Bagradas did not notice that—or if he did, had sense enough not to let on. He said, “Whatever Kubratoi still have fight in them want to come in on our side, Your Majesty, not against us. We picked up another few dozen yesterday. Of course, when it comes to real fighting, they may do us as little good as that group that stayed with you out of the pass all the way up until things looked dangerous and then took off.” The regimental commander lifted a cynical eyebrow.
“As long as they aren’t raiding us, they can do as they please,” Krispos said. “We brought along enough of our own folk to do our fighting for us.” He lifted a hand from Progress’ neck to pluck at his beard. “I wonder how that column I sent out is faring.”
“My guess would be that they are still out swinging wide, Your Majesty,” Bagradas said. “If they turn north too close to us, Harvas might be able to position men in front of them.”
“They were warned about that,” Krispos said. One more thing to worry about—
He urged Progress ahead toward the group of sorcerers. They were, he saw without surprise, gathered around Tanilis. Zaidas, who had been animatedly chattering with her, looked over with almost comic startlement as Krispos rode up beside him.
“A good thing I’m not Harvas,” Krispos remarked dryly. He bowed in the saddle to Tanilis. “My lady, may I speak with you?”
“Of course, Your Majesty. You know you have only to command.” She spoke without apparent irony and flicked the reins to get her horse into a trot and away from the wizards. Krispos did the same. Zaidas and the other wizards stared after them in disappointment. When enough clear space had opened up to give them some privacy, Tanilis inclined her head to Krispos. “Your Majesty?”
“I just wanted to say I feel bad about the way things ended between us last night.”
“You needn’t trouble yourself about it,” she replied. “After all, you are the Avtokrator of the Videssians. You may do just as you wish.”
“Anthimos did just as he wished,” Krispos said angrily. “Look what it got him. I want to try to do what’s right, so far as I can see what that is.”
“You’ve chosen a harder road than he did.” After a small pause, Tanilis went on in a dispassionate tone of voice, “Few would say that bedding a woman not your wife falls into that category.”
“I know, I know, I know.” He made a fist and slammed it down on his thigh just below the bottom edge of his coat of mail. “I don’t make a habit of it, you know.”
“I would have guessed that, yes.” Now she sounded amused, perhaps not in an altogether pleasant way.
“It isn’t funny, curse it.” Doggedly, clumsily, he went ahead: “I’d known you—loved you for a while, though I know you didn’t love me—for such a long time, and now I’d seen you again, when I never expected to, well, I never worried about what I was doing till I’d done it. Then that note came, and I got brought up short—”
“Aye, you did.” Tanilis studied him. “I might have guessed your marriage was one of convenience only, but two sons born close together argues against that, the more so as you’ve spent a good part of your reign in the field.”
“Oh, there’s something of convenience in it, for me and for her both,” Krispos admitted, “but there turns out to be more to it than that, too.” He laughed without mirth. “You noticed that, didn’t you? But all the same, when we’d made love and the courier brought the letter, I had no business treating you the way I did. That’s not right, either, and I’m sorry for it.”
Tanilis rode on for a little while in silence. Then she remarked, “I think riding into battle might be easier for you than saying what you just said.”
Krispos shrugged. “One thing I’m sure of is that putting a crown on my head doesn’t make me right all the time. The lord with the great and good mind knows I didn’t learn much from Anthimos about how to rule, but I learned that. And if I was wrong, what’s the point in being ashamed to say so?”
“Wherever you learned to rule, Krispos”—he warmed to hear her use his name again, rather than his title—“you appear to have learned a good deal. Shall we return to being friends, then?”
“Yes,” he answered with relief. “How could I be your enemy?”
Mischief sparkled in Tanilis’ eyes. “Suppose I came to your tent again tonight. Would you take up saber and shield to drive me away?”
In spite of all his good intentions, his manhood stirred at the thought of her coming to his tent again. He ignored it. I’m too old to let my prick do my thinking for me, he told himself firmly. A moment later he added, I hope. Aloud, he said, “If you’re trying to tempt me, you’re doing a good job.” He managed a smile.
“I would not seek to tempt you into something you find improper,” Tanilis answered seriously. “If that is how it is, let it be so. I said back in Opsikion, all those years ago, that we would not suit each other over the long haul. It still seems true.”
“Yes,” Krispos said again, with no small regret. He still wondered if he and Dara suited each other over the long haul. Ever since he became Emperor, he’d been away on campaign so much that they’d had scant chance to find out. He went on, “I’m glad we can be friends.”
“So am I.” Tanilis looked around at the Kubrati countryside through which they were riding. Her voice sank to a whisper. “Being friendless in such a land would be a dreadful fate.”
“It’s not that bad,” Krispos said, remembering his childhood years north of the mountains. “It’s just different from Videssos.” The sky was a paler, damper blue than inside the Empire. The land was a different shade of green, too, deeper and more like moss; the gray-green olive trees that gave Videssos so much of its distinctive tint would not grow here. The winters, Krispos knew, had a ferocity worse than any Videssos suffered.
But perhaps Tanilis was not seeing the material landscape that was all Krispos could perceive. “This land hates me,” she said, shivering though the day was warm. Her sepulchral tone made Krispos want to shiver, too. Then Tanilis brightened, or rather grew intent on her prey. “If we can pull Harvas down, let it hate me as much as it will.”
With that Krispos could not argue. He gazed out at Kubrat again. Far off in the northwest, he spied a rising smudge of dirty gray smoke against the horizon. He pointed to it. “Maybe that’s the work of the column I sent out,” he said hopefully.
Tanilis’ gaze swung that way. “Aye, it is your column,” she said, but she did not sound hopeful. Krispos tried to make himself believe she was still fretting over the way the land affected her.
But the next morning, as the main body of the army was getting ready to break camp, riders began straggling in from the west. Krispos did not want to talk with the first few of them; as he’d learned, men who got away first often had no idea what had really gone wrong—if anything had.
Sarkis came in about midmorning. A fresh cut seamed one cheek; his right forearm was bandaged. “I’m sorry, Majesty,” he said. “I was the one who made the mistake.”
“You own up to it, anyhow,” Krispos said. “Tell me what happened.”
“We came across a village—a town, almost—that isn’t on our old maps,” the scout commander answered. “I’m not surprised—it looked as if the Halogai were still building it: longhouses are their style, anyhow. Not a lot of men were in it, but those who were came boiling out, and their women with them, armed and fighting as fierce as they were.”
Sarkis picked at a flake of dried blood on his face. “Majesty, beating them wasn’t the problem. We had plenty of men for that. But I knew our true goal was Pliskavos and I wanted to get there as quick as I could. So instead of doing much more than skirmishing and setting the village ablaze—”
“We saw the smoke,” Krispos broke in.
“I shouldn’t wonder. Anyhow, I didn’t want to lose time by riding around the place, either. So I swung us in on this side instead, and we rode straight north—right into a detachment from Harvas’ army. They had more troopers than we did and they beat us, cur
se ’em.”
“Oh, a plague,” Krispos said, as much to himself as to Sarkis. He thought for a few seconds. “Any sign of magic in the fight?”
“Not a bit of it,” Sarkis answered at once. “The northerners looked to be heading west themselves, to try to cut us off from riding around their army. Thanks to that miserable, stinking flea-farm of a village, they got the chance and they took it. Let me have another go at them, Your Majesty, or some new man if you’ve lost faith in me. The plan was good, and we still have enough room to maneuver to make it work.”
Krispos thought some more and shook his head. “No. A trick may work once against Harvas if it catches him by surprise. I can’t imagine him letting us try one twice. Something ghastly would be waiting for us; I feel it in my bones.”
“You’re likely right.” Sarkis hung his head. “Do what you will with me for having failed you.”
“Nothing to be done about it now,” Krispos answered. “You tried to pick the fastest way to carry out my orders, and it happened not to work. May you be luckier next time.”
“May the good god grant it be so!” Sarkis said fervently. “I’ll make you glad you’ve trusted me—I promise I will.”
“Good,” Krispos said. Sarkis saluted and rode away to see the men who were still coming in from the column. Krispos sighed as he watched him go. It would have to be the hard way, then, with the butcher’s bill that accompanied the hard way.
He’d already thought about putting peasants back into the border regions south of the mountains. He would also have to find soldiers to replace those who fell in this campaign. Where, he wondered, would all the men come from? He laughed at himself, though it wasn’t really funny. Back in his days on the farm, he’d never imagined the Emperor could have any reason to worry, let alone a reason so mundane as finding the people to do what needed doing. He laughed again. Back in his days on the farm, he’d never imagined a lot of things.
HARVAS SKIRMISHED, SCREENED, AVOIDED PITCHED BATTLE. HE seemed content to let the war turn on what happened after he got to Pliskavos. That worried Krispos. Even the Kubratoi and the Videssian-speaking peasants who flocked to his army and acclaimed him as a liberator failed to cheer him. Kubrat would return to imperial rule if he beat Harvas, aye. If he lost, the nomads and peasants both would only suffer more for acclaiming him.
As his force neared Pliskavos, he began sending out striking columns again, not to cut Harvas off from the capital of Kubrat but rather to ensure that he and his army went nowhere else. One of the columns sent men galloping back in high excitement. “The Astris! The Astris!” they shouted as they returned to the main force from the northwest. They were the first imperial soldiers to reach the river in three hundred years.
Another column came to the Astris east of Pliskavos a day later. Instead of sending back proud troopers to boast of what they’d done, they shouted for reinforcements. “A whole raft of Halogai are crossing the river on boats,” a rider gasped as he rode in, mixing his metaphors but getting the message across.
Krispos dispatched reinforcements on the double. He also sent a company of soldiers from the first column that had reached the Astris to ride west along its bank toward the Videssian Sea. “Find Kanaris and bring him here,” he ordered. “This is why we have ships on the Astris. Let’s see the northerners put more men across it once he sails up.”
He saw the Astris himself the next day. The wide gray river flowed past Pliskavos, which lay by its southern bank. The stream was wide enough to make the steppes and forests on the far bank seem distant and unreal. Unfortunately quite real, however, were the little boats that scurried across it. Each one brought a new band of Halogai to help Harvas hold the land he’d seized. Krispos raged, but could do little more until the grand drungarios of the fleet arrived. While he waited, the army began to built a palisade around Pliskavos.
“Something occurs to me,” Mammianos said that evening. “I don’t know as much as I’d like about fighting on water or much of anything about magic, but what’s to keep Harvas from hurting our dromons when they do come up the Astris?”
Kristos gnawed on his lower lip. “We’d better talk with the magicians.”
By the time the talk was done, Krispos found himself missing Trokoundos not just because the mage had been a friend. Trokoundos had been able to make sorcerous matters clear to people who were not wizards. His colleagues left Krispos feeling as confused as he was enlightened. He gathered, though, that sorcery aimed at targets on running water tended to be weakened or to go astray altogether.
He didn’t care for the sound of that tended to. “I hope Harvas has read the same magical books you have,” he told the wizards.
“Your Majesty, I see no sorcerous threat looming over Kanaris’ fleet,” Zaidas said.
“Nor do I,” Tanilis agreed. Zaidas blinked, then beamed. He sent Tanilis a worshipful look. She nodded to him, a regal gesture Krispos knew well. The force of it seemed to daze Zaidas, who was younger and more susceptible than Krispos ever had been when he knew her. Krispos shook his head; noticing how young other people were was a sign he wasn’t so young himself. But he had as much assurance from his wizards as he could hope for. That was worth a slight feeling of antiquity.
THE PALISADE AROUND PLISKAVOS GREW STRONGER OVER THE next couple of days. The troopers dug a ditch and used the dirt from it to build a rampart behind it. They mounted shields on top of the rampart to make it even higher. All the same, the gray stone wall of Pliskavos stood taller still.
The Halogai sallied several times, seeking to disrupt the men who were busy strengthening the palisade. They fought with their folk’s usual reckless courage and paid heavily for it. Each day, though, dugouts brought fresh bands of northerners across the Astris and into Pliskavos.
“Halogaland must be grim indeed, if so many of the northerners brave the trip across Pardraya in hopes of settling here,” Krispos observed at an evening meeting with his officers.
“Aye, true enough, for the lands hereabouts are nothing to brag of,” Mammianos said. Krispos did not entirely trust the fat general’s sense of proportion; the coastal lowlands where Mammianos had been stationed were the richest farming country in the whole Empire.
Sarkis put in, “I wonder how many villages like the one that gave me trouble have been planted on Kubrati soil. We’ll have to finish the job of uprooting them once we’re done here.” A gleam came into his dark eyes. “I wouldn’t mind uprooting one or two of those gold-haired northern women myself.”
Several of the men in Krispos’ tent nodded. Fair hair was rare—and exotically interesting—in Videssos. “Have a care now, Sarkis,” Mammianos rumbled. “From what you’ve told us, the Haloga wenches fight back.”
Everyone laughed. “You should have tried sweet talk, Sarkis,” Bagradas said. The laughter got louder.
“I hadn’t gone there to woo them then,” Sarkis answered tartly.
“Back to business,” Krispos said, trying without much success to sound stern. “How soon can we be ready to storm Pliskavos?”
His officers exchanged worried looks. “Starving the place into submission would be a lot cheaper, Your Majesty,” Mammianos said. “Harvas can’t have supplies for all the men he’s jammed in there, no matter how full his warehouses are. His troops’ll start taking sick before long, too, crowded together the way they must be.”
“So will ours, in spite of everything the healer-priests can do,” Krispos answered. Mammianos nodded; camp fevers could cost an army more men than combat. Krispos went on, “Even so, I’d say you were right most of the time. But not against Harvas Black-Robe. The more time he has to ready himself in there, the more I fear him.”
Mammianos sighed. “Aye, some truth in what you say. He is a proper bugger, isn’t he?” He glanced around to the other officers, as if hoping one of them would speak out for delay. No one did. Mammianos sighed again. “Well, Majesty, we have ladders and such in the baggage train, and all the metal parts and cordage for siege engines. We’l
l need some time to knock down trees for their frames and cut the wood to fit, but as soon as that’s done we can take a crack at it.”
“How long?” Krispos insisted.
“A week, maybe a day or two less,” Mammianos said, obviously reluctant to be pinned down. “Other thing is, though, that Harvas’d have to be blind not to see what we’re up to as we prepare. He’s a lot of nasty things, but blind isn’t any of them.”
“I know,” Krispos said. “Still, he knows what we’re here for anyhow. We didn’t fight our way across Kubrat to offer to harvest his turnips. Let’s get those engines started.” Mammianos and the rest of the officers saluted. With orders given, they would obey.
The next morning, armed parties rode out to chop timber. By midday horses and mules began hauling back roughly trimmed logs. Under the watchful eyes of the engineers who would assemble and direct the use of the catapults and rams, soldiers cut the wood to proper lengths. The noise of carpentry filled the camp.
Mammianos had been right: the Halogai on Pliskavos’ walls had no doubt what the imperials were doing. They jeered and waved their axes and swords in defiance. The ones with a few words of Videssian yelled out what sort of welcome the attackers were likely to receive. Some of Krispos’ soldiers yelled back. Most just kept working.
A tall, thin pillar of smoke rose into the sky from somewhere near the center of Pliskavos. When Zaidas saw it, he turned pale and drew the sun-circle over his heart. All the wizards with the imperial army redoubled their apotropaic spells.
“What exactly is Harvas up to?” Krispos asked Zaidas, reasoning he would be most likely to know because of his sensitive sorcerous vision.
But the young mage only shook his head. “Nothing good,” was the sole answer he would give. “That smoke—” He shuddered and sketched the sun-sign again. This time Krispos did the same.
The wizards’ concern made Krispos more and more edgy. Nor was his temper improved when a dozen more dugouts full of Halogai landed at Pliskavos’ quays before the sun reached its zenith. In the late afternoon, Videssian watchers on the shore of the Astris spied another small flotilla getting ready to set out from the northern bank.
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