Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (23 page)

Surprisingly, Goudeles said to Gorgidas, “Well reasoned, outlander. The Northern Sea does run some distance west of the Haloga lands, how far no man knows, but cold and drear throughout.” He gave an elegant
grimace of distaste. “It must be the cause of the harsh weather good Arigh mentions.”

“How do you know that, Pikridios?” Skylitzes challenged. “Far as I’ve heard, you never set foot outside Videssos till now.”

“A fragment of poetry I came across in the archives,” the bureaucrat replied blandly. “Written by a naval officer—a Mourtzouphlos, I think; they’re an old family—not long after Stavrakios’ time, when the Halogai still minded their manners. Quite an arresting little thing, really; one is quite taken with the strangeness of it, almost as if the author were portraying another world. Rocks and ice and wind and odd, bright-beaked shore birds with some flatulent name he must have borrowed from the local barbarians: ‘auks,’ I think it was.”

“Well, auks to you, too,” Skylitzes said, defeated by the pen-pusher’s barrage of detail. Goudeles dipped his head in a smug half-bow. Gorgidas thought he heard Skylitzes grind his teeth.

“Your pardon, gents,” Agathias Psoes broke in, practical as a Roman, “but that looks to be a good place to camp, there up ahead by the stream.” The underofficer pointed; as if at the motion, a small flock of ducks came quacking down from the gray sky. Psoes smiled like a successful conjurer; his men unshipped their bows. Gorgidas’ stomach rumbled at the thought of roast duck.

But the first bird that was shot let out a loud squawk, and its flock-mates took wing, evading the fusillade of arrows the troopers aimed at them. “Shut up in there,” the Greek said as his belly growled again. “It’s cheese and wheatcakes after all.”

Sword drill came before supper. To his dismay, Gorgidas was starting to look forward to it. There was an animal pleasure in feeling his body begin to learn the right response to an overhand cut, a thrust at his belly, a slash at his calf. The practice was like the Videssian board game that mimicked war, but played with arm and eye and feet as well as mind.

Feet—at last he was working on ground firm enough to make footwork mean something more than just staying upright. “A man-killer soon,” Skylitzes said, dancing back from a stab.

“I don’t want to be a man-killer,” the Greek insisted. Skylitzes ignored
that and came back to show him how he had given the thrust away. The taciturn Videssian officer was a good teacher; better, Gorgidas thought, than Viridovix would have been. He was more patient and more systematic than the mercurial Celt and remembered his pupils were altogether untrained. Where Viridovix would have thrown up his hands in disgust, Skylitzes was willing to repeat a parry, a lunge, a sidestep thirty times if need be, until it was understood.

When Gorgidas was done, he went down to bathe in the stream, leaving Pikridios Goudeles to Skylitzes’ tender mercies. Skylitzes worked the seal-stamper harder than Gorgidas; the Greek was not sure how much of that was because he was a better student than Goudeles and how much because Goudeles and the soldier did not get along. He heard Goudeles yelp as Skylitzes spanked his knuckles—getting some of his own back for that arctic epic.

A green and brown frog no bigger than the last joint of Gorgidas’ finger sat in a bush near the edge of the stream. If it had not peeped suddenly, he never would have noticed it. He shook his finger at it. “Hush,” he said severely, “before you send all our Khamorth running for their lives.” His stomach gurgled again. “And you, too.”

They came to a good-sized river the next day; Psoes identified it as the Kouphis. “This is as far west on the Pardrayan steppe as I’ve come,” he said.

“We’re halfway to the Shaum, near enough,” Arigh said, and Skylitzes nodded. He spoke little of his travels, but if he knew the Arshaum speech along with that of the Khamorth, likely he had gone much farther than the Kouphis.

The river ran north and south. They rode upstream, looking for a ford, and came level with what looked like a heap of building-stones on the far bank. They set Gorgidas scratching his head—what were they doing here in the middle of the flat, empty plain? Two of Psoes’ troopers had heard of the stone-pile, but they were little help; they called it “the gods’ dung heap.”

Skylitzes gave a rare laugh. “Or the Khamorth’s,” he said quietly, so Psoes’ men would not hear. “It’s what’s left of a Videssian fort, after two hundred-odd years of sacks and no upkeep.”

“What?” Gorgidas said. “The Empire ruled here once?”

“No, no,” Skylitzes explained. “It was a gift from the Avtokrator to a powerful khagan. But when the khagan died, his sons quarreled, and the nomads went back to living clan by clan.”

Pikridios Goudeles stared across the Kouphis at the ruin and burst into laughter himself. “That? That pile of rubble is Khoirosphaktes’ Folly?”

“You know of it, too?” Gorgidas asked, forestalling Lankinos Skylitzes; the soldier, it seemed, was not willing to believe Goudeles knew anything.

The bureaucrat rolled his eyes, a gesture that somehow brought with it a whiff of the capital despite the shabby traveling clothes that had quickly replaced his fine robes. “Know of it? My inquisitive friend, in Videssos’ accounting schools it is the paradigm of failing to measure cost against results. The goldpieces squandered on shipping artisans and stone from the Empire! And for what? You see it for yourself.” He shook his head. “And that says nothing of the elephant.”

“Elephant?” the Greek and Skylitzes said together. In Videssos as in Rome they were rare breasts, coming from the little-known lands south of the Sailors’ Sea.

“Oh, indeed. One of the khagan’s envoys had seen one—at a menagerie, I suppose—and told his master about it. So there was nothing for it but that the barbarian had to have a look at it, too. And the Avtokrator Khoirosphaktes, who, I fear, drank too much to know when to leave well enough alone, shipped it to him. Oh, the gold!” Goudeles looked pained to the bottom of his parsimonious soul.

“Well, out with it, man!” Gorgidas exclaimed. “What did the khagan do with his elephant?”

“Took one look and shipped it back, of course. What would
you
do?”

“Och, beshrew me, sure and I’ve gone and made a hash of it,” Viridovix said, cocking hands on hips in irritation. The inky-black night was at last graying toward another cloudy morning, and the Celt, to his disgust, realized he had been riding east ever since he escaped from Varatesh. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “There’s a bit o’ good in everything,” he told himself, “that there is. The omadhaun’d never think to look for me going this way—he must credit me for better sense.”

He gnawed at his mustache as he thought, then swung south, planning to ride in a large circle around Varatesh’s camp; he had a healthy respect for the outlaw chief. “I should have put paid to the son of a mangy ferret, for all he spared my mates,” he said, speaking aloud again to hear the good Celtic words flow off his tongue. “One fine day he’ll cause me more grief, sure as sure.”

A horse which had started to graze while he paused jerked its head up with a sharp neigh of protest as its lead rope came taut again. “Dinna say me nay,” the Gaul told it, still unhappy with himself. “Too late for your regrets, as for mine.”

As the day wore on, the sun finally began to burn its way through the storm clouds. The rain grew fitful, then stopped. “Well, the gods be praised,” Viridovix said, and looked about for a rainbow. He did not find one. “Likely that knave of a Varatesh stole it,” he muttered, only half joking.

In one small way, the rain and clouds and mist had been a comfort to him, for they closed in his circle of vision and did not make him cope with the plains’ vast spaces along with his other miseries. But with the clearing weather, the horizon seemed to draw back veil after veil until, as in his first days on the steppe, he felt like a tiny speck moving through infinity. “If there were but one wee star in all the sky, sure and it’d be no lonelier than I,” he said, and bellowed out endless songs to hold aloneness at arm’s length.

His banshee shout of glee when he spied a herd of cattle moving far to the south sent his horses’ ears pricking up in alarm. After a moment’s reflection, though, he squelched it, wondering which was worse, no neighbors or bad ones. “For if I can see them, sure as sure they can see me. Och, wouldn’t the little Greek be proud now, to hear me play the logician?”

His reasoning was rewarded, if that was the word, within minutes. A handful of Khamorth peeled away from their cattle and came toward him at a trot. “And what will they do when they find a stranger with these horses and all?” he asked himself; he did not care for the answer he reached. Then he recalled the heavy bows the nomads carried and grew unhappier yet.

He wished for his helm and his cape of scarlet skins to let him cut an
impressive figure. His traveling clothes were muddy, wet, and drab to begin with; he surveyed himself with distaste. “Sure and it’s a proper cowflop I look,” he said mournfully. He cursed Varatesh anew. The outlaw, a scrupulous thief, had stolen only the Gaul and his sword.

At that thought he yelled laughter; his lively spirits could not hold gloom for long. He leaped down from his horse, pulled his ragged tunic over his head, and scrambled out of baggy trousers. He threw them on his pony’s back. Naked, blade in hand, he waited for the plainsmen.

“Now they’ll have somewhat to think on,” he said, still grinning widely. The breeze ran light fingers over his skin. He felt no strangeness, readying himself to fight bare. For as long as the bards recalled, there had been Celts who went naked into battle, wanting no more armor than their fighting rage. He roared out a challenge and strode toward the nomads.

The grin turned sour on his face as he saw the arrows nocked in their double-curved bows, but he was not shot out of hand. The Khamorth gaped at him—what sort of crazy man was this pale, copper-haired giant? They talked back and forth in their own language. One pointed at Viridovix’ crotch and said something that was probably rude; they all laughed. Curiosity would not keep this pack at bay long; already the arrows were beginning to bear on him.

He took another long step forward; the plainsmen raised their bows menacingly. “Is it that any o’ you lumping buggers is after having the Videssian?” he shouted, his whole stance a defial.

As it happened, none of them spoke the imperial tongue. But their colloquy after the question let him pick out their leader, a lean, hard-faced barbarian whose curly beard tumbled halfway down his chest. “You!” the Celt shouted, and pointed at the Khamorth with his sword.

The nomad gave back a stony glare. “Aye, you, you sheep-futtering spalpeen!” Viridovix said, repeating the insult in his vile Khamorth. As the plainsman slowly reddened, the Gaul gestured, daring him to come out face to face in single combat.

He knew the risk he ran. If the Khamorth was secure in his dominance over his comrades, he would just order them to kill the Celt and then ride on, unruffled. But if not … The plainsmen were watching their chief very closely. Silence stretched.

The nomad snarled something; he was angry, not afraid. He reminded Viridovix of a stoat as he slipped off his pony—his motions had a fluid, quick purposefulness that warned the Celt at once he would be no easy meat. The nomad’s shamshir slid from its leather sheath, down which writhed polychrome beasts of prey in the contorted Khamorth style. He sidled forward, taking the Gaul’s measure as he advanced.

Curved sword met straight one, and at the first pass Viridovix gave back a pace. Quick as a ferret indeed, he thought. He parried a cut at his upper thigh, then threw his arm back to avoid another. Smiling now, enjoying the game, the plainsman bored in to finish him, only to be brought up short by the Celt’s straight-armed thrust—not for nothing had Viridovix spent years with the Romans. But his sword, unlike Scaurus’, had no sharp stabbing point, and the nomad’s shirt of thick sueded leather kept it from his vitals. The Khamorth grunted and stepped back himself.

Each having surprised the other, they fenced warily for a time, both looking for some flaw to use to advantage. Viridovix hissed as the very point of his foe’s blade drew a thin line across his chest, then growled in disgust at his own clumsiness when he was pinked again, this time on the left arm. His ancestors, he decided, were great fools—fighting naked, there was just too much to guard. The nomad was unmarked. Viridovix was stronger than the Khamorth and had a longer reach, but in the long run speed would likely count for more.

“Well, then, we maun be keepin’ it brief,” he said to himself and leaped at the plainsman, raining blows from all directions, trying to overwhelm him by sheer dint of muscle. His opponent danced away, but his boot heel skidded in the trampled mud, and he had to block desperately as Viridovix’ blade came slashing down. He turned the stroke, but his own sword went flying, to land point down in the muck.

“Ahh,” said the Khamorth from their horses.

With their leader at his mercy, as he thought, Viridovix had no intention of killing him—there was no telling what the plainsmen might do after that. But when he stepped confidently forward to pluck the nomad’s knife from his belt in token of victory, the Khamorth chopped at his wrist with the hard edge of his hand, and his own sword dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.

“No you don’t, you blackhearted omadhaun!” the Gaul shouted as his foe grabbed for the dagger. He grappled, wrapping the nomad in a bear hug. The Khamorth butted like a goat, crashing the top of his head up into Viridovix’ chin. The Celt saw stars, spat blood from a bitten tongue, but his left hand kept its clamp on his opponent’s right wrist. He punched the plainsman in the back of the neck again and again—not sporting, maybe, but effective. At last, with a soft little groan, the Khamorth slumped to the mud.

Sweat glistening all over his body, Viridovix retrieved his sword and faced the mounted nomads. They stared back, as uncertain as he was. “I’ve not killed him, you know,” the Gaul said, gesturing toward their chief, “though he’ll wish I had for the next few days.” He still got blinding headaches from the clubbing Varatesh had given him.