An Emperor for the Legion (21 page)

The tribune gave them both his best courtier’s bow, but then, to his mortification, he heard himself blurting, “Will one of you please tell me what in Skotos’ name is going on?”

The captain frowned. He spat on the sand and looked through the fog toward heaven, his hands upraised. I’ve wounded his piety, Scaurus thought. Well, too bad for him.

Komitta looked down her elegant nose at the Roman. “The Emperor has decided it is time for his soldiers’ companions and families to rejoin them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Were you not informed of the move? A pity.” She was the perfect aristocrat, asking a servant’s pardon for some small oversight.

The tribune resisted an urge to take her by her sculpted shoulders and shake information out of her. It was the devout captain who came to his rescue: “The Key’s ships have declared for Gavras, now that he’s put the city under siege. They sailed up during the last fog; his Highness ordered them to stay hidden so they could take advantage of the next one to bring our kin across without interference from the Sphrantzai. Worked, too.”

“The Key,” Scaurus breathed. Now that someone had spelled it out for him in small simple words, he mentally kicked himself for his stupidity. The fleets of the island of the Key were second in importance in Videssos only to the capital’s, something he had known for a year and more. But, land-oriented foreigner that he was, the fact had held no meaning for him, even after some broad hints from Thorisin Gavras.

Viridovix, subject to no discipline but his own, had been hanging back a couple of paces behind the Roman. Now he came forward to lay an indignant hand on Marcus’ arm. “Is it that there’s no fight here after all?” he said.

“So it would seem.” The tribune nodded, still bemused.

“Isn’t that the way of it?” the Gaul said loudly. “The first one his honor gives me a fair chance at, and it turns out there’s not a fornicating thing for him to be giving, at all.”

The Videssian captain, as much a professional at war as a Roman veteran, looked at the Celt as he would at any other dangerous madman. There was a smoldering interest in Komitta Rhangawe’s eye, though, that Marcus hoped against hope Viridovix would not pick up.

Luck rode with him; the Gaul’s noisy complaint had caught more ears than the ones close by. Guided by it, two of his lemans came running up the beach to smother him with hugs and squeals of, “Viridovix! Darling! We missed you so much!” Viridovix patted them as best he could with a torch in one hand and his shield in the other. To Scaurus’ relief, Komitta’s high-arched nostrils pinched as they might at a bad smell.

Turning back to his men, the tribune quickly explained what the real situation was. The Romans raised a cheer, excited both by the new strength the Key’s fleet gave Gavras and, probably more, by the prospect of seeing their loved ones again. There was, Scaurus admitted reluctantly, something to
this Videssian custom of keeping a soldier’s family close by him, however much it went against the Roman way. The men stayed in better spirits and seemed to fight harder knowing that their families’ fate as well as their own depended on their valor.

“We came for the wrong reason,” he said to the legionaries, “but now that we’re here we can be useful. Take your torches down to the shore and help guide those boats in.”

That was a task they set to with a will, some of them even splashing out into the sea so the lights they carried would reach further. As the small boats beached, the Romans kept calling the names of their loved ones. A glad cry would ring out every few minutes as couples reunited. Scaurus saw some of these walk into the mist in search of privacy, but pretended not to notice; after the tension of a few minutes before, that sort of release was inevitable.

Then he heard a familiar contralto calling, “Marcus!” and forgot about Roman discipline himself. He folded Helvis into an embrace so tight that she squeaked and said, “Careful of the baby—and of me, too, you and your ironworks.” Dosti was sound asleep in the crook of her right arm.

“Sorry,” he lied; even through armor the feel of her roused him. She laughed, understanding him perfectly. She leaned against his shoulder, tilted her head up for a kiss.

Malric ran his hands over the tribune’s mail. The excitement of the trip had kept him wide awake. “Papa,” he said, “I was on the ship with the sailors and then on the little boat going through the waves with mama, and—”

“Good,” Marcus said, absently ruffling his stepson’s hair. Malric’s adventures could wait. Scaurus’ other hand was sliding to tease Helvis’ breast, and she smiling up from eyes suddenly heavy-lidded and sensuous.

Out of the fog came a volley of discordant trumpet blasts, the metallic clatter of men running in mail, and loud shouts: “Gavras! Thorisin! The Emperor!”

“Ordure,” muttered the tribune, all thoughts of love-making banished. He cursed himself for a fool. Somehow he had managed to forget the warning Zeprin the Red had taken to Thorisin. The Haloga had done his job only too well, it seemed; from the sound of them, hundreds of men were rushing the beach to meet the nonexistent invaders.

“Gavras!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, and the legionaries
took up the cry, feeling at first hand the predicament in which they’d put the Videssian cavalry an hour before. An unpleasant prospect, being attacked by one’s own army.

The Emperor’s horsemen on the beach shouted as loudly as the Romans.

“Are you handling the traitors out there, Scaurus?” Thorisin was quite invisible, but the tribune could hear amusement struggling with concern in his voice.

“Quite well, thank you. We might have done better if we’d known they were coming.” Gavras had known that. “My plans are foggy,” Marcus remembered him saying. Foggy, forsooth! But he had not seen fit to tell his commanders. The jolt he must have got when Zeprin the Red stormed his tent shouting treachery served him right, Scaurus decided; he must have wondered if his scheme had turned in his hand to bite him.

The tribune gave him credit for taking nothing for granted; he had come ready to fight at need, and quickly, too. Now that they saw there was no danger, the troopers he had brought with him came running down to the seaside to help the boats in. It grew crowded and confused on the beach, but happy.

Komitta Rhangawe shrieked when Thorisin, mounted on his borrowed black, scooped her up and set her in front of his saddle like a prize of war. Gaius Philippus clucked in disapproval. “There’s times when I wonder if he takes this war seriously enough to win,” he said.

“Remember Caesar,” Marcus said.

The senior centurion’s eyes grew sad and fond, as at the mention of an old lover. “That bald whoremonger? Him and his Gallic tarts,” he said, pure affection in his voice. “Aye, but you’re right, he was a lion in the field. Caesar, eh?” he echoed musingly. “If the Gavras does half so well, we’ll get our names in more histories than Gorgidas’, and no mistake. Along with a copper, that’ll buy you some wine.”

“Scoffer,” the tribune snorted, but knew he’d made his point.

Afterglow upon him, Marcus took some of his weight on his elbows. Helvis sighed, an animal sound of content. He listened to the ocean rhythm of his pulse, more compelling than the surf muttering to itself in the distance.

“Why isn’t it always like this?” he said, more to some observer who was not there than to Helvis or himself.

He did not think she heard him. His fingers curious now in a new way, he touched her face, trying to bridge the gap between them. It was no good, of course; she remained the stubborn mystery anyone outside the self must always be, however closely bodies join. He looked down at her in the darkness inside their tent and could not read her eyes.

So he was startled when she shrugged beneath him, her sweat-slick skin slipping against his. Her voice was serious as she answered, “Much good can come from love, I think, but also much evil. Each time we begin, we make Phos’ Wager again and bet on the good; this time we won.”

He blinked there in the gloom; a thoughtful reply to his question was the last thing he had expected. The Namdaleni used their wager to justify right conduct in a world where they saw good and evil balanced. Though they were not sure Phos would triumph in the end, they staked their souls on acting as if his victory was certain. The comparison, Marcus had to admit, was apt.

And yet it did not bring Helvis closer to him, but only served to make plain their differences. She reached for her god in explanation as automatically as for a towel to dry her hands.

Then his nagging thoughts fell silent, for they were moving together again, her arms tightening round his back. Her breath warm in his ear, she whispered, “Too many never know the good at all, darling; be thankful we have it when we do.”

For once he could not disagree. His lips came down on hers.

Once he had used the cover of fog to bring his soldiers’ households over the Cattle-Crossing, Thorisin Gavras unleashed his new-found navy against the city’s fleet. He hoped the sailors in the capital would follow those from the Key into rebellion against the Sphrantzai. Several captains did abandon the seal-stampers’ cause for Gavras, bringing ships and crews with them.

But Taron Leimmokheir, more by his example and known integrity than any overt persuasion, held the bulk of the city’s fleet to Ortaias and his uncle. The sea fight quickly grew more bitter than the stagnant siege before Videssos. Raid and counterraid saw galleys sunk and burned; pallid, bloated corpses
would drift ashore days later, reminders that the naval war had horrors to match any the land could show.

The leader of the Key’s fleets was a surprisingly young man, handsome and very much aware of it. Like most of the Videssian nobles Scaurus had come to know, this Elissaios Bouraphos was a touchy customer. “I thought we sailed to help you,” he growled to Thorisin Gavras at an early morning officers’ conference, “not to do all your bloody fighting for you.” He ran his hands through hair that was beginning to thin at the temples, a habitual gesture; Marcus wondered if he was checking the day’s losses.

“Well, what would you have me do?” Thorisin snapped back. “Storm the walls in a grand assault? I could spend five times the men I have on that, and well you know it. But with your ships aprowl, the seal-stampers can’t bring a pound of olives or a dram of wine into Videssos. They’ll get hungry in there by and by.”

“So they will,” Elissaios agreed sardonically. “But the Yezda will be fat, for they’ll have eaten up the westlands while you sit here on your arse.”

Silence fell round the table; Bouraphos had said aloud what everyone there thought in somber moments. In the civil war the Sphrantzai and Gavras both mustered what men they could round the capital, leaving the provinces to fend for themselves. Time enough to pick up the pieces after the victory was won … if any pieces were left.

“By Phos, he’s right,” Baanes Onomagoulos said to Thorisin. As was true of a good many of Gavras’ officers, he had wide holdings in the westlands. “If I hear the wolves are outside Garsavra, Skotos strike me dead if I don’t take my lads home to protect it.”

The Emperor slowly rose to his feet. His eyes blazed, but his temper was under the rein of his will; each word he spoke might have been cut from steel. “Baanes, pull one man out of line without my leave and you will be struck dead, but not by Skotos. I’ll do it myself, I vow. You gave me your oath and your proskynesis—you cannot take them back at a whim. Do you hear me, Baanes?”

Onomagoulos locked eyes with him; Thorisin stared back inflexibly. It was the marshal’s eyes that broke away, flicking down the table to measure his support. “Aye, I hear you, Thorisin. Whatever you say, of course.”

“Good. We’ll speak no more about it, then,” Gavras answered evenly, and went on with the business of the council.

“He’s going to let him get away with that?” Gaius Philippus whispered incredulously to Marcus.

“It’s just Onomagoulos’ way of talking,” the tribune whispered back, but he, too, was troubled. Baanes still had the habit of treating Thorisin Gavras as a boy; Scaurus wondered what it would take to make him lose that image of the Emperor in his mind.

Such nebulous concerns were swept away when the Romans returned to camp. Quintus Glabrio met them outside the palisade. “What’s gone wrong?” Marcus asked at once, reading the junior centurion’s tight-set features.

“I—you—” Glabrio started twice without being able to go forward; he could not control his voice as he did his face. He made a violent gesture of frustration and disgust, then spun on his heel and walked off, leaving his superiors to follow if they would.

Scaurus and Gaius Philippus exchanged mystified glances. Glabrio was as cool as they came; neither of them had seen him anything but quietly capable—until now.

He led them south past the camp, down along the earthwork the legionaries had thrown up to besiege Videssos. A knot of men had gathered at one of the sentry posts. As he came closer, Scaurus saw they all bore the same expression of mixed horror and rage that welled up through Quintus Glabrio’s impassive mask.

The knot unraveled at the tribune’s approach; the legionaries seemed glad of any excuse to get away. That left two men shielding what lay there, Gorgidas and Phostis Apokavkos.

“Are you sure you want to see this, Scaurus?” Gorgidas asked, turning to the tribune. His face was pale, though as legionary physician he had seen more pain and death than a dozen troopers rolled together.

“Stand aside,” Marcus said harshly. The Greek and Apokavkos moved back to show him Doukitzes’ corpse. He moaned. He could not stop himself. Was it for this, he thought, that I rescued the little sneak thief from Mavrikios’ wrath? For this? The body there before him mutely answered yes.

Splayed now in death, Doukitzes was even smaller than
Scaurus remembered. He seemed more a doll cast aside by some vicious child than a man. But where would any child, no matter how vicious, have gained the horrendous skill for the deliberate, obscene mutilations that stole any semblance of dignity, of humanity, from the huddled corpse?

A pace behind him, he heard Gaius Philippus suck in a long, whistling breath of air. He did not notice his own hands clenching to fists until his nails bit into his palms.