Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

"The man. The girl," Crispin said, ignoring this. "Where are they? Are they hurt?"

"They're here, they're here. She's not been touched, we've no time for play. You are late, I told you. That's why we were riding to look for you. An undignified, Jad-cursed order if ever there was one."

"Oh, shit yourself! The courier was late. I wrapped up affairs and left five days after he came! It was past the season for sailing. You think I wanted to be on this road? Find him and ask questions. Titaticus, or something. An idiot with a red nose. Kill him with your helmet. How is Vargos?"

Carullus looked back over his shoulder. "He's on a horse."

"What? Riding?"

The tribune sighed. "Tied across the back of one. He was… worked over a little. He struck me after you fell. He can't do that!"

Crispin tried to sit up, and failed, miserably. He closed his eyes and opened them again when this seemed practical. "Listen to me carefully. If that man has been seriously injured, I will have your rank and your pension revoked, if not your life. This is an oath. Get him in a litter and have him tended to. Where s the nearest physician who doesn't kill people?"

"At camp. He struck me," Carullus repeated, plaintively. But he turned, after a moment, and gestured again, behind him. When another soldier trotted up on his horse, Carullus murmured a rapid volley of instructions, too softly for Crispin to hear. The cavalryman muttered unhappily but turned to obey.

"It is done," Carullus said, turning back to Crispin. "They say he's had nothing broken. Won't walk or piss easy for a while, but nothing that won't pass. Are we friends?"

"Fuck yourself with your sword. How far to your camp?"

Tomorrow night. He's all right, I'm telling you. I don't lie."

"No, you just shit all over your uniform when you realize you've made the mistake of your life."

"Jad's blood! You swear more than I do! Martiman, there is fault here both ways. I am being reasonable."

"Only because a holy man saw what happened, you bloated fart, you pantomime buffoon."

Carullus laughed suddenly. "True enough. Number it among the great blessings of your life. Give money to the Sleepless Ones until the day you die. Bloated fart is also good, by the way. I like it. I'll use it. Do you want a drink?"

The situation was outrageous, and he was only moderately reassured about Vargos's condition, but it did begin to appear that Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian was not entirely a lout, and he did want a drink

Crispin nodded his head, carefully.

They brought him a flask, and later an aide to the tribune cleaned Crispin's bloodied cheek and jaw line with decent care when they halted for a brief rest. He saw Vargos then. They had indeed worked him over, and more than a little, but had evidently chosen to reserve more substantial chastisement until such time as everyone at their camp could watch the fun. Vargos was awake by then. His face was puffy from the blows and there was an ugly gash on his forehead, but he was in a litter now. Kasia was led up, apparently untouched, though with that furtive, doe-like look in her eyes again, as if caught in torchlight by night hunters and frozen in place with apprehension. He remembered his first sight of her. Yesterday at about this time in the front room of Morax's inn. Yesterday? That was astonishing. It would give him another headache if he dwelled on it. He was an idiot. An imbecile.

Linon was gone, to her god, into silence in the Aldwood.

"We have an escort to the military camp," Crispin said to both of them, still moving his jaw as little as possible. "I have achieved an understanding with the tribune. We will not be harmed further. In return I will allow him to continue functioning as a man and a soldier. I am sorry if you were hurt, or frightened. It seems I am now to be accompanied to Sarantium the rest of the way. There was more urgency to my summons than was evident in the documents themselves or their delivery. Vargos, they have promised a physician at their camp tomorrow night to tend to you, and I will release you from my service then. The tribune swears you will come to no harm and I believe he is honest. A gross pig, but honest."

Vargos shook his head. He mumbled something Crispin couldn't make out. His lips were badly swollen, the words garbled.

"He wants to come with you," Kasia said softly. The sun was low, now, behind her, almost straight along the road. It was growing colder, twilight coming. "He says he cannot serve on this road any more, after this morning. They will kill him."

Crispin, after a moment's thought, realized that had to be true. He remembered a blow struck by Vargos in the dark of the innyard before dawn this morning. Vargos, too, had intervened in this sacrifice. His own was not the only life in the midst of change, it seemed. In the last bronze glow of the sun under-lighting clouds he looked closely at the man in the other litter. "This is correct? You wish me to retain your services all the way to the City?"

Vargos nodded his head.

Crispin said, "Sarantium is a different world, you know that."

"Know that," Vargos said, and this time he heard it clearly. "Your man."

He felt something unexpected then, like a shaft of light through everything else that day. It took him a moment to recognize it as happiness. Crispin stretched out a hand from his litter and the other man reached across the space between to touch it with his own.

"Rest now," said Crispin, struggling to keep his own eyes open. His head was hurting a great deal. "It will be all right." He wasn't sure he believed that, but after a moment he saw that Vargos had indeed closed his eyes and was asleep. Crispin touched his bruised chin again and struggled not to yawn: it hurt when he opened his mouth so much. He looked at the girl. "We'll talk tonight," he mumbled. "Need to sort out your life, too."

He saw that quick, flaring apprehension in her again. Not a surprise, really. Her life, what had happened to her this year, and this morning. He saw Carullus coming over: long strides, his shadow behind him on the road. Not a bad man, really. An easy laugh, sense of humour. Crispin had provoked him. In front of his soldiers. It was true. Not the wisest thing. Might admit that later. Might not. Might be better not.

He was asleep before the tribune reached his litter.

"Don't hurt him!" Kasia said to the officer as he came up, though Crispin never heard it. She stepped quickly between the litter and the soldier.

"I can't hurt him, girl," said the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian, shaking his head bemusedly, looking at her. "He has both my balls on a smith's anvil and the hammer in his hand."

"Good!" she said. "Keep remembering that." Her expression was fierce, northern, not at all doe-like just then.

The soldier laughed aloud. "Jad rot the moment I saw the three of you in that chapel," he said. "Now Inici slave girls tell me what to do? What ere you even doing abroad on the fucking Day of the Dead, anyhow? Don't you know it is dangerous today in Sauradia?"

She went pale, he saw, but made no reply. There was a tale here, his instincts told him. They also told him he wasn't likely to hear it. He could have her beaten for disrespect, but knew he wouldn't. He really was a kind-hearted man, Carullus told himself. The Rhodian didn't know how lucky he was.

Carullus also had a sense-a mild one, to be sure-that his own future might possibly be at risk as a result of this encounter at the sanctuary. He'd seen, a little too late, the Rhodian's Permit, and who had signed it, and had read the specific terms of the Emperor's request for the presence of a certain Martinian of Varena.

An artisan. Only an artisan, but personally invited to the City to lend his great expertise and knowledge to the Emperor's new Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom. Another building. Another fucking building.