Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 Read Online Free

Viridovix to death. Maybe, like Scaurus, they were too stunned at what happened to dare harm him, or maybe that confident attitude was paying dividends.
    Junius Blaesus came up to Marcus. Ignoring Viridovix altogether, the scout gave his commander a smart salute, as if by clinging to legionary routine he could better cope with the terrifying unknown into which he had fallen. “I don’t believe this is Gaul at all, sir,” he said. “I walked to the edge of the clearing, and the trees seem more like the ones in Greece, or some place like Cilicia.
    “It’s not a bad spot, though,” he went on. “There’s a pond over there, with a creek running into it. For a while I thought we’d end up in Tartarus, and nowhere else but.”
    “You weren’t the only one,” Marcus said feelingly. Then he blinked. It had not occurred to him that whatever had happened might have left him and his troops still within land under Roman control.
    The scout’s salute and his speculation gave the tribune an idea. He ordered his men to form a camp by the pond Blaesus had found, knowing that the routine labor—a task they had done hundreds of times before—would help take the strangeness from this place.
    He wondered how he would explain his arrival to whatever Roman authorities might be here. He could almost hear the skeptical proconsul: “A dome of light, you say? Ye-ss, of course. Tell me, what fare did it charge for your passage …?”
    Earthworks rose in a square; inside them, eight-man tents sprang up in neat rows. Without being told, the legionaries left a sizeable space in which Gorgidas could work. Not far from where Marcus stood, the Greek was probing an arrow wound with an extracting-spoon. The injured legionary bit his lips to keep from crying out, then sighed in relief as Gorgidas drew out the barbed point.
    Gaius Philippus, who had been supervising the erection of the camp, strolled over to Scaurus’ side. “You had a good idea there,” he said. “It keeps their minds off things.”
    So it did, but only in part. Marcus and Gorgidas were educated men, Gaius Philippus toughened by a hard life so he could take almost anything in stride. Most legionaries, though, were young, from farms or tiny villages, and had neither education nor experience to fall back on. The prodigy that had swept them away was too great for the daily grind to hold off for long.
    The Romans murmured as they dug, muttered as they carried, whispered to one another as they pounded tentpegs. They made the two-fingered sign against the evil eye, clutching the phallic amulets they wore round their necks to guard themselves from it.
    And more and more, they looked toward Viridovix. Like the anodyne of routine, his immunity slowly wore away. The mutters turned hostile. Hands started going to swords and spears. Viridovix’ face turned grim. He freed his own long blade in its scabbard, though even with his might he could not have lasted long against a Roman rush.
    But the legionaries, it seemed, wanted something more formal andawesome than a lynching. A delegation approached Scaurus, at its head a trooper named Lucilius. He said, “Sir, what say we cut the Gaul’s throat, to take away the anger of whatever god did this to us?” The men behind him nodded.
    The tribune glanced at Viridovix, who looked back, still unafraid. Had he cringed, Marcus might have let his men have their way, but he was a man who deserved better than being sacrificed for superstition’s sake.
    Scaurus said so, adding, “He could have stood by while his men slew us all, but instead he chose to meet me face-to-face. And the gods have done the same thing to him they did to all of us. Maybe they had their reasons.”
    Some legionaries nodded, but most were still unsatisfied. Lucilius said, “Sir, maybe they left him with us just so we could offer him up, and they’ll be angry if we don’t.”
    But the more he thought about it, the more Marcus hated the idea of deliberate human sacrifice.