Videssos Besieged ttot-4

by Harry Turtledove

  «Ah,» Thrax said. «When you put it that way, it does make sense, doesn't it?»

  To give him his due, he handled the rescue of the men who had abandoned the burning transport about as well as anyone could have done. A good many soldiers were lost, drowned before any rescuers could reach them, but a good many were pulled from the sea, too. It could have been worse. How many times had Maniakes thought that after some new misfortune?

  Bagdasares' magic had shown no further trouble facing the Videssian fleet after the storm and the attack by those other ships. Maybe that meant they would reach Videssos the city with ease once they'd surmounted that attack—in the case of the Renewal, literally, as it rode over the Kubratoi monoxyla. Then again, maybe it meant Bagdasares had metaphorically had his elbow joggled before the sorcery showed everything it could. One way or the other, Maniakes expected he would learn soon.

  Close by the imperial city, no single-log boats dared show themselves by day. The fleet based in the capital made sure of that. But, from the Renewal, Maniakes saw the nomads' encampments outside the double wall of the capital. That ate at him, as did knowing Makuraner engineers were teaching the Kubratoi the art of building siege engines. From now on, no Videssian city would be safe.

  From the walls, Videssian defenders cheered when they saw the imperial standard flying from the Renewal. Maniakes did not flatter himself that all those cheers were for him. He had taken to Makuran the best soldiers the Empire of Videssos had. Getting those soldiers back made Videssos the city likelier to hold. Had he been a defender hopefully awaiting them, he would have cheered their return, too.

  «We'll land as many ships as we can in the little harbor for the palace quarter,» he told Thrax. «That will include the Renewal.»

  «Aye, your Majesty,» the drungarios said, nodding in obedience. «You'll want to send the rest around to the Neorhesian harbor in the north?»

  «That's right,» Maniakes agreed.

  «When we tie up at that little harbor, you'll be able to get a good look at what's going on in Across,» Thrax said, as if the idea had only just occurred to him. It probably had only just occurred to him; that saddened Maniakes, who was used to looking further ahead. Thrax could, of course, have been the sort of man who did not look ahead at all; too many men were like that. But in that case he would not have been drungarios of the fleet.

  Across looked to be buzzing. The red-lion banner of Makuran flew from a silk pavilion situated barely out of range of dart-throwers mounted on dromons. Yes, Abivard would know exactly how far that was, having spent so much time on the wrong—or, from the Videssian perspective, the right—side of the Cattle Crossing from Videssos the city.

  Maniakes wondered whether the Makuraner marshal remained on the western side of the Cattle Crossing, or whether the Kubratoi had sneaked him over the narrow strait so he could gauge the land walls of the imperial city with his own eyes. Suddenly and rather sharply, the Avtokrator wondered which side of the Cattle Crossing Tzikas was on these days. Before he began his treacheries, Tzikas had been a Videssian general, and a formidably good one. If anyone knew of weaknesses in the walls—if there were any weaknesses to know—he was likely to be the man.

  The Makuraners saw the imperial standard, too, when the Renewal drew near Across to give Maniakes a closer look at them. The curses they sent his way warred with the cheers from Videssos the city. Their whole camp was much closer to the Cattle Crossing than had been their way during earlier stays in Across. Then they had seemed content merely to have come so close to Videssos' capital. Now they had the notion they could cross, could reach the goal so long denied them.

  They're wrong,» Maniakes murmured. Saying that and ensuring ft was true, though, were two different things. Maniakes turned back to Thrax. «Take us to the harbor. I've seen enough here.»

  With his father, and with Rhegorios and Symvatios, Maniakes passed through the Silver Gate's opening in the inner wall of Videssos the city and strode out toward the lower outer wall. «By the lord with the great and good mind, the parasol-bearers are still fuming because I wouldn't let them come out here with me,» he said, fuming himself. «That would be all I needed, wouldn't it? Showing the Kubratoi exactly whom to shoot, I mean.»

  That's the kind of nonsense you don't have to put up with in the field,» the elder Maniakes agreed. «I don't blame you for getting out of Videssos the city whenever you can, son. You don't nave idiots getting in the way of what needs doing.»

  «No,» the Avtokrator said. Escaping the stifling ceremonial of the imperial court was one reason he was glad to get out of Videssos the city. He noticed his father did not mention the other one. The elder Maniakes did not approve of his marriage to Lysia, either, but, unlike so many in the city, was at least willing to keep quiet about it.

  The massive portals of the Silver Gate's entryway through the outer wall were shut. The even more massive bars that held those portals closed were in place in their great iron brackets. Behind the gate, the iron-faced portcullis was lowered into its place in the gateway. Up above it, murder holes let defenders pour boiling water and heated sand down on the heads of warriors who might try to break down the defenses. Maniakes would not have cared to assault the Silver Gate, were he besieger rather than besieged. But, if the Makuraners taught the Kubratoi how to build and use siege engines, they would not have to attack the gate. They might choose instead to try to break down some less heavily defended stretch of wall. If they had any sense, that was what they would do. But who could say for certain what lay in Etzilios' mind? Maniakes wondered whether the Kubrati khagan himself knew.

  The Avtokrator climbed the stone stairway to the walk atop the outer wall. His father, cousin, and uncle followed. He tried to make himself climb slowly out of consideration for the elder Maniakes and Symvatios, but they were both breathing hard by the time they gained the walkway.

  Maniakes peered out toward the Kubratoi camp nearby. Etzilios had chosen to set his own tent opposite the Silver Gate, the chief way into Videssos the city. The horsetail standards that marked his tent were unmistakable. Also as near unmistakable as made no difference was the banner fluttering next to that standard. White and red… Maniakes could not make out the lion of Makuran on the flag, but had no doubt it was there.

  Kubratoi rode back and forth, out beyond the ditch in front of the wall. They weren't doing much: he didn't see any of them shooting arrows at the Videssians defending the city, for instance. But they were alert enough to make a sally look like a bad idea.

  «How are we fixed for grain?» Maniakes asked. He looked back over his shoulder. The bulk of the inner wall hid Videssos the city from his view. He could feel the weight of its populace pressing out at him all the same. How many people did the city hold? A hundred thousand? A quarter of a million? Twice that? He didn't know, not even within such a broad range. What he did know was that, however many of them there were, they all needed to eat and to keep on eating.

  «We're not too bad off,» Symvatios answered. «The granaries were fairly full when the siege started, and we've been bringing in more from further south and east, where the Kubratoi haven't reached. We can last… a while.»

  «Other question is, how long can the Kubratoi last out there?» The elder Maniakes pointed toward Etzilios' encampment. «What do they do for food once they've eaten the countryside empty?» «Starve or go home,» Rhegorios said. «Those are the choices they have.»

  «Those are two of the choices they have,» Maniakes said, which made his cousin look puzzled. Wishing he didn't have to, the Avtokrator explained: «They can also try breaking into the city. If they do that, it doesn't matter how much grain we have left or how little food they have. If they break in, they win.»

  Rhegorios nodded, now unwontedly serious. «Do you know, cousin of mine—» He didn't string titles together now, either. «—that never crossed my mind. In spite of everything they've gathered out there, I have trouble making myself believe they might break in.»

  «We all have trouble beli
eving it,» the elder Maniakes said. «That may be good or bad. It's good if the Kubratoi have doubts in the same proportion as we have confidence. But if we're slack because we know Videssos the city has never fallen and they're all eager and zealous to make a first time, we're in trouble.»

  «That's so,» Maniakes said: «They haven't tried storming the walls?»

  His father shook his head. «No. Some days they aren't quiet like this, though. They'll come up into archery range and shoot at our people on the walls. They haven't done that so much lately. It's as if they're—waiting.»

  «And we know what they're waiting for, too,» the Avtokrator said unhappily. «They're waiting to see what the Makuraners can show them and how much help it will be. The boiler boys are good at what they do, too. I wish they weren't, but they know as much about siege warfare as any Videssian.»

  «Abivard will probably want to get more of his people over to this side of the Cattle Crossing before any serious attack on the walls,» Symvatios said. «He won't fancy the Kubratoi taking all the spoils if we fall.»

  «And they won't want him taking any—Etzilios sucked in treachery at his mother's breast.» Maniakes grew thoughtful. «I wonder if we can make the allies distrust each other more than they hate us.»

  «That is an interesting notion,» the elder Maniakes said. He, too, stared out toward the Kubrati camp. «I have to say I'd guess the odds are against it. We might as well try, though. The worst they can tell us is no.»

  «The world doesn't end if you get your face slapped,» Rhegorios remarked. «You just ask another girl the same question. Or sometimes you ask the same girl the same question a little later on, and you get a different answer.»

  «Hear the voice of experience,» Maniakes said dryly. His cousin coughed and spluttered. His father and uncle both laughed. The world looked a little brighter, giving him three, maybe even four, heartbeats' worth of relief—till he thought about the Kubratoi again.

  A postern gate swung open. Despite all the grease the soldiers had poured onto the hinges, they still squeaked. Maniakes wondered when anyone had last oiled them. Had it been a year ago, or five, or ten? Till this year, no one had expected Videssos the city to be besieged, and a siege was the only time when a postern gate was useful.

  «Curse it, we don't want to let all the Kubratoi and Makuraners know we're doing this,» the Avtokrator hissed. «The idea is to keep it secret—otherwise we wouldn't have chosen midnight.»

  «Sorry, your Majesty,» the officer in charge of the gate answered, also in a low voice. «That's as quiet as we could manage.» He peered out into the darkness. «Here comes the fellow, so he is on time. I wouldn't have thought it, not with a barbarian.»

  No shouts from the wall above warned of any other Kubratoi moving forward with the single emissary Maniakes had suggested to Etzilios. The khagan was keeping his end of the bargain, most likely because he didn't think he could wring any great advantage from betraying it now. At Maniakes' command, the soldiers at the postern gate ran a long plank out over the far side of the ditch.

  «Mind you don't fall off,» one of the men called softly to the newcomer. «It's a goodish way down.»

  «I shall beens very carefuls, thank youse,» the Kubrati answered in Videssian fractured but fluent. His footfalls thudded confidently on the gangway. When he came into Videssos the city, the guardsmen pulled back the plank and shut the postern gate once more.

  «Moundioukh, isn't it?» Maniakes said. No torches burned nearby—that would have given away the parley. But the Avtokrator had heard only one man capable of mangling Videssian as this fellow did.

  And, sure enough, the Kubrati nodded in the darkness and said, «Whose else would the magnifolent Etzilios sends to treat against youse?» Maniakes wondered whether that against was more slipshod grammar or a slip of the tongue. He'd find out.

  With the gate closed, a couple of torchbearers came hurrying up. Yes, that was Moundioukh, in the flesh as well as in the voice. His scraggly beard had more gray in it than Maniakes remembered. «Your master is a treacherous man,» the Avtokrator said severely.

  To his surprise, Moundioukh burst out laughing. «Of courses him are,» the Kubrati answered. «Otherwisely him never talkings at youse.»

  «I daresay,» Maniakes said. «All right—what does he want from me for him to give over his alliance with the Makuraners? I presume there must be something I can give him, or he wouldn't have sent you to me.»

  Moundioukh's large, square teeth flashed in the torchlight as he laughed again. «The magnifolent Etzilios tell me, 'Go to this Maniakes. See him crawl. See him slithither'—is word, yes, slithithering? 'Then youse tells he what me tells youse.' «

  «And what did the magnifolent Etzilios tell you?» Maniakes knew a certain amount of pride at bringing the epithet out with a straight face.

  «Not seen enough of slithitherings yettish times,» the Kubratoi replied pointedly.

  Maniakes exhaled through his nose in exasperation. «To the ice with him, and to the ice with you, too. I don't know what else I can do but tell you I'll do whatever you and the khagan want.» He couldn't say magnifolent again, no matter how hard he tried.

  «You prostitute yourselves for I, like youse always having I prostitute myselves to youse?» Moundioukh said.

  The guards growled. «He means 'prostrate,' « Maniakes said quickly. He wondered if that made the demand any more bearable. He was vicegerent of Phos on earth; who was this nasty barbarian envoy to demand that he go down on his belly before him? The man with the whip hand—the answer was painfully plain. «I said anything, and I was not lying.» Maniakes did the deed. He'd seen it performed before him countless times, but hadn't done it himself since Likinios Avtokrator sat on the Videssian throne. His body, he discovered, still remembered how.

  «Youse really doing this things.» Moundioukh sounded amazed.

  «Yes, I really did it. Have I slithithered enough for you now?» After performing a proskynesis, desecrating the Videssian language came easy.

  «Is enoughly, yeses,» Moundioukh admitted. «Now we tells youse what the magnifolent khagan tell we. He tell, nothing in all these world youse does—» He made it sound like yooz dooz."—am enoughs to make he go buggering Makuraners. Us, theys see chance to slaughterize you, and usses takes it.»

  «You and the Makuraners would quarrel afterward, even if you won,» Maniakes said. «We have a saying—'thieves fall out.' «

  «We quarrels?» Moundioukh shrugged. «Then we quarrels. Not having mores of quarrels with Videssians, not nevers again. Magnifolent Etzilios sezzing, that worths any sizes of quarrelings with Makuran.»

  The khagan was probably right, too, when you looked at things from the Kubrati point of view. If Videssos the city fell, it would be a frontier province to the Makuraners, far from their center. But Videssos the city was the very heart of the Empire of Videssos. Cut it out and the Empire had no heart left. Free rein hereabouts, near enough—that was the stake for which Etzilios was playing. «And beside,» Moundioukh added, «you beat Etzilios. He pay youse back how youse am deservings.»

  For a barbarian, the khagan was a rational man. But a hunger for revenge, coupled with sound reasons of policy, could make him unreasonable—and apparently had made him so. «If I hadn't beaten him, he would have been down here by the city years before,» Maniakes pointed out.

  «Should has beed,» Moundioukh said. «Should has killed you in trick making treaty. Save Kubrat shitpot full troubles, that beed happening.»

  «I'm so sorry,» Maniakes said dryly. «I should have killed Etzilios, that last fight where I landed troops behind your raiders. That would have saved me a lot of trouble.»

  «Now youse gots troubles, Etzilios gots troubles, all gots troubles,» Moundioukh said, apparently in agreement. «Am time of troubles.»

  «No agreement from the khagan, then?» Maniakes said unhappily.

  «Nones,» Moundioukh said. «He says I says no. Youse pushing, I says no and futter yourself, youse pushings hard and I tells youse so
mething really with lots of juices in it. You wants I should?» He sounded delighted to oblige.

  «Never mind,» Maniakes told him. He didn't bother waving the torchbearers away from the postern gate now—if any Makuraners saw Moundioukh coming back, maybe they'd think the Kubratoi were betraying them even when they weren't. «Let him out,» he said to the men in charge of the gate. «We're not going to be able to come to terms.»

  Having opened once, the gate proved more willing to do so quietly the second time—when Maniakes would have preferred it noisy. The Videssian soldiers slid the gangway out across the ditch. Moundioukh walked across it. This time, no one urged him to be careful. If he fell down and broke his neck in the ditch now, what difference would it make? None Maniakes could see.

  «I think that was worth a try, your Majesty,» the officer in charge of the gate said. «We're no worse off now than we were before.»

  «That's true.» Maniakes remembered throwing away his crown and the rest of the imperial regalia to escape the Kubratoi when they'd ambushed him in that treaty ceremony. «Aye,» he said, half to himself, «I've had worse from the nomads. This time, Moundioukh didn't cost me anything but my dignity.»

  «I kept hoping it wasn't true,» Maniakes said, looking out from a tower thrusting up from the inner wall.

  «Well, it bloody well is true,» Rhegorios answered. He was looking in the same direction. «You're not going to try and tell me the Kubratoi could build those all on their lonesome, are you?»

  Those were siege engines, some of them stone– and dart-throwers, other the skeletal beginnings of towers to overtop the outer wall. On the timber frames, the Kubratoi would soon add raw hides to make the towers harder to burn. If they could bring them up to the wall, they'd be able to put men on the walkway. If they did that, anything could happen.

  «You're right, of course—they couldn't,» Maniakes said unhappily. «Abivard, Skotos curse him to the ice—» He turned his head and performed the ritual expectoration. «—did sneak one of his engineers, or maybe more than one, over the Cattle Crossing. Those are Makuraner-style engines, or else I'm a wolf with a purple pelt.»