Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (85 page)

“Two, actually.” The Greek ticked them off on his fingers. “First, the land. Size means nothing. Shaumkhiil and Gaul are open countries. People and ideas move freely, so it is no wonder they aren’t much different from one end to the other. But Erzerum? It’s all broken up with mountains and rivers. Each valley makes a bastion, and since none of the peoples here could hope to rule the whole land, they’ve been able to keep their own ways and tongues without much interference.”

He paused for a gulp of wine. Erzerum’s vintages were rough, but better than kavass. Down in the valley, behind a covering stream, the band of cavalry was moving two by two into position at the edge of the stream. Bright banners snapped above them.

Gorgidas put the wineskin away; he would rather argue. “Where was I? Oh, yes, the second reason for Erzerum’s diversity. Simple—it’s the rubbish-heap of history. Every folk beaten by Makuran, or Videssos, or even by Vaspurakan or the peoples of Pardraya, has tried to take refuge here, and a good many pulled it off. Thus the Shnorhali, who fled the Khamorth when they entered Pardraya who knows how long ago—their remnant survives here.”

“Isn’t he the cleverest little fellow, now?” Viridovix said, beaming at the Greek. “Clear as air he’s made the muddle, the which had me stymied altogether.”

“Clear as fog, you mean,” Skylitzes said. He challenged Gorgidas: “Does your fine theory explain why the Mzeshi
are
orthodox? You brought them up, now account for them. By your rules they should have taken their doctrine from the heretic Vaspurakaners, who were the first people close to them to follow Phos, even if wrongly.”

“An interesting question,” the physician admitted. After thinking a bit, he said slowly, “I would say they are orthodox for the same reason the Vaspurakaners aren’t.”

“There you go, speaking in paradoxes again,” Skylitzes growled.

“These Greeks are made for talking circles round a body,” Viridovix put in.

“To the crows with both of you. There is no paradox. Look, Vaspurakan liked Videssos’ religion, but was afraid the influence of the Empire would come with its priests. So the ‘princes’ worked out their own form of the faith, which satisfied them and kept the Empire at arm’s length. But Vaspurakan was to the Mzeshi what Videssos was to Vaspurakan: a land with attractive ideas to borrow, but maybe risky to their freedom, too. So they decided for orthodoxy. Videssos is too far away to be dangerous to them.”

Skylitzes wore a grimace of concentration as he worked that through, but Goudeles, who had been quiet till now, said, “I like it. It makes sense. And not only does it show why the Mzeshi are orthodox and the ‘princes’ not, it also makes clear why Khatrish, Thatagush, and Namdalen keep clinging to their own pet heresies.”

“Why, so it does,” Gorgidas said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, a
good theory should be able to cover a wide range of cases.” He paused and waved back toward the varied groups of new allies. “Erzerum is a wide range of cases by itself.”

Arigh said, “To me this history of yours only makes so much fancy talk. I’m just glad the one thing all these hillmen can get together on is hating Yezd.”

“Right you are,” Skylitzes said, and the others nodded. Though most of the Yezda had roared east against Vaspurakan and Videssos, enough raiders had pushed north to rape and loot and kill among the Erzrumi valleys that the locals, whatever tiny nation they might claim, welcomed Yezd’s foes. That was the only reason Arigh could control them at all. Hitting back was too sweet a prospect to jeopardize with their own petty quarrels.

The Arshaum waved for a messenger. “Fetch me, hmm, let’s see, Hamrentz of the Khakuli. Let’s see what he can tell us about these horsemen ahead.” The riders were still deploying along their stream; through the dust their mounts kicked up, the sun glinted off spearpoints.

Hamrentz, whose holding lay a couple of days’ ride north, was a thin, gloomy man with enormous hands. He wore a mail coif, but the rest of his armor was a knee-length shirt of leather covered with bone scales. Though he spoke some Videssian, he followed the Four Prophets of Makuran and had lines from their writings tattooed on his forehead.

When Arigh put the question to him, his doleful features grew even longer; one of his verses almost disappeared in a deep fold of skin. “This is—how would you say?—the Vale of the Fellowship. So they call it here, let me say. They are no cowards. I give them so much. I have seen them fight. But to their neighbors they are the—” He used a guttural obscenity in his own language, adding an equally filthy gesture.

Arigh repeated the scurrility with a grin. It was one to fill the mouth and soothe the angry spirit. “I know that’s foul,” he said. “What exactly does it mean?”

“What it says, of course,” Hamrentz said. “In this language, I do not know the words.” He seemed offended. The rest of his answers were hardly more than grunts. “You will find out, and then you will understand,” he finished cryptically, and rode off.

Arigh looked at his advisors, who shrugged one by one. Goudeles said, “You might summon one of the others.”

“Why waste my time when I can see for myself? Come along, if you care to.” The Arshaum raised his voice. “Narbas, to us! The further south we get, the more of these people speak Vaspurakaner.”

They hoisted the truce sign and trotted down toward the stream. Behind them, several Erzrumi contingents erupted in hisses, catcalls, and the whistles some of the hillmen used for jeers. Viridovix scratched his head. “You’d think these Fellowship laddies the greatest villains left unkilled, sure and you would, the way the carry on. To see ’em, though, why, they’re better-seeming soldiers than half we have wi’ us.”

The troops drawn up on the far side of the little river were indeed disciplined-looking, well-horsed, and well-armored in crested helms, mail shirts under surcoats, and bronze greaves. They numbered archers as well as lancers. The Arshaum scouts, not wanting to start a war by accident, were keeping a respectful distance from the border stream.

A few of the locals nocked arrows or let their horses move a couple of paces forward as Arigh’s party drew close, but in the center of their line a black-bearded giant in an orange coat nodded to his companion, a younger man whose surcoat matched his. The latter blew three bright notes from a coiled horn. At once the horsemen settled back into watchful waiting.

Perhaps drawn by the action of the leaders, Viridovix ran an eye down the line. “Will you mark that, now? Pair by pair they are, matched by their coats.” The others saw he was right. One pair wore light green, the next scarlet, then ocher, then the deep blue of woad; remembering a tunic of that exact shade he had once owned, the Celt ached for his lost forests.

“How quaint,” Goudeles said, with the disdain he showed any non-Videssian custom. “I wonder what it might signify.”

Gorgidas felt himself go hot, then cold. He was suddenly sure he understood Hamrentz’s obscenity. In a way he hoped he did, in a way not; if not altogether satisfying, his life had been simple for some time now. Were he right, it might not long stay so.

He had only a moment to reflect; with a sudden toss of his head, the big man in orange spurred forward into the stream, which proved only
belly-deep on his mount. Without a second thought, his comrade with the horn followed. Cries of alarm rang along the line. The big man shouted them down.

With his size and his horse’s—it was one of the big-boned mountain breed—he towered over Arigh. But the Arshaum, backed by a much bigger army, met his stare with a king’s haughtiness; he had learned a great deal, treating with the Erzrumi. The local gave a rumbling grunt of approval. He said something in his own language. Arigh shook his head. “Videssian?” he asked.

“No,” the black-bearded chief said; it seemed the only word he knew. He tried again, this time in throaty Vaspurakaner. Narbas Kios translated: “The usual—he wants to know who we are and what in the name of Wickedness we’re doing here.”

“They follow the Four Prophets, then,” Skylitzes said, recognizing the oath.

“In the name of Wickedness it is, with Avshar and all,” Viridovix said.

“Aye.” Arigh began to explain their goal. When he said “Yezd,” both the locals growled; the younger one reached for the spiked mace on his hip. Thanks to Gunib and the other forts in the passes, the only nomads they had seen were Yezda raiders from the south, and thought Arigh was identifying himself as one. They laughed when Kios made them understand their mistake. “All we ask is passage and fodder,” Arigh said. “You can see from the bands with my men that we did not plunder their countryside. We’ll all loot to glut ourselves in Yezd.”

Black-Beard jerked his chin toward the Erzrumi with the Arshaum. “I care not a turd for them. But,” he admitted, “they are a sign you tell some of the truth.” He could not keep a glow from his eyes, the glow that comes to any hillman’s face when he thinks of the booty to be taken in the flatlands below.

He shook himself, as if awaking to business from a sweet dream. “You have given your names; let it be a trade. Know me to be Khilleu, prince of the Sworn Fellowship of the Yrmido. This is Atroklo, my—” He dropped back into his own tongue. Atroklo, who by the fuzziness of his beard could not have been far past twenty, smiled at the prince when his name was mentioned.

Gorgidas knew that smile, had felt it on his own face years—a lifetime!—ago, before he left provincial Elis for Rome and whatever it might offer. No, he thought, his life would not be the same.

Khilleu was laughing in his beard; his face was heavy-featured but open, a good face for a leader. “So you’d poke the Yezda, eh? I like that, truly I do.”

Atroklo broke in in their language, his voice, surprisingly, not much lighter than his chieftain’s bass. Khilleu pursed his lips judiciously and gave an indulgent wave, as if to say, “You tell it.” Atroklo did, in halting Vaspurakaner: “That wizard you speak—
spoke
—of, I think he pass through here.”

From the way all eyes swung toward him, he might have been a lode-stone. He reddened with the almost invisible flush of a swarthy man, but plowed ahead with his story. “Four days ago we find in field a black stallion, dead, that none of us knows.” He had given up on the past tense of his verbs. “It is a fine horse once, I think, but used to death. Used past death, I mean—never I see an animal so worn. A skeleton, lather long caked on sides, one hoof with no shoe and down to bloody nub. Cruel, I think then. Now I think maybe magic or desperate, or both. No tackle is with this dead horse, and next day our noble Aubolo finds two of his best beasts missing. Who thief is, he does not know then and does not know now.”

“Avshar!” Arigh’s companions exclaimed together; it was, Gorgidas thought, becoming a melancholy chorus. “Four days!” the Arshaum chief said bitterly. “See, we’ve lost another two to him. These Erzrumi can’t stay with us; they only slow us down.”

Khilleu had watched them closely; attitudes spoke for much, even if he could not follow their talk. He and Atroklo dropped into a low-voiced colloquy in the Yrmido tongue. The prince returned to Vaspurakaner. “I begin to believe you,” he said, looking straight at Arigh. “We too have suffered from the southern jackals, more than once. I ask you two questions: Would you have the Sworn Fellowship at your side? And will our charming neighbors,” he continued, irony lurking in that resonant bass, “bear with our coming?”

“As for the first, why not? One Erzrumi slows us as much as a thousand, and you look to have good men. As for the other, Hamrentz of the Khakuli said you were no cowards.”

“Among other things,” Atroklo guessed. His laugh and Khilleu’s did not sound amused.

“Here’s another argument for you, then,” Sklyitzes put in. “These Arshaum here outnumber all the hillmen with us three to one.”

“A point,” Khilleu said. He spread his hands. “In the end, what choice have I? You have not three, but ten times my numbers. Oh, we could hold out in our keeps if we would, but stop your passage? No.” Again, his chuckle was grim. “So I will leap on the snow leopard’s back, hold on to its ears, and pray to the Four to petition the kindly gods not to let it turn aside for my sheep.”

Atroklo blew a different call on his horn; Gorgidas watched a vein pulse at his temple. He must have played the signal for truce. The Sworn Fellowship abandoned their defensive stand at the edge of the stream and formed up into a long column.

“You will answer to me if you betray us,” Khilleu warned Arigh. “Tell that to Hamrentz and the rest, too; for all your numbers, I vow it.”

“No,” Arigh said. “I will tell them they will answer to me.”

“Spoken like a king!” Khilleu cried when Narbas translated. “I would have bid you to a feast at my keep this night for my own honor’s sake, but now I see I may enjoy the evening. Bring all these here. Invite my neighbor chiefs, too; some may come.” Wry mirth edged his voice. “There will be pleasures for every taste, not merely our own.”

“I will eat with you outside your castle, but not in it,” Arigh answered. He did not need Goudeles’ hisses or Skylitzes’ surreptitious wave to make him wary of the squat, square pile of masonry toward which the Yrmido chief was pointing.

Atroklo started an angry exclamation, but Khilleu cut him off. “Can’t say I blame you,” he told the Arshaum. “My Lio is a strong keep; if I intended mischief, I could hole up there for ten years. Outside it will be—at sunset? Good. Best your men camp here—not only, I admit, because there is good water, but also to keep as much distance between you and my people as we can.”

He waited, watching Arigh narrowly, ready to judge his sincerity by how he reacted. “Till sunset,” was all the nomad said. He wheeled his horse, leaving Khilleu to make the best of the economical plains style.

Hamrentz, whose respect for the Yrmido was grudging but real,
agreed to banquet with them, as did Gashvili, who owned frankly that he knew nothing about them for good or ill. The other Erzrumi leaders said no, with varying degrees of horror. One, Zromi of the Redzh, took up his hundred horsemen and rode from home at the thought of the Yrmido joining the expedition. “Good riddance,” Skylitzes said. “We gain more here than we lose, seeing the last of his band of thieves.”