But Immodios was right to ask for the banners, given the role the Avtokrator had set him to play. And if Maniakes had said no, he might well have set resentment afire in a heart free of it till then. The business of ruling was never simple, and got more complicated the harder you looked at it.
Brave with banners, Immodios' detachment rode off, intent on convincing the Makuraner infantry commanders that it was the whole Videssian army. The large majority of that army, meanwhile, abandoned their journey toward Qostabash and swung south, into a region of the Land of the Thousand Cities they had never visited before.
That the region was new did not mean it was remarkable. Cities still squatted on hillocks made from millennia of rubble. Canals still crisscrossed fields of wheat and barley and beans and garden patches green with growing onions and lettuces and melons. Those absurd little boats still plied the canals. Mosquitoes and gnats still swarmed, thick as heavy rain.
Maniakes had hoped to glide through all but unnoticed. Since he was leading an army of several thousand mounted men, that hope, he admitted to himself if to no one else, was unrealistic. Getting through the untouched country cleanly and with as little fighting as he could—that he had a better chance of doing.
Scouts reported messengers pelting off to the east. Some they caught, some they could not. Those who escaped were no doubt taking word of his arrival to those in the best position to do something about it. He wondered if they would be believed. He hoped they wouldn't, not when Immodios was ostentatiously pretending to be what his army really was.
One calculation of his came true: in a land not much touched by war, the locals hesitated to open canals to slow him down. «They'd have done just that, nearer Qostabash,» he said to Rhegorios.
His cousin nodded. «So they would. We'd have done some more sacking and wrecking ourselves, too. This feels as if we're traveling through their country, not fighting a war in it.»
«We're here to travel,» Maniakes said, and Rhegorios nodded again.
Travel they did, at a good pace. Once, not long after Immodios had separated himself from them! a delegation came out from one of the cities in the southern part of the floodplain: officials of some sort, along with yellow-robed servants of the God. Maniakes supposed they wanted to ask him not to sack their town, or perhaps not to plunder its fields. He never found out for certain, because he did not wait around for them to catch up to him. He wondered what they ended up doing. Going back into their city, he supposed, and thanking the God he'd passed it by.
He had no trouble keeping the army fed. With plenty of water, good soil, and heat the year around, the Land of the Thousand Cities bore even more abundantly than the coastal lowlands of the Empire of Videssos. Something was always ripe enough for men and horses to enjoy.
Messengers rode back and forth between Maniakes' army and Immodios' division impersonating that army. A couple of days after Maniakes didn't stop to listen to the local delegation, one of Immodios' riders brought in not only the officer's report of his position but also a message tube whose leather was stamped with the lion of Makuran. «Well, well,» Maniakes said. «Where did you come by this?»
«Fellow who was using it won't need it anymore.» The messenger grinned at him.
Maniakes spoke and understood the Makuraner language fairly well. In its written form, though, it used different characters from Videssian, and he'd never learned them. He found that Philetos could make sense of it. «Some interesting magical texts come out of Makuran,» the healer-priest remarked, «which are well worth leading in the original.»
«I don't think there's anything magical about this,» Maniakes said, handing him the parchment.
Philetos unrolled it and went through it with a speed and confidence that said he was indeed fluent in the written Makuraner language. «Your Majesty, this is from the commander of the army near Qostabash—Turan is his name—to the city governors in the region through which we are passing.»
«Ah,» Maniakes said. «That sounds interesting. I'll wager we've caught one copy of several, then. What does he say?»
«He warns them to be alert for Videssian brigands—his phrase, I assure you—who may be operating in this area. He says their depredations are a snare and a ruse, as the main Videssian force is advancing against him, and he expects to do battle against it soon.»
Maniakes smiled at Philetos. The healer-priest smiled back at him. «Isn't that nice?» the Avtokrator said. «This Turan doesn't know which end is up, sounds like.» He sobered. «He doesn't, that is, unless he manages to pick off one of our messengers. That would give the game away.»
«So it would,» Philetos agreed. «Here as elsewhere in life, secrets are never so secret as we might like.»
«That's truer than I wish it were,» Maniakes said. «And, speaking of wishes, I wish I'd thought of having a code for Immodios and me to use when we write back and forth to each other. Too late now, I'm afraid: if I send him one, I'll have to worry about the Makuraners capturing it and reading things I think they can't. Best leave it alone.»
Surprisingly soon, the hills from which the Tutub rose came into sight ahead of the Videssian army. Maniakes sent several messengers to Immodios, ordering him to leave off his imposture and join the main force. A rider from his division came back to Maniakes, confirming that he'd got the command. Of the division itself, though, there was for the moment no sign.
For the first couple of days, Maniakes did not worry over chat. Indeed, he took advantage of it, sending scouts deep into the hill country to make sure the ways south and east remained open. And those ways were open; Turan had not set traps along them to slow his progress. He supposed that, whatever orders the Makuraner general might be getting from Sharbaraz, he was just as well pleased to see the Avtokrator of the Videssians abandoning the Thousand Cities.
But, when Immodios did not arrive after those couple of days, Maniakes began to fret and fume. «Curse him,» the Avtokrator grumbled, «doesn't he realize this country isn't so rich as the Land of the Thousand Cities? We're going to start eating it empty pretty soon.»
«He has only a division of men,» Rhegorios said. «As near as I can see, this whole countryside breeds foot soldiers the way a dead dog breeds flies.»
He didn't say any more. As far as Maniakes was concerned, he'd said too much already. The Avtokrator had sent out Immodios' force as a distraction. He hadn't intended to have the Makuraners swallow it up. The Makuraners could afford the losses doing that would take, but he couldn't afford those they'd inflict on him.
No messengers came from Immodios. The scouts Maniakes sent north, in the direction of Qostabash, could not find a way past Turan's infantry, which was, as Rhegorios had said, abundant, and also very alert. Maniakes found himself facing a most unpleasant choice: either abandoning Immodios' division to its fate or going north to rescue it, delaying his return to Videssos the city on account of that, and possibly losing the capital to the Kubratoi and Makuraners.
To any Avtokrator of the Videssians, the capital had to come first. Maniakes told himself that, but still could not make himself leave Immodios in the lurch. Nor could he make himself order his army to head north, away from the route to Videssos the city. For two or three days, he simply dithered.
When at last he nerved himself to order the army to forget about Imrnodios, he found himself saved from the consequences of his own decision, for outriders from the missing division joined up with his own scouts. Immodios' main body came into his camp half a day later.
The dour officer prostrated himself before Maniakes. Most of the time, the Avtokrator would have waved for him not to bother. Today, he let Immodios go through with the proskynesis as a sign of his displeasure. When he did signal for the captain to rise, Immodios said, «Your Majesty, you can do as you like with me. By the good god, the Makuraners had me so plugged up along a river and canal line, I thought I'd never break out and get past them.»
Much of Maniakes' anger vanished. «Abivard did the same thing to us a couple of years a
go—do you remember? He defied us to get onto his side of the water, but we beat him once we managed it»
«So we did, your Majesty, but we had the whole army then, and I had only a piece of it,» Immodios replied. «I'm afraid I did too good a job of convincing him you were with us—he pulled out everyone under the sun to carry shield and bow and hold us away from Qostabash.»
«I can see how that would have been a problem, yes,» Maniakes said. «How did you finally get over the waterline?»
«The same way we did two years ago,» Immodios answered. «I used part of my force to look as if I was going to force a crossing at one spot, then crossed someplace else where my scouts reported he was thinning out his garrison to cover the feint. Horses are faster than foot soldiers, so I managed to pull everyone across without too much trouble. I didn't do any more fighting afterward that I didn't have to: hurried down here to you.»
«All right,» Maniakes said. The dressing-down he'd planned to give Immodios died unspoken. The commander seemed to have given a good part of it to himself. «We'll head back toward Lyssaion, then.»
The farmers and herders who lived in the hills from which the Tutub sprang fled into the roughest country they could find when the Videssian army made its way through their land for the second time in a relatively short interval. No doubt they stared down at the imperials with helpless resentment from their craggy refuges, wondering what had prompted Maniakes to revisit them on such short notice.
They might have been surprised to hear he was at least as unhappy about the necessity as were they. He would much sooner have been fighting outside their capital than rushing back to try to save his own.
«Next interesting question,» Rhegorios observed as the army came out of the hills and into the valley of the Xeremos, «is whether any ships will be waiting for us once we get to Lyssaion.»
Maniakes had entertained that same worry—had entertained it and now rejected it. «There will be ships,» he said, as if he had seen them himself: and so, in a manner of speaking, he had. «Bagdasares showed them to me.» Of the tempest Bagdasares had also shown him, he said nothing.
«I'd hate to have him wrong, that's all,» the Sevastos murmured.
«He's not wrong,» Maniakes said. «Think it through—do you think my father would send word the city was in trouble without giving us a way to get back there? I don't need magic to see that.»
«Uncle Maniakes?» Rhegorios shook his head, visibly taking the point. «No, he'd never make that kind of mistake. My father calls him the most careful man he ever heard of.» He pointed at the Avtokrator. «How did he ever get a son like you?»
«He was born luckier than I was, into a time where you didn't need to take so many chances,» Maniakes answered. «By the time I got the crown, I had to do all sorts of desperate things to make sure I kept having an empire to rule. The trouble with desperate things is, a lot of them don't work.» He sighed. «We've found out more than we ever wanted to know about that, haven't we?»
«So we have,» Rhegorios said, adding, «Well, now we and the Makuraners are even.» When Maniakes looked puzzled, his cousin condescended to explain: «Wouldn't you say throwing everything they have into an attack on Videssos the city is about as desperate as our throwing everything we have into an attack on Mashiz? Maybe they're more desperate still, because the city is harder to take than Mashiz.»
«Ah, now I understand,» Maniakes said. «Put that way, you're right, of course.» Some of the desperate things he'd done had been disasters. Some of them, against the Kubratoi and Makuraners both, had succeeded better than he'd dared hope. Now he had to do everything he could to ensure that Abivard and Sharbaraz's desperate attack—if that was what it was—didn't fall into the second category.
One of the things he did, as soon as he was sure no substantial Makuraner force lurked ahead of him, was to send riders through the hill country and down the valley of the Xeremos to make sure that the fleet he confidently expected to find waiting for him was in fact there. He got less confident by the day till the first rider returned. If the fleet wasn't there, he didn't know what he'd do. Travel through the westlands by land? Go up to Erzerum and hope to find a fleet there? Leap off a tall promontory into the sea? With the third choice, at least, the agony would be over in a hurry.
But, by the way the returning horseman was waving at him, he didn't have to worry about that—one down, hundreds left. «They're there, your Majesty,» the fellow shouted when he got close enough for the Avtokrator to hear him. «A whole great forest of masts in the harbor, waiting for us to come aboard.»
«The lord with the great and good mind be praised,» Maniakes breathed. He turned to the trumpeters who were usually nearby. «Blow the quick trot. The sooner we get to Lyssaion, the sooner we sail.»
The sooner the storm strikes us, he thought. He wondered if he should hold back his pace in the hope the bad weather would go by before the fleet did. He didn't think that would help. If he held back, somehow or other the storm would manage to do the same. And, if he held back, who could say what might happen in Videssos the city while he was delaying?
His soldiers rode down the valley of the Xeremos as fast as they could without foundering their horses. Blue banners with gold sunbursts on them snapped in the breeze. Brisk as ever, the horns called out the commands that held the army together. As the horsemen rode by, the peasants who farmed the valley looked up from their endless labor. Did they know the soldiers were coming back too soon, too soon?
What they knew mattered little, not here, not now. Maniakes knew. Knowledge gnawed at him like a toothache. Then, faster than he'd expected, more slowly than he would have liked, Lyssaion lay before him, baked golden under the sun.
Beyond the town splashed the water. He saw, at first, only a narrow strip of that deep, implausible blue. But where there was a strip, there was a sea.
It would take him where he wanted to go. Like a mad and jealous lover, it would try to kill him. It might succeed. Bagdasares' magic hadn't shown him anything about that, not one way or the other. He rushed forward to embrace the sea just the same.
In Lyssaion waited the hypasteos and the garrison commander. They knew what was happening in Videssos the city. They had known longer than he; messengers who reached him went past them first.
In Lyssaion also waited Thrax. The drungarios' silver hair seemed out of place amidst all the golden stonework. Maniakes realized he should not have been surprised to see the commander of the fleet there, but somehow he was. The idea of Thrax's doing anything unexpected was itself unexpected.
«Aye, your father sent me and the Renewal here,» Thrax said, which made Maniakes feel better: the drungarios hadn't done anything so strange as thinking on his own, then. «You're needed back home, that you are.»
«I was needed where I was, too,» Maniakes answered. But saying that gained nothing. The past two campaigning seasons, he'd moved according to his own plan. This year, the will directing him belonged to Abivard and Sharbaraz. They'd outwitted him. It was that revoltingly simple. He asked the question that had to be asked: «How bad is it back there?»
«Well, Videssos the city's still standing, or was when I left,» Thrax said. Maniakes wished he hadn't added that qualifier. Thrax went on, «We've spied a Makuraner or two on the eastern side of the Cattle Crossing, looking at the city the way a cat looks at a bird in a cage: it looks tasty, but they have to figure out how to get inside.»
«Makuraner soldiers on our side of the Cattle Crossing,» Maniakes murmured, and hung his head. A series of humiliations from Makuran and Kubrat had punctuated his reign, but this was the worst of all. For all the centuries of Videssian history, the strait had shielded the capital—till now.
«No siege gear on our side,» Thrax said, as if in consolation– and it was consolation of a sort. «Those monoxyla the Kubratoi use, they can sneak men across easily enough, but only a few at a time, on account of our dromons still catch and sink a good many. Some of the tackle is right bulky, though.»
; «Less than you'd think,» Maniakes said worriedly. The more he thought about it, the more worried he got, too. Ropes and metal fittings and a few special pieces of gear were all the Makuraners needed to bring over with them. They could make the rest out of green timbers, using the Kubratoi for labor… «Aye, we have to get back to the city as fast as we can.»
«That's what I'm here for, your Majesty,» Thrax said. The elder Maniakes had told him why he was here. Maniakes had a well-founded suspicion the drungarios would have had trouble figuring it out without advance instruction.
With advance instruction, he was capable enough. Wanting to use him to best advantage, Maniakes said, «You should know to expect stormy weather on the way back to Videssos the city. Bagdasares' magic warned me of it when he cast a spell to make sure we would come safe from the city to Lyssaion.»
When Thrax's sun– and wind-leathered skin wrinkled into a frown, he seemed to age ten years in a moment. «I'll do all I can to make the ships ready in advance,» he said. And then, anxiously, «That is the reason you're telling me this, isn't it?»
«Yes, that's the reason,» Maniakes answered in a resigned voice. He and Thrax had been together for a long time. The drungarios was steady enough; that was why Maniakes had named him to his post. In most circumstances, steadiness was plenty. Every once in a while, Maniakes would have liked to see a bit of flash along with it.
As Thrax had been waiting in the harbor of Lyssaion for some time while the army returned from the Land of the Thousand Cities, he did have the fleet ready to reembark the men and horses. The men grumbled a bit filing onto the wharves to board the ships that would take them away: after hard campaigning, they'd finally returned to a Videssian city, but they weren't going to have the chance to sample such fleshpots as it held.
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