«Magic. Back there.»
«Why should I believe you?» Abivard said. «Why should I ever believe you?» He turned to the men of the vanguard, who were gaping at Tzikas as if he were a ghost walking among men. «Seize him! Drag him off his horse. Disarm him. The God alone knows what mischief he's plotting.»
«You're mad!» Tzikas shouted as the Makuraners carried out Abivard's orders. «Why would I stick my head in the lion's mouth if I didn't wish you and the King of Kings well?»
«Escaping from Maniakes comes to mind,» Abivard replied. «So does looking for another chance to drag my name through the dirt for Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.» For a despised foreigner like Tzikas, he appended Sharbaraz' honorific formula.
«Why should I want to escape Maniakes when you're just as eager to do me in?» Tzikas asked bitterly. «He gloated about that—by the God, how he gloated about it.»
«He gloated so hard and made you hate him so much that you commanded his rear guard, you rode out to challenge me to single combat, and your counterattack wrecked our last chance of beating him,» Abivard said. «You were swearing by Phos then, or at least your hand was, though your mouth didn't tell it everything. By the God, Tzikas—» He put into the oath all the contempt he had in him. «—what would you have done if you'd decided you liked the Avtokrator?'
«My hand? I don't know what you're talking about,» Tzikas said sullenly. It might even have been true. He went on, «Go ahead—mock me, slay me, however you please. And go ahead, run right after the Videssian army. Maniakes will give you a kiss on the cheek for helping him along. See if he doesn't.»
He had, if not all the answers, enough of them to make Abivard doubt himself and his purpose. But then, Tzikas usually had a great store of answers, plenty to make you doubt yourself. Videssians bounced truth and lies back and forth, as if in mirrors, till you couldn't tell what you were seeing. Abivard sometimes wondered whether the imperials themselves could keep track.
One thing at a time, then. «What sort of magic is it, Tzikas?»
«I don't know,» the renegade answered. «Maniakes didn't tell me. All I know is, I saw his wizards hard at work back there after he and his wife—his cousin who is his wife—had been closeted with them for a couple of hours before they started doing whatever they were doing. I didn't think it was for your health and well-being. I was commanding the rear guard—he'd come to trust me that far again. When I saw my chance, I galloped here. And look at the thanks you give me for it, too.»
«You can check this, lord,» Romezan rumbled. He'd listened to Tzikas with the same mixture of fascination and doubt Abivard felt.
I know I can. I intend to,» Abivard said. He turned to his men and said to one of them, «Fetch Bozorg and Panteles up here. If there's any magic up ahead, they'll sniff it out. And if there's not, Tzikas here will wish he'd stayed to suffer Maniakes' tender mercy when he finds out what we end up doing to him.» As the soldier hurried off, Abivard shifted to the Videssian to ask a mocking question: «Do you follow that, eminent sir?»
«Perfectly well, thank you.» Tzikas had sangfroid, no two ways about it. But then, a man would hardly arrive at a position where he could commit treason—let alone repeated treason—without a goodly helping of sangfroid.
Abivard fretted and stewed. While he waited, Maniakes and his army were getting farther away every moment After what seemed an interminable delay, Bozorg and Panteles came trotting up behind the soldier Abivard had sent to bring them. He watched Tzikas watching the Videssian in his service and made up his mind not to let the two of them be alone together if he could help it.
No time to worry about that, though. Abivard spoke to the two mages: «This, as you know, is the famous and versatile Tzikas of the Videssian army, our army, the Videssians again, and now– maybe—ours once more.»
«One of those transfers was involuntary on my part,» Tzikas said. Yes, he had sangfroid and to spare.
As if he hadn't spoken, as if Bozorg and Panteles weren't staring wide-eyed at the famous and versatile Tzikas, whom they could not have expected to find returned to allegiance to the King of Kings—if he had returned to allegiance to the King of Kings– Abivard went on, «Tzikas says the Videssians are planning something unpleasantly sorcerous for us up ahead. I want you to find out whether that's so. If it is, I suppose Tzikas may have earned his life. If not, I promise he will keep it longer than he wants to but not long.»
«Aye, lord,» Bozorg said.
«It shall be as you say, eminent sir,» Panteles added in Videssian. Abivard wished he hadn't done that. The soldiers of the vanguard, from the lowliest trooper up through Romezan, looked from him to Tzikas and back again, tarring both of them with the same brush. Abivard didn't want Panteles getting any ideas, from any source, about disloyalty.
The two wizards worked together smoothly enough, more smoothly than they had when they had been trying to cross the canal, when Bozorg had reckoned the Voimios strap only a figment of Panteles' imagination and a twisted figment at that. Now, sometimes chanting antiphonally, sometimes pointing and gesturing down the road in the direction from which Tzikas had come, sometimes roiling the dust with their spells, they probed what lay ahead.
At last Bozorg reported, «Some sort of sorcerous barrier does lie ahead, lord. What may hide behind it I cannot say: it serves only to mask the sorceries on the farther side. But it is there.»
«That's so,» Panteles agreed. «No possible argument. There's a sorcerous fog bank, so to speak, dead ahead of us.»
Abivard glanced over at Tzikas. The renegade affected not to notice that he was being watched. I've told the truth, his posture said. I've always told the truth. Abivard wondered if he really grasped the difference between the posture of truth and truth itself.
For the time being that was beside the point. He asked Bozorg, «Can you penetrate the fog bank to see what lies behind it?»
«Can we? Perhaps, lord,» Bozorg said. «In fact, it is likely, as penetrating it tends toward a restoration of a natural state. The question of whether we should, however, remains.»
«Drop me into the Void if I can see why,» Abivard said. «It's there, and we need to find out what's on the other side of it before we send the army into what's liable to be danger. That's plain enough, isn't it?»
«Oh, it's plain enough,» Bozorg agreed, «but is it wise? For all we know, trying to penetrate the sorcerous fog, or succeeding in Penetrating it, may be the signal for the truly fearsome charm it conceals to spring to life.»
«I hadn't thought of that.» Abivard was certain his face looked as if he'd been sucking on a lemon. His stomach was as sour as if he'd been sucking on a lemon, too. «What are we supposed to do, then? Sit around here quivering and wait for the sorcerous fog bank to roll away? We're all liable to die of old age before that happens. If I were Maniakes, I'd make sure my wizards gave it a good long life, anyhow.»
Neither Bozorg or Panteles argued with him. Neither of them sprang into action to break down the sorcerous fog, either. When Abivard glared at them, Panteles said, «Eminent sir, we have here risks in going ahead and also risks in doing nothing. Weighing these risks is not easy.»
Abivard glanced over, not at Tzikas this time but at Romezan. The noble of the Seven Clans would have had only one answer when in doubt, go ahead, and worry afterward about what happens afterward. Romezan reckoned Abivard a man of excessive caution. This time the two of them were likely to be thinking along the same lines.
«If you can pierce that fog, pierce it,» Abivard told the two wizards. «The longer we stay stuck here, the farther ahead of us Maniakes gets. If he gets too far ahead, he escapes. We don't want that.»
Panteles bowed, a gesture of respect the Videssians gave to any superior. Bozorg didn't. It wasn't that he minded acknowledging Abivard as being far superior to him in rank; he'd done that before. But to do it now would have been to acknowledge that he thought Abivard was right, and he clearly didn't.
Whether he thought him right or not, though, he obeyed. As at the twisted canal, Panteles took the lead in the answering magic; being a Videssian, he was likely to be more familiar with the sort of sorcery Maniakes' mages employed than Bozorg was.
«We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector,» Panteles intoned, «watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.»
Along with the other Makuraners who understood the Videssian god's creed, Abivard bristled at hearing it.
