Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (38 page)

They had little more chance for talk; the temple was filling fast with chattering Garsavrans. Scaurus took a seat in the first row of benches, leaving Zigabenos alone by the altar. In his shabby cloak, he was a poor match for its silver-plated magnificence.

Lavros had disappeared for a few minutes. He returned bearing a large pair of scissors and a razor with a glittering edge. A second priest followed him, a swarthy, stocky man who carried an unadorned blue robe and bore a copy of Phos’ sacred writings, bound in rich red leather, under his arm. The townsfolk grew quiet as they strode toward the holy table in the center of the shrine.

Zigabenos lowered his head toward Lavros. The scissors snipped, shearing away his thick black hair. Once there was only stubble on his
pate, Lavros wielded the razor. Zigabenos’ scalp gleamed pale, and seemed all the whiter when compared to his sun-weathered face.

The short, swarthy priest held out the leather-bound volume to the officer, saying formally, “Behold the law under which you shall live if you choose. If in your heart you feel you can observe it, enter the monastic life; if not, speak now.”

Head still bent, Zigabenos murmured, “I will observe it.” The priest asked him twice more; his voice gained strength with each affirmation. After the last repetition, the priest bowed in turn to Zigabenos, handed his book to Lavros, and invested the new monk with his monastic garb. Again following ritual, he said, “As the garment of Phos’ blue covers your naked body, so may his righteousness enfold your heart and preserve it from all evil.”

“So may it be,” Zigabenos whispered; the Garsavrans echoed his words.

Lavros prayed silently for a few moments, then said, “Brother Mertikes, would it please you to lead this gathering in Phos’ creed?”

“May I?” said Zigabenos—no, Mertikes, Scaurus thought, for Videssian monks yielded up their surnames. His voice was truly grateful; the tribune had yet to meet a Videssian who took his faith lightly. Mertikes was a strange sight, standing by the rich altar in his severely plain robe, a little trickle of blood on the side of his newly shaved head where the razor had cut too close. But even Scaurus the unbeliever was oddly moved as he led the worshipers in the splendid archaic language of their creed, “We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.”

“Amen,” the Garsavrans finished, and Marcus found himself repeating it with them. Lavros said, “This service is completed.” The crowd began to stream away. Mertikes came up to squeeze Scaurus’ hand with his own strong clasp. Then Lavros said gently, “Come with me, brother, and I will take you to the monastery and introduce you to your fellow servants of Phos.” Head up now, not looking back, the new monk followed him.

That crisis solved itself neatly, but was only peripheral to the greater problem of the captive Namdalener lords. A week after Zigabenos became Brother Mertikes, a mob tried to storm the provincial governor’s hall and free Drax and his comrades. The legionaries had to use steel to
drive the rioters back, leaving a score of them dead and many more wounded. They lost two of their own as well, and after that the Romans could only walk Garsavra’s streets by squads. Three nights later the townsmen tried again. This time Marcus was ready for them. Khatrisher archers on the roof of the hall broke the mob’s charge before it was well begun, and none of the tribune’s men was hurt.

He knew, though, that he did not have the troops to hold down sedition forever, not and watch Yavlak, too. And so he met with the Namdaleni in their confinement. Soteric gave a sardonic bow. “You honor us, brother-in-law. I’ve seen my sister a few times, but you never deigned visit before.”

And Bailli sneered. “Still sweating, are you? I hope they wring all the water from your carcass.” Drax’ lieutenant was far from forgetting the peasant irregulars.

The great count himself sat quiet, along with Turgot. Marcus guessed that Turgot did not care what he was about to say; Drax’ silence was likelier from policy.

The tribune nodded to Bailli. “Yes, I’m still sweating. I don’t fancy going through another night like the couple just past and I don’t intend to, either. And so, gentlemen—” He looked from one islander to the next. “—something will have to be done about you. Easiest would be to strike off your heads and put them on pikes in the marketplace.”

“Whoreson,” Soteric said.

Drax leaned forward, alert now. “You’d not say that if it was your plan.”

“I’ll do it if I have to,” Marcus answered, but he admired the great count’s quickness all the same. “Truly, I’d sooner not—it’s Thorisin’s place to judge what you deserve. But I won’t chance the townsfolk freeing you. You’re too dangerous to the Empire for that.” Drax bowed slightly, as if acknowledging praise.

“What do you leave us with, then?” Soteric demanded scornfully.

“Your bare lives, if you want them. Do you?” The tribune waited. As the Namdaleni saw he meant the question, they slowly nodded, Turgot last of all. “Very well, then …”

“You’re getting good at these spectacles,” Gaius Philippus said out of the corner of his mouth. “The locals’ll think twice before they get gay.” A hollow square of legionaries in full battle dress stood at attention in the center of the Garsavran marketplace,
pila
grounded, staring stolidly out at the hostile Videssians around them. A raw northerly breeze whipped their cloaks back from their shoulders.

“I’m glad the weather’s holding off,” Marcus said. When the wind came from the north, rain and then snow were bound to follow. The tribune was happy to be next to the small fire in the center of the Romans’ square—until a blown spark stung his calf behind his greave. He cursed and rubbed.

The buccinators’ horns brayed; heads turned toward the maniple tramping into the marketplace, its swords drawn and menacing. Taller than their Roman captors, Drax and Bailli, Soteric and Turgot were easy to recognize in the center of the column.

Marcus glanced toward Ansfrit, the captain of the Namdalener castle, to whom he had granted a safe-conduct to his drama. Ansfrit looked as though he wanted to try a rescue on the spot, but the fearsome aspect of Scaurus’ troopers was enough to intimidate the Garsavrans.

The maniple merged with the hollow square. Legionaries frogmarched their prisoners up to the tribune, two to each islander. In front of them strode Zeprin the Red. The enormous Haloga cut an awesome figure in the gleaming gilded cuirass of Imperial Guards—freshly re-gilded for the occasion, in fact. He saluted Scaurus Roman-style, shooting right fist out and up. “Behold the traitors!” he cried, bass thundering through the open market.

Barefoot, shivering in the wind in thin gray linen tunics, fists clenched tight with tension, the men of the Duchy awaited judgment. The silence stretched. Then the crowd of Garsavrans around the square of the legionaries parted as if fearing disease, to let a single figure through. Like Spartan hoplites of the world Scaurus had known, Videssian executioners wore red to make the stains of their calling less evident. Only the man’s black buskins were not the color of blood.

There were Yezda in the crowd; the tribune saw them staring admiringly at the tall, angular, masked shape of the executioner. Here was pomp and ceremony to suit them, he thought with distaste.

No help for that—he was bound to go on with what he had devised. “Hear me, people of Garsavra,” he said; Styppes had been glad to help with
this
speech. “As traitors and rebels against his Imperial Majesty Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator of the Videssians, these wretches deserve no less than death. Only my mercy spares them that.” But as his listeners began to brighten, he went on inexorably, “Yet as a mark of the outrage they have worked on the Empire, and as fit warning to any others who might be mad enough to contemplate revolt, let the sight of their eyes be extinguished and let them know Skotos’ darkness forevermore!” By Videssian reckoning, that constituted mercy, for it avoided capital punishment.

But a moan rose from the crowd, overtopped by Ansfrit’s bellow of anguish. The Garsavrans started to surge forward, but Roman
pila
snapped out in bristling hedgehog array to hold them off.

Inside the hollow square, the four Namdaleni jerked as if stung. “Blinded?” Drax howled. “I’d sooner die!” The islanders wrenched against their captors’ grip and, with panic strength, managed to tear free for an instant. But for all their struggles, the legionaries wrestled them to the ground and held them there, pulling away the hands with which they vainly tried to shield their eyes.

Tunelessly humming a hymn to Phos, the executioner put the tip of a thin pointed iron in the fire. He lifted it every so often to gauge its color; his thick gloves of crimson leather protected him from the heat. Finally he grunted in satisfaction and turned to Scaurus. “Which of ’em first?”

“As you wish.”

“You, then.” Bailli happened to be closest to the executioner, who went on, not unkindly, “Try to hold as steady as you can; ’twill be easier for you so.”

“Easier,” Bailli mocked through clenched teeth; sweat poured down his face. Then the iron came down, once, twice. Tight-jawed no longer, the snub-nosed Namdalener screamed and screamed. The scent of charring meat filled the air.

Pausing between victims to reheat his iron, the executioner moved on to Turgot and Drax, and then at last to Soteric. Helvis’ brother’s cries were all curses aimed Marcus’ way. He stood unmoved over the fallen
Namdaleni and answered only, “You brought this upon yourselves.” The burned-meat smell was very strong now, as if someone had forgotten a roasting joint of pork.

The legionaries helped their groaning, sobbing prisoners sit, pulling thick black veils over their eyes to hide the hot iron’s work. “Show them to the people,” Scaurus commanded. “Let them see what they earn by defying their rightful sovereign.” The troopers who formed the hollow square opened lanes to let the crowd look on the Namdaleni.

“Now take them away,” the tribune said. No one raised a hand to stop the islanders from being guided back to their captivity in the governor’s hall. They stumbled against each other as they staggered between their Roman guards.

“Ansfrit,” Marcus called. The Namdalener captain approached, fear and rage struggling on his pale face. Scaurus gave him no time to compose himself: “Surrender your castle to me within the day, or when we take it—and you know we can—everyone of your men will suffer the same fate as these turncoats. Yield now, and I guarantee their safety.”

“I thought you above these Videssian butcheries, but it seems the dog apes his master.”

“That’s as may be,” the tribune shrugged, implacable. “Will you yield, or shall I have this fellow—” He jerked his head toward the red-clad executioner. “—keep his irons hot?” Under his shiny leather mask, the man’s mouth shaped a smile at Ansfrit.

The Namdalener flinched, recovered, glared helplessly at Scaurus. “Aye, damn you, aye,” he choked out, and spun on his heel, almost running back toward the motte-and-bailey. Behind his retreating back, Gaius Philippus nodded knowingly. Marcus smiled himself. Another pair of troubles solved, he thought.

The druids’ marks on his blade flared into golden life, scenting wizardry, but it was scabbarded, and he did not see.

Far to the north, Avshar laid aside the black-armored image of Skotos he used to focus his scrying powers. A greater seer than any
enaree
, he cast forth his vision to overleap steppe and sea, as a man might cast a fishing line into a stream. The power in Scaurus’ sword was his guide; if
it warded the hated outlander from his spells, it also proclaimed the Roman’s whereabouts and let Avshar spy. Though he could not see the tribune himself, all around him was clear enough.

The wizard-prince leaned back against a horsehair-filled cushion of felt. Even for him, scrying at such a distance was no easy feat. “A lovely jest, mine enemy,” he whispered, though no one was there to hear him. “Oh yes, a lovely jest. Yet perhaps I shall find a better one.”

News somehow travels faster than men. When Scaurus got back to the legionary camp, Helvis met him with a shriek. “Animal! Worse than animal—foul, wretched, atrocious brute!” Her face was dead white, save for a spot of color high on each cheek.

Legionaries and their women pretended not to hear—a privilege of rank, Marcus thought. They would have gathered round to listen to any common trooper scrapping with his leman.

He took Helvis by the elbow, tried to steer her back toward their tent. “Don’t flare at me,” he warned. “I left them alive, and more than they deserved, too.”

She whirled away from him. “Alive? What sort of life is it, to sit in a corner of the marketplace with a chipped cup in your lap, begging for coppers? My brother—”

She dissolved in tears. The tribune managed to guide her into the tent, away from the camp’s watching eyes. Malric, he guessed, was out playing; Dosti, napping in his crib, woke and started to cry when his mother came in sobbing. Marcus tried to comfort her, saying, “There’s no need for that, darling. Here, I’ve brought a present for you.”