“I made a mistake at the officers’ meeting,” Argyros replied. He tried to leave it at that, but Bardanes and Alexander were waiting expectantly, so he went on, “I showed Hermoniakos to be in the wrong for taking Constantine Doukas to task. After that, I suppose all I would have had to do was blink at the wrong time and Hermoniakos would have come down on me.”
“That is the way of things when you mix in the quarrel of men above your station,” Alexander said with Arab fatalism. “Whether the bear beats the lion or the lion the bear, the rabbit always loses.”
“Lions and bears,” Bardanes snorted. “A damn shame, if you ask me.”
“No one did,” Argyros said.
“I know,” Bardanes said cheerfully. “Another damn shame they didn’t break some other officers I could name instead of you. There’s more than one I owe plenty to, and I’d enjoy getting some of my own back. You, though—well, shit, you’re a hard-nosed bastard, aye, but I can’t deny you’re fair.”
“Thank you for that much, anyhow.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s as much as we can hope for from an officer, and more than we usually get. You’ll find out.”
They gradually drew near another tree-lined creek, a good spot for a band of Jurchen to be lying in ambush. Bardanes and Alexander both unconsciously looked in Argyros’s direction; old habits died hard.
“Let’s split up,” he said, accepting that in their eyes he still held rank. It warmed him for what he was about to do, but only a little. “You two head down to the south end of the stand. Remember to stay out of arrow range. I’ll go north. We’ll all ford the stream and meet on the other side.”
The other two scouts nodded and took their horses downstream. Neither looked back at Argyros; their attention was on the trees and whatever might be lurking among them. As he had told them he would, he rode north. He splashed over to the eastern side of the stream. But he did not turn back to meet the other Romans. Instead he kept heading northeast at a fast trot.
He could imagine the consternation Alexander and Bardanes would feel when they came to the rendezvous point and found he was not there. The first thing they would do, no doubt, would be to race back to the western bank of the creek to see if he had been waylaid.
When they discovered he had not, they would follow his tracks. They would have to. He wondered what they would do when they saw the direction he was taking. He did not think they would follow him. He was riding straight toward the Jurchen.
Even if they did, it would not matter. By then he would have a lead of half an hour and several miles: plenty of time and distance to confuse his trail. In the end, his erstwhile companions would have only one choice—to go back to John Tekmanios and report he had deserted.
Which was only fair, because that was exactly what he intended to do. The biggest worry, of course, was that the first Jurchen he met would shoot him on sight. But when he came riding up openly, one hand on the reins and the other high in the air, the nomad horseman was bemused enough to decide that taking him into camp would be more interesting than using him for target practice. He was not, however, bemused enough to keep from relieving Argyros of his bow, sword, and dagger. The Roman had expected that and did not resist.
The tents of the plainsmen sprawled in disorderly fashion over three times the ground the Roman camp occupied, although Argyros thought the Jurchen fewer in number. The black tents themselves were familiar: large, round, and made of felt. The Romans had borrowed the design from the plainsmen centuries ago.
Men walked here and there, clumping about in their heavy boots. The nomads spent so much time on horseback that they were awkward on the ground, almost like so many birds. They stopped to eye Argyros as the scout brought him in. He was getting tired of people staring at him. The khan’s tent was bigger than the rest. The oxtail standard was stuck in the ground in front of it. Argyros’s captor shouted something in the musical Jurchen tongue, of which the Roman knew nothing except a couple of foul phrases. The tent flap drew back, and two men came out. One was plainly the khan; he carried the same aura of authority Tekmanios bore. He was a small, stocky man in his mid-forties, narrow-eyed and broad-faced like most of the nomads, but with a nose with surprising arch to it. A scar seamed his right cheek. His beard was sparse; he let the few hairs on his upper lip grow long and straggle down over his mouth, which was thin and straight as a sword cut. He listened to the Jurchen who had first encountered Argyros, then turned to the Roman. “I am Tossuc. You will tell me the truth.” His Greek was harsh but understandable.
Argyros dipped his head. “I will tell you the truth, O mighty khan.”
Tossuc made an impatient gesture over the front of his tunic. The garment was of maroon velvet, but of the same cut as the furs and leathers the rest of the Jurchen wore: open from top to bottom, fastened with three ties on the right and one on the left. The khan said, “I need to hear no Roman flattery. Speak to me as to any man, but if you lie I will kill you.”‘
“Then he will not speak to you as to any other man,” chuckled the Jurchen who had accompanied the khan out of his tent. His Greek was better than Tossuc’s. He was white-haired and, rare among the nomads, plump. His face somehow lacked the hardness that marked most of his people. The Roman thought he was the man who had had the tube that caused his present predicament, but had not come close enough during the fighting to be sure.
Seeing Argyros’s gaze shift to him, the plainsman chuckled again and said, “Do not place hope in me, Roman. Only you can save yourself here; I cannot do it for you. I am but the shaman of the clan, not the khan.”
“You also talk too much, Orda,” Tossuc broke in, which seemed to amuse Orda mightily. The khan gave his attention back to Argyros. “Why should I not tie you between horses and rip you apart for a spy?”
Ice walked up Argyros’s back. Tossuc was not joking; the Roman thought him incapable of joking as his shaman had. The ex-commander of scouts said, “I am no spy. Would a spy be fool enough to ride straight to your camp and offer himself up to you?”
“Who knows what a Roman spy would be fool enough to do? If you are no spy, why are you here?
Quick, now; waste no time making up falsehoods.”
“I have no falsehoods to make up,” Argyros replied. “I am—I was—an officer of scouts; some of your men will have seen me and can tell you it is so. I told the Roman lieutenant-general he was wrong in a council and showed him it was true. As reward, he took away my rank. What was I to do?”
“Kill him,” Tossuc said at once.
“No, because then the other Romans would kill me too. But how can I serve the Empire after that? If I join you, I can gain revenge for the slight many times, not just once.”
The khan rubbed his chin, considering. Orda touched his sleeve, spoke in the nomad tongue. He nodded, short and sharp. The shaman said, “Will you swear by your Christian God that you speak the truth?”
“Yes,” Argyros said. He crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, by the Virgin and all the saints, I swear I have left the Romans after my quarrel with Andreas Hermoniakos, the lieutenant-general.”
Orda heard him out, then said to Tossuc, “His truth is not certain, khan, but it is likely. Most of these Christians are too afraid of this hell of theirs to swear such an oath wantonly.”
“Fools,” Tossuc grunted. “Me, I fear nothing, in this world or the next.” It was not meant as a boast; had it been, Argyros would have paid no attention to it. Spoken as a simple statement of fact, though, it commanded belief—and the Roman knew only too well he was not without fear himself, for the khan inspired it in him.