The Legion of Videssos (44 page)

“So it is,” the tribune said, brushing back a loose lock of hair that crawled like a wet worm down his cheek. “A day and a half, maybe, to the Cattle-Crossing. In decent weather it’d be half a day.”

A six-man mounted party splashed west past them, kicking up muck and earning curses from the legionaries. Here among the suburbs of the capital, there was a good deal of local traffic. It made the roads worse, something Marcus had not thought possible. He had his prisoners resume their black veils full-time; in the less crowded country further west he had only made them clap on the veiling once or twice a day when someone approached. This was safely imperial territory and the charade was probably unneeded, but where Drax was concerned he took few chances.

More splashing from up ahead, and another rider loomed out of the rain—Nevrat. Her head turned as she searched for Scaurus in the gloom. She smiled when she saw him, teeth flashing against her dark skin. “I’ve found us a campsite,” she said, “a farm with a good stone horse barn to keep our, ah, guests warm and safe. I looked it over. It has little slit windows—” She held her hands a palm’s breadth apart to show him. “—and a door that bars from the outside.”

“Perfect,” Marcus exclaimed. “The great count won’t break out of that.” He had made Junius Blaesus virtually ring the prisoners’ tent with sentries each night. Behind stone and wood, though, they’d be safe enough. A single sentry each watch should do, giving his troopers a much-needed rest.

The farmer on whose land the barn stood was a toplofty little man whose prosperity was made plain enough by the very fact that he owned several horses. He tried to bluster
when the tribune asked to use the barn, naming two or three minor court officials who, he declared, “will not be pleased to hear of my being mistreated in this way!”

Annoyed, Marcus dug out Thorisin Gavras’ letter and wordlessly handed it to the man, who went red and then white as he saw the imperial signature. “Anything you desire, of course,” he said rapidly, and shouted for his farmhands. “Vardas! Ioustos! Come quick, you lazy wretches, and drive the horses into the field!”

The two men emerged from a little cottage set to one side of the main farmhouse, one of them still chewing at a mouthful of supper. Having won his point, the tribune could afford to be gracious. He waved them back. “Let the beasts be. The men inside will have no fire, and the animals’ heat will help keep them warm.”

Vardas and Iuostos looked toward their master, whose name Scaurus did not know. “As he pleases,” the farmer said; they went back to their interrupted meal. Now ingratiating, the short tubby man said to the Roman, “You will honor me by joining me for supper?”

“Thank you, no.” An hour of nervous chatter from this fellow, arrogant and servile by turns, was not to Marcus’ taste. He gave an excuse that let the man save face. “I have to see to setting up camp.”

“Ah.” The farmer nodded wisely, as if understanding what a great labor that was. He bobbed a stiff bow, turned, and fled back into his house. Marcus laughed silently at his retreating back.

The legionaries, whose tents were going up nicely without any supervision, greeted his orders with barely muffled cheers. They did whoop out loud when Blaesus volunteered to take a turn at the barn door himself. Grinning with pleasure at their response, the junior centurion said, “Why not? It’s easier than sleeping, almost.”

“You’d better not sleep, Junius,” the tribune said, driving a tent peg into the muddy ground—at last, something the rain made easier. His tone was bantering, and Blaesus still smiled, but not as widely as he had. The
fustuarium
waited for sentries who dozed at their posts.

Once the tent was up, Scaurus dried himself as best he could. Malric and Dosti fell deeply asleep as soon as their
dinner was done. “What did you do, beg a potion from Styppes?” the tribune whispered to Helvis as she covered the two boys. “They’ve been hellions since we set out.”

“Not far wrong,” she said, rising. She tossed him a half-empty wineskin. “I gave them each a good nip while you were busy.”

“Did you? Whatever for?”

She gave him a slow sidelong look. “For us,” she said, her voice thick and sweet as the unwatered wine in the skin.

He scarcely had time to set it down before she stepped smiling into his arms. He kissed her in glad surprise; her desire turned fickle when she was carrying a child.

Her fingers toying with him, she undid his sword belt, pulled down his metal-studded military kilt. “Such complications,” she murmured. Scaurus kissed her eyes and then her ear, having already tugged her simple shift over her head. He blew out the lamps. Together, they slipped to the sleeping mat.

After a while she turned her back on him; he slid into her from behind. The posture, made for slow, lazy love, was easy on them both, her for her pregnancy and him for his weariness after days of pushing through mud. She sighed and wriggled closer.

When he was spent, he rolled lazily onto his back, whistling up into the darkness. Malric stirred, muttering something. “Hush, dear,” Helvis said softly. Marcus was not sure which of them she was talking to until she groped for the wineskin, found it, and gave her son a long swallow. He smacked his lips, then turned over and went back to sleep.

“There,” Helvis said to the tribune. “Tonight, no interruptions.” She pressed herself against him, her hand busy once more.

“Easy there,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“I think you’re fine,” she said, mischief in her voice, and did not stop.

“I’m not sure anything will happen.” But as he spoke, he felt himself rising to her touch. His arms tightened around her.

“You are the noisiest man,” she grumbled, kindly, a bit later, pushing him away from her; his gasps had wakened Dosti. Every pore content, he did not answer. She quieted the
baby the same way she had Malric, then returned to the tribune’s side.

After a while, she touched him again. He looked at her, bemused, but there was not enough light to read her expression. “You’re asking too much, you know,” he said sleepily.

She laughed at him. “Times I’ve said that to you, you sulked for days. See how it feels to be mouse instead of cat, sir? But I want you, and I’ll have you.”

He stroked her hair, damp now with sweat as well as rain. So was his own. “There is a difference, though. If I can’t, I can’t.”

“There are ways,” she said, and used one. It took a while, but he discovered she was right. Amazement gave way to delight. Drowned in her flesh, he sank into as profound a sleep as he had ever known.

Helvis waited for what seemed an endless time, listening to Scaurus’ slow, steady breathing and the beat of the rain on the tent. He did not stir when she moved away from him and got to her feet; her mouth twisted in vexation as his seed dribbled down her thigh. She was glad he had not been able to see her face.

She dressed quickly, pinning her heavy cloak closed over her shift. She found the wineskin with her fingers and slipped it into a deep pocket. Then she felt the ground until she came upon his sword belt.

The broad-bladed dagger slid free of its sheath with a tiny scrape of metal against metal. It was heavier in her hand than she had expected. She looked down at the sleeping tribune, hardly more than a deeper shadow in the darkness. Her grip tightened on the hilt.… She bit her lip till she tasted blood, shook her head violently. She could not. The knife went with the wineskin.

Malric whimpered as she picked him up, but did not wake. Dosti made no complaint at all, snoring and breathing wine fumes into her face. She held both of them under her outspread cloak so the raindrops would not wake them when she went outside, and thanked Phos that Marcus had pitched his tent just to one side of the horse barn. She did not think she could carry Malric far.

She wished she were not pregnant. It made her slow-moving
and clumsy, and what would be necessary would be all the more dangerous.

The chilly rain beat against her face as she shouldered the tent flap open and stepped out into the night. She did not look back at Marcus, but around to take her bearings. There was the barn, with the sentry in front of it. She wondered who he was.

Most of the legionaries’ tents were behind her; she could see lamplight under a couple of flaps. Snatches of pandoura music came sweet through the storm, Senpat Sviodo whiling away the time. Closer by she heard Titus Pullo laugh at a joke Vorenus told. Relief seeped through her; it would have been impossibly difficult with either of them on guard. They were too alert by half. All these Romans, she knew too well, were fine soldiers, but the ex-rivals surpassed the rest.

She wondered how long the watchman had been on duty. Was his turn just starting or almost done? She could not gauge the time, not with moon and stars swaddled in clouds. Gamble, then—her lips thinned in a humorless smile as she realized the Videssians’ scornful nickname for her people, like most caricatures, fit somewhat.

And Marcus did not believe at all.

She squashed carefully through the mud, as if toward the latrines dug behind the horsebarn. If anyone was there, she could still withdraw in safety—and leave her brother and the other Namdaleni to the judgment of the Avtokrator of the Videssians. It did not bear thinking of.

No one squatted over the noisome slit trenches. She breathed a prayer of thanks to Phos for his protection; confidence soared in her. As soon as the barn’s wall screened her from the view of the Roman sentry, she stepped under the shelter of its broad, overhanging eaves. She dug her face into the hollow of her shoulder, wiping the rain from her eyes. Then she stooped and set her sleeping children in the small dry space by the gray stone wall.

“Back soon, my dears,” she breathed, though the wine in them meant they did not hear. The sight of Dosti tore at her. She felt whore and deceiver both, to have used his father so. But blood, faith, and folk were ties older and stronger than two and a half years of what was sometimes love with Scaurus.

She straightened, found the tribune’s knife, and held it concealed in the flowing sleeve of her cloak. Her heart pounded, her breath came short and fast, not in the passion she had counterfeited but from fear. Recognizing it helped steady her. She turned the corner of the barn and came up to the man on guard.

She was sure she would have no chance of sneaking up on him—she had never seen a Roman sentry woolgathering on watch. So she came openly, splashing and complaining in a loud voice about the dreadful weather.

“Who—?” the Roman said, tensing as he peered through the rain and dark. “Oh, it’s you.” He relaxed, gave a rueful chuckle. “Aye, it’s hideous, isn’t it? And to think I was chuckleheaded enough to volunteer to stand out in it. Here, come under the eaves; it’s a little drier, though not much, not with this cursed north wind.”

“Thank you, Blaesus.”

“What can I do for you, my lady?” the junior centurion asked, an open, friendly man with no suspicion in him. He knew Helvis was a Namdalener, in the same way he knew Senpat Sviodo was a Vaspurakaner or Styppes a Videssian. It meant little to him—as well find danger in Scaurus himself as in his woman.

“I have some sweetmeats here Marcus thought you might like,” she said, stepping closer. Her hands, Blaesus saw, were sensibly hidden against the cold and wet in her mantle’s broad sleeves. He felt his face flush with gladness. Truly the tribune was an officer in ten thousand, to think of sharing tidbits with a sentry.

The knife was in the Roman’s neck before he saw it glitter. He tried to scream, but blood gushed into his mouth, tasting of iron and salt. He knew a moment’s chagrin—he should have been more careful. Scaurus had spoken to him about that before.

The thought was dizzy, distant as he fought in vain to breathe through the fire and flood in his throat. His knees gave way. He fell face-down in the muck.

A legionary stuck his head into Marcus’ tent and shouted, “Sir!”

“Hmm? Wuzzat?” The tribune rolled over, grunted at the contact between the cold sleeping mat and his backside.

The trooper—it was Lucius Vorenus, he realized—blasted sleep from him. “Blaesus is murdered, sir, and the islanders fled!”

“What? Ordure!” Scaurus sprang to his feet, groping for clothes. Suddenly wakened with such news, it took him a few seconds to notice that Dosti and Malric had not begun to howl, that Helvis was not beside him. At the jakes, he thought.

But his sword belt hefted wrongly when he seized it. His fingers found the empty sheath. “Murdered?” he barked tensely at Vorenus. “How?”

The legionary’s voice was grim. “Stabbed through the throat like a pig, sir.”

“No,” Scaurus whispered, half prayer, half moan, finding a horrid pattern in the night’s events. Bare-chested and barefoot, he burst past Vorenus and ran for the horse barn. The trooper splashed after him, making heavier going through the mud in his mail shirt and
caligae
. “Is Helvis back of the barn with the children?” Marcus flung over his shoulder.

“At the latrines? I don’t think so, sir. Why?” Vorenus said, puzzled and panting.

“Because they’re not in my tent either,” the tribune grated, tasting the cup of desperation and betrayal, “and my dagger is missing.”

Vorenus’ jaw shut with an audible click.

Still looking surprised, Blaesus’ corpse leaned against the wall of the barn, by the opened door. Vorenus said, “When I came to relieve him, I thought he’d been taken ill until I shifted him and spied—that.” A second mouth gaped in the junior centurion’s neck. The trooper went on, “The door was shut when I got here, I suppose so anyone looking from camp would see nought amiss. But there’s not a Namdalener in there now, or a horse either.”

“There wouldn’t be,” Scaurus agreed. “Do Nevrat and Senpat still have theirs?”

“I don’t know, sir. I came to you first, and their tent’s some way from yours.”

“Go find out; if they do, we’ll need them. Rouse the camp, send out searchers—” Not that they’ll find anyone, he jeered
to himself, not with them afoot and the islanders mounted and with the gods knew how long a start. But maybe by some miracle Helvis was nearby after all, wondering what the commotion was about. He winced at the unlikelihood. As Vorenus started to dash away, the tribune added, “And fetch me Styppes.”