A GREAT SILENCE HELD THE CENTER OF THE FIELD. MEN ON both sides stood with lowered weapons, stunned at what they had seen. The din of combat on either flank seemed irrelevant. Marcus and Viridovix looked at each other, dazed by the force they had called up and finding it hard to believe they had not been swept away with Avshar.
Then one of the wizard-prince’s flies bit Scaurus on the back of the neck. Now that they were no longer under sorcerous control, his sword did not protect against them. The sudden pain and his automatic slap made victory real to him.
Across the line, the Makuraners began swatting at themselves, too. One of them caught the tribune’s eye: a lanky, blade-nosed warrior who sat his horse with the inborn arrogance of a great noble. He smiled and nodded, as if to a friend. “We are all well rid of that one,” he said, only a faint guttural rasp flavoring his Videssian.
Trumpets blared behind Scaurus. He heard Thorisin Gavras cry, “Drive them now, drive them! They’ll be quaking in their corselets without the stinking he-witch to do their dirty work for ’em!”
The tribune’s hand tightened on his sword. A last push against a demoralized enemy …
The Makuraner’s smile grew wider and less pleasant, and Marcus felt a chill of foreboding. “Do you think we will run off?” the fellow said. “We are taking this fight; now it will be for ourselves instead of for a master who ruled us only because of his might.”
He called to his lancers in their own language. They yelled back eagerly, clapping their hands and clashing swords and shields together. Their cry became a swelling chorus: “Nogruz! Nogruz!”
“Och, it’s another round for the shindy, I’m thinking,” Viridovix said softly.
“Come over to us,” the Makuraner noble urged. “Neither of you is an imperial by blood. Would you not sooner serve the winners?”
Marcus could see the ambition blazing from him like fire. No wonder this Nogruz had followed Avshar—he would not shrink from anything that looked to be to his advantage. The tribune shook his head; Viridovix answered with a contemptuous snort.
“A pity,” Nogruz said, shouting to make himself heard over the yells of his men. “Then I will kill you if I can.”
He spurred his horse forward. He was too close to the Roman and Gaul to build up the full, terrifying momentum on which heavy cavalry depended, but so clever with his lance that he almost skewered Marcus as the tribune sprang away. Viridovix slashed from the other side, but Nogruz was as good with his shields as he was with his spear and turned the blow. More Makurani rumbled after him, and the battle began again.
“Out of my way!” Thorisin Gavras shouted impatiently, pushing his charger through the ranks of the Halogai. He nearly rode Gorgidas down when the Greek did not scramble out of his path quickly enough. Then he was face to face with Nogruz, his gilded armor and the Makuraner’s silvered corselet both battered and grimy. “I’d sooner have killed the wizard, but you’ll do,” he said.
Both master horsemen, they probed at each other with their lances. Thorisin closed first, ducking under a thrust and booting his big bay at Nogruz. He threw his lance aside and yanked out his saber, sent it whistling down in a vicious stroke. Nogruz dropped his own lance and took the cut on his mailed sleeve. His mouth twisted in pain beneath his waxed mustaches, but he bought the time he needed to draw his sword as he twisted away from the Emperor’s backhand pass.
Marcus only got glimpses of their single combat, as he was battling for life himself. He did see the brief sequence when a Makuraner came storming at Gavras from the flank. One of the Emperor’s Haloga guardsmen shattered his lance and cut him from his horse with two thunderous strokes of the axe. A moment later another of Nogruz’ followers killed the northerner, but did not interfere in the duel.
Nogruz’s desperate use of his sword arm to meet Thorisin’s attack left it numb and slow, and the noble found himself in constant danger. The imperials roared and the Makurani groaned when his sword flew from his hand.
The Emperor’s next cut was meant to kill. Nogruz ducked away, not quite far enough. The blow laid his cheek open to the teeth. He reeled in the saddle. Then his men did rush up to protect him and bore him back into their ranks before Gavras could strike again.
“They must break now!” Thorisin cried, brandishing his red-smeared saber. He urged his foot soldiers to another push at their foes. The Makurani, though, were tough as steel. They had been fighting Videssos for fifty generations and did not need leadership to keep on; it was in their blood.
Marcus was listening to find out what was happening on either side of the deadlocked center, and misliking what he heard. The noise he had dismissed as unimportant in the aftermath of Avshar’s fall was vital again, and it showed a Yezda win in the making on the left. Even before Mourtzouphlos pulled out of line, that had been the weakest part of the imperial army; the Videssians there did not have enough plainsmen to screen them from the savage archery of the nomads who fought under Avshar’s banner.
From the direction of the shouts, the Videssian left was already sagging badly. If it broke, or even if its flank was dislodged from the hill country that anchored it, the Yezda would have a free road to the imperials’ rear. Scaurus’ guts knotted at the thought. That was how Maragha turned into a catastrophe.
The tribune looked around for Viridovix. Having risked the unthinkable once made it less so in a second crisis. Were all the Makurani to vanish as Avshar had, the tide of battle would surely turn.…
But the Gaul was nowhere to be seen; a thicket of Makuraners on horseback and tall Halogai had got between him and Marcus. The Roman set out toward where he thought Viridovix had to be, but the going was as slow and hard as it had been when he was inching his way toward Avshar.
A mounted man pounded him on the shoulder from the side. He whirled and thrust, thinking he was under attack. Thorisin Gavras knocked his point away. The Emperor wore a fierce, harried expression. “I wish I’d put the damned Arshaum over there,” he said, pointing with his saber.
“Then you’d only have the same problem on the other wing.”
“Maybe so, but they’re grinding us on the left, and there’s nothing I can do about it—all the reserves are in.” Gavras was clutching his sword hilt tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He scowled. “Phos, I thought they’d scatter once you did in the wizard. And if I know you, you’ve had it planned for weeks, too.”
With what he hoped was a suitably modest shrug, the tribune answered, “It worked better than I expected. I was afraid I’d go with him.”
A messenger on a lathered, blowing horse forced his way up to Thorisin before he could reply. Marcus and a Haloga drove away an enemy lancer; the tribune wounded the Makuraner’s mount, but the fellow escaped anyhow. When the Roman turned back, Gavras’ face was as set as if it had been carved from marble.
“Bad news?” Marcus asked. Like Nogruz, he had to shout to be heard over the clash of weapons; the panting, oaths, and war cries of the fighting men; the pounding of horses’ hooves and the beasts’ squeals; and the moans and shrieks of the hurt.
“You might say so,” Gavras answered in a dead voice. He pointed over the Makuraner line. “The lookouts in the hills have spotted a dust cloud heading this way—cavalry, from the speed they’re making. They aren’t ours.” He glanced at the sun, which had slipped startlingly far into the west. “We might have hung on till dark saved us. Now …”
Marcus finished the sentence for himself. If the Makurani and Yezda had reinforcements coming, everything was over. Thorisin could not hold against them and could not retreat without turning his own flank.
“Make them earn it,” the tribune said.
“Aye. What else is there to do?” The Emperor’s eyes still held bleak courage, but a rising despair lay under it. “All for nothing,” he said, so softly Scaurus could hardly make out his words. “The Yezda gobble the westlands, fresh civil war over what’s left to us … even though you routed him, Roman, it seems Avshar wins at last.”
Still more quietly, he went on, “And Phos preserve Alania and my child, for no one else will.”
He spoke, Marcus thought, like Cincinnatus or one of the other heroes from the legendary days of the earliest Republic, putting the concerns of the state ahead of those of his family. But that spirit had not saved some of those heroes from disaster, and the tribune failed to see how it would here, either.
Hot fighting was an anodyne; he threw himself into it, to have no time to think of what was coming. He spied Viridovix for a moment and laughed bitterly—he was where the tribune had been not long before, probably searching for him as he had for the Celt. He struggled back in the direction he had come, but a knot of horsemen blocked his path.
“Skhēsómetha?” someone asked at his elbow: “Will we hold?”
His answer, to his surprise, also came out in Greek: “Ou tón—On my oath, no.”
Gorgidas drew in a long, hissing breath of dismay. He was sadly draggled, his helmet jammed down over one ear; sweat, dust, and blood matted his beard; his cheeks were hollow with exhaustion. The target Viridovix had given him was all but hacked to flinders.
He nodded leftward and dropped into Latin to ask, “It’s there, isn’t it?” The noise from that part of the field was very bad. The Yezda had bent the imperials back a long way. They knew a building victory and whooped as if it were already won.
But Scaurus had to answer, “Worse than that.” A head taller than the Greek, he could see over the fighting and make out that fatal onrushing cloud of dust himself. He told Gorgidas what it meant.
Too weary to curse, Gorgidas felt his shoulders sag as though someone had loaded him down with a sack of wet sand. “Not much sense in any of this after all, is there?” he said. The thought saddened him. As physician and historian, he searched for patterns to give meaning to what went on around him. All the events of the last several years, each of no great importance by itself, had come together to produce Avshar’s downfall, unexpected but perfectly just. And now a relative handful of men from the west, thanks only to their untimely arrival, would rob that downfall of its significance and produce exactly the same result as if the wizard-prince still lived. Where was the right there? he wondered, and found no answer.
Yells of fear and dismay said that imperials up and down the line were spotting the approaching army. “Hold your ground!” Thorisin Gavras’ shout was urgent, but he did not show his troops the hopelessness he had revealed to Scaurus. “Running won’t help—you’ll be caught from behind! The best chance we have is to stand fast!” The sensible advice, the kind an underofficer might give his squad, kept the soldiers steadier than any showy exhortations.
Marcus could see the banners of Yezd through the roiling dust. He felt no worse; he had known who those warriors were. Some of their countrymen spied them, too, and were waving them forward.
Lanceheads swung down as the newcomers went into a gallop. Makurani, the tribune thought dully—they would tear through the imperial line like a rockslide smashing a plank fence.
The noise of their impact was like the end of the world: the thud of body against body, horse against horse; the racket of weapons clashing and snapping; screams of terror, and others of pain. But the enemy was crying out, not the imperials; the attack crashed into their unprotected rear.
Marcus simply stood, rigid with astonishment. Then the new battle cry echoing over the field reached his ears, and he started yelling like one possessed. The newcomers were shouting, “Wulghash!”
Grinning a crazy man’s grin, Gorgidas cried, “It fits! It fits!” He hugged Scaurus, danced three steps from an obscene dance, and leaped in the air in sheer high spirits. The tribune, bemused, drove off a dismounted warrior who made for the Greek while he was temporarily deranged.
If Gorgidas’ pattern was completed, that of the men who had followed Avshar shattered into ruin. Chaos ripped through their ranks at the sound of the khagan’s name. Some took up the cry themselves. Others, Yezda and Makurani both, had joined the wizard-prince in preference to Wulghash—or feared he would think so. They set upon men who had been their comrades until a moment before, hewing them down lest they be assailed in turn.
With fratricide loose among them, they could not hope to conquer the bewildered imperials, or even stand against them. Seeing the enemy’s disarray, Thorisin Gavras went over to the attack. The Videssians’ pipes and trumpets relayed his commands: “Press ahead, strike hard! This time they break!”
And break they did, unstrung at last. As nomads will, the Yezda galloped off in all directions, like spattered quicksilver. Once they were seen to be running, the pursuit was not fierce; the imperials were at the end of their tether, and Thorisin only too aware of how readily the nomads could flock back together. He let them go.
Instead he swung his forces in against Nogruz’ Makurani. Less able to flee than the Yezda, they had no choices but fighting or surrender—and, having been beset from behind out of the blue, few would risk the latter. Battling with reckless desperation, they hurled the imperials back time after time.
But the troops who shouted Wulghash’s name fought with an anger that made them a match for the countrymen now their foes. The khagan headed them. Older than most of his men, he was still a formidable warrior, making up with experience the little he had lost in strength. Too, his own rage propelled him as he hammered through his opponents.
Nogruz met him in the center of his riven force. The Makuraner noble’s head was bandaged, but he had his wits back, and the full use of his right arm. They availed him nothing. Wulghash rained blows on him with a heavy, six-flanged mace, smashing his shield and shattering the sword in his hand. A final stroke crushed his skull.
When Nogruz went down, his followers saw at last that their game was over. They began shedding their proud, plumed helmets and giving up, though a few chose to fight to the end. More yielded to the imperials than to Wulghash’s followers. Accepting the surrender of a nobleman who kept his arrogance even in defeat, Marcus thought he, too, would sooner take his chances with an out-and-out enemy than with an overlord he had renounced.
The tribune did not see any mistreatment of the soldiers who had submitted to Wulghash. It was as if he had no time for them, for good or ill. He prowled through their disheartened ranks, his eyes darting this way and that.
He was so intent on his search that he reached the imperials’ line without noticing it, only drawing up in surprise when he saw he was face to face with foot soldiers. The Halogai and legionaries paid him no special attention, except when one asked if he wanted to surrender. He angrily shook his head.
Scaurus called a greeting, his voice a dusty croak. Wulghash’s head whipped around. His broad nostrils flared in surprise. “You!” he said. “You turn up in the oddest places.”
“So, if your Highness will pardon me, do you.” Talking hurt; the tribune reached for his canteen. To his disgust, it was dry.
The khagan of Yezd grunted. “No trouble raising men against Avshar, or following his tracks, though we had to forage like so many dogs for the scraps his army—my army!—left.” Wulghash’s scowl was black. “And for what?” he said bitterly. “Aye, he’s beaten here, but what of it? He’s escaped me. One way or another, he’ll be back to start his blood-sucking all over again.”
“Not this time.” In as few words as he could, Marcus told Wulghash of the wizard-prince’s annihilation. He had to work to convince the khagan that Avshar had not simply gotten away through his own magic. When Wulghash finally believed him, he dismounted and embraced the tribune. His forearms were thick and muscled, like a wrestler’s.
Only scattered fighting was left; most of Nogruz’ men were either prisoners or down. Scaurus looked around to take stock. He spotted Viridovix not far away; even coated with dust, his fiery locks were hard to miss. The Gaul was relieving a captive of his gold-chased saber and knife. He waved in reply to the tribune’s hoarse shout.
“Where might you ha’ been?” he asked, prodding the dejected Makuraner along ahead of him as he ambled over. “Sure and I thought there we’d have to be swording it again, and you off doing a skulk.” The twinkle in his eye took any sting from his words.
He glanced curiously at Wulgash. “And who’s this stone-faced spalpeen?”
“We’ve met,” the khagan said coldly, looking him up and down. “I remember your loose tongue.”
The Gaul bristled and hefted his captive’s sword. Several of Wulghash’s men growled; one pointed a lance at Viridovix. Wulghash did not move, but shifted his weight to be ready for whatever happened.
Marcus said quickly, “Let be.” He told Viridovix who the khagan was, and Wulghash of the Celt’s part in beating Avshar. “We’ve fought the same foe; we shouldn’t quarrel among ourselves.”
“All right,” the two men said in the same grudging tone. Startled, they both smiled. Wulghash stuck out his hand. Viridovix put the saber in his belt and took it, though the result was as much a trial of strength as a clasp.
“Touching,” Thorisin Gavras said dryly. He showed no concern at riding up to the very edge of the Makuraner line. A fly flew in front of his face. He stared at it cross-eyed, then waved it away. “Surely the priests would approve of making a late enemy into a friend.”
There was no mistaking him; the setting sun shone dazzlingly off his corselet and the gold circlet on his brow. Wulghash licked his lips hungrily. He had a good many retainers behind him.… “If I gave the word,” he murmured, “you would be the late enemy.”
The Emperor’s eyebrows came down like storm clouds. “Who’s this arrogant bastard?” he demanded of Scaurus, unconsciously imitating Viridovix. Wulghash scowled back; he did not care for being insulted to his face twice running.
The tribune did not answer at once. Instead he said testily, “Will someone give me a drink of water?” Thorisin blinked. Viridovix was first with a canteen. It held wine, not water. Marcus drained it. “Thanks,” he breathed, sounding like himself again. He turned back to the Avtokrator, who was barely holding his temper. “Your Majesty, I present Wulghash, khagen of Yezd.”
Thorisin sat straighter on his horse. All at once, the Halogai behind him were alert again, instead of tiredly slapping one another on the back and exclaiming over what a hard fight it had been. Scaurus could read the Emperor’s mind; Gavras was thinking what Wulghash had a moment before, what the tribune had in the throne room at Mashiz—one quick blow, now.…
“You wouldn’t have won your battle without him,” Marcus said.
“What has that to do with anything?” Thorisin replied, but he gave no order.
Wulghash had followed Gavras’ thought as readily as the Roman. His guards were as loyal as Thorisin’s; they had chosen him when he was a fugitive and followed him across hundreds of miles to restore him to his throne. He lifted his mace, not to attack but in plain warning. “Move on me and thou’t not enjoy it long, even an thou slayest me,” he promised the Emperor.
“Save your ‘thous’ for Avshar,” Thorisin said. He was still taking the measure of the khagan’s horsemen, weighing the chances.
“Avshar is gone,” Marcus said. “Without him setting Yezd against Videssos, can the two of you find a way to live in peace?”
Wulghash and Gavras both looked at him in surprise; the thought did not seem to have occurred to either of them. The moment for violence slipped away. Thorisin let out a harsh chuckle. “You hear the strangest notions from him,” he said to Wulghash. “Something to it, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Wulghash said. He turned his back on the Emperor to remount his horse. Once he was aboard it, he went on, “We will camp for the night. If we are not assailed, we will not be the ones to start the fighting.”
“Agreed.” Thorisin spoke with abrupt decision. “I will send someone come morning, behind a shield of truce, to see what terms we can reach. Should we fail …” He stopped. Again the tribune could think along with him.
So could Wulghash. He grinned sourly. “You’ll try to rip my gizzard out,” he finished.
Thorisin laughed. Here, at least, was one who did not misunderstand him.
The khagan pointed at Scaurus. “Send him; no one else. No, I take that back—send his friend, too, the tough, stocky one. I can read a lie on him, where this one’s too smooth by half.” The tale Marcus had spun in Mashiz was not forgotten, then.
“Why them?” the Emperor said, not relishing Wulghash’s demand. “I have real diplomats at hand—”
“Who sucked in tedium with their mothers’ milk,” Wulghash interrupted. “I haven’t time to waste listening to their wind. Besides, that pair rescued me and let me go free out of their comrades’ camp, knowing full well who I was. I trust them—somewhat—not to play me false.” He gave Thorisin a measuring stare. “Can it be you do not feel the same?”
Challenged, Gavras yielded. “As you wish, then.” Because he was at bottom a just man, he added, “All in all, they’ve served Videssos well—as has this outlander here.” He nodded at Viridovix. “Ridding the world of Avshar outweighs anything else I can think of.”
The Gaul had been unwontedly quiet since the Emperor came up, not wanting to draw notice to himself. At last he saw that Thorisin really did not hold a grudge against him. He beamed in relief, saying, “Sure and your honor is a fine gentleman.”
“As may be. What I am is bloody tired.” With that, no one in earshot could disagree. Thorisin turned to Scaurus. “See me in the morning for your instructions. Between now and then I intend to sleep for a week.”
“Aye, sir,” the tribune said, saluting. “By your leave …” At the Emperor’s nod, he and Viridovix took their leave. Along the way they picked up Gorgidas, who was doubly worn with fighting and healing. After waiting for him to help a last wounded Haloga, they steered him back toward the main body of legionaries, holding him upright when he stumbled from fatigue. He muttered incoherent thanks.
“Och, Scaurus, what’ll you and himself do if Gaius Philippus is after getting himself killed?” Viridovix asked. “Wouldn’t that bugger up your plans for fair?”
“Phos, yes,” Marcus said, surprising himself by swearing by the Videssian god. He could not imagine Gaius Philippus dying in battle; the veteran seemed indestructible. Apprehension seized him.
His heart leaped when he heard the familiar parade-ground rasp: “Form up there, you jounce-brained lugs! You think this is a fornicating picnic, just because the scrap’s over for a while? Form up, the gods curse your lazy good-for-nothing bungling!”
Gorgidas roused a bit from his stupor. “Some things don’t change,” he said.
Darkness was swiftly falling; the Roman, Greek, and Gaul were almost on top of Gaius Philippus before he recognized them. When he did, he shouted, “All right, let’s have a cheer for our tribune now—beat Avshar singlehanded, he did!”
The roar went up. “I like that,” Viridovix said indignantly. “There for my health, I suppose I was.”
Marcus laid a hand on his shoulder. “We both know better.”
So, in fact, did Gaius Philippus. He came up to the Gaul and said in some embarrassment, “I hope you understand that was for the sake of the troops. I know nothing would have worked without your having the backbone to go through with the scheme.”
“Honh! A likely tale.” Viridovix tried to sound gruff, but could not help being mollified by the rare apology from the senior centurion.
It seemed the legionaries had left camp weeks ago, not half a day. Great holes were torn in their ranks; Scaurus mourned each Italian face he would never see again. With Vorenus slain on the field, Titus Pullo trudged back to the Roman ditch and earthwork like a man stunned. Their rivalry was done at last. Pinarius, the trooper who had challenged Marcus and his friends when they returned to Amorion, was dead, too, and his brother beside him, along with so many more.
And Sextus Minucius was hobbling on a stick, his right thigh tightly bound up, his face set with pain and pale from loss of blood. Having seen more battlefield injuries than he liked to remember, Marcus was not sure the young Roman would walk straight again. Maybe Gorgidas’ healing would help, he thought. Still, Minucius was luckier than not—his Erene was no widow.
If anything, the Videssians and Vaspurakaners who had joined the legionaries suffered worse than the Romans, being not quite so skilled at infantry fighting. Scaurus felt a stab of guilt walking past Phostis Apokavkos’ corpse; had he left the Videssian in the city slum where he found him, Apokavkos might eventually have made a successful thief.
Gagik Bagratouni limped from a wound much like Minucius’. Two “princes” were dragging his second-in-command, Mesrop Anhoghin, in a litter close behind him. Perhaps mercifully, Anhoghin was unconscious; sticky redness soaked through the bandages wrapped round his belly.
Bagratouni gave Scaurus a grave nod. “We beat them,” was all he said; the victory had been too narrow for exultation.
As the legionaries began filing into camp, Laon Pakhymer led the tattered remnant of his Khatrishers up to the palisade. “May we bivouac with you?” he called to Marcus. He looked from his own men to the Romans and sadly shook his head. “There’s room for the lot of us.”
“Too true,” Marcus said. “Of course; come ahead.” He made sure an adequate guard had been detailed to watch the legionaries’ prisoners, then stumbled into his tent, started to undo his armor, and fell asleep still wearing one greave.
Seeing Gaius Philippus carrying a white-painted shield on a spearshaft, Pikridios Goudeles raised a sardonic eyebrow. “First Scaurus usurps my proper function, and now you?” he said.
The veteran grunted. “You’re welcome to it. I’m no diplomat, with or without any damned olive branch.”
Goudeles frowned at the Roman idiom, then caught it. “Blame your honest face,” he chuckled. His own features were once more as they had been at the capital; he had trimmed his hair and beard, and also shed his Arshaum leathers for a short-sleeved green robe of brocaded silk. But he was wearing his saber and kept glancing proudly at the dressing that covered an arrow wound on his arm—pen-pusher or no, he had been in the previous day’s fighting.
“Let’s get on with it,” Marcus said, hefting his own shield of truce. His head was buzzing with Thorisin’s commands, and the most urgent of them had been to reach an agreement quickly.
Several Halogai and Videssians saluted the tribune as he walked out of the imperial camp; they knew what he had done. Provhos Mourtzouphlos, though, turned his back. Marcus sighed. “It’s wrong to wish someone on your own side had been killed in action, but—”
“Why?” Gaius Philippus asked bluntly. “He’s a worse enemy than a whole clan of Yezda.”
Vultures and carrion crows flapped into the air, screeching harsh protests, as the Romans went through the battleground. Wild dogs and foxes scuttled out of their path. Flies, Avshar’s and others, swarmed over the littered corpses. Those were already beginning to swell and stink under the late summer sun.
Makuraner sentries, apparently forewarned to expect Scaurus and Gaius Philippus, led them to Wulghash. On their way, they took them through the entire camp, which was even more sprawled and disorderly than the one they had left not long before.
The tribune caught his breath sharply when they rounded a last corner and approached Wulghash’s pavilion. In front of it stood a long row of heads, sixty or seventy of them. Some still wore the gilded or silvered helms of high officers.
“I don’t see Tabari,” Marcus said.
“You were looking for him, too, eh? Let’s hope he had sense or luck enough to stay in Mashiz.”
One head still seemed to be trying to say something. Scaurus wondered uneasily if awareness could linger for a few seconds after the axe came down.
Gaius Philippus’ thoughts went in another direction. He said, “I was wondering why we hadn’t been shown any prisoners. Now I know. With the dangerous ones shortened, Wulghash drafted the rest to fill out his army.”
Marcus smacked his fist into his palm, annoyed he had not made the connection himself. It fit what he knew of Wulghash’s bold, ruthless character. Following the logic a step further, he said, “Then he’ll be looking to bring the scattered Yezda back under his command, too.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a double handful of nomads rode by on their ponies. They scowled, recognizing the Romans’ gear. Marcus was also frowning. “Something else we were meant to see, I think.”
“Aye. Just what Gavras is afraid of, too.”
The tribune’s suspicion that the show had been planned grew sharper when the guides, who had disappeared into Wulghash’s tent, chose that moment to emerge and beckon the Romans forward. One of the Makurani held the gray felt flap wide so they could enter.
The tent held no regal finery; its furnishings were an incongruous blend of the ornate Makuraner and spare Yezda styles—whatever had been easy to scrape up, Marcus guessed. The only exception was the large quantity of sorcerer’s gear—codices, a cube of rose crystal, several elaborately sealed jars, an assortment of knives with handles that looked unpleasantly like flesh, and other oddments—now heaped carelessly in a corner.
Wulghash saw the tribune glance that way. “Useless preparations, as it turned out,” he remarked.
“Like the performance you put on for us out there?” Marcus asked politely.
The khagan was unfazed. “It showed what I intended. I am not as weak as Gavras thinks—and I grow stronger by the hour.”
“No doubt,” Gaius Philippus nodded. He and Scaurus had agreed that he should deliver Thorisin’s ultimatum. “That’s why the Emperor gives you three days to begin withdrawing to Yezd. After that the truce is over, and he will attack without warning.”
The senior centurion’s bluntness made Wulghash’s wide, fleshy nostrils flare with anger. “Does he? Will he?” he cried. “If that’s what he meant by talking, let him come today, and I will speak a language he understands.” He tugged his saber halfway out of its scabbard.
“You’d lose,” Marcus said. “We were holding—barely, I grant, but holding—against the whole army Avshar had mustered, and you don’t have much more than the core left. We’d trounce you. Why shouldn’t you go home? This is not your country and never was. You have your own throne again—see to your land, and your hold on it.”
The khagan looked so grim Marcus was afraid he would not be able to hold his temper. The trouble, he knew, was that Wulghash was as eager to conquer Videssos as Avshar had been. He had to be burning like vitriol inside because his charge, instead of ruining the wizard-prince, had only saved the imperial forces.
But he had been a ruler for many years, and learned realism. His bluster aside, Thorisin could crush him if willing to pay the butcher’s bill. He breathed heavily for close to a minute, not trusting himself to speak, then finally ground out, “Has Gavras any other little, ah, requests for me?”
Again it was Gaius Philippus who answered. “Only one. Since all the nomads, not only from this latest invasion but from years gone by, too, have come to Videssos without his leave, he bids you order them back to Yezd and keep them there from now on.”
Scaurus waited for Wulghash to explode again. Instead he threw back his head and laughed in the Romans’ faces. “Then he may as well bid me tie all the winds up in a sack and keep them in the sky. The nomads in Videssos are beyond my control, or that of any other man. They go as they will; I cannot make them do anything.”
As that was exactly what the tribune had thought when Thorisin gave him the instruction, he had no good answer ready. Wulghash went on, “For that matter, I would not recall the nomads if I could. Though they are of my blood, I have no use for them, save sometimes in battle. You’ve seen who backs me—Makurani. Civilized men.
“The nomads spread strife wherever they go. They plunder, they kill, they ruin farms, wreck trade, empty cities, and drain my coffers. When some of the clan chiefs wanted to harry the Empire instead of Yezd, I helped them on their way and sent more after them. Good riddance, I say. Had they all gone, my rule would have been ten times easier.”
Marcus was suddenly reminded of the Romans after they had conquered Greece—captured by their captors in art, in literature, in luxury, in their entire way of life. Wulghash was much the same. His people had been barbarians, but he seized on the higher culture of Makuran with a convert’s zeal.
The khagan had another reason to resent the folk from whom he had sprung. His hands bunched into fists, and he glowered down at the sleeping-mats on the ground as he paced between them. He said, “And the Yezda chose Avshar over me, followed him, worshiped him.” That rankled yet, Scaurus thought. “It was not just his magic; he and they suited each other, with their taste for blood. So, since you serve Gavras, tell him he is welcome to the nomads he has. I do not want them back.”
After his outburst, there did not seem to be much room for discussion. “We’ll take your words back to the Emperor,” Marcus promised in a formal voice, “and tell him of your determination.”
“Can’t say I blame you, either, looking at things from your side,” Gaius Philippus added.
Wulghash softly pounded him on the shoulder in gratitude. “I said to Gavras’ face you were an honest man.”
“Won’t stop me from cutting you up a few days from now, if I have to,” the veteran answered stolidly. “Like your Makurani, I know which side I’m on.”
“Be it so, then,” the khagan said.
“He won’t commit himself to getting the nomads out, eh?” Thorisin asked.
“No,” Scaurus replied. “He disowns them. If anything, I think he hates them worse than you do. And in justice,” he went on, and saw the Emperor roll his eyes at the phrase, “I don’t see what he could do. Yavlak and the other clan-chiefs are their own law. They wouldn’t heed his commands any more than yours, and he hasn’t the power to compel them.”
“I know that,” Gavras said placidly. If he was angry at Wulghash’s rejection of his demand, he hid it well. In fact, he looked pleased with himself, in a foxy way. “I wanted to hear them denied from his own lips.”
Marcus tugged at his ear, not following whatever the Emperor had in mind. Beside him, Gaius Philippus shrugged almost invisibly.
“Never mind,” Thorisin said. “Just make sure you see me tomorrow morning before you go off and haggle with him again. Now get out. I have more people to see than the two of you.” He did sound in good spirits, Marcus thought.
The Romans bowed and left. Scaurus heard Thorisin shouting for his steward: “Glykas! Come here, damn it, I need you. Fetch me Mourtzouphlos and Arigh the Arshaum.” A little pause. “No, you lazy lackwit, I don’t know where they are. Find them, or find another job.”
The Makuraner sentry spat at Marcus’ feet when he and Gaius Philippus came up to Wulghash’s encampment. The tribune thought he was about to be attacked in spite of the shield of truce he was carrying. He got ready to throw it away and go for his sword.
“Expected as much,” Gaius Philippus said. He had also shifted into a fighting stance. Scaurus nodded.
But having relieved his feelings, the sentry haughtily turned his back and led the Romans to the khagan’s tent. This time they went straight there. Wulghash’s troopers shook fists as they passed. Someone threw a lump of horsedung. It smacked against Gaius Philippus’ upraised truce shield, staining the smooth white paint.
Wulghash was outside the pavilion, talking with his bodyguards. One of them pointed to the Romans. The khagan rumbled something deep in his throat. He jerked his chin at Gaius Philippus’ shield. “A fitting symbol for a broken peace,” he growled.
“As far as Thorisin is concerned, the truce still holds,” Marcus answered. “Have you been assailed here?”
“Spare me the protests of innocence, at least,” Wulghash said. “I’d sooner believe in a virgin whore. You know as well as I what Gavras did in the dead of night—sent out his Videssians and those vicious savages from Shaumkhiil to harry my warriors in their scattered camps. Hundreds must have died.”
“I repeat: Were you and yours attacked here?”
Scaurus’ monotone made the khagan look up sharply. “No,” he said, his own voice suddenly wary.
“Then I submit to you that the peace between you and the Emperor has not been breached. You told us yesterday that you had no use for the Yezda, that you could not force them to obey you, and that you did not want them. In that case, Thorisin has every right to deal with them as he sees fit. Or do you only claim them as yours when you gain some advantage from it?”
Wulghash flushed all the way up to the balding crown of his head. “I was speaking,” he said tightly, “of the Yezda already in Videssos.”
“That doesn’t do it,” Gaius Philippus said. “You were the one complaining how the buggers with Avshar kissed his boot instead of yours. Now you want ’em back. All right. The way I see it, Gavras has the right to stop you if he can. They weren’t part of the deal. And as for this,” he glanced at the shield of truce, “your soldier flung the horseturd.”
Marcus put in, “Thorisin could have attacked you here instead of the Yezda, but he held off. He isn’t interested in destroying you—”
“Because it would cost him too dear.”
“As may be. It would cost you more; he is stronger than you now. And while he is stronger, he intends to see you gone from Videssos. I warn you, he is deadly serious over his ultimatum. If he sees no movement from you come day after tomorrow, he’ll move on you with everything he has. And there are fresh troops just in from Garsavra.”
The last was bluff, but Thorisin had set the groundwork for it by lighting several hundred extra campfires the night before. Wulghash bit his lip, examining Gaius Philippus closely. But the senior centurion revealed nothing, for the khagan had slightly misread his man. Gaius Philippus would always say what he thought, but a team of fifty horses could not have dragged a stratagem from him.
Recalling what Wulghash had told him when they were just out of the tunnels below Mashiz, Marcus said, “I would also wish we were friends as well as what my people call guest-friends.” Wulghash took his meaning, and he went on, “As a friend, I would say your best course lies in retiring. You cannot succeed against Thorisin here and you need to reestablish yourself in Yezd.”
“I don’t think the two of us will ever be friends, whatever we might want,” the khagan answered steadily. “For now, worse luck, I fear you are right, but I am not done with Videssos yet. Defend it if you can, but it is old and worn. One good push—”
“I’ve heard Namdaleni talk the same way, but we survived them.” Scaurus thought back to Drax the opportunist, and hotheaded Soteric. Remembering her brother reminded him of Helvis and how she had scorned him for calling the Videssians we. He shrugged, which made Wulghash scratch his head. He was content with his choice.
The Yezda khagan was not one to leave a point quickly. “If not in my day, then in my son’s,” he said.
“How is Khobin?” Marcus asked, dredging the name up from Wulghash’s use of it in the palace banquet hall.
“Alive and well, last I heard,” Wulghash said gruffly. But his eyes narrowed, and his left eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch; the tribune knew he had gained a point. Wulghash’s chuckle had a grim edge to it. “The hired killers Avshar sent out botched their job. They weren’t his best; he must have thought Khobin not worth worrying about.”
“I’m glad, and glad he was wrong.”
“And I,” the khagan answered. “He’s a likely youngster.”
“That’s all very well, but it grows no barley,” Gaius Philippus said, dragging them back to the issue at hand. “What do you propose doing about pulling out?”
Wulghash grunted, but Gaius Philippus’ forthrightness had made him ask for the veteran. “If I had my choice, I would fight,” the khagan said. “But the choice is not mine—and Gavras, it seems,” he added wryly, “will not let me seize it. So … I will withdraw.” He spat that out as if it tasted bad.
Scaurus could not help letting out a slow, quiet breath of relief. “The Emperor pledges that you will not be harassed as long as you are retiring in peace.”
“Big of him,” Wulghash muttered. He seemed surprised and not very happy to see the Romans still in front of him; he must have looked on them as symbols of his failure to hold his ground. “You have what you want, don’t you? If you do, we’re finished. Go away.”
As they walked back to the imperial camp, Gaius Philippus said darkly, “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of everyone telling me, ‘Go.’ Next time someone tries it, he’ll know just where to go, I promise.”
“You’d never make an ambassador,” Marcus said.
“Good.”
That evening, though, having heard their report, Pikridios Goudeles disagreed with the tribune. “You should be proud of yourselves,” he told the Romans. “For amateurs, you did very well. Thorisin’s unhappy because he can’t slaughter Wulghash; Wulghash is disgusted because he has to go home. And after all, what is diplomacy,” he paused to hone his epigram, “but the art of leaving everyone dissatisfied?”
Sullenly, Wulghash withdrew toward the west. Gavras sent out a company of Videssian horsemen to make sure he really was retreating, much as Shenuta had kept a close eye on the Arshaum when they were passing through his territory.
A couple of days later, after it became clear the khagan was pulling back, Gaius Philippus startled Marcus by requesting leave for the first time since the tribune had known him. “It’s yours, of course,” Marcus said at once. “Do you mind my asking why?”
The veteran, usually so direct, looked uncomfortable. “Thought I’d borrow a horse from the Khatrishers, do a bit of riding out. Sight-seeing, you might say.”
“Sight-seeing?” Gaius Philippus made the most unlikely tourist Scaurus could imagine. “What on earth does this miserable plain have worth seeing?”
“Places we’ve been before,” the senior centurion said vaguely. He shifted from foot to foot like a small boy who needs to be excused. “I might get up to Aptos, for instance.”
“Why would anyone want to go to—” Marcus began, and then shut up with a snap. If Gaius Philippus had finally worked up the nerve to court Nerse Phorkaina, that was his business. The tribune did say, “Take care of yourself. There probably are still Yezda prowling the road.”
“Stragglers I’m not afraid of, but Avshar’s army went through there. That does worry me.” The veteran rode out a couple of hours later, sitting his borrowed horse without grace but managing it with the same matter-of-fact competence he displayed in nearly everything he did.
“After his sweetling, is he?” Viridovix asked, watching the Roman trot past the burial parties busy at their noisome work.
“Yes, though I doubt he’d admit it on the rack.”
Instead of laughing at the centurion, Viridovix sighed heavily and said, “Och, I hope he finds her hale and all to bring back. E’en a great gowk like him deserves a touch o’ happiness, for all his face’d crack to show it.”
Gorgidas spoke in Greek. Marcus translated for Viridovix: “ ‘Count no man happy before his end,’ ” Solon’s famous warning to Croesus the Lydian king. The physician continued tartly, “The mere presence of the object of one’s infatuation does not guarantee delight, let me assure you.”
The tribune and the Gaul carefully looked elsewhere. Rakio had not returned to the legionary camp after the battle, save to get his gear. Having taken up with one of the Namdalener knights, he left Gorgidas without a good-bye or a backward glance.
“Don’t stand there mooning on my account,” the Greek snapped. “I knew he was fickle when we started; to give him his due, he never pretended otherwise. My pride isn’t badly stung, or my heart. It’s the better matches that leave the lasting sorrow.”
“Aye.” That was Scaurus and Viridovix together, softly. For a few seconds each of the three men was lost in his thoughts, Gorgidas remembering Quintus Glabrio; Viridovix, Seirem; and Marcus, Alypia and Helvis both.
Where nothing else would have, the thought that his second love might go as the first had almost kept him from pressing Thorisin on their bargain. His combat injuries were healing. But when he touched it unexpectedly, the wound Helvis had dealt pained him as much as it had when it was fresh. He flinched from opening himself to the risk of such hurt again.
Well, what are you going to do, then? he asked himself angrily—hide under a rock the rest of your life so the rain can’t find you?
The answer inside him was quiet, but very firm.
No.
The Emperor’s Haloga guardsmen were used to the tribune asking for an audience with their master. They saluted with clenched fists over their hearts; one ducked into the imperial tent to find out how long a wait Scaurus would have. “Yust a few minutes,” he promised as he reemerged.
Actually it was closer to half an hour. Marcus made small talk with the Halogai, swapping stories and comparing scabs. Apprehension tightened his belly like an ill-digested meal.
Glykas the steward stuck his head out and peered round, blinking in the bright sunshine, till he spied the Roman. “He’ll see you now,” he said. Scaurus walked forward on legs suddenly leaden.
Thorisin looked up from the stack of papers he so despised. With Videssos’ enemies bested for the moment, he had to start paying attention to the business of running the Empire again. He shoved the parchments to one side with a grunt of relief, waited for Marcus to bow, and overlooked, as usual, the tribune’s omitting the prostration. “What now?” he asked in a neutral voice.
“Perhaps—” Marcus began, and was mortified to have the word come out as a nervous croak. He steadied himself and tried again: “Perhaps it might be better if we talked under the rose.” Gavras frowned; the tribune flushed, realizing he had rendered the Latin phrase literally. He explained.
“ ‘Under the rose,’ eh? I rather like that,” the Emperor said. He dismissed Glykas, then turned back to Scaurus, his expression watchful now. “And so?” he prompted, folding his arms across his chest. Even in the ordinary linen tunic and baggy wool breeches he was wearing, he radiated authority. He’d had three years to grow into the imperial office, and it fit him.
Marcus felt his power, though he was not so intimidated as a Videssian would have been. He took a deep breath, then, as if to beat back his trepidation, and plunged straight ahead. “As we agreed in Videssos, I’d like you to think about me as a husband for your niece—if Alypia wishes it, of course.”
The Emperor steepled his fingers, making Scaurus wait. “Did we have such an agreement?” he asked lazily. “As I recall, there were no witnesses.”
“You know we did!” the tribune yelped, appalled. Denial was the last tack he had foreseen Gavras taking. “Phos heard you, if no one else.”
“You win nothing with me for using the good god’s name; I know you for a heathen,” Thorisin jeered. But he went on musingly, “To be just, you never tried that trick, either. Don’t tell me so stubborn a one as you has actually changed his mind?”
The squabbling among Phos’ sects still struck Marcus as insane, and he had no idea how to pick the true creed—if there was one—from the baying pack. But after his experience on the field, he could no longer ignore the Empire’s faith. “I may have,” he said, as honest a reply as he could find.
“Hrmmp. Most men in your shoes would come see me festooned with enough icons to turn a lance, or singing hymns, if they had the voice for it.”
The tribune shrugged.
“Hrmmp,” Thorisin repeated. He pulled at his beard. “You don’t make it easy, do you?” He gave a short snort of laughter. “I wonder how many times I’ve said that, eh, Roman?” He grinned as if they were conspirators.
Marcus shrugged again. The Emperor was drifting into that unfathomable sportive mood of his. Marcus realized that any response he made might be wrong. He cast about for arguments to prove to Gavras that he was no danger to him, but stood mute.
Gavras slammed the palms of his hands down, hard. His papers jumped; one rolled-up scroll fell off the desk. His voice came muffled from behind it as he leaned over to pick up the parchment. “Well, all right, go ahead and ask her.”
Triggered by the silence breaking, Marcus gabbled, “As a foreigner, I’d be no threat to the throne because the people would never accept—” He was nearly through the sentence before his brain registered what his ears had heard. “Ask her?” he whispered. The Avtokrator had not invited him to sit, but he sank into the nearest chair. It was that or the floor; his knees would not hold him up.
Tossing the scroll back onto the desktop, Thorisin ignored the breach of protocol. “I said so, didn’t I? After Zemarkhos, Avshar—Avshar!—and even a peace of sorts with Yezd, I could hardly refuse you. And besides—” He turned serious in an instant. “—if you know anything about me, you’d best know this: I keep my bargains.”
“Then the argument was a sham, and you were going to say yes to me all along?”
The sly grin came back to Gavras’ face. “What if I was?”
“Why, you miserable bastard!”
“Who’s a bastard, you cross-eyed midwife’s mistake?” Thorisin roared back. They were both laughing now, Marcus mostly in relief. The Emperor found a jug of wine, shook it to see how much it held—enough to suit him. He uncorked it, gulped, put the stopper back, and tossed it to Scaurus. As the tribune was drinking, he went on. “Admit it, your heart would’ve stopped if I’d told you aye straight out.”
Marcus started to say something, swallowed wrong, and sputtered and choked, spraying wine every which way. Thorisin pounded him on the back. “Thanks,” he wheezed.
He stood and clasped the Emperor’s hand, which was as hard and callused as his own. “My heart?” he said. “This would be the first time you’d ever shown a counterfeit copper’s worth of care for my health if that were true.”
“So it would,” Gavras said calmly, unashamed at being caught out. “Would it make you feel better if I admitted I was enjoying every second of the charade?”
Marcus took another drink, this time successfully. “Nothing,” he said, “could make me feel better than I do now.”
The imperial army was breaking camp, shaking itself into marching order for the return to the capital, and Gaius Philippus had not returned. “No need for you to come with us,” Arigh told Scaurus. “My lads’ll find him, never fear.” He rode at the head of a company of Arshaum.
“Me, I’d bet on us,” Laon Pakhymer said; he had a band of his own horsemen behind him. “The old hardcase’s ghost would haunt us for spite if we didn’t do everything we could for him.” The Khatrisher would head into dangerous country after Gaius Philippus before letting on that he liked him.
Marcus paid no attention to either of them, but methodically saddled his horse. He mounted, then turned from one man to the other. “Let’s go.”
They trotted through the battlefield. The stench of the unburied horses and Yezda was beginning to fade; scavengers had reduced many of them to bare bones. Raw mounds of earth topped the mass graves of the fallen imperial soldiers. Broken weapons and bits of harness were starting to get dusty; whatever was worth looting had long since been taken.
Behind the search party, someone let out a yowl. Scaurus turned to see Viridovix galloping after them. “Why did ye no tell me you were for chasing down t’auld man?” he complained to the tribune once he had caught up. Mischief gleamed in his eyes. “Och, what a show—himself in love. Strange as a wolf growing cabbages, I warrant.”
“Maybe so, but I’d be careful twitting him over it,” Marcus advised.
“That I ken.”
Stretches of ground pocked with hoofprints showed where Avshar’s camp, and Wulghash’s, had lain. Not far past them, a Khatrisher scout whooped and pointed. Marcus peered ahead, but his eyes were not good enough to pick out the rider the scout had spotted before the fellow went to earth, letting his horse run free. The search party hurried ahead, but short of firing the scrubby brush by the side of the road or sending in dogs, no one was going to find the suspicious traveler in a hurry.
But when he heard his name shouted, Gaius Philippus cautiously emerged from cover. Recognizing Scaurus, Viridovix, and then Pakhymer, he lowered his gladius.
“What’s all this about?” he growled. “Where I come from, they don’t send this many out after parricides.”
“A vice of yours we hadn’t known,” Laon Pakhymer said, drawing a glare. It did not bother him, which only annoyed Gaius Philippus more. “And you’ll pay for that pony if it’s come to any harm,” the Khatrisher added; three of his troopers and a couple of Arshaum were chasing the beast down.
Marcus cut through the senior centurion’s obscenities to explain why they had gone searching for him. Gaius Philippus relaxed, a little. “It’s nice of you, I’m sure, but sooner or later I’d have turned up.”
“Not a bad brag,” Arigh said, which touched him off all over again. Scaurus did not think he had been boasting. If anyone could travel the westlands alone, it was Gaius Philippus.
After his curses ran down, he reclaimed his horse and headed back with the search party, still grumbling that they had wasted their time. Both to distract him and out of curiosity, Marcus asked, “Did you manage to get all the way up to Aptos?”
“Said I was going to, didn’t I?”
“And?”
“Not a whole lot left of the town,” Gaius Philippus said, frowning. “The Yezda did go through with Avshar, and wrecked the place. The keep held out, though, and Nerse was able to save a lot of the townsfolk. Some others got away to the hills. If there’s a calm spell, they can rebuild.”
“Nerse, you say? Ho, now we come down to it,” Viridovix exclaimed.
Gaius Philippus tensed; his face went hard and suspicious. Marcus wanted to kick the Celt and waited helplessly for him to come out with some crudity—here as nowhere else, Gaius Philippus was vulnerable.
But Viridovix, who had known loss of his own, was not out to wound. He asked only, “And will you be needing groomsmen, too, like Scaurus here?”
Even that simple, friendly question was almost too much. The senior centurion answered in a low-voiced growl. “No.” He turned to Marcus. “Groomsmen, eh? Nice going—you pulled it off. I hope I’ll be one of them.”
“You’d better be.” Gaius Philippus’ smile was such an obvious false front that the tribune asked gently, “She turned you down?”
“What?” The veteran looked at him in surprise. “No. I never asked her.”
That was too much for Viridovix. “You didna ask her?” he howled, clapping a hand to his forehead. “Are y’unhinged? You went gallivanting on up a couple days’ ride, likely near got yoursel’ killed a time or two …” He paused, but Gaius Philippus’ bleak expression neither confirmed nor denied. “And you stopped in for a mug o’ wine and a how-do-ye-do, then took off again? Och, the waste of it, man, the waste! If it were me, now—”
“Shut up,” the senior centurion said with such cold anger that the Gaul actually did. “If it were you, you’d’ve talked her ear off and made her love every minute of it. Well, I haven’t your tongue, loose at both ends, and I haven’t anything much to offer her, either. She’s a landed noble, and what am I? A mercenary who owns a sword and a mail shirt and precious little else.” He glanced toward Pakhymer. “I had to hit up Laon here for a horse to make the trip.”
Viridovix did not reply in words, merely pointed at Scaurus. Gaius Philippus turned brick red, but said stubbornly, “He’s him; I’m me.”
“Honh!” Viridovix said. Only the warning in Gaius Philipus’ eyes kept him from going further.
The sad thing, Marcus thought, was that the veteran was right; he had grown too set in his ways to know how to change even when he wanted to. “You got there and back all right; that’s what counts.” He bobbed his head at Arigh. “Let’s head back.”
“Took you long enough,” the Arshaum said. Like Pakhymer, he had waited halfway between boredom and irritation while the Romans and Viridovix talked, for they still favored Latin among themselves.
Everyone rode in silence for some time. They were nearly back to camp when Gaius Philippus said, “You know, Celt, you might have something after all. Maybe one of these days I’ll get back to Aptos again and do the talking I should have done this time.”
“Sure and you will,” Viridovix said consolingly, but Marcus heard the melancholy edge to his voice. Gaius Philippus had no trouble making plans when he was moving directly away from his goal. Carrying them out was something else.
Thorisin Gavras had not known of the search party. Only a rear guard was left at the campsite, a garrison to hold the gap in the hills against Yezda raiders. But the main body of troops had hardly traveled a mile; Scaurus could still see companies of men and horses through the inevitable cloud of dust they kicked up.
“Let’s race it!” Pakhymer shouted, spurring his pony ahead. “First one to the baggage train collects a silverpiece from everybody else!” He had given himself a head start, but his lead did not last long; an Arshaum shot past him almost before the wager was out of his mouth.
Galloping along in the middle of the laughing, shouting pack, Marcus knew he was going to lose his money. He did not care. Ahead lay Amorion, and beyond it Videssos the city. He was going home.