started south again.
Another stop came before long. This time, twenty families were detached from the main group. 'They're treating us just like the Kubratoi did,' Krispos' mother said in some dismay.
'Did you expect we'd get to go back to our old village, Tatze?' his father said. She nodded. 'I didn't,' he told her. We've been gone a good while now. Someone else will be working our fields; I suppose we'll go to fill some holes that've opened up since.'
So it proved. The next morning, Phostis was one of a group of thirty peasant men told off by the Videssian soldiers. Along with the others and their kinsfolk, he, Tatze, Krispos, and Evdokia left the main road for a winding path that led west.
They reached their new village late that afternoon. At the sight of it, even Phostis' resignation wore thin. He glared up at one of the troopers who had come with the farmers. 'The Kubratoi gave us more to work with than this,' he said bitterly. Krispos watched his father's shoulders slump. Having to start over from nothing twice in three years could make any man lose heart.
But the Videssian soldier said, 'Take another look at the fellows waiting there for you, farmer. Might be you'll change your mind.'
Phostis looked. So did Krispos. All he'd noticed before was that there weren't very many men in the village. He remembered arriving at the one in Kubrat. His father was right: more people had been waiting there than here. And he saw no one out in the fields. So what good could this handful of men be?
Something about the way they stood as they waited for the newcomers to reach them made Krispos scratch his head. It was different from the way the villagers in Kubrat had stood, but he could not put his finger on how.
His father could. 'I don't believe those are farmers at all,' he said slowly.
'Right the first time.' The trooper grinned at him. 'They're pensioned-off veterans. The Avtokrator, Phos bless him, has established five or six like them in every village we're resettling with you people.'
'But what good will they be to us, save maybe as strong backs?' Phostis said. 'If they're not farmers, we'll have to show them how to do everything.'
'Maybe you will, at first,' the soldier said, 'but you won't have to show 'em the same thing twice very often, I'll warrant. And could be they'll have a thing or two to teach you folk, as well.'
Krispos' father snorted. 'What could they teach us?'
He'd meant that for a scornful rhetorical question, but the horseman answered it. 'Bow and sword, spear and shield, maybe even a bit of horsework. The next time the Kubratoi come to haul you people away, could be you'll give 'em a bit of a surprise. Tell me now, wouldn't you like that?'
Before his father could answer, Krispos threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Phostis started to laugh, then stopped abruptly. His hands curled into fists, and he bayed, too, a deep, solid underpinning to his son's high yips.
More and more farmers began to howl, and finally even some of the soldiers. They entered the new village like a pack at full cry.
He was, after all, still a boy.
II
For some years, the Kubratoi did not raid into Videssos. Sometimes, in absent moments, Krispos wondered if Phos had heard his thought and struck fear into the wild men's hearts. Once, when he was about twelve, he said as much to one of the retired veterans, a tough graybeard called Varades.
Varades laughed till tears came. 'Ah, lad, I wish it were that easy. I'd sooner spend my time thinking bad thoughts at my foes than fighting, any day. But more likely, I reckon, is that old Omurtag still hasn't gone through all the gold Rhaptes sent him to buy you back. When he does—'
'When he does, we'll drive the Kubratoi away!' Krispos made cut-and-thrust motions with the wooden sword he was holding. Grown men, these days, practiced with real weapons; the veterans had been issued enough for everyone. A spear and a hunting bow hung on the wall of Krispos' house.
'Maybe,' Varades said. 'Just maybe, if it's a small band bent on robbery instead of a full-sized invasion. The Kubratoi know how to fight; not much else, maybe, but that for certain. You farmers won't ever be anything but amateur soldiers, so I wouldn't even try taking 'em on without a good advantage in numbers.'
'What then?' Krispos said. 'If there's too many, do we let them herd us off to Kubrat again?'
'Better that than getting killed to no purpose and having them herd off your mother and sisters even so.'
Krispos' second sister, Kosta, had just turned two. He thought of her being forced to trek north, and of his mother trying to care for her and Evdokia both. After a moment, he thought of his mother trying to do all that while mourning his father and him. He did not like any of those thoughts.
'Maybe the Kubratoi just won't come,' he said at last.
Varades laughed again, as boisterously as before. 'Oh, aye, and maybe one of the village jackasses'd win all the hippodrome races down in Videssos the city. But you'd better not count on it.' He grew serious. 'I don't want you to mistake my meaning, boy. Sooner or later, they'll come. The whoresons always do.'
By the time Krispos was fourteen, he was close to being as tall as his father. The down on his face began to turn dark; his voice cracked and broke, generally at moments when he least wanted it to.
He was already doing a man's work in the fields. Now, though, Varades and the other veterans let him start using real arms. The wire-wound hilt of a steel sword felt nothing like the wooden toy he'd swung before. With it in his hand, he felt like a soldier—more, like a hero.
He felt like a hero, that is, until Idalkos—the veteran who had given him the blade—proceeded to disarm him half a dozen times in the next ten minutes. The last time, instead of letting him pick up the sword and go on with the lesson, Idalkos chased him halfway across the village. 'You'd better run!' he roared, pounding after Krispos. 'If
