The Legion of Videssos (30 page)

From a quarter mile away, Marcus could hear the roars of outrage in the fort, could see men running about on the wall
and shooting a few useless arrows at the pillagers outside. Then a wooden gangboard thudded down over the deep moat. Knights stormed over it, their horses’ hooves echoing thunderously. Peering through the leaves, the tribune counted them as they came. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine … his spies’ best guess was that the castle held fifty or so.

While panicked sheep ran every which way, the Khatrishers regrouped to meet the threat, using their ponies’ quickness and agility for all they were worth. They peppered their heavily armored foes with arrows; Scaurus saw an islander clap his hands to his face and slide back over his horse’s tail. Two of Pakhymer’s men rushed toward a Namdalener who had gotten separated from his mates, one to either side. Watching from concealment, the tribune bit his lip. What would it take to convince the Khatrishers they could not stand up against islanders in close combat? Covering his left side with his shield, the Namdalener chopped the man on his right from the saddle, then used a clever backhanded stroke to send the other reeling away with a gashed forearm. The rest of the islanders shouted to applaud the feat of arms.

As if their morale was broken, the raiding party sped toward the hills, the men of the Duchy pounding after them. Now the Khatrishers’ light horses were not putting out quite their best speed; they seemed unable to pull away from the islanders’ ponderous chargers. Yelling and brandishing their lances, the Namdaleni held hotly to the pursuit.

Scaurus watched the gap between islanders and fortress increase. He turned to the maniple which had spent an uncomfortable night with him under the almonds. “All right, lads, at the trot!” he shouted. They burst from concealment and rushed toward the castle, carrying hurdles and bundles of brush to fill the moat.

They were almost halfway there before any of the Namdaleni spied them approaching from the side; the riders were intent on the chase, while the handful still inside the fortress had no eyes for anything but their comrades. Then one of the men on the earthwork wall let out a horrified bellow. The tribune was close enough to see mouths drop open in dismay. Islanders darted toward the gangboard, to drag it up before the legionaries reached it. Scaurus bared his teeth in a grin; he had not counted on that much luck.

The thick oak planks were heavy, and the passage of horses and mail-clad knights had driven the wooden bridge deep into the soft earth of the rampart. Marcus heard the islanders grunting and swearing with effort, but the outer edge of the gangboard had hardly moved when his
caligae
thudded onto it.

He dashed forward, doing his best not to think of the moat that yawned below. An islander, his nails broken and hands black with dirt, gave up the futile effort to shift the bridge and stepped out onto it, drawing his sword as he did. Marcus’ own Gallic longsword was already in his hand. “Horatius, is it?” he panted. But unlike the span the legendary Roman hero had held against the Etruscans, this one was wide enough for three or four men to fight abreast. Before more Namdaleni could join the first quick-thinking one, Scaurus assailed him from the front, Minucius from the left, and another Roman from the right. He defended himself bravely, but three against one was a fight that could only last seconds. The soldier toppled, bleeding at throat, groin, and thigh. Cheering, the legionaries trampled over his corpse and swarmed into the castle’s bailey. A couple of Namdaleni tried to fight; most threw down their arms in despair.

By then the knights chasing the Khatrishers realized the snare they had fallen into. They spun their horses and came galloping back toward the fort, spurring desperately. But the Khatrishers turned round, too, and became pursuers rather than pursued. The islanders, with more at stake than the raiders, ignored their arrows as best they could, though one charger after another rode on riderless.

“Come on, put your backs into it!” Scaurus shouted. With many more hands than the Namdaleni had used, the legionaries strained at the gangboard. They yelled as it pulled free of the clinging earth and went tumbling into the moat. It was well made; the tribune did not hear timbers crack as it hit.

Outside the castle, the islanders milled round in confusion, shut out of their own fortress and at a loss what to do next. The Khatrishers’ archery suggested that lingering was not the wisest course. Looking glumly back over their shoulders, they trotted north, presumably to join their main force. Pakhymer waved to Marcus, who returned it; the assault had gone better than he had dared hope.

He spent the night in the captured fort, waiting for reports from his officers. A rider attached to Gagik Bagratouni’s force came in just after sunset, to announce a success as complete and easy as the tribune’s. Junius Blaesus took his target, too, but at the cost of some hard fighting. “What went wrong?” Marcus asked.

“Started his charge too damned soon,” the Khatrisher scout answered, not shy about criticizing someone else’s officer. “The Namdaleni managed to reverse themselves and hit him before he made it to the castle. He’s brave enough, though—ducked a lance and speared one right off his horse, he did.” The Katrisher tugged his ear, trying to remember something. “Ah, that’s it—your friend Apokavkos lost the little finger on his right hand.”

“Pity,” Scaurus said. “How is he taking it?”

“Him? He’s angry at himself—told me to tell you he cut instead of thrusting, and the last time he’ll make that mistake, thank you very much.”

That left only Gaius Philippus unaccounted for. Marcus was not much worried; the senior centurion’s target was farthest from his own. But early next morning a rider came in to report flat failure. He was vague about what had happened; Scaurus did not hear the full story until he saw Gaius Philippus back at the Roman camp a few days later. He had pulled the legionaries out of the captured forts, leaving Videssians behind instead, a mixture of nobles’ retainers and irregulars—troops plenty good for garrison duty.

“One of those things,” the senior centurion shrugged. “The Khatrishers went whooping into the fields fine as you please, but the whoresons inside had a couple of stone-throwers in their castle, which we didn’t know about till they opened up. Good aimers, too. They squashed two horses and took the head off a rider neat as you please. That discouraged the rest considerably, and what was supposed to be a fake skedaddle turned real mighty fast.” He spooned up some mutton stew. “Can’t say I blame ’em much. We sat under some peaches till it was dark again, then left. Some of my men have taken a flux from eating green ones, the twits.”

Despite the veteran’s misfortune, Scaurus knew he had gained a solid success. His mouth watered at the prospect of getting down into the plain; a full summer in the hills would
leave them picked bare and his troops starving. True, all Drax’ forces together could crush the legionaries, but Drax had problems of his own.

Senpat Sviodo made as if to throw his pandoura away in disgust after producing a chord even Scaurus’ insensitive ear recognized as spectacularly unmusical. “I wish we were back in the highlands,” he said. “It’s too muggy down here; there’s no way to keep gut strings in tune with all this humidity. Ah, my sweet,” he crooned, holding the pandoura as he might Nevrat, “you deserve strings of finest silver. And,” he added, laughing, “if I lavished money on you thus, perhaps you’d not betray me, fickle hussy.”

With an enthusiast’s zeal, he went on to explain the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of stringing. Marcus fought to hide boredom; not even Senpat’s easy charm could make him find music interesting, and the day’s march had left him worn.

He was glad of the excuse to break away when Lucius Vorenus came up. “What now?” he asked. “What’s Pullo done that you don’t care for?”

“Eh?” Vorenus blinked. “Oh, nothing, sir. That valley scuffle’s made fast friends of us. In fact, we’re on sentry go together, over at the east gate. And just rode up, sir, is a Yezda who’d have speech with you.”

“A what?” It was Scaurus’ turn to gape. Senpat’s Latin was enough to catch the name of his people’s foes; he struck a jangling discord that had nothing to do with whether his strings were in tune. The tribune felt his mouth tighten. “What would a Yezda have to say to me?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. He’s out there with a white rag tied to his bow; he doesn’t carry a spear, or have a helmet to put on it, for that matter. Dirty-looking beggar,” Vorenus added virtuously.

Marcus exchanged glances with Senpat. The Vaspurakaner’s face showed an odd mixture of puzzlement and hostility; Scaurus felt much the same. “Bring him in,” he said at last. Vorenus saluted and trotted off.

Despite the legionary’s unflattering description, Marcus expected a more impressive figure than the Yezda cut—some high officer, perhaps, with Makurani blood in his veins along
with the infusion from the steppe—tall, thin, handsome, with delicate hands and mournful liquid eyes, like the captain who had defended Khliat against Mavrikios Gavras. But only a scruffy nomad on a pony followed Vorenus, looking for all the world like any of the Khamorth in imperial service. Not a soldier gave him a second look. Yet his presence here, not far from Kyzikos, was a knife at Videssos’ throat.

The Yezda, for his part, seemed no more happy to be in his enemies’ camp than Marcus was to have him there. He turned his head nervously this way and that, as if looking for escape routes. “You Scaurus, leader of this peoples?” he asked, his Videssian labored but understandable.

“Aye,” the tribune said stonily. “What would you?”

“I Sevabarak, cousin to Yavlak, who is leaders of clans of Menteshe. He send me to you to ask how much money you gots. You need plenties, I think.”

“And why is that, pray?” Marcus asked, still not caring to have anything to do with Yezda.

Sevabarak was not offended; indeed, he seemed amused. “Because we—how you say?—whale stuffings out of oh-so-tough knightboys last week. Damn sight more than pissworthy Empire can do,” he said. Then, ticking off names on his fingers, he went on, “We gots Drax, we gots Bailli, we gots what’s-his-name Videssian thinks he’s Empire—”

“Emperor,” Scaurus corrected mechanically. Beside him, Senpat Sviodo’s eyes were round and staring. So, for that matter, were his own.

Sevabarak waved the interruption aside. “Whatever. We gots. We gots Turgot, we gots Soteric, we gots Clozart—no, I take back, him dead, two days gone. Anyway, we gots shitpot full Namdalenis. You wants, you buy back, plenty monies. Otherwise,” and his eyes grew cruel and eager, “we see how long we stretch them lives out. Some last weeks, I bet.”

But Marcus paid no attention to the threat. Here was a broken rebellion handed to him on a golden plate—and if the legionaries moved quickly, they still might keep the Yezda off the coastal plain. And thinking of gold … “Pakhymer!” he shouted. This might cost more than the legionaries had, and he was ready to swallow all the Khatrisher’s “I-told-you-so’s” to get it.

T
HE GREAT WAIN CREAKED, MOVING ACROSS THE GENTLY
rolling steppe on wheels tall as a man. Gorgidas sat cross-legged on the polychrome rug of goats’ hair, paring away at his stylus’ point with the edge of his sword; not what Gaius Philippus had hoped he’d use the weapon for, he thought, chuckling. He tested the point on the ball of his thumb. It would do. He opened a three-leafed tablet, frowned when he saw how poorly he’d smoothed the wax after transcribing his last set of jottings onto parchment.

He tugged on his left ear as he thought. His stylus hurried across the tablet, tiny wax curls spiraling up from it. “In sweep of territory, neither Videssos nor Yezd compares favorably with the nomads to the north. Indeed, should those nomads somehow unite under a single leader, no nation could stand against them. They do not, however, govern themselves with great wisdom or make the best use of the vast resources available to them.”

He studied what he had written—not bad, something of a Thucydidean flavor to it. His script was small and very neat. As if that mattered, he said to himself with a snort. In all this world, only he read Greek. No, not quite: Scaurus could stumble
through it after a fashion. But Scaurus was in Videssos, which seemed unimaginably far away from this wandering train of Arshaum wagons.

Beside him, Goudeles was making notes of his own for an oration he intended to give to Arigh’s father Arghun, the khagan of the Gray Horse clan, when at last they reached the chieftain. It would not be long now, a couple of days at most. Lankinos Skylitzes, well padded with fat cushions, was sound asleep, ignoring the occasional jounce of a wheel bumping over a rock. He snored.

Gorgidas set the stylus moving again. “It is not surprising, then, that the Arshaum should have succeeded in driving the Khamorth to the eastern portion of the steppe, which extends further west than any man’s knowledge of it; the former folk has adapted itself more completely to the nomadic way of life than the latter. The very tents of the Arshaum, ‘yurts,’ in their dialect, are set upon large wheeled carts. Thus no time is wasted pitching or breaking camp. They followed their flocks forever, like dolphins in a school of tunny.”

The comparison pleased him. He translated it into Videssian for Goudeles. The pen-pusher rolled his eyes. “ ‘Sharks’ might he better,” he said, and followed that with a muttered, “Barbarians!”

Gorgidas chose to think that remark was meant to apply to the Arshaum and not to him. He resumed his scribbling: “Because the plainsfolk do not act as a single nation, both Videssos and Yezd try to win them over clan by clan. By attracting such prominent khagans as Arghun to their side, they hope to influence less important leaders to join the faction that looks to be a winner.” He put his stylus down, asked Goudeles, “What do you suppose this Bogoraz is up to?”

Skylitzes opened one eye. “No good for us, I’m sure,” he said, and went back to sleep.

“I fear he’s right,” Goudeles said, sighing. The Yezda ambassador had also come to woo Arghun. Until their khagan chose one side or the other, the Arshaum were carefully keeping Bogoraz and his retainers separate from the Videssian party.