Free Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 by Harry Turtledove Page A

clasp Scaurus’ hand. “Good to see you again,” he said. “The march to your barracks is a couple of miles. I hope you don’t mind us making a parade of it. It’ll give the people something to talk about and get them used to the look of you as well.”
    “Fine,” Marcus agreed. He had expected something like this; the Videssians were inordinately fond of pomp and ceremony. His attention was only half on Khoumnos anyhow. The rest was directed to the troops the imperial officer led.
    The three contingents of the honor guard seemed more concerned over watching each other than about the Romans. Khoumnos’ personal contingent was a squadron of
akritai
—businesslike Videssians cut in the mold of Tzimiskes or Mouzalon. They wanted to give the Romans their full attention, but kept stealing quick looks to the right and left.
    On their left was a band—Marcus rejected any word with a more orderly flavor than that—of nomads from the Pardrayan plains. Dark, stocky men with curly beards, they rode shaggy steppe ponies, wore breastplates of boiled leather and foxskin caps, and carried double-curved bows reinforced with horn. “Foot soldiers!” one said in accented Videssian. He spat to show his contempt. Marcus stared at him until the nomad flushed and jerked his eyes away.
    The tribune had a harder time deciding the origin of the escorting party’s last group. They were big, solid men in heavy armor, mounted on horses as large as any Marcus had seen, and armed with stout lances and straight slashing swords. They had something of the look of the Halogai to them, but seemed rather less—what was the word Viridovix had used?—doomful than the northern mercenaries. Besides, about half their number had dark hair. They were the first clean-shaven men Scaurus had seen. The only nation that might have spawned them, he decided at last, was Namdalen. There Haloga overlords mixed blood with their once-Videssian subjects, from whom they had learned much.
    Their leader was a rugged warrior of about thirty, whose dark eyesand tanned skin went oddly with his mane of wheat-colored hair. He swung himself down from his high-cantled saddle to greet the Romans. “You look to have good men here,” he said to Marcus, taking the tribune’s hand between his own in a Haloga-style grip. “I’m Hemond of Metepont, out of the Duchy.” That confirmed Marcus’ guess. Hemond went on, “Once you’re settled in, look me up for a cup of wine. We can tell each other stories of our homes—yours, I hear, is a strange, distant land.”
    “I’d like that,” Marcus said. The Namdalener seemed a decent sort; his curiosity was friendly enough and only natural. All sorts of rumors about the Romans must have made the rounds in Videssos during the winter.
    “Come on, come on, let’s be off,” Khoumnos said. “Hemond, your men for advance guard; the Khamorth will take the rear while we ride flank.”
    “Right you are.” Hemond ambled back to his horse, flipping the Videssian a lazy salute as he went. Khoumnos’ sudden urgency bothered Marcus; he had been in no hurry a moment before. Could it be he did not want the Romans friendly toward the Namdaleni? Politics already, the tribune thought, resolving caution until he learned the local rules of the game.
    A single Videssian with a huge voice led the procession from the walls of the city to the barracks. Every minute or so he bellowed, “Make way for the valiant Romans, brave defenders of the Empire!” The thoroughfare down which they strode emptied in the twinkling of an eye; just as magically, crowds appeared on the sidewalks and in every intersection. Some people cheered the valiant Romans, but more seemed to wonder who these strange-looking mercenaries were, while the largest number would have turned out for any parade, just to break up the monotony of the day.
    Eyes front and hands raised in salute, the legionaries marched west. They passed through two large, open squares, by a marketplace