The Tale of Krispos (87 page)

“No!” yelled every Videssian trooper who heard him.

“Then show them what we can do!”

The imperials raised a great, wordless shout and spurred against Harvas’ men. For several minutes the Halogai resisted as desperately and as successfully as their foes had not long before. Then, on the imperial left, a band of lancers at last broke through their line and got into their rear. More followed, their voices high and excited in triumph. Beset from front and rear at once, the Halogai could not withstand the Videssian onslaught. They broke and fled northward.

Krispos set spurs to Progress. The big bay gelding snorted and bounded forward through the thinned ranks of the imperial bodyguards. Krispos was far from an enthusiastic warrior; he’d seen war young, and from a peasant’s perspective. But now he wanted to strike a blow at the marauders who had done Videssos such grievous harm.

His guardsmen shouted and grabbed for Progress’ bridle, trying to hold him back. Krispos spurred the horse again, harder this time. All at once, quite abruptly, no one stood between him and the foe. Progress pounded toward Harvas’ Halogai. The Videssian horsemen, seeing Krispos heading toward the fight, cheered even harder than they had before.

A northerner turned to face him. The fellow wore a mail shirt that reached down to his knees, carried a hacked and battered round wooden shield. He was bareheaded; if he’d ever had a helmet, he’d lost it in the fighting. He still had his axe. It was streaked with the brown of drying blood and with fresh red. He chopped at Progress’ forelegs.

The stroke was too quick, and missed. Krispos slashed at the Haloga. He missed, too. Then Progress was past the man. Krispos never knew whether the northerner escaped or was finished by other Videssians. Battle, he had discovered, was often like that.

Soon Progress caught up with another foe. This one did not turn. He kept trotting heavily toward the north, intent only on escape. Krispos aimed for the hand-wide gap between the base of his helmet and the collar of his coat of mail. He swung with all his strength. His saber clattered off iron. The blow jolted him in the saddle. The Haloga staggered but did not fall. His dogged trot went on.

Krispos reined in. Even a slight taste of battle burned out the desire for more. As well that as a youth he had ignored others’ urgings and refused to become a soldier, he thought. If this was the best he could do, he would have been ravens’ meat all too quickly.

Up ahead, a band of Halogai turned at bay, buying time for their countrymen to get free. Now more stars than the evening star shone in the sky; black night was near. In the darkness and confusion, victory could unravel…and Krispos would sooner have stepped on a scorpion in the dark than encounter Harvas there. He looked round for a courier, but found none.
This is what I get for running ahead of the people I need,
he thought, feeling absurdly guilty.

Just then a call he knew sang out, loud and insistent:
Hold in place.
His shoulders sagged with relief. Mammianos was thinking along with him. Videssians began pulling up, taking off their helmets to wipe their brows. Those who had come through unhurt started chattering about what a splendid fight it had been.

A Haloga came up beside Krispos. He gasped and started to raise his saber before he realized the fellow wore the raiment of the imperial guard. Geirrod looked at him with doubly reproachful eyes. “Majesty, you should not leave us. We serve to keep you safe.”

“I know, Geirrod. Will you forgive me if I admit I made a mistake?”

Geirrod blinked, taken off guard by such quick and abject surrender. “Aye, well,” he said, “I suppose the man in you threw down the Emperor. That is not bad.” He saluted and walked off. But Krispos knew he had made a mistake. He had to be Avtokrator first and man second. If he threw his life away on a foolish whim, far more than he alone would suffer. The lesson was hard. He hoped one day to learn it thoroughly.

Jubilation ran high in camp that night, despite the continuing groans and cries of the wounded. From the excitement the men showed, they were as excited and overjoyed at their victory as was Krispos himself, likely for the same reason: Down deep, they must have doubted they could beat Harvas. Now that they had done it once, the next time might come easier.

“Tonight we feast!” Krispos shouted, which only made the camp more joyful. Cattle were slaughtered as quickly as they could be led up, adding further to the blood that drenched the area. Soon every trooper seemed to have a big gobbet of beef roasting over a fire. Krispos’ nostrils twitched at the savory scent, which reminded him he’d eaten nothing since morning. He stood in line to get some meat of his own.

After he’d eaten, he met with his generals. Several of them had men they wanted promoted for bravery on the battlefield. “We’ll do it right now,” Krispos said. “That way everyone will be able to applaud them.”

The musicians played
Assembly.
The troops packed themselves around the imperial tent. One by one Krispos called names. As the soldiers came forward to be rewarded, their commanders shouted out what they had done. Their comrades cheered lustily.

“Who’s next?” Krispos whispered.

“A file leader named Inkitatos,” Mammianos whispered back.

“File leader Inkitatos!” Krispos yelled as loud as he could, then again. “File leader Inkitatos!”

Inkitatos elbowed his way through the crush to stand on the podium between Krispos and Mammianos. Mammianos called to the listening soldiers, “File leader Inkitatos’ brave and well-trained war horse dashed out the brains of four northerners with blows from its hooves.”

“Hurrah!” the men shouted.

“File leader Inkitatos, I am proud to promote you to troop leader,” Krispos declared. The soldiers cheered again. Grinning, Krispos added, “And I promote your horse, too.” The troops whooped and waved and yelled louder than ever.

“If he’s promoted, do I get his new pay?” Inkitatos asked with the accent and ready opportunism of a man born in Videssos the city.

Krispos laughed out loud. “By the good god, you’ve earned it.” He turned to the military scribe who was recording the night’s promotions. “Note that Inkitatos here will draw troop leader’s pay once for himself and once for his horse.” The scribe’s indulgent chuckle broke off when he saw that Krispos meant it. He was shaking his head as he made the notation.

It must have been close to midnight by the time the last promotion was awarded. By then the crowd round the imperial tent had thinned out. Krispos envied the troopers who could go off to their bedrolls any time they felt like it. He had to stay up on the podium until the whole ceremony was done. When he did finally get to bed, he remembered nothing after he lay down.

Sunrise came far too soon. Krispos’ eyes felt gritty and his head ached. He knew he should have been eager to press on after Harvas, but found exhausting the prospect of anything more vigorous than an enormous yawn. Yawning over and over, he went outside for breakfast.

When the army moved out, archers were in the van, ready to harass Harvas’ men as they retreated. With them rode the wizards, Zaidas in front of them all. Harvas could have left any number of sorcerous ambushes behind to delay or destroy the Videssians. Krispos worried even more that the raiders would choose to stand siege in Imbros. With the leisure that would bring Harvas, who could guess what wickedness he might invent?

Delays the army found. Haloga rear guards twice stood and fought. They sold their lives as bravely as Videssians might have if they were protecting their countrymen. The imperial army rode over them and pressed on.

Imbros was almost in sight when a wall of darkness, twice the height of a man, suddenly rose up before the soldiers. Zaidas waved for everyone to halt. The soldiers were more than willing. They had no idea whether the wall was dangerous and did not care to learn the hard way.

The wizards went into a huddle. Trokoundos cast a spell toward that blank blackness. The sorcerous wall drank up the spell and remained unchanged. Trokoundos swore. The wizards tried a different spell. The black wall drank up that one, too. Trokoundos swore louder. A third try yielded results no better. What Trokoundos said should have been hot enough to melt the wall by itself.

“What now?” Krispos asked. “Are we blocked forever?” The wall stretched east and west, far as the eye could see.

“No, by the lord with the great and good mind!” Trokoundos’ scowl was as dark as the barrier Harvas had placed in the imperial army’s path. “Were such facile creations as potent as this one appears, the sorcerous art would be altogether different from what in fact it is.” He paused, as if listening to his own words. Then, right hand outstretched, he walked up to the black wall and tapped it with a fingertip.

The other mages and Krispos, not believing he would dare do that, cried out in dismay. Zaidas reached out to pull Trokoundos back—too late. Lightning crackled, surrounding Trokoundos in a dreadful nimbus. But when it faded, the wall faded, too. The wizard was left unharmed.

“I thought as much,” he said, his voice silky with self-satisfaction. “Just a bluff, designed to keep us dithering here as long as we would.”

“You were very brave and very foolish,” Krispos said. “Please don’t do that again—I expected to see you die there.”

“I didn’t, and now the way lies open,” Trokoundos answered. With that Krispos could not argue. He signaled to the musicians. The call
Advance,
all eager horns and pounding drums, rang forth. The army moved ahead.

What with rear guards and sorcerous ploys, Harvas had succeeded in putting space between himself and his pursuers. When Imbros came into sight late that afternoon, Krispos approached the town with more than a little trepidation, fearing Harvas had used the time he’d gained to establish himself inside.

But Imbros stood empty, surrounded by its forest of stakes. Over the winter, most of the impaled corpses had fallen from them; bone gleamed whitely on the ground. Here and there, though, a mummified body still stood, as if in macabre welcome.

Krispos’ soldiers’ muttered to themselves as they made camp not far away. They had heard of Harvas’ atrocity, but only a relative handful had seen it till now. Stories heard, no matter how vile, could be discounted in the mind. What came before the eye was something else again.

An imperial guardsman stuck his head into Krispos’ tent. “The general Bagradas would see you, Majesty.”

“Send him in.” Krispos stuffed a last large bite of bread and cheese into his mouth, then washed it down with a swig of wine. He waved Bagradas to a folding canvas chair. “What can I do for you, excellent sir? You led your—or rather Rhisoulphos’—regiment bravely against the Halogai.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. I did my best. I find myself embarrassed, though. When the fight was over, I found a pair of letters had come for Rhisoulphos, and it slipped my mind till now that you wanted to see all such.”

“So I did,” Krispos said. “Well, no harm done, excellent sir. Let me have them, if you please.”

“Here you are, Your Majesty.” Bagradas sadly shook his head. “I wish he could have seen how his men fought yesterday. They did him proud, and many used his name as a battle cry, reckoning that Harvas had feared him enough to make away with him. Most mysterious and distressing, his disappearance.”

“Yes, so it was.” Krispos’ voice was abstracted. One of the letters to Rhisoulphos was from the patriarch Gnatios. That one he had been waiting for. The other came as a complete and unpleasant surprise. It was from Dara.

He waited until Bagradas had saluted and bowed his way out, then sat and waited a little longer, weighing the two letters in his hand without opening either of them. He had repeatedly warned the ecumenical patriarch not to betray him again, and he knew all his warnings might well have been wasted. But Dara…Ever since he’d taken the throne, he’d relied on her, and she’d never given him any reason to doubt his trust. Yet how did a relatively short connection with him weigh against a lifetime’s devotion to her father?

He found he did not want to know, not right away. He set down the letter from Dara and broke the seals on the one from Gnatios. It was daubed with as much wax as if it had come from the imperial chancery. When at last he could unroll it, he held it close to a lamp to read:

“Gnatios, ecumenical patriarch of the Videssians, to the eminent and noble sir Rhisoulphos: Greetings. As you know, I have suffered many indignities at the hands of the peasant whose fundament currently defiles the imperial throne. I have long believed that those of noble birth, confident in their own excellence, can best rule the state without feeling the constant and pressing need to interfere in the affairs of the temples. Thus, eminent sir, should any accident, genuine or contrived, befall Krispos, rest assured that I shall be delighted to proclaim your name from the altar at the High Temple.”

Krispos tossed the letter aside. Sure enough, Gnatios could no more turn away from treachery than a fat man could turn away from sweetness. A fat man’s taste just made him heavier. Gnatios, though, would soon be lighter—by a head, Krispos promised himself, not without regret. But he had forgiven his patriarch too many times already.

What of his wife? What was he to do if he found her plotting against him? He put his hands over his face—he had no idea. At last he made himself unseal the letter. He recognized Dara’s smooth-flowing script at once:

“Dara to her father: Greetings. May Phos keep you safe through all the fighting that is to come and may he give Krispos the victory. I am well, though enormous. The midwife says second births are easier than first. The good god grant that she be right. Phostis has another tooth, and says mama plain as day. I wish you and Krispos could see him. Give Krispos my love and tell him I will write to him tomorrow. Love to you as well, from your affectionate daughter.”

Ashamed of his worries, Krispos rolled up the letter. To be Avtokrator was to be schooled in suspicion. Had he not been suspicious, he might not have found Rhisoulphos’ plot till it found him. But to suspect his wife flayed his conscience, all the more so since she had but written her father an innocent, friendly letter.