Bridge of the Separator

XIII

The miserable excuse for a horse that Rhavas rode made him long for the steppe ponies he'd had to leave behind in Videssos the city. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should have tried to retrieve them. Also not for the first time, he shrugged. Too late to worry about such things now.

His hoofed snail approached one of the more northwesterly gates in the Long Walls. He eyed the gateway, and the soldiers at it, with some trepidation. Orders to seize him on sight might well have got here before he did. Considering the quality—or lack of same—of his mount, anything at all might have got here before he did.

But the gate guards didn't seem unduly concerned. "Hello, holy sir," one of them called. "Where are you bound?"

"Imbros," Rhavas answered; if he followed the road ahead, it would lead him there. Taking a chance, he added, "I'm on my way home from the synod."

"Phos!" The guardsman sketched the sun-circle. Rhavas gravely imitated the gesture. The soldier went on, "We've heard something about that, we have. They ought to string the stinking heretic up by his toes and roast him upside down over a slow fire."

"That's too good for him." Another gate guard came up with an even more ingenious—and even more appalling—torture.

"He will get his just deserts in the world to come," Rhavas said gravely. That was bound to be true, but his view of what those deserts were surely differed from that of the gate guards.

They all nodded. "No doubt you're right," one of them said, "but we'd like to see him catch it in this world, too." He paused for a moment, then added, "You're heading to Imbros? You'll want to be careful on the road, holy sir. There's Khamorth loose, and they like sporting with travelers they catch. They like it, but you wouldn't."

"Thanks for the warning. May you be blessed for your kindness." If Rhavas was going to play the role of a priest who believed in Phos, he would play it to the hilt. "Perhaps I can even convert them to the worship of the lord with the great and good mind." He drew the sun-circle over his heart again.

All the guards who heard him started to laugh. "Don't try it unless you aim to end up dead in a hurry," one of them said. "Most of these fellows are from the clan of Kubrat, and that's about the meanest bunch of Khamorth there are. They suck up to Skotos, they do." He spat in the dirt of the roadway.

So did Rhavas. If he hadn't, he might have roused suspicion. "May I pass through?" he asked.

"Go ahead, holy sir," one of the soldiers answered. "Don't say we didn't warn you, though. That road's not safe—not even close."

"My faith will protect me," Rhavas said. This time, several gate guards sketched the sun-sign. He supposed that meant they admired his piety. And he was pious, or so he felt himself to be. But the god he revered and the one to whom they clung were not the same. "Get up!" He booted his horse forward. It plodded through the gate and out past the Long Walls. The guardsmen smiled behind their hands at the miserable beast.

"His faith better protect him," one of them said, not quite softly enough. "The good god knows he can't run away from trouble."

"We told him," another one replied. "If he doesn't want to listen, that's his funeral—and it's liable to be."

Rhavas rode on. He wondered whether the Kubrati really were more ferocious than other Khamorth, or whether they were simply the barbarians the guards knew best. After what he'd seen in the far northeast, he would have bet on the latter.

He also wondered whether, before very long, grim-faced horsemen would ride up the road after him. Though word hadn't got to this gate, he was outlawed in the Empire of Videssos, fair game for anyone who might bring him down. He was far more dangerous than any single pursuer—he was a host in himself, in fact—but he was only one man. He had to sleep, and he couldn't look every which way at once. The clout in the head he'd taken in the High Temple brutally reminded him of that. He still got headaches more often than he wanted.

Despite those headaches, he wondered if the monk hadn't done him a favor. When he first woke up in the cell under the patriarchal residence, he'd thought of the dream he'd had while unconscious as nothing but . . . a dream.

The longer he contemplated it, though, the greater its importance seemed to grow. He slowly became convinced it was more than a dream: a vision, even a covenant. Some very holy men claimed to have found a mystical communion with Phos. Rhavas, always hardheaded, had had trouble believing those claims, chiefly because he'd never experienced anything like that himself. Now . . .

If he hadn't come to an agreement, made a bargain, with Skotos after the monk's truncheon let—made—him slip the bonds of consciousness, what had he done? Years, many years, in exchange for dedicated service to the dark god's cause . . . That struck him as fair enough, and more than fair enough.

He would have given Skotos dedicated service even without the promise of more years with which to do it. He was loyal, unless forced not to be by overwhelming weight of circumstance. He would give the dark god the same fierce allegiance he had formerly lavished on the lord with the great and good mind. Skotos could surely see that. And it was in Skotos' interest to grant him as much time as he needed to carry out his work.

The horse paused, looking longingly toward some tall grass by the side of the road. Rhavas glanced back over his shoulder. No Videssian cavalrymen pounded up the road after him. No Khamorth in sight, either, come to that. He slid down from the saddle, led the horse over to the grass, and let it graze. Why not? It wasn't much slower standing still than in alleged motion.

As the animal grazed, Rhavas wondered whether pursuers could do anything to him: whether he needed to worry at all, in fact. If Skotos had promised him many years, wouldn't he get them come what may?

He didn't need long to decide not to take foolish chances. Sozomenos' warning that the dark god lied had nothing to do with his decision, either. So he told himself, and he thought it was true. If he found a cliff and jumped off it, he wasn't so foolish as to imagine Skotos would take him in his arms and bear him up. He would hit the ground and die, regardless of any promises. If Stylianos and his soldiers and mages caught him, he might also die. That seemed only too clear. He could live for many years, but he would have to earn them.

When he mounted once more, the horse snorted indignantly and sent him a resentful stare—the most animation he'd seen from it. If it had been more animated when he wanted it to move, he would have liked it better. It didn't want to leave the grass, any more than a man would have wanted to leave an eatery where he was enjoying himself. With reins and bit and stirrups, Rhavas had means of persuasion he couldn't have used on a man. Still unhappy, the horse went north.

A breeze carried the salt tang of the Videssian Sea to Rhavas. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed it in Skopentzana till he had it back. He wondered if he would have to leave it behind again. He hoped not.

He rode on till the sun sank low in the west. A village lay not far ahead, but he did not dare try the tavern there. If recognized, he could be killed while asleep. He'd camped in the open many times on the way from Skopentzana down to Videssos the city. He could do it again. He could, and he did.

Bread and cheese and an onion made a spare but tolerable supper. He had more in his saddlebags. He washed down the food with rough red wine. If he had to, he could drink water. He'd got used to the bed at Lardys' inn, but bare ground wasn't impossibly hard, not when he was swaddled in a couple of thick wool blankets. He yawned and twisted and fell asleep.

When he woke, the eastern sky was gray. He felt elderly as he unrolled himself from the blankets. His back had some pointed things to say about the way he'd treated it. He wasn't a young man anymore, and waking up after a night on the ground reminded him of that. He ate more bread and cheese and wine as blue replaced black in the west, the stars faded, and the east went from gray to pink to gold. He was riding north again by the time the sun came over the horizon.

In the early morning, he didn't fear the village. A couple of dogs ran yapping toward his horse, but a peasant on his way out to the fields shouted at them and scared them away. The man waved to Rhavas. "You're up and about early, holy sir," he said.

"So are you," Rhavas answered.

"I'm up early every day—well, except sometimes in the winter, on account of I can't do anything then," the local answered. "But I mostly wake up at sunrise anyways, just on account of I'm used to it." He eyed Rhavas. "You're a city man yourself, unless I miss my guess."

"That's so, yes." Rhavas admitted what he could hardly deny. "I'm bound for Imbros."

"You want to be careful. I hear there's savages on the road. Haven't seen 'em here, Phos be praised"—the peasant sketched the sun-sign, and Rhavas had to remind himself to do the same—"but they're around. Now that we've got us a new Avtokrator, maybe things'll get better. 'Course, maybe they won't, too." Peasant fatalism was older and often stronger than faith in the lord with the great and good mind.

"I do not fear the heathen," Rhavas said. "Perhaps I can convert him."

The peasant thought he meant converting the Khamorth to the worship of Phos. He made the sun-circle again, and again Rhavas imitated the gesture. "Good luck go with you, holy sir, but I wouldn't push it too hard. The barbarians are supposed to have a nasty temper when they're roused."

"Well, so do I," Rhavas said, and the local guffawed. The fellow sketched a salute, as if to a general, and then went on his way. The work wouldn't wait. Work never waited.

A woman gave Rhavas a sack of dried apricots as he rode through the village. A man handed him a slab of smoked salmon. Plainly, his fears the night before had been for naught. Word of him had not come to this place, not yet. He gave back blessings, for all the world as if he still favored Phos.

On he went, at his horse's shambling walk. He eyed every stand of trees by the side of the road with suspicion. He remained vulnerable to ambush, as he did to surprise by night.

But there was no surprise, no ambush, when he met the Khamorth. He rode up to the top of a low rise and saw a barbarian encampment ahead, cattle and sheep grazing in a field of grain, tents of hide and felt pitched nearby.

They had sentries out, of course. One of the plainsmen pointed toward Rhavas, who saw he was very visible as he came over the rise. The Khamorth were too far off for him to hear them calling back and forth. They must have done it, though, for three of them trotted his way on horseback. He could imagine their laughter—look at the silly Videssian, too stupid even to run!

Rhavas didn't intend to run. Maybe that made him silly, but he didn't think so. He pointed in the direction of the riders and said what he'd wanted to say to his own miserable horse: "Curse you, beasts."

All three steppe ponies fell over dead at the same time. One faint startled squawk reached Rhavas' ears. Two of the Khamorth rose at once. The third had caught a leg under his horse. The other barbarians pulled him free. He could walk, but not well: he hobbled over to a big gray boulder and sat down on it.

What would the other two do? If they came forward on foot, Rhavas knew he would have to kill them. He didn't want to do that; it would antagonize the rest of the clan. But if he didn't, they would certainly try to kill him.

One of them started to head his way. The other one grabbed his intrepid friend's wolfskin jacket. The Khamorth who'd done the grabbing pointed to the horses. Rhavas couldn't hear what he was saying, and wouldn't have understood it if he could. He could made a pretty good guess just the same. That could have been us. That was what he wanted the barbarian to be saying, anyhow.

After a short argument, the plainsman in the wolfskin jacket gave in. He and his pal helped their limping companion back toward the encampment. Slowly and warily, Rhavas also rode in that direction.

His back tingled. If the Khamorth wanted to, they could slip men around behind him to try to shoot him from ambush. They might get away with it, too. He kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure they didn't. He reined in well away from any cover. With their extraordinary bows, though, he wasn't sure he was far enough away.

He waited, painfully aware of how vulnerable he was. In due course, a single barbarian rode out of the camp toward him. The man drew his sword, waved it so the blade caught the sunlight, and tossed it down onto the grass. He slowly turned his steppe pony in a circle to let Rhavas see he had no bow case. Heart pounding with nerves, Rhavas waved him forward.

The Khamorth pointed to the dead steppe ponies. "What you do?" he shouted in bad Videssian. "How you do?"

"I could have killed the men on them instead," Rhavas answered. The Khamorth nodded to show he understood. Rhavas kept looking back over his shoulder. He didn't aim to let the fellow in front of him lull him. Still seeing no one, he went on, "I spared them so I could talk with your chieftain."

"Me chieftain." The nomad jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "Me Kolaksha. Who you? You wizard? Wizard from Videssos not even piss pot." He spat to show his contempt.

"No, eh?" Rhavas pointed at Kolaksha as he'd pointed at the other Khamorth and their ponies a while before. He smiled when the barbarian flinched. Smiling still, he went on, "I am stronger than your shaman. If you do not believe me, I will fight him with magic."

He had to go back and forth with the chieftain several times. Kolaksha did not speak much Videssian at all. Rhavas, of course, knew not a word of the Khamorth tongue. I suppose I'll have to start learning it, he thought in surprise, the first time the notion had even crossed his mind.

Kolaksha laughed when he understood. "Why you want? Lipoksha kill you if you try. You priest of Phos, yes? Yes. Phos puny god. Puuuny." He seemed to fancy the word, and stretched it out lovingly.

Lipoksha, Rhavas gathered, was the name of the tribe's shaman. Kolaksha, for his part, had packed a lot into a few words. "Why?" Rhavas echoed. "To lead you, to lead all the Khamorth, against Videssos.

Videssos is my enemy now." The Empire having cast him out, this was the best way he'd come up with to gain revenge. Despite being cast out, he remained very Videssian indeed in his hunger for it.

Revenge, plainly, was a notion Kolaksha understood. Just as plainly, he wasn't much taken with Rhavas' chances. "You priest of Phos," he repeated. "Phos weak."

"I am not a priest of Phos," Rhavas said deliberately. "I am a priest of Skotos. Shall I curse your horse, the way I did those?" He pointed to the dead animals not far from the one the chieftain rode.

"No! This good horse!" Kolaksha laid a protective hand on his steppe pony's mane. He sneered in Rhavas' direction. "Gooder than ugly buzzard bait you ride."

"Any buzzard that ate this horse would puke afterward," Rhavas replied. He waited to see whether Kolaksha would get that. When the barbarian threw back his head and laughed, Rhavas knew he had.

"Funny man. Funnnny." Kolaksha stretched that out as he had puny. He eyed Rhavas' mount again. "Horse funnnny, too." The chieftain plucked at his beard, which was full and curly to the point of shagginess. "Skotos . . . Skotos is god who fight Phos?"

"That's right." Rhavas nodded. "Skotos is the god who is beating Phos. And Skotos is using the Khamorth, using your people, to beat Videssos."

Kolaksha scowled. "But Skotos wicked god, yes? Khamorth not wicked. Khamorth good. I good." He jerked a thumb at his own broad chest again. "Videssos have it coming." He added something in his own language. If it wasn't more of the same, Rhavas would have been amazed.

He almost laughed in the plainsman's face, as Kolaksha had laughed at his sardonic crack. Only worry about angering the chieftain held him back. No one was ever a villain in his own eyes. That seemed as true among savage steppe nomads who robbed and raped and killed for the fun of it as it was among suave, sophisticated Videssians . . . who robbed and raped and killed for the fun of it.

Rhavas wasn't a villain in his own eyes, either. He was a reformer, a man denied his rightful place by the willful blindness of those with a vested interest in keeping things as they were. Videssos . . . had it coming. He was no more able to look at the black things he'd done than Kolaksha was to examine his deeds—and he was also no more able to realize that he couldn't look at them.

The Khamorth chieftain eyed him, eyed the dead horses, eyed the vultures and ravens already starting to circle above the carrion. Kolaksha nodded to himself. One way or another, he'd made up his mind. "You come," he said, and waved back toward the nomads' camp. "Come, yes. You fight Lipoksha. Why not? After he kill you, we go on."

"A truce until he and I fight?" Rhavas asked.

"Yes, yes." Kolaksha nodded impatiently, as if to a little boy who was nagging him about something unimportant. "We not bother you before. Let Lipoksha take care of you."

His certainty was daunting. But I can't let him daunt me, not now, Rhavas thought. His head came up. He stared at—stared through—the chieftain. "And if I take care of him?"

"Then we listen to you." Kolaksha laughed. "But you not do that."

"We'll see. My god supports me," Rhavas said. The Khamorth chieftain laughed again, louder this time, as if Rhavas had told him a funny story. Rhavas didn't think it was funny. Angrily, he went on, "Bring me to this Lipoksha. And look well on him when you do, for you will not see him again." His bragging only made Kolaksha laugh even more.

When Lipoksha emerged from his tent, he was not at all what Rhavas had expected. Instead of being an even rougher, hairier, more barbarous version of Kolaksha, Lipoksha could almost as easily have been a woman as a man. His face was scraped smooth, and his dark hair flowed down over his shoulders. Moreover, the Khamorth shaman moved with a woman's grace and delicacy. He wore tunic and trousers of deerskin adorned with fringes on the chest and back and at the elbows and wrists and knees and ankles—and at the crotch.

When he spoke in his own language, his voice was high and light: not quite a woman's voice, but not quite a man's, either. Rhavas snapped his fingers. Something he'd read a long time before came back to him. "You're an enaree!" he exclaimed. The last word sprang from the plainsmen's language, for Videssian had no equivalent.

Lipoksha did not seem to know any Videssian. Kolaksha, who did, jerked in surprise at hearing a word in his speech from Rhavas' mouth. "How you know of this?" he demanded, his voice hard with suspicion.

"I've read of it," Rhavas answered. But that made no sense to the nomad, who did not know the Videssian words for reading or writing or books. A barbarian indeed, Rhavas thought. Do I really want to live among these people? A moment later, he bleakly answered himself. What choice have I got? I cannot live in Videssos any more, not until the Empire falls.

Finally, Kolaksha gave up trying to understand. Lipoksha spoke again, in that epicene, effeminate voice. Effeminate. Rhavas nodded to himself. That was the word he remembered—an account of a trader's journey deep into the Pardrayan steppe used it to speak of enarees . The chieftain translated for his shaman: "He say, you not like Videssian wizards, not like Videssian priests."

"That is true," Rhavas agreed gravely. He supposed Lipoksha meant he was not like them. But if the enaree had actually said Rhavas did not like them, that would have been no less true.

Lipoksha said something else. Were those high, thin tones natural for him, or had he acquired them by practice? Rhavas could not ask, for Kolaksha's gruff, surely natural baritone followed: "You want his place, yes?"

"Yes," Rhavas said.

More twittering from Lipoksha. More growls, more or less in Videssian, from Kolaksha: "You want to be like Khamorth, you fight in Khamorth way, he say. You go together into felt tent. You fight there." The chieftain frowned. That wasn't what he'd wanted to say. His heavy features looked surprisingly thoughtful for a moment. Then they lightened. He'd found the words he needed. "The of-you spirits fight." He'd made hash of the Videssian possessive, but his meaning came through. Casually, he added, "One come out of felt tent. The other . . ." His gesture needed no words to get the meaning across.

"How do our spirits fight in the felt tent?" Rhavas asked. The trader's tale had spoken of this ritual, too, but he couldn't bring back the details.

Kolaksha blinked. When he translated Rhavas' words into his own language, Lipoksha seemed startled, too. "Ignorant foreigner," Kolaksha said scornfully. He might almost have been a Videssian sneering at barbarians. "All folk know of the tent where breathe in hemp smoke." He flared his nostrils and inhaled noisily to show what he meant.

"Not all folk do, for I did not," Rhavas said with ponderous precision. That only made both Kolaksha and Lipoksha sneer more, which annoyed him. He asked, "What can breathing in hemp smoke possibly do?"

After the chieftain translated, the enaree spoke volubly in his guttural language, waving his hands for emphasis. Kolaksha turned his words, or some of them, into Videssian: "Put you in spirit world. You want magic fight, should be there."

"Ah." Rhavas fought down a stab of unease. Maybe hemp smoke was some sort of drug, then—or maybe the plainsmen, with barbarous ignorance, imagined it was. Lipoksha plainly wanted the sorcerous duel on his terms, not Rhavas'. Are you confident in what you are doing, or not? Rhavas asked himself. He nodded. He was. And even if he weren't, it was much too late to back out now, and he had nowhere else to go if he did. As firmly as he could, he nodded again. "Let it be as you say, then. The felt tent."

The Khamorth eagerly set up the felt tent. It was smaller than the rest of the tents in the encampment, for it was not meant as a dwelling place, only as one of ritual. Unlike the tents in which the nomads lived, this one had no smoke hole at the top; the smoke inside was supposed to be trapped. Rawhide lashings could tightly close the tent flap, also to keep smoke from escaping.

The flap had lashings on both inside and outside. From Kolaksha's bits of Videssian, Rhavas gathered breathing in hemp fumes was entertainment as well as the stuff of sorcerous confrontations. Today, though, only the interior lashings would be used. The winner of the duel would have to untie them when he emerged.

With no smoke hole and with the flap shut, it was dark inside the felt tent. Lipoksha brought in a lamp along with the brazier atop which the hemp seeds would burn. The lamp smelled odd. After a moment, Rhavas realized it was burning sour butter rather than olive oil. He sighed. Yes, he was among barbarians.

But they, at least, give me this chance, he thought savagely. That is more than my own folk did.

With gesture, Lipoksha had him sit crosslegged on one side of the brazier. The Khamorth shaman took his own place opposite Rhavas. Rhavas' knees creaked; the enaree took the posture for granted. There wouldn't be room for stools in the nomads' tents, Rhavas realized. When Khamorth sat, they sat on the ground or on carpets. Of course they would be more limber than the average Videssian.

Lipoksha gave Rhavas a seated bow. Rhavas inclined his head in return. Gestures of respect had their place before any struggle. The enaree nodded to himself, satisfied that Rhavas had given honor for honor. Lipoksha took from his belt a small sack. Even in the dim, flickering lamplight, Rhavas saws that it was made of leather. Videssians probably would have used linen instead. But the plainsmen used almost exclusively the products of their flocks and of the hunt. The only cloth they had was the wool they spun and what they got from Videssos by trade or theft.

The shaman undid the rawhide cord that held the sack closed. He murmured a few incomprehensible but rhythmic sentences. A prayer of sorts, Rhavas thought. Then Lipoksha poured the seeds in the sack down onto the hot brazier.

A cloud of smoke rose and filled the tent. It stung Rhavas' eyes and made him cough. The smell wasn't unpleasant: spicier and more pungent than wood smoke. But he wouldn't have cared to be trapped in a tight place with a smoky campfire, and he didn't much care for this, either.

He tried to breathe as little as he could. Lipoksha, by contrast, inhaled noisily, sucking in great draughts of smoke. Then Rhavas made himself do the same, even if he felt as if his throat were on fire. Whatever power the smoke had would not help the shaman without helping him.

A foolish grin spread across Lipoksha's face, almost but not quite the grin he might have worn after too much wine. Rhavas found it hard to maintain the hatred of the world that had sustained him for so long. His body felt lethargic, while his mind was more interested in itself than in anything around him.

His will, though, still drove him. He pointed at Lipoksha, sitting there on the far side of the brazier. "Curse you," he said.

He could see the curse leave his fingers. It was as if he existed on two planes at once, the normal mundane world and the world of the spirit, the world of power. He saw the curse fly toward Lipoksha, and he saw the shaman's spirit sidestep it so that it went on out uselessly into the void.

"Is that all you can do?" In the spirit realm, Rhavas had no trouble understanding the Khamorth. Lipoksha's spirit-self waved contemptuously. "Here is a curse with bite."

Behind Rhavas, something growled. His spirit-self whirled, though his physical body sat unmoving. A great wolf advanced on him. Fire blazed in its eye sockets; its teeth were jagged as old saw blades. He knew without being warned that it would eat his soul if it could—and it could.

"Begone!" he cried. The wolf's tongue lolled out. It laughed a doggy laugh at him and padded closer, the fire in its eyes burning brighter. "Curse you!" Rhavas said, as he had when he aimed death at Lipoksha. But death had missed then, and it missed now. He was not sure the spirit-wolf lived, not as the material world understood the word.

The wolf's jaws gaped wide, wide enough to swallow Rhavas at a gulp. Lipoksha's spirit-self giggled. "Good-bye, little man. Good-bye, little fool," he said gaily.

Rhavas wondered if he could run. But, he sensed, as in the material world, so here: a lone wolf could always outrun a lone man. He ran, then, but at the wolf. It reared back in surprise. "Skotos take you!" he roared. "Darkness eat you forever!"

And the wolf was gone.

Lipoksha stopped laughing. Rhavas' spirit-self turned back toward the shaman. "I did not think you could do that," Lipoksha remarked.

"Life is full of surprises," Rhavas said. "You called on your powers, and I called on mine. Here is another taste of them, and see how you like it!" He shouted out the spell he had used in the High Temple, the one that would have brought light if used with Phos' name but sent blackness across the world when made with Skotos'.

Again, that blackness flowed from Rhavas' hands. Here in the spirit realm, it seemed more alive, more aware than it had in the material world. It streamed toward Lipoksha's spirit-self, as if to drown him in darkness. As Rhavas had against the shaman's summoned wolf, Lipoksha stood his ground. A drum appeared in his hands. He beat out a rapid, intricate rhythm. The leading edge of the darkness writhed. He was trying to seize control of it for himself, maybe even to turn it back against the one who had sent it.

"Skotos!" Rhavas whispered, both his spirit-self and his physical body. He pointed toward Lipoksha, he turned his will toward Lipoksha—and the darkness obeyed him.

As it engulfed the shaman, Lipoksha let out a startled, frightened wail. Above it, or perhaps behind it, Rhavas thought he heard—imagined he heard?—a dark, cold laughter. The enaree might have heard—or imagined?—the same thing, for the wail from out of the darkness rose to a high, desperate shriek. And then it was gone, gone forever. The laughter? There on the spirit plane, the laughter rolled on forever, as eternal and resistless as the tide.

Little by little, Rhavas came back to himself, or found himself once more in the material world alone. Was there a difference? He could not have said. The hemp fumes still clouded his brain. They still clouded his eyes as well. But there was no mistaking the corpse that slumped down on the far side of the brazier from him for a living man. No man alive could have achieved that boneless posture—and luckless Lipoksha's bowels had let go, adding a fresh stink to the pungency of the hemp fumes in the felt tent.

Head spinning, Rhavas crawled to the tent flap. His fingers were clumsy on the rawhide lashings that held the flap closed; he had to fumble at the knots before they finally came free. When they did, and when he saw daylight again, he wished he had a shield to protect his eyes from the sudden and unexpected brilliance. No, he was not Phos' creature anymore.

Kolaksha and several other Khamorth waited expectantly outside the felt tent. When they saw Rhavas emerge, their faces were comic studies of astonishment and dismay. "Where Lipoksha?" the chieftain demanded, as if that weren't, or shouldn't have been, obvious.

"In there." Rhavas pointed back to the tent. He also added what was, or should have been, obvious: "Dead." His eyes adapted to the light outside, a bit at a time; he was not doomed to be an owl, then, and blind by daylight. He added one thing more, the first thing on his mind: "I'm hungry."

Kolaksha spoke in his own language. One of the other plainsmen shouted. A woman, gold hoops in her ears and bracelets jingling on her wrists, hurried up with a wooden tray piled high with roast mutton and unleavened wheat cakes and a drinking horn that looked to have been shaped from a real cow's horn. She seemed very ready. Maybe Lipoksha would have been hungry, too, had he come out.

Rhavas ate like a starving wolf. The Khamorth flavored mutton with mint, not garlic. It was strange, but it wasn't bad. The butter on the wheat cakes was going off, or had gone. That plainly didn't matter to the Khamorth. In Rhavas' famished state, it didn't matter to him, either. The horn held something thin and sour, but at least as strong as wine.

When Rhavas asked what it was, Kolaksha answered in his own language: "Kavass." That helped Rhavas not at all. Kolaksha gathered his fragments of Videssian and did his best to explain. Eventually, Rhavas gathered that he was drinking fermented mare's milk. Not so long before, the news would have turned his stomach. Now all he did was hold out the drinking horn for more.

The woman who'd served him refilled the horn from a skin full of kavass . That would have revolted Rhavas, too; he was used to pitchers of pottery or metal. But the nomads had to travel light. Something that could be stored in very little space like the skin suited them better.

"How you kill Lipoksha?" Kolaksha asked when Rhavas' feeding frenzy at last gave signs of slowing.

"How?" By then, the mare's milk had risen to Rhavas' head—or maybe he still felt the aftereffects of the hemp fumes. Grandly, he answered, "Because I was the stronger. I said I would be, did I not?"

"But—you Videssian." That summed up the chieftain's attitude in three words.

"Not anymore." Rhavas did not try to make his voice grim. It came out that way by itself, which made it more effective than any histrionics could have. He went on, "The folk who raised me are my enemies now. And I will do what anyone with enemies would try to do: I will have my revenge on them."

As Kolaksha had before, he understood that now; higher sentiments might have baffled him. "You want us to help you with revenge, then?"

"Not just help me." Rhavas remembered reading that belching was a sign of good manners on the plains; it showed a man appreciated his food. He let out what he would have suppressed in Videssian company. Kolaksha's smile showed he'd done right. "Not just help me," he repeated. "Oh, no. I want you to share in my revenge. How would you like to take Imbros, for instance?"

Kolaksha understood that, too; a greedy light kindled in his eyes. But then it faded. "Take town slow business. Not get over wall. Videssian soldiers come," he said sorrowfully.

"If I give you Imbros, will you finally believe I am all I say I am?" Rhavas asked.

"I believe," Kolaksha said. "You not beat Lipoksha if you plain old pissant Videssian priest." He paused. That greedy light came back. "You give us Imbros, I believe more."

Just for a moment, Rhavas almost wept. This barbarous chieftain was willing, even eager, to let what he saw, what he experienced, influence what he believed. Could the priests and prelates of proud and civilized Videssos say the same? If they could, they never would have condemned me, Rhavas thought bitterly. He scowled. If he couldn't show them one way that evil was loose in the world, then he would have to show them another.

And he would show Kolaksha, too. Kolaksha would enjoy the demonstration. The priests and prelates of Videssos? That would be a different story.

Kolaksha sent riders to several nearby bands of nomads with connections of blood or marriage to his group of Kubrati. How such alignments worked among the Khamorth Rhavas did not know, not in any detail. He did gather that the other plainsmen would ride with Kolaksha's men against Imbros. If the city fell, they would share the spoils. Kolaksha would accrue greater glory for providing it—and for discovering Rhavas.

If, on the other hand, something went wrong . . . "You make I look bad before other khagans, I make you pay," he warned Rhavas.

Rhavas only nodded. He did not tell the chieftain he could kill him at a word. Make a man afraid and you also made him dangerous. All he said was, "You want to do this. I want to do this. Together, we will."

"How?" Kolaksha asked.

"Soon enough, you will see," Rhavas said.

Kolaksha fumed, but decided not to press it. "You say you kill Lipoksha, then you kill him," he said, as if reminding himself. "I not think you can do that, but you do. You say you do to Imbros, too. Maybeso you do it."

That was something less than a ringing vote of confidence, but he didn't nag Rhavas anymore afterward. Plenty of Videssians in positions of authority would have. Kolaksha might have been—was—a barbarian. That did not make him stupid, or a fool. Rhavas had not understood the distinction before he came to live among the Khamorth. He did now.

The plainsmen were people, not monsters. He hadn't grasped that before, either. They were husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins, friends and lovers and enemies, inferiors and superiors. Among members of their own tribe, they behaved as people ordinarily did. Some of their rituals differed from the Videssians', but the yhad rituals. They used them, with diminished force, among other Khamorth as well. To them, though, Videssians simply were not human beings. The word they applied to Videssians was related to the one they applied to mussels that used self-made strings to fix themselves to rocks in a river.

At first, that dismayed Rhavas. But what did Videssians think about the Khamorth? Nothing good. They called them plainsmen and savages and barbarians. They sometimes called them other things, too, things that suggested the Khamorth showed their livestock undue affection. Rhavas had believed that was so, or could be so. He saw no sign of it. In due course, being ever curious, he asked Kolaksha about it.

"Oh, yes, we know about that," the chieftain said matter-of-factly.

"What do you do about it?" Rhavas asked.

"We kill man. Kill animal, too. Animal have bad spirit in it. Let spirit out," Kolaksha said. Videssian shepherds also faced the death penalty for bestiality. Videssian sheep, however, remained immune from punishment.

Riders went back and forth between Kolaksha's tribe and those of his friends and allies. They were on Videssian soil, but they did not appear to know it, or to care. A few towns in the area still had imperial garrisons. The plainsmen avoided them but otherwise ignored them.

Plainsmen drifted closer to Imbros. Except for Kolaksha's band, none of them came very close. They were ready to pitch in if things went well. They were also ready to leave in a hurry if things went wrong. They wanted proof before they gave Rhavas more in the way of confidence. They wanted to see what he could do.

Yes, they were people, all right.

Dressed in nomad furs and leathers, Rhavas surveyed Imbros. Shedding his priest's robe felt oddly final. He might have been a snake shedding its skin. But what would come forth, he judged, was more different from what had gone before than the new snake was from the old.

Imbros was smaller than Skopentzana, larger than Develtos. Its garrison seemed alert. Once, when Rhavas rode too close, a catapult on the wall shot a dart at him. It missed, but the whoosh of the thing as it flew past made him hastily draw back out of range.

After fright came anger. He told Kolaksha, "Tomorrow, Imbros falls to the Khamorth, to the Kubrati who have trusted in me."

"How?" the chieftain asked once more.

"The walls will fall—much of the city will fall—and you can go in and take what you want, do what you will," Rhavas answered.

Kolaksha looked at him, as skeptical as any Videssian might have been. "Just like that?"

Rhavas looked back. "Just like that," he said. "Remember Lipoksha, Kolaksha. What I say I can do, I can do."

Kolaksha grunted. "We see." After a moment, he added, "We be ready. All Khamorth be ready." If this did go off as Rhavas said it would, he intended to take advantage of it. If it didn't, he no doubt intended to make Rhavas pay if he could. He probably could. Rhavas was even more alone among the nomads than he had been among his own people. Who would have imagined I could be? he thought.

He spent the night gathering himself. He knew what he had to do. He'd done it before. Once more. Once more, and he could start paying Videssos back for spurning him. When dawn came, he went looking for Kolaksha. The chieftain, as it turned out, was also looking for him: the sort of mishap that made people laugh in a Midwinter's Day skit. By the time Rhavas finally found Kolaksha, he was fuming, not laughing. "Are your men ready?" he demanded. "Are the other Khamorth clans close enough to join in after the walls fall?"

"I come to ask same question to you," Kolaksha said. "I come to ask, you are ready? We are ready. We wait. Now you do."

"Waiting is at an end. Follow me." Rhavas ordered the chieftain around like a prelate telling a newly ordained priest what to do. Kolaksha muttered to himself in his own language, but follow he did. He had a stumpy, splayed-out gait, his feet wide apart. Like a lot of Khamorth, he was bowlegged. Rhavas wondered if that sprang from all the time the plainsmen spent in the saddle. But he could worry about that later, if he worried about it at all. He pushed aside some bushes and pointed ahead. "The walls of Imbros."

"Yes, walls of Imbros," Kolaksha said impatiently. "How we get inside stinking walls of Imbros?"

"Like this." Rhavas pointed again. Bringing forth all his strength, he cried, "Accursed and downfallen be the city of Imbros, accursed and downfallen in the name of Skotos, lord of darkness and master of the world!"

Kolaksha shouted when the ground began to shake. He shouted again when the walls of Imbros broke to pieces and tumbled down. A great cloud of gray-brown dust shot up into the air, obscuring what was happening inside the city. But the grinding crashes that came through the roar of the earthquake itself said that Rhavas' prophecy was being fulfilled.

When the shaking stopped, Rhavas nodded to the Khamorth chieftain. "Send in your men. Let all the tribes send in their men. Did I honor my promise, or did I fail you?"

By way of reply, Kolaksha folded him into an embrace and kissed him on both cheeks. Rhavas would have liked that better if the barbarian had bathed anytime in the past year. Since he couldn't do anything about that, he endured it. "You do! You do!" Kolaksha bawled in his ear, capering like a bowlegged puppy. Rhavas could have done without that, too. He told himself the plainsman's heart was in the right place, anyhow.

Watching Imbros laid low, Rhavas felt his own heart leap and soar. He would have been happier were it Videssos the city, but he had done what he could do. This would tell Stylianos and Sozomenos and everyone else who had condemned him that he hadn't gone away. They'd thought they could get by with punishing him and ignoring him. They'd thought so, but they needed to think again.

"Come!" Kolaksha yelled. "Forward!" He lumbered toward the ruins of Imbros. Khamorth, mounted and afoot, approached the city from all sides. Rhavas didn't see how he could hang back. He'd watched the barbarians sack Skopentzana. He'd watched in horror and despair. On my head be it. Even now, the curse he'd called down on himself still bit him.

Here, though, he wouldn't be watching a sack. He wouldn't be trying to escape a sack. He would be joining a sack. And as for the Videssians whose homes and lives he'd just shattered—well, too bad for them.

Cry out to Phos, he thought. Go ahead. See how much good it does you. As much good as it ever did me.

An arrow hissed past his head. Someone in the wreckage was trying to fight back. Rhavas ducked. By the time he did, of course, the shaft was long past. Plainsmen started scrambling over the stones of the shattered wall. There had been screams inside Imbros before. Now new ones erupted.

An aftershock staggered him. He had some control over the first shaking. Once that passed, his earthquakes behaved like any others. Aftershocks from this one would go on for months, if not for years. Some of them would be big enough to do damage in their own right. When this one ended, he ran on toward the wall.

It had come down even more completely than he'd hoped. As he approached, he saw why: it was worked stone inside and out, but had a rubble core. It wasn't solid, mortared stone all the way through. Build on the cheap, will you? Rhavas laughed. You get what you pay for—and what you deserve.

Although not a particularly athletic man, he had no trouble climbing over the wreckage and into Imbros. Some of the buildings inside the town had fallen; others still stood. Rhavas laughed again to see steeples topped by gilded sun-globes toppled in the streets. Phos' temples had not proved immune to Skotos' powers. He had expected nothing different, and rejoiced to be proved right.

Iron belled off iron as a Videssian soldier who'd somehow survived the collapse traded sword strokes with a plainsman. Another Khamorth used both hands to throw a chunk of rock at the Videssian. It caught him in the ribs and almost knocked him off his feet. The nomad with whom he'd been dueling slashed his throat before he could recover. Gurgling and clutching at the gushing wound, the Videssian sank to his knees. There was nothing sporting about the way the Khamorth fought. Effective? That was another story.

But the plainsmen were after loot as much as blood. They descended like locusts on a jeweler's shop, and came away festooned with gold and silver chains and rings and bracelets. Rhavas wondered where the jeweler was. Buried in the ruins? Or just sensible enough to realize his gauds weren't worth his life?

A woman shrieked, high and shrill. Rhavas knew that sound. Sure enough, several plainsmen had her down and were doing what they pleased. Seeing him in clothes like theirs, they waved for him to join them.

For a moment, he thought of Ingegerd, and of his self-disgust afterward. But that was different. He'd really cared for her, and she should have cared for him, especially after all he did for her. Besides, then he hadn't understood the way the world worked as well as he did now.

This luckless Videssian? What was she but a body to him? Nothing at all. He nodded to the Khamorth and lined up with them. His turn came fast. It was soon over, too. He rose, fumbling at his trousers. A nomad took his place. That couldn't have made any difference to the woman.

He wondered if they would let her go once they finished their sport or get a last fillip by cutting her throat. He wasn't curious enough to stay around and find out. Whether the barbarians did the one or the other might not matter much to the woman, either.

A ragged-looking Videssian man still in his nightshirt pointed at Rhavas and cried, "You damned barbarian, curse you to Skotos' ice forevermore!"

Rhavas pointed back. "No, curse you," he said. The local had just enough time to realize a supposed nomad spoke perfect Videssian before falling over dead.

Taverns also proved favorite targets for the Khamorth. The plainsmen poured down wine as if they thought they would never see it again. Remembering the taste of the fermented mares' milk that was their usual drink, Rhavas had trouble blaming them.

Some of them, plainly, were out to drink themselves blind as fast as they could. Maybe they had friends who would watch over them till they revived. Or maybe they just didn't fear anything the Videssians of Imbros could do. Maybe they thought there wouldn't be enough Videssians left alive in Imbros to worry about.

And maybe they were right. Along with drinking and theft, the Khamorth delighted in slaughter. They shot, slashed, stabbed, or broke in the heads of Videssians by the hundreds—no, by the thousands. And they exulted in what they did in ways that would have turned the stomach of the most hardened Videssian bandit. Some of what they did turned Rhavas' stomach, and he'd worked worse than any Videssian bandit ever born.

This is what you wanted, he reminded himself. This is what all of Videssos deserves. He nodded. He knew that. Knowing it and seeing it acted out before him proved two very different things.

A few Videssians got away. He saw them running off to the east and south. In a way, that was good: they would tell the other imperials what the barbarians had done here today. But in another way, it was not so good: they would bring back soldiers to seek revenge. Rhavas went looking for Kolaksha.

The chieftain listened to him, then shrugged a broad-shouldered shrug. "We leave when we leave," Kolaksha said. "If soldiers come, we run or we fight. No soldiers now. Looting now. Killing now. Women now. Wine now." He thrust a jar of wine at Rhavas.

"You are a chieftain. You can give orders. . . ." Rhavas' voice trailed away. Kolaksha couldn't give orders, not the way a Videssian general or even a Videssian captain could. He had no force of law behind his commands, only force of character. If the other plainsmen—especially those not of his tribe—didn't feel like listening to him, how could he make them? He couldn't, and he knew it. Rhavas hadn't fully understood it, but he did now.

He felt betrayed. What good was a leader who didn't really lead? Not much, not to him, although the Khamorth didn't seem to mind. But what did they know? They were just barbarians.

They are an instrument, he thought. I have to play them. But how? No two strings on this instrument vibrated the same way. How could he get a tune out of it?

While he wondered, the nomads went on doing what they wanted to do. To his horror, he realized that was what they'd been doing all along. They'd got him to knock down Imbros' walls for them. Then they did what they would have done if they'd got in some other way. They were playing him, not the other way round.

He turned away from Kolaksha and left the ruined city. Not all his pleasure in Imbros' fall was slaked; he did have a measure of vengeance against Videssos. But it was not enough to satisfy him fully. He wanted something less savage, something more sophisticated, at his beck and call: something like Videssos turned upside down and worshiping Skotos.

For a moment, he thought of journeying to Makuran, the only other civilized land Videssos knew. Not without regret, he shook his head. The long voyage was only a small part of what deterred him. The Makuraners had their own faith, that of the Four Prophets. Like any other Videssian, Rhavas reckoned it so much nonsense, but, from what little he knew of its ideas, it was full of the same foolishness as Phos-worship. It would not be easy for a lone man, and especially a lone Videssian, to overthrow.

What then? The only other tools he had left to work with were the Khamorth and the Halogai. The big blond barbarians in the far north would have intimidated him even if not for Ingegerd. They had wild gods of their own, certainly savage enough to have crawled up from Skotos' ice, but they were not likely to hearken to a Videssian preaching to them—no, preaching at them. The tale of Kveldoulphios the martyr showed that.

The Khamorth, then. It would have to be the Khamorth. But not these Khamorth, Rhavas decided. Horses were tethered everywhere near fallen Imbros. Men were supposed to have been detailed to keep an eye on them. Most of those nomads, though, had gone into the city to share in the looting and drinking and rape. That didn't surprise Rhavas. The plainsmen lacked anything resembling discipline.

He found the steppe pony Kolaksha had given him to replace the miserable Videssian horse he'd been riding. He also took two others, so he wouldn't wear down the one animal. And then, on his pony and leading the others, he rode away from Imbros. The disaster that had overwhelmed it was necessary but not sufficient. He wanted—he needed—more and better.

A sentry who hadn't gone into the ruined city shouted at him. He shouted back, not with words but just with loud noises. Those didn't do—the Khamorth hopped up onto his own horse and rode toward Rhavas, plainly wanting to know who he was and what he thought he was doing.

With a sigh, Rhavas said, "Curse you," and the plainsman slid off his pony's tail and lay on the ground, dead. Rhavas, meanwhile, muttered under his breath. He hadn't wanted to do that. It might tell the nomads in which direction he was going. It also gave them even more reason than horse theft to want to follow him.

Dismounting, he dragged the dead man behind some bushes. The pony he added to his own string. Maybe the nomads wouldn't find their fellow for some time. Maybe scavengers would have got to him by then, so no one could see he'd died for no apparent reason. Come to that, maybe the Khamorth didn't associate death for no apparent reason with Rhavas. And maybe, when they found him fled, they wouldn't look toward the northeast.

He hoped they wouldn't, anyhow. Wouldn't they think he'd sickened of what he'd done and gone back to his own folk? It seemed reasonable to him that they should. Whether what he knew of reason and what the Khamorth knew of it were related was apt to be an . . . interesting question.

In his saddlebags were wheat cakes and smoked meat. They made a good enough supper. No doubt the plainsmen whose horses he'd stolen also carried iron rations. He could keep going for a while. And, after night came, he shielded his campsite with some of the darkness impenetrable he'd used to such effect in the High Temple. To anyone riding past, it would seem like nothing but a darker shadow under the trees.

Murmuring a prayer of thanks to Skotos for the protective shield—adapted from one he would have used for Phos—Rhavas rolled himself in a blanket and slept.

Videssos still had a presence on the Astris River. War galleys like those that sailed the seas patrolled it. The Khamorth built no boats larger than canoes hollowed out of tree trunks. Had Videssos had more ships on the river, she could have kept the barbarians from crossing. As things were, the galleys harried them when they could.

When Rhavas rode down to the riverbank, he had shed his furs and leather and redonned his priest's robe. He had also shaved his head for the first time in some little while. He wanted the galleys to recognize him as a Videssian.

He didn't encounter one till the next day. It rowed up close to the shore. One of the crew shouted, "What are you doing way up here, holy sir?"

"I am going to convert the heathen on the far side of the Astris to the one true faith," Rhavas replied, which was true, but not in the way the galley's crew would look for. He went on, "I require passage across the river."

"Those savages? They'll eat you without salt," the sailor said.

"I fear nothing, for I have my god on my side," Rhavas said loftily—again, true but unhelpful to his audience. Then he added a bit of bluff: "The Avtokrator and the ecumenical patriarch will hear of it if you fail to aid me."

Even that might not have been altogether bluff, now that he thought about it. The skipper of this galley would certainly hear about it when people in Videssos the city figured out whom he'd taken across the Astris. And the assurance with which he spoke carried weight. The war galley grounded itself on the muddy bank. A gangplank thumped down. Sailors jumped out and helped Rhavas lead his horses up into the ship. One of the men said, "Looks like you got these beasts straight from the barbarians."

"I did," Rhavas said.

That impressed the sailor. "Maybe the Khamorth really will listen to you, then, holy sir. You're a braver man than I am, though, and I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Rhavas rapidly discovered he was a braver man than the war galley's captain. The officer fidgeted like a man coming down with the runs when the long, lean vessel beached itself on the north bank of the Astris. "Hurry up! Hurry up!" he cried over and over again, his voice unmistakably frightened. "If a troop of those savages come down on us while we're stuck here, we're all dead men—but we won't die fast enough to suit us. Hurry up!"

At last, Rhavas and the steppe ponies were off the ship. Sailors strained and shoved to get the galley back into the water. They all cheered when it floated again. And they jeered at Rhavas, shouting, "So long, holy sir!" "We'll never see you again, by the good god!" "Good luck—you'll need it!"

Rhavas only shrugged. They trusted in their god. He trusted in his. He did not think Skotos would let him fall before he accomplished what he had in mind. He booted his horse forward. Before long, he left the Astris—and the Empire of Videssos—behind and rode out onto the Pardrayan steppe.

Videssian writers often likened the vast plains to the north and west of their realm to the ocean. Rhavas hadn't understood the figure of speech when he lived in Videssos the city or Skopentzana. Now, seeing the terrain, he did. Everything was green and gently rolling. When the wind whistled through the tall grass, it made it bend and rise like waves skimming across the surface of the sea.

And, like the sea, the steppe was vast. When Rhavas sailed to Skopentzana, he was rarely out of sight of land. Even so, he got a vivid sense of the sea's immensity. That same feeling struck him now. The steppe swept on for what might as well have been forever. It looked the same in every direction. He might have been all alone there, alone as if no other human beings existed now, ever had, or ever would. There he was, by himself, under an infinite sky, moving across an equally infinite landscape.

He built a small fire when the sun went down. The wheat cakes he ate with his smoked meat seemed less stale after he toasted them. He worried that the flames might draw plainsmen, but was glad to have them when wolves began to howl in the distance. The sea had its sharks. The steppe had predators as well, and not all of them went on two legs.

When morning came, he woke undiscovered and undevoured. He mounted a different steppe pony and led the other three behind him. On across the great, unchanging plain he rode.

A band of nomads found him four days later. The plainsmen were out hunting. They thought they'd come across better game than rabbits or their neighbors' cattle. Their harsh whoops as they galloped toward him put him in mind of the croaking and cawing of ravens and carrion crows.

He cursed them. One by one, they dropped from their saddles and thudded to the ground. Their horses slowed and began to graze. Rhavas plundered the food from the animals' saddlebags and kept on in the direction he'd been going.

A week went by before he ran into another human being. The plainsman was riding along keeping an eye on a large herd of cattle. When he saw Rhavas coming toward him, he broke away from the herd. Rhavas got ready to fell him as he'd felled the other Khamorth. This nomad, though, neither aimed an arrow at him nor drew his sword. Instead, waving, he shouted something in his own language.

He sounded more curious than angry. "I don't understand you!" Rhavas shouted back in Videssian.

Hearing another tongue intrigued the Khamorth. He yelled something else. Again, Rhavas answered in Videssian. By then, the nomad was close enough to give Rhavas a good look at him. He was a young man with an open, friendly face. Jabbing a thumb at his own chest, he said, "Argippash." Then he pointed at Rhavas and mimed curiosity.

"Rhavas," Rhavas said. "I am from Videssos." He pointed south and tried to use sign language to show he'd come a long way and been traveling for some time.

Argippash exclaimed excitedly to show he understood. He used gestures of his own to invite Rhavas back to his tribe's encampment. He didn't seem like a man intent on murdering a stranger. After a moment, Rhavas figured out what he did seem like: a man who'd found something unusual and who wanted to use it to win points from his friends and neighbors. Rhavas didn't mind. He'd hoped to get a friendly reception from one of these bands, but hadn't been sure he could. This seemed his best chance.

The plainsmen's camp wasn't much different from that of Kolaksha's Kubrati. The chieftain here was a barrel-chested graybeard named Takshaki. To Rhavas' surprise and delight, he knew a little Videssian: less than Kolaksha had, but enough to make himself understood. "Learn from traders," he said. "You trader? Got wine?" His bushy eyebrows quirked up hopefully. He knew what he wanted, all right.

"No, I am not a trader," Rhavas answered. "I am a priest."

Takshaki's face fell. "Phaos, Phaos, Phaos," he grumbled. "No want hear Phaos." He said something in his own language to Argippash. The younger man spoke defensively—something that had to mean, How could I have known?

"I will not speak of Phos," Rhavas promised. "If you want to hear me, I will speak of Skotos. If you do not want to hear that, I will not speak of any god. Instead, I will tell you that much of northern Videssos lies open to you nomads and to your flocks and herds."

"We hear. We on way." Takshaki cocked his head to one side. His eyebrows rose again, in a slightly different way this time. "Why you tell? You Videssos." He corrected himself: "You of Videssos."

"I have a feud with Videssos," Rhavas said. The Khamorth chief frowned. Rhavas did his best to explain. When Takshaki got it, he got it all at once. He understood the idea; he'd been missing the word.

He might have been a barbarian, but he was nobody's fool. "Videssos big," he said, stretching his arms wide. "You one man." He held up his right forefinger. "How one man feud with big?" He grinned as he used his new vocabulary.

Rhavas pointed his finger at a hawk circling above the encampment. "Curse you," he said, and the bird plummeted out of the sky. Takshaki and Argippash and the other nomads who'd gathered around to see the strange new arrival all exclaimed in astonishment. Rhavas gave the chieftain a courtier's bow. "I am one man, yes. But I am not weak."

"You do to man, too?" Takshaki asked.

"I can," Rhavas answered.

The nomad plucked at his long, thick, curly beard. "You do with this Skotos?"

"Yes, that's right," Rhavas said eagerly.

Takshaki folded his arms across his broad chest in a truly kingly gesture. "You stay," he declared.

Stay Rhavas did, for the next several months. More than a few men in Takshaki's tribe learned Videssian from him. He picked up the plainsmen's language, studying it with the same dogged persistence he'd given to his theological research back in what was now a vanished time. The tribe's shaman was a man named Budin. He dressed in a fringed costume, as Lipoksha had, but he was not effeminate. Rhavas' sorcery and doctrine intrigued him, as his intrigued Rhavas. Despite differences of birth and culture, they were kindred spirits.

"You want us to hurt Videssos," Budin said when they'd learned enough of each other's languages to be able to talk fairly well.

"I do indeed." Rhavas nodded.

Budin clicked his tongue between his teeth. "A renegade is more dangerous than a man from another tribe," he observed. "He knows his own too well."

"No doubt you are right," Rhavas said. Videssos and Makuran had used that truth against each other to great effect. He hadn't thought a barbarous shaman would be able to see it, but if the man had . . . "I aim to be as dangerous to Videssos as I can."

"Videssos has done things to you." Budin did not make it a question.

"Videssos certainly has." Rhavas nodded again.

"But what has Videssos done to Takshaki's tribe? What has Videssos done to the Khamorth?" the shaman asked.

Maybe he did not think Rhavas would have an answer for him. But Rhavas did: "Videssos has held you away from land where you could graze your animals. Videssos has held on to gold and goods and wine that could be yours. Videssos has been too strong to attack. Now Videssos is weak. Many plainsmen have already entered her." He deliberately used the Khamorth word for going into a woman. "Will Takshaki's tribe stay behind when others grow rich? You were already on your way to Videssos."

Budin licked his lips. "I think we will not stay behind. I think Takshaki also thinks this. But he wants grazing space and wine and riches and plunder. You want endless war against Videssos. These are not the same thing."

What would you have been if you'd grown up in Videssos and truly been trained in how to think? Rhavas wondered. With your native shrewdness, you would have been formidable. You are wasted as a nomad shaman. Budin was bound to be right again. Rhavas thought it better not to come out and admit as much. "If you want to take what should be yours, you will need to fight to seize and to hold it," he said. "That suits me, and should suit you as well."

"Time will tell if it does," Budin said—yes, he was shrewd.

Here, though, he was not shrewd enough. When he thought of time, he thought of one year, or five years, or ten. No man was likely to think in terms longer than those. Rhavas did. He was starting to think in terms of generations, of lifetimes. Had he not been promised years, many years, to bring his hopes and those of his new master to fruition? He had, or he was convinced he had, and he intended to take advantage of it.

A broad ditch with fortresses spaced every couple of miles along the eastern edge of it had protected the Empire of Videssos from incursions off the steppe. It had. It did not anymore. The fortresses stood empty. The edges of the ditch had begun to fall in on themselves. Takshaki's tribe had no trouble getting its flocks and herds across to the other side. No one challenged them. No Videssians were in any position to challenge them, nor had they been since the fortresses emptied so their soldiers could go fight in the civil war.

As for the Khamorth—well, the new land was wide. There was plenty of room for them to spread across it as they pleased. So none of them challenged Takshaki's entrance into what had been Videssos, either.

Sometimes the nomads guided their animals. Sometimes they simply let them wander where the grazing was good. Takshaki preferred the latter way. His cattle and sheep ambled north and east. That disappointed Rhavas; the plainsmen headed into an area far from any place where the writ of Stylianos and Sozomenos ran these days. He thought about leaving them and attaching himself to another tribe more actively engaged against Videssos. It would be easier now that he'd picked up some of the barbarians' language.

Rhavas thought about it, but then abandoned the idea, at least for a while. Takshaki's herds and flocks moved east along a river valley—snowy now, as it had been the last time Rhavas traveled along it—that grew more familiar the farther he went. It was the valley of the Anazarbos, and the livestock and the tribe were on their way to Skopentzana.

They reached the burned and battered ruins about a week later. "This was a large, fine place once," Budin said, as if he were speaking of centuries in the past and not something less than a year. Takshaki's men started combing through the wreckage, and they were rewarded. Earlier plunderers had not found everything worth stealing.

"So it was," Rhavas said. Dead weeds poked up through the snow between cobblestones now. Bushes had begun to cover the downfallen, tumbled stones that had made up the wall. He too went into the city, though what he was looking for had nothing to do with loot.

He started toward the chief temple and the prelate's residence beside it, but checked himself before he got there. That was a past life, a mistaken life, a failed life. He hadn't grasped what mattered then.

Instead, he sought out what was left of Himerios' house, where he'd first set eyes on Ingegerd, where he'd first set out on the path that made him what he was today. After some effort, he found the street. It was the fourth house. He went inside: not hard, not when the walls had fallen in on themselves. He looked out at what had been Skopentzana and slowly nodded to himself. This was where it had started, and this was how he aimed to make it end. He nodded again. Why not? Didn't he have all the time in the world?

THE END