'Fools,' Phostis said. 'Now they'll come down harder on all of us.'
He was right. The men from the north started traveling before dawn and did not stop to feed the peasants till well after noon. They pushed the pace after the meager meal, too, halting only when it got too dark for them to see where they were going. By then, the Paristrian Mountains loomed tall against the northern skyline.
A small stream ran through the campsite the Kubratoi had picked. 'Shuck out of your shirt and wash yourself,' Krispos' mother told him.
He took off his shirt—the only one he had—but did not get into the water. It looked chilly. 'Why don't you take a bath, too, Mama?' he said. 'You're dirtier than I am.' Under the dirt, he knew, she was one of the best-looking ladies in his village.
His mother's eyes flicked to the Kubratoi. 'I'm all right the way I am, for now.' She ran a grimy hand across her grimy face.
'But—'
The swat of his father's hand on his bare behind sent him skittering into the stream. It was as cold as it looked, but his bottom still felt aflame when he came out. His father nodded to him in a strange new way, almost as if they were both grown men. 'Are you going to argue with your mother the next time she tells you to do something?' he asked.
'No, Father,' Krispos said.
His father laughed. 'Not until your backside cools off, anyway. Well, good enough. Here's your shirt.' He got out of his own and walked down to the stream, to come back a few minutes later wet and dripping and running his hands through his hair.
Krispos watched him dress, then said carefully, 'Father, is it arguing if I ask why you and I should take baths, but Mama shouldn't?'
For a bad moment he thought it was, and braced himself for another smack. But then his father said, 'Hmm —maybe it isn't. Put it like this—no matter how clean we are, no Kubrati will find you or me pretty. You follow that?'
'Yes,' Krispos said, although he thought his father—with his wide shoulders, neat black beard, and dark eyes set so deep beneath shaggy brows that sometimes the laughter lurking there was almost hidden—a fine and splendid man. But, he had to admit, that wasn't the same as pretty.
'All right, then. Now you've already seen how the Kubratoi are thieves. Phos, boy, they've stolen all of us, and our animals, too. And if one of them saw your mother looking especially pretty, the way she can—' Listening, she smiled at Krispos' father, but did not speak, '—he might want to take her away for his very own. We don't want that to happen, do we?'
'No!' Krispos' eyes got wide as he saw how clever his mother and father were. 'I see! I understand! It's a trick, like when the wizard made Gemistos' hair turn green at the show he gave.'
'A little like that, anyhow,' his father agreed. 'But that was real magic. Gemistos' hair really
'Of course not!' Krispos giggled. But that wasn't supposed to fool anyone; as his father said, it was only a game. Here, now, his mother's prettiness remained, though she was trying to hide it so no one noticed. And if hiding something in plain sight wasn't magic, Krispos didn't know what was.
He had that thought again the next day, when the wild men took their captives into Kubrat. A couple of passes opened invitingly, but the Kubratoi headed for neither of them. Instead, they led the Videssian farmers down a forest track that seemed destined only to run straight into the side of the mountains.
Strung out along the bottom of that steep, twisting gorge, people and animals could move but slowly. True evening came when they were only part of the way through the mountains.
'It's a good trick,' Krispos' father said grudgingly as they settled down to camp. 'Even if imperial soldiers do come after us, a handful of men could hold them out of this pass forever.'
'Soldiers?' Krispos said, amazed. That Videssian troopers might be riding after the Kubratoi had never crossed his mind. 'You mean the Empire cares enough about us to fight to get us back?'
His father's chuckle had little real amusement in it. 'I know the only time you ever saw soldiers was that time a couple of years ago, when the harvest was so bad they didn't trust us to sit still for the tax collector unless he had archers at his back. But aye, they might fight to get us back. Videssos needs farmers on the ground as much as Kubrat does. Everybody needs farmers, boy; it'd be a hungry world without 'em.'
Most of that went over Krispos' head. 'Soldiers,' he said again, softly. So he—for that was how he thought of it—was so important the Avtokrator would send soldiers to return him to his proper place! Then it was as if—well, almost as if—he had caused those soldiers to be sent. And surely that was as if—well, perhaps as if—he were Avtokrator himself. It was a good enough dream to fall asleep on, anyhow.
When he woke up the next morning, he was certain something was wrong. He kept peering around, trying to figure out what it was. At last his eyes went up to the strip of rock far overhead that the rising sun was painting with light. 'That's the wrong direction!' he blurted. 'Look! The sun's coming up in the west!'
'Phos have mercy, I think the lad's right!' Tzykalas the cobbler said close by. He drew a circle on his breast, itself the sign of the good god's sun. Other people started babbling; Krispos heard the fear in their voices.
Then his father yelled 'Stop it!' so loudly that they actually did. Into that sudden silence, Phostis went on, 'What's more likely, that the world has turned upside down or that this canyon's wound around so we couldn't guess east from west?'
Krispos felt foolish. From the expressions on the folk nearby, so did they. In a surly voice, Tzykalas said, 'Your boy was the one who started us hopping, Phostis.'
'Well, so he was. What about it? Who's the bigger fool, a silly boy or the grown man who takes him seriously?'
Someone laughed at that. Tzykalas flushed. His hands curled into fists. Krispos' father stood still and quiet, waiting. Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Tzykalas turned away. Two or three more people laughed
