Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (59 page)

“The which is only your fault, so dinna come carping to me over it.”

“Scoffer. Truly, though, had you not been a strong, healthy man, you would have been dead long before I got to you.” Pride and delighted awe lit the Greek’s face as the notion that he had really healed took hold.

Viridovix dressed again with some haste; it was not so warm as all that. He gulped kavass. After months on the steppe, he hardly noticed the faintly sour taste—and it, too, was warmth of a sort. He said to Gorgidas, “You’re after hearing what’s befallen me—tell me now how the lot o’ you fared once I was raped away.” The Greek obeyed, talking much of the night away as the wind howled outside. Listening, Viridovix thought the past months had been good ones for Gorgidas. His wit was still biting, but he spoke with a confidence and a sense of his own worth the Gaul had not seen in him since his lover’s death—and perhaps not before.

Once the story was done, the physician seemed to change the subject. “Do you remember the argument we had a couple of years ago, not long after we came to Videssos?”

“Och, which one was that?” Viridovix said, grinning and yawning. “There’ve been so many, and rare sport they are, too.”

“Hmm. Well, maybe so. The one I’m thinking of had to do with war and what it was good for.”

The reminiscent smile disappeared from Viridovix’ face. “So that’s the one you mean, is it?” he said heavily, sighing through his thick mustaches. “I’m afeared you had the right of it after all. A cold cruel thing it is, warring, and glory only a word a reeking corp’ll never hear again.”

Gorgidas stared at the Celt, thunderstruck as if a second head had appeared on his shoulders. This, from the barbarian who exulted in combat for its own sweet sake? “Odd you should say so, when—” the
physician began, and then stopped, looking at his friend more closely. He had examined the Gaul’s body; now he looked at the man, really saw for the first time the grief that sat behind his eyes and showed at the corners of his mouth and in the deepening lines of his forehead. “You lost more than a battle when you rode with the Khamorth,” he blurted.

“Too canny, y’are,” Viridovix said, and sighed again. “Aye, there was a lass, Batbaian’s sister she was. She’s dead now, though not soon enough.” After a while he went on, very low, “And part o’ me with her. And what was the sense in that, or the use?” he asked the Greek. “None I could see when I found her, puir broken thing, nor the now either. Blood for blood’s sake, the which is why I own I was wrong and you right.”

Gorgidas thought of Quintus Glabrio, face blank in death. The memory burned in him still, and from his own pain he knew the Gaul’s. They sat silent for a time, words no good to them. Then the Greek said, “No little irony here.”

“And what might that be?”

“Only that when I brought up that argument I intended to yield it to you.”

“Go on with you.” Viridovix was as startled as the physician had been before. “You, the chap who wouldna carry a sword, come to relish soldiering? Next you’ll be after taking heads and nailing ’em to your gate like a proper Celt.”

“Thank you, no. But—” Gorgidas slapped the
gladius
on his hip, which Viridovix had not noticed. “—I wear a blade these days, and I begin to know what to do with it. And perhaps I begin to understand your ‘glory.’ For is it not true,” he said, falling naturally into disputational style even though he was not speaking Greek, “that the idea of winning acclaim from one’s fellow will make a man more likely to resist the onslaught of the wicked?”

“Honh!” The Gaul shook his head; having once changed his mind, he held to his new view with a convert’s zeal. “An omadhaun’ll go after glory no less than an honest man, so where’s the use of it there?”

Gorgidas leaned forward with pleasure, sleep forgotten, loving the argument for its own sake. “That’s true, but the renown of a good man lives forever, while an evildoer’s fame is buried in disgrace. Four hundred years ago Herodotos said of the sycophant at Delphi who carved the
Spartans’ name on a golden bowl they did not offer, ‘I know his name, but I will not record it.’ And no one knows it now.”

“He did that?” the Gaul said admiringly. “Now there’s a revenge for you. But listen—”

They wrangled through the night, pounding fists onto knees and shouting at each other, quite without rancor: “Thick-skulled woods-runner!” “Hairsplitting knave of a Greek!” Fire and smelly tallow lamps guttered low, leaving them in near darkness. At last the thin murky light of winter dawn began to creep under the tent flap.

Gorgidas knuckled his eyes, suddenly feeling exhaustion catch up with him again. No help for it, not with another day in the saddle ahead. The left side of his mouth quirked up in a wry grin. “Here we sit, not knowing which of us is right and which wrong, but we go on even so.”

“Aye, well, what else can we do?” Viridovix rose, stretched, jammed on his fur hat and stuck his head outside. “Come on, laddie, they’re stirring out there.” The swirl of cold air helped wake Gorgidas. Shivering, he belted his coat shut and followed the Gaul out into the snow.

M
ARCUS WAS WORKING IN HIS CUBICLE LATE ONE AFTERNOON WHEN
he found he needed to go up to the records room to compare a protested assessment to the one levied the year before. He scratched his head; the place was empty. Where were the clerks hunched over registers, their ink-smudged fingers flicking beads on reckoning boards?

Only a single grizzled watchman paced the corridors, and he was making his rounds as fast as he could. When Scaurus hailed him, he looked at the tribune as at any madman. “Go on with you, sir. Who’s for work on Midwinter’s Day? The lot of ’em left hours ago, they did.”

“Midwinter’s Day?” Marcus echoed vaguely. He counted on his fingers. “Why, so it is.” The watchman was gaping now, exposing a few blackened stumps of teeth. Not even foreigners forgot the chief festival of the Videssian year, the celebration to call the sun back from the winter solstice.

Chilly air bit at Scaurus’ nose as he left the pen-pushers’ warm den. That had been true last year, too, when he’d been dragged from his desk by Viridovix and Helvis.… He kicked at the snow, remembering.

Hardly anyone walked the broad ways of the palace complex; the servants, soldiers, and bureaucrats who made up the Empire’s heart reveled with the rest of the city. The plaza of Palamas, just east of the palaces, was a sea of humanity. Venders cried their wares: ale, hot spiced wine, roast goat in cheese sauce, shellfish, squid fried in olive oil and dusted with breadcrumbs, perfumes, jewelry of all grades from cheap brass trash to massy gold encrusted with gems big as a man’s eye, minor magic charms, images of Phos and his holy men. Strolling musicians wandered through the crowds, singing or playing pipes, lutes, horns straight or recurved, even a Vaspurakaner pandoura or two, all in the hope of enjoyably separating the frolickers from their coins.

Marcus, who had no ear for music in his best moods, gave them a wide berth. They reminded him of Helvis, who delighted in music, and of his recent fiasco with Nevrat Sviodo. Nevrat went out of her way to be friendly whenever she, Senpat, and the tribune went out, but her manner had a slight constraint that had not been there before. It was, he knew, no one’s fault but his own. He growled a curse, wishing he could be free of his memories.

Monks’ sober blue robes stood out from the gaudy finery most Videssians wore. Some joined the celebration around them; Scaurus would have bet a good many goldpieces that Styppes was already oblivious to the world. Others led little groups of laymen in prayer or hymns of praise to Phos, forming islets of dignity and deep faith in the jollier, more frivolous throng.

Some, though, abominated all fleshly pleasures, and in their narrow fanaticism devoted themselves only to destroying everything of which they disapproved: Zemarkhos had his spiritual brothers in the city. One such, a dour man whose robe flapped ragged round his scrawny shanks, came panting by the tribune, chasing fine singing youths in masks. Seeing he would never catch them, he shook his fist, shouting, “Your japes profane Phos’ holy days! Give your souls to contemplation, not this reckless gaiety! It is a defilement, you witless fools, and Skotos’ everlasting ice awaits you!” The young men were long gone. “Bah!” the monk said softly, and looked round for other evil to root out.

Marcus feared the monastic would turn on him; his shaven cheeks and light eyes and hair marked him as an outlander, and so a likely heretic or outright unbeliever. But there was better game close by. A ring of people watched a little dog, its fur dyed green, prance back and forth on its hind legs to the tap of its master’s hand-drum. He had trained it to take money from their fingers and scamper back to him with the coins.

“Isn’t t’at marvelous?” boomed one of the spectators, a tall Haloga mercenary whose chilly homeland offered no such diversions. His companion, a darkly beautiful whore, smiled up at him, nodding. Her velvet gown, shot through with maroon brocade, clung to her like a second skin. His arm was tight round her waist; now and again his massive hand would slide up to tease the bottom of her breast.

He let her go for a moment, went to one knee; his blond braid, tied
with a cord the color of blood, almost brushed the cobbles. “Here, pup!” he called. The dog minced over to take a coin, dropped to all fours to scurry off to the man with the drum. “Gold!” he exclaimed, and bowed low to the Haloga. “A thousand thanks, my master!” The crowd cheered.

But when the mercenary rose, the Videssian monk was stabbing a long bony forefinger into his face. “Filthy, obscene revelry!” he cried. “You poor benighted heathen, you should be at prayer thanking Phos for his mercy in restoring the light for yet another year, not defiling yourself with this lewd creature here!” His glare swung to the courtesan, who returned it; her eyes had glowed at the soldier’s lavishness.

The Haloga blinked in surprise at the onslaught. Perhaps he had been briefed about the dangers of inciting Videssian clerics, for his answer was mild enough: “Take your hand away, sir, if you please.”

The monk did. He must have thought he had hit the mercenary’s conscience, for he softened his harsh commanding tones and tried to speak persuasively. “For all that you are a foreigner, sir, you have the look of a gentleman, so think on what I say. Is your carnal pleasure worth the risk of your soul?”

“Go stifle yourself, you skin-headed vulture!” the tart shrilled. “You leave him alone!” She clutched the mercenary’s arm possessively.

“Be silent, trull,” the monk said. He kept looking her up and down, as if against his will. Videssian monks were celibate, but he could not tear his gaze away from her invitingly displayed flesh. His words were for the Haloga, but his eyes stayed riveted on the woman. “I grant she’s a lovely thing, yet desire is but Skotos’ honied bait to trap the unwary.”

Marcus grimaced at the sally, though it was not meant for him.

The monk was fairly howling now: “Look at the fine round arse of her, and her narrow waist, oh, and a bosom to make any man weak, in truth—” Scaurus found him almost pitiful to hear, thinking he was condemning the sensual delights he had forsworn, but instead lingering lovingly over them all. “Sparkling eyes and full red lips; sweet as aged wine they must be.” He fairly twitched with lust.

The Haloga threw back his head and laughed, a great bass roar loud enough to turn heads over half the plaza. “Bugger me with a pine cone, priest, if you don’t need her worse than I do. Here.” He tossed a goldpiece
at the feet of the monk, who stared at it, popeyed. “Go on,” the mercenary told him, “have a good frike on me. I’ll find another wench, have no fear; this burgh crawls with queans.”

Monk and whore screamed at him together, then at each other. The Haloga turned his broad back on both of them and tramped away. The crowd whooped behind him, loose enough this one day of the year to enjoy a cleric’s comeuppance, even at the hands of a heathen.

Nor could Scaurus help smiling; no sea of sorrows was big enough for a man to drown in it altogether. As with Styppes’ bilious temper and fondness for the grape, this monk’s sad slaverings reminded him that under those blue robes dwelt human beings, perhaps not too different from himself. That was worth remembering. Most times, Videssos’ monks roused only dread in him, for fanaticism in the cause of faith was not something a Roman was well equipped to understand.

Thinking of Styppes and his thirst, the tribune bought a cup of wine. It sat warm in his belly. When a man ran through the plaza shouting the praises of the mime troupes performing at the Amphitheater, he drifted south along with a good many others.

The Amphitheater’s great oval bowl marked off the southern boundary of the plaza of Palamas. Scaurus paid his two-copper fee and passed through one of the tunnel-vaulted passageways and into the arena. Ushers herded him up ramps and stairways to the very top of the bowl; the mimes had been playing all day, and the Amphitheater was packed.

Seen from so far away, the obelisk, chryselephantine statues, and other memorials of past imperial triumphs that decked the Amphitheater’s central spine was almost more impressive than they had been when the tribune stood among them. The tip of the tall granite spike was at the level of his eyes, even here. Not far away from its base bloomed the twelve bright silk parasols that marked the Avtokrator of the Videssians as the same number of lictors with their rods and axes distinguished a Roman consul.

The tribune could not make out Thorisin’s features. Somehow that heartened him. He drank more wine, rough cheap stuff that snarled on his palate. Catching his grunt of distaste, the man to his right on the long stone bench said, “A rare vintage—day before yesterday, I think.” He was a skinny, bright-eyed little fellow with the feral look of a cutpurse to him.

Marcus smacked his lips. “No, you’re wrong. I’m sure it’s last week’s.” The joke was feeble, but he had not made many lately.

His benchmate’s reply was lost in the crowd’s flurry of applause as a new set of players came out onto the track where, most days, race horses galloped. One of the actors pantomimed stepping in something distasteful and earned a guffaw.