The Legion of Videssos (36 page)

He had all the payments within two days.

With the constant strain and motion of campaigning, he knew he had not given Helvis much time or attention the past couple of months. Sometimes he thought that pleased her just as well. If they were not together much, they could not quarrel, and she still bitterly resented his loyalty to the Empire. And as her pregnancy progressed, her desire for him faded. The same thing had happened when she was carrying Dosti; he bore it as best he could.

Once they set down a long-term camp outside Garsavra, however, they could not keep ignoring each other—and Soteric’s captivity gave Helvis a new and urgent worry. The evening after Scaurus sent a heavily armed party to buy the Namdalener prisoners from Yavlak, she asked him, “What do you plan to do with them once you have them?”

She held her voice tight-reined, but he could hear the fear that rode it. Still, she urged no action on him, having learned that the easiest way to turn him against an idea was to push for it too strongly. In the lamplight her deep blue eyes were enormous as she waited for his reply.

“Nothing at once, past holding them and sending word to Thorisin. That choice is for him to make, not me.”

He braced for an explosion, but was startled when her eyes swam with tears, and she scrambled clumsily to her feet to embrace him, saying brokenly, “Thank you, oh, thank you!”

“Here, what’s this about?” he said, taking her shoulders and holding her at arm’s length so he could see her face. “Did you think I’d kill them out of hand?”

“How was I to know? After what you said in camp after the
battle where—” She could not put a pleasant face on that, so she drew back quickly. “After the battle, I feared you might.”

Her gaze went to the image of the holy Nestorios atop her little traveling shrine. “Thank you,” she whispered to the saint, “for saving Soteric.”

Marcus stroked her hair. “I said that in the heat of rage. That does not excuse it; I’m not proud of it. But I haven’t the stomach for butchery. I thought you knew me better.”

“I thought I did, too.” She moved close to him, smiled when her belly touched him at the same time as her breasts. But her face grew sober again as she looked up and tried to read his. “Still, even after so long I think sometimes I don’t know you at all.”

His arms tightened around her. He often felt the same toward her and realized their recent isolation had done nothing to help that. Even so, he did not tell her what was in his mind—that Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator of the Videssians, was not apt to view captured rebel chiefs kindly. The holy Nestorios notwithstanding, Soteric was a long way from saved.

The note was in Latin, and ambiguous to boot: “We have your packages. Coming in three days.” Marcus read it twice before he noticed the Roman “d” was replaced by its Videssian equivalent. Little by little the Empire wore away at them all.

On the morning of the third day a Khatrisher messenger told the tribune the company he had sent out was within a couple of hours of Garsavra. “Very good,” he breathed, full of relief. So Yavlak had kept his bargain after all—one hurdle overleaped.

To intimidate the islanders still holed up in their fortress outside the town, Marcus paraded almost his entire army past the castle, leaving behind only enough men to hold the legionary camp against a sally. The men of the Duchy watched him from their walls of heaped-up earth. They would be getting hungry in there soon, he thought; time enough to deal with them then.

Even so short a distance west of Garsavra, the land began to slope sharply upwards toward the central plateau. The Arandos, slow and placid in the lowlands, bumped down over
cataracts to reach them. The great boulders were almost lost in seething white foam. Its greatest tributary, the Eriza, flowed down from the north to meet it; Garsavra sat at their junction.

Scaurus’ guide clung to the southern bank of the Arandos, which surprised him not at all. On the plateau the rivers were the only sure source of water in summer.

He saw dust ahead, low, widespread cloud that meant men on foot—the light cavalry of the Yezda would have kicked it up in high, straight columns. He exchanged grins with the Khatrisher scout, who gave the thumbs-up gesture Pakhymer’s hand had picked up from the Romans.

Then Marcus spied the marching square of legionaries, flanked by a thin cordon of Khatrisher archers to hold off any raiders that might appear—and to round up any Namdalener who somehow broke out of that hollow square.

Junius Blaesus saluted the tribune with the air of a man glad to lay down a heavy burden. “Here they are, sir, all the ones Yavlak had alive: three hundred and—let me see—seventeen. I set out with, ah, twenty-one who died on the march—they were badly wounded to start with, and I couldn’t see much the Yezda had done for ’em. I didn’t want to leave them behind, though,” he finished anxiously.

“You did right,” Marcus assured him, and watched his broad peasant face glow with pleasure. Earnest though Blaesus was, responsibility frightened him.

The tribune turned from the junior centurions to the Namdaleni in his charge. The islanders were a far cry from the proud, confident troops who had set out to wrest Videssos’ westlands from the Empire. Patchy beards straggled up their gaunt cheeks. Most walked with a forward list, as if drawing themselves up straight took more vigor than they had. Almost every man limped, some from wounds, the rest because the Yezda had stolen their boots and left them only cloths with which to wrap their feet. They wore tattered rags of surcoats and trousers; like the boots, their mail shirts were the nomads’ spoils. Their eyes were hollow and uncaring as they plodded along.

So this was victory, Scaurus thought. He felt like a captain of one of Crassus’ fire brigades back at Rome, turning a profit from the misfortune of others by buying burning property on the cheap.

Here and there a face, an attitude stood out from the general run of prisoners. Mertikes Zigabenos’ luxuriant black whiskers made him easy to pick out in the throng of new, scraggly beards. So did his expression of absolute despair, painful to see even among so much misery. He would not lift his head when Marcus called his name. Beside him walked Drax, whose short beard was startlingly red. The great count’s left arm in a filthy sling. He was not ashamed to meet Scaurus’ eye, but his own steady gaze was as unfathomable as ever.

Not all the Namdaleni had forgotten they were men. The veteran Fayard, who had been a member of Hemond’s squadron when Marcus arrived at Videssos the city, marched where the troopers around him shambled. He threw the tribune a sharp salute, followed it with a shrug, as if to say he had thought they would meet again, but not like this. Somehow he had kept himself fit, making the best of whatever came his way.

Soteric, too, was straight as a plumb bob. That stubborn erectness was what first made Marcus know him; beard and haggardness added years to his looks, so he seemed older than the tribune when in fact he was not thirty. A half-healed, puckered scar seamed his forehead. He glared at his brother-in-law like a trapped wolf. With little sympathy in him, he expected none.

“Traitor!” Soteric shouted, and the tribune did not doubt he meant it. A strange word, he thought, after the fight at the Sangarios. But Helvis’ brother was so full of the righteousness of his cause that he was blind to any other. Some of that was in Helvis, too. Not as much, Marcus thought thankfully.

He turned to Styppes, saying, “Do what you can for their hurts.” Not all of those, he saw, had come in battle; some islanders carried the mark of the lash or worse.

The healer-priest had scant relish for his task. “You ask too much of me,” he said, sounding for once very much like Gorgidas. “Many I will not cure, for they have had long to fester. And these are heretics and enemies as well.”

“They fought for the Empire once,” Marcus pointed out, “and many will again, with your help.” Styppes scowled at him. Scaurus started to argue further, but found he was talking
to the priest’s back. Styppes was pushing past Blaesus’ men to reach the wounded Namdaleni.

Gaius Philippus was trying not to smile. “What is it with that one? Does he always have to growl a while before he goes to work?”

“You’re a fine one to talk. The gods help any legionary in your way after something goes wrong,” Scaurus said. The veteran did grin then, acknowledging the hit.

It was drawing toward evening when the legionaries and their captives reached Garsavra. Scaurus led them past the Namdalener-held fortress once more, an implied threat that the men of the Duchy in his hands might become hostages for the castle’s surrender. The ploy worked less well than he had hoped. The haler prisoners raised a cheer to see the motte-and-bailey still holding out, a cheer the knights on its rampart echoed.

Soteric gave Marcus a look filled with ironic triumph.

Nettled, the tribune paraded his army and the captured Namdaleni down Garsavra’s chief street to the town marketplace as a spectacle for the people. That was not quite a success, either. The Garsavrans were less fond of such shows than their jaded cousins in the capital. The verge of the roadway was embarrassingly empty as the legionaries tramped between the baths and the local prelate’s residence, a domed building of yellow stucco every bit as large and important as the governor’s hall. The clatter of hobnailed
caligae
on cobblestones all but drowned the spatters of applause the few spectators did dole out. Most of the townsfolk ignored the parade, preferring to go about their business.

But that did not mean the Garsavrans paid no attention to the arrival of the Namdalener prisoners. The town began to heave like a man after a stiff dose of hellebore, and street fights broke out fresh. One faction wanted to lynch the islanders out of hand. To his dismay, Scaurus found this group including not only those who hated the Namdaleni, but also some who had collaborated with them while they held Garsavra and now wanted to make sure details of their collusion never came forth.

“They’d be as glad to work for Yavlak,” he said, disgusted.

“Aye, well, it’s for us to see they never have the chance,”
Gaius Philippus answered calmly, too cynical to be much upset by another proof of man’s capacity for meanness.

But for every man ready to roast the islanders over a slow fire, another wanted to free them and start the rebellion all over again. Marcus began to wish he had settled down to besiege the men of the Duchy in their motte-and-bailey, however wasteful of troops and time that was. He was sure they slipped into town from time to time; with Garsavra wall-less, it was impossible to keep them out. And their presence was a constant reminder to the Garsavrans of their brief rule. Every third housefront, it seemed, had “Drax the Protector” scrawled on it in charcoal or whitewash.

The tribune did his best to get his captives fit for travel east, thinking that once the bulk of them were out of Garsavra the turmoil would die down. He also wanted to show the townsfolk that the islanders themselves had to recognize the Empire’s superiority. The ceremony he worked out borrowed from both Roman and Videssian practices.

In the center of the marketplace he drove two
pila
butt-first into the ground, then lashed a third across them, a little below head height; he set a portrait of Thorisin Gavras atop the crosspiece. Then he gathered the Namdalener prisoners—all save Drax, his leading officers, and the luckless Martikes Zigabenos—in front of his creation in groups of ten. Legionaries with bared swords and Khatrisher archers stood between them and the watching Garsavrans.

“As you bend your necks to pass under this yoke,” Scaurus said to the prisoners—and to the crowd, “so do you yield yourselves up to the rightful Avtokrator of the Videssians, Thorisin Gavras.”

Group by group, the islanders subjugated themselves, stooping beneath the Roman spear and the image of the Videssian Emperor. As they emerged on the far side, Styppes swore each group to a frightful oath calling down curses on themselves, their families, and their clans if ever they warred against the Empire, or even sat silent while others spoke of such war. And group by group the Namdaleni swore, “On this we stake our very souls.” The healer-priest glowered at the form their oath took, but Marcus was well pleased. The men of the Duchy were more likely to obey an oath that followed their own usage than one imposed on them by the imperials.

The ritual of surrender went perfectly through about two-thirds of the Namdaleni. Then Styppes, in the middle of swearing yet another group to loyalty, swayed and collapsed. As he had been gulping from a large wineskin all through the ceremony, Marcus was more annoyed than concerned. There was a brief delay as a couple of Romans dragged him to one side and another pair hurried off to fetch the prelate of Garsavra, a white-bearded, affable man named Lavros.

Marcus rescued the written-out oath from where it had fallen by Styppes. Lavros quickly read it to himself, then nodded and started to administer it from the beginning to the waiting Namdaleni, who had been laughing and joking among themselves. Fayard, who happened to be in the group being sworn, called out, “Here now, your honor, we’ve done that bit already!”

“I doubt you’ll suffer any lasting harm from doing it again,” Lavros said, unruffled, and kept right on with the whole oath. The men of the Duchy made their pledge, and the ceremony went on.

Thirty Khatrishers accompanied the Namdalener prisoners Scaurus sent back to Videssos the city. They were as much to protect the islanders from Ras Simokattes’ irregulars as to keep them from escaping; Namdaleni who traveled through the countryside unarmed or in small parties took their lives in their hands.

Every so often the tribune worried about Bailli’s angry outburst at the edge of the southeastern hills. The men of the Duchy were beaten, but the guerillas showed no sign of shutting up shop. One problem at a time, Scaurus told himself, echoing Laon Pakhymer.

Bailli and his fellow officers were a problem in themselves. Marcus had not sent them east with the common soldiers, not caring to risk their getting away on the journey—they were too dangerous to run loose. He kept them shut up in the governor’s residence, waiting for an order from Thorisin on their fate. That solution was not ideal either, for as soon as the Garsavrans realized they were there the town broke out in new turmoil—or rather the same old one.