hardest burden anyone can lay on a man. If you don't care to bear it, speak up now.'
'Oh, I'll bear it. Father. I just wanted to be sure I understood what you were asking of me,' Evripos said.
'Good,' Krispos said. 'I'll give you one piece of advice and one only—I know how you won't much care to listen. It's just this: if you have to decide, do it firmly. No matter how much doubt, no matter how much fear and trembling you feel, don't let it show. Half the business of leading people is just keeping up a solid front.'
'That may be worth remembering,' Evripos said, as big a concession as Krispos knew he was likely to get. His son asked, 'What will Katakolon be doing while I'm here in the city?'
'He'll go the westlands as my spatharios. Another campaign will do him good, I think.'
'Ah.' If Evripos wanted to take issue with that, he didn't find any way to manage it. After a pause a tiny bit longer than a more experienced man would have given, he nodded brusquely and changed the subject. 'I hope I'll serve as you'd have me do, Father.'
'I hope you will, too. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. If the lord with the great and good mind hears my prayers, you'll have a quiet time of it. I don't really
'Then why take the army out?' Evripos asked.
Krispos sighed. 'Because sometimes it's needful, as you know very well. If I don't go to the fighting this summer, it will come to me. Given that choice, I'd sooner do it on my own terms, or as nearly as I can.'
'Aye, that makes sense,' Evripos said after a moment's thought. 'Sometimes the world won't let you have things all as you'd like them.'
He was probably speaking from bitterness at not being first in line for the throne. Nonetheless, Krispos was moved to reach out and set a hand on his shoulder. 'That's an important truth, son. You'd do well to remember it.' It was, he thought, a truth Phostis hadn't fully grasped—but then Phostis, as firstborn, hadn't had the need. Each son was so different from the other two ... 'Where's Katakolon? Do you know?'
Evripos pointed. 'One of the rooms down that hallway: second or third on the left, I think.'
'Thanks.' Later, Krispos realized he hadn't asked what his youngest son was doing. If Evripos knew, he kept his mouth shut, a useful ploy he might well have picked up from his father. Krispos walked down the hallway. The second chamber on the left, a sewing room for the serving women, was empty.
The door to the third room on the left was closed. Krispos worked the latch. He saw a tangle of bare arms and legs, heard a couple of horrified squawks, and shut the door again in a hurry. He stood chuckling in the hall until Katakolon, his robe rumpled and his face red, came out a couple of minutes later.
He let Katakolon steer him down the corridor, and was anything but surprised to hear the door open and close behind him. He didn't look back, but started to laugh. Katakolon gave him a dirty look. 'What's so funny?'
'You are,' Krispos answered. 'I do apologize for interrupting.'
Katakolon's glare got blacker, but he seemed confused as well as annoyed. 'Is that all you're going to say?'
'Yes, I think so. After all, it's nothing I haven't seen before. Remember, I was Anthimos' vestiarios.' He decided not to go into detail about Anthimos' orgies. Katakolon was too likely to try imitating them.
Looking at his youngest son's face, Krispos had all he could do to keep from laughing again. Katakolon was obviously having heavy going imagining his rather paunchy, gray-bearded father reveling with an Avtokrator who, even after a generation, remained a byword for debauchery of all sorts.
Krispos patted his son on the back. 'You have to bear in mind, lad, that once upon a time I wasn't a creaking elder. I had the same yen for good wine and bad women as any other young man.'
'Yes, Father,' Katakolon said, but not as if he believed it.
Sighing, Krispos said, 'If you have too much trouble picturing me with a zest for life, try to imagine Iakovitzes, say, as a young man. The exercise will do your wits good.'
He gave Katakolon credit: the youth visibly did try. After a few seconds, he whistled. 'He'd have been something, wouldn't he?'
'Oh, he was,' Krispos said. 'He's still something, come to that.'
All at once, he wondered if Iakovitzes had ever tried his blandishments on Katakolon. He didn't think the old lecher would have got anywhere; like his other two sons, his youngest seemed interested only in women. If Iakovitzes had ever tried to seduce Katakolon or one of the other boys, they'd never brought Krispos the tale.
'Now let me tell you why I interrupted you at a tender moment—' Krispos explained what he had in mind for the most junior Avtokrator.
'Of course, Father. I'll come with you, and help as I can,' Katakolon said when he was done; of the three boys, he was the most tractable. Even the stubborn streak he shared with his brothers and Krispos was in him good- natured. 'I don't expect I'll be busy every moment, and some of the provincial lasses last summer were tastier than I'd have expected away from the capital. When do we start out?'
'As soon as the roads are dry.' Dry himself, Krispos added, 'You won't be devastating the local girls by leaving quite yet.'
'All right,' Katakolon said. 'In that case, if you'll excuse me—' He started down the hall, more purpose in his stride than on any mission for his father. Krispos wondered if he'd burned that hot at seventeen. He probably had, but he had almost as much trouble believing it as Katakolon did in placing him at one of Anthimos' revels.
Livanios addressed his assembled fighters: 'Soon we fare forth, both to fight and to advance along the gleaming path. We shall not go alone. By the lord with the great and good mind, I swear our trouble will not be raising men but rather making sure we are not overwhelmed by those who would join us. We shall spread across the countryside like a fire through grassland; no one and nothing can hold us back.'
The men cheered. By their look, a good many of them were herders from the westlands' central plateau: lean, weatherbeat-en, sunbaked men intimately acquainted with grass fires. Now they carried javelins in their hands, not staves. They were not the best-disciplined troops in the world, but fanaticism went a long way toward making up
