Harry Turtledove [The V

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back to sleep."
Helvis scooped him up and hugged him. "We're talking so much because we're
happy. We're going home soon."
Her words meant nothing to her son, who had been born in Videssos and known no
life save that of the camp. "How can we go home?" he asked. "We are home."
The tribune had to smile. "How do you propose to explain that to him?"
"Hush," Helvis said, rocking the sleepy boy back and forth. "Phos be thanked,
he'll leam what the word really means. And thank you, my very dear, for giving
him the chance. I love you for it."
Scaurus nodded, a short, abrupt motion. He was still fighting his internal
battle, and praise seemed suspect. But with his choice made, what need was
there to load his qualms on her? Better, he thought, to hold them to himself.
He slid under the blanket; this day had drained him, and in another way the
one upcoming would be worse. But it was a long time before he slept.
Turmoil outside woke him at first light of day. He knuckled his eyes, cursed
groggily, and then sat bolt upright. The first cause for the uproar that
crossed his mind was his men's somehow learning what was afoot. He scrambled
into his cloak and dashed out of the tent. It would be all too easy for hubbub
to turn to riot.
But there was no sign of riot, though the legionaries were not standing to
muster in front of their eight-man tents. Instead they were packed in a
shoving, shouting mass against the western wall of the camp, peering and
pointing over the palisade in high excitement. More kept coming as the camp
awakened.
The tribune pushed through the crowd; his men gave way with salutes as they
recognized him. They were jammed so close together, though, that he took
several minutes to work his way up to the palisade.
He did not have to be right by it his inches let him see over the last couple
of ranks of men. Someone next to him pounded him on the back: Minucius. The
trooper's eyes were alight with triumph, his strong features stretched in a
grin. "Will you look at that, sir?" he exclaimed. "Will you just look at
that?"
For a moment Marcus still did not know what he meant. There ahead was
Thorisin's earthwork and, beyond it, the capital's fortifications, silently
indomitable as always.
That sentence had no sooner taken shape than it echoed like a gong inside him.
No wonder the great double walls seemed silent in the dawn not a defender was
on them.
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He felt giddy, as if he had gulped down a jug of neat wine. "Step aside! Make
room!" he cried, ramming his way to the very front he had to see as much as he
could, be as close as he could. Normally he would have been ashamed to use his
rank so, but in his excitement he did not give it a second thought.
There were the Silver Gates straight ahead, the works that had beaten back
everything his men could throw at them. They were wide open now, and in them
stood three men with torches, almost hopping in their eagerness to wave the
besiegers into Videssos. Their shouts came thinly across the no man's land
between the city and the siege-works: "Hurrah for Thorisin Gavras, Avtokrator
of the Videssians!"
VIII
The torch-wavers and their friends behind them were as unsavory a lot of
ruffians as the tribune had ever seen. Gaudy in street finery baggy tunics
with wide, flopping sleeves and tights dyed in an eye-searing rainbow of
colors they swarmed around the orderly Roman ranks, flourishing cudgels and
shortswords and shouting at the top of their lungs.
No matter who they were, though, their cries were what Scaurus most wanted to
hear: "Gavras the Emperor!" "Dig up Ortaias' bones!" "To the Milestone with
the Sphrantzai, the dung-munching Skotos-lovers!"
As he looked north along the wall, the tribune saw Thorisin's army loping by
squads and companies through every wide-flung gate. The Namdaleni were moving
up from their stretch of siege line along with all the rest. If Gavras was a
winner after all, withdrawal suddenly looked foolish.
"Reprieve," Gaius Philippus said, and Marcus nodded, feeling relief like a
cool wind in his mind. He blessed the mixed emotions that had made him
hesitate before announcing the pullout to his men. Never had he come to a
decision more reluctantly and never was he gladder to see events overturn it.
Helvis would be disappointed, but victory paid all debts. She would get over
it, he told himself.
The news grew wilder with every step he took into the city, until he had no
idea what to believe. Ortaias had abdicated, taken refuge in the High Temple,
fled the city, been overthrown, been killed, been torn into seven hundred
pieces so even his ghost would never find rest. The rebellion had started
because of food riots, treachery among Ortaias' backers, and anger at the
excesses of Outis Rhavas' men, of the great count Drax, or of the Khamorth.
Its leader was Rhavas, Mertikes Zigabenos whom Scaurus vaguely remembered as
Nephon Khoumnos' aide the Princess Empress Alypia, Balsamon the patriarch, or
no one.
"They don't know what's happening any more than we do," Gaius Philippus said
in disgust as he listened to the umpteenth contradictory tale, all of them
told with passionate conviction. "You might as well shut your ears."
That was not quite true. On one thing, at least, all rumors came
together though the rest of Videssos had slipped from their hands, the
Sphrantzai still held the palace quarter. Unlike much of what he heard, that
made sense to Scaurus. Many buildings in the palace complex were fortresses in
their own right, perfect refuges for a faction beaten elsewhere.
It also decided Scaurus' course of action. The Silver Gate opened onto Middle
Street, the capital's main thoroughfare, which ran directly to the palaces
with but a single dogleg. The tribune told the buccinators, "Blow
double-time!" Above the blare of horns he shouted, "Come on, boys! We've
waited long enough for this!" The legionaries raised a cheer and quickstepped
down the slate-paved street at a pace that soon left most of the rowdies
gasping far behind them.
The tribune remembered the Romans' parade along Middle Street the day they
first came to the capital. Then it had been slow march, with a herald in front
of them crying, "Make way for the valiant Romans, brave defenders of the
Empire!" The street had cleared like magic. Today pedestrians got no more
warning than the clatter of iron-spiked sandals on the flagstones and, if Phos
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was with them, a shouted "Gangway!" After that it was their own lookout, and
more than one was flung aside or simply run down and trampled.
Just as they had on that first day, the sidewalks filled to watch the troops [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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