The healer-priest released his hold on the injured man and sat up. The blue-robe's face was white and drained, a token of what the healing had cost him. A moment later, the soldier sat, too. A pale scar marred the skin of his neck; by its seeming, he might have worn it for years. Wonder filled his face as he picked up the bloodstained arrow the priest had pulled from his neck.
"Thank you, holy sir," he said, his voice as unhurt as the rest of him. "I thought I was dead."
"As I think I am now," the healer croaked. "Water, I pray you, or wine." The trooper pulled free the flask that still dangled from his belt, handing it to the man who had saved him. The blue-robe's larynx worked as he threw back his head and gulped down great drafts.
Krispos urged his horse forward, glad the soldier was hale. Healer-priests were better suited to dealing with the consequences of skirmishes than battles, for they quickly exhausted their powers—and themselves. In large conflicts, they helped only the most desperately hurt, leaving the rest to those who fought wounds with sutures and bandages rather than magic.
Noetos rode toward Krispos. Saluting, he said, "We drove the bastards off with no trouble, your Majesty. Sorry we had to slow you down to do it."
"Not half so sorry as I am," Krispos answered. "Well, the good god willing, that won't happen again." He explained his plan to extend the cavalry screen around the army. Noetos nodded with sober approval. Krispos went on, "Did your men capture any of the rebels?"
"Aye, we got one in the pursuit after I sent Barisbakourios to you," Noetos said. "Shall we squeeze the Thanasiot cheese till the whey runs out of him?" A couple of his lieutenants were close by; they chuckled grimly at the rearguard commander's truth in jest's clothing.
"Presently, at need," Krispos said. "Let's see what magic can do with him first. Bring him here. I want to see him."
Noetos called orders. Some of his troopers frogmarched a young man in peasant homespun into the Avtokrator's presence. The captive must have taken a fall from his horse. His tunic was out at both elbows and over one knee; he was bloody in all three of those places and a couple of others, as well. Serum oozed down into one eye from a scrape on his forehead.
But he remained defiant. When one of the guards growled, "Down on your belly before his Majesty, wretch," he bent his head, sure enough, but only to spit between his feet as if in rejection of Skotos. All the soldiers snarled then, and roughly forced him into a proskynesis in spite of his struggles.
"Haul him to his feet," Krispos said, thinking the cavalrymen were likely to have done worse to their prisoner had they not been under his eye. When the ragged, battered youth—he" might have been Evripos' age, more likely Katakolon's—i Krispos asked him, "What have I done to you, that you treat me like the dark god?"
The prisoner worked his jaw, perhaps preparing to spit once more. "You don't want to do that, sonny," one of the troopers said.
The young man spat anyhow. Krispos let his captors shake him a little, but then raised a hand. "Hold on. I want this question answered as freely as may be, given what's happened here. What have I done, to be hated so? We've been at peace most of the years since he was born; taxes are lower now than then. What does he have against me? What do you have against me, sirrah? You may as well speak your mind; the headsman's shadow already falls across your fate."
"You think I fear death?" the prisoner said. "By the good god, I laugh at death—it takes me out of this trap of Skotos, the world, and sends me on to Phos' eternal light. Do your worst to me; that's but for a moment. Then I shake free of the dung we call a body, like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon."
His eyes blazed, though he kept blinking the one beneath the scrape. The last set of eyes Krispos had seen burning with such fanaticism had belonged to the priest Pyrrhos, first his benefactor, then his ecumenical patriarch, and at last such a ferocious and inflexible champion of orthodoxy that he'd had to be deposed.
Krispos said, "Very well, young fellow—" He realized he was speaking as if to one of his sons who'd been foolish. "—you despise the world. Why do you despise my place in it?"
"Because you're rich, and wallow in your gold like a hog in mud," the young Thanasiot answered. "Because you choose the material over the spiritual, and give over your soul to Skotos in the process."
"Here, you speak to his Majesty with respect, or it'll go the harder for you," one of the cavalrymen growled. The prisoner spat on the ground again. His captor backhanded him across the face. Blood started from the corner of his mouth.
"Enough of that," Krispos said. "He'll be one of many who feel that way. He's eaten up bad doctrine and sickened on it."
"Liar!" the young man shouted, careless of his own fate. "You're the one with false teachings poisoning your mind. Abandon the world and the things of the world for the true and lasting life, the one yet to come." He could not raise his arms, but lifted his eyes to the heavens. "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind—"
Hearing the heretic pray to the good god with the identical words he himself used, Krispos wondered for a moment if the fellow could be right. Pyrrhos, in his day, might have come close to saying yes, but not even the rigorously ascetic Pyrrhos could have countenanced destroying all the things of this world for the sake of the afterlife. How were men and women to live and raise families if they wrecked their farms or shops, abandoned parents or children?
He put the question to the prisoner: "If you Thanasioi had your way, wouldn't you soonest let mankind die out in a single generation's time, so no one would be left alive to commit any sins?"
"Aye, that's so," the youth answered. "It won't be so simple; we know that—most folk are too cowardly, too much in love with materialism—"
"By which it sounds as if you mean a full belly and a roof over one's head," Krispos broke in.
"Anything that ties you to the world is evil, is from Skotos," the prisoner insisted. "The purest among us stop taking food and let themselves starve, the better to join Phos as soon as they may."
Krispos believed him. That streak of fanatic asceticism ran deep in many Videssians, whether orthodox or heretic. The Thanasioi, though, seemed to have found a way to channel that religious energy to their own ends, perhaps more effectively than the comfortable clergy who came from Videssos the city.
"Me, I aim to live in this world as long and as well as I can," the Avtokrator said. The Thanasiot laughed scornfully. Krispos did not care. Having known privation in his youth, he saw no point to embracing it when he did not have to. He turned to the men who had hold of the youngster. "Tie him onto a horse. Don't let him escape or harm himself. When we encamp tonight, I'll have Zaidas the wizard question him. And if magic doesn't get me what I need to know ..."
The guards nodded. The young heretic just glared. Krispos wondered how long that defiance would last if confronted with fire and barbed iron. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out.
Late in the afternoon, the Thanasioi again tried to raid the imperial army. A courier carried a dripping head back to Krispos. His stomach lurched; the hacking was as crude as that of any farmer who slaughtered a pig, while the iron smell of fresh blood also brought back memories of butchering.
If the courier had any such memories, they didn't bother him. Grinning, he said, "We drove the whoresons off, your Majesty—spreading us wider was a fine plan. Junior here, he didn't run fast enough."
"Good," Krispos said, trying not to meet Junior's sightless eyes. He dug in the pouch at his belt and tossed the courier a goldpiece. "This is for the good news."
"Phos bless you, majesty," the fellow exclaimed. "Shall we put this lad on a pike and carry him ahead of us for a standard?"