to take forever to get to the gist…
«We are, as we have said, angered that you should presume to summon to your aid the army commanded by Romezan son of Bizhan, which we had purposed using for other tasks during this campaigning season. We are further vexed with the aforesaid Romezan son of Bizhan for hearkening to your summons rather than ignoring it, as was our command, the aforesaid Romezan being separately admonished in a letter directed specifically to him.
Only one possible circumstance can mitigate the disobedience the two of you have demonstrated both individually and collectively, the aforementioned circumstance being complete and overwhelming victory against the Videssians violating the land of the Thousand Cities. We own ourselves delighted one such victory has been gained and look forward either to Maniakes' extermination or to his ignominious retreat. The God grant that you soon have the opportunity to inform me of one or the other of these happy results.»
As messengers did, this one asked Abivard, «Is there a reply, lord?»
«Wait a bit,» Abivard answered. He read the letter again from top to bottom. It was no more vituperative in the second reading than it had been in the first. Abivard stepped out of the tent and spotted Pashang coming by, swigging on a jug of date wine. «Go find Romezan and fetch him to me,» he told the driver.
«Aye, lord,» Pashang said, and went off for Romezan. His pace was slower than Abivard would have desired; Abivard wondered how much of the wine he'd had.
But he did find Romezan and bring him back. The Makuraner general was waving a parchment as he approached; Abivard assumed that that was because he'd just gotten his letter from the King of Kings, too. And so it proved. Romezan called, «There, you see? I told you that you worry too much.»
«So you did,» Abivard admitted. By the way Romezan was acting, his letter wasn't actively painful, either. Turning to the messenger, Abivard said, «Please tell Sharbaraz King of Kings we'll do everything we can to obey him.» Romezan nodded vigorously.
The messenger bowed. «It shall be as you say, lords.» To him Abivard and Romezan were figures almost as mighty as Sharbaraz himself: the one brother-in-law to the King of Kings, the other a great noble of the Seven Clans. Abivard clicked his tongue between his teeth. It all depended on how, and from what station, you looked at life.
When the fellow was gone, Abivard turned to Romezan in some bemusement. «I had expected the King of Kings to be angry at us,» he said.
«I told you,» Romezan answered. «Victory atones for any number of sins.»
«It's not that simple,» Abivard insisted to Roshnani over stewed kid that night. «The more victories I won in the Videssian westlands, the more suspicious of me Sharbaraz got. And then here, in the land of the Thousand Cities, I couldn't satisfy him no matter what I did. If I lost, I was a bungling idiot. But if I won, I was setting myself up to rebel against him. And if I begged for some help to give me a chance to win, why then I was obviously plotting to raise up an army against him.»
«Until now,» his principal wife said.
«Until now,» Abivard echoed. «He didn't fall on Romezan like an avalanche, either, and Romezan flat disobeyed his orders. Till now he's screamed at me even though I've done everything he told me to do. I don't understand this. What's wrong with him?» The incongruity of the question made him laugh as soon as it had passed his lips, but he'd meant it, too.
Roshnani said, «Maybe he's finally come to see you really do want to do what's best for him and for Makuran. The years pile up on him the same as they do on everyone else; maybe they're getting through.»
«I wish I could believe that—that's he's grown up at last, I mean,» Abivard said. «But if he has, it's very sudden. I think something else is going on, but for the life of me I have no idea what.»
«Well, let's see if we can figure it out,» Roshnani said, logical as a Videssian. «Why is he ignoring things that would have made him angry if he were acting the way he usually does?»
«The first thing I thought of is that he's trying to lull Romezan and me into feeling all calm and easy when he really does intend to fall on us like an avalanche,» Abivard said. «But if that's so, we'll have to look out for people trying to separate us from the army in the next few days, either that or people trying to murder us right in the middle of it. That could be, I suppose. We'll have to keep an eye out.»
«Yes, that certainly is possible,» Roshnani agreed. «But again, it's not the way he's been in the habit of behaving. Maybe he really is pleased with you.»
«That would be even more out of character,» Abivard said, his voice bitter. «He hasn't been, not for years.»
«He was… better this past winter than the one before,» Roshnani said. Odd for her to be defending the King of Kings and for Abivard to be assailing him. «Maybe he's warming up to you again. And then—» She paused before going on thoughtfully. «And then, your sister is drawing nearer to her time every day. Maybe he remembers the family connection.»
«Maybe.» Abivard sounded imperfectly convinced, even to himself. «And maybe he remembers that, if he does have a boy, all he has to do is die for me to become uncle and maybe regent to the new King of Kings.»
«Absent assassins, that doesn't add up,» Roshnani said, to which Abivard had to nod. His principal wife sighed. «Day by day we'll see what happens.»
«So we will,» Abivard said. «One of the things that will happen, by the God, is that I'll drive Maniakes out of the land of the Thousand Cities.»
With Romezan's cavalry added to the infantry he'd trained, Abivard knew he had a telling advantage over the force Maniakes had operating between the Tutub and the Tib. Making the telling advantage actually tell was another matter altogether. Maniakes proved an annoyingly adroit defender.
What irked Abivard most was the Avtokrator's mutability. When Maniakes had had the edge in numbers and mobility, he'd pressed it hard. Now that his foes enjoyed it, he was doing everything he could to keep them from getting the most out of it
Wrecked canals, little skirmishes, nighttime raids on Abivard's camp—much as Abivard had raided him the year before—all added up to an opponent who might have smeared butter over his body to make himself too slippery to be gripped. And whenever Maniakes got the chance, he would storm another town on the floodplain; another funeral pyre rising from an artificial hillock marked a success for him, a failure for Makuran.
«Never have liked campaigning in this country,» Romezan said. «I remember it from the days when Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis. Too may things can go wrong here.»
«Oh, yes, I remember that, too,» Abivard said. «And, no doubt, so does Maniakes. He's giving us as much grief as we can handle, isn't he?»
«That he is,» the cavalry general said. «He doesn't care about proper battle, does he, not so long as he can have a good time raiding?»
«That's what he's here for,» Abivard agreed. «It's worked, too, hasn't it? You're not fighting him in the Videssian westlands, and I'm not sitting in Across going mad trying to figure out how to get to Videssos the city.»
«You're right, lord,» Romezan said, using the title as one of mild, perhaps even amused, respect. «I wish you'd found a way, too; I'd be lying if I said anything else.»
«We haven't got any ships, curse it,» Abivard said. «We can't get any ships. Our mages couldn't conjure up the number of ships we'd need. Even if they could, it would be battle magic and liable to fall apart when we needed it most. And even if it didn't, the Videssians are a hundred times the sailors we are. They could sink magical ships the same as any others, I fear.»
«You're probably right,» Romezan admitted. «What we really need—»
«What we really need,» Abivard interrupted, «is a mage who could make a giant silvery bridge over the Cattle Crossing into Videssos the city so our warriors could cross dryshod and not have to worry about Videssians in ships. The only trouble with that is—»
«The only trouble with that is,» Romezan said, interrupting in turn, «a mage who could bring off that kind of conjuration wouldn't be interested in helping the King of Kings. He'd want to be King of Kings himself or, more likely, king of the world. So it's a good thing there's no such mage.»
«So it is,» Abivard said with a laugh. «Or it's mostly a good thing, anyhow. But it does mean we'll have to do more of the work ourselves—no, all of the work ourselves, or as near as makes no difference.»
A couple of days later a scout brought back a piece of news he'd been dreading and hoping for at the same time: at the head of a troop of Videssian cavalry Tzikas had delivered a formidable attack against Romezan's
