Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

priestto Roman, though this time the contact lasted much longer before the priest pulled away. As he did, the soldier stirred and tried to stand. When Gorgidas examined his wound, it was like Minucius’: a terrible scar, but one apparently long healed.
    Gorgidas hopped from foot to foot in anguished frustration. “By Asklepios, I have to learn the language to find out how he does that!” He looked as though he wanted to wring the answer from the priest, with hot irons if he had to.
    Instead, he seized the Videssian and hauled him off to another injured legionary. This time the priest tried to pull away. “He’s dying, curse you!” Gorgidas shouted. The cry was in his native Greek, but when Gorgidas pointed at the soldier, the priest had to take his meaning.
    He sighed, shrugged, and stooped. But when he thrust his hands under the Roman’s bandages, he began to shake, as with an ague. Marcus thought he felt the healing magic begin, but before he could be sure, the priest toppled in a faint.
    “Oh, plague!” Gorgidas howled. He ran after another blue-robe and, ignoring the fellow’s protests, dragged him over to the line of wounded soldiers. But this priest only shrugged and regretfully spread his hands. At last Gorgidas understood he was no healer. He swore and drew back his foot as if to boot the unconscious priest awake.
    Gaius Philippus grabbed him. “Have you lost your wits? He’s given you back two you never thought to save. Be grateful for what you have—look at the poor wretch, too. There’s no more help left in him than wine in an empty jar.”
    “Two?” Gorgidas struggled without success against the veteran’s powerful grip. “I want to heal them all!”
    “So do I,” Gaius Philippus said. “So do I. They’re good lads, and they deserve better than the nasty ways of dying they’ve found for themselves. But you’ll kill that priest if you push him any more, and then he won’t be able to fix ’em at all. As is, maybe he can come back tomorrow.”
    “Some will have died by then,” Gorgidas said, but less heatedly—as usual, the senior centurion made hard, practical sense.
    Gaius Philippus went off to start the legionaries setting up camp for the night. Marcus and Gorgidas stood by the priest until, some minutes later, he came to himself and shakily got to his feet.
    The tribune bowed lower to him than he had to Vourtzes. That was only fitting. So far, the priest had done more for the Romans.
    That evening, Scaurus called together some of his officers to hash out what the legionaries should do next. As an afterthought, he added Gorgidas to Gaius Philippus, Quintus Glabrio, Junius Blaesus, and Adiatun the Iberian. When Viridovix ambled into the tent, he did not chase the Gaul away either—he was after as many different viewpoints as he could find.
    Back in Gaul, with the full authority of Rome behind him, he would have made the decision himself and passed it on to his men. He wondered if he was diluting his authority by discussing things with them now. No, he thought—this situation was too far removed from ordinary military routine to be handled conventionally. The Romans were a republican people; more voices counted than the leader’s.
    Blaesus raised that point at once. “It grates on me, sir, it does, to have to hire on to a barbarian king. What are we, so many Parthians?”
    Gaius Philippus muttered agreement. So did Viridovix; to him, even the Romans followed their leaders too blindly. He and the senior centurion looked at each other in surprise. Neither seemed pleased at thinking along with the other. Marcus smiled.
    “Did you see the way the local bigwig was eyeing us?” Quintus Glabrio put in. “To him,
we
were the barbarians.”
    “I saw that too,” Scaurus said. “I didn’t like it.”
    “They may be right.” That was Gorgidas. “Sextus Minucius would tell you so. I saw him in front of his tent, sitting there mending his tunic. Whatever these Videssians are, they know