ranks of the Makuraner infantry into worse disorder than they had already known, and let the Videssians gain more ground still. At Maniakes' orders, more imperials rode over the almost-completed bridge to aid their comrades. «You're a sneaky one,» Rhegorios shouted. «They figured the bridge would have to be finished for us to use it.»
«You don't want to do the thing they expect,» Maniakes answered. «If they know what's coming, they're most of the way to knowing how to stop it. If they haven't seen it before, though—» He watched avidly as his men carved out a bridgehead on the western bank of the Tib. The riders who had used up their javelins slashed at the Makuraners with swords. Whoever was commanding this enemy army lacked the presence of mind of the infantry general who'd given battle against the Videssians a few days before. When he saw his troops wavering, he pulled them away from their opponents. That made them waver even more. The Videssians, sensing victory, pushed all the harder.
Little by little, Makuraner foot soldiers began to flee, some to the north, some to the south, some to the west. Once serious resistance had ended, the Videssians did not pursue as hard as they might have. Instead, they formed a perimeter behind which the engineers finished the bridge of boats. Maniakes rode across to the west bank of the Tib without having himself or Antelope get wet.
«Mashiz!» the soldiers shouted. «On to Mashiz!» They knew what they had done, and knew also what they wanted to do. Had Mashiz been only an hour's gallop distant, it might have fallen. But it was a couple of days away, and the sun was sliding down behind the Dilbat Mountains. Maniakes judged he had taken enough risks, or maybe more than enough. He ordered the army to halt for the night.
Having done that, he wondered whether he should dispense with leaving a garrison behind to protect the bridge of boats. He was tempted not to bother after all, the magic had shown his army would come back safe over the Tib. After some thought, though, he decided idiocy might be stronger than sorcery, and so warded what obviously needed warding.
«On the far bank at last,» he told Lysia once his pavilion had been set up. «Didn't come close two years ago, came close but didn't make it last year. Now—we see what we can do.»
She nodded, then said, «I wish you hadn't had Bagdasares cast that spell. I'd be more hopeful than I am. Can we take Mashiz so quickly? If we do, why would we turn back so soon? What could go wrong?»
«I don't know the answers to any of those questions,» he said. That's why we're going ahead and moving on Mashiz: to find out what can go wrong, I mean.»
Lysia made a face at him. «What if nothing goes wrong? What if we go in, seize the city, and capture Sharbaraz or kill him or make him run away?»
«For one thing, Bagdasares will be very embarrassed,» Maniakes answered, which made Lysia look for something to throw at him. He caught a hard roll out of the air and went on, «I don't know what then, except that I'd be delighted. I've been trying to go ahead as if I thought that was what would happen, but it's not easy. I keep wondering if something I do will make whatever is going to go wrong, go wrong.»
«Better in that case not to have had the magic,» Lysia said. «I know,» Maniakes answered. «I've had that thought before, every now and then. Knowing the future, or thinking you know the future, can be more of a curse than a blessing.» He gave a wry shrug. «I didn't want to know as much as the spell showed me; it did more than I asked. And, of course, not knowing the future can be more a curse than a blessing, too.»
«Life isn't simple,» Lysia said. «I wonder why that isn't a text for the ecumenical patriarch to preach on at the High Temple. It doesn't work out the way you think it will. No matter how much you know, you never understand as much as you think you do.»
«That's true,» Maniakes said. He glanced over at her. She was glancing over at him, too. For most of their lives, they'd never expected to be married to each other. Many things would have been a good deal simpler had they not ended up married to each other. The only problem was, life wouldn't have been worth living. «How do you feel?» he asked her.
She knew what he meant when he asked that question; of itself, her left hand went to her belly. «Pretty well,» she answered. «I'm still sleepy more than I would be if I weren't going to have a baby, but I haven't been sick very much this time, for which I thank the lord with the great and good mind.»
Maniakes let his fancy run away with him. He knew he was doing it; it wasn't, he thought, as if he were deluding himself. «Wouldn't it be fine if we did run Sharbaraz King of Kings out of Mashiz and if Bagdasares did turn out wrong? We could spend the rest of the campaigning season there, and maybe even the winter, too. We could have a prince—or a princess—of the Videssian imperial house born in the capital of Makuran.»
«No, thank you,» Lysia said at once, her voice sharp. «I know that sounds very grand, but I don't care. I want to go home to have this baby. If we go home after we've beaten the Makuraners, that's wonderful—better than wonderful, in fact. But beating the Makuraners isn't reason enough for me to want to stay here. If you decide to do that, well and good. Send me back to Videssos the city.»
In marriage as in war, knowing when to retreat was not the least of virtues. «I'll do that,» Maniakes promised. He scratched at his beard while he thought. «Meanwhile, though, I have to figure out how to arrange the triumph after which I get to send you home.» He snapped his fingers. «Should be easy, shouldn't it?» Lysia laughed. So did he.
For the next few days, Maniakes wondered whether he had magical powers to put those of Bagdasares to shame. One snap of the fingers seemed to have been plenty to rout all the opposition the Makuraners had mustered against his men. The foot soldiers, who had put up such a persistent fight for so long, now began melting away rather than resisting as they had.
Every now and then, some of them would try to hold back the Videssians, while others broke canals open. But these men seldom stood in place as the other, larger, force west of the Tib had done so often over the past couple of years; it was as if his crossing the river had taken the spirit out of them.
And opening the canals was less effective west of the Tib than it had been in the heart of the Land of the Thousand Cities. As was true east of the Tutub, there was land beyond that which the network of canals irrigated. Instead of having to slog through fields made all but impassable by water and mud, the Videssians simply wait around them, and once or twice scooped up good-sized bands of foes in the process.
Far more easily than Maniakes had imagined possible, his men neared the approaches to Mashiz. There their advance slowed. The usurper Smerdis had fortified those approaches against Sharbaraz. Once Sharbaraz won the civil war between them and became King of Kings himself, he'd rebuilt and improved the fortification, though no obvious enemy threatened his capital.
«We helped break these works once,» Maniakes said to Ypsilantes, «but they look a good deal stronger than they did then.»
«Aye, that's so, your Majesty,» the chief engineer said, nodding. «Still, I expect we'll manage. Smerdis, now, he had horsemen who would fight for him, and that made life hard for us, if you'll recall. The walls and such are better now, I'll not deny, but so what? The troops in and around 'em count for more; men are more important than things.»
«Do you know,» Maniakes said, «I've had a bard tell me just that. He said that as long as the people in his songs were inter-esting the settings mattered little—and if the people were dull, the finest settings in the world wouldn't help.»
«That makes sense, your Majesty—more sense than I'd expect from a bard, I must say. When you get down to the bottom of anything you can think of, near enough, it's about people, isn't it?» Ypsilantes looked at the fortifications ahead. «People who huddle behind thick stone are more difficult, worse luck.»
«If they're trying to keep us from doing what we need to do, I should say so.»
«We'll manage, never fear,» Ypsilantes repeated. «With no cavalry, they'll have trouble sallying against us, too, the way Smerdis' men did.»
«That's so,» Maniakes said. «I'd forgotten that sally till you reminded me of it. Makuraners popping out everywhere—I won't be sorry not to see that, thank you very much.»
The Makuraners did not sally. They did fling large stones from catapults in their fortresses. One luckless Videssian scout drew too close to one of those forts at exactly the wrong moment; he and his mount were both smashed to bloody pulps. That made Maniakes thoughtful. Even with his own stone– and dart-throwers set up to shoot back at the ones the Makuraners had in place, his army would have to run the gauntlet before breaking into Mashiz. It would be expensive, and he did not have all that many men he could spare; that he had any army that could stand against the Makuraners he took as something close to direct intervention from Phos, considering how
