The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  But the sight of Tzikas back serving the Videssians once more after renouncing not only mem but their god inflamed the members of the Makuraner cavalry regiment that had fought so long and well under his command. Before Abivard could charge the man who had betrayed Maniakes and him both, a double handful of horsemen were thundering at the Videssian. Tzikas had shown himself no coward, but he'd also shown himself no fool. He galloped back to the protection of the Videssian line.

  All the Makuraner cavalrymen screamed abuse at their former leader, reviling him in the foulest ways they knew. Abivard started to join them but in the end kept silent, savoring a more subtle revenge: Tzikas had failed in the purpose to which Maniakes had set him. What was the Avtokrator of the Videssians likely to do with—or to—him now? Abivard didn't know but enjoyed letting his imagination run free.

  He did not get to enjoy such speculation long. Videssian horns squalled again. Shouting Maniakes' name—conspicuously not shouting Tzikas' name—the Videssian army rode forward again. Fewer arrows flew from their bows, and fewer from those of the Makuraners as well. A lot of quivers were empty. Picking up shafts from the ground was not the same as being able to refill those quivers.

  «Stand fast!» Abivard called. He had never seen a Videssian force come into battle with such grim determination. Maniakes' men were out to finish the fight one way or the other. His own foot soldiers seemed steady enough, but how much more pounding could they take before they broke? In a moment he'd find out.

  Swords slashing, the Videssians rode up against the Makuraner line. Abivard hurried along the line to the place that looked most threatening. Trading strokes with several Videssians, he acquired a cut—luckily a small one—on the back of his sword hand, a dent in his helmet, and a ringing in the ear by the dent. He thought he dealt out more damage than that, but in combat, with what he saw constantly shifting, he had trouble being sure.

  Peering up and down the line, he saw the Videssians steadily forcing his men back despite all they could do. He bit his Up. If the Makuraners did not hold steady, the line would break somewhere. When that happened, Maniakes' riders would pour through and cut up his force from in front and behind. That was a recipe for disaster.

  Forcing the enemy back seemed beyond his men's ability now that his stratagem had proved imperfectly successful. What did that leave him? He thought for a moment of retreating back into Zadabak, but then glanced over toward the walled city atop its mound of ancient rubbish. Retreating uphill and into the city was liable to be a nightmare worse than a Videssian breakthrough down here on the flatlands.

  Which left… nothing. The God did not grant man's every prayer. Sometimes, even for the most pious, even for the most virtuous, things went wrong. He had done everything he knew how to do here to beat the Videssians and had proved to know not quite enough. He wondered if he would be able to retreat on the flat without tearing the army to pieces. He didn't think so but had the bad feeling he would have to try it anyhow before long.

  Messengers rode and ran up to him, reporting pressure on the right, pressure on the left, pressure in the center. He had a last few hundred reserves left and fed them into the fight more in the spirit of leaving nothing undone than with any serious expectation that they would turn the tide. They didn't, which left him facing the same dilemma less than half an hour later, this time without any palliative to apply.

  If he drew back with his left, he pulled away from the swamp anchoring that end of the line and gave the Videssians a free road into his rear. If he drew back with his right, he pulled away from Zadabak and its hillock. He decided to try that rather than the other plan, hoping the Videssians would fear a trap and hesitate to push between his army and the town.

  A few years before the ploy might have given Maniakes pause, but no more. Without wasted motion or time he sent horsemen galloping into the gap Abivard had created for him. Abivard's heart sank. Whenever he'd been beaten before, here in the land of the Thousand Cities, he'd managed to keep his army intact, ready to fight another day. For the life of him, he didn't see how he was going to manage that this time.

  More Videssian horn calls rang out. Abivard knew those calls as well as he knew his own. As people often do, though, at first he heard what he expected to hear, not what the trumpeters blew. When his mind as well as his ear recognized the notes, he stared in disbelief.

  «That's retreat» Turan said, sounding as dazed as Abivard felt. «I know it is,» Abivard answered. «By the God, though, I don't know why. We were helpless before them, and Maniakes surely knew it.»

  But the flankers who should have gotten around to Abivard's rear and started the destruction of the Makuraner army instead reined in and, obedient to the Avtokrator's command, returned to their own main body. And then that main body disengaged from Abivard's force and rode rapidly off toward the southeast, leaving Abivard in possession of the field.

  «I don't believe it,» he said. He'd said it several times by then. «He had us. By the God, he had us. And he let us get away. No, he didn't just let us get away. He ran from us even though we couldn't make him run.»

  «If battle magic worked, it would work like that,» Turan said. «But battle magic doesn't work or works so seldom that it's not worth the effort. Did he up and go mad all of a sudden?»

  «Too much to hope for,» Abivard said, to which his lieutenant could only numbly nod. He went on, «Besides, he knew what he was doing, or thought he did. He handled that retreat as smoothly as any other part of the battle. It's only that he didn't need to make it… did he?»

  Turan did not answer that. Turan could not answer that any more than Abivard could. They waited and exclaimed and scratched their heads but came to no conclusions.

  In any other country they would have understood sooner than they could on the floodplain between the Tutub and the Tib. On the Pardrayan steppe, on the high plateau of Makuran, in the Videssian westlands, an army on the move kicked up a great cloud of dust. But the rich soil hereabouts was kept so moist, little dust rose from it. They did not know the army was approaching till they saw the first outriders off to the northeast.

  Spying them gave rise to the next interesting question: whose army were they? «They can't be Videssians, or Maniakes wouldn't have run from them,» Abivard said. «They can't be our men, because these are our men.» He waved to his battered host.

  «They can't be Vaspurakaners or men of Erzerum, either, or Khamorth from off the steppe,» Turan said. «If they were any of those folk Maniakes would have welcomed them with open arms.»

  «True. Every word of it true,» Abivard agreed. «That leaves nobody, near as I can see. By the kind of logic the Videssians love so well, then, that army there doesn't exist.» His shaky laugh said what such logic was worth.

  He did his best to make his army ready to fight at need. Seeing the state his men were in, he knew how forlorn that best was. The army from which Maniakes had fled drew closer. Now Abivard could make out the banners that army flew. As with the Videssian horn calls, recognition and understanding did not go together.

  «They're our men,» he said. «Makuraners, flying the red lion.»

  «But they can't be,» Turan said. «We don't have any cavalry force closer than Vaspurakan or the Videssian westlands. I wish we did, but we don't.»

  «I know,» Abivard said. «I wrote to Romezan, asking him to come to our aid, but the King of Kings, in his wisdom, countermanded me.»

  Still wondering, he rode out toward the approaching horsemen. He took a good-sized detachment of his surviving cavalry with him, still unsure this wasn't some kind of trap or trick—though why Maniakes, with a won battle, would have needed to resort to tricks was beyond him.

  A party to match his separated itself from the main body of the mysterious army. «By the God,» Turan said softly.

  «By the God.» Abivard echoed. That burly, great-mustached man in the gilded armor– Now, at last, Abivard rode out ahead of his escort. He raised his voice: «Romezan, is it really you?»

  T
he commander of the Makuraner mobile force shouted back: «No, it's just someone who looks like me.» Roaring laughter, he spurred his horse, too, so that he and Abivard met alone between their men.

  When they clasped hands, Romezan's remembered strength made every bone in Abivard's right hand ache. «Welcome, welcome, three times welcome,» Abivard said most sincerely, and then, lowering his voice though no one save Romezan was in earshot, «Welcome indeed, but didn't Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, order you to stay in the westlands?»

  «He certainly did,» Romezan boomed, careless of who heard him, «and so here I am.»

  Abivard stared. «You got the order—and you disobeyed it?»

  «That's what I did, all right,» Romezan said cheerfully. «From what you said in your letter, you needed help, and a lot of it. Sharbaraz didn't know what was happening here as well as you did. That's what I thought, anyhow.»

  «What will he do when he finds out, do you think?» Abivard asked.

  «Nothing much—there are times when being of the Seven Clans works for you,» Romezan answered. «If the King of Kings gives us too hard a time, we rise up, and he knows it.»

  He spoke with the calm confidence of a man bom into the high nobility, a man for whom Sharbaraz was undoubtedly a superior but not a figure one step—and that a short one—removed from the God. Although Abivard's sister was married to the King of Kings, he still retained much of the awe for the office, if not for the man who held it for the moment, that had been inculcated in him since childhood. When he thought it through, he knew how little sense that made, but he didn't—he couldn't—always pause to think it through.

  Romezan said, «Besides, how angry can Sharbaraz be once he finds out we've made Maniakes run off with his tail between his legs?»

  «How angry?» Abivard pursed his lips. «That depends. If he decides you came here to join forces with me, not so you could go after Maniakes, he's liable to be very angry indeed.»

  «Why on earth would he think that?» Romezan boomed laughter. «What does he expect the two of us would do together, move on Mashiz instead of twisting Maniakes' tail again?»

  «Isn't this a pleasant afternoon?» Abivard said. «I don't know that I've seen the sun so bright in the sky since, oh, maybe yesterday.»

  Romezan stared at him, the beginning of a scowl on his face. «What are you talking about?» he demanded. Fierce as fire in a fight, he wasn't the fastest man Abivard had ever seen in pursuit of an idea But he wasn't a fool, either; he did eventually get where he was going. After a couple of heartbeats the scowl vanished. His eyes widened. «He truly is liable to think that? Why, by the God?»

  For all his blithe talk a little while before about going into rebellion, Romezan drew back when confronted with the actual possibility. Having drawn back himself, Abivard did not think less of him for that. He said, «Maybe he thinks I'm too good at what I do.»

  «How can a general be too good?» Romezan asked. «There's no such thing as winning too many battles.»

  His faith touched Abivard. Somehow Romezan had managed to live for years in the Videssian westlands without acquiring a bit of subtlety. «A general who is too good, a general who wins all his battles,» Abivard said, almost as if explaining things to Varaz, «has no more foes to beat, true, but if he looks toward the throne on which his sovereign sits…»

  «Ah,» Romezan said, his voice serious now. Yes, talking of rebellion had been easy when it had been nothing but talk. But he went on, «The King of Kings suspects you, lord? If you're not loyal to him, who is?»

  «If you knew how many times I've put that same question to him.» Abivard sighed. «The answer, as best I can see, is that the King of Kings suspects everyone and doesn't think anyone is loyal to him, me included.»

  «If he truly does think that way, he'll prove himself right one of these days,» Romezan said, tongue wagging looser than was perfectly wise.

  Wise tongue or not, Abivard basked in his words like a lizard in the sun. For so long everyone around him had spoken nothing but fulsome praises of the King of Kings—oh, not Roshnani, but her thought and his were twin mirrors. To hear one of Sharbaraz' generals acknowledge that he could be less man wise and less than charitable was like wine after long thirst.

  Romezan was looking over the field. «I don't see Tzikas anywhere,» he remarked.

  «No, you wouldn't,» Abivard agreed. «He had the misfortune to be captured by the Videssians not so long ago.» His voice was as bland as barley porridge without salt: how could anyone imagine he'd had anything to do with such a misfortune? «And, having been captured, the redoubtable Tzikas threw in his lot with his former folk and was most definitely seen not more than a couple of hours ago, fighting on Maniakes' side again.» That probably wasn't fair to the unhappy Tzikas, who had problems of his own—a good many of them self-inflicted—but Abivard couldn't have cared less.

  «The sooner he falls into the Void, the better for everybody,» Romezan growled. «Never did like him, never did trust him. The idea that a Videssian could ape Makuraner manners—and to think we'd think he was one of us… not right, not natural. How come Maniakes didn't just up and kill him after he caught him? He owes him a big one, eh?»

  «I think he was more interested in hurting us than in hurting Tzikas, worse luck,» Abivard said, and Romezan nodded. Abivard went on, «But we'll hurt him worse than the other way around. I've been so desperately low in cavalry till you got here, I couldn't take the war to Maniakes. I had to let him choose his moves and then respond.»

  «We'll go after him.» Romezan looked over the field once more. «You took him on with just foot soldiers, pretty much, didn't you?» Abivard nodded. Romezan let out a shrill little whistle. «I wouldn't like to try that, not with infantry alone. But your men seem to have given the misbelievers everything they wanted. How did you ever get infantry to fight so well?»

  «I trained them hard, and I fought them the same way,» Abivard said. «I had no choice: it was use infantry or go under. When they have confidence in what they're doing, they make decent troops. Better than decent troops, as a matter of fact.»

  «Who would have thought it?» Romezan said. «You must be a wizard to work miracles no one else could hope to match. Well, the days of needing to work miracles are done. You have proper soldiers again, so you can stop wasting your time on infantrymen.»

  «I suppose so.» Oddly, the thought saddened Abivard. Of course cavalry was more valuable than infantry, but he felt a pang over letting the foot soldiers he'd trained slip back into being nothing more than garrison troops once more. It seemed a waste of what he'd made them. Well, they'd be good garrison troops, anyhow, and he could still get some use out of them in this campaign.

  Romezan said, «Let's clean up this field here, patch up your wounded, and then we'll go chase ourselves some Videssians.»

  Abivard didn't need to hear that notion twice to like it. He hadn't been able to chase the Videssians in all his campaigning through the land of the Thousand Cities. He'd put himself where they would be a couple times, and he'd lured them into coming to him, too. But to go after them, knowing he could catch them «Aye,» he said. «Let's.»

  Maniakes very quickly made it clear that he did not intend to be brought to bay. He went back to the old routine of wrecking canals and levees behind him to slow the Makuraner pursuit. Even with that, though, not all was as it had been before Romezan had come to the land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssians did not enjoy the luxury of leisure to destroy cities. They had to content themselves with burning crops and riding through fields to trample down grain: wreckage, yes, but of a lesser sort.

  Abivard wrote a letter to Sharbaraz, announcing his victory over Maniakes. Romezan also wrote one with Abivard looking over his shoulder as he drafted it and offering helpful suggestions. It apologized for disobeying the orders he'd gotten from the King of Kings and promised that if forgiven, he'd never again make such a heinous blunder. After reading it, Abivard felt as if he'd eaten too much
fruit that had been too sweet to begin with and then had been candied in honey.

  Romezan shook his head as he stamped his signet—a wild boar with great tushes—into the hot wax holding the letter closed. «If someone sent me a letter like this, I'd throw up.»

  «So would I,» Abivard said. «But it's the sort of thing Sharbaraz likes to get. We've both seen that: tell the truth straight out and you're in trouble, load up your letter with this nonsense and you get what you want.»

  The same courier carried both letters off toward the west, toward a Mashiz no longer in danger from the Videssian army, toward a King of Kings who was likely to care less about that than about his orders, no matter how foolish, being obeyed. Abivard wondered what sort of letter would come out of the west, out of the shadows of the Dilbat Mountains, out of the shadows of a court life only distantly connected to the real world.

  He also wondered when he would hear that Tzikas had been put to death. When he did not hear of the renegade's premature– though not, to his way of thinking, untimely—demise, he wondered when he would hear of Tzikas' leading the rear guard against his own men.

  That did not happen, either. The longer either of those things took to come about, the more unhappy he got. He'd handed Tzikas over to Maniakes in the confident expectation—which Maniakes had fostered—that the Avtokrator would put him to death. Now Maniakes was instead holding on to him: to Abivard it seemed unfair.

  But he knew better than to complain. If the Avtokrator had managed to trick him, that was his own fault, no one else's. Maybe he'd get the chance to pay Maniakes back one day soon. And maybe he wouldn't have to rely on trickery. Maybe he'd run the Videssians to earth as if they were a herd of wild asses and ride them down. Amazing, the thoughts to which the arrival of a real cavalry force could give rise.