Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (34 page)

For one thing, they said, none of the other contingents of the imperial army made such a production of their nightly
stopping places. They knew they were deep in Videssian territory and altogether safe, and their tents went up in a cheerful, casual disarray wherever their officers happened to feel like pitching them. Worse yet, in a proper Roman camp there was no place for women, and many of the legionaries wanted to spend their nights with the partners they had found in Videssos.

The tribune could find no sympathy with the first of these points. He said, “What the rest of the army does is its own concern. It’s too simple to go slack when things are easy and then never bother to tighten up again—until it costs you, and then it’s too late. The lot of you are veterans; you know what I’m saying is true.”

They had to nod. Minucius, his booming voice and open manner subdued by the irregular situation in which he’d put himself, said timidly, “It’s not the work we mind so much, sir. It’s just that well … once camp is made, it’s like a jail, with no escape. My woman’s pregnant, and I worry about her.” His comrades muttered agreement; looking from one of them to another, Marcus saw they were almost all coupled men.

He understood how they felt. He had slept restlessly the past couple of nights, knowing Helvis was only a few hundred yards away but not wanting to give his troopers a bad example by breaking discipline for his private gratification.

He thought for a few seconds; less than a third of the Romans had women with them. If a party of about a hundred got leave each night, each soldier could see his lover twice a week or so. The improvement in morale would probably be worth more than the slightly loosened control would cost.

He gave the legionaries his decision, adding, “Leave will only be granted after all required duties are complete, of course.”

“Yes, sir! Thank you sir!” they said, grinning in relief that he had not ordered them clapped in irons.

He knew they must not be allowed to think they could violate the proper chain of command on every whim. He coughed dryly, and watched the grins fade. “The lot of you are fined two weeks’ pay for bringing this up without your officers’ permission,” he said. “See that it doesn’t happen again.”

They took the fine without a murmur, still afraid he might
condemn them to far worse. Under the law of the legions he could confíscate their goods, have them flogged, or give them over to the
fustuarium
—order them clubbed, beaten, and stoned to death by their fellow soldiers. When he snapped, “Get out!” they fell over themselves scrambling from his tent. In some ways, Roman discipline still held.

The order duly went out, and the grumbling in the ranks vanished or was transmuted into the ordinary grousing that has existed in every army since time began. “I suppose you had to do it,” Gaius Philippus said, “but I still don’t like it. You may gain in the short run, but over the long haul anything that cuts into discipline is bad.”

“I thought about that,” Scaurus admitted, “but there’s discipline and discipline. To keep the vital parts, you have to bend the ones that aren’t. The men have to keep thinking of themselves as Romans and
want
to think that way, or they—and we—are lost. If they decide they’d rather slip off and be peasants in the countryside, what can we do? Where can we find the legions, the generals, the Senate to back up our Roman discipline? Do you think the Videssians give a damn about our ways? I can’t order us to feel like Romans; it
has
to come from within.”

Gaius Philippus looked at him like a Videssian suddenly confronted with heresy. The centurion had kept himself—and, to a large measure, the rest of the legionaries, too—going by ignoring, as far as he could, the fact that Rome was gone forever. It rocked his world for Scaurus to speak openly of what he tried not even to think about. Shaking his head, he left the tribune’s tent. A few minutes later Marcus heard him blistering some luckless soldier over a speck of rust on his greave. Scaurus made a wry face. He wished he could work off his own concerns so easily.

Letting the Romans out of camp at night proved to have one advantage the tribune had not thought of when he decided to allow it. It put them back in the mainstream of army gossip, as much a constant as that of the capital. The women heard everything, true or not, and so did the legionaries while with them. Thus it was that Scaurus learned Ortaias Sphrantzes was still with the army. He found it almost impossible to believe, knowing the mutual loathing the Gavrai and Sphrantzai had
for one another, but on his way to see Helvis a night later he proved its accuracy by almost bumping into the spatharios.

“Your pardon, I beg,” the young Sphrantzes said, stepping out of his way. As he had when Gaius Philippus rated him while he watched the Romans drill, he had a fat volume under his arm. “Yes, it’s Kalokyres on generalship again,” he said. “I have so much to learn and so little time to learn it.”

The idea of Ortaias Sphrantzes as a general was enough to silence the tribune. He must have raised an eyebrow, though, for Ortaias said, “My only regret, my Roman—” He pronounced the word carefully. “—friend, is that I’ll not have your formidable infantry under my command.”

“Ah? What command is that, my lord?” Marcus asked, thinking Mavrikios might have given the youth a few hundred Khamorth to play with. The answer he got shook him to his toes.

“I am to lead the left wing,” Sphrantzes replied proudly, “while the Emperor commands the center and his brother the right. We shall make mincemeat of the foe! Mincemeat! Now you must forgive me; I am studying the proper way to maneuver heavy cavalry in the face of the enemy.” And the newly minted field marshal vanished into the warm twilight, paging through his book to the place he needed.

That night, Helvis complained Scaurus’ mind was somewhere else.

The next morning the tribune told Gaius Philippus the ghastly news. The senior centurion held his head in his hands. “Congratulations,” he said. “You just ruined my breakfast.”

“He seems to mean well,” Marcus said, trying to find a bright side to things.

“So does a doctor treating somebody with the plague. The poor bastard’ll die all the same.”

“That’s not a good comparison,” Gorgidas protested. “True, the plague is past my power to treat, but at least I’m skilled in my profession. After reading one book of medicine, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to treat a sour stomach.”

“Neither would anyone else with sense,” Gaius Philippus said. “I thought Mavrikios had too much sense to give the puppy a third of his army.” He pushed his barley porridge aside, saying to the Greek doctor, “Can you fix
my
sour stomach? The gods know I’ve got one.”
Gorgidas grew serious. “Barley after you’re used to wheat will give you distress, or so says Hippokrates.”

“It never did before,” Gaius Philippus said. “I’m disgusted, that’s all. That bungling twit!”

The “twit” himself appeared later that day, apparently reminded of the Romans’ existence by his encounter with Marcus. Sphrantzes looked dashing as he rode up to the marching legionaries; his horse had the mincing gait of a Videssian thoroughbred. His breastplate and helm were gilded to show his rank, while a deep-blue cape streamed out behind him. The only flaw in his image of martial vigor was the book he still carried clamped under his left arm.

Sphrantzes reined his horse in to a walking pace at the head of the Roman column. He kept looking back, as if studying it. Gaius Philippus’ hostile curiosity soon got the better of him. He asked, “What can we do for you today, sir?” His tone belied the title of respect he’d granted Sphrantzes.

“Eh?” Ortaias blinked. “Oh, yes—tell me, if you would, are those the standards under which you fight?” He pointed at the nine tall manipular
signa
the standard-bearers proudly carried. Each was crowned by an open hand ringed by a wreath, representing faithfulness to duty.

“So they are. What of it?” Gaius Philippus answered shortly.

Marcus understood why the subject was a sore one. He explained to Sphrantzes, “We were only a detachment of a larger unit, whose symbol is the eagle. We have no eagle here, and the men miss it dearly.”

That was an understatement, but no Videssian could hope to understand the feeling each legion had for its eagle, the sacred symbol of its very being. During the winter at Imbros there had been some talk of making a new eagle, but the soldiers’ hearts were not in it. Their
aquila
was in Gaul and lost to them forever, but they wanted no other. The lesser
signa
would have to do.

“Most interesting,” Ortaias said. His concern with the Romans’ standards, however, was for a different reason. “Is your custom always to group like numbers of soldiers under each ensign?”

“Of course,” Scaurus replied, puzzled.

“And why not?” his centurion added.

“Excuse me a moment,” Sphrantzes said. He pulled out of the Roman line of march so he could stop his horse and use both hands to go through his tactical volume. When he found what he wanted, he sent the beast trotting back up to the Romans.

“I quote from Kalokyres,” he said: “The first book, chapter four, part six: ‘It is necessary to take care not to make all companies exactly equal in number, lest the enemy, counting one’s standards, form an exact idea of one’s numbers. Take heed in this matter: as we said, the companies should not be more than four hundred men, nor less than two hundred.’ Of course, your units are smaller than the ones Kalokyres uses, but the principle, I should say, remains the same. Good day to you, gentlemen.” He rode away, leaving the Romans speechless behind him.

“Do you know,” Gaius Philippus said, “that’s not a bad notion?”

“So it isn’t,” Marcus said. “In fact, it’s a very good one. How in the world did Ortaias Sphrantzes ever come up with it?”

“It’s not as if he thought of it himself,” the centurion said, looking for a way out of his discomfiture. “This Kalo-what’s-his-name must have had his wits about him. Yes.” He tried to console himself with that thought, but still looked rattled.

Viridovix had watched the entire exchange with high glee. “Sure and there he is, the man who sucked in soldiering with his mother’s milk—a centurion she was herself, I have no doubt—all tossed in a heap by the biggest booby ever hatched. It all goes to prove the Celtic way of fighting is the best—get in there and do it, for the more you think, the more trouble you’re in.”

Gaius Philippus was too graveled even to argue. “Oh, shut up,” he muttered. “Where’d Gorgidas get to? My stomach’s hurting again.”

The coastal plain between the suburbs across from Videssos and the city of Garsavra was some of the most fertile land the Romans had ever seen. The soil was a soft black loam that crumbled easily in the hand and smelled rich, almost meaty, in its promise of growth. Scores of rivers and lesser streams ran down from the central plateau so that the soil
could fulfill its promise. The warm rain fetched by the constant breeze off the Sailors’ Sea watered those few stretches flowing water did not touch.

Viridovix’ dire predictions about the weather, made months before, came true with a vengeance. It was so hot and humid the ground steamed each morning when the sun came up. The pale Halogai, used to the cool, cloudy summers of their northern home, suffered worse than most; day after day, they fainted in their armor and had to be revived with helmetsful of water.

“Red as a boiled crayfish, he was,” Viridovix said of one sunstruck northerner.

Gorgidas cocked an eye at him. “You don’t look any too good yourself,” he said. “Try wearing a soft hat instead of your helmet on march.”

“Go on with you,” the Celt said. “It takes more than a bit of sun to lay me low.” But Scaurus noticed he followed the physician’s advice.

With fine soil, abundant water, and hot sun, no wonder the breadbasket of the Empire lay here. The land was clothed with the various greens of growing plants. There were fields of wheat, millet, oats, and barley, and others growing flax and cotton, which Gorgidas insisted on calling “plant wool.” Orchards grew figs, peaches, plums, and exotic citrus fruits. As none of these last had been common in the western Mediterranean, Marcus had trouble telling one from the next—until the first time he bit into a lemon, thinking it an orange. After that he learned.

Vineyards were rare here; the soil was too good, and water too plentiful. Nor did Scaurus see many olive trees until the land began to rise toward the plateau a day or so outside of Garsavra.

The folk who farmed the fertile plain were as much a revelation to the tribune as their land. They were quiet, steady, and as industrious as any people he had seen. He was used to the tempestuous populace of Videssos the city, with their noisy, headlong pace, their arrogant assumption of superiority over all the rest of mankind, and their fickle swings of mood. He’d wondered more than once how the Empire had managed to prosper for so many centuries with such truculent material on which to build.

Gorgidas laughed at him for saying that one night. The Greek physician was always a part of the unending talk round the Roman watchfires. He seldom left camp after dusk had fallen. Scaurus knew he had no sweetheart, but used the company of men to hold loneliness at bay.

Now he commented, “You might as well judge Italy by the hangers-on at the lawcourts in Rome. For as long as Videssos has had its empire, the Emperors have spoiled the people of the capital to win their favor. You can hardly blame them, you know—reckoning by the riots a few weeks ago, their necks would answer if they didn’t keep them happy. Don’t forget, the Empire has lasted a long time; the city people think luxury their rightful due.”

The tribune remembered Cato’s complaint of over a century before his own time, that a pretty boy could cost more than a plot of land, and a jar of imported liquamen more than a plowman. Rome had not become less fond of pleasure in the intervening years. What was the joke about Caesar?—every woman’s husband and every man’s wife. Scaurus shook his head, wondering what his native capital would be like after hundreds of years as an imperial capital.

Garsavra, which the army reached on the ninth day out of Videssos, was a long way from imperial status. The town was, in fact, smaller than Imbros. Thanks to its river-junction site, it was a trade center for a good part of the westlands. Nevertheless, when the expeditionary force camped round the city, it more than doubled Garsavra’s population.