The Legion of Videssos (7 page)

She swayed away, Viridovix following her hungrily with his eyes.

“A skin?” Arigh said eagerly. He forgot his anger. “Kavass? By the three wolf tails of my clan, it’s five years since I set tongue to it. You benighted farmer-folk make do with wine and ale.”

“A new tipple?” That was Pikridios Goudeles, sounding intrigued. Gorgidas remembered the Arshaum boasting of the plains drink before, but had forgotten what the nomads brewed it from. Viridovix, a toper born, no longer seemed so dismayed over Filennar’s disappearance.

She soon returned, carrying a bulging horsehide with the hair still on the outside. At Sivas’ gesture, she handed it to Arigh, who took it as tenderly as he might an infant. He undid the rawhide lace that held the drinking-mouth, raised the skin to his face. He drank noisily; it was good manners on the plains to advertise one’s enjoyment.

“Ahhh!” he said at last, pinching the mouth closed after a draught so long his face had begun to darken.

“There’s dying scarlet!” Viridovix exclaimed—city slang for drinking deep. He raised the skin for a swig of his own, but at the first taste his anticipation was replaced by a surprised grimace. He spat a large mouthful out on the floor. “Fauggh! What a foul brew! What goes into the making of it, now?”

“Fermented mares’ milk,” Arigh answered.

Viridovix made a face. “Sure and it tastes like the inside of a dead snail.” The Arshaum glowered at him, irritated at hearing his beloved drink maligned.

Lankinos Skylitzes and Methodios Sivas, both long familiar with the steppe brew, showed no qualms at drinking and smacked their lips in best nomad style. When the skin came to
Goudeles he swallowed enough for politeness’ sake, but did not seem sorry to pass it on to Gorgidas.

“Get used to it, Pikridios,” Skylitzes said, amusement just below the surface of his voice.

“That is a phrase with which I could easily grow bored,” the bureaucrat said tartly. More than a little warmed by all he’d drunk, Skylitzes chuckled.

Gorgidas gave a suspicious sniff as he hefted the horsehide, now half empty. He expected a sour, cheesy odor, but the kavass smelled much more like a light, clear ale. He drank. Actually, he thought, it had surprisingly little flavor of any kind, but it put a quick warm glow in his belly. For potency it matched any wine he knew.

“It’s not bad, Viridovix. Try it again,” he urged. “If you were looking for something as sweet as wine it’s no wonder you were startled, but surely you’ve had worse.”

“Aye, and better, too,” the Gaul retorted. He reached for a flagon of wine. “On the steppe I’ll have no choice, but the now I do and I’m for the grape, begging your pardon, Arigh. Pass him his snail-squeezings, Greek, sith he’s so fond of ’em and all.” Viridovix’ larynx bobbed as he swallowed.

Sivas gave the embassy a token guard of ten men. “Enough to show you’re under the Empire’s protection,” he explained. “Prista’s whole garrison wouldn’t be enough to save you from real trouble, and if I did send them out, every clan on the plains would unite to burn the town round my ears. They find us useful, but only so long as we don’t seem dangerous to them.”

The
hypepoptes
did let the envoys choose horses and remounts from the garrison’s stables. His generosity saved them from the mercies of their fellow guests at the inn, who had proved to be horse traders. True to Viridovix’ prediction, they were also gamblers. Gorgidas sensibly declined to game with them; Arigh and Pikiridios Goudeles were less cautious. The Arshaum lost heavily, but Goudeles held his own.

When Skylitzes heard that he smiled a rare smile, observing, “Seal-stampers are bigger bandits than mere horse copers dream of being.”

“To the ice with you, my friend,” Goudeles said. Gold clinked in his belt-pouch.

In another area the bureaucrat was wise enough to take expert advice. Like Gorgidas and Viridovix, he asked Arigh to choose a string of horses for him. Only Skylitzes trusted his own judgment enough to pick his beasts, and did so well that the plainsman looked at him with new respect. “There’s a couple there I wouldn’t mind having for myself,” he said.

“Och, how can he be telling that?” Viridovix complained. “I know summat o’ horseflesh, at least as we Celts and the Videssians reckon it, and such a grand lot of garrons I’ve never seen before, like as so many beans in the pod.”

With its Gallic flavor, the word was an apt one to describe the rough-coated steppe ponies. They were small, sturdy beasts, unlovely and not very tame—nothing like the highbred steeds the Videssians prized. But Arigh said, “Who needs a big horse? The plains beasts’ll run twice as long and find forage where one of those oat-burners would starve. Isn’t that right, my lovely?” He stroked one of his horses on the muzzle, then jerked his hand away as the beast snapped at him.

Gorgidas laughed with the rest, but nervously. He was at best an indifferent horseman, having practiced the art only rarely. Well, then, you can’t help getting better, he told himself; but Arigh’s promise of months in the saddle made his legs twinge in anticipation.

A week after the
Conqueror
put into Prista, the embassy and its accompanying guards rode out the town’s north gate. Though the party numbered only fifteen, from any distance it looked far larger. In steppe fashion, each man rode at the head of five to seven horses, some carrying gear and iron rations, the rest unloaded. The nomad custom was to ride a different animal each day so as not to wear down any of them.

The morning sun shone silver off the Maiotic Bay. The pinched-off arm of the Videssian Sea was several miles to the east, but there were no hills to screen it from view. Beyond the bay a darkness marked another promontory of land jutting south into the ocean. That horizon line, too, was low, flat, and smooth, another portion of the steppe that rolled west—how far? No man knew.

Gorgidas gave such things irregular thought. Most of his attention rested on staying aboard his horse; as beasts will, the cursed animal sensed his inexperience and seemed to take a
perverse pleasure in missteps that almost threw him from the saddle. That, luckily, was of the style both Videssians and plainsfolk favored: high-cantled, with pommels before and behind, and with that marvelous invention, stirrups. Without such aids the Greek would have been tossed more than once.

All the improvements, though, did nothing to dull the growing ache in his thighs. He was in good hard shape, able to keep up with the Roman legionaries on march, but riding plainly made different demands. His discomfort was only made worse by the short stirrup leathers the nomads used, which made him draw his knees up and cramped his legs the more.

“Why keep them so short?” he asked the squad leader heading the embassy’s guardsmen.

The underofficer shrugged. “Most things in Prista we do Khamorth-style,” he said. “They like to stand tall in the saddle for archery.” He was a Videssian himself, a lean dark man with heavily muscled forearms. His name was Agathias Psoes. Three or four of his men also looked to have come from across the sea. The rest, like the soldier who had greeted the ambassadors, were obviously locals. Among themselves all the troopers spoke a strange jargon, so thickly laced with Khamorth phrases and turns of syntax that Gorgidas could hardly follow it.

“I have some longer strips,” Arigh said. “We Arshaum don’t need to get up to know what we’re shooting at.” He won scowls from his escorts, but ignored them. So did Gorgidas. He took the leathers gratefully. They helped—somewhat.

The Greek’s distress was nothing compared to that of Pikridios Goudeles. The seal-stamper was an influential man, but not one who had ever been required to push his body much. When the day’s ride ended and he awkwardly scrambled down from his horse, he tottered about like a man of ninety. His hands were soft, too, and chafed from holding the reins. Collapsing to the ground with a groan, he said, “Now I understand Gavras’ ploy in making me a legate; he expects my exhausted corpse to be buried on these plains, and may well get his wish.”

“He might have wanted you to see the price the Empire pays for your comforts in the city,” Lankinos Skylitzes said.

“Hrmmp. Without comforts, what’s the point of civilization?
When you’re in Videssos, my sober friend, you sleep in a bed, too, not rolled in your blanket on the street.” Goudeles’ bones might ache, but his tongue was still sharp. Skylitzes grunted and went off to help the cavalrymen gather brush for the night’s watchfire.

It blazed hot and bright, the only light as far as the eye could reach. Gorgidas felt naked and alone on the vast empty plain. He missed the comforting earthworks and ditches the Romans threw up wherever they went; a whole army could be skulking in the darkness just beyond the sentries’ vigilance. He jumped as a nightjar flashed briefly into sight, drawn by the insects the fire lured.

Breakfast the next morning was smoked mutton, hard cheese, and thin, flat wheatcakes one of the troopers cooked on a portable griddle. The nomads seldom ate bread. Ovens were too bulky for a people ever on the move. The cakes were chewy and all but flavorless; Gorgidas was sure he would grow mightily tired of them in short order. Well, he thought, with such fare you need hardly fear a flux of the bowels—more likely the opposite. The climate spoke for that, too—folk in lands with harsh winters and a prevailing north wind tended to constipation, or so Hippokrates taught.

His medical musings annoyed him—that should be over and done. To set his conscience at ease, he jotted a note on the soldier’s cooking methods.

Viridovix had been unusually quiet on the first day’s journey out of Prista. He was again as the embassy left camp behind. He rode near the rear of the company and kept looking about in all directions, now left, now right, now back over his shoulder. “There’s nothing there,” Gorgidas said, thinking he was worried they were being followed.

“How right you are, and what a great whacking lot of nothing it is, too!” the Celt exclaimed. “I’m feeling like a wee bug on a plate, the which is no pleasure at all. In the forests of Gaul it was easy to see where the world stopped, if you take my meaning. But here there’s no end to it; on and on it goes forever.”

The Greek dipped his head, feeling some of the same unhappiness; he, too, had come to manhood in a narrow land. The plains showed a man his insignificance in the world.

Arigh thought them both daft. “I only feel alive on the
steppe,” he said, repeating his words back in Prista. “When I first came to Videssos I hardly dared walk down the street for fear the buildings would fall on me. How folk cramp themselves in cities all their lives is past me.”

“As Pindar says, convention rules all,” Gorgidas said. “Give us time, Arigh, and we’ll grow used to your endless spaces.”

“Aye, I suppose we will,” Viridovix said, “but I’m hanged if I’ll like ’em.” The Arshaum’s shrug showed his indifference.

In one way the broad horizon worked to the traveler’s advantage: game was visible at an extraordinary distance. Frightened by the horses, a flock of gray partridges leaped into the air. They flew fast and low, coasting, flapping frantically, coasting again. Several troopers nocked arrows and spurred their mounts after the fleeing birds. Their double-curved bows, strengthened with horn, sent arrows darting faster than any hawk.

“We should have nets,” Skylitzes said as he watched three shafts in quick succession miss one dodging bird, but the horsemen were archers trained from childhood, and not every shot went wide. They bagged eight partridges; Gorgidas’ mouth watered at the thought of the dark, tender meat.

“Good shooting,” Viridovix said to one of Agathias Psoes’ men. The soldier, from his looks almost pure Khamorth, held two birds by the feet. He grinned at the Celt. Viridovix went on, “It’s a fine flat path your shafts have, too. What’s the pull on your bow?”

The trooper passed it to him. Next to the long yew bows the Celts favored, it was small and light, but Viridovix grunted in surprise as he tugged on the sinew bowstring. His arm muscles bunched before the bow began to bend. “Not a bit of a toy, is it?” he said, handing it back.

Pleased at his reaction, the soldier smiled slyly. “Your shield, give him here,” he said, his Videssian as accented as the Celt’s. Viridovix, who wore it slung over his back when combat was not near, undid its strap and gave it to the horseman. It was a typical Gallic noble’s shield: oblong, bronze-faced, with raised spirals of metal emphasized by enameling in bright red and green. Viridovix kept it in good repair; he was fastidious about his arms and armor.

“Pretty,” the trooper remarked, propping it upright against a bush. He walked his horse back until he was perhaps a hundred yards from it. With a savage yell he spurred the animal forward, let fly at point-blank range. The shield went spinning, but when Viridovix recovered it there was no shaft stuck in it.

“Sure and the beast kicked it ov—” the Celt began. He stopped in amazement. High in the upper right-hand corner of the shield, a neat hole punched through bronze and wood alike. “By my enemies’ heads,” he said softly, shaking his own.

The guardsman picked up his arrow, which had flown another ten or twelve feet after piercing the shield. He put it back in his quiver, saying, “A good buckler you have. Through mine it would farther have gone.” His own shield was a small round target of wood and leather, good for knocking a sword aside, but not much more.

Viridovix said, “And I was after thinking the plainsmen were light-armored on account of the scrawny little cobs they rode, the which couldna carry the weight o’ metal.”

“Why else?” Gorgidas said.

“Use your eyes, clodpoll of a Greek,” the Celt replied, waving his shield in Gorgidas’ face. “Wi’ sic bows you’re a pincushion with or without ironmongery, so where’s the good in muffling up?”

To Viridovix’ irritated surprise, Gorgidas burst out laughing. “Where’s the jape?”

“Your pardon,” the Greek said, jotting a note. “The idea of a weapon so strong as to make defense unprofitable never occurred to me. This steppe bow isn’t one, you know; in their mail and plate the Namdaleni stood up to it quite well. But the abstract concept is fascinating.”