The Legion of Videssos (17 page)

There was no answer. He called again, with equal lack of success. “Probably gone off somewhere to drop his trousers,” Lankinos Skylitzes guessed.

Gorgidas heard footsteps squelching toward the camp and thought for a moment Skylitzes was right. But it was one of the sentries. “Hallo the camp!” the trooper said. “Are you daft
there, to let your fire die? Keep talking, the lot of you, so I can find you.”

When the sentry came in, he asked, “Is everything well? I had something odd happen to me.” He spoke with elaborate unconcern, trying to mask his worry. “I was out there watching and started to feel faint. I headed in to get a relief, but I reckon I didn’t make it—next thing I knew, it was raining on me. Very strange—seems like there’s a smith pounding out stirrups in my head, but I drank water because I knew I had to be sober for watch. What hour is it, anyway?”

As it turned out, no one knew. Nor did they argue about it long, for just then one of the horses gave a puzzled-sounding snort and scrambled to its feet, followed within minutes by the rest of the animals. Ignoring their own headaches, Psoes’ men and Skylitzes rushed over to them, shouting in mixed Videssian and the Khamorth tongue. For the first time, Gorgidas understood something was truly amiss; horses did not go down of their own accord.

The horsemen clucked and fussed over their beasts, trying to learn why they had fallen. Lankinos Skylitzes walked back toward the dead campfire. “Gorgidas?”

“Here.”

“Where? Oh.” The soldier almost stumbled over him. “Sorry—bloody dark.” Skylitzes’ voice softened. “I’ve heard you are a healer. Would you see to the horses? They seem all right, but—” He spread his hands, a motion the Greek saw only dimly.

Gorgidas understood the request, but it did not please him. “I’m a physician no more,” he said shortly. That was too abrupt, he decided, so he went on, “Even if I were, I know nothing of animals. Horseleeching is a different art from doctoring men.” And a good deal lower one, he did not add.

Skylitzes caught his annoyance nonetheless. “I meant no offense.” Gorgidas dipped his head impatiently, then regretted it as his headache flared. Skylitzes asked, “Has Viridovix turned up?”

“No. Where could he have wandered off to, anyhow? Where did he lay out his sleeping-mat? If he’s on it snoring, I’ll wring his lazy neck.”

“You’d need to wait your turn, I think.” Skylitzes squinted
as he peered through the rain. He pointed. “Over there, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?” Gorgidas took himself to task for not paying closer heed before he slept; if a historian—or a doctor, for that matter—failed to notice details, what good was he? He was proud of his powers of observation, and here, when he needed them, they let him down.

Skirting the ashes of the campfire—and still wondering why they were so cold—the Greek walked in the direction Skylitzes had indicated. Sure enough, there were blankets and a thin traveling mat spread on the ground; they were beginning to get soaked now. Beside them was a knapsack Gorgidas recognized as Viridovix’ and the Celt’s helmet with its seven-spoked bronze wheel of a crest. Of Viridovix himself there was no sign.

The commotion in the camp made the two remaining sentries come in to see what was toward; both reluctantly admitted falling asleep at their posts. “Trouble yourselves not,” Pikridios Goudeles said pompously, “for no harm resulted.”

Agathias Psoes growled, as any good underofficer would at the notion of his men dozing on watch. And Gorgidas shouted, “No harm? Where’s Viridovix?”

“To that I must confess my ignorance. The man is your comrade, and of your people. Why should he choose to wander off?”

Gorgidas opened his mouth, shut it again; he had no idea. He did know how useless it was to explain that he and the Celt were no more of the same people than Goudeles and a Khamorth.

The rest of the night was dank and miserable. No one went back to sleep, and not just the pattering rain stopped them. The entire party was much more awake than their midnight rousing called for, but unpleasantly so; a good part of the desultory talk centered on their aching heads.

“Been drunk without a hangover before,” Arigh remarked, “but I never had the hangover without the drunk.” As if to correct the fault, he swigged from the kavass-skin that was almost always near him.

Toward morning the clouds grew tattered for a while, revealing a thin cheese-paring of a moon low in the east. Too thin, too low—“We’ve lost a day!” Gorgidas exclaimed.

“Phos, you’re right,” Skylitzes said, making his god’s circular sun-sign over his breast. He raised his hands to the damp heavens and muttered a prayer. Nor was he the only one; Psoes and the Videssians in his squad imitated him, while the troopers who still followed Khamorth ways poured kavass out on the ground to propitiate the less abstract powers they worshiped. Even Goudeles, as worldly a man as Videssos grew, prayed with the soldiers.

“Some spirit has touched us. We should sacrifice a horse,” Arigh said, and the Khamorth cried out in agreement.

Gorgidas listened to his companions with growing exasperation. While they babbled of gods and spirits, his logical mind saw the answer only too clearly. “We’ve been magicked asleep so someone could snatch Viridovix,” he said, and, a moment later, carrying his train of thought to its conclusion, added, “Avshar!”

“No,” Skylitzes replied at once. “Were it Avshar, we should be waking in the next world. There is no mercy in him.”

“His minions, then,” the Greek insisted. He remembered the potent blade the Gaul carried, but did not mention it; the fewer who knew of it, the less likely word of it would reach the wizard, should Gorgidas prove wrong by some lucky chance.

He did not think he was. It was growing steadily lighter; he walked over to examine Viridovix’ bedroll once more. His breath hissed out as he saw the bloodstains on the Celt’s blankets. He held them up, displaying them to the rest of the party. “A kidnapping while we were spelled to sleep!” he said.

“And even so, what of that?” Goudeles said. The seal-stamper sounded petulant; he was used to the comforts of Videssos and did not relish sitting unprotected in the rain and mud of the trackless steppe. He went on, “When weighed against the mission with which we were entrusted, what is the fate of one barbarian mercenary? Once our embassy is successfully completed—which boon Phos grant—then, with the augmentation of manpower the addition of the Arshaum will yield us, we may properly search for him. But until such augmentation should come to pass, he remains a secondary consideration.”

Gorgidas gasped, not wanting to believe his ears. “But he
may be hurt, dying—he surely is hurt,” the Greek said, touching the brown stains on the cloth. “You would not leave him in the enemy’s hands?”

If Goudeles was embarrassed, he did not show it. “I would not cast myself into them, either, and bring to nothing the purpose for which I was dispatched.”

“The pen-pusher is right,” Skylitzes said, looking as though the admission left a bad taste in his mouth. “The Empire’s safety overrides that of any one man. Your countryman is a doughty fighter, but he is only one. We need hundreds.”

Neither of the Videssians knew Viridovix, save on the journey. Gorgidas turned to Arigh, who had roistered with the Celt for two years. “He is your friend!”

Arigh tugged at his straggling chin whiskers, plainly uncomfortable with the Greek’s bald appeal. Personal ties counted for more with him than with the imperials, but he was a khagan’s son and understood reasons of state. “It grieves me, but no. The farmer-folk speak true, I fear. I betray a trust now whatever I do, but I act for my clan before I act for myself. V’ridrish is no easy prey; he may yet win free.”

“Curse you all!” Gorgidas said. “If you care nothing for what happens to your comrade, stand aside for one who does. I’ll ride after him myself.”

“That is well said,” Arigh said quietly. Several of the troopers echoed him. Furious, Gorgidas ignored them all, sweeping possessions into his rucksack.

But Skylitzes came over to put a hand on the Greek’s shoulder. Gorgidas cursed again and tried to shake free, but the stocky Videssian officer was stronger than he. “Let loose of me, you god-detested oaf! Why should you care if I seek my friend? I cannot matter to you any more than he does.”

“Think like a man, not an angry child,” Skylitzes said softly. The rebuke was calculated to touch the Greek, who prided himself on his rationality. Skylitzes waved, an all-encompassing gesture that swept round the horizon. “Go after Viridovix—” Like Goudeles, he said the name carefully. “—if you will, but where will you go?”

“Why—” the Greek began, and then stopped in confusion. He rubbed his bristly chin; a beard, he was finding, could be a useful adjunct to thought. “Where do your reports place Avshar?” he asked at last.

“North and west of where we are now, but that news is weeks old and worth nothing now. You’ve seen how the plainsmen move, and no law makes the damned wizard-prince stay with any one clan.”

“Northwest is good enough.”

“Is it? I’ve seen you, outlander; you lack the skill to follow a trail—not that the rain will leave you one.” Skylitzes went on remorselessly, “And if you do somehow catch up to your foes, what then? Are you warrior enough to slay them all singlehanded? Are you warrior enough even to protect yourself if a nomad chooses to make sport of you? Will that sword of yours help, should you buckle it on instead of leaving it in your kit?”

Gorgidas started; sure enough, he had not thought of the
gladius
Gaius Philippus had given him, and had left it tucked away with his scrolls of parchment. For the first time in many years, he wished he were skilled with weapons. It was humiliating that he could not stop some chance-met, unwashed, illiterate barbarian who might enjoy killing him simply to watch him die.

He rummaged through his sack for the sword, but threw it angrily back in when he found it. It could not cut Lankinos Skylitzes’ logic. “West, then,” he said, hating the necessity that impelled his words.
Ananke
, he thought: life’s harshest master.

When Skylitzes offered a sympathetic handclasp, the Greek did not take his hand. Instead he said, “Keep drilling me on my swordplay, will you?” The officer nodded.

Gorgidas’ thoughts were full of irony as he scrambled onto his horse. He had left Videssos for the plains to change from doctor to historian. Change he was finding aplenty, but hardly what he had wanted. Things long excluded from his life were forcing their way in: women, weapons—but precious little history yet. It might have been funny, had he been without greater concerns.

The rain poured down from an indifferent sky.

T
HE RETREAT FARED BETTER THAN
M
ARCUS HAD DARED
hope. With victory in their hands, the Namdaleni were more eager to chase small bands of fugitives than to tackle a good-sized detachment still under arms. A couple of companies of horsemen made tentative runs at the legionaries, but went off in search of easier prey when they failed to dissolve in panic flight.

“Cowards get what they deserve,” Nevrat Sviodo remarked as she passed the body of a Videssian speared in the back. Scorn filled her voice. She had fought side by side with her husband. Her quiver was almost empty, her saber had blood on it, and her forehead was cut and bruised from a thrown stone, luckily only a glancing blow.

“Aye, that’s the reward for running higgledy-piggledy,” Gaius Philippus agreed. The senior centurion was not downcast in defeat; he had seen it before. “There’s ways to lose as well as ways to win. By the Sucro, now, my mates did well even though we lost, and at Turia, too. If the old woman hadn’t shown up, we’d have given the boy a good drubbing and sent him back to Rome.” He smiled at the memory.

“The old woman? The boy?” Nevrat looked at him in confusion.

“Never mind, lass; it was a long time ago, back where the lot of us came from. These Videssians aren’t the only ones with civil wars, and I chose the wrong side in one.”

“So you were with Sertorius, then?” Marcus said. He knew the senior centurion had been of Marius’ party. After Sulla beat the last of the Marians in Italy, Quintus Sertorius refused to yield Spain to the winners. Winning the Spanish natives to his side, he fought on guerilla-style for eight years, until one of his own subordinates murdered him.

“So I was. What of it?” Gaius Philippus challenged. His loyalty, once given, died hard.

“Not a thing,” the tribune said. “He must have been a fine soldier, to face up to Pompey the Great.”

“ ‘The Great?’ ” Gaius Philippus spat in the dusty roadway. “Compared to what? As I said, if Metellus hadn’t saved his bacon at Turia, he’d be running yet—if he could. We wounded him there, you know.”

“I hadn’t realized that. I was still in my teens then.”

“Yes, I suppose you would have been. I was a little younger than you are now, I think.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. Most of the hair on his scarred forearm was silver. “Time wins the war, no matter what becomes of the battles.”

The sun was still high in the west when the legionaries came into sight of their camp again. There were dead horses and riders outside, and a squad of Namdaleni studying the palisade at a respectful distance. They trotted off when they recognized the newcomers.

Minucius met Scaurus at one of the entrances to the
via principalis
. The young underofficer’s salute was as much a gesture of relief as of respect. “Good to see you, sir,” he managed.

“And you,” Marcus said. He raised his voice so everyone could hear: “Half an hour! Knock down the tents, find your women and tots, and then we travel. Anyone slow can make his excuses to the islanders—we won’t be here to listen to them.”

“I knew it went wrong,” Minucius was saying. “First the
plainsmen running, and then the Videssians, with Drax’ men on their heels. Did Utprand turn traitor, then?”

“No, but his men did. He’s dead.”

“So that was the way of it,” Minucius growled. His large hands folded into fists. “I thought I knew some of the good-for-naughts who tried coming over the stakes. You saw the welcome we gave ’em—they went off to have a go at something less lively, like the imperials’ camp over past the trees.” He hesitated; uncertainty seemed out of place on his rugged features. “I hope we did right, sir. There was, ah, some as wanted us to open up and join ’em.”