An Emperor for the Legion (3 page)

“Good,” Senpat said. He studied the tribune. “You can loosen up a bit after all, then? I’d wondered.”

“I suppose I can,” Marcus sighed, and the regret in his voice was so plain he and Sviodo both had to laugh. So it’s to be our women with us wherever we go, is it? the tribune thought. One more step along the way from legionary officer
to head of a mercenary company. He laughed at himself again, this time silently. In the Empire of Videssos, captain of mercenaries was all he’d ever be, and high time he got used to the notion.

The Yezda were thick as fleas round Khliat; the last day’s march to the city was a running fight. But Khliat itself, to Scaurus’ surprise, was not under siege, nor was any real effort made to keep the Romans from entering it. As Nevrat had remarked, in victory the nomads forgot the leaders who had won it for them.

That was fortunate, for Khliat could not have repelled a serious attack. Marcus had expected its walls to be bristling with spears, but only a handful of men were on them. To his shock, the gates were open. “Why not?” Gaius Philippus said scornfully. “There’s so many running, the Yezda would be trampled if they tried to get in.” A gray-brown dust cloud lay over everything eastward, the telltale banner of an army of fugitives.

Inside, panic still boiled. Plump sutlers, calculating men who could smell a copper through a wall of dung, threw their goods at anyone who would take them, so they could flee unencumbered. Singly and in small groups, soldiers wandered through the city’s twisting streets and alleyways, calling the names of friends and lovers and hoping against hope they would be answered.

More pitiful yet were the women who crowded close by Khliat’s western gate. Some kept a vigil doomed to heartbreak, awaiting warriors who would come to them no more. Others had already despaired of that and stood, bejeweled and gowned, offering themselves to any man who might get them safely away.

The Khatrishers were first into Khliat. Most of them were without women here, as they had taken service with Videssos for the one campaign alone and thus left wives and sweethearts behind in their forested homeland.

The tribune passed through the squat gray arch of stone and under the iron-spiked portcullis which warded the city’s west-em gate. He looked up through the murder-holes and shook his head. Where were the archers to spit death at any invader who tried to force an entrance, where the tubs of bubbling oil and molten lead to warm the foe’s reception? Likely, he
thought bitterly, the officer in charge of such things fled, and no one has thought of them since.

Then any concern over matters military was swept from him, for Helvis was holding him tightly, heedless of the pinch of his armor, laughing and crying at the same time. “Marcus! Oh, Marcus!” she said, covering his bristly face with kisses. For her, too, the agony of suspense was over.

Other women were crying out with joy and rushing forward to embrace their men. Three, comely lasses all, made for Viridovix, then halted in dismay and dawning hostility as they realized their common goal.

“I’d sooner face the Yezda than a mess like that,” Gaius Philippus declared, but Viridovix met the challenge without flinching. With fine impartiality, the big Gaul had kisses, hugs, and fair words for all; the blithe charm that had won each girl separately now rewon them all together.

“It’s bloody uncanny,” the senior centurion muttered enviously. His own luck with women was poor, for the most part because he took no interest in them beyond serving his lusts.

“The Romans! The Romans!” Starting at the western gate, the cry spread through Khliat almost before the last legionary was in the city. Their dependents flocked to them, and many were the joyful meetings. But many, too, were the women who learned, some gently from comrades, others by the simple brutal fact of a loved one’s absence, that for them there would be no reunions. There were Romans as well, who looked in vain for loved faces in the excited crowd and hung their heads, sorrow sharpened by their companions’ delight.

“Where’s Malric?” Marcus asked Helvis. He had to shout to make himself understood.

“With Erene. I watched her two girls yesterday while she kept vigil here at the gates. I should go to her, to let her know you’ve come.”

He would not let her out of their embrace. “The whole city must know that by now,” he said. “Bide a moment with me.” He was startled to realize how much for granted he had come to take her beauty in the short time they had been together. Seeing her afresh after separation and danger was almost like looking at her for the first time.

Hers were not the sculptured, aquiline good looks to which Videssian women aspired. Helvis was a daughter of Namdalen, snub-nosed and rather wide-featured. But her eyes were
deepest blue, her smiling mouth ample and generous, her figure a shout of gladness. It was too soon for pregnancy to mark her body, but the promise of new life glowed from her face.

The tribune kissed her slowly and thoroughly. Then he turned to Gaius Philippus with orders: “Keep the single men here while those of us with partners find them—the gods willing—and bring them back. Give us, hmm—” He gauged the westering sun. “—two hours, then tell off a hundred or so good, reliable men and rout out anyone fool enough to think he’d sooner go it alone.”

“Aye, sir.” The grim promise on the centurion’s face was enough to make any would-be deserter think twice. Gaius Philippus suggested, “We could do worse than using some Khatrishers in our patrols, too.”

“There’s a thought,” Marcus nodded. “Pakhymer!” he called, and the commander of the horsemen from Khatrish guided his small, shaggy horse into earshot. Scaurus explained with he wanted. He phrased it as request; the Khatrishers were equals, voluntary companions in misfortune, not troops formally subject to his will.

Laon Pakhymer absently scratched his cheek as he considered. Like all his countrymen, he was bearded; he wore his own whiskers full and bushy, the better to cover pockmarks. At last he said, “I’ll do it, if all patrols are joint ones. If one of your troopers gets rowdy and we have to crack him over the head, I want some of your men around to see it was needful. It’s easier never to have a feud than to stop one once started.”

Not for the first time, Scaurus admired Pakhymer’s cool good sense. In shabby leather trousers and sweat-stained fox-skin cap, he looked the simple nomad, a role many Khatrishers affected. But the folk of that land had learned considerable subtlety since their Khamorth ancestors swept down off the plains of Pardraya to wrest the province from Videssos eight hundred years ago. They were like fine wine in cheap jugs, with quality easy to overlook at a hasty drinking.

The tribune ordered the buccinators to trumpet “Attention!” The legionaries stiffened into immobility. Marcus gave them his commands, adding at the end, “Some of you may think you can steal away and never be caught. Well, belike you’re right. But remember what’s outside and reckon up how long you’re likely to enjoy your escape.”

A thoughtful silence ensued. Gaius Philippus broke it with
a bellowed, “Dis-
missed!
” Partnered men scattered through the city; their bachelor comrades stood at ease to await their return. Some moved toward the women clustered at the gates, intent on changing their status, permanently or for a little while. Gaius Philippus cocked an interrogative eyebrow at Scaurus. The tribune shrugged. Let his troops find what solace they could.

“Minucius,” he said, “come on with Helvis and me? Erene is looking after Malric, it seems.”

The legionary grinned. “I’ll do that, sir. With three little ones running around, I’m sure of my welcome—seeing me’s bound to be a relief.”

Marcus chuckled, then translated for Helvis. Among themselves, he and his men mostly spoke Latin, and she had only a few words of it. She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know how right you are,” she said to Minucius.

“Oh, but I do, my lady,” he answered, switching to Videssian for her. “The little farm I grew up on, I was the oldest of eight, not counting two who died young, and I still don’t know when my mother slept.”

Even in the most troubled times, some things in Khliat did not change. As Helvis, Marcus, and Minucius walked through the town’s marketplace, they had to kick their way through the pigeons, blackbirds, and sparrows that congregated in cheeping, chirping hordes round the grain merchants’ stalls. The birds were confident of their handouts and just as sure no one meant them any harm.

“They’ll learn soon enough,” Minucius said, sidestepping to avoid a pigeon which refused to make way for him. “Come a siege, there’ll be a lot of bird pies the first day or two. After that they’ll know their welcome’s gone, and you won’t get within fifty feet of one on the ground.”

Beggars still lined the edge of the market place, though it seemed most of the able-bodied vagabonds had vanished for safer climes. In an expansive mood, Minucius dug into his pouch for some money to toss to a thin, white-bearded old man with only one leg who lounged in front of an open tavern door.

“You’d give him gold?” Marcus asked in surprise, seeing the trooper produce a small coin instead of one of the broad bronze pieces Videssos minted.

“That’s what they’d like you to think, anyway. It’s that
pen-pusher Strobilos’ money, and it’s not worth a bloody thing.” Ortaias Sphrantzes’ great-uncle Strobilos had been Avtokrator until Mavrikios Gavras ousted him four years before. His coinage was cheapened even beyond the lows set by previous bureaucratic Emperors; the “goldpiece” on which his pudgy features were stamped was more than half copper.

Minucius flipped the coin to the beggar, who plucked it out of the air. Debased or no, it was a finer gift than he usually got; he dipped his head and thanked the Roman in halting, Vaspurakaner-flavored Videssian. That completed, he popped the coin into his mouth and dragged himself into the grogshop.

“I hope the old boy has himself one fine spree,” Minucius said. “He doesn’t look like there’s many left in him.”

Scaurus gave the legionary an odd look. Minucius had always struck him as sharing Gaius Philippus’ single-minded devotion to the army, without the senior centurion’s years of experience to give a sense of proportion. Such a thoughtful remark was not like him.

“If you’re as eager to see Erene as she is to see you,” Helvis said to Minucius with a smile, “it will be a happy meeting indeed. She hardly talks about anything but you.”

Minucius’ thick-bearded Italian peasant’s face lit up in a grin that lightened his hard features. “Really?” he said, sounding shy and amazed as a fifteen-year-old. “These past few months I’ve thought myself the luckiest man alive.…” And he was off, praising Erene the rest of the way to the small house she and Helvis shared.

Listening to him as they walked along, Marcus had no trouble deciding where his unexpected streak of compassion came from. Here was a man unabashedly in love. In a way, the tribune was a trifle jealous. Helvis was a splendid bed-mate, a fine companion, and no one’s fool, but he could not find the flood of emotion in him that Minucius was releasing. He was happy, aye, but not heart-full.

Well, he told himself, you’ll never see thirty again, and it’s not likely Minucius has twenty-two winters in him. But am I older, he asked himself, or merely colder? He was honest enough to admit he did not know.

Helvis wore the key to her lodging on a string round her neck. She drew it up from between her breasts, inserted it into its socket, and drew out the bolt-pin. The door opened inward;
Malric shot out, crying, “Mama! Mama!” and reaching up to seize his mother round the waist. “Hello, Papa!” he added as she lifted him and tossed him up in the air.

“Hello, lad,” Marcus said, taking him from Helvis.

“Did you bring me a Yezda’s head, papa?” Malric said, remembering what he’d asked of Scaurus before the imperial army left Khliat.

“You’ll have to ask Viridovix about that,” the tribune told him.

Minucius barked laughter. “There’s a warrior in the making,” he said.

His voice brought a delighted cry of recognition from inside the house. Erene, a stocky little Videssian girl who barely reached his shoulder, came running through the door and almost bowled him over with her welcoming embrace.

“Easy, darling, easy!” he said, holding her out at arm’s length. “If I squeeze you as tight as I want, I’d pop the baby out right now.” He stroked her cheek with a sword-callused hand.

“Are you all right?” Erene asked anxiously. “You weren’t hurt?”

“No, hardly even a scratch. You see, what happened was—”

Marcus gave a dry cough. “I’m afraid all this will have to wait. Erene, round up your girls and pack whatever you can carry without being slowed. I want to be out of this town before sunset.”

Minucius looked at him reproachfully, but was too much a soldier to argue. He expected a protest from Erene, but all she said was, “I’ve been ready to leave for two days. This one—” She squeezed Minucius’ arm. “—knows how to travel light, and I’ve done my best to learn from him.”

“And I,” Helvis said when Scaurus turned his head toward her. “I’ve been with you long enough to know your craze for lugging everything around on your men’s backs. What you have against supply wagons and packhorses I’ll never understand.” Her own folk’s warriors fought mounted and were far more at home with horses than the unchivalric Romans.

“The more independent an army is of anything outside itself, the better it does. The Yezda show that only too well. Now, though, we really could use extra beasts and cars, what
with all the noncombatants we’ll have along. Will Khliat supply any, do you think?”

Erene shook her head. Helvis explained further: “Yesterday it would have, but last night Utprand brought his regiment through and emptied the horse-pens of what animals were left. He headed south at dawn this morning.”

Likely, Marcus thought, the Namdalener captain was leading his troops to Phanaskert, to join his fellow easterners who were serving as a garrison in that city. From his own point of view that was a logical move: best to link all the men of the Duchy together. Utprand probably did not care—or even notice—that his march out of the path of the oncoming Yezda helped open Videssos to invasion. Mercenaries tended to think of themselves before their paymasters. As do I, the tribune realized, as do I.