He lay down on the pallet. Dry straw rustled under his weight. It smelled musty. Straws poked through the thin linen covering, and in a couple of places through his tunic as well. He wiggled till he was no longer being stabbed, then drew the blanket up to his neck. When he did that, his feet stuck out. He wiggled some more and managed to get all of himself covered. Competing fears and worries roared in his head so loudly he could clearly hear none of them. He fell asleep almost at once.
Rain blew into Krispos' face. He cast an unhappy countenance up to the heavens—and got an eyeful of raindrops for his presumption. 'Well,' he said in a hollow voice, 'at least we won't be hungry.'
Sarkis rode at his left hand. 'That's true, your Majesty. We got the flying column into Aptos just in time to drive off the Thanasiot raiders. It was a victory.'
'Why don't I feel victorious?' Krispos said. Rain trickled between his hat and cloak and slithered down the back of his neck. He wondered how well the gilding and grease on his coat of mail repelled rust. He had the feeling he'd find out.
To his right, Evripos and Katakolon looked glum. They looked worse than glum, in fact—they looked like a couple of drowned cats. Katakolon tried to make the best of it. He caught Krispos' eye and said, 'I usually like my baths warm, Father.'
'If you go out in the field, you have to take that up with Phos, not with me,' Krispos said.
'But you're his viceregent on earth. Don't you have his ear?'
'Aye, viceregent on earth—so they say. But nowhere, son, will you find that an Avtokrator has jurisdiction over what the heavens decide to do. Oh, I can tell the clouds not to drop rain on me, but will they listen? They haven't yet, not to me or any of the men who came before me.'
Evripos muttered something sullen under his breath. Krispos looked at him. He shook his head, muttered again, and rode a little farther away so he wouldn't have to say anything out loud to his father. Krispos thought about pressing him, decided it wouldn't be worth the argument, and kept his own mouth shut.
Sarkis said, 'If you could command the weather, your Majesty, you'd have started doing it your first fall on the throne, when Petronas raised his revolt against you. The rains came early that year, too.'
'That's true; they did. I wish you hadn't reminded me,' Krispos said. The rains then had kept him from following up a victory and let Petronas regroup and continue the fight the next year. He hoped he'd manage a genuine victory against the Thanasioi before the downpour made warfare impossible.
Katakolon said, 'I'd expected the heretics to come out and really fight against us by now.' He sounded disappointed that they hadn't; he was only seventeen, with no true notion of what combat was about. Krispos had got his own first taste at about the same age, and sickened on it. He wondered if Katakolon would do the same.
But his son had raised a legitimate point. Krispos said, 'I'd thought they would come out and fight, too. But this Livanios of theirs is a canny one, curse him to the ice. He knows he gains if I don't destroy him this campaigning season.'
'He doesn't gain if we take back Pityos,' Sarkis said.
Krispos' horse put a foot in a hole concealed by water and almost stumbled. When he'd saved his seat and brought the gelding back under control, he said, 'I'm starting to think we'll need a break in the rain even to get to Pityos.'
'Even if the Thanasioi attack us, it'll be a poor excuse for a battle,' Sarkis said. 'By the time a man's shot his bow twice, the string'll be too wet to use again. Not much chance for tactics after that—-just out saber and slash.'
'A soldiers' battle, eh?' Krispos said.
'Aye, that's what they call it,' Sarkis said, 'the ones who live to call it anything, that is.'
'Yes,' Krispos said. 'What it really means is, some stupid general's fallen asleep on the job.' Soldiers' battles were part of the Videssian military tradition, but not a highly esteemed part. Videssos honored cleverness in warfare as in everything else; the point was not simply to win, but to win with minimum damage to oneself. That could make unnecessary what would have been the next battle.
Sarkis said, 'In this campaign, a soldiers' battle would favor us. But for the band of turncoats who went over with Livanios, most of the Thanasioi are odds and sods who oughtn't to have the discipline they need to stand up in a long fight.'
'From your mouth to the good god's ear,' Krispos said.
'Cowardly scum, the lot of them,' Evripos growled; he'd been listening after all. By his tone, he hated the Thanasioi less for their doctrinal errors than for making him get cold and wet.
'They won't be cowards, young majesty; that's not what I meant at all,' Sarkis said earnestly. 'They'll have fire and dash aplenty, unless I miss my guess. What I doubt is their sticking power. If they don't break us at the first onset, they should be ours.'
Evripos grunted once more, wordlessly this time. Krispos peered through the rain at the territory ahead. He didn't like it: too many hills to pass between on the way to Pityos. Maybe he would have done better to stick to the coastal plain. He hadn't expected the rains so soon. But he was too far in to withdraw; the best course now was to forge ahead strongly and hope things would come out right in the end.
That was, however, also the least subtle course. Against the odds and sods Sarkis had mentioned, he'd have been confident of success. But Livanios had shown himself to be rather better at the game of war than that. Krispos wondered what he had in mind to counter it, and how well the ploy would work.
'One more thing I'll have to find out the hard way,' he murmured. Sarkis, Katakolon, and even Evripos looked curiously at him. He didn't explain. His sons wouldn't have understood, not fully, while the cavalry commander probably followed him only too well.
Camp that night was soaked and miserable. The cooks had trouble starting their fires, which meant the army was reduced to bread, cheese, and onions. Evripos scowled in distaste at the hard, dark little loaf a fellow handed him out of a greased leather sack. After one bite, he threw it down in the mud.
