GAIUS PHILIPPUS SLAPPED AT A HORSEFLY BUZZING ROUND the head of the bony gray nag he was riding. It droned away. He growled, “I’m amazed this arse-busting chunk of buzzards’ bait has enough life in it to draw flies. Get up, you mangy old crock! Make it to Amorion by sundown and you can rest.”
He jerked on the reins. The gray gave him a reproachful look and came out of its amble for a few paces’ worth of shambling trot. It blew until its skinny sides heaved, as if the exertion were too much for it. As soon as it thought it had satisfied him, it fell back into a walk. “Miserable gluepot,” he said, chuckling in spite of himself.
“It’s an old soldier, sure enough,” Marcus said. “Be thankful it’s not better—it didn’t tempt the Yezda into trying to steal it.”
“I should hope not!” Gaius Philippus said, taking perverse pride in his decrepit mount. “Remember that one whoreson who looked us over a couple of days ago? He fell off his pony laughing.”
“As well for us,” the tribune answered. “He was probably a scout for a whole band of them.”
At that thought he slipped out of the bantering mood. The journey inland from Nakoleia was much worse that he had expected. The port was still in Videssian hands, but its hinterland swarmed with Yezda, who swooped down on farmers whenever they tried to work their fields. If the Empire had not kept the city supplied by sea, it could not have survived.
Most of the villages on the dirt track that led south were deserted, or nearly so. Even a couple of towns that had kept their ancient walls through the centuries of imperial peace now stood empty. The Yezda made growing or harvesting crops impossible, and so the towns, though safe from nomad siege, withered. He wondered how many had died when they were forced to open their gates, and how many managed to get away.
It occurred to him that the devastation the nomads were inflicting on the westlands had happened on a vastly greater scale long before, when the Khamorth swarmed off the edge of the steppe into Videssos’ eastern provinces. He shook his head. No wonder those lands had fallen into the heresy of reckoning Skotos’ power equal to that of Phos; evil incarnate must have seemed loose in the world.
A squad of horsemen came round a bend in the road, trotting briskly north. Their leader swung up an arm in warning when he caught sight of the Romans, then brought it down halfway as he recognized they were not Yezda. He rode up to inspect them. Scaurus saw that he had helmet, shortsword, and bow, but no body armor. His men were similarly equipped and mounted on a motley set of animals. The tribune had met their like on the road the day before—Zemarkhos’ men.
The squad leader drew the sun-sign over his heart. Marcus and Gaius Philippus quickly imitated him; it would have been dangerous not to. “Phos with you,” the Videssian said. He was in his late twenties, tall, stringy, scarred like a veteran, with disconcertingly sharp eyes.
“And with you,” the tribune returned.
A tiny test had been passed; the Videssian’s head moved a couple of inches up and down. He asked, “Well, strangers, what are you doing in the dominions of the Defender of the Faithful?” Having heard Zemarkhos’ self-chosen title from the riders he had come across yesterday, Marcus did not blink at it.
“We’re for the holy Moikheios’ panegyris at Amorion,” he said, giving the cover story he and Gaius Philippus had worked out aboard the Seafoam. “Maybe we can sign on as caravan guards with one of the merchants there.”
The squad leader said, “That could be.” He studied the tribune. “By your tongue and hair, you are no Videssian, but you do not look like a Vaspurakaner. Are you one of the Namdalener heretics?”
For once Marcus was glad of his blondness; though it marked him as a foreigner, it also showed he was not of the sort Zemarkhos’ men killed on sight. He recited Phos’ creed in the version the Empire used; the Namdaleni appended “On this we stake our very souls” to it, an addition which raised the hackles of Videssian theologians. Gaius Philippus followed his lead. He went through the creed haltingly, but got it right.
The horsemen relaxed and took their hands away from their weapons. “Orthodox enough,” their chief said, “and no one will take it ill if you hold to that usage. Still, you’ll find that many, out of respect for our lord Zemarkhos, add ‘We also bless the Defender of thy true faith,’ after ‘decided in our favor.’ As I say, it is optional, but it may make them think the better of you in Amorion.”
“ ‘We also bless the Defender of thy true faith,’ ” Scaurus and Gaius Philippus repeated, as if memorizing the clause. Zemarkhos, it seemed, had a perfectly secular love of self-aggrandizement, no matter how he phrased it. The tribune kept his face blank. “Thanks for the tip,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” the Videssian answered. “Outlanders who come to the true belief of their own accord deserve to be honored. Good luck in town—we’re off to watch for Yezda thieves and raiders.”
“And filthy Vaspurakaners, too,” one of his men added. “Some of the stinking bastards are still skulking around, for all we can do to root ’em out.”
“That’s not so bad,” said another. “They make better sport than bustards, or even foxes. I caught three last winter.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as he might of any other game. Scaurus’ twinge of regret at his hyprocrisy over the creed disappeared.
The squad leader touched a forefinger to the rim of his helmet, nodded to the Romans, and started to lead his troops away. Gaius Philippus, who had been mostly silent till then, called after him. He paused. The senior centurion said, “I was through these parts a few years ago and made some good friends at a town called Aptos. Have the Yezda got it, or Zemarkhos?”
“It’s ours,” the Videssian said.
“Glad to hear it.” Marcus suspected Gaius Philippus was mostly worried about Nerse Phorkaina, the widow of the local noble; Phorkos had died at Maragha. She was the only woman the tribune had heard Gaius Philippus praise, but when the legionaires had wintered at Aptos the veteran did nothing at all to let her know his admiration. Fear of one sort or another, Marcus thought, found a place to root in everyone.
Amorion was no great city, even next to Garsavra, only a dusty town in the middle of the westlands’ central plateau. Without the Ithome River, the place would have had no reason for being. But the only two times Marcus had seen it, it was jammed past overflowing, first by Mavrikios Gavras’ army marching west toward disaster and now with the panegyris.
Twilight was descending when the Romans rode between the parallel rows of commercial tents outside the city. Thorisin had been right; in the crush they were just another pair of strangers. A merchant with the long rectangular face and liquid eyes of the Makuraners laughed in staged amazement at the price a Videssian offered him for his pistachioes. Half a dozen turbaned nomads from the desert south of the Sea of Salt—slender, big-nosed men with a family likeness—were packing up their incenses and quills of spice till morning. They had camels tethered back of their tent; Marcus’ horse shied at the unfamiliar stink of them.
A priest dickered with a fat farmer over a mule. The rustic’s respect for the blue robe was not making him drop his price any. Somehow a Namdalener merchant had found his way to Amorion with a packhorse-load of clay lamps. He was doing a brisk business. The priest bought one after the mule seller laughed in his face.
“I don’t see him making it hot for heretics,” Gaius Philippus remarked.
“Seems to me ‘heretics’ and ‘Vaspurakaners’ mean the same thing to Zemarkhos,” Scaurus answered. “He’s got himself and his people worked into such a froth about them that he has no time to stew over anybody else’s mischief.”
The senior centurion grunted thoughtfully. Caravan masters, lesser merchants, swaggering guardsmen, and bargain hunters represented a great sweep of nations, some heterodox, others outside Phos’ cult altogether, yet every one of them carried on undisturbed by the clergy. But not a single Vaspurakaner was to be seen, although the land of the “princes”—as they called themselves—was not far northwest of Amorion, and although many of them had settled round the city after Yezda assaults made them flee Vaspurakan. Zemarkhos’ pogroms had done their work well.
The Romans rode past a caravan leader—a tall, wide, swag-bellied man with a shaved head, great jutting prow of a nose, and drooping black mustachioes almost as splendid as Viridovix’—cursing at a muleteer for letting one of his beasts go lame. He swore magnificently, in several languages mixed to blistering effect; his voice was the bass crash of rocks thundering down a mountainside. By unspoken joint consent, Scaurus and Gaius Philippus pulled up to listen and admire.
The caravaneer spotted them out of the corner of his eye. He broke off with a shouted, “And don’t let it happen again, you motherless wide-arsed pot of goat puke!” Then he put meaty hands on hips in a theatrical gesture that matched his clothes—he wore a maroon silk tunic open to the waist, baggy wool trousers dyed a brilliant blue tucked into gleaming black knee-high boots, a gold ring in his right ear, and one of silver in his left. Three of his teeth were gold, too; they sparkled when he grinned at the Romans. “You boys have a problem?”
“Only trying to remember what all you called him,” Gaius Philippus said, grinning back.
“Ha! Not half what he deserves.” A chuckle rumbled deep in the trader’s chest. He gave the Romans a second, longer look. “You’re fighters.” It was not a question. With a broad-bladed dagger and stout, unsheathed cutlass on his belt, the caravaneer recognized his own breed. “I’m short a couple of outriders—are you interested? I’ll take the both of you in spite of that horrible screw you’re riding there, gray-hair.”
“Why did you think I wanted your curses?” Gaius Philippus retorted.
“Don’t blame you a bit. Well, what say? It’s a goldpiece a month, all you can eat, and a guardsman’s share of the profits at the end of the haul. Are you game?”
“We may be back in a day or two,” Marcus said; it would not do to refuse outright, for their story’s sake. “We have business to attend to in town before we can make plans.”
“Well, you can paint me with piss before I tell you I’ll hold the spots, but if I haven’t filled ’em by then, I’ll still think about you. I’ll be here—between the damn Yezda and all this hooplah over the Vaspurs, things are slow. Ask for me if you don’t see me; I’m Tahmasp.” The Makuraner name explained his slight guttural accent and his indifference to Zemarkhos’ persecution, except where it interfered with trade.
Someone bawled Tahmasp’s name. “I’m coming!” he yelled back. To the Romans he said, “If I see you, I’ll see you,” and lumbered away.
Gaius Philippus booted his horse in the ribs. “Come on, you overgrown snail.” He said to Marcus, “You know, I wouldn’t half mind serving under that big-nosed bastard.”
“Never a dull moment,” Scaurus agreed. The centurion laughed and nodded.
At any other time of the year Amorion would have shut down with nightfall, leaving its winding, smelly streets to footpads and those few rich enough to hire link-bearers and bodyguards to hold them at bay. But during the panegyris of the holy Moikheios, the town’s main thoroughfare blazed with torches to accomodate the night vigils, competing choirs, and processions with which the clergy celebrated their saint’s festival.
“Buy some honied figs?” called a vendor with a tray slung over his shoulder. When Marcus did, the man said, “Phos and Moikheios and the Defender bless you, sir. Here, squeeze in beside me and grab yourselves a place—the big parade’ll be starting before long.” The Defender again, was it? The tribune frowned at the hold Zemarkhos had on Amorion. But he had an idea how to break it.
Practical as always, Gaius Philippus said, “We’d best find somewhere to stay.”
“Try Souanites’ inn,” the fig seller said eagerly. He gave rapid directions, adding, “I’m called Leikhoudes. Mention my name for a good rate.”
To make sure I get my cut, Marcus translated silently. Having no better plan, he made Leikhoudes repeat the directions, then followed them. To his surprise, they worked. “Yes, I have something, my masters,” Souanites said. It proved to be piles of heaped straw in the stable with their horses at the price of a fine room, but Scaurus took it without argument. Each stall had a locking door; Souanites might see his place near empty the rest of the year, but he made the most of the panegyris when it came.
After they stowed their gear and saw to their animals, Gaius Philippus asked, “Do you care anything about this fool parade?”
“It might be a chance to find out what we’re up against.”
“Or get nailed before we’re started,” Gaius Philippus said gloomily, but with a sigh he followed the tribune into the street.
They took a wrong turn backtracking and were lost for a few minutes, but the noise and lights of the main street made it easy to orient themselves again. They emerged a couple of blocks down from where they had turned aside to go to Souanites’ and promptly bumped into the fig seller, who had been working his way through the gathering crowd. His tray was nearly empty, he spread his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry I no longer have such a fine view to offer you.”
“We owe you a favor,” Marcus said. With Leikhoudes between them, he and Gaius Philippus elbowed their way to the front of the crowd. They won some black looks, but Scaurus was half a head taller than most of the men and Gaius Philippus, though of average size, did not have the aspect of one with whom it would be wise to quarrel. Leikhoudes exclaimed in delight.
They were just in time, though the first part of the procession left the Romans fiercely bored. The company of Zemarkhos’ militia drew cheers from their neighbors, but looked ragged, ill-armed, and poorly drilled to Marcus. They held the Yezda off with holy zeal, not the spit and polish that made troops impressive on parade. Nor was the tribune much impressed by the marching choruses that followed. For one thing, even his insensitive ear recognized them as rank amateurs. For another, most of their hymns were in the archaic language of the liturgy, which he barely understood.
“Are they not splendid?” Leikhoudes said. “There! See, in the third row—my cousin Stasios the shoemaker!” He pointed proudly. “Ho, Stasios!”
“I’ve never heard any singers to match them,” Scaurus said.
“Aye, but plenty to better them,” Gaius Philippus added, but in Latin.
Another chorus went by, this one accompanied by pipes, horns, and drums. The din was terrific. Then came a group of Amorion’s rich young men on prancing horses with manes decorated by ribbons and trappings bright with gold and silver.
The noise of the crowd turned ugly as a double handful of half-naked men in chains stumbled past, prodded along by more of Zemarkhos’ irregulars with spears. The prisoners were stocky, swarthy, heavily bearded men. “Phos-cursed Vaspurakaners!” Leikhoudes screeched. “It was your sins, your beastly treacherous heresy that set the Yezda on us all!” The crowd pelted them with clods of earth, rotten fruit, and horsedung. In a transport of fury, Leikhoudes hurled the last of his figs at them.
Marcus set his jaw; beside him Gaius Philippus shifted his feet and swore under his breath. They had no hope of making a rescue; to try would get them ripped to pieces by the mob.
The growls around them turned to cheers. “Zemarkhos! His Sanctity! The Defender!” With neighbors watching, no one dared sound halfhearted.
Before the fanatic priest marched the parasol bearers who symbolized power to the Videssians, as the lictors with their rods and axes did in Rome. Marcus whistled when he counted the flowers of blue silk. Fourteen—even Thorisin Gavras was only entitled to twelve.
As if oblivious to the adulation he was getting, Zemarkhos limped down the street, looking neither right nor left. His gaunt features were horribly scarred, as were his hands and arms. Limp and scars both came from the big prick-eared hound that paced at his side.
The hound was called Vaspur, after the legendary founder of the Vaspurakaner people. Zemarkhos had named it long before Maragha, to taunt the Vaspurakaner refugees who fled to his city. Finally Gagik Bagratouni had his fill of such vilification. He caught priest and dog together in a great sack, then kicked the sack. Striking out in pain and terror, Vaspur’s jaws had done the rest.
Marcus, who had been at Bagratouni’s villa, had persuaded the nakharar to let Zemarkhos out, fearing his death as a martyr would touch off the persecution the priest had been fomenting. Maybe it would have, but looking back, the tribune did not see how things could have gone worse for the “princes.” He wished he had let Vaspur finish tearing Zemarkhos’ life away.
The hound paused, growling, as it padded past the Romans. The hair stood up along its back. It had been close to three years, and the beast had only taken their scent for a few minutes; could it remember? For that matter, would Zemarkhos know them again if he saw them? Scaurus suddenly wished he were a short brunet, to be less conspicuous in the crowd.
But the dog walked on, and Zemarkhos with it. The tribune let out a soft sigh of relief. The priest had been dangerous before, but now he carried an aura of brooding power that made Marcus wish he could raise his hackles like Vaspur. He did not think mere temporal authority had put that look on Zemarkhos’ ruined features; something stranger and darker dwelt there. By luck, it was directed inward now, growing, feeding on the priest’s fierce hate.
Still shouting, “Phos watch over the Defender,” the crowd fell in behind Zemarkhos as he made his way into Amorion’s central forum. They swept Scaurus and Gaius Philippus with them. More Videssians filled the edges of the square; the newcomers pushed and shoved to find places.
The spear-carrying guards forced their Vaspurakaner captives into the middle of the forum. They released the ends of the chains they held. One took a short-handled sledge from his belt and secured each prisoner by staking those free ends to the ground. A couple of the Vaspurakaners tugged at their bonds, but most simply stood, apathetic or apprehensive.
The guards moved away from them in some haste.
Zemarkhos limped toward the prisoners. Beside him, Vaspur barked and snarled, showing gleaming fangs. “Is he going to set the hound on them?” Gaius Philippus muttered in disgust. “What did they do to him?”
Marcus expected the dog to go for the prisoners in vengeance for Bagratouni’s treatment of Zemarkhos. That made a twisted kind of sense. But at the priest’s command it sat next to him. Zemarkhos’ profile was predatory as a hunting hawk’s as he focused his will on the Vaspurakaners.
He extended a long, clawlike finger in their direction. The crowd quieted. The priest quivered; Scaurus could fairly see him channeling the force that boiled within him. In a way, he thought, it was an obscene parody of the ritual healer-priests used to gather their concentration before they set to work.
But Zemarkhos did not intend to heal. “Accursed, damned, and lost be the Vaspurakaner race!” he cried, his shrill voice searing as red-hot iron. “Deceitful, evil, mad, capricious, with wickedness twice compounded! Malignant, treacherous, beastly, and obstinate in their foul heresy! Accursed, accursed, accursed!”
At every repetition, he stabbed his finger toward the captives. And at every repetition, the crowd bayed in bloodthirsty excitement, for the Vaspurakaners writhed in torment, as if lashed by barbed whips. Two or three of them screamed, but the noise was drowned in the roar of the crowd.
“Accursed be the debased creatures of Skotos!” Zemarkhos screeched, and the prisoners fell to their knees, biting their lips against anguish. “Accursed be their every rite, their every mystery, abominable and hateful to Phos! Accursed be their vile mouths, which speak in blasphemies!” And blood dripped down into the Vaspurakaners’ beards.
“Accursed be these wild dogs, these serpents, these scorpions! I curse them all, to death and uttermost destruction!” With as much force as if he cast a spear, he shot his finger forward again. Their faces contorted in terror and agony, their eyes starting from their heads, the Vaspurakaners flopped about on the ground like boated fish, then subsided to twitching and finally stillness.
Only then did Zemarkhos, unwholesome triumph blazing in his eyes, stalk up to them and spurn their bodies with his foot. The crowd, fired to the religious enthusiasm that came all too readily to Videssians, shouted its approval. “Phos guard the Defender of the Faithful!” “Thus to all heretics!” “The true faith conquers!” One loud-voiced woman even cried out the imperial salutation: “Thou conquerest, Zemarkhos!”
The priest gave no sign the acclaim moved him. Urging Vaspur to his feet, he limped off toward his residence. He fixed his unblinking stare on the crowd and said harshly, “See to it you fall not into error, nor suffer your neighbor to do so.”
His people, though, were used to his unbending sternness and cheered him as though he had granted them a benediction. They streamed out of the plaza, well pleased with the night’s spectacle.
As they were making their way back to their meager lodgings, Gaius Philippus turned to Marcus and asked, “Are you sure you want to go through with what you planned?”
“Frankly, no.” The strength of Zemarkhos’ wizardry, fueled with a fanatic’s zeal and a tyrant’s rage, daunted the tribune. He walked some paces in silence. At last he said, “What other choice do I have, though? Would you sooner be an assassin, sneaking through the night?”
“I would,” Gaius Philippus answered at once, “if I didn’t think they’d catch us afterward. Or, more likely, before. But I’m glad I’m no big part of your scheme.”
Marcus shrugged. “The Videssians are a subtle folk. What better to confound them with than the obvious?”
“Especially when it isn’t,” the veteran said.
Dawn the next day gave promise of the ferocious heat of the Videssian central plateau, the kind of heat that would quickly kill a man away from water. The horse trough in which Scaurus washed his head and arms was blood-warm.
He had no appetite for the loaf he bought from the innkeeper. Gaius Philippus finished what was left after polishing off his own. It was not, Marcus knew, that the other felt easier because he was sure of his safety. Had their roles been reversed, the unshakable centurion would not have eaten a bite less.
They stayed in the shade of the stable until early afternoon, drawing curious glances from the horseboys and the guests who came in to take their beasts.
When the shadows started to grow longer again, Marcus unpacked his full Roman military kit and donned it all—greaves, iron-studded kilt, mail shirt, helmet with high horsehair crest, scarlet cape of rank. Even in the shadows, he began to sweat at once.
Gaius Philippus, still in cloth, clambered aboard his spavined gray. He led the tribune’s saddled horse after him as he emerged from the stable and leaned down to clasp hands with Scaurus. “I’ll be ready at my end, not that it’ll make any difference if things go wrong. The gods with you, you great bloody fool.”
A good enough epitaph, Marcus thought as the senior centurion clopped away. His own progress was as leisurely as he could make it; in armor under that blazing sun he understood, not for the first time, how a lobster must feel boiled in its shell.
He collected a crowd of small boys before he got to Amorion’s chief street. The youngsters had grown used to soldiers, but not ones so resplendent as he. He gave out coppers with a free hand; he wanted to attract all the notice he could. He asked, “Is Zemarkhos preaching today?”
Some of the lads perked up at mention of the priest, while others watched the tribune with blank faces; not through love alone did Zemarkhos rule Amorion. One of the boys who had smiled said, “Aye, so he is, sir. He talks in the plaza every day, he do.”
“Thanks.” Scaurus gave him another coin.
“Thank you, sir. Are you going to go listen to him? I can see, sir, you’ve come from far away, maybe even just to hear him? Isn’t he a marvel? Have you ever run across his like?”
“That I haven’t, son,” the Roman said truthfully. “Yes, I’m going to listen to him. I may,” he went on, “even speak with him.”
The corpses of the Vaspurakaners still lay in their agonized postures in the center of the square. They did nothing to slow the furious buying and selling of the panegyris, which went on all around them. Two rug sellers had set up stalls across from each other, and loudly sneered at one another’s merchandise. A swordsmith worked a creaking grindstone with a foot pedal as he sharpened customers’ knives. A plump matron examined herself in a merchant’s bronze mirror, looking for flaws in the speculum and in her makeup. She put it down with a reluctant nod; the haggling began in earnest.
Sellers of wine, nuts, roasted fowls, ale, fruit juice, figs, little spiced cakes, and a hundred other delicacies wandered through the eager crowd, crying their wares. So did strongmen sweating under the great stones they had heaved over their heads, strolling musicians, acrobats—including one who walked on his hands and had a beggar’s tin cup tied to his leg—trainers with their performing dogs or talking ravens, puppeteers, and a host of other mountebanks.
And so, for all Zemarkhos’ ascetic prudery, did prostitutes, drawn with the other merchants to the panegyris’ concentration of wealth. Marcus spied Gaius Philippus, well posted at the edge of the square, talking with a tall, dark-haired woman, attractive in a stern-faced way. Perhaps she reminded him of Nerse Phorkaina, the tribune thought. She slid her dress off one shoulder for a moment to show the centurion her breasts. Startled, Marcus laughed—perhaps she didn’t, too.
As the street lad promised, Zemarkhos was exhorting a good-sized gathering. Flanked by several spear-carrying guardsmen, he stood, Vaspur at his side, behind a portable rostrum. He emphasized his points by pounding it with his fists. Scaurus did not need to have heard the first part of the harangue to know what it was about.
“They are Skotos’ spawn,” Zemarkhos was shouting, “seeking to corrupt Phos’ untarnished faith through the vile mockery of it they practice in their heretical rites. Only by their destruction may right doctrine be preserved without blemish. Aye, and by the destruction of those deluded heresy-lovers in the capital, whose mercy on the disbelievers’ bodies will be justly requited with torment to their souls!”
The audience cheered him on, crying, “Death to the heretics! Zemarkhos’ curse take the hypocrites! Praise the wisdom of Zemarkhos the Defender, scourge of the wicked Vaspurakaners!”
Flicking his crimson cape round him, Marcus worked his way toward Zemarkhos’ podium. He cut an impressive figure; people who turned to grumble as he pushed past them muttered apologies and stepped back to let him by. Soon he stood in the second or third row, close enough to see the veins bulging at Zemarkhos’ throat and on his forehead as he ranted against his chosen victims.
“Anathema to those who spring from Vaspurakan, the root-stock of every impurity!” he screamed. “May they be cast into Skotos’ outer darkness for their wicked inspirer to devour! They are the worst of all mankind, howling like wild dogs against our correct faith—hardhearted, stiff-necked, vain, and insane!”
Marcus pushed his way to the very front of the audience. “Rubbish!” he shouted, as loud as he could.
He heard gasps all around him. Zemarkhos’ mouth was open for his next pronouncement. It hung foolishly for a moment as the priest gaped; it had been years since anyone opposed him. Then he waved to his guards. “Kill me this blasphemous oaf.” Grinning, they stepped forward to obey.
“Yes, send your dogs to do your work,” the Roman jeered. “Too stupid to learn, are you? Look what happened to you when you tried that with your precious Vaspur. You’re a scrawny, murderous fraud and you deserve every scar you have.”
Several people near Scaurus scrambled away, afraid they might somehow be tainted by his sacrilege. Vaspur snarled. The guards, no longer grinning, hefted their spears in anger. The tribune set his hand to the hilt of his sword, but kept his eyes riveted on Zemarkhos. Confident in his own power, the priest gestured to his men again. They growled, but gave way.
“Very well, madman, let it be as you wish; you are as fit a subject as my other for the proof of Phos’ power within me.” Zemarkhos’ eyes glittered with consuming hunger. As he measured Scaurus, his stare reminded the tribune of that of an old eagle, ready to stoop.
Then the zealot priest’s eyebrows twitched, surprise returning humanity to his expression. “I know you,” he rasped. “You are one of the barbarians who preferred the company of Vaspurakaners to my exposition of the truth. Your repentance will come late, but none the less certain for that.”
“Of course I’d sooner have guested with them than with you. They’re whole men, not twisted, venomous fanatics, ‘hardhearted, stiff-necked, vain, and insane!’ ” Marcus quoted with insulting relish. The crowd gasped again; Zemarkhos jerked as if stung.
“ ‘Whole men,’ is it?” he returned. His stabbing finger darted at the Vaspurakaners he had slain. “There they lie, a mort of them, given over to death by Phos’ just judgment.”
“Horseshit. Any evil wizard could work the same, without taking Phos’ mantle for himself in the bargain.” The tribune sneered. “Phos’ power! What nonsense! If you weren’t so damned cruel, Zemarkhos, you’d be a joke, and a lame one at that. Go on, show everyone here Phos’ power—if it comes through you, strike me dead with it.”
“No need to beg,” Zemarkhos said, his voice an eager whisper. “I will give you what you want.” He did not move, but seemed nonetheless to grow taller behind the podium. Marcus could all but see the power he was summoning to himself. His eyes were two leaping back flames; his whole body quivered as he aimed his dart of malice.
His arm shot toward the tribune. Scaurus stumbled under the immaterial blow and wished for his scutum to hold up against it. His ears roared; his sight grew dark; agony filled his mind like the kiss of molten lead. He bit his lip till he tasted blood. Dimly he heard Zemarkhos’ cackle of cruel, vaunting laughter.
But he held on to his sword, though he kept it in its sheath. Zemarkhos’ fanatic zeal powered his magic to a strength to match any Marcus had seen since he came to Videssos, but the druids’ charms were equal to it. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he called to Zemarkhos, and stood straight once more.
The hatred on the priest’s face was frightening, making him into something hardly human. He gathered all his might within him and loosed it in a single blast of will. This time, though, the Gallic blade’s ward spells were already alive and easily turned aside the thrust. Scaurus barely flinched.
The tribune stretched his mouth into a grin. “I don’t think Phos is paying much attention to you,” he said. “Try again—maybe he’s doing something important instead.”
The crowd muttered at his effrontery, but also at Zemarkhos’ failure. The priest readied another curse, but Marcus saw in his eyes the beginning of doubt, sorcery’s fatal foe. The third attack was the weakest; the tribune felt vague discomfort, but did not show it.
“There—do you see?” he shouted to the folk around him. “This old vulture tells lies with every breath he takes!” He forbore to mention that he would have been lying dead in the dirt without his sword’s unseen protection.
“You have sold your soul to Skotos and stand under his shield!” Zemarkhos shrieked, his voice cracking. His harsh features were greasy with sweat; he panted like a soldier after an all-day battle.
That was a cry to get Scaurus mobbed, but he was ready for it. “Hear the desperate liar, grabbing at straws! Do you not teach, Zemarkhos, that Phos will beat Skotos in the end? Or are you a Balancer all of a sudden, one of those Khatrisher heretics who do not profess that good is stronger than evil?”
At another time, the expression the priest wore might have been funny. He had thrown charges of heresy past counting, but never expected to catch one, or to see his very piety discredited. “Kill him!” he started to scream to his guardsmen, but a cabbage flew out of the crowd and caught him in the side of the head, sending him sprawling off the podium. Not all of Amorion had enjoyed living under his religious tyranny.
Nor had all hated it, either; the cabbage-flinger went down with a shriek as the man in front of him whirled and stabbed him in the side. He kicked savagely at the man he had knifed, then fell himself as the woman beside him smashed a clay water jug over his head.
“Dig up Zemarkhos’ bones!” she screamed—the Videssian cry for riot. A hundred voices took up the call. A hundred more rose in horror, shouting, “Blasphemers! Heretic lovers!”
Zemarkhos scrambled to his feet. Two men rushed him, one swinging a chunk of firewood, the other barehanded. Growling horribly, Vaspur leaped for the first man’s throat. He threw up his arms to protect himself. Vaspur tore them to the bone; the man dropped his club and fled, dripping blood. One of the priest’s guards speared the unarmed man. He stared in amazement at the point in his belly, crumpled, and fell.
“Murderer! See the murderer!” that same woman cried. Her voice was loud and coarse as a donkey’s bray and rang through the square. Before the guard could pull his pike free, she led the charge at him. He went down and did not get up. “Dig up Zemar—” Her cry was abruptly cut off as another guard reversed his spear and clubbed her with it. A moment later an uprooted paving stone dashed out his brains.
“Death to those who mock the Defender!” a wild-eyed youth shouted, and was fool enough to punch Marcus in his ironclad ribs. The tribune heard knuckles break. The young man howled. The tribune kicked him in the stomach before he could think of something worse to do; the youth folded up like a fan.
Armed, armored, and well-trained in the midst of rioting civilians, Scaurus enjoyed a tremendous edge. He swung his sword in great arcs, not so much to strike as to keep a little space around him. The sight of a yard of edged steel in the hands of someone who knew how to use it made even the most fiery zealot think twice. The tribune began slipping through the mob toward Gaius Philippus.
His worst worry was Zemarkhos’ guardsmen, but the three or four of them still standing had all they could do holding the rioters back from their master. His curses now rained on the crowd that had followed him so long. But in civil strife as in battle, uproused passion went far to protect against magic. And as one intended victim after another did not drop, the priest’s assurance failed him. He turned and fled, robe flapping about his shanks as he forced them into a hobbling run.
A fusillade of stones and rubbish followed him. Several missiles landed; he staggered and went to one knee. More struck the dog Vaspur. It howled and leaped as far as the chain Zemarkhos still held would let it. When the chain went taut the dog fell heavily, half-throttled.
Its snarl sent everyone close by scrambling back. The closest target for its fury was its master. Zemarkhos screamed “No!” as Vaspur sprang for him. The dog’s teeth tore at his throat. The scream rose higher and shriller for a moment, then bubbled away to silence.
Zemarkhos’ backers cried out in horror, but his foes raised a great hurrah. His death did nothing to end the riot. By then, everyone in the square had been hit from behind at least once and struck back blindly, keeping fights going and starting new ones. Some went through the crowd with more purpose, looking for old enemies to pay back.
The mob also began to realize no one would keep them from plundering whatever traders whose goods took their fancy. The first merchant’s stall went over with a crash. Friends and foes of Zemarkhos forgot their quarrel and looted it together.
“Phos and no quarter!” bellowed a squat, brawny man in a butcher’s leather apron. He rampaged through the crowd, heavy fists churning. Marcus wondered whose side he was on, and wondered if he knew himself.
Someone bludgeoned the tribune. His helmet took the worst of the blow, but he still staggered. He whirled by reflex and felt his sword bite. His attacker groaned, fell, and was trampled. He never did see the fellow.
Across the plaza, a disappointed looter cursed because all of a ring seller’s best opals had already been stolen before he got a chance at them. “It’s not fair!” he yelled, paying no attention to the jeweler who lay unconscious on the ground a few feet away, a thin stream of blood trickling down the side of his face.
“Cheer up,” another man said. “There’s bound to be better stuff in the merchants’ tent city outside of town.”
“You’re right!” the first rioter exclaimed. “And most of those buggers are heretics or out-and-out heathens, so they must be fair game.” He had been howling against Zemarkhos, but only because his brother-in-law had fallen victim to the priest. Now he filled his lungs and shouted, “Let’s clean out those rich whoresons who come here just to cheat us every year!”
The cheers were like the baying of wolves. Brandishing torches and makeshift weapons, the mob streamed north through Amorion’s streets, hot for loot. Most houses were slammed tight against the riot, but the tide of excitement swept more than a few men from them.
Marcus fought his way across the current toward Gaius Philippus. The veteran’s gladius was in his scarred fist; his feet dangled outside the stirrups. Just before the tribune made it to him, a rioter tried to steal the roan he was leading. Disdaining the sword, the centurion raked out with his left foot. The nailed soles of his caligae shredded the Videssian’s back. The man howled like a whipped dog; when he turned to run, Gaius Philippus sped him along with a well-aimed toe to the fundament.
As Scaurus mounted, the senior centurion scowled at him. He grumbled, “You could have waited a bit before you started the brawl. I might have had time for a quick one against the wall with that tart, but as soon as the ruction got going she ran off to lift whatever wasn’t nailed down. Easier than friking, I suppose.”
“Go howl.” Marcus booted his horse forward. He took off his crested helmet and threw away his cape, trying to look as little like the man who had set Amorion aboil as he could.
It helped, but not as much as he wanted. “Pawn of Skotos!” an old bald man yelled, rushing at him with looted dagger in hand. But the tribune’s horse was a trained war-beast from the imperial stables. It reared and struck out with iron-shod hooves. The man toppled, his knife flying through the air.
“This wretched slug I’m on would kill itself if it tried that,” Gaius Philippus said envyingly. The gray was not at risk; one display was enough to make the rioters keep their distance. Undisturbed for the moment, the Romans rode the mob’s current north.
“What now?” the senior centurion asked, shouting to be heard. “Back to Nakoleia?”
“I suppose so,” Marcus said, but he still hesitated. “I do wish, though, I had a token to prove Zemarkhos dead.”
“What are you going to do, go back and take his head so you can toss it at Thorisin’s feet the way Avshar gave you Mavrikios’?” When Scaurus did not answer at once, Gaius Philippus turned astonished eyes on him. “By the gods, you’re thinking of it!”
“Yes, I’m thinking of it,” the tribune said heavily. “After all this, I’m damned if I’ll leave Gavras any excuse for cheating me. I have to be sure he can’t.”
“He can if he wants to, anyway—that’s what being Emperor is all about. All going back’ll do is get you killed to no purpose.” Gaius Philippus paused a moment. “Now you listen to me and see if I don’t argue like some fool Greek sophist—shame Gorgidas isn’t here to give me the horselaugh.”
“Go on.”
“All right, then. Without Zemarkhos, do you think this town can hold off the Yezda long? What’ll they be doing? Sitting back with their thumbs up their arses? Not bloody likely. And even Thorisin can’t help noticing them being here instead of that maniac in a blue robe.”
“You’re not wrong,” Marcus had to admit. “Gavras won’t thank us for giving them Amorion, though.”
“Then why didn’t he give you an army, to keep them out of it? You know the answer to that as well as I do.” Gaius Philippus drew the edge of his hand across his throat. “You’ve done what he told you to; he can’t complain over what happens next.”
“Of course he can; you just showed me that yourself.” But Marcus realized Gaius Philippus was right. Zemarkhos was done, and without troops the tribune could not help Amorion. “Very well, you have me. Let’s get out while we can.”
“Now you’re talking.” Gaius Philppus bullied a resentful lope out of his horse and slapped its bony flank when it tried to slack off. “Not this time, you don’t.” Soon he and Marcus were near the front of the mob. The centurion grinned maliciously at the rioters around them. “They’d best enjoy their loot while they can. The Yezda’ll swarm down on ’em like flies on rotten meat.”
“So they will.” Marcus swore in sudden consternation. “And one of the ways they’ll come swarming is out of the north, straight down the path we need to use.”
“A pox! I hadn’t thought of that. We were lucky when we got here, not seeing more than a few scattered bands.” Gaius Philippus rubbed his scarred cheek. “And they’ll be hot for plunder, too, when they come across us. Bad.”
“Yes.” Buildings were beginning to thin out as they got near the edge of town; like most cities in the once-secure Videssian westlands, Amorion had no wall. Ahead, Marcus could see the tents of wool, linen, and silk, the merchants’ assembly that rose like mushrooms after a rain, only to disappear once the panegyris was over. “I have it!” he exclaimed, wits jogged by them. “Let’s take that Tahmasp up on turning guardsman. There’s booty in his caravan, aye, but only the biggest band of raiders would dare have a go at him. He’d bloody any smaller bunch.”
“You’ve thrown a triple six!” Gaius Philippus said. “The very thing!” He bunched the thick muscles in his upper arms. “We may get to have another whack at these jackals around us, too. I wouldn’t mind that one bit.” Like most veteran soldiers, he loathed mobs, as much for their disorder as for their looting habits.
The tent city was already in an uproar when the Romans reached it. The first wave of rioters had come just ahead of them; they were running from one vendor to the next, snatching what they could. The buyers already there were catching the fever, too, and joining the mob. Several bodies, most of them locals, lay bleeding in the dirt.
But the mob’s onset was not the only thing sowing confusion. Merchants were frantically shutting up displays, taking down tents, and loading everything onto their horses, donkeys, and camels. Some were nearly done; they must have started at first light, long before Scaurus touched off the scramble at Amorion.
“Now where was Tahmasp lurking?” Gaius Philippus growled. The Romans had counted on finding him by his main tent, which was an eye-searing saffron that had glowed even in the twilight of the night before. But it was already down.
“There, that way, I think,” Marcus said pointing. “I remember that blue-and-white striped one wasn’t far from him.”
They rode forward. “Right you are,” Gaius Philippus said, spotting the yellow canvas baled up on horseback. There was no sign of the caravan master, though traders who traveled with him were still dashing about finishing their packing.
Despite the chaos, the mob left Tahmasp’s caravan alone. A good forty armored guardsmen, most of them mounted, formed a perimeter to daunt the most foolhardy rioters. Some had drawn bows, others carried spears or held sabers at the ready. They had the mongrel look of any such company, with no matching gear and men who ranged from a blond Haloga through Videssians and Makuraners to robed desert nomads and even a couple of Yezda. They were all scarred, several missing fingers or an ear, and probably four-fifths of them outlaws, but they looked like they could fight.
They bristled as the Romans approached. “Where’s Tahmasp?” Marcus shouted to the man he figured for their leader, a short, dark, hatchet-faced Videssian who wore his wealth—his hands glittered with gold rings, his arms with heavy bracelets. His sword belt and scabbard were crusted with jewels, and the torque round his neck would have raised the envy of Viridovix or any Gallic chieftain. Baubles aside, he looked quick and dangerous.
“He’s bloody well busy,” he snapped. “What’s it to you?”
Gaius Philippus spoke up, in piping falsetto: “Oh, the wicked fellow! He’s got me in trouble, and my daddy’s coming after him with an axe!” The guard chief’s jaw dropped; several of his men doubled over in laughter. In normal tones, the centurion rasped, “Who are you, dung-heel, to keep people from him?”
The other purpled. Marcus said hastily, “He said for us to come see him if we were looking for spots in your troop. We are.”
That got them a different kind of appraisal from Tahmasp’s rough crew. Suddenly the gaudy little troop leader was all business. His darting black eyes inspected the puckered scar on the tribune’s right forearm, his sleeveless mail shirt. “Funny gear,” he muttered. He gave Gaius Philippus a hard once-over. “Well, maybe,” he said. He called to the Haloga, “Go on, Njal, fetch the boss.”
“What idiocy is this?” Tahmasp boomed as he came up at a heavy run. He glared at his guard chief. “This had better be good, Kamytzes. These boneheads with me this trip couldn’t figure out how to put a prick where it goes, let alone—” He broke off, recognizing the Romans. “Ha! Done with your precious ‘business,’ are you?”
Somewhere behind Marcus, a rioter yelled as a merchant slammed a box closed on his hand. “You might say so,” the tribune said.
Tahmasp’s eyes glinted, but he rolled his shoulders in a massive shrug. “The fewer questions I ask, the fewer lies I get back. So you two want to join me, eh?” Receiving nods, he went on, “You’ve soldiered before—no, don’t tell me about it; I’d sooner not know. That makes things easier. You know what orders are. Pay and all I told you about already. Steal, and we’ll stomp you the first time; stomp you again, harder, and kick you out naked the next. Try and run out on us, and we’ll kill you if we can. We don’t like bandits planting spies.”
“Fair enough,” Marcus said. Gaius Philippus echoed him.
“Good.” The caravaneer’s bushy eyebrows went down as he frowned. “I forgot to ask—what do I call you?”
They gave their praenomens. “Never heard those before,” Tahmasp said. “No matter. You, Markhos, from now on you are in Kamytzes’ band. Once we are on the move, that is right flank guard. And you, Gheyus—” His Makuraner accent made the veteran’s name a grunt. “—you belong to Muzaffar and left flank patrol.” He pointed to a countryman of his, a tall, thin man with coal-black hair going gray at the temples and an aristocratic cast of features marred by a broken nose.
Tahmasp saw the Romans look at each other. He laughed until his big belly shook—not like so much jelly, as Balsamon’s did, but like a boulder bouncing up and down. “I don’t know you bastards,” he pointed out. “Think I’ll let you stay together and maybe plot who knows what? Not frigging likely.”
He might not be a Videssian, Marcus thought, but his mind worked the same way. No help for it; taking precautions kept Tahmasp alive.
Gaius Philippus asked the caravaneer, “What’s all your hurly-burly about? Seems you were going to get out even before the riot started—and ’most everybody else up here with you.” As if to punctuate his words, another merchant company pulled away, the traders lashing their animals ahead. The lash fell on looters, too, driving them away with curses and yelps.
“I’d have to have my head stuffed up my backside to stay. A rider came in this morning with news of a thundering big army pushing east up the Ithome toward us. That says Yezda to me, and I’m not blockhead enough to sit still and wait for ’em.”
“You called it,” Scaurus said to Gaius Philippus. The approaching force had to be the nomads, he thought. Thorisin had hardly begun mobilizing when Marcus was expelled from the city; he doubted whether an imperial force could even have reached Garsavra.
“Enough of this jibber-jabber,” Tahmasp declared. “We’ve got to get out of here fast, and standing around chinning don’t help. Some of the stupid sods with me would hang around to sell a Yezda the sword he’d take their heads with the next second. Kamytzes, Muzaffar, these two are your headache now. If they give trouble, scrag ’em; we got on without ’em before, and I’ll bet we can again.” He turned and clumped away, shouting, “Isn’t that bleeding tent down yet? Move it, you daft buggers!”
Kamytzes ordered Marcus forward with a brusque gesture. Muzaffar smiled at Gaius Philippus, his teeth white against swarthy skin. When he spoke, his voice was soft and musical: “Tell me, what do you call that steed of yours?”
“This maundering old wreck? The worst I can think of.”
“A man of discernment, I see. That would seem none too good.” He beckoned to the veteran to join him. “If you are one of us, you are facing the wrong way.”
Tahmasp’s caravan pulled out less than an hour after the Romans took service with him. Forty guards seemed an impressive force when the caravan was gathered together, but, even eked out by merchants, grooms, and servants, they were pitifully few once it stretched itself along the road. Divided into three-man squads, Kamytzes’ troop patrolled its side of the long row of wagons, carts, and beasts of burden, while Muzaffar’s took the other.
Marcus looked for Gaius Philippus, but could not see him.
What might have been a bad moment came just outside Amorion, when the rioters were still thick as fleas on a dog. A double handful of them attacked Scaurus and the squadmates he had been assigned, Njal the Haloga and a lean, sun-baked desert nomad who spoke no Videssian at all. The tribune heard his name was Wathiq.
Some of the looters tried to keep the guards in play while the rest went for the donkeys behind them. Against their own kind, the simple plan would have worked. But Njal, wielding his axe with a surgeon’s precision, sliced off one rioter’s ear and sent him running away shrieking and spurting blood. Marcus cut down another before the fellow could jump in to hamstring his horse. Wathiq turned in the saddle and shot one of the men who had run past them in the back. The rioters gave it up as a bad job and fled, while the three professionals grinned at each other.
Njal and Wathiq could talk to each other after a fashion in broken Makuraner. Through the Haloga, the tribune learned Wathiq had backed the wrong prince in a tribal feud and had to flee. Njal himself was exiled for being too poor to pay blood-price over a man he had killed. Scaurus gave out that he was a wandering mercenary down on his luck, a story the other two accepted without comment. He had no idea whether they believed him.
The Roman thought nothing of it when Tahmasp led his charges west; with enemies coming from the opposite direction, he would have gone the same way to get maneuvering room.
They camped by the Ithome. With summer’s heat drawing near, the river was already low in its bed, but it would flow the year around. On the parched central plateau, that made it more precious than rubies.
Each squad of guards shared a tent; Marcus gave up the idea of any private planning with Gaius Philippus. Still, he thought, with Latin between them, their talk would be safe enough from prying ears. But when he went looking for the centurion at the cookfires, he discovered his comrade’s squad had picket duty the first watch of the night. Kamytzes had given him, Wathiq, and Njal the mid-watch. From what he had seen of Tahmasp’s methods, he suspected that was no accident.
The blocky caravaneer hired the best, though. His cook somehow managed a savory stew out of travelers’ fare of smoked meats, shelled grain, chick-peas, and onions. The very smell of it had more substance than the thin, sorry stuff Thorisin Gavras’ jailers had dished out.
The tribune settled down by a fire to enjoy the stew, but before he got the spoon to his lips, one of the other guardsmen stumbled over him. Marcus’ bowl went flying. The trooper was a Videssian, thicker through the shoulders than most imperials, with a gold hoop dangling piratically from his left ear. “Sorry,” he said, but his mocking grin made him out a liar.
“You clumsy—” Marcus began, but then he saw the rest of the guards watching him expectantly and understood. Any new recruit could look forward to a hazing before veterans would accept him.
His tormentor loomed over him, fists bunched in anticipation. Without standing up, the tribune hooked his foot back of the other’s ankle. The Videssian went down with a roar of rage; Scaurus sprang on top of him.
“No knives!” Kamytzes shouted. “Draw one, and it’s the last thing you’ll do!”
The two fighters rolled in the dirt, pummeling each other. The Videssian rammed a knee at Marcus’ groin. He twisted aside just enough to take it on the point of the hip. He grabbed his opponent’s beard and pulled his face down into the dust. When the other tried for a like hold on him, his hand slipped off the tribune’s bare chin.
“Ha!” someone exclaimed. “Some point to this shaving business after all.”
The Roman saw sparks when the guard’s fist smashed into his nose. Blood streamed down his face; he gulped air through his mouth. He punched the Videssian in the belly. The fellow was so muscular it was like hitting a slab of wood, but one of the tribune’s blows caught him in that vulnerable spot at the pit of the stomach. The guard folded up, the fight forgotten as he struggled to breathe.
Marcus climbed to his feet, gingerly feeling his nose. There was no grate of bone, he noted with relief, but it was already swelling. His voice sounded strange as he asked Kamytzes, “Have I passed, or is there more?”
“You’ll do,” the little captain said. He nodded at the tribune’s foe, who was finally starting to do more than gasp. “Byzos there is no lightweight.”
“Too true,” Scaurus agreed, touching his nose again. He helped Byzos up and was not sorry to see he had scraped a good piece of hide off the Videssian’s cheek. But the guard took his hand when he offered it. The fight had been fair and was no tougher an initiation rite, the tribune decided, than the branding that sealed a man to a Roman legion.
“Pay up, chief,” one of the guards said. Kamytzes, looking sour, pulled off a ring and gave it to him.
Marcus frowned, not caring to have his new commander resentful at having lost money on account of him. “If you want to get your own back,” he said, “bet on my friend Gaius when his turn comes after he gets off watch.”
“With his head full of gray?” Kamytzes stared. “He’s an old man.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” the tribune said. “Tell you what; make your bets. If you lose, I’ll make them good for you—and here are your witnesses to see I said so.”
“The bigger fool you, but I’m glad to take you up on it. Never turn down free money or a free woman, my father always told me, and money won’t give you the clap.”
When the squad rode out on picket duty, Njal said, “You’d best be richer t’an you look, outlander. T’at Kamytzes, he might almost be a Namdalener for gambling.” He said something to Wathiq, who nodded vigorously and pantomimed a man rolling dice.
“I’m not worried,” Marcus said, and hoped he meant it.
The watch passed without incident; only the buzz of insects and a nightjar’s chuckling call broke the stillness. Videssos’ constellations, still alien to the tribune after nearly four years, rolled slowly across the heavens. Making idle talk with Njal, he learned the Halogai recognized constellations altogether different from the patterns the imperials saw in the sky. Wathiq, it turned out, had another set still.
It seemed a very long time before the late-watch squad came to relieve them. They shook their heads when Scaurus asked whether they knew how Gaius Philippus had done. “We sacked out soon as our tent was up,” one said for all. “Take more than a brawl to wake us, too—hate this bloody last watch of the night.”
As Marcus was yawning himself, he could hardly argue. Back at the camp, the fires had died into embers; even gossipers and men who had stayed up for a last cup or two of wine were long since abed. “Come morning you’ll know,” Njal consoled Scaurus as they slid into their bedrolls. The tribune fell asleep in the middle of a grumble.
Tahmasp announced the dawn not with trumpets, but with a nomad-style drum whose deep, bone-jarring beat tumbled men out of bed like an earthquake. Bleary-eyed, Marcus splashed water on his face and groped for his tunic. He was still mouth-breathing; his nose felt twice its proper size.
After the sweaty closeness of the tent, the smell of wheatcakes sizzling was doubly inviting. Marcus stole one from the griddle with his dagger, then tossed it up and down till it was cool enough to hold. He devoured it, ignoring the cook’s curses. It was delicious.
A nudge in the ribs made him whirl. There stood Kamytzes, looking like a fox who had just cleaned out a henhouse. The troop leader handed him a couple of pieces of silver. “I made plenty more,” he said, “but this for the tip.”
“Thanks.” Marcus pocketed the coins. He looked round for Gaius Philippus, but Muzaffar’s half of the guard troop was billeted at the far end of the camp. Turning back to Kamytzes, he asked, “How did he do it?”
“They picked a big hulking bruiser to go at him, all muscles and no sense. From the way he came swaggering over, a blind idiot would have known what he had in mind. Your friend hadn’t had time to sit down to his supper yet. He made as if he didn’t notice what was going on until the lout was almost on top of him. Then he spun on his heel, cold-cocked the bugger, dragged him over to the latrine trench, and dropped him in—feet first; he didn’t want to drown him. After that he got his stew and ate.”
Scaurus nodded; the encounter had the earmarks of the senior centurion’s efficiency. “Did he say anything?” he asked Kamytzes.
“I was coming to that.” The cocky officer’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “After a couple of bites he looked up and said to nobody in particular, ‘If anything like that happens again, I may have to get annoyed.’ ”
“Sounds like him. I doubt he need worry much.”
“So do I.” Filching a wheatcake the same way Marcus had, Kamytzes bustled away to help Tahmasp get the caravan moving.
They were on the road by an hour and a half after sunrise—not up to the standard of the legions, but good time, the tribune thought, for a private band of adventurers. Tahmasp went up and down the line of merchants who traveled with him, blasphemously urging them to keep up. “What do you think you are, a eunuch in a sedan chair?” he roared at one who was too slow to suit him. “You move like that, we’ll fornicating well go on without you. See how fast you’ll run with Yezda on your tail!” The trader mended his pace; the caravaneer had no more potent threat than leaving him behind.
As they had the day before, they traveled west. Marcus waved to Tahmasp as he came by on his unceasing round of inspections. “What is it?” the flamboyant caravaneer asked genially. “Kamytzes tells me you carved yourself a place,” he said, chuckling, “though you’ll not gain favor by making your nose as big as mine.”
“As I wasn’t born with it that way, I’ll be as glad when it’s not,” the tribune retorted. Happy to find Tahmasp in a good mood, he asked when the caravan would swing north toward the Empire’s ports on the coast of the Videssian Sea.
Tahmasp dug a finger in his ear to make sure he had heard correctly. Then he threw back his head and laughed till tears streamed down his leathery cheeks. “North? Who’s ever said a word about north? You poor, stupid, sorry son of a whore, it’s Mashiz I’m bound for, not your piss-pot ports. Mashiz!” He almost choked with glee. “I hope you enjoy the trip.”