His horse let out a frightened squeal and tried to rear. Krispos fought the animal back under control. An arrow protruded from its rump. Poor beast, he thought—it knew nothing of the differences in worship because of which it had been wounded.
The Thanasioi charged again. This time some of them broke through his screen of bodyguards. Phostis traded saber strokes with one, Katakolon with another. That left Krispos facing two at once. He slashed at the one on his right side, used his shield to hold off the blows of the one to his left, and hoped someone would come to his aid soon.
Suddenly the horse of the Thanasiot to his right screamed, far louder and more terribly than his own mount had a few minutes before. A Haloga axe had bitten into its spine, just behind its rider. The horse foundered. The Haloga raised his axe again and slew the Thanasiot.
That let Krispos turn against his other foe. He still remembered how to use a sword himself, and slashed the fellow on the forearm. Another Haloga guard, his axe dripping gore, bore down on the heretic. The Thanasiot ignored him, bending every effort toward slaying the Avtokrator. He paid the price for his fanaticism: the guardsman hacked him out of the saddle.
“Thanks.” Krispos panted. Sweat ran down his forehead and stung his eyes. “I’m getting old for this business, much as I hate to admit it.”
“No man is young enough to be happy fighting two,” the Haloga said, which made him feel a little better.
Among them, his sons and the northerners had put an end to the other Thanasioi who’d broken through. Katakolon had a cut that stretched halfway across one cheek, but managed a blood-spattered smile for Krispos. “Iakovitzes won’t like me so well anymore,” he shouted.
“Ah, but all the girls will sigh over how brave you are,” Krispos answered, which made his youngest son’s smile wider.
Another Thanasiot surge. The Halogai on foot and Videssians on horseback contained it. Krispos gauged the fighting. He had not asked a great deal of his men, only that they hold their place against the onslaught of the Thanasioi. So much had they done. The heretics were bunched against them, still trying to force their way out of the valley.
“Send for Zaidas,” Krispos commanded. A messenger rode off.
He soon returned with the wizard, who had not been far away. “Now, Your Majesty?” Zaidas asked.
“The time will never be better,” Krispos said.
Zaidas set to work. Most of his preparations for this magic had been made ahead of time. It was not, properly speaking, battle magic, nor directed against the Thanasioi. Battle magic had a way of failing; the stress of fighting raised emotions to such a pitch that a spell which might otherwise have been fatal failed to bite at all.
“Let it come forth!” Zaidas cried, and stabbed a finger up toward the sky. From his fingertip sprang a glowing green fireball that rose high above the heaving battle line, growing and getting brighter as it climbed. A few soldiers from both sides paused for an instant to call Phos’ name or sketch the sun-sign above their hearts. Most, however, were too busy fighting for their lives to exclaim over the fireball or to notice it at all.
Zaidas turned to Krispos. “What magic may do, magic has done,” he said. His voice was ragged and worn; sorcery cost those who worked it dear.
Little by little, the green fireball faded. Before too long, it was gone. Watching the indecisive fight to which he had committed his army, Krispos wondered if it had been sent skyward in vain. Men should have been watching for its flare…but one of the lessons he’d learned after close to half a lifetime on the throne was the chasm that sometimes yawned between should have been and were.
His head went rapidly back and forth from one side of the valley to the other. “Where are they?” he demanded, not of anyone in particular but of the world at large.
As if that had been a cue, martial music rang out in the distance. Soldiers in the imperial army cheered like men possessed; the Thanasioi stared about in sudden confusion and alarm. Down into the valley from left and right rode fresh regiments of horsemen in line. “Krispos!” they cried as they bent their bows.
“Taken in both flanks, by the good god!” Sarkis exclaimed. “Your Majesty, my hat’s off to you.” He doffed the iron pot he wore on his head to show he meant his words literally.
“You helped come up with the plan,” Krispos said. “Besides, we both ought to thank Zaidas for giving a signal the watchers from both concealed flanking parties could see and use. Better by far than trying to gauge when to come in by the sandglass or any other way I could think of.”
“Very well.” Sarkis took off his helmet for Zaidas, too.
The wizard’s grin took years off his age and reminded Krispos of the eager, almost painfully bright youngster he’d been when he began his sorcerous service. That had been in the last campaign against Harvas, till now the hardest one Krispos had known. But civil war—and religious civil war at that—was worse than any attack from a foreign foe.
Where the Avtokrator and the general had praised his sorcery, Zaidas thought about the fighting that remained ahead. “We still have to win the battle,” he said. “Fail in that and the best plan in the world counts for nothing.”
Krispos studied the field. Had the Thanasioi been professional soldiers, they might have salvaged something by retreating as soon as they discovered themselves so disastrously outflanked. But all they understood of the military art was going forward no matter what. That only got them more thoroughly trapped.
For the first time since fighting began, Krispos turned loose a smile. “This is a battle we are going to win,” he said.
PHOSTIS WAS ONLY A FEW FEET FROM HIS FATHER WHEN KRISPOS claimed victory. He was no practiced strategist himself, but he could see that a foe attacked on three sides at once was on the way to destruction. He was glad Olyvria had stayed back at the camp. Though she’d given herself to him without reservation, seeing all her father’s hopes go down in ruin could only bring her pain.
Phostis knew pain, too, but of a purely physical sort. His shoulder ached with the effort it took to hold up a shield against arrows and saber slashes. In another couple of weeks it could have borne the burden without complaint, but not yet.
Screeching “The gleaming path!” for all they were worth, the Thanasioi mounted yet another charge. And from the midst of the fanatics’ ranks, Phostis heard another cry, one not fanatical at all: “If we slay the Avtokrator, lads, it’s all up for grabs!”
Fueled by desperation, fervor, and that coldly rational cry, the heretics surged against the right wing of the imperial line. As they had once before, they shot and hacked their way through the Halogai and Videssians protecting Krispos. All at once, being of high rank stopped mattering.
Off to one side of Phostis, Sarkis laid about him with a vigor that denied his bulk. To the other, Krispos and Katakolon were both engaged. Before Phostis could spur his horse to their aid, someone landed what felt like a hammer blow to his shield.
He twisted in the saddle. His foe was yelling at the top of his lungs; his was the voice that had urged the Thanasioi against Krispos. “Syagrios!” Phostis yelled.
The ruffian’s face screwed into a gap-toothed grimace of hate. “You, eh?” he said. “I’d rather carve you than your old man—I owe you plenty, by the good god.” He sent a vicious cut at Phostis’ head.
Just staying alive through the next minute or so was as hard as anything Phostis had ever done. He didn’t so much as think of attack; defense was enough and more. Intellectually, he knew that was a mistake—if all he did was try to block Syagrios’ blows, sooner or later one would get through. But they came in such unrelenting torrents that he could do nothing else. Syagrios was twice his age and more, but fought with the vigor of a tireless youth.
As he slashed, he taunted Phostis: “After I’m done with you, I’ll settle accounts with that little whore who crowned me. Pity you won’t be around to watch, on account of it’d be worth seeing. First I’ll cut her a few times, just so she hurts while I’m—” He wen
t into deliberately obscene detail.
Fury all but blinded Phostis. The only thing that kept him from attacking wildly, foolishly, was the calculating look in Syagrios’ eyes as he went through his speech. He was working to enrage, to provoke. Refusing to give him what he wanted was the best thing Phostis saw to do.
A Haloga came up on Syagrios’ left side. The ruffian had no shield, but managed to turn aside the guardsman’s axe with the flat of his blade. That wouldn’t work every time, and he knew it. He spurred his horse away from the northerner—and from Phostis.
As he drew back, Phostis cut at him. The stroke missed. Phostis laughed. In the romances, the hero always slashed the villain into steaks. In real life, you were lucky if you didn’t get hacked to bits yourself.
Since he was for the moment not beset, Phostis looked around to see how his comrades were faring. He found Krispos in the midst of a sea of shouting Thanasioi. The Avtokrator, badly beset, slashed frantically this way and that.
Phostis spurred toward him. To the Thanasioi, he was nothing—just another soldier, a nuisance, not a vital target like Krispos. He wounded three heretics from behind in quick succession. That sort of thing wasn’t in the romances, either; they went on and on about glory and duels and fair fights. Real war, Phostis was discovering in a hurry, didn’t concern itself with such niceties. If you stayed alive and the other fellow didn’t, that was a triumph of strategy.
The Halogai also fought their way in Krispos’ direction. So did all the reserves who saw he was in danger. Quite suddenly, no living Thanasioi were near the Avtokrator. Krispos’ helmet had been battered so that it sat at a crazy angle on his head. He had a cut on his cheek—almost a match for Katakolon’s—and another on his sword arm. His gilded mail shirt and shield were splashed with sticky red.
“Hello, everyone,” he said. “Rather to my surprise, I find myself still in one piece.”
Several variations of Glad you are rose into the air, Phostis’ among them. He looked round for Syagrios, but did not see him. Real battle lacked the romances’ neat resolutions, too.
Krispos went in the blink of an eye from a horseman fighting wildly for his life to the commander of a great host. “Drive them hard!” he shouted, pointing toward the center of the line. “See them waver? One good push and they’ll break.”
Had Zaidas not said Krispos lacked all talent for magic, Phostis might have believed him a wizard then. No sooner had he called attention to the sagging Thanasiot line than crimson banners began falling or being wrested from the hands of the heretics who bore them. The roar that went up from the imperials at that rang through the valley like a great horn call.
“How could you tell?” Phostis demanded.
“What? That?” Krispos thought for a moment, then looked sheepish. “Part of it comes from seeing a lot of fights. My eye knows the signs even if my mouth doesn’t. And part of it—sometimes, don’t ask me how, you can make your will reach over a whole battlefield.”
“Maybe it is magic.”
Phostis didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until Krispos nodded soberly. “Aye, it is, but not of the sort Zaidas practices. Evripos has a touch of it; I’ve seen that. You haven’t yet had the chance to find out. You can rule without it, no doubt of that, but it makes life easier if it’s there.”
One more thing to worry about, Phostis thought. Then he shook his head. He needed to worry about two things, not one: whether he had the magic of leadership, and how vulnerable he would be if Evripos had it and he didn’t.
At any other time, he might have occupied himself for hours, maybe days, with worries over those two. Now, with the battle swinging the imperials’ way at last—could it be past noon already?—he had no leisure for fretting.
“Forward!” came the cry all along the line. Phostis was glad to press the fighting. It relieved him of having to think. As he’d found in Olyvria’s arms, that could be a blessing of sorts. The only trouble was, worries didn’t go away. When the fighting or the loving was done, they reared their heads again.
But not now. Shouting “Forward!” with the rest, he rode against the crumbling resistance of the Thanasioi.
KRISPOS LOOKED OUT AT VICTORY AND FOUND IT AS APPALLING as it usually is. Pierced and mangled men and horses were the building blocks of what the chroniclers would one day call a splendid triumph of arms. At the moment, it reminded Krispos of nothing so much as an open-air slaughterhouse, down to the stink of entrails and the buzz of hungry flies.
Healer-priests wandered through the carnage, now and then stooping to aid some desperately wounded man. Their calling did not let them discriminate between Krispos’ followers and the Thanasioi. Once, though, Krispos saw a blue-robe stand up and walk away from someone, shaking his shaven head in bewilderment. He wondered if a dying Thanasiot had possessed the courage to tell the healer he would sooner walk the gleaming path.
Most of the heretics, though, were glad enough to get any help the imperials gave them. They held out gashed arms and legs for bandages and obeyed their captors’ commands with the alacrity of men who knew they might suffer for any transgression. In short, they behaved like other prisoners of war Krispos had seen over the years.
Katakolon rode up to the Avtokrator. “Father, they’ve run down the heretics’ baggage train. In it they found some of the gold, ah, abstracted from the mint at Kyzikos.”
“Did they? That’s good news,” Krispos said. “How much of the gold was recovered?”
“Something less than half the amount reported taken,” Katakolon answered.
“More than I expected,” Krispos said. Nevertheless, he suspected the troopers who’d captured the baggage train were richer now than when they’d started their pursuit. That was part of the price the Empire paid for civil war. If he tried to squeeze the gold out of them, he’d get a name for niggardliness that might lead to another revolt a year or three down the line.
“Your Majesty!” Another messenger waved frantically. “Your Majesty, we think we have Livanios!”
The gilded mail shirt that weighed on Krispos’ shoulders all at once seemed lighter. “Fetch him here,” the Avtokrator ordered. Then he raised his voice. “Phostis!”
“Aye, Father?” His eldest looked worn, but so did everyone else in the army.
“Did you hear that? They think they’ve caught Livanios. Will you identify him for me? You’ve see him often enough.”
Phostis thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said firmly.
“What?” Krispos glared at him. “Why not?”
“He’s Olyvria’s father,” Phostis said. “How am I to live with her if I point the finger at him for the headsman?”
“Your mother’s father plotted against me when you were a baby, do you know that?” Krispos said. “I exiled him to a monastery at Prista.” The outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea was as grim a place of exile as the Empire had.
“But did Mother tell you of his plot?” Phostis demanded. “And would you have taken his head if he’d not been her father?”
The questions, Krispos admitted to himself, were to the point. “No and yes, in that order,” he said. Even after exiling Rhisoulphos, he’d been nervous about sleeping in the same bed with Dara for a while.
“There, you see?” Phostis said. “Livanios was an officer of ours. You’ll have others here who can name him for you.”
Krispos thought about ordering Phostis to do as he’d said, but not for long. He had learned better than to give orders that had no hope of being obeyed—and in any case, Phostis was right. “Let it be as you say, son,” the Avtokrator said.
He watched in some amusement as Phostis, obviously ready to argue more, deflated. “Thank you,” the younger man said, his voice full of relief.
Krispos nodded, then called, “Who among my soldiers knows the traitor and rebel Livanios by sight?”
The question ran rapidly through the army. Before long, several men sat their horses close by Krispos. Among them was Gai
nas, the officer who’d sent back to Videssos the city the dispatch warning of Livanios’ defection to the gleaming path.
The prisoner himself took a while to arrive. When he did, Krispos saw why: he was afoot, one of several captives with hands tied behind their backs so they could not even walk quickly. Phostis said, “The one on the left there, Father, is the mage Artapan.”
“Very good,” Krispos said quietly. If Artapan was in this group, then Livanios probably was, too. Phostis had, in fact, all but said he was. Here, though, the all but was important. Krispos turned to the men he’d assembled. “Which of them is Livanios?”
Without hesitation, they all pointed to the fellow two men away from Artapan. The captive straightened and glared at Krispos. He was doing his best to keep up a brave front. “I am Livanios. Do as you please with my body. My soul will walk the gleaming path beyond the sun and dwell with Phos forever.”
“If you were so set on walking the gleaming path, why did you rob the mint at Kyzikos and not just burn it?” Phostis asked. “You didn’t despise material things enough to keep from dirtying your hands with them.”
“I do not claim to be the purest among the followers of the holy Thanasios,” Livanios said. “Nevertheless, I follow the truth he preached.”
“The only place you’ll follow him, I think, is to the ice,” Krispos said. “And since I’ve beaten you and taken you in arms against me, I don’t need to argue with you.” He turned to one of the Halogai. “Trygve, you’re still carrying your axe. Strike off his head and have done.”
“Aye, Majesty.” The big blond northerner strode over to Livanios and pushed him so he went to his knees. Trygve spoke with neither cruelty nor any great compassion, merely a sense of what needed doing: “Bend your neck, you. It will be over soonest then.”
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