Krispos Rising

III

Krispos came back from the fields one hot, sticky summer afternoon to find his mother, his sisters, and most of the other village women gathered round a peddler who was showing off a fine collection of copper pots. "Aye, these'll last you a lifetime, ladies, may the ice take me if I lie," the fellow said. He whacked one with his walking stick. Several women jumped at the clatter. The peddler held up the pot. "See? Not a dent in it! Made to last, like I said. None of this cheap tinker's work you see too often these days. And they're not too dear, either. I ask only three in silver, the eighth part of a goldpiece—"

Krispos waved to Evdokia, but she did not notice him. She was as caught up as any of the others by the peddler's mesmerizing pitch. Krispos walked on, a trifle miffed. He still wasn't used to her being out of the house, though she'd married Domokos nearly a year ago. She was eighteen now, but unless he made a conscious effort not to, he still thought of her as a little girl.

Of course, he was twenty-one himself, and the older men in the village still called him "lad" a lot of the time. No one paid any attention to change until it hit him in the head, he thought, chuckling wryly.

"Dear ladies, these pots—" The peddler broke off with a squeak that was no part of his regular sales pitch. Beneath his tan, blood mounted to his cheeks. "Do excuse me, ladies, I pray." His walk toward the woods quickly turned into an undignified dash. The women clucked sympathetically. Krispos had all he could do not to guffaw.

The peddler emerged a few minutes later. He paused at the well to draw up the bucket and take a long drink. "Your pardon," he said as he came back to his pots. "I seem to have picked up a touch of the flux. Where was I, now?"

He went back to his spiel with almost as much verve as he'd shown before. Krispos stood around and listened. He didn't intend to sell pots, but he had some piglets he was fattening up to take to market at Imbros soon, and the peddler's technique was worth studying.

Not much later, though, the man had to interrupt himself again. This time he went for the woods at a dead run. He did not look happy when he returned; his face was nearer gray than red.

"Ladies, much as I enjoy telling you about my wares, I think the time has come to get down to selling, before I embarrass myself further," he said.

He looked unhappy again through the bargaining that followed. The breaks in his talk had weakened his hold on the village women, and they dickered harder than he would have liked. He was shaking his head as he loaded pots back onto his mule.

"Here, stay for supper with us," one of the women called. "You shouldn't set out on the road so downcast."

The peddler managed a smile and a low bow. "You're too kind to a traveling man. Thank you." Before he got his bowl of stew, though, he needed to rush off to relieve himself twice more.

"I do hope he's well," Tatze said that evening to Phostis and Krispos.

A scream jerked the village awake the next morning. Krispos came running out of his house spear in hand, wondering who'd set upon whom. The woman who had invited the trader to stay over stood by his bedroll, horror on her face. Along with several other men, Krispos ran toward her. Had the wretch repaid her kindness by trying to rape her?

She screamed again. Krispos noticed she was fully clothed. Then, as she had, he looked down at the bedroll. "Phos," he whispered. His stomach churned. He was glad it was empty; had he had breakfast, he would have lost it.

The peddler was dead. He looked shrunken in on himself, and bruised; great violet blotches discolored his skin. From the way the blankets of the bedroll were drenched and stinking, he seemed to have voided all the moisture from his body in a dreadful fit of diarrhea.

"Magic," Tzykalas the cobbler said. "Evil magic." His hand made the sun-sign on his breast. Krispos nodded, and he was not the only one. He could imagine nothing natural that would result in such gruesome dissolution of a man.

"No, not magic," Varades said. The veteran's beard had been white for years, but Krispos had never thought of him as old till this moment. Now he not only looked his years, he sounded them, as well; his voice quivered as he went on, "This is worse than magic."

"What could be worse than magic?" three men asked at once.

"Cholera."

To Krispos it was only a word. By the way other villagers shook their heads, it meant little more to them. Varades filled them in. "I only saw it once, the good god be thanked, when we were campaigning against the Makurani in the west maybe thirty years ago, but that once was enough to last me a lifetime. It went through our army harder than any three battles—through the enemy the same way, I suppose, or they would've just walked over us."

Krispos looked from the veteran to the peddler's twisted, ruined corpse. He did not want to ask the next question: "It's ... catching, then?"

"Aye." Varades seemed to pull himself together. "We burned the bodies of those that died of it. That slowed the spread, or we thought it did. I suppose we ought to do it for this poor bugger here. Something else we ought to do, too."

"What's that?" Krispos said.

"Fast as we can, ride to Imbros and fetch back a priest who knows healing. I think we're going to need one."

Smoke from the peddler's pyre rose to the sky. The villagers' prayers to Phos rose with it. As he had four years earlier when the Kubratoi came, Stankos set off for Imbros. This time, instead of a mule, he rode one of the horses captured from the wild men.

But for his being gone, and for the black, burned place on the village green, life went on as before. If other people worried every time they felt a call of nature, as Krispos did, they did not talk about it.

Five days, Krispos thought. Maybe a little less, because Stankos was on a horse now and could get to Imbros faster. Maybe a little more, because a priest might not ride back with the same grim urgency the Videssian troopers had shown—but Phos knew that urgency was real.

The healer-priest arrived on the morning of the sixth day after Stankos rode out of the village. He was three days behind the cholera. By the time he got there, the villagers had burned three more bodies, one the unfortunate woman who had asked the peddler to stay. More people were sick, diarrhea pouring out of them, their lips blue, their skin dry and cold. Some suffered from pain and cramps in their arms and legs, others did not. Out of all of them, though, flowed that endless stream of watery stool.

When he saw the victims who still lived, the priest made the sun-circle over his heart. "I had prayed your man here was wrong," he said, "but I see my prayer was not answered. In truth, this is cholera."

"Can you heal it?" Zoranne cried, fear and desperation in her voice—Yphantes lay in his own muck outside their cottage. "Oh, Phos, can you heal it?"

"For as long as the lord with the great and good mind gives me strength," the priest declared. Without stopping even to give his name, he hurried after her. The healthy villagers followed.

"He's called Mokios," Stankos said as he trooped along with the rest of them. "Aii, my arse is sore!" he added, rubbing the afflicted portion of his anatomy.

Mokios knelt beside Yphantes, who feebly tried to make the sun-sign when he recognized a priest. "Never mind that now," the priest said gently. He pushed aside the villager's befouled tunic, set hands on his belly. Then, as Gelasios had when healing Krispos' father, he recited Phos' creed over and over, focusing all his will and energy on the suffering man under his fingers.

Yphantes showed no external wound, as Phostis had. Thus the marvel of watching him grow well again was not there this time. Whether or not it was visible, though, Krispos could feel the current of healing pass from Mokios to the villager.

At last the priest took away his hands. He slumped back, weariness etching lines deep into his face. Yphantes sat up. His eyes were sunken but clear. "Water," he said hoarsely. "By the good god, I've never been so dry in my life."

"Aye, water." Mokios gasped. He sounded more worn than the man he had just healed.

Half a dozen villagers raced to be first to the well. Zoranne did not win the race, but the others gave way when she said, "Let me serve them. It is my right." With the pride of a queen, she drew up the dripping bucket, untied it, and carried it to her husband and Mokios. Between them, they all but drank it dry.

The priest was still wiping water from his mustache and beard with the sleeve of his blue robe when another woman tried to tug him to his feet. "Please, holy sir, come to my daughter," she got out through tears. "She barely breathes!"

Mokios heaved himself upright, grunting at the effort it took. He followed the woman. Again, the rest of the villagers followed him. Phostis touched Krispos on the shoulder. "Now we pray he can heal faster than we fall sick," he said softly.

Mokios succeeded again, though the second healing took longer than the first. When he was done, he lay full length on the ground, panting. "Look at the poor fellow," Krispos whispered to his father. "He needs someone to heal him now."

"Aye, but we need him worse," Phostis answered. He knelt and shook Mokios. "Please come, holy sir. We have others who will not see tomorrow without you."

"You are right," the priest said. Even so, he stayed down several more minutes and, when he did rise, he walked with the shambling gait of a man either drunk or in the last stages of exhaustion.

Krispos thought Mokios' next healing, of a small boy, would fail. How much, he wondered, could a man take out of himself before he had nothing left? Yet in the end Mokios somehow summoned up the strength to vanquish the child's disease. While the boy, with the resilience of the very young, got up and began to play, the healer-priest looked as if he had died in his place.

But others in the village were still sick. "We'll carry him if we have to," Phostis said, and carry him they did, on to Varades.

Again Mokios recited Phos' creed, though now in a voice as dry as the skins of the cholera victims he treated. The villagers prayed with him, both to lend him strength and to try to ease their own fears. He sank into the healing trance, placed his hands on the veteran's belly. They were filthy now, from the stools of the folk he had already cured.

Once more Krispos felt healing flow out of Mokios. This time, however, the priest slumped over in a faint before his task was done. He breathed, but the villagers could not bring him back to himself. Varades moaned and muttered and befouled himself yet again.

When they saw they could not rouse Mokios, the villagers put a blanket over him and let him rest. "In the morning, the good god willing, he'll be able to heal again," Phostis said.

By morning, though, Varades was dead.

Mokios finally roused when the sun was halfway up the sky. Videssian priests were enjoined to be frugal of food and drink, but he broke his fast with enough for three men. "Healers have dispensation," he mumbled round a chunk of honeycomb.

"Holy sir, so long as it gives you back the power to use your gift, no one would say a word if you ate five times as much," Krispos told him. Everyone who heard agreed loudly.

The priest healed two more, a man and a woman, that day. Toward sunset, he gamely tried again. As he had with Varades, though, he swooned away before the cure was complete. This time Krispos wondered if he'd killed himself until Idalkos found his pulse.

"Just what my father worried about," Krispos said. "So many of us are deathly ill that we're dragging Mokios down with us."

He'd hoped Idalkos might contradict him, but the veteran only nodded, saying, "Why don't you go on home and get away from the sickness for a while? You're lucky; none of your family seems to have come down with it."

Krispos made the sun-sign over his heart. A few minutes later, after seeing that Mokios was as comfortable on the ground as he could be, he took Idalkos' advice.

He frowned as he came up to his house. Being near the edge of the village, it was always fairly quiet. But he should have heard his father and mother talking inside, or perhaps Tatze teaching Kosta some trick of baking. Now he heard nothing. Nor was cooksmoke rising from the hole in the center of the roof.

All at once, his belly felt as if it had been pitched into a snowdrift. He ran for the door. As he jerked it open, out came the latrine stench with which he and the whole village had grown too horribly familiar over the last few days.

His father, his mother, his sister—they all lay on the floor. Phostis was most nearly conscious; he tried to wave his son away. Krispos paid him no heed. He dragged his father to the grass outside, then Tatze and Kosta. As he did, he wondered why he alone had been spared.

His legs ached fiercely when he bent to lift his mother, and when he went back for Kosta he found his arms so clenched with cramps that he could hardly hold her. But he thought nothing of it until suddenly, without willing it, he felt an overpowering urge to empty his bowels. He started for the bushes not far away, but fouled himself before he got to them. Then he realized he had not been spared after all.

He began to shout for help, stopped with the cry unuttered. Only the healer-priest could help him now, and he'd just left Mokios somewhere between sleep and death. If any of the villagers who were still healthy came, they would only further risk the disease. A moment later he vomited, then suffered another fit of diarrhea. With his guts knotted from end to end, he crawled back to his family. Perhaps their cases would be mild. Perhaps ...

His fever was already climbing, so thought soon became impossible. He felt a raging thirst and managed to find a jar of wine in the house. It did nothing to ease him; before long, he threw it up.

He crawled outside again, shivering and stinking. The full moon shone down on him, as serene and beautiful as if no such thing as cholera existed. It was the last thing Krispos remembered seeing that night.

"Oh, Phos be praised," someone said, as if from very far away.

Krispos opened his eyes. He saw Mokios' anxious face peering down at him and, behind the priest, the rising sun. "No," he said. "It's still dark." Then the memory came crashing back. He tried to sit. Mokios' hands, still on him, held him down. "My family!" he gasped. "My father, my mother—"

The healer-priest's haggard face was somber. "Phos has called your mother to himself," he said. "Your father and sister live yet. May the good god grant them strength to endure until I recover enough to be of aid to them."

Then he did let Krispos sit. Krispos tried to weep for Tatze, but found the cholera had so drained his body that he could make no tears. Yphantes, now up and about, handed him a cup of water. He drank it while the priest drained another.

He had to force himself to look at Phostis and Kosta. Their eyes and cheeks were sunken, the skin on their hands and feet and faces tight and withered. Only their harsh breathing and the muck that kept flowing from them said they were not dead.

"Hurry, holy sir, I beg you," Krispos said to Mokios.

"I shall try, young man, truly I shall. But first, I pray—" He looked round for Yphantes, "—some food. Never have I drained myself so."

Yphantes fetched him bread and salt pork. He gobbled them down, asked for more. He had eaten like that since he'd entered the village, but was thinner now than when he'd come. His cheeks, Krispos thought dully, were almost as hollow as Phostis'.

Mokios wiped at his brow. "Warm today," he said.

To Krispos, the morning still felt cool. He only shrugged by way of answer; as, not long before, he had been in fever's arms, he did not trust his judgment. He looked from his father to his sister. How long could they keep life in them? "Please, holy sir, will it be soon?" he asked, his nails digging into his palms.

"As soon as I may," the healer-priest replied. "Would I were younger, and recovered more quickly. Gladly would I—"

Mokios paused to belch. Considering how much he had eaten, and how quickly, Krispos saw nothing out of the ordinary in that. Then the healer-priest broke wind, loudly—as poor Varades never would again, Krispos thought, mourning the veteran with the small part of him not in anguish for his family.

And then utter horror filled Mokios' thin, tired face. For a moment, Krispos did not understand; the stench of incontinence by his house—indeed, throughout the village—was so thick a new addition did not easily make itself known. But when the healer-priest's eyes went fearfully to the wet stain spreading on his robe, Krispos' followed.

"No," Mokios whispered.

"No," Krispos agreed, as if their denial were stronger than truth. But the priest had tended many victims of the cholera, had smeared himself with their muck, had worked himself almost to death healing them. So what was more likely than a yes, or than that almost being no almost at all?

Krispos saw one tiny chance. He seized Mokios by both shoulders; weak as he was, he was stronger than the healer-priest. "Holy sir," he said urgently, "holy sir, can you heal yourself?"

"Rarely, rarely does Phos grant such a gift," Mokios said, "and in any case, I have not yet the strength—"

"You must try!" Krispos said. "If you sicken and die, the village dies with you!"

"I will make the attempt." But Mokios' voice held no hope, and Krispos knew only his own fierce will pushed the priest on.

Mokios shut his eyes, the better to muster the concentration he needed to heal. His lips moved soundlessly; Krispos recited Phos' creed with him. His heart leaped when, even through fever, even through sickness, Mokios' features relaxed toward the healing trance.

The priest's hands moved toward his own traitorous belly. Just as he was about to begin, his head twisted. Pain replaced calm confidence on his face, and he puked up everything Yphantes had brought him. The spasms of vomiting went on and on, into the dry heaves. He also fouled himself again.

When at last he could speak, Mokios said, "Pray for me, young man, and for your family, also. It may well be that Phos will accomplish what I cannot; not all who take cholera perish of it." He made the sun-sign over his heart.

Krispos prayed as he had never prayed before. His sister died that afternoon, his father toward evening. By then, Mokios was unconscious. Some time that night, he died, too.

After what seemed forever but was less than a month, cholera at last left the village alone. Counting poor brave Mokios, thirty-nine people died, close to one inhabitant in six. Many of those who lived were too feeble to work for weeks thereafter. But the work did not go away because fewer hands were there to do it; harvest was coming.

Krispos worked in the fields, in the gardens, with the animals, every moment he could. Making his body stay busy helped keep his mind from his losses. He was not alone in his sudden devotion to toil, either; few families had not seen at least one death, and everyone had lost people counted dear.

But for Krispos, going home each night was a special torment. Too many memories lived in that empty house with him. He kept thinking he heard Phostis' voice, or Tatze's, or Kosta's. Whenever he looked up, ready to answer, he found himself alone. That was very bad.

He took to eating most of his meals with Evdokia and her husband, Domokos. Evdokia had stayed well; Domokos, though he'd taken cholera, had suffered only a relatively mild case—his survival proved it. When, soon after the end of the epidemic, Evdokia found she was pregnant, Krispos was doubly glad of that.

Some villagers chose wine as their anodyne instead of work; Krispos could not remember a time so full of drunken fights. "I can't really blame 'em," he said to Yphantes one day as they both swung hoes against the weeds that had flourished when the cholera made people neglect the fields, "but I do get tired of breaking up brawls."

"We should all be grateful you're here to break them up," Yphantes said. "With your size and the way you wrestle, nobody wants to argue with you when you tell 'em to stop. I'm just glad you're not one of the ones who like to throw their weight around to show how tough they are. You've got your father's head on your shoulders, Krispos, and that's good in a man so young."

Krispos stared down as he hacked at a stinging nettle. He did not want Yphantes to see the tears that came to him whenever he thought of his family, the tears he'd been too weak and too dry inside to shed the day they died.

When he could speak again, he changed the subject. "I wonder how good a crop we'll end up bringing in?"

No former could take that question less than seriously. Yphantes rubbed his chin, then straightened to look out across the fields that were now beginning to go from green to gold. "Not very good," he said reluctantly. "We didn't do all the cultivating we should have, and we won't have as many people to help in the harvest."

"Of course, we won't have as many people eating this winter, either," Krispos said.

"With the harvest I fear we'll have, that may be just as well," Yphantes answered.

Not since he was a boy in Kubrat had Krispos faced the prospect of hunger so far in advance. What with the rapacity of the

Kubratoi, every winter then had been hungry. Now, he thought, he would face starvation cheerfully if only he could starve along with his family.

He sighed. He did not have that choice. He lifted his hoe and attacked another weed.

"Uh-oh," Domokos whispered as the tax collector and his retinue came down the road toward the village. "He's a new one."

"Aye," Krispos whispered back, "and along with his clerks and his packhorses, he has soldiers with him, too."

He could not imagine two worse signs. The usual tax collector, one Zabdas, had been coming to the village for years; he could sometimes be reasoned with, which made him a prince among tax men. And soldiers generally meant the imperial government was going to ask for something more than the ordinary. This year, the village had less than the ordinary to give.

The closer the new tax collector got, the less Krispos liked his looks. He was thin and pinch-featured and wore a great many heavy rings. The way he studied the village and its fields reminded Krispos of a fence lizard studying a fly. Lizards, however, did not commonly bring archers to help them hunt.

There was no help for it. The tax collector set up shop in the middle of the village square. He sat in a folding chair beneath a canopy of scarlet cloth. Behind him, his soldiers set up the imperial icons: a portrait of the Avtokrator Anthimos and, to its left, a smaller image of his uncle Petronas.

It was a new picture of Anthimos this year, too, Krispos saw, showing the Emperor with a full man's beard and wearing the scarlet boots reserved for his high rank. Even so, his image looked no match for that of Petronas. The older man's face was hard, tough, able, with something about his eyes that seemed to say he could see behind him without turning his head. Petronas was no longer regent—Anthimos had come into his majority on his eighteenth birthday—but the continued presence of his image said he still ruled Videssos in all but name.

Along with the other villagers, Krispos bowed first to the icon of Anthimos, then to that of Petronas, and last to the fleshly representative of imperial might. The tax collector dipped his head a couple of inches in return. He drew a scroll from the small wooden case he had set beside his left foot, unrolled it, and began to read:

"Whereas, declares the Phos-guarded Avtokrator Anthimos, from the beginning of our reign we have taken a great deal of care and concern for the common good of affairs, we have been equally concerned to protect well the state which Phos the lord of the great and good mind has granted us. We have discovered that the public treasury suffers under many debts which weaken our might and make difficult the successful prosecution of our affairs. Even matters military have been damaged by our being at a loss for supplies, with the result that the state has been harmed by the boundless onslaughts of barbarians. According to our ability, we deem the situation worthy of needed correction ..."

He went on in that vein for some time. Looking around, Krispos watched his neighbors' eyes glaze. The last time he'd heard rhetoric so turgid was when Iakovitzes ransomed the captive peasants from Kubrat. That speech, at least, had presaged a happy outcome. He doubted the same would be true of this one.

From the way the soldiers shifted their weight, as if to ready themselves for action, he knew when the tax man was about to come to the unpalatable meat of the business. It arrived a moment later: "Accordingly, all assessments for the present year and until the conclusion of the aforementioned emergency are hereby increased by one part in three, payment to be collected in gold or in kind at the times and locations sanctioned by long-established custom. So decrees the Phos-guarded Avtokrator Anthimos."

The tax collector tied a scarlet ribbon round his proclamation and stowed it away in its case. One part in three, Krispos thought. No wonder he has soldiers with him. He waited for the rest of the villagers to join him in protest, but nobody spoke. Perhaps he was the only one who'd managed to follow the speech all the way through.

"Excellent sir," he said, and waited till the tax man's eyes swung his way. "Excellent..." He waited again.

"My name is Malalas," the tax collector said grudgingly.

"Excellent Malalas, we can pay no extra tax this year," Krispos said. Once he found the boldness to speak, others nodded with him. He went on, "We would have trouble paying the usual tax. This has been a hard year for us, excellent sir."

"Oh? What's your excuse?" Malalas asked.

"We had sickness in the village, excellent sir—cholera. Many died, and others were left too weak to work for a long time. Our crop is small this year."

At the mention of the dread word cholera, some clerks and a few soldiers stirred nervously. Malalas, however, amazed Krispos by bursting into laughter. "Nice try, bumpkin! Name a disease to excuse your own laziness, make it a nasty one so we'll be sure not to linger. You'd fool some with that, maybe, but not me. I've heard it before."

"But it's the truth!" Krispos said, appalled. "Excellent sir, you've not seen us till now. Our old tax collector, Zabdas, would recognize how many faces he knew aren't here today, truly he would."

Malalas yawned. "A likely tale."

"But it's the truth!" Krispos repeated. The villagers backed him up: "Aye, sir, it is!" "By Phos, we had many dead, a healer-priest among 'em—" "My wife—" "My father—" "My son—" "I could hardly walk for a month, let alone farm."

The tax collector raised a hand. "This matters not at all."

Krispos grew angry. "What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" He ducked under Malalas' canopy, stabbed a finger down at the register on the tax man's knees. "Varades is dead. Phostis—that's my father—is dead, and so are my mother and sister. Tzykalas' son of the same name is dead ..." He went through the whole melancholy list.

None of it moved Malalas a hairsbreadth. "As you say, young man, I am new here. For all I know—in fact, I think it likely—the people you name may be hiding in the woods, laughing up their sleeves. I've seen that happen before, believe you me."

Krispos did believe him. Had he not ferreted out such cheats, he would not have been so arrogantly certain of what was happening here. Krispos wished those cheats down to Skotos' ice, for they'd made the tax man blind to any real problems a village might have.

"The full proportion named is due and shall be collected," Malalas went on. "Even if every word you say is true, taxes are assessed by village, not by individual. The fisc has need of what you produce, and what the fisc needs, it takes." He nodded back toward the waiting soldiers. "Pay peaceably, or it will be the worse for you."

"Pay peaceably, and it will be the worse for us," Krispos said bitterly. Taxes were assessed collectively, he knew, to make sure villagers tolerated no shirkers among them and so they would have to make good the labor of anyone who left. To use the law to force them to make up for disaster was savagely unjust.

That did not stop Malalas. He announced the amount due from the village: so many goldpieces, or their equivalent in the crops just harvested, all of which were carefully and accurately listed in the register.

The villagers brought what they had set aside for the annual assessment. With much sweat and scraping, they had amassed an amount just short of what they'd paid the year before. Zabdas surely would have been satisfied. Malalas was not. "We'll have the rest of it now," he said.

Guarded by his soldiers, the clerks he'd brought along swarmed over the village like ants raiding a pot of lard. They opened storage pit after storage pit and shoveled the grain and beans and peas into leather sacks.

Krispos watched the systematic plundering. "You're worse thieves than the Kubratoi!" he shouted to Malalas.

The tax man spoiled it by taking it for a compliment. "My dear fellow, I should hope so. The barbarians have rapacity, aye, but no system. Do please note, however, that we are not arbitrary. We take no more than the Avtokrator Anthimos' law ordains."

"You please note, excellent sir—" Krispos made the title into a curse. "—that what the Avtokrator's law ordains will leave some of us to starve."

Malalas only shrugged. For a moment, red fury so filled Krispos that he almost shouted for the villagers to seize weapons and fall on the tax collector and his party. Even if they massacred them, though, what good would it do? It would only bring more imperial soldiers down on their heads, and those troops would be ready to kill, not merely to steal.

"Enough, there!" Malalas called at length, after one of his clerks came up to whisper in his ear. "No, we don't need that barley—fill in the pit again. Now let us be off. We have another of these miserable little hamlets to visit tomorrow."

He remounted. So did his clerks and the cavalrymen who had protected them. Their harness jingled as they rode out of the village. The inhabitants stared after them, then to the emptied storage pits.

For a long time, no one spoke. Then Domokos tried to put the best light he could on things: "Maybe if we're all very watchful, we can ..." His voice trailed away. Not even he believed what he was saying.

Krispos trudged back to his house. He picked up a trowel, went around to the side of the house away from the square, bent down, and started digging. Finding what he was looking for took longer than he'd expected; after a dozen years, he'd forgotten exactly where he'd buried that lucky goldpiece. At last, though, it lay gleaming on his muddy palm.

He almost threw the coin away; at that moment, anything with an Avtokrator's face on it was hateful to him. Common sense, however, soon prevailed. "Might be a good while before I see another one of these," he muttered. He struck the goldpiece in the pouch he wore on his belt.

He went into his house again. From their places on the wall he took down spear and sword. The sword he belted on next to his pouch. The spear would also do for a staff. He went outside. Clouds were building in the north. The fall rains had not yet started, but they would soon. When the roads turned to mud, a staff would be handy.

He looked around. "Anything else I need?" he asked out loud. He ducked inside one last time, came out with half a loaf of bread. Then he walked back to the village square. Domokos and Evdokia were still standing there, along with several other people. They were talking about Malalas' visit, in the soft, stunned tones they would have used after a flood or other natural disaster.

Domokos raised an eyebrow when he saw the gear Krispos carried. "Going hunting?" he asked his brother-in-law.

"You might say so," Krispos answered. "Hunting something better than this, anyhow. If the Empire can rob us worse than the wild men ever did, what's the use of farming? A long time ago, I wondered what else I could do. I'm off for Videssos the city, to try to find out."

Evdokia took his arm. "Don't go!"

"Sister, I think I have to. You and Domokos have each other. Me—" He bit his lip. "I tear myself up inside every time I go home. You know why." He waited until Evdokia nodded. Her face was twisted, too. He went on, "Besides, I'll be one less mouth to feed here. That's bound to help—a little, anyhow."

"Will you soldier, then?" Domokos asked.

"Maybe." Krispos still did not like the idea. "If I can't find anything else, I guess I will."

Evdokia embraced him. "Phos guard you on the road and in the city." Krispos saw by how quickly she stopped arguing that she realized he was doing what he needed to do.

He hugged her, too, felt the swell of her growing belly against him. He clasped Domokos' hand. Then he walked away from them, away from everything he'd ever known, west toward the highway that led south to the city.

From the village to the imperial capital was a journey of about ten days for a man in good condition and serious about his walking. Krispos was both, but took three weeks to get there. He stopped to help gather beans for a day here, to cut timber for an afternoon there, for whatever other odd jobs he could find. He got to Videssos the city with food in his belly and some money in his pouch besides his goldpiece.

He had already seen marvels on his way south, for as the road neared the city it came down by the sea. He'd stopped and stared for long minutes at the sight of water that went on and on forever. But that was a natural wonder, and now he was come to one worked by man: the walls of Videssos.

He'd seen city walls before, at Imbros and at several towns he'd passed on his journey. They'd seemed splendid things then, huge and strong. Next to the walls he approached now, they were as toys, and toddlers' toys at that.

Before Videssos' outer wall was a broad, deep ditch. That outwall loomed, five or six times as tall as a man. Every fifty to a hundred yards stood square or hexagonal towers that were taller still. Krispos would have thought those works could hold out Skotos himself, let alone any mortal foe the city might face.

But behind that outer wall stood another, mightier yet. Its towers were sited between those of the outwall, so some tower bore directly on every inch of ground in front of the wall.

"Don't stand there gawking, you miserable bumpkin," someone called from behind Krispos. He turned and saw a gentleman with a fine hooded cloak to keep him dry. The rain had started the night before; long since soaked, Krispos had stopped caring about it.

His cheeks hot, he hurried toward the gate. That proved a marvel in itself, with valves of iron and bronze and wood thick as a man's body. Peering up as he walked under the outwall, he saw troopers looking down at him through iron gates. "What are they doing up there?" he asked a guardsman who was keeping traffic moving smoothly through the gate.

The guard smiled. "Suppose you were an enemy and somehow you'd managed to batter down the outer door. How would you like to have boiling water or red-hot sand poured down on your head?"

"Not very much, thanks." Krispos shuddered.

The gate guard laughed. "Neither would I." He pointed to Krispos' spear. "Have you come to join up? You'll get better gear than that, I promise you."

"I might, depending on what kind of other luck I find here," Krispos said.

By the way the gate guard nodded, Krispos was sure he'd heard those words or ones much like them many times. The fellow said, "They use the meadow south of here, down by the sea, for a practice field. If you do need to look for an officer, you can find one there."

"Thanks. I'll remember," Krispos said. Everyone seemed to want to push him toward a soldier's life. He shook his head. He still did not want to be a soldier. Surely in a city as great as Videssos was said to be, a city as great as her walls proclaimed her to be, he would be able to find something, anything, else to do with his life. He walked on.

The valves of the inner wall's gates were even stouter than those of the outwall. As Krispos passed under the inner wall, he looked up and saw another set of murder-holes. Feeling quite the city sophisticate, he gave the soldiers over his head a friendly nod and kept going. A few more steps and he was truly inside Videssos the city.

Just as he had in front of the walls, he stopped in his tracks to stare. The only thing with which he could think to compare the view was the sea. Now, though, he gazed on a sea of buildings. He had never imagined houses and shops and golden-domed temples to Phos stretching as far as the eye could reach.

Again someone behind him shouted for him to get moving. He took a few steps, then a few more, and soon found himself walking through the streets of the city. He had no idea where he was going; for the moment, one place seemed as good as another. It was all equally strange, and all equally marvelous.

He flattened himself against the front of a shop to let a mule-drawn cart squeeze past. In his village, the driver would have been someone he knew. Even in Imbros, the fellow probably would have raised a finger to his forehead in thanks. Here, he paid Krispos no mind at all, though the squeaking wheels of his cart almost brushed the newcomer's tunic. By the set look on his face, he had someplace important to go and not enough time to get there.

That seemed to be a characteristic of the people on the streets. Living in the most splendid city in the world, they gave it even less notice than Krispos had the familiar houses of his village. They did not notice him, either, except when his slow walk exasperated them. Then they sidestepped and scooted past him with the adroitness, almost, of so many dancers.

Their talk, the snatches of it that he picked up over the squeal of axles, the banging of coppersmiths' hammers, and the patter of the rain, had the same quick, elusive quality to it as their walk. Sometimes he had to think to understand it, and some of what he heard eluded him altogether. It was Videssian, aye, but not the Videssian he had learned from his parents.

He wandered for a couple of hours. Once he found himself in a large square that he thought was called the Forum of the Ox. He did not see any oxen in it, though everything else in the world seemed to be for sale there.

"Fried squid!" a vendor shouted.

A twist of breeze brought the savory scent of hot olive oil, breading, and seafood to Krispos' nose. His stomach growled. Sightseeing, he realized suddenly, was hungry work. He wasn't sure what a squid was, but asked, "How much?"

"Three coppers apiece," the man answered.

Krispos still had some small change in his pouch from the last job he'd done before he got to the city. "Give me two."

The vendor plucked them from his brazier with a pair of tongs. "Mind your fingers, now, pal—they're hot," he said as he exchanged them for Krispos' coins.

Krispos almost dropped them, but not because they were hot. He shifted his spear to the crook of his elbow so he could point. "Can I eat these—these—" He did not even know the right word.

"The tentacles? Sure—a lot of people say they're the best part." The local gave him a knowing smile. "Not from around these parts, are you?"

"Er, no." Krispos lost himself in the crowd; he did not want the squid-seller watching while he nerved himself to eat what he'd bought. The meat inside the breadcrumbs proved white and chewy, without any pronounced flavor; the tentacles weren't much different, so far as he could tell, from the rest. He licked his fingers, flicked at his beard to dislodge stray crumbs, and walked on.

Darkness began to fall. Krispos knew just enough of cities to try to find an inn. At last he did. "How much for a meal and a room?" he asked the tall thin man who stood behind a row of wine and beer barrels that served as a bar.

"Five pieces of silver," the innkeeper said flatly.

Krispos flinched. Not counting his goldpiece, he did not have that much. No matter how he haggled, he could not bring the fellow down below three. "Can I sleep in the stables if I tend your animals or stand guard for you?" he asked.

The innkeeper shook his head. "Got a horseboy, got a bouncer."

"Why are you so dear?" Krispos said. "When I bought squid cheap this afternoon, I figured everything else'd be—how would you say it?—in proportion."

"Aye, squid and fish and clams are cheap enough," the innkeeper said. "If you just want a good fish stew, I'll give you a big bowl for five coppers. We have lots of fish here. How not? Videssos is the biggest port in the world. But we have lots of people, too, so space, now, space'll cost you."

"Oh." Krispos scratched his head. What the innkeeper said made a strange kind of sense, even if he was not used to thinking in those terms. "I'll take that bowl of stew, and thank you. But where am I supposed to sleep tonight? Even if it wasn't raining, I wouldn't want to do it on the streets."

"Don't blame you." The innkeeper nodded. "Likely you'd get robbed the first night—doesn't matter how sharp your spear is if you're not awake to use it. Armed that way, though, you could try the barracks."

"Not till I've tried everything else," Krispos said stubbornly. "If I sleep in the barracks once, I'll end up sleeping there for years. I just want a place to set my head till I find steady work."

"I see what you're saying." The innkeeper walked over to the fireplace, stirred the pot that hung over it with a wooden spoon. "Your best bet'd likely be a monastery. If you help with the chores, they'll house you for a while, and feed you, too. Not a nice stew like this—" He ladled out a large, steaming bowlful. "—but bread and cheese and beer, plenty to keep you from starving. Now let's see those coppers, if you please."

Krispos paid him. The stew was good. The innkeeper gave him a heel of bread to sop up the last of it. He wiped his mouth on his damp sleeve, waited until the innkeeper was done serving another customer. Then he said, "A monastery sounds like a good idea. Where would I find one?"

"There must be a dozen of 'em in the city." The innkeeper stopped to think. "The one dedicated to the holy Pelagios is closest, but it's small and hasn't the room to take in many off the street. Better you should try the monastery of the holy Skirios. They always have space for travelers."

"Thanks. I'll do that. How do I get there?" Krispos made the innkeeper repeat the directions several times; he wanted to be sure he had them straight. Once he was, he stood in front of the fire to soak up as much warmth as he could, then plunged into the night.

He soon regretted it. The directions might have served well enough by daylight. In the dark, with half the firepots that should have lit the streets doused by rain, he got hopelessly lost. The innkeeper's fire quickly became only a wistful memory.

Few people were out and about so late. Some traveled in large bands and carried torches to light their way. Others walked alone, in darkness. One of those followed Krispos for blocks and sank back into deeper shadow whenever Krispos turned to look his way. Farm boy or not, he could figure out what that meant. He lowered his spear and took a couple of steps toward the skulker. The next time he looked around, the fellow was gone.

The longer Krispos walked, the more he marveled at how many streets, and how many miles of streets, Videssos the city had. From the way his feet felt, he had tramped all of them—and none twice, for nothing looked familiar. Had he stumbled on another inn, he would have spent his lucky goldpiece without a second thought.

Instead, far more by luck than design, he came upon a large low structure with several gates. All but one were barred and silent. Torches burned there, though, and a stout man in a blue robe stood in the gateway. He was armed with an even stouter cudgel, which he hefted when Krispos walked into the flickering circle of light the torches cast.

"What building is this?" he asked as he approached. He trailed his spear, to look as harmless as he could.

"This is the monastery that serves the memory of the holy Skirios, may Phos hallow his soul for all eternity," the watchman replied.

"May he indeed!" Krispos said fervently. "And may I beg shelter of you for the night? I've wandered the streets searching for this monastery for—for—well, it seems like forever."

The monk at the gate smiled. "Not that long, I hope, though it is the sixth hour of the night. Aye, come in, stranger, and be welcome, so long as you come in peace." He eyed Krispos' spear and sword.

"By Phos, I do."

"Well enough," the watchman said. "Enter then, and rest. When morning comes, you can present yourself to our holy abbot Pyrrhos with the others who came in out of the rain this evening. He, or someone under him, will assign you some task for tomorrow—or perhaps for some time, if you need a longer time of shelter with us."

"Agreed," Krispos said at once. He started to walk past the monk, then paused. "Pyrrhos, you say? I knew a man by that name once." He frowned, trying to remember where or when, but gave it up with a shrug after a moment.

The monk also shrugged. "I've known two or three myself; it's a fairly common name."

"Aye, so it is." Krispos yawned. The monk pointed the way to the common room.

The abbot Pyrrhos was dreaming. It was one of those dreams where he knew he was dreaming but did not particularly want to break the mood by exerting his will. He was in a line of people coming before some judge, whether imperial or divine he could not say.

He could not hear the judgments the enthroned figure was passing on those in front of him, but he was not greatly concerned, either. He knew he had led a pious life, and his worldly sins were also small. Surely no harsh sentence could fall on him.

The line moved forward with dreamlike quickness. Only one woman stood between him and the judge. Then she, too, was gone. Had she walked away? Disappeared? Pyrrhos had not noticed, but that, too, was the way of dreams. The abbot bowed to the man—if it was a man—on the throne.

Eyes stern as those of Phos transfixed Pyrrhos. He bowed again and stayed bent at the waist. Almost he went to hands and knees and then to his belly, as if he stood before the Avtokrator. "Illustrious lord—" his dream-voice quavered.

"Silence, worm!" Now he could hear the judge's voice. It reverberated like a thunderclap in his head. "Do as I say and all will be well for Videssos; fail and all fails with you. Do you understand?"

"Aye, lord," dream-Pyrrhos said. "Speak, and I obey."

"Go then to the monastery common room. Go at once; do not wait for dawn. Call out the name Krispos, once, twice, three times. Give the man who answers every favor; treat him as if he were your own son. Get hence now, and do as I have ordained."

Pyrrhos woke to find himself safe in his own bed. A guttering lamp illuminated his chamber. Save for being larger and packed with books, it was like the cells in which his monks slept—unlike many abbots, he disdained personal comfort as a weakness.

"What a strange dream," he whispered. All the same, he did not get up. He yawned instead. Within minutes, he was asleep again.

He found himself before the enthroned judge once more. This time, he was at the head of the line. If he had thought those eyes stern before, they fairly blazed now. "Insolent wretch!" the judge cried. "Obey, or all totters around you. Summon the man Krispos from the common room, once, twice, three times. Give him the favor you would your own son. Waste no time in sottish slumber. This must be done! Now go!"

Pyrrhos woke with a violent start. Sweat beaded his forehead and his shaven crown. He still seemed to hear the last word of the judge's angry shout dinning in his ears. He started to get out of bed, then stopped. Anger of his own filled him. What business did a dream have, telling him what to do?

Deliberately he lay back down and composed himself for sleep. It came more slowly this time than before, but his disciplined mind enforced rest on him as if it were a program of exercise. His eyes sagged shut, his breathing grew soft and regular.

He felt a cold caress of terror—the judge was coming down from the throne, straight for him. He tried to run and could not. The judge seized him, lifting him as if he were light as a mouse. "Summon the man Krispos, fool!" he roared, and cast Pyrrhos from him. The abbot fell and fell and fell forever ...

He woke up on the cold stone floor.

Trembling, Pyrrhos got to his feet. He was a bold man; even now, he started to return to his bed. But when he thought of the enthroned judge and those terrible eyes—and how they would look should he disobey yet again—boldness failed. He opened the door to his chamber and stepped out into the hallway.

Two monks returning to their cells from a late-night prayer vigil glanced up in surprise to see someone approaching them. As was his right, Pyrrhos stared through them as if they did not exist. They bowed their heads and, without a word, stood aside to let the abbot pass.

The door to the common room was barred on the side away from the men the monastery took in. Pyrrhos had second thoughts as he lifted the bar—but he had not fallen out of bed since he was a boy. He could not make himself believe he had fallen out of bed tonight. Shaking his head, he went into the common room.

As always, the smell hit him first, the smell of the poor, the hungry, the desperate, and the derelict of Videssos: unwashed humanity, stale wine, from somewhere the sharp tang of vomit. Tonight the rain added damp straw's mustiness and the oily lanolin reek of wet wool to the mix.

A man said something to himself as he turned over in his sleep. Others snored. One fellow sat against a wall, coughing the consumptive's endless racking bark. I'm to pick one of these men to treat as my son? the abbot thought. One of these?

It was either that or go back to bed. Pyrrhos got as far as putting his fingers on the door handle. He found he did not dare to work it. Sighing, he turned back. "Krispos?" he called softly.

A couple of men stirred. The consumptive's eyes, huge in his thin face, met the abbot's. He could not read the expression in them. No one answered him.

"Krispos?" he called again.

This time he spoke louder. Someone grumbled. Someone else sat up. Again, no one replied. Pyrrhos felt the heat of embarrassment rise to the top of his tonsured head. If nothing came of this night's folly, he would have some explaining to do, perhaps even—he shuddered at the thought—to the patriarch himself. He hated the idea of making himself vulnerable to Gnatios' mockery; the ecumenical patriarch of Videssos was far too secular to suit him. But Gnatios was Petronas' cousin, and so long as Petronas was the most powerful man in the Empire, his cousin would remain at the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

One more fruitless call, the abbot thought, and his ordeal would be over. If Gnatios wanted to mock him for it, well, he had endured worse things in his service to Phos. That reflection steadied him, so his voice rang out loud and clear: "Krispos?"

Several men sat up now. A couple of them glared at Pyrrhos for interrupting their rest. He had already begun to turn to go back to his chamber when someone said, "Aye, holy sir, I'm Krispos. What do you want of me?"

It was a good question. The abbot would have been happier with a good answer for it.

Krispos sat in the monastery study while Pyrrhos bustled about lighting lamps. When that small, homely task was done, the abbot took a chair opposite him. The lamplight failed to fill his eyesockets or the hollows of his cheeks, leaving his face strange and not quite human as he studied Krispos.

"What am I to do with you, young man?" he said at last.

Krispos shook his head in bewilderment. "I couldn't begin to tell you, holy sir. You called, so I answered; that's all I know about it." He fought down a yawn. He would sooner have been back in the common room, asleep.

"Is it? Is it indeed?" The abbot leaned forward, voice tight with suppressed eagerness. It was as if he were trying to find out something from Krispos without letting on that he was trying to.

By that sign, Krispos knew him. He had been just so a dozen years before, asking questions about the goldpiece Omurtag had given Krispos—the same goldpiece, he realized, that he had in his pouch. Save for the passage of time, which sat lightly on it, Pyrrhos' gaunt, intent face was also the same.

"You were up on the platform with Iakovitzes and me," Krispos said.

The abbot frowned. "I crave pardon? What was that?"

"In Kubrat, when he ransomed us from the wild men," Krispos explained.

"I was?" Pyrrhos' gaze suddenly sharpened; Krispos saw that he remembered, too. "By the lord with the great and good mind, I was," the abbot said slowly. He drew the circular sun-sign on his breast. "You were but a boy then."

It sounded like an accusation. As if to remind himself it was true no more, Krispos touched the hilt of his sword. Thus reassured, he nodded.

"But boy no more," Pyrrhos said, agreeing with him. "Yet here we are, drawn back together once more." He made the sun-sign again, then said something completely obscure to Krispos: "No, Gnatios will not laugh."

"Holy sir?"

"Never mind." The abbot's attention might have wandered for a moment. Now it focused on Krispos again. "Tell me how you came from whatever village you lived in to Videssos the city."

Krispos did. Speaking of his parents' and sister's deaths brought back the pain, nearly as strong as if he felt it for the first time. He had to wait before he could go on. "And then, with the village still all in disarray, our taxes went up a third, I suppose to pay for some war at the other end of the Empire."

"More likely to pay for another—or another dozen—of Anthimos' extravagant follies." Pyrrhos' mouth set in a thin, hard line of disapproval. "Petronas lets him have his way in them, the better to keep the true reins of ruling in his own hands. Neither of them cares how they gain the gold to pay for such sport, so long as they do."

"As may be," Krispos said. "It's not why we were broken, but that we were broken that put me on my way here. Farmers have hard enough times worrying about nature. If the tax man wrecks us, too, we've got no hope at all. That's what it looked like to me, and that's why I left."

Pyrrhos nodded. "I've heard like tales before. Now, though, the question arises of what to do with you. Did you come to the city planning to use the weapons you carry?"

"Not if I can find anything else to do," Krispos said at once.

"Hmm." The abbot stroked his bushy beard. "You lived all your life till now on a farm, yes? How are you with horses?"

"I can manage, I expect," Krispos answered, "though I'm better with mules; I've had more to do with them, if you know what I mean. Mules I'm good with. Any other livestock, too, and I'm your man. Why do you want to know, holy sir?"

"Because I think that, as the flows of your life and mine have come together after so many years, it seems fitting for Iakovitzes' to be mingled with the stream once more, as well. And because I happen to know that Iakovitzes is constantly looking for new grooms to serve in his stables."

"Would he take me on, holy sir? Someone he's never—well, just about never—seen before? If he would ..." Krispos' eyes lit up. "If he would, I'd leap at the chance."

"He would, on my urging," Pyrrhos said. "We're cousins of sorts: his great-grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister. He also owes me a few more favors than I owe him at the moment."

"If he would, if you would, I couldn't think of anything better. " Krispos meant it; if he was going to work with animals, it would be almost as if he had the best of farm and city both. He hesitated, then asked a question he knew was dangerous: "But why do you want to do this for me, holy sir?"

Pyrrhos sketched the sun-sign. After a moment, Krispos realized that was all the answer he'd get. When the abbot spoke, it was of his cousin. "Understand, young man, you are altogether free to refuse this if you wish. Many would, without a second thought. I don't know if you recall, but Iakovitzes is a man of—how shall I say it?—uncertain temperament, perhaps."

Krispos smiled. He did remember.

The abbot smiled, too, but thinly. "That is one reason, of course, why he constantly seeks new grooms. Truly, I may be doing you no favor, though I pray to Phos that I am."

"Sounds to me like you are," Krispos said.

"I hope so." Pyrrhos made the sun-sign again, which puzzled Krispos. Pyrrhos hesitated, then went on, "In justice, there is one other thing of which I should warn you: Iakovitzes is said sometimes to seek, ah, services from his grooms other than caring for his beasts."

"Oh." That made Krispos hesitate, too. His memory of the way Iakovitzes had touched him was inextricably joined to the mortification he'd known on that Midwinter's Day when the villagers poked fun at him and Idalkos. "I don't have any leanings that way myself," he said carefully. "But if he pushes too hard, I suppose I can always quit—I'd be no worse off then than if I hadn't met you."

"What you say has a measure of truth in it," Pyrrhos said. "Very well, then, if it is your wish, I will take you to meet Iakovitzes."

"Let's go!" Krispos leaped to his feet.

The abbot stayed seated. "Not quite at this instant," he said, his voice dry. "Iakovitzes may occasionally go to bed in the ninth hour of the night, but I assure you he is not in the habit of rising at this time. If we went to his home now, we would be turned away from his door, most likely with dogs."

"I forgot what time it was," Krispos said sheepishly.

"Go back to the common room. Sleep the rest of the night there. When morning comes, we will visit my cousin, I promise you." Pyrrhos yawned. "I may even try for a little more sleep myself, assuming I don't get thrown out of bed again."

"Holy sir?" Krispos asked, but the abbot did not explain.