SWORDS CLASHED. PRESSED HARD, NEVRAT SVIODO GAVE ground. Her foe slashed at her legs. She barely turned the blow with her saber and had to retreat again. The next cut came high. Again her parry was just in time. Sweat ran into her eyes. It burned. She did not have even an instant to blink it away, for her opponent was sidling forward, a nasty grin on his face.
A quick flurry of steel—an opening! Nevrat ducked a cut, stepped in close. Her wrist knew what to do then. Her foe reeled away.
He was still grinning. She scowled at him, her eyes dark and dangerous. “Curse you, Vazken, did you let me get home there? Don’t try that again when you practice with me, or you’ll end up bleeding for real.”
Vazken placatingly spread his hands. “It’s hard to make myself go all out against a woman.”
“Do you think the Yezda match your courtesy?” Nevrat snapped. She suspected she had seen more combat than her partner on the drill field—scouting was a chancier business than fighting in line. She did not say so. Vazken would only have stomped off in a huff.
She also did not want to practice with him any more. If not fully tested, how could she get better?
Seeing her cousin Artavasdos riding up was something of a relief. She had the excuse she needed to escape from Vazken without telling him to go to the ice. She greeted Artavasdos with a dazzling smile.
He had to work to return it. She realized with surprise that he was frightened. “What is it” she asked, steering him away from Vazken. One thing the sometimes stolid Vaspurakaners learned in Videssos was the joy of gossip.
Artavasdos understood that, too. He waited until Vazken was well out of earshot before he dismounted and offered her a stirrup, saying, “Climb up behind me. I’ve been sent to fetch you. We’ll ride double into the city.”
“Fetch me?” She made no move to mount. “By whom?”
“Alypia Gavra,” her cousin said, adding, “If I don’t get you to her fast, we’re both for it.” The answer sent her scrambling onto Artavasdos’ horse. He hardly waited for her to slide behind his saddle before he sprang up, seized the reins, and sent the horse back toward the city walls at a fast trot.
“Phos!” Nevrat exclaimed. “I can’t meet the princess like this. Look at me—in these leathers I look like a Yezda. I stink like one, too. Let me stop at the barracks to change and at least sponge myself off a little.”
“No,” Artavasdos said flatly. “Speed counts for everything now.”
“You’d better be right.”
He hurried west along Middle Street. When he turned north off it, Nevrat said, “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Where I was told to,” he said. She felt like reaching forward and wrenching a better answer out of him, but with difficulty forbore. If this was a joke, she thought grimly, Thorisin’s palace would get itself a new eunuch, cousin or no.
A few minutes later, Nevrat burst out, “By Vaspur Phos’ firstborn, are you taking us to the High Temple?” The great shrine had been growing against the sky since Artavasdos left Middle Street, but Nevrat had not thought much about it—following their own version of Phos’ faith, the Vaspurakaners did not worship along with imperials. Now, though, the High Temple was too close to ignore.
Artavasdos turned in the saddle to give Nevrat a respectful look. “You’re very close. How did you guess?”
“Never mind.” She would rather have been wrong. She slid off the horse with a sigh of relief as Artavasdos tethered it outside the stucco building at the edge of the High Temple courtyard. Together, cautiously, they went to the door of the patriarchal residence. Nevrat grasped the knocker and rapped twice.
Even she had not expected Balsamon to answer himself. “Come in, my friends, come in,” he said, beaming. Nevrat felt his smile like warm sunshine; no wonder, she thought, the Videssians loved him so well.
“Where are your retainers, sir?” she asked as he led her and her cousin down a corridor.
“I have but the one,” Balsamon said, “and Saborios is off on a bootless errand. Well, not quite, but more than he thinks.” He laughed. Though Nevrat did not see the joke, she found herself grinning, too.
The patriarch led the two Vaspurakaners into his disreputable study. He and the young woman waiting there cleared space for them to sit. She was quite plainly dressed, but for a necklace of emeralds and mother-of-pearl; Nevrat took a moment to realize who she was.
“Your Highness,” she said, and began a curtsey, but Alypia help up a hand to stop her.
“We have no time for that,” she said, “and in any case, the favor I am going to ask of you I ask as a friend, not as a princess.”
“Don’t worry, my dear, Saborios will be bootless a while longer,” Balsamon told her.
“Not even Nepos knows how long his spell will hold,” Alypia retorted. Quickly, as if begrudging every word, she explained to Nevrat, “Saborios—he’s my uncle’s watchdog here—is off taking a pair of Balsamon’s blue patriarchal boots to be redyed. So long as Nepos’ magic works, he won’t notice the very long wait he’s having for them. Nor—Nepos hopes—will anyone detect that I am not back in the palace complex. But he cannot juggle the two magics forever, so we must hurry with our business here.”
“Then let me ask at once what you want of me, your Highness,” Nevrat said, carefully not abandoning Alypia’s formal title, “and ask you why you choose to call me friend when we have never met.”
Artavasdos gasped at her boldness, but Alypia nodded approvingly. “A fair question. We are, though, both friends of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus.”
Her quiet statement hung in the air a moment. “So we are,” Nevrat said. She studied the princess and added, “You are a good deal more than that, it seems.”
Despite his role as go-between, Artavasdos looked about ready to flee. Nevrat paid no attention to him; she wanted to see how Alypia would react. Balsamon, though, spoke first: “It also seems Scaurus somehow infects everyone who knows him with his own blunt speech.” Had his words been angry, Nevrat would have been as frightened as her cousin, but he sounded amused.
“Hush,” Alypia told him. She turned back to Nevrat. “Yes, he and I are a good deal more than friends, as you put it. And because of that, he has been sent to what will almost surely be his death.” She explained what Thorisin required for Marcus to redeem himself.
“Zemarkhos!” Nevrat exclaimed. Having traveled so long with Gagik Bagratouni’s men, she knew more than she ever wanted to of the fanatic priest’s pogrom against all Vaspurakaners. Anything to hurt him sent hot eagerness surging through her. But she agreed with Alypia—she did not think Scaurus had a chance against him.
When she said so, the princess sagged against the back of her couch in dismay. Nevrat abandoned her half-formed thought of telling Alypia that Marcus had wanted her, too. That might have cured an infatuation, but she was convinced Alypia felt more—and so did Scaurus, if he was willing to beard Zemarkhos for her sake.
“Tell me what to do,” she said simply.
Alypia’s eyes glowed, but she wasted no time on thankyous. “To destroy Zemarkhos, I think Marcus will have to have an army at his back. His Romans and those who have joined them are in Garsavra. If you rode to tell them what has happened to him, what do you think they would do?”
Nevrat never hesitated. Give Bagratouni another chance for revenge? Give Gaius Philippus—no, it would be Minucius; Gaius Philippus was with Scaurus—the chance to save his beloved commander? “Charge for Amorion, and Phos spare anything in their way.”
“Exactly what I thought,” Alypia said, eager now for the first time.
Nevrat looked at her in wonder. “You would do this, in spite of your uncle’s command?”
“Command? What command?” Alypia was the picture of innocence. “Balsamon, you as patriarch must be well informed of what goes on in the palaces. Has his Imperial Majesty ever ordered me not to send word to Garsavra of Marcus’ dismissal?”
“Indeed not,” Balsamon said blandly, though he could not keep the corners of his mouth from twitching upward.
Only because Thorisin never dreamed you would, Nevrat thought. She did not say that. What she did say was, “I think Marcus is a very lucky man, Princess, to have you care for him.”
“Is he?” Alypia’s voice was bitter and full of self-reproach. “His luck has an odd way of showing itself, then.”
“So far,” Nevrat said firmly.
“You’ll go, then?”
“Of course I will. Senpat will be furious with me—”
“Oh, I hope not!” Alypia exclaimed. “I would have gone through him—”
“—because he’ll be stuck here in the city,” Nevrat said.
At the same time the princess was concluding, “—but with his duties here, I thought he would have trouble getting away inconspicuously.”
They stared at each other and started to laugh. Nevrat flashed the thumbs-up gesture the Romans used. She was unsurprised to find Alypia knew what it meant. The princess said, “How will I ever repay you for this?”
“How else?” Nevrat said. At Alypia’s puzzled look, she explained: “Invite me to the wedding, of course.”
They laughed again. “By Phos, I will!” Alypia said.
“Most touching, my children,” Balsamon put in. “But I suggest we bring our pleasant gathering to an end, before this poor lad jitters himself to death.” He made a courteous nod toward Artavasdos, who did seem on the point of expiring. “And, even more to the point, before my dear colleague Saborios at last returns with my boots.”
After embracing Nevrat, Alypia left first, by a back way. Then Balsamon led Nevrat and her cousin out to Artavasdos’ horse. “It matters less if Saborios should happen to see you,” he said. “He’ll merely think me daft for consorting with heretics.” One of his shaggy eyebrows rose. “Surely I’ve given him better reason than that.” He patted Nevrat’s arm and went back inside.
The two Vaspsurakaners were still close to the High Temple when a priest came by carrying a pair of blue boots. He had an upright bearing and rugged features, but his face was vaguely confused.
“Don’t gape at him like that,” Nevrat hissed in Artavasdos’ ear. Her cousin ostentatiously looked in the other direction. He was not cut out for intrigue, Nevrat thought. But it did not matter. Past a glance any man might have sent an attractive woman, Saborios paid no attention to either of them.
Nevrat began thinking about what she had agreed to try, and also began worrying. From Garsavra to Amorion was no small journey, and many Yezda roamed between the two towns. Could the legionaries force their way through? More to the point, could they do it in time?
“The only thing to do is find out,” she muttered to herself. She grinned. What better omen to start with than sounding like Scaurus?
Riding west through the lush farming country of the coastal plain, Nevrat became certain she was being followed. She could see a long way in the flatlands, and the horseman on her trail was noticeably closer than he had been when she first spotted him early that morning.
She checked her bowstring to make sure it was not frayed. If Thorisin was fool enough to send a single rider after her, he would regret it. So, even more pointedly, would the rider. Not many imperials, she thought proudly, could match her at the game of trap and ambush.
She did spare concern for Balsamon, Alypia Gavra, and her cousin Artavasdos. She wondered what had gone wrong, back in the city. Maybe Saborios had noticed something amiss in spite of the sorcerous befuddlement Nepos cast on him, or maybe Nepos had just tried keeping too many magics in the air at once, like a juggler with too many cups.
On the other hand, maybe pincers and knives had torn the truth from Artavasdos, who could not hide behind rank.
In the end, none of that mattered. What did matter was the fellow coming after her. She glanced back over her shoulder. Yes, he was closer. He had a good horse—not, Nevrat thought, that having it would help him.
A couple of mule-drawn cars, piled high with clay jugs full of berries, were coming toward her. She swerved behind them. They hid her from view as she rode off the road into the almond orchard along the verge.
One of the farmers with the carts called, “Old Krates don’t like trespassers on his land.”
“To the ice with him, if he begrudges me a quiet spot to squat a minute,” Nevrat said. The farmers laughed and trudged on.
Nevrat walked into the orchard and tethered her horse to a tree out of sight from the roadway. She gave the beast a feed-bag so it would not betray her with a neigh. Then she took her bow and quiver and settled down to wait, well hidden by bushes, for her pursuer.
Something with too many legs crawled up under her trousers and bit her several times, just below her knee, before she managed to kill it. The bites itched. Scratching at them gave her something to do.
Here came the fellow at last. Nevrat peered through the leaves. Like her, he was riding one of the nondescript but capable horses the Videssians favored. She set an arrow in her bow, then paused, frowning. She wished she could see better from her cover. Surely no Videssian would wear a cap like that one, with three peaks and a profusion of brightly dyed ribbons hanging down in back.…
She rose, laughing, her hands on her hips, the bow forgotten. “Senpat, what are you doing here?”
“At the moment, being glad I found you,” her husband replied, trotting his horse up to her. “I was afraid you’d gone off the road to give me the slip.”
“I had.” Nevrat’s smile faded. “I thought you were one of Thorisin’s men—the more so,” she added, “as you told me you were staying in the city the other night when I left.”
Senpat grinned at her. “The thought of sleeping alone for who knows how long grew too disheartening to bear.”
Her hands went to her hips again, this time in anger. Her eyes flashed dangerously. “For that you would risk us both? Have you all of a sudden gone half-witted? The very reason I got this task was that your leaving the capital might be noticed. You were trailing me—how many imperials are after you?”
“None. My captain felt very bad when I got a letter from home bidding me return at once because my older brother had just died of snakebite. The same thing had happened to him three years ago, which is why I had Artavasdos write the letter that way. For good measure, he wrote it in Vaspurakaner, which Captain Petzeas doesn’t read.”
“You have no older brother,” Nevrat pointed out.
“Certainly not now, poor fellow, and Petzeas has the letter to prove it.” Senpat arched an elegant eyebrow. “Even if anyone who knows differently hears of it, it’ll be too late to matter.”
“Oh, very well,” Nevrat grumbled. She could never stay annoyed at her husband for long, not when he was working so hard to charm her. And he was right—the imperials were unlikely to see through his precautions. Still: “It was a risky thing to do.”
Senpat clapped a hand to his forehead. “This, from the woman who rode out alone from Khliat after Maragha? This, from the woman who, if I know her as the years have given me a right to, is itching to tangle with the Yezda or Zemarkhos or both at once?” Nevrat hoped he did not see her guilty start, but he did, and grinned. He went on, “I don’t expect to keep you out of mischief, but at least I can share it with you. And besides, Scaurus is a friend of mine too.”
Again Nevrat wondered whether he would say that if he knew the Roman had made a move in her direction. Probably, she thought—Marcus was at low ebb the past fall, but took a no when he heard one even so. Senpat would likely chuckle and say he could not fault the tribune’s taste.
Nevrat did not intend to find out.
She said, “Come with me while I get my horse. I tied him up in the nut orchard so I could do a proper job of ambushing you.”
“Hmmp. I suppose I should be honored.” As they scuffed through last year’s dry leaves, Senpat remarked, “Nice quiet place.”
“A couple of locals told me old Krates, who I take it owns the orchard, doesn’t care for intruders.”
“He doesn’t seem to have troubled you any while you were setting up your precious ambush.” Senpat put a hand on Nevrat’s shoulder. “Do you suppose he might stay away a while longer?”
She moved toward him. “Shall we find out?”
“I still say you shouldn’t have shot Krates’ dog,” Nevrat told her husband a few days later.
By then they were almost to Garsavra, but Senpat still sounded grumpy. “You’re right. I should have shot Krates, for showing up when he did.”
“We’ve made up for it since.”
“Well, so we have.” Senpat peered toward the town ahead. “Why does it look different?”
“The Romans have been busy,” Nevrat said. A man-high earthwork wall, faced with turf so it would not melt in the rain, surrounded Garsavra. It has been unfortified for hundreds of years, but times were changing in Videssos’ westlands, and not for the better. From the direction in which she was coming, Nevrat could see two openings in the wall, one facing due north, the other east. She was dead certain a matching pair looked west and south. “They’ve turned the place into a big legionary camp.”
“Sounds like what Gaius Philippus would do—there’s nothing he likes better.” Senpat chuckled. “I wonder if he had the Romans knock down half the buildings in town so he could make the streets run straight between his gates.”
Nevrat shook her head. “He’s not wasteful. Look at the way they made the Namdalener motte-and-bailey part of their works.” She found the senior centurion too single-mindedly a soldier to be easy to like, but she was always glad they were on the same side.
The sentries at the north gate were Vaspurakaners, men from Gagik Bagratouni’s band. They brightened at the approach of two of their countrymen. Still, their questions were brisk and businesslike—Roman drill working, Nevrat thought as the foot soldiers stood aside to let her and Senpat into Garsavra.
Sextus Minucius made his headquarters where Scaurus and Gaius Philippus had before him, in what had been the city governor’s residence. He was a handsome young man, taller than most of the legionaries, with blue-black stubble that darkened his cheeks and chin no matter how often he shaved.
He greeted Senpat and Nevrat warmly, but with a trace of awkwardness. He had been only a simple trooper when they first attached themselves to the legion; now he outranked them. At their news, though, he abruptly became all business. His face went hard as stone.
“Gaius Philippus, too, eh?” he murmured, half to himself. He followed it with something in Latin that Nevrat could not follow. Seeing her incomprehension brought him back to the here-and-now, and to Videssian. “Sorry. It sounds like him, I said. The two of you had best wait here while I send for Bagratouni and Pakhymer. They ought to hear your story firsthand, to give me the best advice.”
That last sentence killed any doubts Nevrat had about who was in charge at Garsavra. In his firm, unhesitating acceptance of duty, Minucius sounded much like Scaurus.
The orderly outside his office was a Roman. His hobnailed caligae clattered on marble flooring as he dashed off to fetch the officers his commander wanted.
Laon Pakhymer showed up first. Somehow that surprised Nevrat not at all. Nothing took Pakhymer by surprise—the light cavalry officer from Khatrish had a nose for trouble and a gift for exploiting it.
Minucius was pacing impatiently by the time Gagik Bagratouni arrived, though the Vaspurakaner was prompt enough. He embraced Senpat and Nevrat in turn. He had known them since he and they still held estates in Vaspurakan, before the Yezda invasions forced so many nobles from their native land.
“So,” he said at last, turning to Minucius. “I am glad to see them, yes, but is this occasion enough to drag me from my quarters?” His voice was deep and deliberate, a fit match for his solid frame and strong, heavy features, the latter framed by an untrimmed beard as dark and thick as Minucius’ would have been.
“Yes,” the Roman said flatly. Nevrat exchanged glances with her husband; not many men could withstand Bagratouni’s presence when he chose to exert it. Minucius nodded their way. “Seeing them is one thing, hearing them something else again.”
Nevrat told most of the story, Senpat filling in details and adding how he had managed to get out of the city to join her. That earned him an admiring grin from Pakhymer. Nevrat saw how her husband drew himself up with pride; praise from the Khatrisher was praise from a master schemer.
When they were through, Bagratouni did what Nevrat had known he would—he slammed his fist down on the table in front of him and roared, “My men march now! Give me Zemarkhos, Phos, and I will ask for nothing more in this life!”
Minucius was the one who surprised her. He waited until Bagratouni’s thundering subsided a little, then told the Vaspurakaner, “Your men march nowhere without my leave, Gagik.”
Bagratouni’s beard swallowed most of his dark flush of anger, but not all. “Who are you to tell me what to do? I am a nakharar, a lord of Vaspurakan, and I act with my retainers as I will.”
“You are not in Vaspurakan,” Minucius said, “and you have taken Roman service as commander of a maniple. Do you remember that, or not?”
Nevrat leaned forward, afraid Bagratouni would throw himself at the Roman. “With Zemarkhos in front of me, I remember nothing,” the nakharar ground out. “How do you propose to stop me from slaying him, as is less than he deserves?”
“With my men, if I have to,” Minucius said evenly. “There are more Romans than Vaspurakaner legionaries in Garsavra. Look at me, Gagik. Do you doubt I would use them if you disobey my orders? I value your counsel; you know that. But I will have your obedience and I will do what I must to get it.”
Bagratouni studied the younger man. The silence stretched. “You would,” the Vaspurakaner said wonderingly. “Very well, then, what are your orders?” He spat the last word at Minucius.
“Why, to go after Scaurus, of course,” the Roman said at once. He was not as calm as he wished to seem; sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Why this game, if we want the same thing?” Bagratouni exclaimed.
“I know how you feel about the Yezda, and about Zemarkhos. I don’t blame you, Gagik, but I need you to remember you go as part of my forces, not have you haring off on your own.”
Laon Pakhymer spoke up. “How will the Emperor feel when you go haring off on your own? No different from you about Gagik, I expect.”
Suddenly and disarmingly, Minucius grinned. It made him look very young indeed. “Probably not. But there are more Romans than Videssian troops in Garsavra, too, so what is he going to do about it?”
“Not bloody much, except pitch a fit.” Pakhymer grinned, too, his teeth white in a scraggly beard that rode high on his cheeks to cover pockmarks. He looked delighted at the prospect.
“If you take back Amorion for him, Thorisin won’t care about the wherefores,” Nevrat said to Minucius.
“She’s right.” Pakhymer turned his impudent smile her way. She suspected he approved of her person more than of her idea, but having men look at her did not bother her. Rather the reverse, unless they went further than looking, and Pakhymer knew better than that.
“If the Yezda kill all of us along the way, of course, we won’t care what Thorisin thinks,” Minucius said. “I’m glad we gave Yavlak something to think about when he raided last winter—his clans won’t want any part of us.”
“You leave Yavlak to me,” Pakhymer said. “I bought an attack on the Namdaleni from him when we needed it; I expect a little gold will get him not to mind us marching through his land.”
“Videssos’ land,” Minucius said, frowning.
“Yavlak’s there, the Emperor’s not. Do you really want to risk having to fight your way through and wasting Phos knows how much time?”
Minucius bit his lip. Nevrat saw Pakhymer had found the magic word to tempt him, despite his abhorrence for dealing with the Yezda in any way but at sword’s point. He drummed his fingers, muttered again in Latin. Nevrat heard a familiar word, but could not follow the phrase.
But in the end, the Roman said, “No. If we move fast, Yavlak won’t dare try troubling us.”
Unlike Bagratouni, Pakhymer knew determination when he heard it. “You’re the boss,” he said with the casual wave he used for a salute. “Not much point to more talk, then, is there? Let’s get ready to go.” He got up and left. Bagratouni followed a moment later.
Minucius rose, too. “The Khatrisher is right. Time to get moving.”
“May I ask you something first?” Nevrat said. Minucius paused. She went on, “I thought I heard you say Marcus’ name, but I didn’t know what the rest of that meant.”
The Roman looked, of all things, embarrassed. “That’ll teach me to talk to myself. Do you really want to know?” He waited till she nodded, then said sheepishly, “I was just asking myself what Scaurus would do in this spot. Now I’m off. One thing he wouldn’t do is waste time.”
Senpat Sviodo strummed the strings of his pandoura as he rode; he guided his horse with his knees. His song and the plashing of the Arandos River were the only music to accompany the column marching west. The Roman army, unlike its Videssian equivalent, mostly traveled in silence.
Nevrat, along with everyone else, was glad for the Arandos. The westlands’ central plateau was nothing like the lush coastal lowlands. Away from running water, the sun baked the land to dust.
Her husband’s song jangled to a stop. Two Khatrishers from Pakhymer’s cavalry screen were riding back toward the main body of foot soldiers with a third man between them. “Yezda,” Senpat said unnecessarily. The fellow was dressed in nomad leathers and carried a small round shield daubed here and there with whitewash—a truce sign.
At Minucius’ signal, the buccinators trumpeted the legionaries to a halt; when they needed it, the Romans did not despise music. The Yezda rode up to him and said in loud, bad Videssian, “What you doing on land belong to mighty Yavlak?”
“Marching on it, not that it is Yavlak’s,” the Roman commander said. He ignored the Yezda’s effort to stare him down; having outfaced Gagik Bagratouni, he was more than equal to this smaller challenge. “And if Yavlak doesn’t care for it, let him recall what happened when he tried visiting Garsavra.”
“He stack up your corpses like firewood,” the Yezda herald blustered.
“Let him try. But tell him this—for now I have no quarrel with him. If I have to turn aside to deal with him, the only land he will claim is enough to bury him in. Now get out. I’ve wasted enough time on you.”
Minucius nodded to the buccinators. They blew advance. The army tramped forward. The Yezda had to swing his horse into a sidestep to keep from being ground into the dirt. Scowling, he wheeled and trotted away.
“Trouble,” Nevrat said, watching his angry back.
Senpat answered, “Mm, maybe not. Yavlak’s no fool and he is still smarting from last winter. Besides, it will take some time for him to gather enough men to fight, even if he wants to. By the time he does, we may be past the stretch of country he holds.” But as he spoke, he stowed his precious pandoura in its soft leather cover and began checking the fletching on the arrows in his quiver. Nevrat did the same.
Despite such forebodings, no trouble came that day. One reason, Nevrat was sure, was the speed with which the legionaries moved. As they were traveling along a river, they needed to carry only iron rations; no cumbersome wagons impeded their march. Dash might have been a better word—they fairly flung themselves up the Arandos.
At the end of the first grueling day, when the legionaries were building their familiar fortified camp, Nevrat asked Minucius, “How do you go so fast? I’ve seen cavalry armies that would have trouble matching your pace.”
“We Romans train for it from the minute we join the legions,” he answered. No doubt he was tired; his face was red and wet, his voice hoarse. But he was ready for more, managing a worn grin as he went on, “We call ourselves ‘mules,’ you know, for all the marching we do in full kit. And by now, all these Vaspurakaners and imperials have been with us long enough to keep up.”
“If I had to bet, I’d say Yavlak will lead his horsemen to where we were early this afternoon.”
“I hope he stays away. But if not, let’s hope you’re right.” Minucius looked around, as he did every minute or so. “No, you idiot!” he bellowed at a Khatrisher. “Water your damned horses downstream from camp, not up! The fornicating Arandos is muddy enough already, without them stirring up more muck for us to drink.”
Despite being the only woman in camp, Nevrat shared a tent with her husband unconcerned and would have worried no more had she been among the legionaries without him. It was not just that she was as handy with weapons as most men. After all the dangers she had shared with the Romans, none of them would have annoyed her, any more than he would a sister.
The next day, she saw a few Yezda. The nomads fled at the sight of the legionaries and looked back over their shoulders in disbelief at seeing troops loyal to Videssos pushing through country they had come to think of as theirs. Never were they in numbers enough to offer combat.
Later that afternoon, a Khatrisher rear guard came galloping up to warn that a real force of nomads was approaching from behind the Romans. Minucius gave Nevrat a Roman salute, holding his clenched fist out at arm’s length in front of him. She waved her hat in reply.
Horns brayed. “Form lines to the rear!” Minucius shouted. With the smoothness of endless drill, the legionaries performed the maneuver.
“Where do you want us?” Laon Pakhymer asked.
“Out front, to foul up their archery.” Minucius studied the ground. “And put a few squads over there, in that little copse. The gods willing, the Yezda will be too busy with us to study it much. If your men pop out at the right time, they’ll count for a lot more than their numbers.” Pakhymer nodded and bawled orders in the lisping Khatrisher dialect.
As soon as he was finished, Senpat called, “Shall we ride with you?”
“I’d sooner your lady asked that,” Pakhymer said, and waited for Nevrat’s snort before continuing, “but aye, come ahead. Another couple of good bows won’t do us any harm.”
“You have a care, mistress,” one of the horsemen said as Nevrat passed him. “Get in trouble, and we’ll all try and save you—and we might mess ourselves up to do it.” He spoke with the half-joking tone Khatrishers often used, but Nevrat knew he meant what he said.
She was warmed and irritated at the same time. “I thank you,” she said “I expect I’ll manage.” The Khatrisher nodded and waved.
The Yezda were not far behind the scout who brought news of them. Already Nevrat saw them emerging from the dust their ponies kicked up and heard the thunder of the horses’ hooves.
“You’ve done this before, lads,” Pakhymer told his men, calm as if he were discussing carting home a sack of beans. “Pick your targets while you’re shooting and help your mates when the sabers come out.”
A horse’s skull on a pole—Yavlak’s emblem-advanced. Closer, closer … Nevrat drew her bow back to her ear, let fly. The string lashed across the leather bracer on her wrist. She did not wait to see if her arrow hit; she was reaching for another while the first was still descending.
Here a horse stumbled, there another shrieked like a woman in labor when it was struck. Men were shouting, too, both from wounds and to terrify their foes. Icy fear shot through Nevrat when she saw blood on her husband’s face. “A graze,” Senpat reassured her when she cried out. “I’ll let my beard get a little fuller to hide the scar, if it bothers you.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” In itself, that kind of minor wound was nothing. But it reminded Nevrat how easy it was to find worse, and how little anyone could do to evade the death flying through the air.
The arrow duel, though, did not last as long as in the usual nomad engagement. Yavlak seemed intent on forcing the issue. His riders bulled through the Khatrishers, who, outnumbered, were forced aside. Nevrat understood why when she yeard Yavlak yelling toward the Roman standards: “With muds and snows you us once beat! Not we gets revenge!”
Senpat’s face wore a grim smile. “Does he really think so? He hasn’t brought near enough men, looks like to me.”
Nevrat never heard him. She was hotly embroiled with a Yezda whose arms seemed as long as an ape’s. She could parry his sword strokes, but her counters did not reach him.
Then the fellow suddenly grinned and moved in to fight at closer quarters. Nevrat recognized the new light in his eyes. It was not battle fury, but simple lust; he had realized he was facing a woman. His tongue flicked over his lips in slow, deliberate obscenity.
But he was no great swordsman, not when Nevrat could get at him at last. Her saber bit between his neck and shoulder. He howled a curse as he reeled away. Nevrat never knew whether her blow finished him—battle was often like that. She had to throw up her sword just in time to turn another nomad’s slash and lost track of the first.
The heat of combat lessened, at least for the Khatrishers. Yavlak flung his horsemen at the legionaries. Senpat clapped a hand to his forehead in disbelief. “He’s an idiot,” he shouted. “He thinks they’ll break and run.”
“Probably the only foot soldiers he’s faced since Maragha are herders with bows and axes trying to keep his men from running off their sheep.” Nevrat’s hand clamped down hard on her sword hilt in delighted anticipation of the shock the nomad chief was about to get.
Watching from the flank, she saw at once that Senpat had been right; Yavlak did not have enough men to take on the legionaries. He tried, regardless. Shouting and brandishing their swords, the Yezda spurred toward the waiting lines of shields. If they could force a breach, numbers would not matter.
The horns cried out, echoing Minucius’ dropped arm. With a single great cry that cut cleanly through the random yells of their foes, the Romans cast their heavy javelins at the Yezda. An instant later, another wave of spears flew. The legionaries drew their stubby thrusting swords and surged forward, peering over the tops of their semicylindrical scuta.
The first ranks of the Yezda were in hideous confusion. The volleys of pila had blunted the momentum of their charge, emptying saddles and felling horses. Yet they could not turn tail and flee, the usual nomad tactic when pressed, because their comrades behind them were still trying to push up and get in the fight. The result was a few minutes of slaughter.
Watching the legionaries swarm over the Yezda, Nevrat thought of ants. Usually the Romans operated at a disadvantage in numbers and gave better than they got. With an edge, they were terrifying. A hamstrung horse screamed. Even before it fell, two soldiers beset its rider, one from either side. He did not last long. Another Roman turned a nomad’s slash with the edge of his big, heavy shield, then used its weight to push the Yezda off balance. Another legionary stabbed him in the back; boiled leather could not keep out steel.
The Yezda could not even seek to outflank their opponents. The Arandos anchored the Romans’ right wing, while Pakhymer’s Khatrishers covered the left. And at close quarters, even mounted the nomads were no match for the disciplined, armored veterans Minucius led. Remembering ravaged fields and burned keeps in Vaspurakan, Nevrat found only fierce delight in their predicament.
But an army of infantry cannot wreck horsemen unless they stay to fight. The Yezda the legionary advance had not caught began pulling away, first by ones and twos, then in larger groups. Then the concealed Khatrisher squadron came galloping out of ambush, emptying their quivers as fast as they could into the Yezda flank. Retreat turned to rout.
“Ride over to Minucius,” Pakhymer bawled in Nevrat’s ear. She started; she had not noticed him come up. “Find out how far he wants us to chase the buggers.”
The Roman’s answer came promptly: “Only far enough to be sure they’re in no shape to re-form. I want to get moving again. This mess has cost us close to half a day.”
“Not much else, though.” Hardly any of the men on the ground were legionaries.
The young man inside Minucius peeped out for a moment from behind the stern commander’s mask. “It did work well, didn’t it? Yavlak got what anyone too eager gets.” His eyes flicked to Bagratouni’s men, who were grimly making certain all the downed Yezda were corpses.
“On my way back to Pakhymer, shall I stop and thank Gagik for you, for not breaking ranks in his own eagerness to get at the nomads?”
“Thank him for obeying orders?” Minucius’ astonishment was perfectly real. “By the gods, no! He does what he does because I command it, not as a favor to me.”
“He’s right,” Senpat said in their tent that night when Nevrat told him of the exchange. They were lying side by side on the bedroll, too tired after the fight for anything more, but too keyed up to sleep.
“Of course he’s right.” Nevrat brushed back a wet lock of hair from her cheek—washing the grime and sweat from it was the only pleasure for which she’d had the energy after the legionaries made camp. She went on, “But how did he make Bagratouni see that, after all he’s suffered from the Yezda? What happened back in Garsavra means nothing now—the Romans would never turn on Gagik’s men here, not in the middle of enemy-held country.”
“I suppose not,” Senpat half agreed, “though I wonder what would happen if Minucius gave the order. I’m glad we don’t have to find out. Still, you’re right; that’s not what held Gagik back.”
“What, then?”
“Do you really want to know what I think? I think over the last couple of years, without ever quite knowing it, Bagratouni has gone from being a nakharar to a—what do they call it?—a centurion, that’s right. This Roman discipline digs deep into a man. I’m just glad it hasn’t set its hooks too deep in us.”
Nevrat thought about that. Imagining Gagik Bagratouni as a clean-shaven Roman made her smile, but she decided her husband had a point. The nakharar had snarled at Minucius, but in the end he obeyed. The Bagratouni she had known of old, affronted so, might well have made the legionary commander carry out his threat.
After a while, she said, “If the Romans have no hold on us, why are we here by the Arandos instead of back in the capital following the Avtokrator’s orders?”
Only a snore answered her. She rolled over. A few minutes later she was asleep herself.
Yavlak had fought the Romans once before they began their drive to the west, but had learned little from his earlier defeat. The nomad chieftains further into the interior of the central plateau knew nothing of the newcomers and were foolish enough to believe they could run them off with whatever forces they scraped together on the spur of the moment.
A couple of stinging defeats taught them otherwise. Word spread quickly from one clan to the next. After that, the Yezda left them alone. In fact, the nomads fled before them, flocks and all.
“I found another abandoned camp ahead of us,” Nevrat reported to Minucius at an evening council after her return from a scouting run. “The tracks leading out of it look two or three days old.”
“Senseless,” the Roman said. Stubble rasped as he rubbed his chin. “If they left us alone, we wouldn’t go after them. You’d think they’d have noticed that by now.”
“Do you miss them?” Nevrat teased.
“Not even slightly.” Again she saw the amused youngster through Minucius’ grave shell, but only for a moment. He went on, “I mistrust what I don’t understand, though.”
“It is the nomads’ way,” Bagratouni said. “When a strong clan comes, the weak ones move aside. They will be fighting among themselves now, over grazing land, and shifting all about in more country than we could hope to march to in a year.” Somber satisfaction at the prospect filled his voice.
Laon Pakhymer’s eyes lit with mock indignation. “Ha! Are you saying my noble ancestors were forced off the steppe into Khatrish, instead of being the great heroes our minstrels sing of?”
Bagratouni took him literally. “It could be so, but with the original push hundreds of miles away.”
“Are we going to push the Yezda into Amorion ahead of us, then?” Minucius said slowly.
Nevrat and Senpat exchanged glances of consternation; neither had worried about that. Gagik Bagratouni’s big hands curled into fists. “Better, maybe, if we do. Zemarkhos and the Yezda deserve each other. The more they fight, the easier time we have coming after.”
“Normally I would agree and be grateful,” Minucius said, his face troubled. “But, the gods willing, Scaurus and Gaius Philippus are also in Amorion, or getting close. We came to rescue them, after all, not to throw more calamities down on them.”
With his gift for pointing out what was so obvious as to be easily overlooked, Pakhymer broke the worried silence that followed. “Well, it’s a bit late to turn back, isn’t it?”
Nevrat thought about the Khatrisher’s wry comment the next day, when she and her husband spotted the horseman coming up along the Arandos after the legionaries. The two Vaspurakaners had rotated back to rear guard, with some of Pakhymer’s men riding in front of the army.
Senpat gave a puzzled grunt as he looked back over his shoulder. “Fellow doesn’t sit his horse like a nomad.”
“So he doesn’t,” Nevrat agreed after a moment’s study. The Yezda, like the Khatrishers and other folk ultimately of Khamorth stock, used very short stirrup leathers and rode with their knees drawn up. The unknown kept his legs down at his horse’s side.
“There just seems to be the one of him.” Senpat whistled three notes from a Vaspurakaner hunting song, then set an arrow in his bow. “Cover me—I saw him first.”
Her chance to argue forestalled by that last, offhand remark, Nevrat trailed her husband at easy bowshot range as he approached the stranger. The two men talked briefly before Senpat waved an all-clear. Her bow still across her lap ready to grab, she came up.
“He’s not a Yezda, Nevrat.” Senpat’s face bore a faintly bemused expression. “His name is Arsakes Akrounos—he’s an imperial courier.”
Looking at Akrounos, Nevrat Sviodo was not surprised. He had the air of unimpressive competence the job required. If he was nonplused at finding a woman on patrol, he never let on. All he said was, “I have a dispatch for your leader.”
“We’ll get you to him,” Nevrat said.
Like most Videssians, Akrounos liked to hear himself talk. He gossiped on about this and that as he rode west between Nevrat and Senpat. Unlike many of his countrymen, he gave nothing away with his chatter, and Nevrat was sure no detail escaped his eyes as he trotted past the marching lines of legionaries.
Minucius tramped along at the front of the column. “Is he now?” he said when Senpat explained who and what Akrounos was. He stepped to one side to let the Romans pass him as he eyed the courier with scant liking. “All right, I suppose he can speak his piece.”
For the first time, Akrounos looked annoyed; he was used to warmer welcomes. He rummaged in a saddlebag and produced a parchment that prominently displayed the imperial sunburst seal. With a flourish, he handed it down to Minucius.
The Roman handed it back, discomfiting him again. “Suppose you just tell me the gist. Sorry and all that, but I don’t read Videssian very fast.”
“Surely you can guess—” Akrounos began.
Minucius cut him off. “Why should I guess, with you here? Say what you have to say or go home.”
“What?” Now the courier was openly scandalized; no one spoke so to imperial representatives. Mastering himself with a visible effort, he broke the seal on the document he carried. “ ‘His Imperial Majesty Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator of the Videssians, to Sextus Minucius, commanding my Majesty’s forces at Garsavra: greetings. I regret to learn that you have forgotten your obedience to me and—’ ”
“The gist,” Minucius said. “I haven’t the time to waste on this.”
Akrounos took a moment to put his thoughts in order; saying things short and clear did not come easy to Videssians. At last he said, “Return your force to Garsavra and in his mercy the Emperor will overlook your brief defection.”
“I thought as much.” Minucius folded his arms. “No.”
Again Akrounos hesitated, expecting some further answer. When he saw he would get none, he cried, “Why such ingratitude? Did the Empire not take you in when you were homeless, feed you when you were hungry?”
The Roman frowned. Nevrat’s respect for Thorisin Gavras’ wits, already high, went up another notch. The argument he had given his courier to cast in Minucius’ face appealed to the legionary’s strong sense of duty.
But Minucius said, “We follow Scaurus first, not Gavras. And we’ve earned our keep with blood. Besides, your master sent my two commanders off to die alone. Where’s the charity in that, Akrounos?”
The soldiers marching by growled in agreement with Minucius’ words. A couple of them hefted pila and glowered at Akrounos. Minucius quelled them with a gesture.
Bagratouni’s contingent replaced a maniple still almost wholly Roman. Akrounos called to the Vaspurakaner, “Do you, too, prefer some outland mercenary as your lord, rather than the Emperor?”
“Why not?” Bagratouni had been listening to the exchange all the while. “Did not Scaurus take us in when we were homeless, feed us when we were hungry?” His deep-set eyes gleamed as he placed the barb. Akrounos’ face froze. Bagratouni nodded gravely to Minucius and walked on.
Senpat murmured in Vaspurakaner, “It would take more than Thorisin to keep Gagik from going after Yezda—and after Zemarkhos.”
“But he doesn’t say that,” Nevrat replied in the same tongue. “He answers as a Roman centurion would—another sign you were right.”
“I will take your answer back to his Imperial Majesty,” Akrounos was saying to Minucius.
“Stay with us,” the Roman urged. “You were lucky to come this far once by yourself. Think how slim the odds are of getting back whole.”
The courier shrugged. “As may be. I have my loyalty, too, and the Emperor will need to hear the news I bring.”
“Go, then,” Minucius said, waving a hand in recognition of Akrounos’ courage. “I am not your enemy, or Thorisin’s either.”
“Ha!” Akrounos turned his horse sharply and trotted east. Minucius marched double time in the opposite direction to catch up to the head of his column. He did not look back.
The legionaries marched northwest along the Ithome River after it joined the Arandos. Amorion was only about three days away. Anticipation grew among the troopers, in the Romans for the chance to rescue their tribune and in the Vaspurakaners for that reason and at the prospect of striking a blow at the hated persecutor of their people.
Just when Nevrat began to hope Zemarkhos was too busy with his theological rantings to bother about such mundane details as frontier guards, a Khatrisher scout rode back to the army bearing a helmet, saber, and bow as trophies.
“A pair of the buggers tried to jump me,” he reported to Minucius. “I shot the one this junk used to belong to, but the other whoreson got away. They were imperials, not Yezda.”
The Roman commander sighed. “I wish you’d picked off both of them, but you did well to get the one.” The scout grinned at the praise.
“So much for surprise,” Laon Pakhymer observed. “If I were you, Sextus, I’d expect attack later today.”
“Even Yavlak waited to gather some of his forces,” Minucius protested.
“Yavlak seeks only loot and blood,” Bagratouni said. “Myself, I think Pakhymer is right. The foul, lying cur of a Zemarkhos has his men deluded into thinking Phos will lift them straight to heaven if they die doing the madman’s will.”
Minucius shook his head in wonder. “What idiocy.” Again he reminded Nevrat of Scaurus, to whom the sectarian quarrels among Phos’ worshipers meant nothing. As for herself, she had grown up with the Vaspurakaner version of the faith and never thought of changing. Some Vaspurakaners in the Empire did, to rise more quickly. Their countrymen had a word for them—traitor.
“I can’t believe any soldier would be so stupid,” Minucius insisted. Pakhymer and Bagratouni argued, but could not change his mind. The louder they shouted, the more he set his strong chin and looked stubborn.
Nevrat thought they were right. She wondered what would have made Marcus see reason. She caught Minucius’ eye and said, “Don’t let your not sharing a belief blind you into thinking it isn’t real. Remember how Bagratouni and his men joined yours.”
The Roman pursed his lips. Pakhymer was sharp enough to stay quiet and let him think, and to kick Bagratouni in the ankle when he would have kept on wrangling. Finally Minucius said, “We’ll march with maniples abreast. That way we can shift quickly into line if we have to.”
He shouted orders, at the same time swearing under his breath at the delay they would cause. Pakhymer winked at Nevrat, then startled her by saying in fair Vaspurakaner, “You have more than logic behind your words.”
Minucius looked up sharply. Nevrat had not thought he knew any of her language either.
“Can’t trust anyone any more,” Senpat chuckled when he rode up from patrol a few minutes later. But the amusement rode lightly on his voice, and on his face. He and Nevrat had not had to flee Zemarkhos’ pogrom, but they had seen the fanatic priest’s venom at Bagratouni’s vanished home in Amorion before the battle of Maragha.
This time the outriders gave only brief warning. “Curse you, how many?” Minucius shouted when a Khatrisher came galloping in to cry that horsemen were chasing him.
“Didn’t stop to count ’em,” the scout retorted. He ignored Minucius’ glare. Nevrat giggled. The freewheeling Khatrishers had a talent for getting under the Romans’ skins.
“Form line!” Minucius commanded. He nodded to Laon Pakhymer. “You were right, it seems. Can your men buy us some time to deploy?”
“Hurry,” Pakhymer said, waving to the rapidly approaching cloud of dust to the west. Smooth as on a parade ground, the legionaries were already moving into position. That seemed to annoy Pakhymer as much as his own soldiers’ cheerful rowdiness irritated Minucius.
“Come on, come on!” Pakhymer bawled to his men. “Don’t you know what a rare privilege it is to die for an officer who’ll admit he was wrong?” He sent Senpat and Nevrat a languid wave better suited to some great lord. “Would you care to join the ball? The dancing will begin shortly.”
Bowstrings had begun to thrum. The cavalry troop trading arrows with the Khatrishers seemed hardly more orderly than so many Yezda; they knew nothing of the intricate maneuvers Videssian military manuals taught. But they knew nothing of retreat either, though Nevrat saw how few they were compared to their foes.
“Zemarkhos!” they shouted. “Phos bless Zemarkhos!”
That war cry infuriated Gagik Bagratouni’s men. They sent it back with obscene embellishments. The leader of Zemarkhos’ men whipped his head around. Even fighting Roman-fashion, Bagratouni’s followers were recognizable for what they were by their stocky builds and thick black beards.
“Vaspurs!” the leader howled. He swung his sword toward them.
Laon Pakhymer was a cool professional. He had his horsemen sidling out to flank Zemarkhos’ irregulars, threatening them with encirclement if they did not withdraw. Neither he nor anyone else who thought only in military terms would have expected them to hurl themselves straight for the legionary line.
Because the charge was such a surprise, it succeeded better than it should have. Nevrat shot at an onrushing Videssian at point-blank range and, to her mortified disgust, missed. She ducked low, grinding her face into the coarse hair of her horse’s mane. She heard his blade hiss bare inches above her head. Then he was past, still yelling Zemarkhos’ name.
Once through the cavalry screen, the Videssians spurred straight for Bagratouni’s men. The rest of the army did not seem to exist to them, save as an obstacle between them and their chosen prey. The volly of pila they took slowed them, but they came on regardless. A dying horse bowled over three Vaspurakaners and gave Zemarkhos’ men a breach to pour into. They stabbed and slashed at the targets of their hatred. The Vaspurakaners fought back as savagely.
But the battle did not stay private long. The Roman maniples by Bagratouni’s moved up and swung in on the sides of Zemarkhos’ troop. And behind them, the Khatrisher cavalry swiftly re-formed to close off escape.
“The cork’s in the bottle now!” Senpat shouted. He yelled a challenge to one of the harried band in front of him: “Here, scum, what about me? I am a prince of Vaspurakan, too!” All the Vaspurakaners styled themselves princes, for they claimed descent from the first man Phos created.
Senpat’s foe fought with desperation and fanaticism. That helped even the fight, since Senpat was a better swordsman. But the Videssian never saw Nevrat, a few paces away, draw her bow. This time her aim was true. The man crumpled.
“Did you doubt me?” Senpat demanded.
“I’ve learned from the Romans, too. I take no chances.”
“Good enough. I won’t complain over unspilled blood, especially when it’s mine.” Senpat urged his horse ahead. Nevrat followed. She had saved arrows and she used them now to wicked effect.
At last even fanaticism could not maintain Zemarkhos’ men. A remnant of them disengaged and tried to fight their way clear. A few did; more died in the attempt. The whole sharp little fight had lasted only minutes.
Minucius came up to Gagik Bagratouni. The Roman commander’s walk was wobbly; a fresh dent in his helmet showed why. His wits still worked, though. “Well fought, Gagik. Let’s talk to some of the prisoners, to see what’s ahead for us.”
The Vaspurakaner spread large hands. “Prisoners? What a pity—there don’t seem to be any.” His eyes dared Minucius to make something of it.
“Ah, well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Minucius said. He looked round for Pakhymer, who, predictably, was not far away. “Can you send your scouts out a bit further, Laon? It wouldn’t do to get hit by a big band of those madmen without warning.”
“I’ll see to it.” The cavalry leader sounded more serious than usual as he gave his orders. The rough handling Zemarkhos’ irregulars gave his men in that first charge did not sit well with him, even if the Khatrishers had gained a measure of revenge.
The trumpets blared advance. The army moved ahead. Senpat finished bandaging a small cut on the side of his horse’s neck. “We’ve done all this,” he said, “and we don’t even know if Scaurus ever made it to Amorion.”
“I know,” Nevrat said. “I keep wondering how he’d fare if he ran into some of Zemarkhos’ zealots.”
“He’s not a Vaspurakaner,” her husband pointed out.
“So he isn’t. I hadn’t thought of that. But even if he’s got to the city, what can he hope to do?” Nevrat dug her heels into her horse’s ribs. “As Minucius said, we’ll find out soon enough.”