"I'll be as loyal to you, most holy sir," Maniakes promised, and the patriarch cheered up again.
Maniakes and Lysia peered through the grillwork that screened off the imperial niche in the High Temple. Maniakes had stored the parchment with the text of Agathios' dispensation with other vital state documents; he presumed the ecumenical patriarch had done something similar with his written pledge not to abandon Videssos the city save under the most dire of circumstances.
"The temple is packed today," Lysia said. Sure enough, nobles had trouble finding space in the pews because so many common people had come to hear the patriarch's promised proclamation.
"Better to let Agathios make the announcement than for me to do it," Maniakes answered. "If I did, it would seem as if I forced the agreement down his throat. Coming from him, it'll be a triumph of reason for both sides."
He started to say more, but the congregants below suddenly quieted, signaling that the patriarch was making his way to the altar. Sure enough, here came Agathios, with censer-swinging priests of lower rank accompanying him and filling the High Temple with sweet-smelling smoke.
When the patriarch reached the altar, he raised his hands to the great stern image of Phos in the dome of the High Temple. The worshipers sitting on all sides of the altar rose; behind the screening grillwork, so did Maniakes and Lysia. They intoned Phos' creed along with Agathios and the rest of the congregants: "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor."
Maniakes took less pleasure in the liturgy than he usually did. Instead of joining him to his fellow believers throughout the Empire, today it seemed to separate him from what he really waited for: Agathios' sermon. His prayers felt perfunctory, springing more from his mouth than from his heart.
Agathios led the worshipers in the creed again, then slowly lowered his hands to urge them back into their seats. Everyone stared intently at him. He stood silent, milking the moment, letting the tension build. "He should be a mime," Lysia whispered to Maniakes. He nodded but waved her to silence.
"Rejoice!" Agathios cried suddenly, his voice filling the High Temple and echoing back from the dome. "Rejoice!" he repeated in softer tones. "His Majesty the Avtokrator has sworn by the lord with the great and good mind to rule the Empire of Videssos from Videssos the city so long as hope remains with us."
Rumor had said as much, these past few days, but rumor was known to lie. For that matter, patriarchs were also known to lie, but less often. The High Temple rang with cheers. They, too, came rolling back from the dome, filling the huge open space below with sound.
"They love you," Lysia said.
"They approve of me because I'm staying," Maniakes answered, shaking his head.
"They'd be howling for my blood if Agathios had just told them I'd be sailing day after tomorrow."
Before Lysia could respond to that, Agathios was continuing: "Surely Phos will bless the Avtokrator, his viceregent on earth, for this brave and wise choice, and will also pour his blessings down on the queen of cities here so that it remains our imperial capital forevermore. So may it be!"
"So may it be!" everyone echoed, Maniakes' voice loud among the rest. He tensed as he waited for Agathios to go on. The patriarch had set forth what he had got from Maniakes. How would he present what he had given up?
Agathios' hesitation this time wasn't to build tension. He was like most men: he had trouble admitting he had needed to concede anything. At last, he said, "His Majesty the Avtokrator bears a heavy burden and must struggle valiantly to restore Videssos' fortunes. Any aid he can find in that struggle is a boon to him. We all know of the tragic loss of his wife-his first wife-who died giving birth to Likarios, his son and heir."
Maniakes frowned. It wasn't really the patriarch's business to fix the succession, even though what he said agreed with what the Avtokrator had established. He glanced over at Lysia. She showed no signs of annoyance. Maniakes decided to let it go. In any case, Agathios was continuing: "All this being said, on reflection I have determined that a dispensation recognizing and declaring licit in all ways the marriage between his Majesty the Avtokrator and the Empress Lysia will serve the Empire of Videssos without compromising the long-established holy dogmas of the temples, and have accordingly granted them the aforesaid dispensation."
At his words, a priest near the altar set down his thurible and strode out of the High Temple, presumably in protest. Out went Kourikos and Phevronia, too. The logothete of the treasury was willing to go on working with Maniakes, but not to be seen approving of his marriage. Another priest left the High Temple, and a few more layfolk, too.
But the large majority of worshipers and clerics stayed where they were. Agathios had not presented his bargain with Maniakes as the this-for-that exchange it was at bottom. That probably helped reconcile some of the congregants to the arrangement. And others would be relieved enough to hear that Maniakes was staying in Videssos the city that they wouldn't care how Agathios had got him to do so.
The patriarch stood straighter when he saw his announcement was not going to set off riots under the temple's dome. "The liturgy is ended," he said, and Maniakes could almost hear him adding, and I got away with it, too. A buzz of talk rose from the congregants as they made their way out to the mundane world once more. Maniakes tried to make out what they were saying but had little luck.
He turned to Lysia. "How does it feel to be my proper wife in the eyes of all-" Well, most, he thought. "-the clerics in the Empire?"
"Except for morning sickness, it feels fine," she answered. "But then, it felt fine before, too."
"Good," Maniakes said.
If Maniakes stood on the seawall and looked west over the Cattle Crossing, he could see smoke rising from the Makuraner army's encampments in Across. And now, if he stood at the northern edge of the capital's land wall, he could look north and see smoke rising from the suburbs the Kubratoi were burning. Refugees streamed into Videssos the city from the north, some in wagons with most of their goods, others without even shoes on their feet. Monasteries and convents did what they could to feed and shelter the fugitives.
Maniakes sent the religious foundations a little gold and a little grain to help them bear the burden. That was all he could do. With the Makuraners holding the westlands and the Kubratoi swooping down toward the capital, the lands recognizing his authority were straitened indeed.
He visited a monastery common room. For one thing, he wanted to show the refugees he knew they were suffering. The fervent greetings he got made him uneasily aware of how much power his office held over the hearts and minds and spirits of the Videssian people. Had he sailed off to Kalavria, they might indeed have lost hope-though he had no intention of ever admitting that to Agathios.
He also wanted to get a feel for what the Kubratoi had in mind with their invasion. "I just saw maybe ten or twenty," one man said in a rustic accent.
"Didn't wait for no more-not me, your Majesty. I hightailed it fast as I could go."
"Saw 'em out on some flat ground," another fellow said. "They weren't bunched up or nothin'-ridin' along all kind of higgledy-piggledy, like."
"They would have got me sure," a third man offered, his face breaking out in sweat as he recalled his escape, "only they stopped to kill my pigs and loot my house and so I was able to get away."
The stories confirmed what Maniakes had come to believe from other reports: unlike the Makuraners, the Kubratoi did not plan to make any permanent conquests. They had swarmed into Videssos for loot and rape and destruction, and spread themselves thin across the landscape.
He summoned his father and Rhegorios to a council of war. "If we can catch them before they're able to concentrate, we'll maul them," he said.
"I ask the question you would want me to ask," Rhegorios said: "Are you looking for us to do more than we can?"
"And here's another question along with that one," the elder Maniakes adde
d.
"So what if we do beat them? They'll just scoot back to Kubrat, faster than we can chase them. When they ride north, they'll torch whatever they missed burning on the way south. Even a win seems hardly worth it."
"No, that's not so, or at least I think I have a way to make it not so." The Avtokrator pointed to the map of the region north of Videssos the city that lay on the table in front of him. He talked for some time.
When he was through, the elder Maniakes and Rhegorios looked at each other.
"If I'd been so sneaky when I was so young," the elder Maniakes rumbled, "I'd have had the red boots instead of Likinios, and you, lad-" He pointed at Maniakes. "-would be standing around waiting for me to die."
Before Maniakes could say anything to that, Rhegorios declared, "It all still depends on that first victory."
"What doesn't?" Maniakes said. "If we do go wrong, though, we'll be able to retreat inside the walls of Videssos the city. We won't be caught in a place where we can be hunted down and slaughtered." He slammed his fist onto the tabletop. "I don't want to think about retreat, not now." He hit the table again. "No, that's not right-I know I need to think about it. But I don't want the men to know it's ever crossed my mind, or else it'll be in the back of theirs."
"Ah, there you come down to the rub," the elder Maniakes said. "But you're going to try this scheme of yours?"
Maniakes remembered the ambush Etzilios had set, remembered his failure in the campaign up the valley of the Arandos. As Rhegorios had said, he had tried to do too much in both of them. Was he making the same mistake now? He decided it didn't matter. "I will try it," he said. "We aren't strong enough to wrest the westlands away from Makuran. If we also aren't strong enough to keep the Kubratoi away from Videssos the city, I might as well have sailed to Kalavria, because it would be about the only place our foes couldn't come after me. That was one of the reasons I wanted to go there."
"Always Haloga pirates," Rhegorios said helpfully.
"Thank you so much, cousin and brother-in-law of mine," Maniakes said. "Does either of you think the risk isn't worth taking?" If anyone would tell him the truth, his father and cousin would. They both sat silent. Maniakes slammed his fist down on the table for a third time. "We'll try it."
Sunburst banners flapping in the breeze, Maniakes' army rode forth from the Silver Gate. The Avtokrator glanced south toward the practice field where his soldiers had spent so much time at drill. This was no drill. This was war. Now he would find out how much the men had learned.
Scouts galloped out ahead of the main body. Finding the foe would not be hard, not at the start of this campaign. All Maniakes had to do was lead his army toward the thickest smoke. He absently wondered why all warriors, regardless of their nation, so loved to set fires. But finding the foe was not the only reason to send out scouts. You also wanted to make sure the foe did not find you before you were ready.
"Haven't been on campaign in a goodish while," Symvatios said, riding up alongside Maniakes. "If you don't do this every year, you forget how heavy chainmail gets-and I'm not as young as I used to be, not quite." He chuckled.
"I expect I'll still remember what needs doing, though."
"Uncle, I'm sorry to have to ask you to come along, but I'm short a couple of senior officers," Maniakes answered. "If Tzikas has a command these days, it's on the wrong side, and Parsmanios-" He didn't go on. That grief wouldn't leave him soon, if ever.
"I am a senior officer, by the good god," Symvatios agreed, laughing again. He had always been more easygoing than the elder Maniakes. "Not quite ready for the boneyard, though I hope to show you."
What Maniakes hoped was that his uncle would have the sense not to get mixed up in hand-to-hand fighting with barbarous warriors a third his age. He didn't say that, for fear of piquing Symvatios and making him rush into danger to prove he could still meet it bravely.
Towns and nobles' villas and estates clustered close to the imperial capital: rich pickings for raiders who managed to get so far south. The Kubratoi had managed. Maniakes' troopers ran into them on the afternoon of the day they had left Videssos the city.
When the scouts came pounding back with the news, the first question Maniakes asked was, "Are we riding into an ambush?"
"No, your Majesty," one of the horsemen assured him. "The barbarians-a couple of hundred of 'em, I'd guess-never spied us. They were busy plundering the little village they were at, and there's open country beyond it, so nobody's lurking there waiting to jump us."
"All right, we'll hit them." Maniakes slammed a fist down on the mailcoat that covered his thighs. He turned to Symvatios. "Hammer and anvil."
"Right you are," his uncle answered. "That's the way we'll be running this whole campaign, isn't it?" He called orders to the regiments he commanded: no horn signals now, for fear of alerting the foe. His detachment peeled off from the main force and rode away to the northeast on a long swing around the hamlet the nomads were looting.
Maniakes made the main force wait half an hour, then waved them forward. Following the scouts, he headed almost straight for the Kubrati-infested village: he swung his troopers slightly westward, to come on the Kubratoi from the southwest.
That worked out even better than he had expected, for an almond grove screened his approach from the Kubratoi. Only when the first ranks of Videssian horsemen rode out from the cover of the trees did the barbarians take alarm. Their frightened shouts were music to his ears. He shouted for music of his own. Now the trumpeters blared forth the charge.
A lot of the Kubratoi had dismounted. Several of them stood around waiting their turn with a luckless, screaming woman who hadn't been able to flee. The fellow who lay atop her at the moment sprang to his feet and tried to run for his steppe pony, but tripped over the leather breeches he hadn't fully raised. When the first arrow penetrated him, he screamed louder than the woman had. A couple of more hits and he sagged to the ground once more and lay still.
Arrows came back toward the Videssians, too, but not many. Most of the nomads who were on horseback or could get to their ponies rode away from the oncoming imperial force as fast as they could. "Push them!" Maniakes called to his men.
"Don't let them think of anything but running."
Run the Kubratoi did. A lot of them outdistanced their pursuers, too, for the boiled leather they wore was lighter than the Videssians' ironmongery. And then, from straight ahead of them, more Videssian horn calls rang out. The nomads cried out in dismay: in running from Maniakes' horsemen, they had run right into the soldiers Symvatios commanded.
Trapped between the two Videssian forces, the Kubratoi fought as best they could, but were quickly overwhelmed. Maniakes hoped they had perished to the last man, but knew how unlikely that was. He had to assume a couple of them had escaped to warn their fellows he was in the field.
As fights went, it wasn't much, and Maniakes knew it. The Videssian army, though, had been without victories for so long that even a tiny one made the soldiers feel as if they had just sacked Mashiz. They sat around the campfires that evening, drinking rough wine from the supply wagons and talking in quick, excited voices about what they had done-even if a lot of them, in truth, had done very little.
"Hammer and anvil," Symvatios said, lifting a clay mug to Maniakes in salute. Maniakes drank with his uncle. Kameas had wanted to pack some fine vintages for him. This time, he hadn't let the vestiarios get away with it. Wine that snarled when it hit the palate was what you were supposed to drink when you took the field. If nothing else, it made you mean.
"We have to do this three more times, I think," the Avtokrator said. "If we manage that…" He let the sentence hang there. Fate had delivered too many blows to Videssos for him to risk tempting it now. He drained his mug and said, "You made a fine anvil, Uncle."
"Aye, well, my hard head suits me to the role," Symvatios replied, laughing. He quickly grew more serious. "We won't be able to work it the same way in every fight, you know. The ground will be different, the Kubratoi
will be a little more alert than they were today…"
"It'll get harder; I know that," Maniakes said. "I'm glad we had an easy first one, that's all. What we have to do is make sure that we don't do anything stupid and give the Kubratoi an edge they shouldn't have."
"You've got enough scouts and sentries out, and you've posted them far enough away from our camp," Symvatios said. "The only way Etzilios could surprise us would be to fall out of the sky."
"Good." Maniakes cast a wary eye heavenward. Symvatios laughed again. The Avtokrator didn't.
About noon the next day, the scouts came upon a good-sized band of Kubratoi. This time they were seen-and pursued. Some fought a rearguard action while others brought the news to Maniakes. He listened to them, then turned to Symvatios. "Move up with your detachment," he said. "Make as if you're at the head of the whole army. While they're engaging you, I'll swing wide and try to take them in flank."
His uncle saluted. "We'll see how it goes, your Majesty: a sideways hammer blow, but I think a good one. My guess is, the nomads don't yet know how many men we've put in the field."
"I think you're right," Maniakes said. "With luck, you'll fool them into believing you're at the head of the whole force. Once they're well engaged with you…"
Banners flapping and horns blaring, Symvatios led his detachment forward to support the Videssian scouts. Maniakes hung back and swung off to the east, using low, scrubbily wooded hills to screen his men from the notice of the nomads. Less than an hour passed before a rider galloped over to let him know the Kubratoi were locked in combat with Symvatios' troopers. "There's enough to give them a hard time, too, your Majesty," the fellow said.
Plenty of east-west tracks ran through the hills; this close to Videssos the city, roads crisscrossed the land like spiderwebs. Maniakes divided his force into three columns, to get all his men through as fast as he could. Again, he sent scouting parties ahead to make sure the Kubratoi weren't lying in wait in the woods. Even after the scouts went through safe, his head swiveled back and forth, watching the oaks and elms and ashes for concealed nomads.
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