“Why should we bother the lieutenant-general, when we can deal with you ourselves?” Alexander said. Argyros yelped as a boot slammed into his thigh.
“Wait,” Justin said.
“What for?” Bardanes spoke for the first time, though his foot had been more than eloquent. Neither he nor Alexander could forget that Argyros had ridden away from their patrol, putting them at risk of being thought accessories to his desertion.
“Because I am your commander, and I order it!” Justin snapped. That was not enough; he could read the mutiny building on their faces. He added, “If Argyros wants to see the lieutenant-general so badly, we should let him. Hermoniakos has more ways to make death interesting than boots, and the temper to use them.”
The scouts considered that. Finally Alexander chuckled.
“Aye, that’s so. The hypostrategos is a regular little hornet when he’s angry. All right, we’ll let him do this bastard in. I wonder what he’ll come up with.”
Argyros heard it all as though from very far away. None of it seemed to have any meaning; the only reality was his pain. The additional discomfort of being dragged to his feet and then lashed over a horse’s back like a corpse hardly registered. Mercifully, he never remembered most of the journey back to the Roman camp.
He did recall waking in horror as he jounced along, and exclaiming, “My saddlebags!”
“Shut up,” Alexander growled. “Nothing is yours anymore. We’ve got ‘em along to share out amongst ourselves, if you stole anything from the Jurchen worth the having.” Argyros passed out again; Alexander took his sigh of relief for an anguished grunt.
The next time he roused was when they cut the bonds from his wrists and ankles and he slid to the ground like a sack of barley. Someone threw a pail of water in his face. He groaned and opened his eyes. The world spun more dizzily than it had when he looked through the tube.
“So you asked to come before me, eh?” He picked out Andreas Hermoniakos’s voice before his vision would focus on the lieutenant-general.
“Answer his excellency,” Justin of Tarsos said. Alexander stepped forward to kick him again, but Hermoniakos halted him with a gesture. Another bucket of water drenched Argyros. He managed a sloppy salute, wondering whether his right wrist was broken. “I beg to report—success,” he said thickly. He had a cut lip, but he did not think any of his teeth were missing—his arm had taken the kick intended for his mouth.
To the amazement of the scouts, the lieutenant-general stooped beside him. “Where is it? What is it?” he demanded. In his urgency, his hand clamped on Argyros’s shoulder. Argyros winced. Hermoniakos jerked his hand away. “Your pardon, I pray.”
Argyros ignored that; he was still working his way through the two earlier questions. “The tube—in the saddlebag,” he got out at last.
“Thank you, Basil.”
As Hermoniakos rose, Alexander put into words what his comrades were feeling: “Sir, this is a deserter!”
“So you obviously thought,” the lieutenant-general snapped. “Now fetch a physician at once. Yes, soldier, you!” Alexander fled in something close to terror. Hermoniakos turned on the other men. “The desertion was staged, of course—you had to think it real, so you would say as much if the Jurchen captured you. I never imagined you would be more dangerous to Argyros than the nomads.”
When the lieutenant-general stooped by the saddlebag, a couple of scouts seized the opportunity to sidle away. The rest looked at each other, at the ground, or into the sky—anywhere but at the man who had been first their commander and then their victim.
Several of them exclaimed as Hermoniakos took out the tube: they had seen Orda with it too, in the scouts’ skirmish before the battle against the Jurchen. Justin of Tarsos solved the puzzle fastest. “You sent him out to steal the magic from the plainsmen!”
“Yes,” Hermoniakos said coldly. He turned back to Argyros. “How do I make the spell work?”
“I don’t think it is a spell, sir. Give it to me.” He took the tube with his left hand, set it in the crook of his right elbow—yes, that wrist was broken, no doubt of it. Awkwardly, he drew out the smaller tube what he thought was the proper distance. Bardanes Philippikos made a sign against the evil eye as he raised it to his face.
He made a last small adjustment and offered the tube to Hermoniakos. “Hold it to your eye and point it at that sentry over there, sir.”
The lieutenant-general did as Argyros suggested. “Mother of God!” he said softly. Argyros was not really listening to him. The approaching footsteps of the army physician were a much more welcome sound.
“Well done, well done,” John Tekmanios said a few days later, when Argyros was up to making a formal report to the general.
“Thank you, your lllustriousness,” the scout commander said. He sank gratefully into the folding chair to which Tekmanios waved him; he was still a long way from being steady on his feet. He accepted wine, although he was not used to having a general pour for him.
“I wish there had been two of those tubes for you to take,” Tekmanios said: “one to keep and one to send back to Constantinople for the craftsmen to use as a model to make more.” He paused awhile in thought. Finally he said, “Constantinople it is. I’m pulling back to our side of the river before long. If I got by without your eyes of Argos all these years, I’ll last another month.”
Argyros nodded. He would have decided the same way.
The general was still in that musing, abstracted mood. “I wonder how that barbarian happened to stumble onto the device when no civilized man ever did.”
Argyros shrugged. “He found that one crystal, ground properly, would start a fire. He must have wondered what two together would do, and looked through them when they were in line.”
“I suppose so,” Tekmanios said indifferently. “It’s of no consequence now. We have the tube; it’s up to us to find out all the different things we can do with it. I don’t suppose the first men who got fire from Prometheus—if you believe the myth—knew everything it was good for, either.”
“No, sir,” Argyros agreed. That sort of speculation fascinated him. Christianity looked ahead to a more perfect time, which had to imply that times past had been less so. The concept was hard to grasp. Things had been the same for as long as he could remember, and in his father’s and grandfather’s time as well, from their tales.
Tekmanios had been thinking along a different line. “There also remains the problem of what to do with you.”
“Sir?” Argyros said in surprise.
“Well, I can’t keep you here in the army any longer, that’s plain,” the general said, raising an eyebrow at having to explain the obvious. “Or don’t you think it would be awkward to go back to command men who’ve beaten you half to death?”
“Put that way, yes, sir.” The scouts would be terrified of him. They would also fear his revenge, and might even arrange an accident for him to beat him to the punch. “What then?”
“As I said, you did a fine job of ferreting out the Jurchen secret. It just so happens that George Lakhanodrakon is a cousin of my wife’s.”
“The Master of Offices, sir?” The Master of Offices was one of the most powerful officials in the Roman Empire, one of the few with the right to report directly to the Emperor himself.
“Yes. Among his other duties, he commands the corps of magistrianoi. How would you like to be the one to take your precious tube down to Constantinople, along with a letter urging your admission to their ranks?”