A bowstring twanged. An arrow buried its head and a good part of its shaft in the dirt a few feet in front of Rhavas' mount. The pony snorted and sidestepped nervously. Rhavas brought it back under control.
"Don't get gay with us, priest, or the next one's through your liver!" warned another bandit, this one with a higher voice.
Rhavas said, "Take what you will. I don't have much." Inside, he fumed. Here was a dangerous spot. He couldn't curse the brigands because he didn't know how many they were or where they hid. If he missed two or three, they could shoot him with ease.
And raucous laughter greeted his reply. "Likely tell!" said the bandit with the shrill voice. "Last priest we got had a pound of gold in a money belt. If it wasn't for the heft of the thing, he would have got away with it. But he didn't, oh, no." He laughed again, nastily.
"Go ahead and search me and my animals," Rhavas said, knowing they would with or without his leave. And if they all came out into the open . . . well, that gave him a chance, anyhow.
He waited. They delayed so long, he began to doubt they would come forth. But at last they did: half a dozen scrawny men, Videssians all, armed with bows and knives and one boar spear. "Get down off that horrible screw you're riding," one of them said. "We may let you keep it—not worth taking."
They did not know the worth of a steppe pony. Rhavas dismounted without a word, having no intention of enlightening them. But when one of them said, "Come on—let's scrag him now," he knew they weren't going to let him keep anything, not even his life.
"Curse you all!" he exclaimed. They twisted and crumpled and died. An arrow hissed past his head—they'd left someone back among the trees in case anything went wrong. They hadn't dreamt anything could go as wrong as it did, though. The arrow came from about the direction Rhavas had expected. "And curse you, too!" he added, and heard another man fall.
He waited tensely. If the bandits had stashed another man anywhere around there, he was still in danger. No more arrows flew at him, though. No shouts of alarm rang through the woods. This seemed to be the lot of them. He breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. Ambush remained his greatest peril.
He took a couple of steps toward the brigands' rough barricade, then stopped, feeling silly. Those logs would need more than one man to shift them. He went back to his horses instead. They stood there quietly. What had happened to the bandits meant nothing to them. They followed without protest when he led them around the barrier.
"Too bad," he murmured as he found the road on the far side. The last bandit lay a few feet to the left of it, his bow by his outstretched hand. An arrow lay there, too; he'd been nocking that shaft when Rhavas' curse struck him down. The noise Rhavas made this time was more like a gasp of relief. He'd cut it even closer than he'd thought.
But it was too bad, even so. The bandits were no theologians—nor would they ever be, now. They hadn't thought through what they were doing. Whether they knew it or not, though, they'd found many of the same answers as Rhavas had himself. No one who took the lord with the great and good mind seriously could have lived as they lived, done what they did, could he?
Rhavas shook his head. He didn't see how. He wished he could have had the chance to talk with them about it. They were the closest thing to converts he'd found, even if they never knew it.
His shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "Too bad," he said again, this time in a different tone of voice. If they'd given him any kind of chance, he would have talked with them. They hadn't, and so he'd done what he had to do.
Now they were dead and he was still alive. He vastly preferred that to the alternative. He swung back up onto the steppe pony he'd been riding. He would make converts of his own. Once he finally got through the mountains, Videssos the city wouldn't be all that far away.
Relatively few barbarians had got past the Paristrian Mountains, no matter what the Videssian soldiers on the other side had told Rhavas. He did not need long to see that for himself once he got down into the lower country. But that didn't mean the lower country was a land at peace. Oh, no—far from it. Rhavas didn't need long to discover that, either.
This was the land where Videssos' long civil war made its home. Stylianos aimed his forces at the imperial capital like a spearhead. And Maleinos, holding Videssos the city, did everything he could to hold back his rival. No, the Videssians did not battle barbarians here. They fought one another instead.
When Rhavas rode into a town called Develtos, about halfway across the peninsula toward Videssos the city, he found himself for the first time in a place that was strongly for Stylianos even though he'd lost a battle nearby the year before. It was so strongly for him that, for some little while after Rhavas got there, he wondered if the rebel was living in the town. That turned out not to be so; Stylianos was off with his army. But he had spent much of the previous winter in Develtos, and the locals remembered him fondly.
They remembered him so fondly, in fact, that Rhavas gave a false name and did not mention the city he'd come from when he took a room at an inn. If anyone here connected him to Maleinos, it would be disastrous. He just said he'd come from the north. Even that got him a curious look from the innkeeper. "I've heard some northern folk talk," the man remarked. "They say things like Phaos for Phos. You don't sound like that, holy sir."
"I should hope not," Rhavas said with what he hoped sounded like indignation and now alarm. "I spent years getting a decent education. Do you want me to seem like someone from the back of beyond every time I open my mouth?"
"Don't take it like that," the innkeeper said quickly. "I didn't mean to offend, by the good god."
"We'll say no more about it, then." Rhavas certainly hoped the man would say no more about it.
Some of the silver he got in change in the taproom at supper was shiny and new. That was part of what drew his eye to it, but only part. He knew all of his cousin's coins, and had got used to seeing images of a man with a long face not too different from his own on Videssian money.
Not on these coins. The Avtokrator they showed was round-faced, even plump. Tiny letters around the rim said "STYLIANOS AVTOKRATOR." The rebel had his own silver. Rhavas wondered if he had his own gold as well. When Rhavas turned the coin over, he saw a sword, a spear, and a bow in place of the usual Videssian sunburst. "BY THESE," said the lettering on the reverse.
A good many rebels had put out coins. It was a way to pretend (or to proclaim, depending on the point of view) that you were a legitimate sovereign. But Stylianos' money, unlike some older rebels' coins Rhavas had seen, was obviously minted to the same standard as ordinary currency.
Develtos had a large monastery. Several monks came into the taproom together. They started drinking heavily and then started singing songs. Several of the ones they chose were, to say the least, unmonastic. The ones that weren't about Stylianos and the slaughter he would work on Maleinos were about women, and showed they had more experience with them than monks had any business owning.
In spite of everything that had happened to him, Rhavas found himself scandalized. That these monks should behave so—! Then, after a little thought, he smiled. If the monks were doing Skotos' work . . . well, so much the better. He went back to his own supper.
"Hey, you!" one of the monks called after a while. "Yes, you, priest!"
Rhavas looked up. "Do you want something of me?" he asked in tones that would have produced chills in Skopentzana colder than winter.
Those tones had no effect here. "'D'you want something of me?'" the monk echoed mockingly. His comrades laughed. He went on, "Yes, I want something of you. I want to know what you think of us."