He didn't think much of the herds of cattle and flocks of sheep moving slowly over the grasslands. Any dihqan back in Makuran would have been ashamed to admit he owned such a handful of ragged, scraggly beasts. Of course, the flocks and herds of Makuran hadn't been devastated by years of civil war and invasion.
The Videssians certainly thought like their Makuraner counterparts. As soon as they got wind of the approach of Abivard's army, they tried to get their animals as far out of the way as they could. Foraging parties had to scatter widely to bring in the beasts that helped keep the army fed.
«That's the way,» Romezan said when the soldiers led in a good many sheep one afternoon when the highlands of Makuran were beginning to push their way up over the western horizon. «If they won't give us what we need, we'll bloody well take it—and we'll take so much, we'll make the Videssians, crazed as they are with their false Phos, take starvation for a virtue because they'll see so much of it.»
«These lands are subject to the rule of Sharbaraz King of Kings and so may not be wantonly oppressed,» Abivard reminded him. But then he softened that by adding, «If the choice lies between our doing without and theirs, we ought not to be the ones going hungry.»
From the west Mikhran marzban still bombarded him with letters urging haste. From the east he heard nothing. He wondered if Maniakes had retaken Across and whether Venizelos had resumed his post as steward to the logothete of the treasury.
Farrokh-Zad, one of Kardarigan's lieutenants, said, «Let your spirits not be cast down, lord, for surely this fool of a Maniakes, seeing us departed, will overreach himself as has been his habit of old. After vanquishing the vile Vaspurakaners, with their noses like sickles and their beards like thickets of wire, we shall return and take from the Videssian whatever paltry parts of the westlands he may steal from us. For are we not the men of Makuran, the mighty men whom the God delights to honor?»
He puffed out his chest, twirled the waxed tip of his mustache, and struck a fierce pose, dark eyes glittering. He was younger than Abivard and far more arrogant: Abivard had been on the point of laughing at his magniloquent bombast when he realized that Farrokh-Zad was in earnest
«May Fraortish eldest of all ask the God to grant your prayers,» Abivard said, and let it go at that. Farrokh-Zad nodded and rode off, a procession of one. Abivard stared after him. Farrokh-Zad probably hadn't set foot in Makuran since his beard had come in fully, but being away hadn't seemed to change his attitudes in the slightest. Those had probably set as hard as cast bronze before he had gotten big enough to defy his mother.
About half the officers in the army were like that; Romezan was a leader among them. They clung to the usages they'd always known even when those usages fit like a boy's caftan on a grown man. Abivard snorted. He was in the other faction, the ones who had taken on so many foreign ways that they hardly seemed like Makuraners anymore. If they ever did go!home to stay, they were liable to be white crows in a black flock. But then, Abivard thought, he'd been getting around Makuraner traditions since the day he had decided to let Roshnani come along when he and Sharbaraz had launched their civil war against Smerdis the usurper.
Such concerns vanished a little later, for an armored rider approached the Makuraner army from the west, carrying a white-painted shield of truce. He was not a Videssian, although the army was still on what had been Videssian soil, but a warrior of Vaspurakan—a noble, by his horse and his gear.
Abivard had the fellow brought before him. He studied the Vaspurakaner with interest: he was not a tall man but thick-shouldered, with a barrel chest and strong arms. Abivard would not have cared to wrestle with him; he made even the bulky Romezan svelte by comparison. His features were strong and heavy, with bushy eyebrows that came together above a nose of truly majestic proportions. His thick beard, black lightly frosted with gray, spilled down over the front of his scale mail shirt and grew up to within a finger's breadth of his eyes. He looked brooding and powerful.
When he spoke, Abivard expected a bass rumble like falling rocks. Instead, his voice was a pleasant, melodious baritone: «I greet you, Abivard son of Godarz, brother-in-law to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» he said in Makuraner fluent enough but flavored by a throaty accent quite different from the Videssian lisp to which Abivard had grown used. «I am Gazrik son of Bardzrabol, and I have authority to speak for the princes of Vaspurakan.»
«I greet you, Gazrik son of Bardzrabol,» Abivard said, doing his best to imitate the way the Vaspurakaner pronounced his name and that of his father. «Speak, then. Enlarge yourself; say what is in your mind. My ears and my heart are open to you.»
«You are as gracious as men say, lord, than which what compliment could be higher?» Gazrik replied. He and Abivard exchanged another round of compliments, and another. Abivard offered wine; Gazrik accepted. He took from a saddlebag a round pastry made with chopped dates and sprinkled over with powdered sugar; Abivard pronounced it delicious, and did not tell him the Videssians called such Vaspurakaner confections «princes' balls.» At last, the courtesies completed, Gazrik began to come to the point. «Know, lord, that the cause of peace would be better served if you turned this host of yours aside from Vaspurakan, the princes' land, the heroes' land.»
«Know, Gazrik son of Bardzrabol, the cause of peace would be better served if you left off your rebellion against Mikhran marzban and handed over to him the vile and vicious wretches responsible for the assassination of his predecessor, Vshnasp marzban.»
Gazrik shook his head; Abivard was reminded of a black bear up in the Dilbat Mountains in back of Mashiz unexpectedly coming upon a man. The Vaspurakaner said, «Lord, we do not repent that Vshnasp marzban is dead. He was an evil man, and his rule over us was full of evils.»
«Sharbaraz King of Kings set him over you. You were in law bound to obey him,» Abivard answered.
«Had he stayed in law, obey him we would have,» Gazrik said. «But you, lord, if a man took women all unwilling from your women's quarters for his own pleasure, what would you do?»
«I do not know that Vshnasp did any such thing,» Abivard said, deliberately not thinking of some of the reports he'd heard. «A man's enemies will lie to make him seem worse than he is.»
Gazrik snorted, not a horselike sound but almost the abrupt, coughing roar of a lion. Abivard had rarely heard such scorn. «Have that however you will, lord,» the Vaspurakaner said. «But I tell you this also: any man who seeks to lead the princes away from Phos who first made Vaspur, that man shall die and spend eternity in Skotos' ice. If you help those who would force this on us, we shall fight you, too.»
Uneasily, Abivard answered, «Sharbaraz King of Kings has ordained this course. So he has ordered; so shall it be.»
«No,» Gazrik said—just the one word, impossible to contradict. He went on in an earnest voice: «We were loyal subjects to the King of Kings. We paid him tribute in iron and silver and gold; our soldiers fought in his wars. We would do this again, did he not interfere in our faith.»
Abivard hoped his frown concealed what he was thinking, for he agreed with Gazrik and had tried to persuade Sharbaraz to follow the course the Vaspurakaner had suggested. But the King of Kings had not agreed, which meant Abivard had to conform to the policy Sharbaraz had set regardless of what he thought of it. Abivard said, «The Videssians make all their subjects worship in the same way: as they have one empire, so they also have one religion. Sharbaraz King of Kings has decreed this a good arrangement for Makuran as well. Let all worship the God; let all acknowledge the power of the King of Kings.»
Gazrik stared down his nose at him—and a fine nose for staring down it was, too. With magnificent contempt the Vaspurakaner said, «And if the Avtokrator of the Videssians chose to leap off a cliff, would Sharbaraz King of Kings likewise cast himself down from a promontory?» By his tone, he hoped it would be so.
Several of the Makuraner generals behind Abivard growled angrily. «Hold your tongue, you insolent dog!» Romezan said.
«Some day we may meet without shield of truce, noble from the Seven Clans,» Gazrik answered. «Then we shall see which of us teaches the other manners.» He turned back to Abivard. «Brother-in-law to the King of Kings, Mikhran marzban holds only the valley containing the fortress of Poskh, and not all of that. If he will withdraw and leave us in peace, we will give him leave to go. This will let you turn back to the east and go on with your war against Videssos. But if he would stay and you would go on, we shall have war between us.»
The trouble was that Abivard saw the course Gazrik proposed as most expedient for Makuran. He exhaled slowly and angrily. He could either obey Sharbaraz in spite of thinking him mistaken or rebel against the King of Kings. He'd seen enough of rebellion both in Makuran and in a Videssos too ravaged by uprising after uprising to oppose the forces of the King of Kings.
And so, wishing he could do otherwise, he said, «Gazrik son of Bardzrabol, if you are wise, you will disband your armies, have your men go home to the valleys where they were born, and beg Sharbaraz King of Kings to show
