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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, stepping
toward 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
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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 had been 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 down the
center. Gorgidas saw a nomad undo his trousers and urinate in the channel; no
one paid him any mind.
The Greek shook his head. In Elis, where he had grown up, such things were
commonplace. The cry of "Exito! Here it comes!" warned pedestrians that a
fresh load of slops was about to be thrown out. But the Romans had better
notions of sanitation, and in their greater cities the Videssians did, too.
Here on the frontier they did not bother and surely paid the price in disease.
Well, what of it? Gorgidas thought; they have healer-priests to set things
right. Then he wondered even about that. By the look of things, many of the
Pristans kept their plains customs and probably did not follow Phos. He
glanced toward the Videssian god's temple. Its discolored stones and
weather-softened lines proclaimed it one of the oldest buildings in the town,
but streaks of tarnish ran down the gilded dome atop it. Skylitzes saw that,
too, and frowned.
If Pikridios Goudeles felt any dismay at the temple's shabby condition, he hid
it well. But he grew voluble when he saw the inside of the inn the natives, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]