Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (58 page)

But when he looked up, the face he saw was a man’s, thin, tense, etched with lines of triumph and harsh fatigue. “Foosh!” he said. “No lassy you, more’s the pity.”

Gorgidas rolled his eyes and laughed. “No need to ask whether you’re healed. By the dog, do you think of nothing else, you satyr?”

Viridovix’ sudden flinch of pain made the Greek wonder if he was in fact healed, but all the Gaul said, very quietly, was, “Aye, betimes I do.” Viridovix struggled to sit. The blood roared in his ears, but he fought his dizziness down. “Batbaian!” he exclaimed. “Is he after being found?”

Hearing his name, Batbaian hurried over to the Celt, still swaddled in the thick felt fabric of the tent. He seemed glad for any excuse to sidle
away from the Arshaum, who were eyeing him like a pack of wolves sizing up a stray hound. Skylitzes and Goudeles crouched by Viridovix, too; the Videssian officer steadied him with a strong right arm, while the bureaucrat pressed Gorgidas’ hand in congratulation.

“Are you all right, now?” Viridovix said to Batbaian, dropping into the Khamorth speech. Gorgidas followed it with difficulty; he had not used that language in months.

“I’m well enough, thanks to this,” the nomad answered, shaking snow from the felt. He looked in wonder at Viridovix. “But how is it you’re here to ask me? You shouldn’t be, not after being out in the blizzard with no cover.”

“Truth that.” There was wonder on Viridovix’s face, too, but aimed at Gorgidas. “He healed me, must be.” Almost accusingly, he said to the physician, “I didna think you could.”

“Neither did I.” Now that it was done, the Greek longed for nothing so much as the warm inside of a tent, a deep draught of kavass, and his bedroll to take him through the long winter night—and most of the next day, if he could get away with it.

But Viridovix was saying, “If it’s a druid of leechcraft you are now, Gorgidas dear, have a look at Batbaian and the eye of him, and see if there’s somewhat to be done for the puir lad.”

The Greek sighed, a long, frosty exhalation; no doubt Viridovix was right. “I’ll do what I can.” He leaned toward the young Khamorth, who drew back in suspicion, still full of mistrust for anyone who had anything to do with the Arshaum. “Hold still,” Gorgidas said in Videssian. Though he hardly spoke the imperial tongue, Batbaian understood it enough to obey.

Gorgidas sucked in his breath sharply when he took a good look at the nomad’s ruined socket. Not having paid any real attention to Batbaian, he had assumed the Khamorth’s eye lost to sword or arrow in some steppe skirmish. But the scar he saw was wrong for that: too large, too round, too neat, with the look of cautery to it. His gently probing fingers confirmed the impression. “How did you come by this?” he asked.

Voice cold as the north wind, Batbaian told him. He did not have the Videssian for all of it, but Viridovix and Skylitzes helped interpret, and
his final, plunging gesture was graphic enough. Skylitzes, hardened soldier though he was, turned his head and was sick in the snow. He bent down and scooped up more to clean his mouth.

“Aye, that was the way of it,” Viridovix said grimly. “A sweet fellow, Avshar.” With a grunt of effort, the Celt fought his way to his feet. He stood swaying but triumphant. “And a deal to pay him back for, that there is.” His face grew bleak once more, his eyes far away. “That there is,” he repeated softly. He touched his sword, drawing strength from the thought of revenge.

Then he seemed to come back to himself, and asked Gorgidas, “Is anything to be done for the eye, now?”

The Greek had to toss his head in his people’s no. He knew he could heal again; like a boy’s first spending of his seed, the one success promised more. But that knowledge was useless here. “Time has given the wound such healing as it will have. Had I seen it when it was fresh, the best I could have done would have been to bring it to the state it is in now. The art works with what it finds; it cannot give back what is lost.”

Viridovix’ nod was unhappy, Batbaian’s only impatient—he wore the mutilation as a reminder to himself of what he owed.

Goudeles sneezed. The sound reminded Gorgidas that the blizzard had not gone away simply because he had found Viridovix. The Gaul could freeze all over again—and so could the rest of them. The physician ran back to his horse, pulled a blanket from his saddlebag, and wrapped Viridovix in it.

The Celt accepted it absently; being alive, being warm enough to feel the snow stinging his cheeks, was enough to savor. He hardly heard Gorgidas when the Greek asked him if he could ride, but the physician’s impatient growl got through. “I can that,” he said, and managed the ghost of a chuckle. “Dinna fash yoursel’.”

He mounted behind Gorgidas, Batbaian back of Skylitzes. The physician’s pony snorted resentfully at having to carry two; Gorgidas got it moving with the rest regardless. “Your riding’s better than it was,” Viridovix said.

“Yes, I know. I have many useless talents these days,” the Greek said, tapping the
gladius
that swung at his left hip. He paused, and added wonderingly, “And a real one, it seems.”

The ride west to the Arshaum army was short; the nomads had been pushing forward at their own steady pace while Gorgidas labored over the Gaul. Outriders yelled challenges. The scout leader answered with loud praise for Gorgidas’ healing talents. The physician’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. Now that he had done something worth talking about, the picket was glad enough to claim a share of it.

Viridovix did not know the Arshaum language, beyond a few obscenities Arigh had taught him. But his eyes grew wide as he took in the size of the approaching force. “The lot of you’ve not been wasting your time, have you now?” he said to Gorgidas. The Greek tossed his head.

Then there was a shout: “V’rid’rish!” Arigh rode up at a near-gallop, clumps of snow flying under his horse’s hooves. His grin as white as the landscape around them, he pounded the Gaul’s back. “I wanted to kill someone when I found the scouts who came across you were gone again before I knew about it.”

“Blame me for that,” Gorgidas said. Like Arigh, he spoke Videssian so Viridovix could understand.

“Blame, is it?” the Celt snorted. “Pay him no mind, Arigh darling. A little later and there’d only be the frozen corp of me here, the which’d be no good for saying hello.”

“You’re without a horse, I see,” Arigh said—the nomads’ first priority. “Take a couple from my string.”

“Obliged,” Viridovix said. “Might you also be having one for Batbaian my friend?”

Arigh’s grin disappeared as his glance slid to the Khamorth. His lip curled; for the first time, he reminded Gorgidas of Dizabul. “Your taste in friends has gone down,” he said.

“Has it now?” Viridovix said. “Well, belike you have the right of it; I keep picking khagans’ sons.” He locked eyes with the Arshaum prince.

With his swarthy skin and the thick layer of grease on his face, it was impossible to see whether Arigh flushed, but after a few moments he walked his horse over to Batbaian. He had learned a little of the Khamorth speech traveling across Pardraya to Prista and the Empire; now he used it to ask, “A horse—you need?”

Batbaian had stiffened as the Arshaum came up to him; he jerked in surprise to hear his own language. Then he nodded with a dignity beyond
his years. “I thank you,” he said. He fumbled at his belt, undid the dagger there—fine metalwork, with a leaping stag in high relief on the bronze sheath—and offered it to Arigh. “A gift for a gift.”

The smile returned to Arigh’s face; he accepted the knife, clapped Batbaian on the shoulder. The watching Arshaum murmured in approval. Few of them, probably, had understood Arigh when he made his gift to Batbaian, but his return gesture needed no words. “The Hairy acts as a man should,” Gorgidas heard one nomad say, and his companion’s reply: “Why not? He’s seen a fight or two, looks like—that scar’s not pretty.”

Arigh said, “Skylitzes, Gorgidas, bring ’em along to my father. We can all hear what they have to say then.” He rode off toward the gray horsetail standard.

Viridovix bowed to Arghun as best he could riding double. The khagan was frailer than he had expected and sat his horse with difficulty; the Gaul wondered if he had been ill. He was soft-spoken, without the blustery temper Targitaus had used to browbeat his clansmen, but the Arshaum hurried to obey when he said something. Now he studied Batbaian cautiously, Viridovix with lively curiosity. He said something in the sibilant Arshaum tongue.

“He didn’t believe Arigh when he told him of your looks,” Gorgidas translated, “but he sees he was telling the truth after all.”

“Honh!” Viridovix said. In Latin he went on, “And I never set eyes on such a lot of slant-eyed flat-noses in all my days either, but no need to tell him that, I’m thinking. Give him top o’ the day instead.”

Gorgidas did. Arghun nodded at the courtesy, then said, “I’d be curious to know how the two of you happened to come here.” It was phrased as a request, but was plainly a command; Gorgidas put it into Videssian for Viridovix and Skylitzes into the Khamorth language for Batbaian.

“Up to me to start, it is,” Viridovix said, and began to tell of what had befallen him since Varatesh snatched him from the camp. The outlaw’s name raised a growl from a few of the Arshaum by Arghun, the ones whose clans wandered closest to the Shaum. They remembered his raid over the winter the year before, and its savagery. The Gaul was soon talking faster than Gorgidas could easily interpret; Arigh helped him when he faltered.

Another horseman pushed his way through the crowd gathering round the newcomers. What a dandified sprout, Viridovix thought; he wore furs and leather as if they were silk and cloth-of-gold, and even in the wind and snow he somehow kept his pony perfectly groomed, its mane braided with bright red ribbons.

“Father, I—” Dizabul began.

Arghun cut him off. “Whatever it is, it’ll have to keep, boy. These foreigners bear important news.”

The young prince’s handsome face clouded as he looked Viridovix’ way, the more so because of Arigh beside him. But when he spied Batbaian his jaw dropped. “Am I less than a Hairy, now?” he began angrily.

But Arghun silenced him again, this time with a gesture of dismissal. “Go on, redbeard,” he said.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said, laughing, when the Gaul told of the trick with the cattle he had suggested to drive Varatesh’s men back. By then Viridovix and Batbaian were speaking alternately as they described the events that had led up to the attack on the outlaws and their allies.

The khagan snapped sharp questions about the battle itself. Hearing it in detail reminded Gorgidas all too much of the catastrophe at Maragha. Avshar’s battle magic, whatever might be true of others’, did not fail in the heat of combat. If the soldiers he led could fight on anywhere near even terms, that sorcery would be enough to spell victory for them.

And the aftermath of victory—the Arshaum prided themselves on their hardness, but more than one cried out in loathing and horror as Batbaian, his voice dispassionate as if it had all happened to some stranger, spoke of endless red-hot irons. They flinched again when Viridovix told of the winners’ cruel toying with their enemies’ hopes, and of Targitaus’ seizure when the dreadful truth came clear. Apoplexy, thought Gorgidas, sickened but unsurprised.

After that, the story of the sack of the camp seemed almost anticlimax, though Viridovix felt the thin scabs tear open and the pain flow out like blood when he thought of Seirem. “So there it stands,” Batbaian finished. “Varatesh, the spirits dung on him, has Pardraya, and Avshar him,
or so it looked to me when I was in their hands. Next to them,” and Batbaian looked Arghun full in the face, beyond fear now, “even you Arshaum are a good choice. So we came to beg your help, if you care to give.” The Khamorth glanced at the warriors all around, said dryly, “You may not need me to persuade you to move east.”

Arghun stroked his wispy beard. He turned to Gorgidas. “This is the Avshar you have spoken of, the one from Yezd?”

“Aye,” said the Greek, echoed by words or nods from his friends and comrades.

The khagan said, “I had not intended to leave much of Yezd on its wheels in any case. Your wizard will be one more yurt to knock down.” Arghun folded his arms with the serene confidence of a man who has not known defeat. The Arshaum who heard his declaration cheered; they, too, were sure only victory was possible when facing Khamorth and other weaklings.

Their guests, who had seen the wizard-prince’s handiwork, were less sanguine, but saw little point in saying so. “As well explain music to a deaf man,” Goudeles muttered. “One way or another, they’ll find out.”

“Or another,” Gorgidas agreed gloomily. Having warned Arghun over and over of the deadly might he would face, the physician was coming to understand the nature of the curse Apollo had laid on Kassandra.

Winter’s short day and the raging storm combined to force the Arshaum to an early halt. “Will you share my tent?” Gorgidas asked Viridovix as they dismounted. “I want to examine you—I can hardly believe you’re alive.” As nothing else could, curiosity held wariness at bay.

“I am that, thanks to you,” the Celt said. He poked Gorgidas in the ribs. “I’ll come wi’ you, though its nobbut the carcass o’ me you’re hankering after.”

“Bah!” From anyone but Scaurus or Viridovix, the crack would have frightened the Greek; and the tribune, he thought, would never have made it—too mannerly by half. As it was, he was obscurely pleased. He looked Viridovix up and down. “You flatter yourself.”

“Do I now?” Chuckling, the Gaul helped him set up his tent. “This is better than the one I had, but mind you drive the pegs down firm.”

The physician was adept with flint and steel and he soon had a dung
fire going. After he and the Gaul had eaten, he seized Viridovix’ wrist; the pulse was firm and steady, that of a healthy man. When the fire had warmed the cramped space inside the tent, he had his friend strip off coat and tunic and listened to his lungs. The air whistled smoothly in and out, with none of the damp, soggy sound that would have warned of chest fever. Finally, he examined the Celt’s hands and feet, cheeks, nose, and ears for traces of frostbite. He tossed his head. “You’re disgustingly well.”