The Legion of Videssos (3 page)

She frowned, sensing his hesitation, but before she could frame her question, her five-year-old son Malric threw aside the wooden cart he had been playing with and started to sing a bawdy Videssian marching song at the top of his lungs: “Little bird with a yellow bill—”

She rolled her eyes, blue like those of many Namdaleni. “Enough of that, young man. Time for bed.” He ignored her, singing on until she grabbed his ankles and lifted him. He hung upside down, shrieking laughter. His tunic fell down over his head; he thrashed his way out of it. Helvis caught Marcus’ eye. “There’s half the battle won.”

The tribune smiled, watching as she peeled his stepson’s trousers off. Even in such inelegant activity, she was a pleasure to look at. Her skin was fairer and her features less aquiline than the Videssian norm, but strong cheekbones and a generous mouth gave her face a beauty of its own. And her figure was opulent, its rich curves filling her long skirt and lace-bodiced blouse of maroon linen in a way that caught any man’s eye. As yet her early pregnancy had not begun to swell her belly.

She swatted Malric lightly on his bare bottom. “Go on,
kiss Marcus goodnight, use the pot, and go to sleep.” Her voice was a smooth contralto.

Malric complained and fussed to see if she was serious; the next swat had more authority behind it. “All right, Mama, I’m going,” he said, and trotted over to Scaurus. “Goodnight, Papa.” He had spoken Namdalener patois with Helvis, but used Latin with the tribune; he had picked up the Roman tongue with a child’s ease in the nearly two years Marcus and Helvis had been together.

“Good night, son. Sleep well.” Scaurus ruffled the boy’s shock of blond hair, so like that of his dead father Hemond. Malric piddled, then slid under the blanket and closed his eyes. Marcus’ own son Dosti, not quite a year old, was asleep in a crib close by the sleeping mats. He whimpered, but quieted as soon as Helvis pulled the coverlet up over him. Some nights now, the tribune thought hopefully, he slept all the way through.

When Helvis was sure Malric was asleep, too, she turned back to Scaurus. “What’s wrong with the healer-priest?”

At the blunt question, Marcus’ hesitation disappeared. “Not much,” he said, but before she could do more than begin to raise her eyebrows, he went on, “except that he’s an arrogant, greedy, ill-tempered sot—at the moment he’s passed out on the floor in one of the bachelor halls, snoring like a sawmill. I doubt he could fix a fleabite, let alone really heal.”

Helvis laughed nervously, half amused at Styppes’ shortcomings, half scandalized by Scaurus’ open contempt for him. She was a zealous follower of Phos, and hearing a priest of any sect maligned made her ill at ease; still, as a Namdalener she reckoned the Videssians heretics and so, in a way, fair game. The ambiguity confused her.

A splinter gouged Marcus’ shoulder through his shirt. As he dug it out with a thumbnail, he thought that ambiguity was something he, too, had come to know with Helvis. They were too different to be wholly comfortable with one another, each of them too strong-willed to yield easily. Religion, policy, love-making … sometimes it seemed there were few things over which they did not quarrel.

But when things went well, he said to himself with an inward smile, they went very well indeed. Still rubbing his
shoulder, he stood and kissed her. She looked at him quizzically. “What was that for?”

“No real reason.”

Her face lit. “That’s the best reason of all.” She pressed herself against him. Her chin fit nicely on his shoulder; she was tall for a woman, as tall, in fact, as many Videssian men. He kissed her again, this time thoroughly. Afterward, he never was sure which one of them blew out the lamp.

Scaurus was spooning up his breakfast porridge—barley flavored with bits of beef and onion—when Junius Blaesus came up to him. The junior centurion looked unhappy. “Mglmpf?” the tribune said, and then, after he had swallowed, “What’s the matter?” From Blaesus’ hangdog air, he had a fair idea.

The Roman’s long face grew glummer yet. A veteran
optio
, or underofficer, he was newly promoted to centurion’s rank and did not like to admit there were problems in his maniple that he had trouble handling. Marcus cocked an eyebrow at him and waited; pushing would only make him more sensitive than he was.

At last Blaesus blurted out, “It’s Pullo and Vorenus, sir.”

The tribune nodded, unsurprised. “Again?” he said. He took a deliberate swig of wine; like almost all Videssian vintages, it was too sweet for his taste. He went on, “Glabrio had nothing but trouble with them. What are they squabbling about now?”

“Which of them threw the
pilum
better at practice yesterday. Pullo swung at Vorenus last night, but they got pulled apart before they could mix it.” Relief was flowering on the junior centurion; Quintus Glabrio, whose unit he now led, had been a truly outstanding officer. If, before his death, he had not been able to control the two fractious legionaries, then Blaesus could hardly be blamed for having problems with them.

“Swung on him, you say? We can’t have that.” Scaurus finished his porridge, wiped off the bone spoon, and put it back in his belt-pouch. He rose. “I’ll have a word or two with them. Set your mind at ease, Junius; it won’t be the first time.”

“Yes, sir.” Blaesus saluted and hurried off on other business,
relieved to have survived the interview. Marcus watched him go, not quite satisfied. Quintus Glabrio, he thought, would have come with him, instead of being content to have passed the problem on. It seemed an evasion of responsibility, a grave flaw by Scaurus’ Stoic-tinged standards. Well, he thought, that must be why Blaesus stayed an
optio
so long.

Titus Pullo sprang to attention when he saw the tribune walking toward him, a fair sign of a guilty conscience. So, interestingly, did Lucius Vorenus. Except for their feud with each other, they were excellent soldiers, probably the two finest in the maniple. Both were in their late twenties, Pullo a bit stockier, Vorenus perhaps a trifle quicker.

Scaurus glared at them, doing his best to project an image of stern reproach. “We’ve been through all this before,” he said. “Docking your pay doesn’t do much good, does it?”

“Sir—” Pullo said, and Vorenus said, “Sir, he—”

“Shut up,” the tribune snapped. “Both of you are confined to barracks for the next two weeks—and that includes staying here when your mates go out to exercise. Since you’re so fond of arguing over your practices, maybe you’ll learn to keep your tempers if you have nothing to argue about.”

“But, sir,” Vorenus protested, “without practice we’ll lose our edge.” Pullo nodded vigorously; here, at least, was something upon which the two Romans could agree. Both were filled with the pride that marked the best fighting men.

“You should have thought of that before you wrangled,” Marcus pointed out. “You won’t go soft, not in two weeks’ time—cleaning details will see to that. Dismissed!” he said sharply. But as they turned, shamefaced, to go, he had an afterthought. “One thing more: don’t make the mistake of keeping this foolish quarrel alive. If there is a next time, I’ll make whichever one of you is guilty the other’s servant. Think on that before you squabble.”

To judge from their faces, neither found the prospect appetizing. Pleased at his ingenuity, the tribune started off to get ready for practice. He wished he could order himself to take a couple of weeks off. The day gave every promise of being another scorcher.

“And how did you handle your battling troopers?” Senpat Sviodo asked him; as usual, the Vaspurankaner’s resonant tenor voice held an amused edge.

“You must have heard me,” Marcus answered, but then realized that while Senpat might have heard him, he had not understood. Among themselves the Romans clung to their Latin, one of the few reminders they had of their lost homeland. Their comrades understood the strange speech but haltingly, lacking Malric’s childish facility for learning new tongues. The tribune explained.

The smile that was never far from the young Vaspurakaner noble’s handsome features came into the open. He had a good smile, white teeth flashing against his olive skin, framed by the beard he wore close-trimmed in the Videssian style. “You Romans are a strange folk,” he said, only a trace of his throaty native tongue coloring his Videssian. “Who else would punish someone by taking work away from him?”

Marcus snorted. Senpat had enjoyed twitting the legionaries since the day he met them almost two years before, but if there was a better mounted scout than he, it had to be his wife. “Your lady Nevrat would understand,” the tribune said.

“So she might,” Senpat admitted, chuckling. “But then she enjoys such things, where I merely endure them.” He gave a theatrical grimace to indicate his disgust at any and all types of work. “Now I suppose you expect me to bake myself in the broiling sun for the sake of hitting the target a hairsbreadth closer to the center.”

“What better way to chastise you for your endless heckling?”

“Oh, what we Firstborn suffer in the cause of truth.” The Vaspurakaners traced their ancestry back to an eponymous hero, Vaspur—in their theology, the first man created by Phos. Not surprisingly, the Videssians did not share this view.

Senpat pulled his Vaspurakaner cap rakishly over one eye. On most of his countrymen the three-peaked headgear looked strange and lumpy, but he wore it with such a jaunty air that he carried it off quite well. He tossed his head. The brightly dyed ribbons that hung down from the back of the cap’s floppy brim flew round his head.

“Since there’s no help for it,” he sighed, “I suppose I’ll fetch my bow.” He started to leave.

“If you carped any more, you’d grow scales,” Marcus said. Senpat looked briefly blank; the wordplay did not work in Vaspurakaner. Then he winced, looking back suspiciously in
case the tribune had more puns lying in wait for him. Scaurus did not, but he was grinning at managing one in a language not his own … and a bad one at that.

“Hold it up a little higher, would you, Gongyles?” Thorisin Gavras said.

Gongyles was a very junior lieutenant, his beard fuzzy; his sudden flush was visible through the straggly growth on his cheeks. “I’m sorry, your Imperial Majesty,” he stammered, awed that the Avtokrator of the Videssians would speak to him for any reason. He raised the map of the Empire’s westlands so all the officers gathered in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches could see it.

The hall held no couches, nor had it for centuries, but tradition died hard in Videssos. Scaurus, sitting on a plain wooden chair in front of a table that wobbled because one leg was too short, smiled at the homage on the callow soldier’s face. He whispered to Gaius Philippus, “Remember when Mavrikios kept Ortaias Sphrantzes standing there for hours holding that damned map? His arms must have been ready to fall off.”

The senior centurion laughed softly. “It would’ve served him right if they had,” he said; his scorn for Ortaias was boundless. His face hardened. “Then he wouldn’t have come along with us to Maragha, and Mavrikios might be alive. Bloody turntail coward; we had a draw till he ran.”

In his contempt, he did not bother to lower his voice much. Thorisin, who stood by the map, looked a question at him, not understanding the veteran’s Latin. It was Gaius Philippus’ turn to go red, though the color hardly showed under his deep tan. “Nothing, sir,” he muttered.

“All right, then.” The Emperor shrugged. Mavrikios Gavras had used a wooden pointer to guide his officers’ eyes across the map of the westlands in that council a couple of years before. His younger brother was a less patient man. He drew his saber from its well-scuffed leather sheath and pointed his way with that.

For all his impatience, his term as Emperor was beginning to leave its mark on him. The lines on either side of his mouth and proud nose were carved deep into his cheeks, though he was but a few years older than Scaurus. There were lines
round his eyes, lines that had not been there before he came to the throne. His hair was thinning, too; what had once been a widow’s peak was becoming a forelock.

But he had the active stride of a younger man, and it took but a single glance at his strong mouth and determined eyes to see that he was yet a man of great vigor and bearing up well under the heavy hands of duty and time. “This is what we’ll have to do,” he said, and his marshals leaned forward as one to listen.

He tapped at the parchment with his sword before he began to speak, mustering his thoughts. As always, the wide peninsula that held the Empire’s western provinces reminded Marcus of a knobby thumb. From marching and countermarching through a good part of the westlands, he knew the map was more accurate than anything Rome could have produced. Discouragingly, it also accurately showed the land the Yezda had taken since Maragha. Most of the high central plateau was lost; the nomads were beginning to settle there and pushing eastward toward the fertile plains that ran to the Sailors’ Sea.

The Emperor ran his blade west along the Arandos River, which flowed down from the highlands through the broad coastal plain. “The whoresons are using the Arandos valley to come right down our throats. It runs both ways, though. Drax’ Namdaleni will plug the gap at Garsavra until we reinforce them. After that, it’s our turn to push west again and reclaim what’s ours.… Yes, this time you have something to say to me, Roman?”

“Aye, or ask you, rather.” Gaius Philippus pointed toward the red-filled circle that marked Garsavra. “Your great count Drax may be a canny enough soldier, but how does he propose to hold a town with no putrid wall?”

Hardly any cities in the westlands were walled. Until the Yezda came, the westerners had lived for hundreds of years without fear of invasion. Such fortifications as had once existed were centuries gone, torn down for the building stone they yielded. To Marcus’ way of thinking, a land free of walls was Videssos’ finest achievement. It told of a security far greater than any his Rome could give its subjects. Even in Italy, an unwalled town would have been as unnatural as a white crow. It had only been fifty years since the Cimbri and
Teutones swarmed over the Alps, asking Marius’ legionaries if they had any messages for the barbarians to take to their wives.