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"Nestorios the holy," Marcus read. Styppes used the larger brush to surround
the saint's head with a gleaming circle of gold. "Thus we portray Phos'
sun-disk, to show the holy man's closeness to the good god,' he explained, but
the tribune had already grasped the halo's meaning.
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"May I?" he said, and when Styppes nodded, he took the wooden panel into his
own hands. "How soon will it be ready for giving?" he asked eagerly.
Styppes' smile, for once, was not sour. "A day for the gilding to dry, then
two coats of varnish to protect the colors underneath." He scratched his
shaved head. "Say, four days' time."
"I wish it were sooner," Marcus said. He was still not won over to this
Videssian art of symbol and allegory, but there was no denying that in
Styppes' talented hands its results were powerfully moving.
The priest reclaimed the icon and set it to one side to dry undisturbed.
"Now," he said with an abrupt change of manner, "where did I toss those
snails? Your supper idea wasn't half bad, outlander; have you any garlic to go
with them?"
Laon Pakhymer appeared at the legionaries' camp like the god from a machine in
a Roman play: no one set eyes on him until suddenly he was there. He flipped
Scaurus the wave that passed for a salute among his easygoing folk; when the
tribune asked how he had managed to ride through not only Zonaras' picket
posts but also the Namdaleni, he answered airily, "There's ways," and put a
finger by the side of his nose.
Sextus Minucius exclaimed, "I'll bet you used that old geezer's ford."
"Aren't you the clever young fellow?" Pakhymer said with mild irony. "And what
if I did?"
"What did he gouge you for?" Gaius Philippus asked. The Khatrisher gave a
resigned shrug. "A
dozen gold-pieces."
The senior centurion choked on his wine. "Jove's hairy arse! You ought to go
back and kill the bugger he only got ten for the lot of us."
"Maybe so," Pakhymer answered, "but then, you hadn't just come from Kyzikos."
He looked uncommonly smug, like a cat that knew where cream came from.
"What difference does it make where you " Marcus began, and then stopped, awe
on his face.
Kyzikos housed an imperial mint. No one in this world had ever heard of Midas,
but in Kyzikos the
Khatrishers could come close to making his dream real. The tribune did not
even think of pointing out that they were stealing the Empire's gold; he had
learned mercenaries served themselves first.
What he did say was, "Drax won't love you for emptying the till."
"Too bad for Drax. You're right, though; he's thrown a good deal at us, trying
to drive us out. And so he has, but our pockets are full. I never did see such
a payday." His pockmarked face was dirty, his beard wind-matted and snarled,
his clothes ragged, but he was blissful nonetheless. Gaius
Philippus stared at him with honest envy.
"No wonder the Namdaleni have been so easy on us, with Kyzikos to go after,"
Minucius said.
"It's like I guessed, sir," Gaius Philippus said to Scaurus. "But Drax is
making a mistake, grabbing at the treasure first. Once his enemies are gone,
it falls into his lap, but if he takes the gold and leaves us around, we may
find some way to get it back."
"He doesn't have it," Pakhymer pointed out. "Still, I take your meaning even
so. I have something planned to make old Drax jump and shout."
"What will you do?" Marcus asked with interest. For all his slapdash ways,
that Khatrisher was a clever, imaginative soldier.
"Oh, it's done already." Pakhymer seemed pleased at his own shrewdness. "I
spread some of
Kyzikos' gold around where it would do the most good it's on its way up to the
central plateau. If the damned islanders are busy fighting Yezda, they can't
very well fight us."
The tribune gaped. "You bribed the nomads to attack Drax?"
"So we fought them a couple of years ago. What of it?'" Pakhymer was defiant
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and defensive at the same time. "We fought the islanders last year when they
served Ortaias, and now again. One war at a time, I say."
"There's a difference," Marcus insisted. "Drax is an enemy, aye, but not
wicked, only power-
hungry. But the nomads kill for the joy of killing. Think on what we saw on
the road to Maragha
and after." He remembered Avshar's gift, hurled into the legionaries' camp
after the fight
Mavrikios Gavras' head.
Pakhymer flushed, perhaps recalling that, too, but he answered, "Any man who
tries to kill me is wicked in my eyes, and my foe's foe my friend. And have a
care the way you say 'nomad,' Scaurus;
my people came off the same steppe the Yezda did." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]