Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

unused ground, nomads’ tents of hides or brightly dyed felt sprang up like toadstools.
    Though Prista held a Videssian governor and garrison, much of its population was of plains blood. The loungers on the dock were squat, heavy-set men with unkempt beards. Most of them wore linen tunics and trousers instead of the steppe’s furs and leathers, but almost all affected the low-crowned fur caps the Khamorth wore in cold weather and hot. And when Pikridios Goudeles asked one of them to help carry his gear to an inn, the fellow sat unmoving.
    Goudeles raised an eyebrow in annoyance. “My luck to pick a deaf-mute,” he said and turned to another idler, this one baring his broad hairy chest to the sun. The man ignored him. “Dear me, is this the country of the deaf?” the bureaucrat asked, beginning to sound angry; in Videssos he was used to being heeded.
    “I’ll make them listen, the spirits fry me if I don’t,” Arigh said, steppingtoward the knot of men. They glowered at him; there was no love lost between Arshaum and Khamorth.
    Lankinos Skylitzes touched Arigh’s arm. The officer was a man of few words and had no liking for Goudeles. He was quite willing to watch the pen-pusher make an ass of himself. But Arigh could cause riot, not embarrassment, and that Skylitzes would not brook.
    “Let me,” he said, striding forward in Arigh’s place. The dock-rats watched him, not much impressed. He was a large man with a soldier’s solid frame, but there were enough of them to deal with him and his comrades, too … and he kept company with an Arshaum. But their scowls turned to startled grins when he addressed them in their own speech. After a few seconds of chaffering, four of them jumped up to shoulder the envoys’ kits. Only Arigh carried his own—and seemed content to do so.
    “What a rare useful thing it must be, to be able to bespeak the people wherever you go,” Viridovix said admiringly to Skylitzes. The Gaul was already becoming his usual exuberant self once more. Like the giant Antaios in the myth, Gorgidas thought, he drew strength from contact with the earth.
    Economical even in gestures, Skylitzes gave a single nod.
    That seemed to frustrate Viridovix, who turned to the Greek. “With your history and all, Gorgidas dear, would you no like to have these folk talk your own tongue so you could be asking them all the questions lurking in your head?”
    Gorgidas ignored the sarcasm; Viridovix’ question touched a deep hurt in him. “By the gods, Gaul, it would give me pleasure if anyone in this abandoned world spoke my tongue, even you. Here the two of us are as closest kin, but I can no more use Hellenic speech with you than you your Celtic with me. Does it not grate you, too, ever speaking Latin and Videssian?”
    “It does that,” Viridovix said at once. “Even the Romans are better off than we, for they have themselves to jabber with and keep their speech alive. I tried teaching my lassies the Celtic, but they had no thought for sic things. I fear I chose ’em only for their liveliness under a blanket.”
    And so were you sated but alone, Gorgidas thought. As if to confirm his guess, the Gaul suddenly burst into a torrent of verse in his native tongue. Arigh and the Videssians gaped at him. The local bearers hadbeen stealing glances at him all along, curious at his fair, freckled skin and fiery hair. Now they shrank back, perhaps afraid he was reciting some spell.
    Viridovix rolled on for what might have been five or six stanzas. Then he stumbled to a halt, cursing in Celtic, Videssian, and Latin all mixed together.
    “Beshrew me, I’ve forgotten the rest,” he mourned and hung his head in shame.
    After the imperial capital’s broad straight streets paved with cobblestones or flags and its efficient underground drainage system, Prista came as something of a shock. The main thoroughfare was hard-packed dirt. It zigzagged like an alley and was hardly wider than one. Sewage flowed in a channel