Turtledove, Harry - The Videssos Cycle 02 - An Emperor For Th

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AN EMPEROR FOR THE LEGION
The Videssos Cycle Book Two
BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE:
A scouting column of three cohorts of Roman legionaries,
led by military tribune Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and senior
centurion Gaius Philippus, was returning to Julius Caesar's
main army when they were ambushed by Gauls. To prevent
mass slaughter, the Gallic commander Viridovix offered single
combat, and Marcus accepted. Both men bore druids' swords,
that of Marcus being battle spoil. When the blades crossed, a
dome of light sprang up around them. Suddenly the Romans
and Viridovix were in an unfamiliar world with strange stars.
They soon discovered they were in the war-torn Empire of
Videssos, a land where priests of the god Phos could work real
magic. They were hired as a mercenary unit by the Empire and
spent the winter in the provincial town of Imbros, learning the
language and customs.
When spring came, they marched to Videssos the city, cap-
ital of the Empire. There Marcus met the soldier-Emperor Ma-
vrikios Gavras, his brother Thorisin, and the prime minister,
Vardanes Sphrantzes, a bureaucrat whose enmity Marcus in-
curred. At a banquet in the Romans' honor, Marcus met Mav-
rikios' daughter Alypia and accidentally spilled wine on the
wizard Avshar, envoy of Yezd, Videssos' western enemy. Av-
shar demanded a duel. When the wizard tried to cheat with
sorcery, Marcus' druid sword neutralized the spell, and Marcus
won.
Avshar tried for revenge with an enchanted dagger in the
hands of a nomad under his spell. The Videssian priest Nepos
was horrified at the use of evil magic. Avshar forfeited the
protection granted envoys.
Marcus was sent to arrest Avshar, accompanied by Hemond
and a squad of Namdaleni, mercenaries from the island nation
of Namdalen. But Avshar had fled, leaving a sorcerous trap
that killed Hemond. Marcus was given Hemond's sword to take
to his widow, Helvis.
Avshar's offenses served as justification for Videssos to
declare war on Yezd, which had been raiding deep into the
western part of the Empire. Troops—native and mercenary—
flooded into the capital as Videssos prepared for war. Tension
rose between Videssians and the growing number of Namdaleni
because of differences in their worship of Phos. To the reli-
giously liberal Romans, the differences were minor, but each
side considered the other heretics. The Videssian patriarch Bal-
samon preached a sermon of toleration, which eased the tension
for the moment.
But fanatic Videssian monks stirred up trouble again. Riot-
ing broke out, and Marcus was sent with a force of Romans
to help quell it. Going into a dark courtyard to break up a rape,
he discovered that the intended victim was Helvis. Caught up
in the moment, they made love. And after the riots subsided,
she and her son joined him in the Romans' barracks. Other
Romans had already found partners.
At last the unwieldy army moved west against Yezd, ac-
companied'by women and dependents. Marcus was pleased to
learn Helvis was pregnant, but shocked to discover Ortaias
Sphrantzes commanded the army's left wing; he was only slightly
mollified on finding the young man was a figurehead, hostage
for Vardanes Sphrantzes' good behavior.
More troops joined the army in the westlands, including
those of Baanes Onomagoulos and Gagik Bagratouni, a noble
driven from his home in mountainous Vaspurakan by Yezda.
Two other Vaspurakaners, Senpat Sviodo and his wife Nevrat,
were acting as guides for the Romans. All Vaspurakaners were
hated as heretics by a local priest, Zemarkhos. Zemarkhos
cursed Bagratouni, who threw him and his dog into a sack,
then beat the sack. Fearing a pogrom, Marcus interceded for
him.
The Yezda began hit-and-run raids against the imperial army
as it moved closer to Yezd. Then an advance force of Ono-
magoulos' troops was pinned down near the town of Maragha.
Leaving the army's dependents behind at Khiiat, the Emperor
moved forward to rescue them.
In a great battle, Avshar commanded the Yezda. By sorcery,
he slew the officer who truly commanded the imperial army's
left wing. Ortaias Sphrantzes, suddenly thrust into real com-
mand, panicked and fled.
The whole wing collapsed. The battle, till then nearly a
draw, turned to disaster. Mavrikios fell fighting, and Thori
desperate counterattack from the right failed, though he
manage to escape with a fair part of the army.
Roman discipline let the legionaries hold their ranks.'
withdrew in good order and encamped for the night. To
midnight, Avshar taunted them by throwing Mavrikios
into their camp. As Gaius Philippus commented, the wi
should have pursued the forces of Thorisin instead.
The game was not over yet.
I
THE ROMANS' TREK EAST FROM THE DISASTROUS BATTLE-
field where the Emperor of Videssos lost his life was a jour-
ney full of torment. The season was late summer, the land
through which they marched sere and burning hot. Mirages
shimmered ahead, treacherously promising lakes where a mud
puddle would have been a prodigy. Bands of Yezda invaders
dogged the fugitives' tracks, skirmishing occasionally and
always alert to pick off stragglers.
Scaurus still carried Mavrikios Gavras' severed head, the
only sure proof the Emperor was dead. Foreseeing chaos in
Videssos after Mavrikios' fall, he thought it wise to forestall
pretenders who might claim the imperial name to aid their
climbs to power. It would not be the first time Videssos had
known such things.
"Sorry I am I wasna there when that black spalpeen Avshar
flung you himself's noddle," Viridovix said to the tribune, his
Latin musically flavored by his native Celtic speech. "I had a
fine Yezda one to throw back at him." True to the fierce cus-
tom of his folk, the Gaul had taken a slain enemy's head for a
trophy.
At any other time Marcus would have found that revolting.
In defeat's bitter aftermath, he nodded and said, "I wish you'd
been there, too."
"Aye, it would have given the whoreson something to
think on," Gaius Philippus chimed in. The senior centurion
usually enjoyed quarreling with Viridovix, but their hatred for
the wizard-prince of Yezd brought them together now.
Marcus rubbed his chin, felt rough whiskers scratch under
his fingers. Like most of the Romans, he had stayed clean-
faced in a bearded land, but lately there had been little time
for shaving. He plucked a whisker; it shone golden in the
sunlight. Coming as he did from Mediolanum in northern
Italy, he had a large proportion of northern blood in his veins.
In Caesar's army in Gaul, he had been teased about looking
like a Celt himself. The Videssians often took him for a Ha-
loga; many of those warriors forsook their chilly home for
mercenary service in the Empire.
Gorgidas worked ceaselessly with the wounded, changing
dressings, splinting broken bones, and dispensing the few
ointments and medicines left in his depleted store. Although
hurt himself, the slim, dark Greek doctor disregarded his pain
to bring others relief.
Covered by a screening force of light cavalry from Vi-
dessos' eastern neighbor Khatrish, the legionaries tramped
east toward the town of Khiiat as fast as their many injuries
would allow. Had he led a force in the lands Rome ruled,
Scaurus would have moved northwest instead, to join Thorisin
Gavras and the right wing of the shattered imperial army. Hard
military sense lay there, for the Emperor's brother—no, the
Emperor now, Marcus supposed—had brought his troops
away in good order. The fight against the Yezda would center
on him.
But here Marcus was not simply a legionary officer, with a
legionary officer's worries. He was also a mercenary captain.
He had to deal with the fact that the legionaries' women, the
families they had made or joined since coming to Videssos,
were left behind in the Vaspurakaner city that had been the
base for Mavrikios' ill-fated campaign. The Romans would
disobey any order to turn away from Khiiat. So, even more,
would the hundreds of stragglers who had attached themselves
to his troop like drowning men clinging to a spar.
For that matter, he never thought of giving such an order.
His own partner Helvis, carrying his child, had stayed in
Khiiat, along with her young son from an earlier attachment.
That was to say, he hoped she had stayed in Khiiat. Uncer-
tainty tormented the legionaries as badly as the Yezda did. For
all Scaurus knew, the invaders might have stormed Khiiat and
slain or carried into slavery everyone there. Even if they had
not, fugitives would already be arriving with word of the ca-
tastrophe that had overtaken the Videssian army.
In the wake of such news', noncombatants might be fleeing
eastward now. That was more dangerous than staying behind
Khiiat's walls. Marcus ran through the gloomy possibilities
time after time: Helvis dead, Helvis captured by the Yezda,
Helvis struggling east with a three-year-old through hostile
country ... and she was pregnant, too.
At last, with a distinct effort of will, he banished the
qualms to the back of his mind. Not for the first time, he was
grateful for his training in the Stoic school, which taught him
to cast aside useless imaginings. He would know soon
enough, and that would be the time to act.
About a day and a half out of Khiiat, a scout came riding
back to the Roman tribune. "A horseman coming out of the
east, sir," he reported. His staccato Khatrisher accent made
him hard for Scaurus to understand—the tribune's own Vi-
dessian was far from perfect.
Interest flared in him when he realized what the scout was
saying. "From the east? A lone rider?"
The Khatrisher spread his hands. "As far as we could tell.
He was nervous and took cover as soon as he spotted us. From
what little we saw, he had the seeming of a Vaspurakaner."
"No wonder he was leery of you, then. You look too much
like Yezda." The invading nomads had ravaged Vaspurakan
over the course of years, until the natives hated the sight of
them. The Khatrishers were descended from nomads as well
and, despite taking many Videssian ways, still had the look of
the plains about them.
"Bring him in, and unhurt," Marcus decided. "Anyone fool
enough to travel west in the face of everything rolling the
other way must have a strong reason. Maybe he bears word
from Khiiat," the tribune added, suddenly hopeful in spite of
himself.
The scout gave a cheery wave—the Khatrishers were most
of them free spirits—and kicked his pony into motion.
Scaurus did not expect him back for some time; for someone
in the furs and leather of a plainsman, convincing a Vaspura-
kaner of his harmlessness would not be easy. The tribune was
surprised when the Khatrisher quickly reappeared, along with
another rider plainly not of his people.
The scout's companion looked familiar, even at a distance.
Before the tribune was able to say more than that, Senpat
Sviodo cried out in joy and spurred his horse forward to meet
the newcomer. "Nevrat!" the Vaspurakaner yelled. "Are you
out of your mind, to journey alone through this wolves' land?"
His wife parted company from her escort to embrace him.
The Khatrisher stared, slack-jawed. In her loose traveling
clothes, her curly black hair bound up under a three-peaked
Vaspurakaner hat of leather, and with the grime of travel on
her, only her beardless cheeks hinted at her sex. She was
surely armed like a man. A horseman's saber hung at her belt,
and she carried a bow with an arrow nocked and ready.
She and Senpat were chattering in their throaty native
tongue as they slowly rode back to the marching legionaries.
The Khatrisher followed, still shaking his head.
"Your outrider has a head on his shoulders," she said,
switching to Videssian as she neared Scaurus. "I took him and
his comrades for Yezda, for all their shouts of 'Friends! Coun-
trymen!' But when he said, 'Romans!' I knew he was no
western jackal."
"I'm glad you chose to trust him," Marcus answered. He
was fond of the intense, swarthy girl. So were many other
Romans; scattered cheers rang out as the men realized who
she was. She smiled her pleasure, teeth flashing white. Senpat
Sviodo, proud of her exploit and glad beyond measure she had
joined him safely, was grinning, too.
The question Senpat had shouted moments before was still
burning in the tribune's mind. "In the name of your god Phos,
Nevrat, why did you leave Khiiat?" A horrid thought forced
its way forward. "Has it fallen?"
"It still stood yesterday morning, when I set out," she an-
swered. The Romans close enough to hear her cheered again,
this time with the same relief Scaurus felt. She tempered their
delight by continuing, "There's worse madness inside those
walls, though, than any I've seen out here."
Gaius Philippus nodded, as if hearing what he expected.
"They panicked, did they, when news came we'd been
beaten?" The veteran sounded resigned; he had seen enough
victories and defeats that the aftermaths of both were second
nature to him.
The Romans crowded round Nevrat, calling out the names
of their women and asking if they were all right. She told
them, "As I said, I left early yesterday. When last I saw them,
they were well. Most of you have sensible girls, too; I think
they'll have wit enough to keep from joining the flight."
"There's flight, then?" Scaurus asked with a sinking feel-
ing.
Nevrat understood his fears and was quick to lay them to
rest. "Helvis knows war, Marcus. She told me to tell you
she'd stay in Khiiat till the first Yezda came over the wall."
The tribune nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to speak.
He felt suddenly taller, as if a burden had been lifted from his
shoulders. Helvis, he knew, had no such reassurance that he
lived.
There were messages from Khiiat for some of the other
Romans as well. "Is Quintus Glabrio here?" The junior centu-
rion was almost at Nevrat's side, but as usual quiet nearly to
the point of invisibility. He took a step forward; Nevrat
laughed in surprise. "I'm sorry. Your lady Damaris also told
me she would wait for you in the city."
"And much else besides, I'm sure," he said with a smile.
The Romans who knew Damaris laughed at that; the hot-tem-
pered Videssian girl was able to talk for herself and Glabrio
both.
"Minucius," Nevrat continued in her businesslike way,
"Erene says you should know she's stopped throwing up.
She's beginning to bulge a bit, too."
"Ah, that's fine to hear," the burly legionary replied. After
less than a week without a razor, his beard was coming in
thick and black.
Nevrat turned back to Marcus for a moment, amusement in
her brown eyes. "Helvis has no such message for you, my
friend. I'm afraid she's green as a leek much of the time."
"Is she well?" he asked anxiously.
"Yes, she's fine. There's nothing at all to worry about. You
men are such babies about these things."
She was so full of comforting, reassuring words from
Khiiat that someone finally called out, "If all's so well back
there, why are they fleeing the city?"
"All's not well," she said flatly. "Remember, the messages
I bring are from the folk with the wit to stay and the heart to
think I'd find you and they'd see you again. All too many are
of the other sort—they've been scurrying like rabbits ever
since Ortaias Sphrantzes came galloping into the city with
word all was lost."
Curses and angry shouts greeted the young noble's name.
Command of the Videssian army's left wing had been his, and
his terror-striken flight turned an orderly retreat into rout.
Nevrat nodded at the Romans' outburst. She might not have
seen Ortaias flee the battlefield, but she had been in Khiiat.
She said contemptuously, "He stayed just long enough to
change horses—the one he'd ridden died next day of misuse,
poor thing—and then he was flying east again. Good rid-
dance, if anyone cares what I think."
"And right you are, lass," Gaius Philippus nodded. A pro-
fessional soldier to the roots of his iron-gray hair, he asked,
"On your way hither, what did you see of the Yezda—aye,
and of our fellows, in the bargain?"
"Too many Yezda. They're thicker further east, but there's
no order to them at all—they're like frogs after flies, striking
at anything that moves. The only thing that brought them to-
gether was the imperial army. Now they've crushed it and
they're breaking up again, looking for new land to push into
... and all Videssos this side of the Cattle-Crossing lies open
to them."
Marcus thought of Videssos' western lands laid waste by
the nomads, the rich, peaceful fields put to the torch, cities so
long at peace they had no walls now the playthings of invad-
ing barbarians, smoking altars heaped high with butchered
victims for Yezd's dark god Skotos. Searching for any straw to
contradict that horrid picture, he repeated the second half of
Gaius Philippus' question: "What of the Empire's troops?"
"Most are as badly beaten as Ortaias. I watched three
Yezda chasing a whole squad of horsemen, laughing them-
selves sick as they rode. One broke off to follow me, but I lost
him in rocky ground." Nevrat dismissed two hours of ten-or in
a sentence.
She went on, "I did see what's left of the Namdalener regi-
ment still in good order, most of a day's ride ahead of you.
The nomads were giving them a wide berth."
"That would be the way of it," Viridovix agreed. "Tough
as nails, they are." The Romans concurred in that judgment.
The warriors from the island Duchy of Namdalen were here-
tics in Videssos' eyes and as ambitious for themselves as any
other mercenary soldiers, but they fought so well the Empire
was glad to hire them.
"Did you see anything of Thorisin Gavras?" Scaurus
asked. Again he thought of linking with Thorisin's forces.
"The Sevastokrator? No, nor heard anything, either. Is it
true the Emperor's dead? Ortaias claimed he was."
"It's true." Marcus did not elaborate and did not mention
his grisly proof of Mavrikios' passing.
摘要：

ANEMPERORFORTHELEGIONTheVidessosCycleBookTwoBYHARRYTURTLEDOVEWHATHASGONEBEFORE:AscoutingcolumnofthreecohortsofRomanlegionaries,ledbymilitarytribuneMarcusAemiliusScaurusandseniorcenturionGaiusPhilippus,wasreturningtoJuliusCaesar'smainarmywhentheywereambushedbyGauls.Topreventmassslaughter,theGalliccom...

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