Maniakes' army. He'd worried about it less since Panteles had started his elaborate theoretical explanation: any man dedicated enough to put so much effort into figuring out what might have gone into a spell wouldn't be content unless he could have a hand in unraveling it, too… would he?
«How say you, Panteles?» Abivard asked. «Eminent sir, I say I never imagined turning a Voimios strap from an amusement into a piece of creative sorcery,» Panteles answered. «To understand how that's done and then to figure out a spell to counter it—I'm lucky to be living in such exciting times, when anything seems possible.»
His eyes gleamed. Abivard recognized the expression on his pinched, narrow face. Soldiers with that exalted look would ride to their deaths without flinching; minstrels who had it crafted songs that lived for generations. Panteles would go where knowledge and energy and inspiration took him and would pursue his target with the eagerness of a bridegroom going to his bride. «I think it will be all right,» Abivard said to Bozorg. «And if it isn't all right, I trust your skill to hold disaster away from us.»
«Lord, you may honor me beyond my worth,» the Makuraner mage murmured.
«I don't think so,» Abivard said heartily. «And as I've told you, I expect you to work with him. If his idea turns out to be wrong-headed after all, I'll need to hear that from you so we can figure out what to try next.»
He hoped with all his heart that Panteles and Bozorg would be able to find a way around—or through— Maniakes' magic. If they could, the sorcery would be a one-time wonder: if not, every time Makuraners tried to clash with Videssians, they would find themselves going back the way from which they had come. That would be a worse disaster than defeat in battle.
«What one mage has done, another may undo,» Panteles declared. To that Bozorg assented with a cautious nod.
«Finding out what the mage has done can be interesting, though,» Abivard remarked.
«Truth, eminent sir. I do not know if I have proposed the correct explanation, either,» Panteles said. «One of the many things I need to learn—»
«Don't just stand there.» Abivard realized he was being unfair, but urgency counted for more. «Go find out what you can by whatever means you can. I intend to send riders up and down the canal—provided they don't think they're riding north when they're riding south or the other way around. If we can force a crossing somewhere else —»
«Then the notion of the Voimios strap becomes moot,» Panteles interrupted.
Abivard shook his head. «Not quite. Oh, we might be able to get around it this one time, but it would keep on being a trick Maniakes has and we don't. He could use it again, say, in a mountain pass where we didn't have any choice about how we tried to get at him. If we can, I want us to have a way to beat this spell so it doesn't stay in the Avtokrator's arsenal, if you take my meaning.»
Both Panteles and Bozorg bowed as if to say they not only understood but agreed. Abivard waved them off to begin their investigation. At his shouted orders, horsemen did gather to ride off up and down the canal. But before they set out, one of them asked, «Uh, lord, how are we to know whether the spell still holds?»
Abivard wished he hadn't asked that. Sighing, he answered, «The only way I can think of is to ride out into the canal and try to cross it. If you do, you've passed the point where the Videssians' magic works. If you don't —»
One of the riders committed the enormity of interrupting the army commander «If we don't—if we come back where we started from—and we haven't gone crazy before then, that's when we know.»
The other horsemen nodded. The fellow had made a pretty fair joke, or what would have been a pretty fair joke under other circumstances, but none of them laughed or even smiled. Neither did Abivard; nor did he stand on his dignity or rank. He said, «That magic is plenty to drive anyone mad, so my best guess is that we've all gone mad already, and getting bitten by it one more time won't do any harm.»
«You have a good way of looking at things, lord,» said the fellow who had interrupted him. He rode south along the canal. Some men followed him; others headed north.
Was it a good way of looking at things? Abivard didn't know. If Maniakes' magic extended a good distance up and down the canal, some of those men were liable to have to endure having their world twisted several times, not once alone. You could grow used to almost anything… but to that?
Something else occurred to him: was the canal folded back on itself for the Videssians, too? If they tried to cross from east to west to attack him, what would happen? Would they make it over to his side of the canal, or would they, too, end up riding out onto the bank from which they'd departed? The question was so intriguing, he almost summoned Bozorg and Panteles so he could ask it. All that restrained him was the thought that they already had enough to worry about.
And so did he. The riders he'd sent north along the canal came back perhaps sooner than he'd expected with the news that the spell, whether it was some larger version of Voimios' strap or not, extended in that direction as far as they'd traveled. They hadn't traveled so far as he'd hoped, but the fear on their faces said they'd gone into the canal as often as they could stand.
Men who'd ridden south began coming back to Abivard's camp, too, not all at once like those who'd gone the other way but a few at a time, some going back into the canal after others could bear it no more. Whether they came soon or late, they had the same news as the men who had traveled north: when they tried to go east over the canal, they found themselves unable.
Last of all to return was the fellow who had suggested that going into the canal would make a man crazy. By the time he came back, the sun was setting in the west. Abivard had begun to wonder whether he'd gone into the canal and never come out.
He shook his fist at the sun, saying, «I've seen that thing too many times—may it drop into the Void. I tried to ride away from it a dozen times, maybe more, this afternoon, and I ended up coming right back at it every one of them. Sorry lord; that spell goes on a long way south.»
«No cause for you to be sorry,» Abivard answered. «I'd call you a hero for braving the canal more than anyone else did.»
«A hero?» The rider shook his head. «I'll tell you what I'd call me, and that's a bloody fool. By your leave, lord, I'll go off and polish my armor—keep it from rusting as best I can, eh?» Abivard nodded permission. Sketching a salute, the soldier strode off.
Abivard muttered something foul under his breath. Maniakes' mages could certainly hold the spell in place for half a day's ride, or perhaps a bit less, to either side of his own position. That meant that shifting camp wasn't likely to do much good, because the Videssians were liable either to move or to extend the spell to his new position.
If he couldn't go around the twisted canal, he'd have to go through it. Going through it meant beating Maniakes' magic. Between them, Bozorg and Panteles would have to come up with some answers.
Summoning them to his tent, Abivard said, «Can you cut through the spell and let us cross?»
«Cutting a Voimios strap is less easy than it sounds, eminent sir,» Panteles said. «When you do cut one lengthwise, do you know what you get?»
«I was going to say two thinner ones, but that would be too simple and obvious, wouldn't it?» Abivard said, and Panteles nodded. «All right, what do you get?» Abivard asked. «A bowl of oxtail soup? Three arkets and a couple of coppers? A bad case of the itch?»
Panteles gave him a reproachful look; maybe mighty Makuraner marshals, to his way of thinking, weren't allowed to be absurd. He reached into a pouch he wore on his belt and pulled out a Voimios strap made from thin leather and sewn together at the ends so he didn't need to hold them between his long, thin, agile thumb and forefinger. «See for yourself, eminent sir, and you will better understand the difficulty we face.»
«All right, I will.» Abivard drew a sharp dagger, poked it through the leather, and began to cut. He worked slowly, carefully, methodically; a pair of shears would have been better for the job, but he had none. When he got the sharp strap cut nearly all the way around, he thought Panteles had been lying to him, for it did look as if it might split in two, as a simple ring would have. But then he made the last cut, and exclaimed in surprise: he still had one twisted strap, but twice as long and half as wide as it had been before.
«This shows some of the complications we face,» Panteles said. «Some means of countering the magic are caught up in its twists and prove to be of no use against it.»
«Yes, I see,» Abivard said. «This is what happens when you cut with the spell. But when you do this—» He cut the strap across instead of lengthwise.'—things look easier.» He handed Panteles the simple length of leather.
