«When I was your age, I thought the same thing,» Abivard told him. «I was wrong, and so are you.»
«I don't think I am,» Varaz said.
Abivard sighed. «That's what I said to my father, too, and it got me no further with him than you're getting with me. Looking back, though, he was right. A boy can't stand against men, not if he hopes to do anything else afterward. Your time will come—and one fine day, the God willing, you'll worry about keeping your son out of fights he isn't ready for.»
Varaz looked eloquently unconvinced. His voice had years to go before it started deepening. His cheeks bore only fine down. To expect him to think of the days when he'd be a father himself was to ask too much. Abivard knew that but preferred argument to breaking his son's spirit by insisting on blind obedience.
There was, however, a time and place for everything. Roshnani cut off the debate, saying, «Quarrel about it tomorrow. You'll get the same answer, Varaz, because it's the only one your parents can give you, but you'll get it after your father has had some rest.»
Abivard hadn't let himself think about that. Hearing the word made him realize how worn he was. He said, «If you two don't want my footprints on your robes, you'd best get out of the way.» Before long he was lying in the crowded tent on a blanket under mosquito netting. Then, no matter how his body craved sleep, it would not come. He had to fight the battle over again, first in his own mind and then, softly, aloud for his principal wife. «You did everything you could,» Roshnani assured him. «I should have realized Maniakes had split his army, too,» he said. «I thought it looked small, but I didn't know how many men he really had, and so—»
«Only the God knows all there is to know, and only she acts in perfect lightness on what she does know,» Roshnani said. «This once, the Videssians were luckier than we.»
Everything she said was true and in perfect accord with Abivard's own thoughts. Somehow that helped not at all. «The King of Kings, may his years be long and his realm increase, entrusted me with this army to—»
«To get you killed or at best ruined,» Roshnani broke in quietly but with terrible venom in her voice.
He'd had those thoughts, too. «To defend the realm,» he went on, as if she hadn't spoken. «If I don't do that, nothing else I do, no matter how well I do it, matters anymore. Any soldier would say the same. So will Sharbaraz.»
Roshnani stirred but did not speak right away. At last she said, «The army still holds together. You'll have your chance at revenge.»
«That depends,» Abivard said. Roshnani made a questioning noise. He explained: «On what Sharbaraz does when he hears I've lost, I mean.»
«Oh,» Roshnani said. On that cheerful note they fell asleep.
When Abivard emerged from the wagon the next morning, Er-Khedur, the town north and east of the battle site, was burning. His mouth twisted into a thin, bitter line. If his army couldn't keep the Videssians in check, why should the part of the garrison of Er-Khedur he'd left behind?
He didn't realize he'd asked the question aloud till Pashang answered it: «They did have a wall to fight from, lord.»
That mattered less in opposing the Videssians than it would have against the barbarous Khamorth, perhaps less than it would have in opposing a rival Makuraner army. The Videssians were skillful when it came to siegecraft. Wall or no wall, a handful of half-trained troops would not have been enough to keep them out of the city.
Abivard thought about going right after the imperials and trying to trap them inside Er-Khedur. Reluctantly, he decided not to. They'd just mauled his army once; he wanted to drill his troops before he put them into battle again. And he doubted the Videssians would tamely let themselves be trapped. They had no need to stay and defend Er-Khedur; they could withdraw and ravage some other city instead.
The Videssians didn't have to stay and defend any one point in the Thousand Cities. The chief reason they were there was to do as much damage as they could. That gave them more freedom of movement than Abivard had had when he was conquering the westlands from the Empire. He'd wanted to seize land intact first and destroy it only if he had to. Maniakes operated under no such restraints.
And how were the westlands faring these days? As far as Abivard knew, they remained in the hands of the King of Kings. Dominating the sea as he did, Maniakes hadn't had to think about freeing them before he invaded Makuran. Now each side in the war had forces deep in the other's territory. He wondered if that had happened before in the history of warfare. He knew of no songs that suggested that it had. Groundbreaking was an uncomfortable sport to play, as he'd found out when ending Roshnani's isolation from the world.
If he couldn't chase right after Maniakes, what could he do? One thing that occurred to him was to send messengers south over the canal to find out how close Turan was with the rest of the assembled garrison troops. He could do more with the whole army than he could with this battered piece of it
The scouts rode back late that afternoon with word that they'd found the host Turan commanded. Abivard thanked them and then went off away from his men to kick at the rich black dirt in frustration. He'd come so close to catching Maniakes between the halves of the Makuraner force; that the Videssians had caught him between the halves of theirs seemed most unfair.
He posted sentries out as far as a farsang from his camp, wanting to be sure Maniakes could not catch him by surprise. He had considerably more respect for the Videssian Avtokrator now than he'd had when his forces had been routing Maniakes' at every turn.
When he said as much, Roshnani raised an eyebrow and remarked, «Amazing what being beaten will do, isn't it?» He opened his mouth, then closed it, discovering himself without any good answer.
Turan's half of the Makuraner army reached the canal a day and a half later. After the officer had crossed over and kissed Abivard's cheek by way of greeting, he said, «Lord, I wish you could have waited before you started your fight.»
«Now that you mention it, so do I,» Abivard answered. «We don't always have all the choices we'd like, though.»
«That's so,» Turan admitted. He looked around as if gauging the condition of Abivard's part of the army. «Er—lord, what do we do now?»
«That's a good question,» Abivard said politely, and then proceeded not to answer it. Turan's expression was comical, or would have been had the army's plight been less serious. But here, unlike in his conversations with his wife, Abivard understood he would have to make a reply. At last he said, «One way or another we're going to have to get Maniakes out of the land of the Thousand Cities before he smashes it all to bits.»
«We just tried that,» Turan answered. «It didn't work so well as we'd hoped.»
«One way or another, I said,» Abivard told him. «There is something we haven't tried in fullness, because as a cure it's almost worse than the sickness of invasion.»
«What's that?» Turan asked. Again Abivard didn't answer, letting his lieutenant work it out for himself. After a while Turan did. Snapping his fingers, he said, «You want to do a proper job of flooding the plain.»
«No, I don't want to do that,» Abivard said. «But if it's the only way to get rid of Maniakes, I will do it.» He laughed wryly. «And if I do, half the Thousand Cities will close their gates to me because they'll think I'm a more deadly plague than Maniakes ever was.»
«They're our subjects,» Turan said in a that-settles-it tone.
«Yes, and if we push them too far, they'll be our rebellious subjects,» Abivard said. «When Genesios ruled Videssos, he had a new revolt against him every month, or so it seemed. The same could happen to us.»
Now Turan didn't answer at all. Abivard started to try to get him to say something, to say anything, then suddenly stopped. One of the things he was liable to say was that Abivard might lead a revolt himself. Abivard didn't want to hear that. If he did hear it, he would have to figure out what to do about Turan. If he let his lieutenant say it without responding, he would in effect be guilty of treasonous conspiracy. If Turan wanted to take word of that back to Sharbaraz, he could. But if Abivard punished him for saying such a thing, he would cost himself an able officer.
And so, to forestall any response, Abivard changed the subject: «Do your men still have their fighting spirit?»
«They did till they got here and saw bodies out in the sun starting to stink,» Turan said. «They did till they saw men down with festering wounds or out of their heads from fever. They're garrison troops. Most of 'em never saw what the aftermath of a battle—especially a lost battle—looks like before. But your men seem to be taking it pretty well.»
«Yes, and I'm glad of that,» Abivard said. «When we'd beat the Videssians, they'd go all to pieces and run
