The Legion of Videssos (20 page)

“No, love,” he said, touching her hand. “The gods know we’re not perfect, but then only they are. Or Phos, if you’d rather,” he amended quickly, seeing her mouth tighten. He cursed his clumsy tongue; he had no real belief in the Roman gods, but spoke merely from habit.

Gaius Philippus had also heard the tribune’s first comment. “Hrmp,” he said. “If the Videssians didn’t hire mercenaries, they’d have killed the lot of us as soon as we came into this crazy world.”

“There is that,” Scaurus admitted. Gaius Philippus nodded, then hurried off to swear at a Vaspurakaner who had been foolish enough to start to relieve himself upstream from the camp. The luckless trooper found himself with a week of latrine duty.

Marcus was left thoughtful. Gaius Philippus rarely broke in when he and Helvis were talking. Was the senior centurion trying in his gruff way to keep things smooth between them? Considering his misogynism, the notion was strange, but the tribune was strapped for any other explanation. He murmured
a sentence in archaic, rhythmic Greek. Helvis looked at him strangely.

“ ‘Everything you say, my friend, is to the point,’ ” he translated. Everything was in Homer somewhere.

Zonaras’ wife was a competent, gray-haired woman named Thekla. His widowed sister Erythro lived with them. Several years younger than Sittas, she was flighty and talkative, and had a gift for puncturing the calm front he cherished.

Erythro was childless; her brother and Thekla had had a daughter and three sons. The girl, Ypatia, reminded Marcus a little of Alypia Gavra in her quiet intelligence. She was betrothed to one of the nobles in the hills to the south. The man stood to inherit Zonaras’ estates, for his only surviving son, Tarasios, was a pale, consumptive youth. He bore his illness with courage and laughed at the coughing fits that wracked his thin frame, but death’s mark was on him. Along with many men of lower rank from the holding, his two brothers had fallen at Maragha, fighting under Onomagoulos.

Despite that, Zonaras had not supported his neighbor’s rebellion against Thorisin Gavras. “As Kalokyres says, in civil war the prudent man sits tight.” Scaurus smothered a smile when he heard that; the last man he had known who was fond of quoting the Videssian military writer was Ortaias Sphrantzes, a miscast soldier if ever there was one.

Framed in black, portraits of the grandee’s dead sons hung in his dining hall. “They’re crude daubs,” Erythro told Marcus in the confidential manner she liked to affect. “I’ll have you know my nephews were handsome lads.”

“All your taste is in your mouth, darling sister,” Sittas Zonaras rumbled. He and Erythro argued constantly, with great enjoyment on both sides. If she spoke well of wine, he would drink ale for the next fortnight to irritate her, while she kept urging him to drown all the cats on the estate—but stroked them when he was not there to see it.

Actually, Scaurus agreed with Erythro here. By the standards of the capital, the paintings were the product of a half-schooled man, no doubt a local. Still, they gave Marcus an idea. A couple of days after the legionaries encamped by Zonaras’ villa, he went to Styppes, saying, “I’d ask a favor of you.”

“Ask,” Styppes grunted, ungracious as usual. At least, thought the tribune, he was sober.

“I’d like you to paint an icon for me.”

“For you?” Styppes’ eyes narrowed within their folds of flesh. “Why should an unbeliever want a holy image?” he asked suspiciously.

“As a gift for my lady Helvis.”

“Who is a heretic.” The healer-priest still sounded surly, but Scaurus had his arguments ready; he had played this game with Videssians before. It took some time and some shouting, but after a while Styppes sullenly admitted that right devotion could lead even heretics toward the true faith—his own. “Which holy man would you have me depict, then?”

The tribune remembered the temple in Videssos Helvis had been visiting when rioting broke out against the Namdaleni in the city. “I don’t know the name of the saint,” he said, as Styppes curled his lip, “but he lived on Namdalen before it was lost to the Empire—Kalavria, it was called, wasn’t it? He has a shrine dedicated to him in the capital, not far from the harbor of Kontoskalion.”

“Ah!” the healer-priest said, surprised Scaurus had a choice in mind. “I know the man you mean: the holy Nestorios. He is portrayed as an old bald man with his beard in two points. So the heretics of the Duchy revere him yet, do they? Very well, you shall have your icon.”

“My thanks.” Marcus paused, then felt he had to add, “A favor for a favor. When I find time, I’ll pose for your image of the holy—what did you call him?—Kveldulf, that was it.”

“Yes, yes, that’s good of you, I’m sure,” Styppes said, abstracted. The tribune thought he was already starting to plan the icon, but as he turned to go he heard the priest mutter under his breath, “Phos, I’m thirsty.” Not for the first time, he wished jolly, capable Nepos preferred life in the field to his chair in theoretical thaumaturgy at the Videssian Academy.

Over the next few days Scaurus was too busy to give Styppes or the icon much thought. Zonaras’ villa and his little private army were well enough to face a rival grandee, but the tribune had few illusions about their ability to withstand Drax’ veterans. The legionaries dug like badgers, strengthening the place as best they could, but his worries only deepened. The
best, he knew, was none too good; he simply did not have enough men.

He used Zonaras’ retainers and his other Videssian horsemen to spy out the Namdaleni. Every day they reported more islanders south of the Arandos, but not the great column of knights the tribune feared. The men of the Duchy began building a motte-and-bailey fort a couple of hours’ ride north of Zonaras’ oak woods. “Drax is busy somewhere and doesn’t want us interfering,” Gaius Philippus said.

Marcus spread his hands in bewilderment. Not all of what the Namdalener count did made sense. “No, all it does is work,” the senior centurion replied. A good Roman, he valued results more than methods.

The tribune released one of his Namdalener prisoners at the edge of the woods, using him as a messenger to offer Drax the exchange of his fellows for Mertikes Zigabenos. Their freckled captain, who called himself Persic Fishhook from a curved scar on his arm, said confidently, “No problem. We’ll be free in a week, is my guess. Thirty of us are worth a Videssian general any day, and then some.” While they waited to be swapped, the islanders cheerfully fetched and carried for the legionaries; even as captives, they and the Romans got on well.

When he got back to Zonaras’ holding, Marcus was intrigued to find Styppes on his hands and knees in the garden by the villa, turning up lettuce leaves. “What are you after?” he called to the healer-priest, wondering what sort of medicinal herbs grew along with the salad greens.

He blinked when Styppes answered, “I need a good fat snail or two. Ah, here!” The priest put his catch in a small burlap bag.

“Now I understand,” the tribune laughed. “Snails and lettuce make a good supper. Will you boil some eggs with them?”

Styppes grunted in exasperation as he got to his feet. He brushed once at the mud on the knees of his blue robe, then let it go. “No, lackwit. I want them to let me finish the image of the holy Nestorios.” He made Phos’ sun-sign over his heart.

“Snails?” Marcus heard his voice rise in disbelief.

“Come see then, scoffer.” Wondering whether Styppes was playing a prank on him, the Roman followed him to his tent.
They squatted together on the dirt floor. Styppes lit a tallow candle that filled the tight space with the smell of burning fat. The priest rummaged in his kit, finding at last a large oyster shell. “Good, good,” he said to himself. He took one of the snails from his bag, held it over the candle flame. The unfortunate mollusc bubbled and emitted a thick, clear slime. As it dripped, Styppes caught it in the oyster shell. The other snail suffered the same fate. “You see?” the healer-priest said, holding the shell under Scaurus’ nose.

“Well, no,” the tribune said, more distressed at the snails’ torment than he had been in several fights.

“Bah. You will.” Styppes poured the slime onto a hand-sized marble slab and added powdered gold. “You will pay me back, and not in new coin,” he warned Scaurus. Next came a little whitish powder—“Alum”—and some sticky gum, then he stirred the mix with a brass pestle. “Now we are ready—you will admire it,” he said. He took out a pair of badger-fur brushes, one so fine the hairs were fitted into a goosequill, the other larger, with a wooden handle.

Marcus drew in a breath of wonder when he saw the icon for the first time. Styppes’ sketches had shown him the priest had a gift, but they were only sketches. The delicate colors and fine line, the holy Nestorios’ ascetic yet kindly face, the subtled shadings of his blue robe, his long, thin hands upraised in a gesture of blessing that reminded the tribune of the awesome mosaic image of Phos in the High Temple in the capital … “Almost I believe in your god now,” he said, and knew no higher praise.

“That is what an image is for, to instruct the ignorant and guide them toward its prototype’s virtues,” the healer-priest replied. His plump hand deft as a jeweler’s, he dipped his tiny feather-brush in the gold pigment on his piece of marble. Though he held the icon close to his face as he worked, his calligraphy was elegant; the gilding, even wet, shone and sparkled in the dim candlelight. “Nestorios the holy,” Marcus read. Styppes used the larger brush to surround the saint’s head with a gleaming circle of gold. “Thus we portray Phos’ sun-disk, to show the holy man’s closeness to the good god,” he explained, but the tribune had already grasped the halo’s meaning.

“May I?” he said, and when Styppes nodded, he took the
wooden panel into his own hands. “How soon will it be ready for giving?” he asked eagerly.

Styppes’ smile, for once, was not sour. “A day for the gilding to dry, then two coats of varnish to protect the colors underneath.” He scratched his shaved head. “Say, four days’ time.”

“I wish it were sooner,” Marcus said. He was still not won over to this Videssian art of symbol and allegory, but there was no denying that in Styppes’ talented hands its results were powerfully moving.

The priest reclaimed the icon and set it to one side to dry undisturbed. “Now,” he said with an abrupt change of manner, “where did I toss those snails? Your supper idea wasn’t half bad, outlander; have you any garlic to go with them?”

Laon Pakhymer appeared at the legionaries’ camp like the god from a machine in a Roman play: no one set eyes on him until suddenly he was there. He flipped Scaurus the wave that passed for a salute among his easygoing folk; when the tribune asked how he had managed to ride through not only Zonaras’ picket posts but also the Namdaleni, he answered airily, “There’s ways,” and put a finger by the side of his nose.

Sextus Minucius exclaimed, “I’ll bet you used that old geezer’s ford.”

“Aren’t you the clever young fellow?” Pakhymer said with mild irony. “And what if I did?”

“What did he gouge you for?” Gaius Philippus asked.

The Khatrisher gave a resigned shrug. “A dozen goldpieces.”

The senior centurion choked on his wine. “Jove’s hairy arse! You ought to go back and kill the bugger—he only got ten for the lot of us.”

“Maybe so,” Pakhymer answered, “but then, you hadn’t just come from Kyzikos.” He looked uncommonly smug, like a cat that knew where cream came from.

“What difference does it make where you—” Marcus began, and then stopped, awe on his face. Kyzikos housed an imperial mint. No one in this world had ever heard of Midas, but in Kyzikos the Khatrishers could come close to making his dream real. The tribune did not even think of pointing out that they were stealing the Empire’s gold; he had learned mercenaries
served themselves first. What he did say was, “Drax won’t love you for emptying the till.”

“Too bad for Drax. You’re right, though; he’s thrown a good deal at us, trying to drive us out. And so he has, but our pockets are full. I never did see such a payday.” His pockmarked face was dirty, his beard wind-matted and snarled, his clothes ragged, but he was blissful nonetheless. Gaius Philippus stared at him with honest envy.

“No wonder the Namdaleni have been so easy on us, with Kyzikos to go after,” Minucius said.

“It’s like I guessed, sir,” Gaius Philippus said to Scaurus. “But Drax is making a mistake, grabbing at the treasure first. Once his enemies are gone, it falls into his lap, but if he takes the gold and leaves us around, we may find some way to get it back.”

“He doesn’t have it,” Pakhymer pointed out. “Still, I take your meaning even so. I have something planned to make old Drax jump and shout.”

“What will you do?” Marcus asked with interest. For all his slapdash ways, that Khatrisher was a clever, imaginative soldier.

“Oh, it’s done already.” Pakhymer seemed pleased at his own shrewdness. “I spread some of Kyzikos’ gold around where it would do the most good—it’s on its way up to the central plateau. If the damned islanders are busy fighting Yezda, they can’t very well fight us.”

The tribune gaped. “You bribed the nomads to attack Drax?”

“So we fought them a couple of years ago. What of it?” Pakhymer was defiant and defensive at the same time. “We fought the islanders last year when they served Ortaias, and now again. One war at a time, I say.”

“There’s a difference,” Marcus insisted. “Drax is an enemy, aye, but not wicked, only power-hungry. But the nomads kill for the joy of killing. Think on what we saw on the road to Maragha—and after.” He remembered Avshar’s gift, hurled into the legionaries’ camp after the fight—Mavrikios Gavras’ head.

Pakhymer flushed, perhaps recalling that, too, but he answered, “Any man who tries to kill me is wicked in my eyes, and my foe’s foe my friend. And have a care the way you say
‘nomad,’ Scaurus; my people came off the same steppe the Yezda did.”

“Your pardon,” the tribune said at once, yielding the small point so he could have another go at the large one. “Bear this in mind, then—once you invite the, ah, Yezda down into the lowlands, even if they do hurt Drax, still you set the scene for endless fighting to push them back again.”