«As far as I'm concerned, Maniakes is welcome to this place,» Abivard snarled. That got him a hurt look by way of reply.
The next town to which he came was called Iskanshin. Its garrison was no more prepossessing than the one in Erekhatti—less so, in fact, for the city governor of Iskanshin had no idea where to lay his hands on the spears that might have turned his men from bravos into something at least arguably resembling soldiers.
«What am I going to do?» Abivard raved as he left Iskanshin.
«I've seen two cities now, and I have exactly as many men as I started out with, though three of those are down with a flux of the bowels and useless in a fight»
«It can't all be this bad,» Roshnani said.
«Why not?» he retorted.
«Two reasons,» she said. «For one, when we were forced through the Thousand Cities in the war against Smerdis, they defended themselves well enough to hold us out. And second, if they were all as weak as Erekhatti and Iskanshin, Videssos would have taken the land between the Tutub and the Tib away from us hundreds of years ago.»
Abivard chewed on that. It made some of his rage go away– some, but not all. «Then why aren't these towns in any condition to meet an attack now?» he demanded not so much of Roshnani as of the world at large.
The world didn't answer. The world, he'd found, never answered. His wife did: «Because Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, decided the Thousand Cities couldn't possibly be in any danger and so scanted them. And one of the reasons he decided the Thousand Cities were safe for all time was that a certain Abivard son of Godarz had won him a whole great string of victories against Videssos. How could the Videssians hope to trouble us after they'd been beaten again and again?»
«Do you know,» Abivard said thoughtfully, «that's not me answerless question it seems to be when you ask it that way. Maniakes has started playing the game by new rules. He's written off the westlands for the time being, which is something I never thought I'd see from an Avtokrator of the Videssians. But the way he's doing it makes a crazy kind of sense. If he can strike a blow at our heart and drive it home, whether we hold the westlands won't matter in the long run, because we'll have to give them up to defend ourselves.»
«He's never been foolish,» Roshnani said. «We've seen that over the years. If this is how he's fighting the war, it's because he thinks he can win.»
«Far be it from me to argue,» Abivard exclaimed. «By all I've seen here, I think he can win, too.»
But his pessimism was somewhat tempered by his reception at Harpar, just east of the Tib. The city governor there did not seem to regard his position as an invitation to indolence. On the contrary: Tovorg's garrison soldiers, while not the most fearsome men Abivard had ever seen, all carried swords and bows and looked to have some idea what to do with them. If they ever got near horsemen or in among them, they might do some damage, and they might not run in blind panic if enemy troopers moved toward them.
«My compliments, Excellency,» Abivard said. «Compared to what I've seen elsewhere, your warriors deserve to be recruited into the personal guard of the King of Kings.»
«You are generous beyond my deserts, lord,» Tovorg answered, cutting roast mutton with the dagger he wore on his belt. «I try only to do my duty to the realm.»
«Too many people are thinking of themselves first and only then of the realm,» Abivard said. «To them— note that I name no names—whatever is easiest is best.»
«You need name no names,» the city governor of Harpar said, a fierce gleam kindling in his eyes. «You come from Mashiz, and I know by which route. Other towns between the rivers are worse than those you have seen.»
«You do so ease my mind,» Abivard said, to which Tovorg responded with a grin that showed his long white teeth.
He said, «This was of course my first concern, lord.» Then he grew more serious. «How many peasants shall I rout out once you have moved on, and how much of the canal system do you think we'll have to destroy?»
«I hope it doesn't come to that, but get ready to rout out as many as you can. Destroying canals will hurt the cropland but not your ability to move grain to the storehouses—is that right?»
«There it might even help,» Tovorg said. «We mostly ship by water in these parts, so spreading water over the land won't hurt us much. What we eat next year is another question, though.»
«Next year may have to look out for itself,» Abivard answered.
«If Maniakes gets here, he'll wreck the canals as best he can instead of just opening them here and there to flood the land on either side of the banks. He'll burn the crops he doesn't flood, and he'll burn Harpar, too, if he can get over the walls or through them.»
«As we did in the Videssian westlands?» Tovorg shrugged. «The idea, then, is to make sure he doesn't come so far, eh?»
«Yes,» Abivard said, wondering as he spoke where he would find the wherewithal to stop Maniakes. Harpar's garrison was a start but no more. And they were infantry. Positioning them so they could block Maniakes' progress would be as hard as he'd warned Sharbaraz.
«I will do everything I can to work with you,» Tovorg said. «If the peasants grumble—if they try to do anything more than grumble—I will suppress them. The realm as a whole comes first»
«The realm comes first,» Abivard repeated. «You are a man of whom Makuran can be proud.» Tovorg hadn't asked about rewards. He hadn't made excuses. He'd just found out what needed doing and promised to do it. If things turned out well afterward, he undoubtedly hoped he would be remembered. And why not? A man was always entitled to hope.
Abivard hoped he would find more city governors like Tovorg.
«There!» A mounted scout pointed to a smoke cloud. «D'you see, lord?»
«Yes, I see it,» Abivard answered. «But so what? There are always clouds of smoke on the horizon in the Thousand Cities. More smoke here than I ever remember seeing before.»
That wasn't strictly true. He'd seen thicker, blacker smoke rising from Videssian cities when his troops had captured and torched them. But that smoke had lasted only until whatever was burnable inside those cities had burned itself out. Between the Tutub and the Tib smoke was a feet of life, rising from all the Thousand Cities as their inhabitants baked bread, cooked food, fired pots, smelted iron, and did all the countless other things requiring flame and fuel. One more patch of it struck Abivard as nothing out of the ordinary.
But the scout spoke with assurance: «There lies the camp of the Videssians, lord. No more than four or five farsangs from us.»
«I've heard prospects that delighted me more,» Abivard said. The scout showed white teeth in a grin of sympathetic understanding.
Abivard had known for some time the direction from which Maniakes was coming. Had the refugees fleeing before the Videssian Avtokrator been mute, their presence alone would have warned him of Maniakes' impending arrival, as a shift in the wind foretells a storm. But the refugees were anything but mute. They were in fact voluble and volubly insistent that Abivard throw back the invader.
«Easy to insist,» Abivard muttered. «Telling me how to do it is harder.»
The refugees had tried that, too. They'd bombarded him with plans and suggestions till he had tired of talking with them. They were convinced that they had the answers. If he'd had as many horsemen as there were people in all the Thousand Cities put together, the suggestions—or some of them—might have been good ones. Had he even had the mobile force he'd left behind in Vaspurakan, he might have been able to do something with a few of the half-bright schemes. As things were—
«As things are,» he said to no one in particular, «I'll be lucky if I don't get overrun and wiped out.» Then he called to Turan. The officer who had commanded his escort on the road from Vaspurakan down to Mashiz was now his lieutenant general, for he'd found no man from the garrison forces of the Thousand Cities whom he liked better for the role. He pointed to the smoke from Maniakes' camp, then asked, «What do you make of our chances against the Videssians?»
«With what we've got here?» Turan shook his head. «Not good. I hear the Videssians are better than they used to be, and even if they weren't, it wouldn't much matter. If they hit us a solid blow, we'll shatter. By any reasonable way of looking at things, we don't stand a chance.»
