Krispos the Emperor

Please understand my aim is not to cause you pain, but to learn.'

'Ask, your Majesty,' Barsymes replied at once. 'You are the Avtokrator; you have the right.'

'Very well, then. To make sure dynastic problems don't come up, Avtokrators have been known to make eunuchs of their bastard offspring. You know your life as only one who lives it can. What have you to say of it?'

The vestiarios gave the question his usual grave consideration. 'The pain of the gelding does not last forever, of course. I have never known desire, so I do not particularly pine for it, though that is not true of all my kind. But being set aside forever from the general run of mankind—there is the true curse of the eunuch, your Majesty. So far as any of us knows, it has no balm.'

'Thank you, esteemed sir.' Krispos put the thought in the place where bad ideas belong. He felt an urgent need to change the subject. 'By the good god!' he exclaimed, as heartily as he could. Barsymes raised an interrogative eyebrow. He explained: 'No matter how smoothly things go, I'll never hear the end of teasing about this from my sons. I've given them a hard time about their affairs, but now I'm the one who's gone and put a loaf in a serving maid's oven.'

'I pray your Majesty to forgive me, but you've forgotten something,' Barsymes said. Now it was Krispos' turn to look puzzled. The vestiarios went on, 'Think what the eminent Iakovitzes will say.'

Krispos thought. After a moment, he pushed back his seat and hid under the desk. He'd seldom made Barsymes laugh, but he added one to the short list. He laughed, too, as he re-emerged, but he still dreaded what would happen the next time he saw his special envoy.

* * *

Phostis made sure the sword fit loose in its sheath. It was not a fancy weapon with a gold-chased hilt like the one he'd carried before he was kidnapped: just a curved blade, a leather-wrapped grip, and an iron hand guard. It would slice flesh as well as any other sword, though.

The horse they gave him wasn't fit to haul oats to the imperial stables. It was a scrawny, swaybacked gelding with scars on its knees and an evil glint in its eye. By the monster of a bit that went with the rest of its tack, it must have had a mouth made of wrought iron and a temper worthy of Skotos. But it was a horse, and the Thanasioi let him ride it. That marked a change for the better.

It would have been better still had Syagrios not joined the band to which Phostis had been attached. 'What, you thought you'd be rid of me?' he boomed when Phostis could not quite hide his lack of enthusiasm. 'Not so easy as that, boy.'

Phostis shrugged, in control of himself again. 'If nothing else, we can spar at the board game,' he said.

Syagrios laughed in his face. 'I never bother with that dung when I'm out fighting. It's for slack times, when there's no real blood to be spilled.' His narrow eyes lit up with anticipation.

The raiders rode out of Etchmiadzin that afternoon, a party of about twenty-five heading south and east toward territory the men of the gleaming path did not control. Excitement ran high; everyone was eager to bring Thanasios' doctrines a step closer to reality by destroying the material goods of those who did not follow them.

The band's leader, a tough-looking fellow named Themistios, seemed almost as unsavory as Syagrios. He put the theology in terms no one could fail to follow: 'Burn the farms, burn the monasteries, kill the animals, kill the people. They go straight to the ice. Any of us who fall, we walk the gleaming path beyond the sun and stay with Phos forever.'

'The gleaming path!' the raiders bawled. 'Phos bless the gleaming path!'

Phostis wondered how many such bands were sallying forth from Etchmiadzin and other Thanasiot strongholds, how many men stormed into the Empire with murder and martyrdom warring for the uppermost place in their minds. He also wondered where the main body of Livanios' men would fare. Syagrios knew. But Syagrios, however much he liked to brag and jeer, knew how to keep his mouth shut about things that mattered.

Soon Phostis' concerns became more immediate. Not least among them was seeing if he couldn't inconspicuously vanish from the raiding band. He couldn't. The horsemen kept him in their midst; Syagrios clung to him like a leech. Maybe when the fighting starts, he thought.

For the first day and a half of riding, they remained in territory under Thanasiot rule. Peasants waved from the fields and shouted slogans at the horsemen as they trotted past. The riders shouted back less often as time went by: muscles unused since fall were claiming their price. Phostis hadn't been so saddle sore in years.

Another day on horseback brought the raiders into country where, instead of cheering, the peasants fled at first sight of them. That occasioned argument among Phostis' companions: some wanted to scatter and destroy the peasants and their huts, while others preferred to press ahead without delay.

In the end, Themistios came down in favor of the second group. 'There's a monastery outside Aptos I want to hit,' he declared, 'and I'm not going to waste my time with this riffraff till it's smashed. We can nail peasants on the way home.' With a large, juicy target thus set before them, the raiders stopped arguing. It would have taken a very bold man to quarrel with Themistios, anyhow.

They came to the monastery a little before sunset. Some of the monks were still in the fields. Howling like demons, the Thanasioi rode them down. Swords rose, fell, and rose again smeared with scarlet. Instead of prayers to Phos, screams rose into the reddening sky.

'We'll burn the building!' Themistios shouted. 'Even monks have too fornicating much.' He spurred his horse straight toward the monastery gate and got inside before the startled monks could slam it shut against him. His sword forced back the first blue-robe who came running up, and a moment later more of his wolves were in there with him.

Several of the raiders carried smoldering sticks of punk. Oil-soaked torches caught quickly. Syagrios pressed one into Phostis' hand. 'Here,' he growled. 'Do some good with this.' Or else, his voice warned. So did the way he cocked his sword.

Phostis threw the torch at a wall. He'd hoped it would fall short, and it did, but it rolled up against the wood. Flames crackled, caught, and began to spread. Syagrios pounded him on the back, as if he'd just been initiated into the brotherhood of wreckers. Shuddering, he realized he had.

A monk waving a cudgel rushed at him, shouting something incoherent. He wanted to tell the shaven-headed holy man it was all a dreadful mistake, that he didn't want to be here and hadn't truly intended to harm the monastery. But the monk didn't care about any of that. All he wanted to do was smash the closet invader—who happened to be Phostis.