Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (89 page)

They took a wrong turn backtracking and were lost for a few minutes, but the noise and lights of the main street made it easy to orient themselves again. They emerged a couple of blocks down from where they had turned aside to go to Souanites’ and promptly bumped into the fig seller, who had been working his way through the gathering crowd. His tray was nearly empty, he spread his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry I no longer have such a fine view to offer you.”

“We owe you a favor,” Marcus said. With Leikhoudes between them, he and Gaius Philippus elbowed their way to the front of the crowd. They won some black looks, but Scaurus was half a head taller than most of the men and Gaius Philippus, though of average size, did not have the aspect of one with whom it would be wise to quarrel. Leikhoudes exclaimed in delight.

They were just in time, though the first part of the procession left the Romans fiercely bored. The company of Zemarkhos’ militia drew cheers from their neighbors, but looked ragged, ill-armed, and poorly drilled to Marcus. They held the Yezda off with holy zeal, not the spit and polish that made troops impressive on parade. Nor was the tribune much impressed by the marching choruses that followed. For one thing, even his insensitive ear recognized them as rank amateurs. For another, most of their hymns were in the archaic language of the liturgy, which he barely understood.

“Are they not splendid?” Leikhoudes said. “There! See, in the third row—my cousin Stasios the shoemaker!” He pointed proudly. “Ho, Stasios!”

“I’ve never heard any singers to match them,” Scaurus said.

“Aye, but plenty to better them,” Gaius Philippus added, but in Latin.

Another chorus went by, this one accompanied by pipes, horns, and drums. The din was terrific. Then came a group of Amorion’s rich young men on prancing horses with manes decorated by ribbons and trappings bright with gold and silver.

The noise of the crowd turned ugly as a double handful of half-naked men in chains stumbled past, prodded along by more of Zemarkhos’ irregulars with spears. The prisoners were stocky, swarthy, heavily bearded men. “Phos-cursed Vaspurakaners!” Leikhoudes screeched. “It was your sins, your beastly treacherous heresy that set the Yezda on us all!” The
crowd pelted them with clods of earth, rotten fruit, and horsedung. In a transport of fury, Leikhoudes hurled the last of his figs at them.

Marcus set his jaw; beside him Gaius Philippus shifted his feet and swore under his breath. They had no hope of making a rescue; to try would get them ripped to pieces by the mob.

The growls around them turned to cheers. “Zemarkhos! His Sanctity! The Defender!” With neighbors watching, no one dared sound halfhearted.

Before the fanatic priest marched the parasol bearers who symbolized power to the Videssians, as the lictors with their rods and axes did in Rome. Marcus whistled when he counted the flowers of blue silk. Fourteen—even Thorisin Gavras was only entitled to twelve.

As if oblivious to the adulation he was getting, Zemarkhos limped down the street, looking neither right nor left. His gaunt features were horribly scarred, as were his hands and arms. Limp and scars both came from the big prick-eared hound that paced at his side.

The hound was called Vaspur, after the legendary founder of the Vaspurakaner people. Zemarkhos had named it long before Maragha, to taunt the Vaspurakaner refugees who fled to his city. Finally Gagik Bagratouni had his fill of such vilification. He caught priest and dog together in a great sack, then kicked the sack. Striking out in pain and terror, Vaspur’s jaws had done the rest.

Marcus, who had been at Bagratouni’s villa, had persuaded the
nakharar
to let Zemarkhos out, fearing his death as a martyr would touch off the persecution the priest had been fomenting. Maybe it would have, but looking back, the tribune did not see how things could have gone worse for the “princes.” He wished he had let Vaspur finish tearing Zemarkhos’ life away.

The hound paused, growling, as it padded past the Romans. The hair stood up along its back. It had been close to three years, and the beast had only taken their scent for a few minutes; could it remember? For that matter, would Zemarkhos know them again if he saw them? Scaurus suddenly wished he were a short brunet, to be less conspicuous in the crowd.

But the dog walked on, and Zemarkhos with it. The tribune let out a soft sigh of relief. The priest had been dangerous before, but now he carried
an aura of brooding power that made Marcus wish he could raise his hackles like Vaspur. He did not think mere temporal authority had put that look on Zemarkhos’ ruined features; something stranger and darker dwelt there. By luck, it was directed inward now, growing, feeding on the priest’s fierce hate.

Still shouting, “Phos watch over the Defender,” the crowd fell in behind Zemarkhos as he made his way into Amorion’s central forum. They swept Scaurus and Gaius Philippus with them. More Videssians filled the edges of the square; the newcomers pushed and shoved to find places.

The spear-carrying guards forced their Vaspurakaner captives into the middle of the forum. They released the ends of the chains they held. One took a short-handled sledge from his belt and secured each prisoner by staking those free ends to the ground. A couple of the Vaspurakaners tugged at their bonds, but most simply stood, apathetic or apprehensive.

The guards moved away from them in some haste.

Zemarkhos limped toward the prisoners. Beside him, Vaspur barked and snarled, showing gleaming fangs. “Is he going to set the hound on them?” Gaius Philippus muttered in disgust. “What did they do to him?”

Marcus expected the dog to go for the prisoners in vengeance for Bagratouni’s treatment of Zemarkhos. That made a twisted kind of sense. But at the priest’s command it sat next to him. Zemarkhos’ profile was predatory as a hunting hawk’s as he focused his will on the Vaspurakaners.

He extended a long, clawlike finger in their direction. The crowd quieted. The priest quivered; Scaurus could fairly see him channeling the force that boiled within him. In a way, he thought, it was an obscene parody of the ritual healer-priests used to gather their concentration before they set to work.

But Zemarkhos did not intend to heal. “Accursed, damned, and lost be the Vaspurakaner race!” he cried, his shrill voice searing as red-hot iron. “Deceitful, evil, mad, capricious, with wickedness twice compounded! Malignant, treacherous, beastly, and obstinate in their foul heresy! Accursed, accursed, accursed!”

At every repetition, he stabbed his finger toward the captives. And at
every repetition, the crowd bayed in bloodthirsty excitement, for the Vaspurakaners writhed in torment, as if lashed by barbed whips. Two or three of them screamed, but the noise was drowned in the roar of the crowd.

“Accursed be the debased creatures of Skotos!” Zemarkhos screeched, and the prisoners fell to their knees, biting their lips against anguish. “Accursed be their every rite, their every mystery, abominable and hateful to Phos! Accursed be their vile mouths, which speak in blasphemies!” And blood dripped down into the Vaspurakaners’ beards.

“Accursed be these wild dogs, these serpents, these scorpions! I curse them all, to death and uttermost destruction!” With as much force as if he cast a spear, he shot his finger forward again. Their faces contorted in terror and agony, their eyes starting from their heads, the Vaspurakaners flopped about on the ground like boated fish, then subsided to twitching and finally stillness.

Only then did Zemarkhos, unwholesome triumph blazing in his eyes, stalk up to them and spurn their bodies with his foot. The crowd, fired to the religious enthusiasm that came all too readily to Videssians, shouted its approval. “Phos guard the Defender of the Faithful!” “Thus to all heretics!” “The true faith conquers!” One loud-voiced woman even cried out the imperial salutation: “Thou conquerest, Zemarkhos!”

The priest gave no sign the acclaim moved him. Urging Vaspur to his feet, he limped off toward his residence. He fixed his unblinking stare on the crowd and said harshly, “See to it you fall not into error, nor suffer your neighbor to do so.”

His people, though, were used to his unbending sternness and cheered him as though he had granted them a benediction. They streamed out of the plaza, well pleased with the night’s spectacle.

As they were making their way back to their meager lodgings, Gaius Philippus turned to Marcus and asked, “Are you sure you want to go through with what you planned?”

“Frankly, no.” The strength of Zemarkhos’ wizardry, fueled with a fanatic’s zeal and a tyrant’s rage, daunted the tribune. He walked some paces in silence. At last he said, “What other choice do I have, though? Would you sooner be an assassin, sneaking through the night?”

“I would,” Gaius Philippus answered at once, “if I didn’t think they’d
catch us afterward. Or, more likely, before. But I’m glad I’m no big part of your scheme.”

Marcus shrugged. “The Videssians are a subtle folk. What better to confound them with than the obvious?”

“Especially when it isn’t,” the veteran said.

Dawn the next day gave promise of the ferocious heat of the Videssian central plateau, the kind of heat that would quickly kill a man away from water. The horse trough in which Scaurus washed his head and arms was blood-warm.

He had no appetite for the loaf he bought from the innkeeper. Gaius Philippus finished what was left after polishing off his own. It was not, Marcus knew, that the other felt easier because he was sure of his safety. Had their roles been reversed, the unshakable centurion would not have eaten a bite less.

They stayed in the shade of the stable until early afternoon, drawing curious glances from the horseboys and the guests who came in to take their beasts.

When the shadows started to grow longer again, Marcus unpacked his full Roman military kit and donned it all—greaves, iron-studded kilt, mail shirt, helmet with high horsehair crest, scarlet cape of rank. Even in the shadows, he began to sweat at once.

Gaius Philippus, still in cloth, clambered aboard his spavined gray. He led the tribune’s saddled horse after him as he emerged from the stable and leaned down to clasp hands with Scaurus. “I’ll be ready at my end, not that it’ll make any difference if things go wrong. The gods with you, you great bloody fool.”

A good enough epitaph, Marcus thought as the senior centurion clopped away. His own progress was as leisurely as he could make it; in armor under that blazing sun he understood, not for the first time, how a lobster must feel boiled in its shell.

He collected a crowd of small boys before he got to Amorion’s chief street. The youngsters had grown used to soldiers, but not ones so resplendent as he. He gave out coppers with a free hand; he wanted to attract all the notice he could. He asked, “Is Zemarkhos preaching today?”

Some of the lads perked up at mention of the priest, while others watched the tribune with blank faces; not through love alone did Zemarkhos rule Amorion. One of the boys who had smiled said, “Aye, so he is, sir. He talks in the plaza every day, he do.”

“Thanks.” Scaurus gave him another coin.

“Thank
you
, sir. Are you going to go listen to him? I can see, sir, you’ve come from far away, maybe even just to hear him? Isn’t he a marvel? Have you ever run across his like?”

“That I haven’t, son,” the Roman said truthfully. “Yes, I’m going to listen to him. I may,” he went on, “even speak with him.”

The corpses of the Vaspurakaners still lay in their agonized postures in the center of the square. They did nothing to slow the furious buying and selling of the
panegyris
, which went on all around them. Two rug sellers had set up stalls across from each other, and loudly sneered at one another’s merchandise. A swordsmith worked a creaking grindstone with a foot pedal as he sharpened customers’ knives. A plump matron examined herself in a merchant’s bronze mirror, looking for flaws in the speculum and in her makeup. She put it down with a reluctant nod; the haggling began in earnest.

Sellers of wine, nuts, roasted fowls, ale, fruit juice, figs, little spiced cakes, and a hundred other delicacies wandered through the eager crowd, crying their wares. So did strongmen sweating under the great stones they had heaved over their heads, strolling musicians, acrobats—including one who walked on his hands and had a beggar’s tin cup tied to his leg—trainers with their performing dogs or talking ravens, puppeteers, and a host of other mountebanks.

And so, for all Zemarkhos’ ascetic prudery, did prostitutes, drawn with the other merchants to the
panegyris’
concentration of wealth. Marcus spied Gaius Philippus, well posted at the edge of the square, talking with a tall, dark-haired woman, attractive in a stern-faced way. Perhaps she reminded him of Nerse Phorkaina, the tribune thought. She slid her dress off one shoulder for a moment to show the centurion her breasts. Startled, Marcus laughed—perhaps she didn’t, too.

As the street lad promised, Zemarkhos was exhorting a good-sized gathering. Flanked by several spear-carrying guardsmen, he stood, Vaspur at his side, behind a portable rostrum. He emphasized his points by
pounding it with his fists. Scaurus did not need to have heard the first part of the harangue to know what it was about.

“They are Skotos’ spawn,” Zemarkhos was shouting, “seeking to corrupt Phos’ untarnished faith through the vile mockery of it they practice in their heretical rites. Only by their destruction may right doctrine be preserved without blemish. Aye, and by the destruction of those deluded heresy-lovers in the capital, whose mercy on the disbelievers’ bodies will be justly requited with torment to their souls!”

The audience cheered him on, crying, “Death to the heretics! Zemarkhos’ curse take the hypocrites! Praise the wisdom of Zemarkhos the Defender, scourge of the wicked Vaspurakaners!”

Flicking his crimson cape round him, Marcus worked his way toward Zemarkhos’ podium. He cut an impressive figure; people who turned to grumble as he pushed past them muttered apologies and stepped back to let him by. Soon he stood in the second or third row, close enough to see the veins bulging at Zemarkhos’ throat and on his forehead as he ranted against his chosen victims.