Harry Turtledove - Krispos the Emperor

Grimacing, Krispos thanked the man and sent him to his own rest. He hadn't really believed Zaidas would stay baffled. He lay down on the cot as he'd intended, but found sleep a long time coming.

Stupid. The word slid sluggishly through Phostis' mind. Because he saw only darkness, he thought for a confused moment that he was still back at the latrines. Then he realized a bandage covered his eyes. He reached up to pull it off, only to discover his hands had been efficiently tied behind his back, his legs at knees and ankles.

He groaned. The sound came out muffled—he was also gagged. He groaned again anyhow. His head felt like an anvil on which a smith about as tall as the top of the High Temple's dome was hammering out a complicated piece of ironwork. He was lying on something hard—boards, he found out when a splinter dug into the thin strip of flesh between blindfold and gag.

Adding to the pounding agony behind his eyes were squeaks and jolts. I'm in a wagon, or maybe a cart, he thought, amazed and impressed that his poor benighted brain functioned at all. He groaned one more time.

"He's coming around," said somebody—a man—above and in front of him. The fellow laughed, loudly and raucously. "It's took him long enough, it has, it has."

"Shall we let him see where he's going?" another voice, a woman's, asked. After a moment, Phostis recognized it: Olyvria's. He ground his teeth in helpless fury; he felt he'd already used up all the groans in him.

The man—the driver?—said, "Nah, our orders was to bring him the first stage of the way to Livanios without him knowin' nothin' about it. That's what your pa done said, and that's what we does. So don't go untyin' him, either, you hear me?"

"I hear you, Syagrios," Olyvria answered. "It's too bad. We'd all be happier if we could get him cleaned up a bit."

"I've smelled worse, out in the fields at manuring time," Syagrios said. "The stink won't kill him, and it won't kill you, neither."

Phostis had been aware of a foul smell since his wits returned. He hadn't realized he was the cause of it. He must have gone on fouling himself after Olyvria's potion—the one that was supposed to end his internal turmoil—forced him down into oblivion. I'll have revenge for that, by the good god, he thought. I'll — He gave up. No vengeance seemed savage enough to suit him.

Olyvria said, "I wish he would have come and talked with me when he saw me by the baggage train. He recognized me, I know he did. I think I could have persuaded him to come with us of his own will. I know he follows Thanasios' gleaming path, at least in large measure."

Syagrios gave a loud, skeptical grunt. "How d'you know that?"

"He wouldn't bed me when he had the chance," Olyvria answered.

Her companion grunted again, in a slightly different tone. "Well, maybe. It don't matter, though. Our orders was to snatch him fast as we could, and we done did it. Livanios will be happy with us."

"So he will," Olyvria said.

She and Syagrios went on talking, but Phostis stopped heeding them. He hadn't figured out for himself—though he supposed he should have—that his kidnappers were Thanasioi. As it did Olyvria, the irony of that struck him, though in his case the impact was far more forcible. Given any sort of choice in the matter, he would have picked a different way of coming into their number. But they had not given him any choice.

He closed his lips on the gag and tried to draw a tiny bit of the cloth into his mouth. He needed several tries before he nipped it between upper and lower front teeth. After working awhile on chewing through it, he decided that was easier said than done. He labored instead to get it down so his mouth would be free. Just when he thought he'd succeed about the time he got to wherever Livanios was, the top edge of the gag slid down over his upper lip. Not only could he talk now if he had to, he could also breathe much more easily.

Even though he could talk, he resolved not to, lest his captors gag him more securely. But his body tested his resolve in ways he hadn't anticipated. At last he said, "Could you people please stop long enough to let me make water?"

Syagrios' startled jerk shook the whole wagon. "By the ice, how'd he get his mouth loose?" He turned around, then growled, "Well, why should we bother? You already stink."

"We aren't just stealing him, Syagrios, we're bringing him to us," Olyvria said. "There's no one on the road; why shouldn't we just stand him up and let him do what needs doing? It won't take long."

"Why should we? You didn't lift him in there, and you won't have to lift him out." The man grumbled a little longer, then said, "All right, have it your way." He must have pulled on the reins; the jingle of harness ceased as the wagon stopped. Phostis felt himself lifted by arms as thick and powerful as any Haloga's. He leaned against the side of the wagon on legs that did not want to hold him up. Syagrios said, "Go ahead and piss. Be quick about it."

"It's not that simple for him, you know," Olyvria said. "Here, wait—I'll help." The wagon shifted behind Phostis as she got down. He listened to her come around and stand by him. She hiked up his robe so he wouldn't wet it. As if that weren't mortification enough, she took him in hand and said, "Go on; now you won't splash on your boots."

Syagrios laughed coarsely. "You hold him like that for very long and he'll be too stiff to piss at all."

Phostis hadn't even thought about that aspect of things; what rang through his mind was his father's voice back at Nakoleia, asking him if he wanted praise for piddling without getting his feet wet. At the moment, such praise would have been welcome. He relieved himself as fast as he could; never before had the phrase possessed such real and immediate meaning for him. His sigh when he was through was involuntary but heartfelt.

The robe fluttered down around his tied ankles. Syagrios picked him up and, grunting, lifted him back into the wagon. The fellow talked like a villain and, without Phostis' excuse for filth, was none too clean, but he had brute strength to spare. He set Phostis down flat in the wagon bed, then returned to his place and got his team moving once more.

"You want to gag him again?" he asked Olyvria.

"No," Phostis said—quietly, so they would see he did not have to be gagged. Then he used a word most often perfunctory for an Avtokrator's son: "Please." It was not perfunctory now.

"I think I'd better," Olyvria said after a brief pause. She must have swung round on the seat; her feet came down in the wagon close by Phostis' head. "I'm sorry," she told him as she slipped the gag over his mouth and tied it behind his neck, "but we just can't trust you yet."

Her fingers were smooth and warm and briskly capable; had she given him the chance, he would have bitten them to the bone. He didn't get the chance. He was already discovering she knew how to do much more than lie temptingly naked on a bed.

That discovery would have surprised his brothers even more than it did him. Evripos and Katakolon were convinced lying naked on a bed was all women were good for. Since he was less concerned about finding them there, he found it easier to envision them doing other things. But not even he had imagined finding one who made such an effective kidnapper.

Olyvria got back up beside Syagrios. She remarked, apparently to no one in particular, "If he gets that one off, he'll regret it."

"I'll make him regret it." Syagrios sounded as if he looked forward to doing just that. Phostis, who had already started working on the new gag. decided not to go on. He chose to believe Olyvria had given him a hint.

The day was the longest, driest, hungriest, and generally most miserable he'd ever endured. After some endless while, he began to see real black rather than gray through the blindfold. The air grew cooler, almost chilly. Night, he thought. He wondered if Syagrios would drive straight on till dawn. If Syagrios did, Phostis wondered if he would still be alive by the time his eyes saw gray once more.