Harry Turtledove - Krispos the Emperor

"If you were so set on walking the gleaming path, why did you rob the mint at Kyzikos and not just burn it?" Phostis asked. "You didn't despise material things enough to keep from dirtying your hands with them."

"I do not claim to be the purest among the followers of the holy Thanasios," Livanios said. "Nevertheless, I follow the truth he preached."

"The only place you'll follow him. I think, is to the ice," Krispos said. "And since I've beaten you and taken you in arms against me. I don't need to argue with you." He turned to one of the Halogai. "Trygve, you're still carrying your axe. Strike off his head and have done."

"Aye, Majesty." The big blond northerner strode over to Livanios and pushed him so he went to his knees. Trygve spoke with neither cruelty nor any great compassion, merely a sense of what needed doing: "Bend your neck. you. It will be over soonest then."

Livanios started to obey, but then his eyes found Phostis. With a quick glance toward Krispos, he asked, "May I put a last question?"

Krispos thought he knew what that question would be. "Be quick about it."

"Yes, your Majesty." Livanios did not sound sarcastic—but then, Krispos did not have to give him an easy end, and he knew it. He turned to Phostis. "D'you have my daughter? Syagrios said he thought you did, but—"

"Yes, I have her," Phostis said.

Livanios bowed his head. "I die content. My blood goes on."

Krispos did not want him having the last word. "My father-in-law died in exile up in Prista, a traitor," he said. "My son's father-in-law will die before he even properly gains that title, also a traitor. Temptation, it seems, rides Emperors' fathers-in-law hard—too hard." He gestured to Trygve.

The axe came down. It wasn't a broad-bladed, long-handled headsman's weapon, but the big man who wielded it was strong enough that that didn't matter. Krispos turned his head away from the convulsions of Livanios' corpse. Phostis, who had watched, looked green. Executions were harder to stomach than deaths in combat.

Unfortunately, they were also sometimes necessary. Krispos turned to Artapan. "If your hands were free, sirrah, I daresay you'd be making magic from his death agony there."

"I would try." Artapan's mouth twisted. "You have a strong mage at your side, Videssian Emperor. With him opposing, perhaps I'd not succeed."

"Did Rubyab King of Kings know you were a death-drinker when he sent you forth to help our heretics?" Krispos asked.

"Oh, indeed." The Makuraner magician's mouth twisted again, this time in a different way—wry amusement. "I was under sentence of death from the Mobedham-mobedh —the high patriarch, you would say—when the King of Kings plucked me from my cell and told me what he required. I had nothing to lose by the arrangement. Nor did he."

"True enough," Krispos said. If Artapan had failed in the mission Rubyab set him, he would die—but he was condemned to die anyhow. And if he succeeded, he would do more good for Makuran than for himself. Rubyab had never been anything but a wily foe to Videssos, but this piece of double-dealing was as devious as any Krispos had ever imagined.

He nodded again to Trygve. Artapan jerked free of his captors and tried to run. With his hands bound behind him, with so many men chasing him, he didn't get more than a couple of paces. The meaty sound of the axe striking cut off his last scream.

"Foolishness," Trygve said from where he cleaned the blade on the wizard's caftan. "Better to die well, since die he would. Livanios did it properly."

Katakolon pointed to the other two captive Thanasioi, who stood in glum and shaky silence. "Will you take their heads, too, Father?"

Krispos started to ask if they would abandon their heresy, then remembered the answer meant little: the Thanasioi felt no shame at lying to save their skins, and might keep their beliefs in secret. Instead, the Avtokrator turned to Phostis and asked, "How big are these fish we've caught?"

"Medium size," Phostis answered. "They're officers, but they weren't part of Livanios' inner circle."

"Take them away and put them with the rest of the prisoners, then," Krispos said to the guards who stood behind the captives. "I'll figure out what to do with them later."

"I've never seen—I've never imagined—so many captives." Katakolon pointed toward long rows of Thanasiot prisoners, each bound to the man in front of him by a line that wrapped round his wrists and then his neck: any effort to flee would only choke those near him. Katakolon went on, "What will you do with them all?"

"I'll figure that out later, too," Krispos said. His memory went back across two decades, to the fearsome massacres Harvas Black-Robe had worked among the captives he'd taken. Seeing those pathetic corpses, even so long ago, had burned away forever any inclination toward slaughter Krispos might have had. He could imagine no surer road to the eternal ice.

"You can't just send them back to their villages," Phostis said. "I did come to know them while I was in their hands. They'll promise anything, and then a year from now, or two, or three, they'll find themselves a new leader and start raiding again."

"I know that," Krispos said. "I'm glad to see you do, too."

Sarkis rode up. In spite of bloody bandages, the cavalry general seemed in high spirits. "We shattered 'em and scattered 'em, your Majesty," he boomed.

"Aye, so we did." Krispos sounded less gleeful. He'd learned to think in bigger terms than battles, or even campaigns. He wanted more from this victory than the two years' respite Phostis had suggested. He scratched his nose, which wasn't as impressive as Sarkis' but did exceed the Videssian norm. "By the good god," he said softly.

"What is it?" Katakolon asked.

"My father—after whom you're named, Phostis—always said we had Vaspurakaner blood in us, even though we lived far from here, up by—and sometimes over—what used to be the border with Kubrat. My guess is that our ancestors had been resettled there on account of some crime or other."

"Very likely," Sarkis said, as if that were a matter for pride.

"We could do the same with the Thanasioi," Krispos said. "If we uproot the villages where the heresy flourishes most and transplant those people over near Opsikion in the far east, say, and up near the Istros—what used to be Kubrat still needs more folk to work the land—those Thanasioi would be likely to lose their beliefs in a generation or two among so many orthodox folk, just as a pinch of salt loses itself in a big jug of water."

"It might work," Sarkis said. "Videssos has done such things before—else, as you say, your Majesty, your own forebears would not have ended up where they did."

"So I've read," Krispos said. "We can even run the transfer both ways, sending in orthodox villagers to loosen the hold the Thanasioi have on the region round Etchmiadzin. It will mean a great lot of work, but if the good god is willing it will put an end to the Thanasiot problem once and for all."

"Moving whole villages—thousands, tens of thousands of people—from one end of the Empire to the other? Moving more thousands back the other way?" Phostis said. "Not the work alone—think of the hardships you'll be making."

Krispos exhaled in exasperation. "Remember, these men we just beat down have sacked and ravaged Kyzikos and Garsavra just lately, Pityos last year, and the lord with the great and good mind only knows how many smaller places. How much hardship did they make? How much more would they have made if we hadn't beaten them? Put that in the balance against moving villagers around and tell me which side of the scale goes down."

"They believe in the Balance in Khatrish and Thatagush," Phostis said. "Have you beaten one heresy, Father, only to join another?"