Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

The Forum of the Ox was a mile and half, perhaps two miles east down Middle Street from the palace quarter. Krispos walked briskly to keep warm. He was glad of his escort as he passed through the plaza of Palamas; as usual, the Halogai marched in a way that said they would trample anyone who did not get clear. Crowds melted before them, as if by magic.

He hurried down Middle Street. He wanted to catch Pyrrhos in the act of preaching against him; whatever punishment he might mete out after the fact, no matter how savage, would not have the effect he wanted. Making a martyr out of the prelate was the last thing he had in mind.

A few hundred yards past the government office building, Middle Street jogged to the south. The Forum of the Ox lay not far ahead. Krispos sped up till he was almost trotting. To have Pyrrhos get away from him now would be unbearably frustrating. He hoped again that his orders had gone through on time.

In ancient days, the Forum of the Ox had been Videssos the city's chief cattle market. It was still an important trading center for goods bulkier, more mundane, and less expensive than those sold in the plaza of Palamas: livestock, grain, cheap pottery, and olive oil. People here stared at Krispos' escort before they got out of the way. In the plaza of Palamas, close by the palaces, they were used to seeing the Avtokrator. He was a much less frequent visitor in this poorer part of the city.

A quick glance around the square showed him what he sought: a knot of men and women gathered around a man in a blue monk's robe. The monk—even across the square, Krispos recognized Pyrrhos' tall, thin frame and lean face—stood on a barrel or box or stone that raised him head and shoulders above his audience. Krispos pointed. "Over there." The Halogai nodded. They moved on Pyrrhos with the directness of a pack of wolves advancing on a wisent.

Pyrrhos was a trained orator. Long before he reached the rear edge of the crowd that listened to the cleric, Krispos could hear what he was saying. So could half the people in the Forum of the Ox. "He must have learned his corruption from the master he formerly served, for surely depravity was the name by which Anthimos was better known. Yet in his own way, Krispos outdid Anthimos in vice, first seducing the previous Avtokrator's wife,' then using her against her husband to climb over his dead body to the throne. How will—how can—Phos bless our efforts with such a man inhabiting the palaces?"

Pyrrhos must have seen Krispos and his bodyguards approach, but he did not pause in his address. Krispos already knew he had courage. Pyrrhos also did not suddenly break off his speech to point out to his audience that the adulterous monster he had been denouncing was here. That, in his sandals, Krispos might have tried, if he truly aimed to overthrow some-one. But Pyrrhos did not deviate from what he had decided to say: his mind was made up, which left no room in it for change.

Krispos folded his arms to listen. Pyrrhos continued his harangue as if the Avtokrator were not there. He paid even less attention to the squad of firemen who dashed into the Forum of the Ox. Others round the square glanced up in some alarm at the sight of the men armed with Haloga-style axes and with a hand pump carried by two men who were sweating even in the chill of winter. Especially after the close escape on Midwinter's Day, fire was a constant fear in the city.

But the fire team made straight for the crowd round the gesticulating monk. "Make way!" the fire captain shouted.

People tumbled away from the crew. "Where's the fire?" somebody yelled.

"Right here!" Thokyodes yelled back. "Leastways, I got orders to put out this incendiary here." He waved to his crew. One of them swung the pump handle up and down. The other turned his hose toward Pyrrhos.

Cold water from the hand pump's wooden tub gushed forth. The people nearest Pyrrhos stampeded away from him, cursing and spluttering as they went. Pyrrhos himself tried to speak on through his drenching, but started to sneeze whether he wanted to or not. The fire team kept hosing him down until the tub was empty. Then Thokyodes looked over to Krispos. "Shall we fill 'er up again, your Majesty?"

Pyrrhos looked as if a little more would drown him. "No, that's fine, Thokyodes, thank you," Krispos said. "I think he's been cooled down very nicely."

"Cooled down— ahhehoo!— am I?" Pyrrhos shouted. Water dripped from his beard and from the end of his nose. "Nay, I've just— ahhehoo!— begun to speak the truth about our imperial adulterer. Now hear me, people of Videssos—"

"Go home and dry off, holy sir," someone called, not unkindly. "You'll take a flux on the lungs if you go on like this." "Aye, your tale's as soggy as your robe anyhow," someone else said. A woman added, "Save the fire in your belly to warm yourself."

"No, the crew just doused that fire," a man said. He chuckled at his own wit.

Pyrrhos had lived all his adult life in monasteries or attached to one temple or another. He was used to respect from the laity, not gibes—not even gibes kindly meant. But worse than those gibes was the laughter that sprang from so many throats at the spectacle of a furious, drenched, shivering holy man standing on his perch—it was an overturned box, Krispos saw—trying to keep on with his denunciation through teeth that chattered loud as the wooden finger cymbals Vaspurakaner dancers used to clack out their rhythm.

He might have stood up against being ignored: because they preached the virtues of a way of life more austere than most folk would willingly embrace, monks were often ignored. But laughter he could not endure. Glaring at the crowd in general and Krispos in particular, he awkwardly scrambled down from his box and stalked away. A fresh sneezing spasm robbed even his departure of dignity.

"Phos with you, drippy Pyrrhos!" a man with a loud voice yelled after him. New laughter rang out. Pyrrhos' back, already stiff, jerked as if someone had stuck a knife into him. "Drippy Pyrrhos, good old drippy Pyrrhos," the crowd sang. His departure turned to headlong retreat; by the time he reached the edge of the Forum of the Ox, he was all but running.

Geirrod turned to Krispos. "He'll love you no better for this, Majesty," the guardsman said. "Make a man out a fool and he'll reckon himself at feud with you no less than if you'd slashed him with sword."

"He's already at feud with me, and with everyone else who won't think and do just as he does," Krispos answered. "Now, though, the good god willing, people won't take him so seriously. The holy Pyrrhos—until lately, the most holy Pyrrhos—was someone whose notions you'd respect. But how much attention would you pay to good old drippy Pyrrhos?"

"Ahh, now I see it," Geirrod said slowly. "You've poisoned his word." He spoke in his own language to his fellow northerners. Their deep voices rose and fell; their eyes swung toward Krispos. Geirrod said, "Who but a Videssian would think to slay a man with laughter?" The other Halogai nodded solemnly.

A few feet away, Thokyodes gestured to his crew. The two men who had hauled the pump around now set it down with grunts of relief. The rest leaned on their fire axes, save for one who strolled off toward a fellow selling roasted chickpeas.

Thokyodes caught Krispos' eye. When Krispos did not look away, the fire captain came over to him. "Well, your Majesty, I hope we put out some trouble for you there," he said. Thokyodes was Videssian and, by his accent, a city man. He required no explanations to understand what Krispos had planned.

"I think you did," Krispos said. "You'll be rewarded for it, too."

"I thank you," Thokyodes said briskly. He did not try to protest his own unworthiness. Business was business.

Krispos raised his voice and called out, "All right, folks, the show is over for today." The crowd that had been listening to Pyrrhos rapidly melted away. A few people averted their faces as they went by Krispos, as if they did not want him to know they had been anywhere near someone who preached against him. More, though, went off chattering happily; as far as they were concerned, Pyrrhos' harangue and Krispos' response to it might have been arranged only for their amusement. City folk were like that, Krispos thought with a touch of exasperation.