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.
'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
'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,
