Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (71 page)

He wheeled his horse and rode away. Behind him, Arigh yipped like a puppy. A chorus of laughing Arshaum took up the call, yapping and baying Rodak out of camp. He roweled his horse savagely as he galloped northeast. Batbaian walked over to Arigh and slapped him on the back in wordless gratitude. Chuckling nomads kept barking at each other until it was full dark.

But back at the tent he shared with Viridovix, Gorgidas was less cheerful. He scrawled down what had happened at Rodak’s embassy, noting, “The Khamorth are caught between two dreads, the ancient fear of their western neighbors and the new terror raised by Avshar. As the one is but the memory of a fright and the other all too immediate, the force of the latter, I think, shall prevail among them.”

As he sometimes did, Viridovix asked the Greek what he’d written. “You’re after thinking the shindy’s coming, then?”

“Very much so. Why should Avshar let Yezd be ravaged if he can block the attack with these plainsmen, who are but tools in his hand? And I have no doubt he will be able to move them against us.”

“Nobbut a tomnoddy’d say you’re wrong,” Viridovix nodded. He drew his sword, checked the blade carefully for rust, and honed away a couple of tiny nicks in the edge—as tame a reaction to the prospect of a fight as Gorgidas had seen from him. Since Seirem had perished in the massacre of Targitaus’ camp, the big Gaul saw war’s horror as well as its excitement and glory.

When he was satisfied with the state of the blade, he sheathed it again and stared moodily into the fire. At last he said, “We should thrash them, I’m thinking.”

“Then sound as if you believed it, not like a funeral dirge!” Gorgidas exclaimed in some alarm. The mercurial Celt seemed sunk in despair.

“You ha’ me, for in my heart I dinna,” he said. “Indeed and we’re the better fighters, but what’s the use in that? Yourself said it a few days ago: it’s Avshar’s witchering wins his battles for him, not his soldiers.”

Gorgidas pursed his lips, as at a bad taste. All Avshar’s troops needed to do was hold fast, draw their foes in until they were fully engaged, and the wizard-prince’s magic would find a weakness or make one. To hold fast … his head jerked up.
“Autò ékhō!”
he shouted. “I have it!”

Viridovix jumped, grumbling crossly, “Talk a language a man can understand, not your fool Greek.”

“Sorry.” Words poured from the physician, a torrent of them. He forgot himself again once or twice and had to backtrack so the Gaul could follow him. As Viridovix listened, his eyes went wide.

“Aren’t you the trickiest one, now,” he breathed. He let out a great war whoop, then fell back on his wolfskin sleeping blanket, choking with laughter. “Puddocks!” he got out between wheezes. “Puddocks!” He dissolved all over again.

Gorgidas paid no attention to him. He was already sticking his head out the tent flap. “Tolui!” he yelled.

“T
HAT
’
S THE ONE
,” M
ARCUS SAID, POINTING,
“
HIS NAME
’
S
I
ATZOULINOS
.”

“Third from the back on the left, is it?” Gaius Philippus growled. The tribune nodded, then regretted it. There was a dull, pounding ache in his head, from too much wine and not enough sleep. The senior centurion strode forward, saying, “His name doesn’t matter a fart to me and it’ll be so much dog dung to him, too, when I’m through with him.”

He stamped down the narrow aisleway between the rows of desks. His high-crested helm nearly brushed the ceiling; his scarlet cloak of rank billowed about his shoulders; his shirt of mail clanked at every step. Scaurus leaned against the doorpost, watching bureaucrats look up in horror from their tax rolls, memoranda, and counting boards at the warlike apparition loosed in their midst.

Intently bent over his book of accounts, Iatzoulinos did not notice the Roman’s approach even when Gaius Philippus loomed over his desk like a thundercloud. The secretary kept transferring numbers from one column to another, checking each entry twice. Though hardly past thirty, he had an older man’s pallor and fussy precision.

Gaius Philippus scowled at him for a few seconds, but he remained oblivious. The senior centurion rasped his
gladius
free. Marcus sprang toward him—he had not brought him here to see murder done.

But Gaius Philippus brought the flat of the blade crashing down on Iatzoulinos’ desk. The bureaucrat’s ink pot leaped into the air and overturned; beads flew from his counting board.

He leaped himself, staring about wildly like a man waking to a nightmare. With a cry of dismay, he snatched his ledger away from the spreading puddle of ink. “What is the meaning of this madness?” he exclaimed, voice cracking in alarm.

“You shut your sniveling gob, you worthless sack of moldy tripes.”
Gaius Philippus’ bass roar, trained to be heard through battlefield din, was fearsome in an enclosed space. “And sit down!” he added, slamming the pen-pusher back into his chair when he tried to scuttle away. “You’re bloody well going to listen to me.”

He spat into the ink spot. Iatzoulinos shriveled under his glare. No shame there, Marcus thought. That glower was made for turning hard-bitten legionaries to mush. “So you’re the fornicating cabbagehead’s been screwing over my men, eh?” the senior centurion barked, curling his lip in contempt.

Iatzoulinos actually blushed; the red was easy to see on his thin, sallow features. “It may possibly be the case that, due to some, ah unfortunate, ah, oversight, disbursement has experienced, ah, a few purely temporary delays—”

“Cut the garbage,” Gaius Philippus ordered. Likely he had not understood half the pen-pusher’s jargon. He noticed he was still holding his sword and sheathed it so he could poke a grimy-nailed finger in Iatzoulinos’ face. The bureaucrat’s eyes crossed as he regarded it fearfully.

“Now you listen and you listen good, understand me?” the veteran said. Iatzoulinos nodded, still watching the finger as though he did not dare look at the man behind it. Gaius Philippus went on, “It was you god-despised seal-stampers first took to hiring mercenaries because you decided you couldn’t trust your own troops anymore, ’cause they liked their local nobles better than you. Right?” He shook the secretary.

“Right?”

“I, ah, believe something of that sort may have been the case, though this policy was, ah, implemented prior to the commencement of my tenure here.”

“Mars’ prick, you talk that way all the time!” The Roman clapped his hand to his forehead. He took a few seconds to pick up his chain of thought. “For my money, you were thinking with your heads up your backsides when you came up with that one, but forget that for now. Listen, you mud-brained bastard son of an illegitimate bepoxed she-goat, if you have to have troops that fight for money, what in the name of a baldarsed bureaucrat do you think they’ll do if there’s no bloody money?” His voice rose another couple of notches, something Scaurus would not
have guessed possible. “If they weren’t kind and gentle like me, they’d tear your fornicating head off and piss in the hole, that’s what! You’d probably remember better that way anyhow.”

Iatzoulinos looked about ready to faint. Deciding things had gone far enough, Marcus called, “Since you are kind and gentle, Gaius, what will you do instead?”

“Eh? Oh. Hrrm.” The centurion was thrown off stride for a second, but recovered brilliantly. Shoving his face within a couple of inches of the pen-pusher’s, he hissed, “I give you four days to round up every goldpiece we’re owed—and in old coin, too, none of this debased trash from Ortaias’ mint—or I start saving up piss. Understand me?”

It took three tries, but Iatzoulinos got a “Yes” out.

“Good.” Gaius Philippus glared round the room. “Well, why aren’t the rest of you lazy sods working?” he snarled, and tramped out.

“A very good day to you all, gentlemen,” Marcus said to the stunned bureaucrats, and followed him. He had an afterthought and stuck his head back in. “Don’t you wish you were dealing with the nobles again?”

Alypia Gavra laughed when the tribune told her the story. “And did he get the pay for your soldiers?” she asked.

“Every bit of it. It went off to Garsavra by courier, let me see, ten days ago. He’s staying in the city until the receipt comes back from Minucius. If it’s not here pretty soon, or if it’s even a copper short, I would not care to be wearing Iatzoulinos’ sandals.”

“Rocking the bureaucrats every so often is not a bad thing,” Alypia said seriously. “They’re needed to keep the Empire running on an even keel, but they are trained in the city and they serve here and begin to think that everything comes down to entries in a ledger. Bumping up against reality has to be healthy for them.”

Marcus chuckled. “I think Gaius Philippus was rather realer than Iatzoulinos cared for.”

“From what I’ve seen of him, I’d say you’re right.” Alypia got out of bed. It was only a few steps to the jug of wine on the table against the far wall. She poured for both of them. The wine was the best this inn offered, but none too good. Compared even to Aetios’ tavern, the place was
dingy and cramped. The din of hammers on copperware of every sort came unceasingly through the narrow window.

When the tribune put down his cup—yellow-brown unglazed clay, ugly but functional—he caught Alypia watching him curiously. He arched his eyebrows. She hesitated, then asked, “Have you told him about us?”

“No,” Scaurus said at once. “The fewer who know, the better.”

She nodded. “That’s so. Yet surely, if half what you and my uncle have said of him is true, he would never violate your trust. And I know the two of you are close; it shows in the way you work together.” She looked the question at him.

“You’re right, he’d never betray us,” the tribune said. “But telling him would not make me easier and would just make him nervous. He’d see only the risk, and never understand that for you it was worth taking.”

“Never say you were not born a courtier, dear Marcus,” she murmured, her eyes glowing. He hugged her close; her skin was like warm satin against his.

“Gangway there!” The rough shout came through the window, accompanied by the clatter of iron-shod hooves on paving-stones. With Alypia in his arms, the tribune did not pay the noise much attention, but it registered. The coppersmiths’ district was a poor quarter of the city, with horses few and far between.

A few minutes later the inn’s whole second floor shook as several men in heavy boots pounded up the wooden stairs. Marcus frowned. “What nonsense is this?” he muttered, more annoyed than alarmed. Better safe, he decided. He climbed to his feet, slid his sword free of its sheath, and wrapped his tunic round his arm for a makeshift shield.

The door came crashing in. Alypia screamed. Scaurus started to spring forward, then froze in his tracks. Four armored archers were in the hallway, bows drawn and aimed at his belly. Half a dozen spearmen crowded after them. And Provhos Mourtzouphlos, a wide smile of invitation on his face, said, “Take another step, outlander, why don’t you?”

Wits numb in disaster, the tribune lowered his blade. “No?” Mourtzouphlos said, seeing he would not charge. “Too bad.” His voice cracked like a whip. “Then back off!”

The Roman obeyed. “Jove,” he said. “Jove, Jove, Jove.” It was neither prayer nor curse, simply the first noise he happened to make.

The Videssian bowmen followed. Three kept arrows trained on him while the fourth turned his weapon toward Alypia, who was sitting rigidly upright in bed, the coverlet drawn to her chin to hide her nakedness. Her eyes were wide and staring, like those of a trapped animal.

“No need to aim at her,” Marcus said softly. The archer, a young man with a hooked nose and liquid brown eyes that told of Vaspurakaner blood, nodded and lowered his bow.

“You be silent,” Mortzouphlos said from the doorway. He suddenly seemed to notice the tribune was still holding his sword. “Drop it!” he ordered, then snapped at the last bowman, “Gather that up, Artavasdos, if you have nothing better to do.”

Mourtzouphlos looked Scaurus’ unclad frame up and down. “Damned foreign foolishness, scraping your face every day,” he said, stroking his own whiskers. His grin grew most unpleasant. “When Thorisin’s done with you, you’ll likely be able to keep your cheeks smooth without needing to shave.” His voice went falsetto; he grabbed at his crotch in an unmistakable gesture.

Marcus’ blood ran cold; of themselves, his hands made a protective cup. One of the troopers behind Mourtzouphlos laughed. Alypia came out of her terrified paralysis. “No!” she cried in horror. “Blame me, not him!”

“No one asked your advice, slut,” Mourtzouphlos said coldly. “A fine one you make to talk, whoring with the Sphrantzai and then spreading yourself for this barbarian.”

Alypia went white. “Shut your foul mouth, Mourtzouphlos,” Scaurus said. “You’ll pay for that, I promise.”

“What are your promises worth?” The Videssian cavalry officer stepped up and slapped him in the face.

Ears ringing, Marcus shook his head to clear it. “Do what you like with me, but have a care how you treat her Majesty the Princess. You’ll get no thanks from Thorisin for tormenting her.”

“Will I not?” Mourtzouphlos retorted, but with a touch of doubt; his men, reminded of Alypia’s title, looked at each other for a moment. Mourtzouphlos pulled himself together. “As for doing what I’d like with you—there’s no time for that now, worse luck. Get your trousers on,
Roman,” he barked. Scaurus had to swallow a startled laugh; if he began, he did not think he would be able to stop.

Mourtzouphlos rounded on Alypia. “And you, my lady,” he said, speaking the honorific like a curse. “Come on, out of there. D’you think I’ll leave you to wait for your next customer?” His men leered in anticipation.

“Damn you, Provhos,” Scaurus said. Alypia stayed motionless beneath the blanket, dread on her face. After her treatment at the hands of Vardanes Sphrantzes, Marcus knew the humiliation Mourtzouphlos was piling on her might break her forever. When the cavalryman reached out to tear the cover away, he shouted, “Wait!”

“And why should I?”

“Because she is still the Emperor’s niece and last living relative. No matter what he may do to me, do you think he’ll thank you for making his scandal worse?” That was a keen shot; the Roman could see calculation start behind Mourtzouphlos’ eyes. He pressed his tiny advantage: “Give her leave to dress in peace; where will she go?”