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Magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies 167 (pdf)
3.Pies Baskerville'ów 1902
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with pleasure.
Earnest though Blaesus was, responsibility frightened him.
The tribune turned from the junior centurions to the Namdaleni in his charge.
The islanders were a far cry from the proud, confident troops who had set out
to wrest Videssos' westlands from the
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Empire. Patchy beards straggled up their gaunt cheeks. Most walked with a
forward list, as if drawing themselves up straight took more vigor than they
had. Almost every man limped, some from wounds, the rest because the Yezda had
stolen their boots and left them only cloths with which to wrap their feet.
They wore tattered rags of surcoats and trousers; like the boots, their mail
shirts were the nomads' spoils. Their eyes were hollow and uncaring as they
plodded along.
So this was victory, Scaurus thought. He felt like a captain of one of
Crassus' fire brigades back at
Rome, turning a profit from the misfortune of others by buying burning
property on the cheap.
Here and there a face, an attitude stood out from the general run of
prisoners. Mertikes Zigabenos'
luxuriant black whiskers made him easy to pick out in the throng of new,
scraggly beards. So did his expression of absolute despair, painful to see
even among so much misery. He would not lift his head when Marcus called his
name. Beside him walked Drax, whose short beard was startlingly red.
The great count's left arm in a filthy sling. He was not ashamed to meet
Scaurus' eye, but his own steady gaze was as unfathomable as ever.
Not all the Namdaleni had forgotten they were men. The veteran Fayard, who had
been a member of Hemond's squadron when Marcus arrived at Videssos the city,
marched where the troopers around him shambled. He threw the tribune a sharp
salute, followed it with a shrug, as if to say he had thought they would meet
again, but not like this. Somehow he had kept himself fit, making the best of
whatever came his way.
Soteric, too, was straight as a plumb bob. That stubborn erectness was what
first made Marcus know him; beard and haggardness added years to his looks, so
he seemed older than the tribune when in fact he was not thirty. A
half-healed, puckered scar seamed his forehead. He glared at his
brother-in-law like a trapped wolf. With little sympathy in him, he expected
none.
"Traitor!" Soteric shouted, and the tribune did not doubt he meant it. A
strange word, he thought, after the fight at the Sangarios. But Helvis'
brother was so full of the righteousness of his cause that he was blind to any
other. Some of that was in Helvis, too. Not as much, Marcus thought
thankfully.
He turned to Styppes, saying, "Do what you can for their hurts." Not all of
those, he saw, had come in battle; some islanders carried the mark of the lash
or worse.
The healer-priest had scant relish for his task. "You ask too much of me," he
said, sounding for once very much like Gorgidas. "Many I will not cure, for
they have had long to fester. And these are heretics and enemies as well."
"They fought for the Empire once," Marcus pointed out, "and many will again,
with your help."
Styppes scowled at him. Scaurus started to argue further, but found he was
talking to the priest's back. Styppes was pushing past Blaesus' men to reach
the wounded Namdaleni.
Gaius Philippus was trying not to smile. "What is it with that one? Does he
always have to growl a while before he goes to work?"
"You're a fine one to talk. The gods help any legionary in your way after
something goes wrong,"
Scaurus said. The veteran did grin then, acknowledging the hit.
It was drawing toward evening when the legionaries and their captives reached
Garsavra. Scaurus led them past the Namdalener-held fortress once more, an
implied threat that the men of the Duchy in his hands might become hostages
for the castle's surrender. The ploy worked less well than he had hoped. The
haler prisoners raised a cheer to see the motte-and-bailey still holding out,
a cheer the knights on its rampart echoed.
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Soteric gave Marcus a look filled with ironic triumph.
Nettled, the tribune paraded his army and the captured Namdaleni down
Garsavra's chief street to the town marketplace as a spectacle for the people.
That was not quite a success, either. The
Garsavrans were less fond of such shows than their jaded cousins in the
capital. The verge of the roadway was embarrassingly empty as the legionaries
tramped between the baths and the local prelate's residence, a domed building
of yellow stucco every bit as large and important as the governor's hall. The
clatter of hobnailed caligae on cobblestones all but drowned the spatters of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
