An Emperor for the Legion (4 page)

His musing made him miss Helvis’ next sentence. “I’m sorry?”

“I said that I suppose we’ll be going in the same direction.”

“What? No, of course not.” The words were out of his mouth before he remembered her brother Soteric was part of the garrison at Phanaskert.

Helvis’ full lips thinned; her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Why? From all I’ve heard, Utprand’s men and yours fought the Yezda to a standstill, even after others fled.” The normal contempt mercenary kin felt for the folk they were hired to defend was only made worse because Videssians and Namdaleni saw each other as heretics. Helvis went on, “Phanaskert is a stout city, stronger than Khliat. Surely behind its walls you could laugh at the scrawny nomads capering by.”

The tribune swallowed a sigh of relief. He wanted no part of going to Phanaskert, and Helvis unwittingly provided him with a perfect military justification for not doing so. He also did not want to quarrel with her. She was strong-willed; her temper, once aroused, was fierce; and in any case he had no time to argue.

He said, “City walls are less protection against nomads than you think. They burn the fields outside, kill the peasants who work them, and starve the town into yielding. Think,” he urged her. “You’ve seen it’s true, in the Empire and here in Vaspurakan. May they rot for it, the Yezda are no better bargain in a siege than in the open field.”

She bit her lip, wanting to disagree further but seeing
Scaurus’ mind was made up. “Very well,” she said at last. Her smile was wry. “I won’t argue with you over soldierly matters. Whether I’m right or not, it would do me no good.”

Marcus was content to let it go at that. While what he had said was true, he knew it was far from the whole truth. Great events would be brewing in Videssos in the aftermath of Mavrikios’ defeat and death. He did not intend to be stranded in a provincial town on the edge of nowhere while they took place without him. In his own way, he was as ambitious as all the other mercenary captains reckoning their chances of riding chaos’ wind to glory. But with only his few precious legionaries behind him, his hopes, unlike theirs, had to center on the imperial government.

None of that calculation showed on his face. He mused how much easier it would have been to remain one of Caesar’s junior officers, with clearly defined duties and with someone else to do his thinking for him. He shrugged inside his mail shirt. The Stoic doctrine he’d studied in Italy taught a man to make the best of what he had and not wish for the impossible—a good creed for a quiet man.

“If you’re ready,” he said to Helvis and Erene, “we’d best head back.”

“Sure and I’m baked to a wee black cinder,” Viridovix said as he tramped along. In fact he was not black, but red as any half-cooked meat. His fair Celtic skin burned under the ferocious Vaspurakaner sun, but refused to tan. Gorgidas smeared various smelly ointments on him. They sloughed away with each new layer of peeling hide.

The Gaul swore as a drop of sweat drew a stinging track down his face. “I have a riddle for the lot of you,” he called. “Why is even the silly seagull wiser than I?”

“I could think of a dozen reasons without trying,” Gaius Philippus said, not about to let such an opening slip by. “Tell us yours.”

Viridovix glared, but gave the answer he had prepared. “Because it has the sense never to visit Vaspurakan.”

The Romans, draggled and sun-baked themselves, chuckled in agreement. Senpat Sviodo, though, took offense to hear his native land maligned. He said loftily, “I’ll have you know this is the first land Phos shaped when he made the world, and the home of our ancestor Vaspur, the first man.”

Some of the Videssians who had joined the Romans hooted. The Vaspurakaners might call themselves Phos’ princes, but no people outside the “princes’ ” land took their theology seriously.

Viridovix cared nothing for theology of any sort. His objections were more immediate. Tilting his head back so he could look down his long nose at the mounted Senpat, he said, “About your being kin to the first man I’ll not speak one way or t’other. Of that sort of thing I ken nought. But I do believe this land your Phos’ first creation, for one look about would tell anybody the puir fool needed more practice.”

The legionaries whooped to see Sviodo speechless; the imperials—and Khatrishers, too—laughed louder yet at Viridovix’ delicious blasphemy. “You’ve only yourself to blame for the egg on your face,” Gaius Philippus told the young Vaspur-akaner, not unkindly. “Anyone with a tongue fast enough to keep three lovelies—and keep them all happy with him—is more than a match for a puppy like you.”

“I suppose so,” Senpat murmured. “But who would have thought he could talk with it, too?” Sunburned as he was, Viridovix could go no redder, but his strangled snort said the Vaspurakaner had a measure of revenge.

The Romans and their comrades pushed east from Khliat in an order reminiscent of any threatened herd. As always, the Khatrishers served as scouts and outriders, screening the main body and warning of trouble ahead or to either side. At their center marched a hollow square of legionaries, old bulls protecting the women, children, and wounded within.

The force’s good order and obvious readiness to stand and fight kept it from danger. A company of about three hundred Yezda paralleled the Romans’ course for more than a day, like so many wolves waiting to pick off the stragglers from a herd of wisent. At last they concluded there was no hope of catching their quarry unaware and rode away in search of easier prey.

At nightfall now, Marcus could hardly protest women inside his camp. Helvis shared his tent, and he was glad of it. Nonetheless, the principle of the thing still galled him. When Senpat Sviodo began teasing him once more, the only answer he got was a stare cold enough to end any further raillery before it could start. Acquiescent Scaurus might be, but not enthusiastic.

Late in the fourth morning out from Khliat, a Khatrisher scout came riding up from the south. Flipping Marcus the usual offhand salute, he reported, “There’s something funny going on up in the hills—sounds pretty much like fighting, but not quite. Ï didn’t take a close look. It’s better country for foot than horse—the grade is steep, and there’s all kinds of loose rocks.”

“Show me,” the tribune said. He followed the Khatrisher’s pointing finger. Sure enough, he saw a small dust cloud and, below it, occasional sparks of light as the sun flashed off a blade. Even allowing that the action was a couple of miles away, it did not seem very big.

Still, if it was Videssian stragglers or Vaspurakaners meeting the vanguard of a major Yezda force, that was something the Romans had to know. Scaurus turned to Gaius Philippus. “Detail me eight men with a good, sensible underofficer to find out what the skirmish means.”

“Eight men it is, sir,” the centurion nodded, quickly choosing a tentful of legionaries. “And for the party’s leader,” he said, “I’d suggest—”

On impulse, Marcus cut him off. “Never mind. I’ll take them myself.”

Gaius Philippus’ face froze, except for one unruly eyebrow that climbed toward his hairline in mute expression of the scandalized feelings he was too well drilled to speak out loud. But Scaurus’ ears were sharper than most. As he turned to take the reconnaissance squad away, he heard the senior centurion grumbling to himself, “Fool amateurs, always think they have to lead from the front.”

Leadership, as it happened, had played almost no rôle in the tribune’s sudden decision. Curiosity was a much bigger part of it, a curiosity piqued by the Khatrisher’s odd description of what he had heard: “Pretty much like fighting, but not quite.” That deserved a closer look.

“Double march,” he told his men and hurried south, his long legs chewing up the distance. Though the legionaries were shorter and stockier, they kept pace. At double march—almost a trot, really—there was scant breath for chatter. The two miles vanished in a silence broken only by hard breathing, the slap of sandals on dirt, and the occasional clank of scabbards slapping off iron-studded military kilts.

The land began sloping up from the valley floor; loose
rocks and gravel made the going hard. Marcus stumbled and had to put his hands out to save a fall. To the rear, one of his men cursed as the same thing happened to him. He realized the Khatrisher had been right in his reluctance to take his mount up the slope. Four legs might be quicker than two, but in this terrain two were far more agile.

He was close enough now to hear the noise the scout had reported, though a jumble of boulders ahead still hid its source. The Khatrisher had been right: at first it sounded like any bit of sharp fighting heard from outside, but as the Romans drew nearer they began cocking their heads and looking at one another in puzzlement. Steel on steel did not sound quite like this, nor did the shouts the combatants raised. Where was the noise of booted feet stamping and leaping, and what was the source of the high, almost inaudible keening that took its place?

Marcus drew his Gallic longsword; its weight was comforting in his palm. Behind him, he heard his men’s stubby
gladii
rasp free of their brass scabbards. The Romans pushed past the last obstructions and up onto a stretch of ground flatter than that through which they had been struggling.

On the little plain, a dozen and a half Yezda, urged on by a hard-faced man in robes the color of dried blood, hewed and chopped at a double handful of Videssians clustered protectively around a plump, shave-pated fellow whose dusty garment might once have been sky blue. “Nepos!” Scaurus shouted, recognizing the rotund little priest of Phos.

Nepos’ head whipped round at the cry; the struggle, going no better than most at odds of nearly two to one, promptly grew more desperate yet, the circle round the priest tighter. Neither the Videssian soldiers nor their foes appeared to notice the Romans’ arrival.

“At them!” Marcus shouted. If the Yezda chose to be fools, it was none of his concern.

The red-robe who led them smiled thinly as the legionaries charged.

His men did not divert a minim of their attention from the enemy at hand, not even when the Romans were upon them. And the legionaries shouted in amazement and dread, for their swords drove through the Yezda as if through smoke, and their bodies met no resistance from the solid-seeming foe.

The Videssian soldiers, for all their bellowed war cries, for
all the ringing of their blades against those of the Yezda, were as insubstantial as the wraiths they fought. Marcus’ brain stopped its brief terrorized yammering—Nepos was mage as well as priest, and the tribune knew Yezda sorcerers wore red-brown by choice. His men had stumbled across a wizards’ duel—and Nepos’ opponent was no weakling, not if he could force the fat priest to the defensive.

Then Scaurus’ sword lashed across one of the phantom Yezda warriors. The marks set into the blade flared golden as it sheared through the sorcery. Like a doused candle flame, the soldier’s seeming ceased to be. Another vanished to a second stroke, then another and another. The Yezda wizard’s smile disappeared with them.

As their foes blew out, Nepos’ projections swung to the attack, and it was his enemy’s turn to draw his powers around himself for defense. But Marcus’ blade, enchanted by vanished Gaul’s druids, had shown itself proof against the spells of Avshar himself; an underling’s magic was no match for it. The tribune pushed forward remorselessly, striking the Yezda’s wraithly warriors out of existence.

Even when the last of them was gone, the red-robe proved neither coward nor weakling. His spells were still potent enough to hold off Nepos’ assault; no phantom Videssian sword reached him, though they missed now by hairbreadths. Growling an oath in his own harsh tongue, he snatched out a dagger and leaped forward to grapple with Scaurus.

That was a contest with but one possible ending, despite the Yezda’s courage. The Roman turned the wizard’s stab with his shield, thrust out and up with the killing stroke of the legionaries. His blade bit flesh, not the filmy figments that had so far stood against him. Blood ran from the Yezda’s mouth, to drown his dying curse half-uttered.

Nepos’ seemings vanished when their creator’s foe fell. The little Videssian priest staggered himself, a man in the last throes of exhaustion. Sweat was pouring from his shaven crown; drops sparkled in his beard. He came up to clasp the tribune’s arm. “Praise Phos, who sends the light, for sending you to me in my desperate need.” The priest’s voice was a ragged, croaking caricature of his usual firm tenor.

He looked down at the crumpled form of the dead Yezda wizard, murmuring, “He would have killed me, I think, had you not come when you did.”

“How did you get into a sorcerers’ duel?” Marcus asked.

“We were dodging each other through these rocks. I saw he had a knife and wanted to frighten him off with phantoms. But he fought back—and he was strong.” Nepos shook his head. “And yet he seemed but a shaman like a thousand others, while I, I am a mage of the Videssian Academy. Can it be true, then—is his dark Skotos a mightier god than mine? Is my life’s work one long futility?”

Scaurus thumped his shoulder; Nepos was normally a jolly soul, but liable to fits of gloom when things went bad. The tribune said, “Buck up. He and all his kind are riding the hem of Avshar’s robe—one win and they think they bestride the world.” He studied the draggled priest. “And you, my friend, are not at your best.”

“That’s so,” Nepos admitted. He scrubbed at the sweat-streaked dirt on his face with a grimy sleeve and shook his head in dismay. It was as if he was looking at himself for the first time in days. He managed a feeble smile. “I’m not in fine fettle, am I?”

“Hardly,” Marcus said. “I can’t promise you any elegant accommodations with my men, but they do beat straggling home alone.”

Nepos’ smile grew broader. “I should certainly hope so.” He sighed, then turned to the legionaries. “I suppose that means I’ll have to tramp back with you long-shanked gentlemen.” The Romans grinned at him; they were all taller—and leaner—than the tubby little priest.

He did his valiant best to keep pace with them, his short legs churning over the ground. “Not bad,” one of the soldiers commended him as they approached the Roman column. The trooper’s smile turned sly. “There’s plenty of Videssians with us already. Maybe we’ll find you a coat of mail and a pack and make a real legionary out of you.”