Philippus, told him of Soteric’s request. The senior centurion’s eyes narrowed. He stroked his chin in thought.

“He wants something from us,” was his first comment, echoing Scaurus’ guess. Gaius Philippus followed it a moment later with, “He’s not very good at these games, is he? By now the whole camp’ll know you’re off on some secret meeting, where if his man had just sung out what he wanted to the gate crew, nobody would have thought twice about it.”

“Maybe I should take you off combat duty,” Marcus said. “You’re getting to be a fine intriguer yourself, you know.”

Gaius Philippus snorted, knowing the tribune’s threat was empty. “Ha! You don’t need to be a cow to know where milk comes from.”

Scaurus fought temptation and lost. “You’re right—that would be udderly ridiculous.” He walked off whistling, somehow feeling better than he had since the ill-fated attack began.

He and Fayard drew three challenges in the ten-minute trip to the Namdalener camp and another at its palisade. Guardsmen who would have ignored a platoon the night before now reached for spear or bow at the smallest movement. Defeat, Marcus thought, made men jump at shadows.

Yet another sentry stood, armed, in front of Soteric’s tent. A trifle shortsighted, he peered closely into the tribune’s face before standing aside to let him pass. Fayard ceremoniously held the tent flap open. “You aren’t coming, too?” Marcus said.

“Me? By the Wager, no,” the man of the Duchy answered. “Soteric pulled me out of a game of dice to fetch you, and just when I was starting to win. So by your leave—” He was gone before the sentence was complete.

“Come in, Scaurus, or at least let the flap drop,” Soteric called. “The wind will put out the candles.”

If Marcus had had any doubts that Soteric’s invitation was not merely social, the company Helvis’ brother kept would have erased them. A bandage on his forearm, Utprand Dagober’s
son sat on the sleeping mat by Soteric, his bearing and his cold eyes wolfish as always. Next to him were a pair of Namdaleni the tribune did not know, save by name: Clozart Leatherbreeches and Turgot of Sotevag, whose native town was on the eastern shore of the island Duchy. The four of them together spoke for most of the islanders who followed Gavras.

They shifted to give Scaurus room to sit. Turgot swore softly as he moved. “My arse is bandaged,” he explained to the Roman. “Took an arrow right in the cheek, I did.”

“He doesn’t care a moldy grape for your arse,” Clozart rumbled. Marcus thought he looked foolish in the tight leather trousers he affected—he was nearing fifty, and his belly bulged over their fastening—but his square face was hard and capable, the face of a man who acts and lets consequences sort themselves out afterward.

“Have some wine,” Turgot said, pouring from a squat pitcher. “We wouldn’t want Fayard forsworn, would we?” Marcus shook his head, sipped politely. For all their ostentatious contempt for Videssian ways, some Namdaleni played the game of indirection even more maddeningly than the imperials who had taught it to them.

Soteric, though, was not one of those. Tossing his own cup back at a gulp, he demanded bluntly, “Well, what did you think of today’s fiasco?”

“About what I thought before,” the tribune answered. “With those walls, a handful of lame old men could hold off an army, so long as they weren’t too old to remember to keep dropping rocks on its head.”

“Ha! Well said, t’at,” Utprand said, baring his teeth in the grimace that served him for a chuckle. “But t’question has more behind it. Gavras sent us forward to be killed, against works he had no hope of taking. Why should we serve such a man as that?”

“So you’re thinking of going over to the Sphrantzai?” Marcus asked carefully. If their answer was aye, he knew he would have to use all his guile to leave the islanders’ camp, for that was a choice he could never make. And if guile failed … He shifted his weight, bringing his sword to a position where it would be easier to seize.

But Clozart spat in fine contempt. “I fart in Ortaias Sphrantzes’ face,” he said.

“A pox on the twit,” Soteric nodded. “The seal-stamping
fop’s a worse bargain than Gavras ever would be, him and his pot-metal ‘goldpieces.’ ”

“What then?” Scaurus said, puzzled. “What other choice is there?”

“Home,” Turgot said at once, and longing filled his eyes at the word. “The lads have had a bellyful, and so have I. Let the damned imperials bake in their own oven, and may both sides burn. Give me cool Sote vag again and the long waves rolling off the endless gray ocean, and if the Empire’s recruiters come my way again I’ll set the hounds to ’em like your Vaspurakaner friend did to the Videssian priest.”

The tribune felt no longing, only a jealousy that by now itself was tired. In this world he and his had no home, nor were they likely to. “You make it sound simple,” he said dryly. “But what do you propose to do, march through the Empire’s eastlands until you come to your own country?”

His intended sarcasm fell on deaf ears. “Aye,” Clozart said, “or rather the sea across from it. Why not? What do the imperials have between here and there to stop us?”

“It should be easy,” Utprand agreed. “T’Empire stripped t’garrisons bare to fight the Yezda, and then again for t’is civil war. Once we get clear of Videssos, there would be no army dare come near us. And T’orisin has to let us go—if he tries to hold us, the Sphrantzai come out and eat him up.”

The chilly logic was convincing, as was Utprand himself; if the bleak Namdalener said a thing could be done, it very likely could. The only question Marcus could find was, “Why tell me now?”

“We want you and yours to come with us,” Soteric answered.

The tribune stared, surprised past speech. The Namdelener rushed on, “Duke Tomond, Phos love him, would be proud to have such fighters take service with him. There’s room and to spare in the Duchy, enough to make your troops yeoman farmers, each with his own plot, and you, I’d guess, a count. How’s the sound of that? ‘Scaurus, Scaurus, the great count Scaurus!’ if ever you chose to go on campaign again.”

Soteric’s tickling at his vanity left Marcus unmoved; he had more influence as a general in the Empire than he would with a fancy title of nobility in Namdalen. But for the first time since the Romans were swept to this world, he found himself tempted to cast aside his allegiance to Videssos. Here, freely
offered, was the thing he had thought impossible: a home, a place of their own in which they could belong.

The offer of land alone would seem like a miracle to his troops. Civil wars had been fought in Rome to get discharged veterans the allotments their generals promised. “Room and to spare …”

“Aye, outlander, it’s a lovely country we have,” Turgot said, still sentimental over the motherland he missed. “Sotevag sits on the coast, between oak woods and croplands, and I spend much of my time there, I will say. But I have a steading up in the moors as well—the high hills, all covered with heather and gorse, and flocks of sheep on ’em. The sky’s a different color from what it is here, a deeper blue, almost makes you think you can see
through
it. And the wind carries music on its breath, not the smell of horseshit and dust.”

The Roman sat silent, all but overwhelmed by his own memories of Mediolanum lost forever, of the snow-mantled Alps seen from a safe, warm house, of tart, pungent Italian wine, of speaking his mind in Latin instead of picking through this painfully learned other tongue …

All four Namdaleni were watching him closely. Clozart saw his struggle for decision but, mistrusting everyone not of his island nation, mistook its meaning. Dropping into the thick patois the men of the Duchy used among themselves, he said to his comrades, “I told you we never should have started this. Look at him there, figuring whether to sell us out or no.”

He did not think Scaurus could follow his speech; few Videssians would have been able to. But more than a year’s time with Helvis had given the tribune a grasp of the island dialect. His quick-sprung optimism faded. He and his were as alien to the Namdaleni as to the imperials.

Soteric knew him better than the other three and saw he had understood. Giving Clozart a venomous glare, he apologized as handsomely as he could.

“We know your worth,” Utprand agreed. “You would not be here else.”

Marcus nodded his thanks; praise from a soldier like this one was praise to be cherished. “I’ll put what you’ve said to my men,” he said. Clozart’s hard face reflected only disbelief, but the tribune meant it. There was no point in keeping the Namdalener offer from the legionaries, and no way to do so short of shutting them all in camp and killing any islander
who came within hailing distance. Better by far to lead events than be led by them.

When the tribune emerged from his brother-in-law’s tent, Fayard was nowhere to be seen. The dice spoke loudly to Namdaleni, and he doubtless decided Scaurus knew the way back to his own quarters.

His mind was spinning as he walked back to the Roman camp. His first feeling at Soteric’s proposal still held true: after a Roman upbringing and almost two years in the Empire of Videssos, being a count in the Duchy seemed rather like being a large wolf in a small pack. Nor was he eager to abandon the Empire. The Yezda were foes who needed fighting once the civil war was won—if it could be won.

On the other hand, when thinking only of the Romans’ best interests, Namdalen looked attractive indeed. He still had a hard time believing there could be land to offer freely to soldiers. In Rome the Senate kept a jealous grip on it; in the Empire it was in the hands of the nobles, with small freeholders taxed to the wall. Land—it would draw his men, right enough.

And on another level altogether, Helvis would surely leave him if he said Soteric nay, and that he did not want. What was between them refused to die, batter it about as they would. And they had a son … Was nothing ever simple?

Gaius Philippus waited just inside the north gate, edgily pacing back and forth. His saturnine features lit as he saw Scaurus. “About time,” he said. “Another hour and I’d have come after you, and brought friends with me.”

“No need for that,” Marcus said. “We have some talking to do, though. Fetch Glabrio and Gorgidas and meet me back here—we’ll take a stroll outside the palisade. Bring the Celt, while you’re at it; this affects him, too.”

“Viridovix? Is it a talk you want, or a brawl?” Gaius Philippus chuckled, but he hurried away to do what the tribune asked. Marcus saw how the Romans followed him with their eyes; they knew something was afoot. Damn Soteric and his amateur theatrics, he thought.

It was only a couple of minutes before the men whose judgment he most trusted and respected were gathered round him, curiosity on their faces. He led them into the night, talking all the while of little things, doing his futile best to make the conference seem ordinary to his men.

Out of earshot of the camp, though, he dropped the façade and gave a bald recounting of what had passed. A thoughtful silence followed as his comrades began to work the thing through, much as he had on his way back from Soteric’s tent.

Gaius Philippus was the first to break it. “Were it up to me, I’d tell ’em no. I haven’t a thing against the islanders—they’re brave men and fine friends to drink with, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my days living among barbarians.” The senior centurion had in full measure the sense of superiority the Romans felt for all other peoples save Greeks. In this world Videssos was the standard by which such things were gauged, and he identified himself with the imperial folk here, forgetting they reckoned him as barbarous as the Namdaleni.

Gorgidas understood that perfectly well, but his choice was the same. He said, “I left Elis for Rome years ago because I knew my home was a backwater. Am I to reverse that course now? I think not—here I stay. There’s too much I have yet to learn, too much the men of the Duchy don’t know themselves.”

The other two were slower to answer. Viridovix said, “Sure and it’s not an easy choice you set us, Scaurus dear, but I think I’m for the change, belike for all the reasons the last two were against it. I’m easier with the islanders than with these sly, haughty imperials, where you never know the thought in a man’s head until one day there’s a hired dagger between your ribs because he misliked the cut of your tunic. Aye, I’ll go.”

That left only Quintus Glabrio; to judge by the pain on his face, his was the hardest choice of all. “And I,” he said finally. Gorgidas’ sharp intake of breath only made him seem more miserable, but he went on, “It’s the land, more than anything else. The hope of it was the only reason I took service in the legions; it was the chance to be my own man one day, not a slave to someone else’s wages. Without land, no one really has anything.”