The roar of stone striking stone put him in mind of an earthquake's fearsome rumble, too.
But earthquakes, no matter how fearsome they were, stopped in a minute or two. This went on and on, the continuous motion underfoot almost making him seasick. Many of the stones the engines cast bounded away from the walls without effect; the masons who had built those works centuries before knew their business.
Every so often, though, the Kubratoi let fly with a particularly hard stone, or with one hurled particularly hard, or with one that hit in a better spot or at a better angle. Then stone on the face of the wall shattered, too.
«How much pounding can we stand?» Maniakes asked his father. «Haven't the foggiest notion,» the elder Maniakes replied. «Never had to worry about it quite this way before. Tell you what, though– knowing where to find the answers is nearly as good as knowing what they are. Anything Ypsilantes can't tell you about the walls isn't worth knowing.»
«That's true, by the good god,» Maniakes agreed, and summoned his chief engineer.
«We should be able to hold out against pounding like this a good long while, your Majesty,» Ypsilantes said. «Only a few stretches of the wall have a rubble core; most of it is either solid stone all the way through or else double-thick stone over storerooms and kitchens and such.»
«That's what I'd hoped,» the Avtokrator said. «Nice to have hopes come true every now and again.»
«I am pleased to have pleased you, your Majesty,» Ypsilantes said. «And now, if you will please excuse me—» He hurried away on missions more vital than reassuring his sovereign.
After Ypsilantes had left, the elder Maniakes tapped his son on the arm. «Come back to the palaces,» he said. «Get some rest. The city isn't going to fall to pieces while you go to bed, and you're liable to fall to pieces if you don't.»
Maniakes shook his head. «As long as I'm here, the men on the wall will know I'm with them. They'll fight harder.»
«Maybe a little, but not that much,» his father replied. «And I tell you this: if you're the only prop holding the defenders up, then the city will fall. They're fighting for more reasons than just your being here. For one thing, they're good soldiers already, because you've made them into good soldiers over the past few years. And for another, believe me, they like staying alive as much as anyone else does. Now come on.»
He put some roughness into his voice, as he had when Maniakes disobeyed him as a boy. The Avtokrator laughed. «You sound like you'll take a belt to my backside if I don't do what you tell me.» The elder Maniakes looked down at the belt he was wearing. As befitted the Avtokrator's father, he had on a gold one with a fancy jeweled buckle. He undid the buckle, took off the belt, and hefted it speculatively. «I could give you a pretty fair set of welts with this one, son,» he remarked.
«So you could,» Maniakes said. «Well, if that's not lese majesty, to the ice with me if I know what is.» He and his father both laughed. When the elder Maniakes started down from the wall, the Avtokrator followed him. They rode back to the palaces together. All the way there, though, Maniakes heard heavy stones thudding against the wall. He didn't think he'd get much rest.
«A sally, that's what we need,» Rhegorios said. «A sally to scatter some of their archers and put paid to some of their engines. The stone-throwers would do, I suppose, but I'd really like to be rid of those siege towers. That would be something worth doing.»
Maniakes eyed his cousin with amusement. «How did you manage to slide from what we need to I suppose in a couple of sentences there? What you mean is, you feel like going out and fighting Kubratoi and you want me to tell you it's all right.»
Rhegorios gave him a glance respectful and resentful at the same toe. «Anyone would think we'd grown up together, or something like that,» he said. «How can I sneak anything past you? You know me too well. For that matter, how do you sneak anything past my sister? She knows you too well.»
«How do I try to sneak anything past Lysia?» Maniakes said. «Mostly I don't. It doesn't work well, for some reason. But that has nothing to do with whether we ought to sally against the Kubratoi.»
«I suppose not,» his cousin agreed. «But are we just going to sit here and let them pound on us?»
«That was exactly what I had in mind, as a matter of fact,» the Avtokrator said. «Whenever I've got in trouble, all through my reign, I've tried to do too much. I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to do as little as I can, and let the Kubratoi and Makuraners wear themselves out, banging their heads on our walls. That's why the walls went up in the first place.»
«What kind of battle plan is that?» Rhegorios said indignantly.
«A sensible one?» Maniakes suggested.
«Where's the glory?» Rhegorios demanded. «Where are the heroes parading down Middle Street singing songs of victory?»
«As for the heroes,» Maniakes said, «more of them will be left alive if we play the game cautiously. As for the glory, the Kubratoi and the Makuraners are welcome to it, for all of me. Now wait.» He held up a hand to check his cousin's expostulation. «Whoever wants glory for glory's sake can have it, as far as I'm concerned. If I can win the war by sitting here like a snail pulled back into its shell, I'll do that, and gladly.»
«Cold-blooded way to look at things,» Rhegorios said. Then, after a moment, he admitted, «Your father would tell me the same, though; I will say that much. Which leaves me with only one question: what does a snail do when somebody tries to smash in his shell?»
«That's simple,» Maniakes said. «He twists around and bites him from the inside.» Rhegorios went off, dissatisfied.
Maniakes' attitude toward warfare might well have been more typically Videssian than that of his cousin. Only the Imperial Guards, for instance, had a name and reputation stretching over generations. When the Avtokrator went out to the wall a few days later, then, he was surprised to find a stretch of it defended by a unit of stone-throwers decorated with graffiti proclaiming, the biting snails! don't crack our shells!
«Did my cousin put you up to this?» he demanded with mock severity.
«His highness the Sevastos might have mentioned it, your Majesty, but he didn't put us up to it, like,» their commanding officer said. «The lads and I, we liked the name, so we decided to wear it.»
«May your teeth be sharp, then,» Maniakes said, and the soldiers cheered.
As he walked along the walls, he realized all the defenders, not just the Biting Snails, were going to need sharp teeth. The Kubratoi were dragging their siege towers, one after another, into position for an assault on the city. They stood just beyond the range of the engines the Videssians had mounted on the outer wall.
Immodios was studying the towers, too, and not looking very happy while he did it. Maniakes consoled himself by remembering how seldom Immodios looked happy about anything. The officer said, «Your Majesty, I fear we're going to have a hard time stopping them or even slowing them down much before they reach the wall.»
«I think you're wrong,» Maniakes answered. «I think the darts and the stones and the fire we'll hurl at them from the wall will make sure they never reach it. I think most of them will burn up or be smashed before they get within bowshot of the wall.»
«If the Kubratoi had figured out siege towers on their own, your Majesty, I'd say you were likely to be right,» Immodios said. «They wouldn't build them strong enough. But the Makuraners know what they're doing, same as we do.»
«They just did the showing,» Maniakes said. «The Kubratoi did the building. They've never tried anything like this before. My bet is, they haven't built strong enough.»
«The lord with the great and good mind grant that you have the right of it,» Immodios said. He didn't sound as if he believed it.
He had reason to worry, too, as the Avtokrator soon discovered. Maniakes had even dared hope that the Kubratoi would try to use beasts of burden to haul the siege towers up close to the wall. The Biting Snails, the other dart– and stone-thrower crews, and the arches would have enjoyed targets to dream of, even if massacring beasts of burden was a stomach-turning business in and of itself. But Etzilios, perhaps having ignored one set of instructions from his Makuraner tutors, did not ignore two. No horses or mules ever came within range of the engines on the outer wall. The nomads led the animals away and disconnected the ropes with which they'd been harnessed. Then they herded ragged men—Videssian prisoners again—into the towers, treating them not much differently from the way they used any other beasts of burden. Kubrati warriors went into the towers, too, a few to make the prisoners propel mem forward, most for the assault on Videssos the city.
Very slowly, the towers began to advance. «Now we find out,» Maniakes said. To his dismay, the closer the
