Free An Emperor for the Legion by Harry Turtledove Page A

your weapons, too, though the gods help you if you need me to tell you that.”
    With Lexos Blemmydes vanished, there were no guides to show Scaurus’ force the way to Amorion. Save for the Romans, the valley the invaders had held was empty of humanity. The angry herders whose cattle had served to rout the Yezda hid in the hills, unwilling to help the men who, from their viewpoint, first befriended and then betrayed them.
    Much later than was pleasing to Marcus’ senior centurion, the army finally began slogging southeast. The sky remained a sullen, leaden gray; hour after hour the rain kept falling, now in little spatters of drizzle, now in nearly opaque sheets driven by a wind with the early bite of winter in it.
    There was no way to steer a steady course in those dreadfulconditions. Drenched and miserable, the legionaries and their companions struggled through a series of crisscrossing little canyons more bewildering than Minos’ labyrinth. They trudged glumly on, trusting in dead reckoning.
    The storm blew itself out toward evening; through tattered clouds, the sun gave an apologetic peep at the world. And when it did, some soldiers fearfully exclaimed it was setting in the east, for it shone straight into their faces.
    Listening to the men, Quintus Glabrio shook his head in resignation. “Isn’t that the way of the world? They’d sooner turn the heavens topsy-turvy than face up to our own blundering.”
    “You spend too cursed much time hanging round Gorgidas,” Gaius Philippus said. “You’re starting to sound like him.” Scaurus had the same impression, though, thinking back on it, he did not remember seeing the junior centurion and the physician together very often.
    “Worse things have happened,” Glabrio chuckled. Gaius Philippus was content to let it rest. If there were things he did not understand in the younger officer, he approved of enough to tolerate the rest.
    Marcus was glad the chaffing went no further than it did. His hangover was gone at last, but he had not eaten all day and felt lightheaded. A real quarrel would have been more than he was up to dealing with.
    Only bits of scudding gray showed the storm’s passage when dawn came again—those, and the red-brown clinging mud that tried to suck sandals from feet. It was, Marcus thought with disquiet, almost the color of Yezd’s banners. He was strangely pleased to see tiny green shoots thrusting up through it, fooled into thinking it was spring.
    Gaius Philippus barked harsh laughter when he said that aloud. “They’ll find out soon enough how wrong they are.” He sniffed at the brisk northern breeze, weather-wise from a lifetime lived in the open. “Snow’s coming before long.”
    Quite by accident, for they were still guideless, they came upon a town early that afternoon. Aptos, it was called, and held perhaps five thousand souls. Peaceful, un walled, unknown to the Yezda, it nearly brought tears to the tribune. To him, towns like this were Videssos’ greatest achievement, places where generation on generation lived in peace, neverfearing that the next day might bring invaders to rape away in hours the fruit of years of labor. Such bypassed tranquil islands were already rare in the westlands; soon, too soon, none would be left.
    Monks pulling weeds from the rain-softened soil of their vegetable gardens looked up in amazement as the battered mercenary company tramped past. True to the disciplined kindness of their vocation, they hurried into the monastery storehouses, returning with fresh-baked bread and pitchers of wine. They stood by the side of the road, offering the refreshments to any who cared to stop for a moment.
    Scaurus had mixed feelings about the Videssian clergy. When humane, as these monks seemed to be, they were among the best of men: he thought of Nepos and the patriarch Balsamon. But their zeal could make them frighteningly, violently xenophobic; the tribune remembered the anti-Namdalener riots in Videssos the city and