Videssos Besieged ttot-4

by Harry Turtledove

  «Nothing would surprise me, not anymore,» his cousin said. «The only worse thing would be having to try handstrokes with all those heavy-armored Makuraners.»

  «That mail is better for horseback,» Maniakes said.

  «I know,» Rhegorios replied. «But it's not so heavy they can't use it afoot, either, and I wouldn't want to be in their way if they tried.»

  «Well, neither would I,» the Avtokrator admitted. «The key to making sure that doesn't happen is keeping them on… the far side of the Cattle Crossing.» He scowled, angry at himself. «I almost said, keeping them on their own side of the Cattle Crossing. It's not theirs. It's ours. I aim to get it back, too.»

  «Sounds fine to me,» Rhegorios said. «How do you propose to do that?»

  «Which? Keep them on that side of the Cattle Crossing or get the westlands back?»

  «Whichever you'd rather tell me about. You're the Avtokrator, after all.» Rhegorios gave him a saucy grin.

  «And you're incorrigible,» Maniakes retorted. «We've got dromons prowling up and down the coast, north and east from the city. Whenever they find any of the Kubrati monoxyla, they burn them or sink them. The trouble is, they don't find that many. The cursed things are too fornicating easy to hide. We're doing what we can. I console myself with that.»

  «Something,» his cousin agreed. «Maybe not much, but something. How about getting the westlands back?»

  «How about that?» Maniakes said, deadpan, and then made as if not to go on. When Rhegorios was somewhere between lese majesty and physical assault, the Avtokrator, chuckling, deigned to continue: «Once this siege fails, I don't think they'll be able to mount another one for a long time. That gives the choice of what to do next back to me. How does another trip to the Land of the Thousand Cities sound? Better that Sharbaraz should worry about his capital than that we worry about ours.»

  «That's the truth.» Rhegorios sent him a respectful look. «You really do have it figured out, don't you?»

  Maniakes coughed, spluttered, and finally laughed out loud. «I know what I'd like to do, yes. How much I'm going to be able to do is another question, and a harder one, worse luck.»

  Rhegorios looked thoughtful. «Maybe we ought to use our ships against the Kubratoi the way we did three years ago: land troops behind their army and catch 'em between hammer and anvil.»

  «Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I've thought about it. The trouble is, Etzilios is looking for it this time. The dromon captains report that he's got squads posted along the coast every mile or so, to bring him word if we do land. We wouldn't catch him by surprise, the way we did then. And the likeliest thing for him to do would be trying to storm the city as soon as he heard we'd pulled out some of the garrison.»

  «That makes unfortunately too much sense,» Rhegorios said. «You're quite sharp when you get logical, you know. You should have been a theologian.»

  «No, thank you,» Maniakes said at once. «I've had so much double from the theologians, I wouldn't want to inflict another one on the world. Besides, I'd be an indifferent theologian at best, and I'm vain enough to think I make something better than an indifferent Avtokrator.»

  «I'd say so,» Rhegorios agreed. «Of course, if I said anything else, I'd get to find out how the weather is up at Prista this time of year.» He was joking; he didn't expect to be sent into exile across the Videssian Sea. The joke, though, illustrated the problem Maniakes had in getting straight answers from his subjects, no matter how much he needed them.

  And some of the answers he got from his subjects he didn't like far other reasons. As he was riding back to the palace quarter from the walls, a fellow in a dirty tunic shouted to him, «This is your fault, curse you! If you hadn't married your cousin, Phos wouldn't be punishing all of Videssos and letting Skotos loose here for your sins!»

  Some of the Avtokrator's guardsmen tried to seize the heckler, but he escaped them. Once away from Middle Street, he lost himself in the maze of lanes and alleys that made up most of the city's roads. The guards came back looking angry and disappointed.

  «Don't worry about it,» Maniakes said resignedly. «Skotos will have his way with that fellow. I hope he enjoys ice, because he's going to see an eternity of it.»

  He hoped that, by making light of the incident, he would persuade the guards it wasn't worth mentioning. Otherwise, they would gossip about it with the serving women, and from them it would get back to Lysia. He was also glad Rhegorios had stayed back at the wall and hadn't heard the heckler. Predicting that such troubles would be long-lasting, his cousin had proved himself a better prophet than Maniakes. The Avtokrator didn't stay at the imperial residence long. Likarios, his son by Niphone and the heir to the throne, asked him seriously, «Papa, when they're bigger, will my little brothers throw me out of the palaces?»

  «By the good god, no!» Maniakes exclaimed, sketching the sun-circle over his heart. «Who's been filling your head with nonsense?» Likarios didn't give a direct answer; he'd very quickly learned to be circumspect. «It was just something I heard.»

  «Well, it's something you can forget,» Maniakes told him. His son nodded, apparently satisfied. Maniakes wished he were satisfied himself. Though Likarios was his heir, the temptation remained to disinherit the boy and place the succession in the line of his sons by Lysia.

  She had never urged that course on him. Had she done so, he would have worried she was out for her own advantage first and the Empire's only afterward. But that did not keep the idea from cropping up on its own.

  He went out to the seawall to escape it. A dromon glided over the water of the Cattle Crossing. The sight, though, was far less reassuring than it had been when the Makuraners were encamped in Across before. Monoxyla crept out at night and made nuisances of themselves, just as mice did even in homes where cats prowled. Then a different image occurred to him. Two or three times, in barns and stables, he'd seen snakes with their coils wrapped around rats or other smaller animals. The rats would wiggle and kick and sometimes even work a limb free for a little while, but in the end that wouldn't matter. They'd be squeezed from so many directions, they ended up dead in spite of all their thrashing.

  He wished that picture hadn't come to mind. In it, the Empire of Videssos was rat, not snake.

  What did Abivard plan, over there in Across? He couldn't smuggle his whole army to this side of the Cattle Crossing ten and twenty men at a time, not if he aimed to take Videssos the city before winter came. Maniakes' guess was that he wanted to take the city as fast as he thought he could. The Kubratoi couldn't indefinitely maintain the siege on their own. They'd eat the countryside empty, and then they'd have to leave.

  That meant… what? Probably an effort on Abivard's part to get a good-sized chunk of the Makuraner field force over here to the eastern side of the Cattle Crossing fairly soon now. If the fleet managed to stop him, the siege would probably collapse of its own weight. If the fleet didn't stop him, Videssos the city was liable to fall, all past history of invincibility notwithstanding. For the Makuraners to teach the Kubratoi siegecraft was bad enough—worse than bad enough. For the Makuraners to conduct the siege would be worse still. Unlike the nomads, they really knew what they were doing.

  «I wish I had a better drungarios of the fleet,» Maniakes murmured. Erinakios, the prickly former commander of the fleet of the Key, would have been ideal… had Genesios' chief wizard not slain him by sorcery while the tyrant was trying to hold off Maniakes.

  A guardsman came trotting toward him. «Your Majesty, there's a messenger from the land wall waiting for you in the imperial residence,» the fellow called.

  «I'll come,» Maniakes said at once. «Has the attack begun?» The Kubrati siege towers weren't finished yet, but that might not figure. If the attack had begun, all Maniakes' worries about what might be would vanish, subsumed into worries over what was. Those, at least, would be immediate, and—with luck—susceptible to immediate repair.

  But the guardsman shook his head. «I don't think so, your Majesty—we'd hear t
he racket from here, wouldn't we? The fellow acts like it's important even so.»

  «You're probably right about the racket,» Maniakes admitted. He followed the soldier at a pace halfway between fast walk and trot As he hurried along, he scratched his head. He'd been at the wall only a little while before the guard arrived. What had changed of such importance, he had to find out about it right away? He forced a shrug, and forced relaxation on himself as well. He was only moments from learning.

  The messenger started to prostrate himself. Maniakes, losing the patience he'd cultivated, waved for him not to bother. The man came straight to the point: «Your Majesty, Immodios, who knows him well, has spotted Tzikas out beyond the wall.»

  Maniakes stiffened and twitched, as if lightning had struck close by. Well, maybe that wasn't so far wrong. «Spotted him, has he?» he said. «Well, has he tried killing him yet?»

  «Uh, no, your Majesty,» the messenger said. «By the good god, why not?» Maniakes demanded. He shouted for Antelope—or, if his warhorse wasn't ready, any other animal that could be saddled in a hurry. The gelding he ended up riding lacked Antelope's spark, but got him out to the wall fast enough to keep him from losing all of his temper. The messenger led him up to the outer wall, close by one of the siege towers. Immodios stood there. He pointed outward. «There he is, your Majesty. Do you see him? The tall, lean one prowling around with the Kubratoi?»

  «I see him,» Maniakes answered. Tzikas stalked out beyond archery range. He wore a Makuraner caftan that billowed in the breeze, and had let his beard grow fuller than the neatly trimmed Videssian norm, but was unmistakable nonetheless. His build, as Immodios had said, set him apart from the stocky nomads who kept him company, but Maniakes thought he would have recognized him even among Makuraners, whose angular height came closer to matching his. All you had to do was wait till you saw him point at something, at anything. I want it radiated from every pore of his body.

  A dart-thrower stood a few paces away, ready to fling its missiles at the Kubratoi when they attacked in earnest. Darts waited ready beside it, in wicker baskets that did duty for outsized quivers. It would hurl those darts farther than the strongest man could shoot a bow.

  Maniakes' father had made sure Maniakes knew how to operate every sort of engine the Videssian army used. The Avtokrator could almost hear the elder Maniakes saying, «Learning doesn't do you any lasting harm, and every once in a while some piece of it—and you never know which one beforehand—will come in handy.»

  After sketching a salute to his father, Maniakes remarked, «I make the range out to the son of a whore to be about a furlong and a half. Does that seem about right to you, Immodios?»

  «Uh, aye, your Majesty,» Immodios replied. Though the question had caught him by surprise, he'd considered before he spoke. Maniakes approved of that.

  He seized a dart, set it in the catapult's groove, and said, «Then perhaps you'll do me the honor of serving on the other windlass there. I don't know if we can hit him, but to the ice with me if I don't intend to try.»

  Immodios blinked again, then worked the windlass with a will. For a range of a furlong and a half, you wanted fifteen revolutions of the wheel; more would wind the ropes too tight and send the dart too far, while fewer and it would fall short. The wooden frame of the catapult creaked under the building tension of the rope skeins.

  The dart-thrower didn't point in quite the right direction. Maniakes used a handspike to muscle it toward Tzikas. He checked his aim with two pins driven into the frame parallel to the groove. Still not quite right. He levered the engine around a little further with the handspike, then grunted in satisfaction. Tzikas paid no attention to the activity of the wall. He was pointing to something at ground level, something to which the Kubratoi were paying rapt attention. Maniakes hoped they would go right on paying rapt attention to it. He looked over to Immodios. «Are we ready?»

  «Aye, your Majesty, I believe we are,» the somber officer answered.

  Maniakes picked up a wooden mallet and gave the trigger a sharp whack. That released the casting arms, which jerked forward, sending the dart on its way. The engine that had propelled it bucked like a wild ass. Half the frame jounced up in the air. It crashed back down to the walkway a moment later. The dart flew straight toward Tzikas, faster and on a flatter trajectory than any archer could have propelled a shaft. «I think we're going to—» Maniakes' voice rose in excitement.

  A Kubrati strode in front of the Videssian renegade. The nomad must have spied the dart, for he flung his arms wide an instant before it struck him. Before he had a chance to do anything more, he himself was flung aside by the terrible impact.

  «Stupid fool,» Maniakes snarled. «To the ice with him—it was Tzikas I wanted.» He seized another dart and thrust it into the catapult's trough.

  Too late. Even as he and Immodios worked the windlasses on either side of the engine, he knew it was too late. Tzikas and the Kubratoi were scattering, all except the luckless fellow the dart had slaughtered. He lay where he had fallen, as a cockroach will after a shoe lands on it.

  Maniakes sent that second dart whizzing through the air. It nearly nailed another nomad, and missed Tzikas by no more than ten or twelve feet. The traitor kept right on going till he was out of range of the engines on the wall. He knew to the foot how far they could throw. He ought to, Maniakes thought bitterly.

  «Close,» Immodios said.

  «Close, aye,» Maniakes answered. «Close isn't good enough. I wanted him dead. I thought I had him. A little bit of luck—» He shook his head. He hadn't seen much of that during his reign, and whatever he had, he'd had to make for himself. A timely error by the enemy, a truly important Makuraner message falling into his hands… the next time he saw anything like that would be the first.

  «I wonder what the traitor was showing the Kubratoi,» Immodios remarked.

  «I have no idea,» Maniakes said. «I don't much care, either. The trouble is, he can still show it to them whenever he wants, whatever it may be. He wouldn't be showing them anything if it hadn't been for that one miserable nomad, may Skotos clutch him forever.» That the Kubrati had paid with his life for moving into the wrong place at the wrong time seemed to Maniakes not nearly punishment enough.

  Immodios persisted: «What does Tzikas know about the way the city walls are built?»

  «Quite a lot, worse luck for us,» Maniakes answered. «He's not going to get close enough to use whatever he knows, though, not if I have anything to say about it.»

  But how much would he have to say about it? Immodios, being alert, sharp-eyed, and a former colleague of Tzikas', had recognized the traitor at long range. How many other officers were likely to do the same tomorrow, or the day after, or in a week? The longer Maniakes thought about that, the less he liked the answer he came up with.

  Whatever Tzikas knew, he'd probably have the chance to show it to the men he now called his friends… unless he decided to betray them again. If Tzikas did that, Maniakes decided, he would welcome him with open arms. And if that wasn't a measure of his own desperation, he didn't know what was.

  Watching the Kubrati siege towers grow and get bedecked with hides and with shields on top of those was almost like watching saplings shoot up and put out leaves as spring gave way to summer. Maniakes found only two differences: the towers grew faster than any saplings, and they got uglier as they came closer to completion, where leaves made trees more beautiful.

  The Kubratoi were being more methodical about the entire siege than Maniakes would have thought possible before it began. He credited that to—or rather, blamed it on—the Makuraners the nomads' monoxyla had smuggled over from the westlands. Abivard and his officers knew patience and its uses.

  Well out of range of Videssian arrows or darts or flung stones, the Kubratoi practiced climbing up into their siege towers and rushing up the wooden stairs they'd made. They also practiced moving the ungainly erections, with horses and mules on ropes and then by men inside the towers.

  «They're
going to find out that's not so easy as they think,» the elder Maniakes remarked one day as he and his son watched a siege tower crawl along at a pace just about fast enough to catch and mash a snail—always provided you didn't give the snail a running start.

  «I think you're right, Father,» the Avtokrator agreed. «Nobody's shooting at them now. No matter what they do, they won't be able to keep all our darts and stones from doing them damage when the fighting starts.»

  «That does make a bit of a difference, doesn't it?» the elder Maniakes said with a rheumy chuckle. «You know it, and I know it, and Etzilios has been too good a bandit over the years not to know it, but does your ordinary, everyday Kubrati know it? If he doesn't, he'll learn quick, the poor sod.»

  «What do we do if the nomads manage to get men on the wall in spite of everything we've done to stop 'em?» Maniakes asked.

  «Kill the bastards,» his father answered at once. «Until Etzilios rides into the palace quarter or the Mobedhan-Mobhed chases the patriarch out of the High Temple, I'm too stubborn to think I'm beat. Even then, I think I'm going to take some convincing.»

  Maniakes smiled. He only wished things were as simple as his father, a man of the old school, still reckoned them to be. «I admire the spirit,» he said, «but how do we go on if that happens?»

  «I don't know,» his father answered, a little testily. «Best thing I can think of is to make sure it doesn't.»

  «Sounds easy, when you put it that way,» Maniakes said, and the elder Maniakes let out a grunt undoubtedly intended for laughter. The Avtokrator went on, «I wish they weren't guarding all their siege engines so closely. I told Rhegorios I wouldn't, but now I think I would sally against them and see how much damage we could do.»

  His father shook his head. «You were right the first time. Biggest advantage we have is fighting from the inside of the city and the top of the wall. If we sally, we throw all that out the window.» He held up a hand. «I'm not saying, never do it. I am saying that the advantage of surprise had better outweigh the disadvantage of giving up your position.»