Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (101 page)

Gaius Philippus acted as if he had been waiting for the blow. He spun and grappled with his other captor, giving Tabari the moment he needed to wrench out the sword.

Scaurus’ guards hesitated a fatal instant. Had they shoved him away at once, they might have quickly overwhelmed Tabari and then wheeled round to retake him. As it was, he managed to thrust out a foot and trip one of them. He sprang on the fellow’s back, grabbing for his knife wrist.

The Yezda was strong as a bull. They thrashed on the ground. The tribune felt his grip failing. The guard tore his hand free. His dagger slashed along Scaurus’ ribs. Gasping, the tribune tried to seize his arm again, all the while waiting for the thrust that would end it. I made them kill me, he thought with something like triumph.

The guard snorted, as if in disdain. The weight pressing on Marcus suddenly grew heavier. He groaned and shoved desperately at the Yezda. The guard slid off, knife clattering to the floor as it slipped from his fingers. Another dagger stood in his back. Gaius Philippus pulled it out. Marcus’ nose caught the death stench of suddenly loosed bowels.

The other guards were down, too. The one Gaius Philippus had fought lay unmoving. “Bastard had a hard head, but not as hard as a stone floor,” the senior centurion said. And Tabari knelt by the last one, wiping the Gallic sword clean on the fellow’s caftan.

“You are hurt,” the Yezda minister said, pointing to the spreading red stain on Marcus’ chest. He helped the tribune shed his tunic, tore rags to try to dress the long cut that ran down from just outside Scaurus’ left nipple. The bleeding slowed but did not stop; the rough bandages began to grow soggy with blood.

“That was all an act, you cheering Avshar on up there?” Gaius Philippus demanded. He did not sound as though he believed it, and held his dagger in a knife-fighter’s crouch.

“No, not all of it,” Tabari said.

Gaius Philippus was poised to hurl himself at the minister. “Hear him out,” Marcus said quickly.

Calmly, Tabari went on, “I’ve long favored Avshar over Wulghash; he will make Yezd mighty. But I have already said once that I judge my debts.” He handed Marcus the Gallic sword. The tribune snatched at it; without it, he felt more than half unmanned.

As Scaurus struggled to his feet, Gaius Philippus snapped at Tabari, “Are you crazy, man? When that walking corpse finds out you’ve let us go, you’ll envy what he had planned for us.”

“That thought had occurred to me.” One of Tabari’s dark eyebrows quirked upward. “I will ask you, then, to lay me out roughly—I hope without permanent damage. If I am stunned and battered when found, everyone will think I put up the best fight I could.”

“What do we do then?” Marcus said.

“Can you walk?”

Scaurus tried it. The effort it took dismayed him; he could feel blood trickling down his belly. But he said, “If I have to, I can. I’d try flying to keep out of Avshar’s hands.”

“Then go into the maze of tunnels down here.” Tabari pointed to an opening in the rock wall. “They run farther than any man knows these days, except perhaps Wulghash, and he is dead. Maybe you will find a way free. I have no better hope to offer you.”

“I think I’d sooner fly,” Gaius Philippus muttered mistrustfully, eyeing the blank black hole. But there was no help for it; he realized that as fast as Marcus.

Tabari drew himself up to stiff attention. “At your service,” he said, and waited.

Gaius Philippus approached him, thumped him on the shoulder. “I’ve never done this as a favor before,” he said. In the middle of the sentence, he slammed his left fist into Tabari’s belly. As the minister folded, Gaius Philippus’ right hand crashed against his jaw. He slumped to the floor.

Rubbing bruised knuckles, the senior centurion opened the unconscious man’s tunic and used the dagger to make a bloody scratch on his chest. “Now they’ll figure we thought he was dead.”

“Don’t forget to cut the tunic, too,” Marcus said. Gaius Philippus
swore at himself and attended to it. Marcus took canteens from the dead guards—no telling how long the Romans might wander this labyrinth. He wished the Yezda had food with them. When he was finished, he saw Gaius Philippus pulling torches from the sconces set in the tunnel wall. “Why do that? All these ways should have lights ready for us to take.”

“Aye, but if we do, whoever comes after us will be able to track us by it,” the veteran said, and it was Scaurus’ turn for chagrin. Gaius Philippus went on, “Eventually we’ll have to start using the torches we come on, but by then we should be lost enough that it won’t matter.” The centurion’s chuckle held no mirth. He strode toward the lightless tunnel entrance. Marcus reluctantly followed. The two Romans plunged in together.

The circle of light behind them shrank, then abruptly vanished as the tunnel veered to the right. Before and behind the flickering glow of the torch was impenetrable black.

Gaius Philippus led, holding the brand high. Marcus did his best to keep up. The cut along his ribs began to stiffen. He did not think he was bleeding anymore, but the wound made him slow and weak. In spite of himself, he would fall behind, into the darkness.

When he did, he saw the druids’ marks on his sword glowing faintly—magic somewhere, he thought. As long as the gleam stayed dim, he refused to let it worry him.

The way branched every hundred paces or so. The Romans went now left, now right at random. At every turning they put three pebbles by the way they chose. “They’ll keep us from doubling back on ourselves,” Scaurus said.

“Unless we miss ’em, of course.”

“Cheerful, aren’t you?” Marcus thought they were deeper underground; his ears had popped again. There was no sign of pursuit behind them. They would have heard it a long way off; but for their own breathing and the faint sound of their feet on stone, the silence was absolute as the darkness.

After a while they paused to rest. They drank a couple of swallows of water. Then, feeling like ants lost in a strange burrow, they wandered on. Once, far off, they saw a lighted corridor and shied away as if it were Avshar in person.

“What’s that?” Gaius Philippus said—something was scratched into the side of the tunnel.

“It’s in the Videssian script,” Marcus said in surprise. “Bring the light close. No, hold it to one side so shadow fills the letters. There, better.” He read: “ ‘I, Hesaios Stenes of Resaina, dug this tunnel and wrote these words. Sharbaraz of Makuran took me in the ninth year of the Avtokrator Genesios. Phos guard the Avtokrator and me.’ ”

“Poor sod,” Gaius Philippus said. “I wonder when this Emperor Genesios lived.”

“I couldn’t tell you. Alypia would know.” Her name sent a wave of loneliness washing over Scaurus.

“I hope you get the chance to ask her, not that it looks likely.” Gaius Philippus shook a canteen. The tribune did not need the slosh to remind him they only had so much water. A couple of days after that was gone and it would not matter whether Avshar tracked them down or not.

They pressed on. They no longer needed to mark a path. This deep in the maze, long-undisturbed dust held their footprints.

Hesaios’ graffito went back to the night that had enfolded it for centuries.

The Romans’ only pastime in the tunnels was talk, and they used it till they grew hoarse. Gaius Philippus’ stories reached back to the days when Scaurus was a child. The veteran had first campaigned under Gaius Marius, against the Italians in the Social War and then against Sulla. “Marius was old and half-crazy by then, but even in the wreck of him you could see what a soldier he’d been. Some of his centurions had been with him in every fight since Jugurtha; they worshipped him. Of course he made most of them—till his day, landless men couldn’t serve in the legions.”

“I wonder if that’s better,” Marcus said. “With no land of their own, they’re always beholden to their general, and a danger to the state.”

“So say you, who grew up landed,” Gaius Philippus retorted, the gut response of a man born poor. “If he can get ’em land, more power to him. What would they do without the army? Starve in the city like that Apokavkos you rescued in Videssos—and not many as bad at thieving as him.”

Only women ranked with war and politics for hashing over. Despite
his earlier try at sympathy, Gaius Philippus could not understand Marcus’ devotion first to Helvis and then to Alypia. “Why buy a sheep if all you want is wool?”

“What do you know? You married the legions.” The tribune intended that for a joke, but saw it was true. It gave him pause; he went on carefully, “A good woman halves sorrows and doubles joys.” But he had the feeling he was explaining poetry to a deaf man.

He was right. Gaius Philippus said, “Doubles sorrow and halves joy, you ask me. Leaving Helvis out of the bargain—”

“Good idea,” Scaurus said quickly. The abandonment was fresh enough still to ache in him every time he thought of it.

“All right. What has Alypia given you, then, that you couldn’t have for silver from some tavern wench? I take it you weren’t bedding her for ambition’s sake?”

“
Et tu?
You sound like Thorisin.” From anyone else, the blunt questions would have angered Marcus, but he knew the centurion’s manner. He answered seriously. “What has she given me? Besides honest affection, which silver won’t buy, her courage outdoes any man’s I know of, to hold herself together through all she’s endured. She’s clever, and kind, and gives everything she has—wisdom, wit, heart—for those she cares about. I only hope to be able to do as much. When I’m with her, I’m at peace.”

“You should write paeans,” Gaius Philippus grunted. “At peace, is it? Seems to me she’s brought you enough trouble for four men, let alone one.”

“She’s saved me some, too. If not for her, who knows what Thorisin would have done after”—he hesitated; here came the hurt again—“after the Namdaleni got away.”

“Oh, aye. Kept you out of jail a few extra months—and made sure you’d be in hotter water when you did land there.”

“That’s not the fault of who she is; it’s the fault of who she was born.”

Marcus had hardly noticed the druids’ marks stamped into his blade gleaming brighter, but now they were outshining Gaius Philippus’ torch. “Hold up,” he told the veteran. “There’s magic somewhere close.” They peered into the darkness, hands tight on their weapons, sure sorcery could only mean Avshar.

But there was no sign of the wizard-prince. Scratching his head, Scaurus took a few steps back the way he had come. The druids’ marks grew fainter. “In front, then. Give me the lead, Gaius. The sword will turn magic from me.”

They traded places. The tribune slowly moved forward, sword held before him like a shield. The glow from it grew steadily brighter, until the tunnel that had never known daylight was lit bright as noon.

In that golden light the pit ahead remained a patch of blackness. It was three times the length of a man; only a narrow stone ledge allowed passage on either side. Scaurus held his sword over the edge of the pit and looked down. The bottom was wickedly spiked; two points thrust up through the rib cage of a skeleton sprawled in ungainly death.

Gaius Philippus tapped Marcus on the shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”

“Very funny. One more step and I’ll keep that fellow down there company.” The tribune pointed to what was left of the victim in the pit.

Or so he thought. The senior centurion gave him a puzzled look. “What fellow? Down where? All I see is a lot of dusty floor.”

“No pit? No spears set in the bottom of it? No skeleton? One of us has lost his wits.” Scaurus had an inspiration. “Here—take my sword.”

They both exclaimed then, Marcus because as the sword left his fingers the pit disappeared, leaving what lay ahead no different to the eye from the rest of the tunnel, Gaius Philippus for exactly the opposite reason as he took the blade. “Is it real?” he asked.

“Do you care to find out? Three steps forward and you’ll know.”

“Hmm. The ledge’ll do fine, thanks. We see that with or without.” He held out the blade to Scaurus. “You take it in your left hand, I’ll hold it in my right, and we’ll sidle by crab-fashion, our backs to the wall. We’ll both be able to see what we’re doing that way—I hope.”

As the tribune touched the sword hilt, the pit jumped into visibility again. The ledge was wide enough for the Romans’ feet and not much more. Some of the spikes below still gleamed brightly, reflecting the light of the sword; others had rusty points and dark-stained shafts that told their own story.

The Romans were about two thirds of the way across when Marcus stumbled. His foot slipped off the edge, toes curling on emptiness. Gaius
Philippus slammed him back against the tunnel wall with a strong forearm. The jar sent anguish through him. When he could speak again, he wheezed, “Thanks. It’s real, all right.”

“Thought so. Here, have a swig.” Even with his sudden sideways leap to save Scaurus, the veteran had not spilled a drop of precious water. Marcus’ stomach twisted at the thought of impalement.

The druids’ stamps dimmed once more as the Romans put distance between themselves and the pit. Gaius Philippus returned to the lead, his torch a better light than the tribune’s blade.

As the sword faded, though, excitement flared in Scaurus. He said, “The Makurani wouldn’t have dug that mantrap if it didn’t guard the way to something important—the escape route?”

“Maybe.” With ingrained pessimism, Gaius Philippus added, “I wonder what else they used to keep unwelcome guests out.”

Hope revived brought fresh anxiety. Every branching of the tunnel became a crisis; the wrong choice might mean throwing freedom away. For a while the Romans agonized over each decision. At last Gaius Philippus said, “A pox on it. The dithering doesn’t help. One way or the other, we just go.” That helped, some.

Scaurus lifted his head like a hunted animal tasting the wind. “Stand still,” he whispered. Gaius Philippus froze. The tribune listened, then grimaced at what he heard. The corridors behind them were silent no more. Echoing strangely in the distance, now strong, now faint, came the cries of soldiers and, like the murmur of surf, the sound of trotting feet. Avshar had awakened to his loss.