Again, Rhavas did not enlighten him. He got Koubatzes' grimoire out of the saddlebag and began to study it. He had never tried to work magic before, but he could see it might be useful. His first look at the book of spells was not reassuring. It was written in a cramped, allusive style: Koubatzes writing to himself, for himself. To an outsider like Rhavas, one word in three, one idea in three, seemed to be missing. He wondered if he could cast a spell with a guide like this, or if disaster would eat him up because he didn't know enough about what he was doing.
"Look at him," Marozia whispered to one of her strapping sons. "See how holy he is?"
"He's something, all right," the young man agreed, also in a low voice.
Yes, I am something, Rhavas thought, but what? He didn't know. Whatever he was, the thing was newly hatched. What will I be when I finish turning into whatever I'm turning into? That was a better question. The only trouble was, he didn't know the answer.
I have the truth, he told himself. If I didn't have the truth, would Koubatzes lie dead in the snow? He remembered Ingegerd lying dead, too, but quickly shied away from that. If she hadn't tempted me, if Himerios hadn't thrown her at me, it never would have happened.
"Pray for us, holy sir," Illos said.
"I will pray that you and your whole family get exactly what you deserve," Rhavas said. Illos and Marozia and their children beamed. They thought he meant a prayer like that in a kindly way. He knew better. With the Khamorth on the prowl, what was likelier than that this farm would be overwhelmed before long? If Illos and Marozia couldn't see that, they were fools, and they would get what fools deserved.
He had his robes and his hooded cloak and his blankets. Marozia handed him another one, plainly the best in the house, of thick, soft wool. "I wove it myself," she said shyly, pointing to the disassembled frame of a loom leaning against a wall.
"I'm sure it will keep me warm," Rhavas said. Marozia bobbed her head and drew back. One of her sons set a mattress on the floor by the hearth. Rhavas lay down and spent as warm and comfortable a night there as he had anywhere since Skopentzana fell.
When he went out to the barn after a filling breakfast the next morning, he found his horses had been well brushed. The youth who had done it said, "They snapped once or twice, but I learned 'em who was boss pretty quick, I did."
"Good for you, and my thanks," Rhavas said. He blessed the animals in the barn, not because he thought it would help them but because the farm family had made it plain they expected it of him.
They still believe in good, he thought as he rode away. They still believe in it, yes, and how much help will it give them? Not much, he judged, not when they saw the barbarians riding toward them—or when they didn't see the plainsmen, but woke in the middle of the night to find the farmhouse, loom frame and all, burning around them.
Rhavas shrugged. It wasn't his worry. Illos and Marozia had made their choices. They'd made them, yes, and now they would pay for them.
He looked back over his shoulder a couple of hours later, and saw a column of smoke rising into the air about where that farm would have been. Illos and Marozia were liable to be paying for their choices even sooner than he'd expected. He shrugged again and rode on.
Lykandos was, or had been, a town not to be despised: a long step down from Skopentzana, two even longer steps down from Videssos the city, but still a place that thought of itself as a local center. It had thought of itself so. Now it was dead.
The north gate stood invitingly open. Only when Rhavas drew close did he see how fire had scarred the valves. He rode into the town. The reek of burning still hung in the air, though most of the smells of death still waited on the thaw that now was not far away.
A dog trotted out of a side street and started at Rhavas, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. The animal looked happy and well fed. Rhavas' stomach did a slow lurch when he thought about what it had probably been eating.
Another dog came up beside the first one, and another, and another, and then several more. More slowly than he should have, he realized a pack of dogs could be as dangerous to him as a pack of wolves. To them, what were he and the horses but more meat?
"Go away," he called to them. They paid no attention. He might have known—he had known—they wouldn't.
He wished he had a rock or something else he could throw at them. Wishing failed to produce one. And he didn't think he had long to figure out what to do, because the dogs were starting to edge forward. Rhavas no longer liked the way their tongues hung from their mouths. It didn't look friendly. It looked hungry.
He pointed at the first dog that had come out. "Curse you!" he said, and the dog fell over and died.
That did him less good than it might have. He could have intimidated a crowd of men by knocking down one of their number. The dogs had no idea he'd done it. A couple of them sniffed the dead one, but how could they understand Rhavas had slain it? They couldn't, and he couldn't tell them.
He pointed at another dog, one that looked as if it was at least half wolf. It fell over, too. Then he knocked over a big brown dog with floppy ears. They lay there in the snow. The others kept growling, working themselves up to attack.
"Curse you all!" Rhavas gasped. He had no idea whether that would help him. If it didn't, though, he feared nothing would.
A couple of the dogs yelped. A little one, at the very back of the pack, stayed on its feet. Most of them just quietly died. Rhavas eyed them in amazement and relief. He looked at the tip of his finger, as if it were a bow or a ballista through which he shot his curses. He knew better: it was only the way he aimed whatever was inside of him. The illusion remained powerful, though.
The little dog stopped growling and smiled a doggy smile at Rhavas. It wasn't about to attack on its own. As part of the pack, it would have been dangerous. By itself, it turned back into a lapdog. Rhavas threw back his head and laughed. Dogs didn't seem much different from people. A mob could destroy everything and everyone in its path. As individuals, the members might be ordinary men and women who wouldn't hurt a fly. Only the swarm of their fellows gave them strength and let them unleash their savagery without fear or even thought.
Rhavas urged his mount and the packhorse forward. They seemed glad to get away from the dogs even if those dogs were dead. Most of Lykandos had been burned. The deeper into the town Rhavas got, the worse it looked. Bodies lay in the street. Sure enough, dogs and carrion birds had worried at them ever since the town fell, however long ago that was.
A few of the corpses wore furs and leather, not cloth. The locals had put up a fight, then. Much good it had done them.
Even in a dead town, a destroyed town, a sacked town, there was bound to be food and bound to be money. Rhavas rode through Lykandos without looking. The Khamorth would have taken everything that was easy to find and that the flames hadn't swallowed. He didn't care to linger here. He didn't care to linger anywhere. The urge to get down to civilization burned in him. If anyone would hear him, his fellow ecclesiastics would.
Koubatzes should have. That the wizard hadn't still enraged him. Well, Koubatzes had paid for his folly. Anyone else who refused to hearken to the truth he brought would also have to pay. No Videssian of any theological stripe would have thought differently. But the others, all the others, were wrong. Rhavas was sure of it. He was sure enough to bet his life. He was sure enough to bet more than his life: he was sure enough to bet his soul.
Lykandos' south gate also sagged open. Rhavas rode out through it. He wondered what would be left of Videssos here in the northlands when all this fighting was done. Anything? Lykandos was an empty ruin. Skopentzana had been sacked and then destroyed in the earthquake. How many other towns had been burned, how many peasants either run off their lands or killed? Could the Empire restore itself here?