made the Empire of Videssos keep running even in the face of the dislocations of the Makuraner and Kubrati invasions, ran more to military manuals than to histories. And soldiers like Kalokyres, in explaining how a general Was to go about doing the things he needed to do, never bothered mentioning whether testicles were essential for the job.
«They certainly do, your Majesty.» The vestiarios showed more enthusiasm for the subject than Maniakes usually saw in him, no doubt because it touched him personally. He went on, «Should you so desire, I could show you some of the relevant passages. I have several of these scrolls and codices myself, copied out by very fine scribes, and I am gradually accumulating more as I discover documents in the archives.»
«Is that what you do in your free time—search the archives, I mean?»
«One of the things, yes, your Majesty.» Kameas drew himself straight with a pride that was liable to be twisted. «After all, things being as they are, I am hardly in a position to chase women.»
Maniakes walked over and punched him in the shoulder, as he might have done with Rhegorios. «To the ice with me if I think I could joke about it,» he said. «You're a good man, esteemed sir—and you don't need a pair of balls for most of the things that make a good man.»
«I have often thought as much myself, your Majesty, but I must tell you that it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to hear it from an entire man,» Kameas said. «Some, I assure you, are less generous than that.»
His mouth stretched out into a thin, hard, bleak line. He had been vestiarios for Genesios before Maniakes managed to rid Videssos of the tyrant. Every so often, Kameas let slip something that suggested Genesios' reign of terror had been even worse within the palace quarter than anywhere beyond. Maniakes had never questioned him or any of the other palace eunuchs about that, partly because he was as well pleased not knowing and partly because he did not want to pain the eunuchs by making them remember.
The vestiarios bowed. «Will there be anything further, your Majesty?»
«I don't think so,» Maniakes said. As Kameas turned to go, the Avtokrator changed his mind. «Wait.» The eunuch obediently stopped. Maniakes dug in his beltpouch. He found no gold there, only silver: a telling comment on the state of the Empire's finances. He tossed a couple of coins to Kameas. They shone in the air till the eunuch caught them. «For your copyist,» Maniakes said.
Kameas bowed again, this time in a subtly different way: as himself now, not as vestiarios. «Your Majesty is gracious.»
«What my Majesty is, is sick and tired of being hemmed into the city and waiting for the Makuraners to try swarming over the Cattle Crossing,» Maniakes said. «We should know when they're going to do it, but we can't steal the signal that warns they're truly moving.»
«If we keep responding to all the signals the Kubratoi have been putting forth—» Kameas began.
«We end up not responding well enough to any one of them,» Maniakes broke in. «It will happen, sooner or later. It has to. But one day soon, one of those signals will be real, and, if we don't take that one seriously, we'll have a Makuraner army on this side of the…»
His voice trailed away. When he didn't go on after a minute or so, Kameas cleared his throat. «You were saying, your Majesty?»
«Was I?» Maniakes answered absently. His eyes and his thoughts were far away. «Whatever I was saying—» He had no memory of it.'—that doesn't matter any more. Had I had gold to give you, esteemed sir, I might not have known. But I do. Now I know.»
«Your Majesty?» Kameas' voice was plaintive. Maniakes did not reply.
VII
«Your Majesty!» the messenger spoke in high excitement. He smelled of lathered horse, which likely meant he'd galloped his mount through the streets of Videssos the city to bring his won! to Maniakes. «Your Majesty, the Kubratoi are flashing sunlight from a silver shield over the Cattle Crossing to the Makuraners!»
«Are they?» Maniakes breathed. As he had with Kameas, he reached into his beltpouch for money. He'd made sure he had gold there now, against this very moment. The messenger gaped when the Avtokrator pressed half a dozen goldpieces into his hand. Maniakes said, «Now give Thrax the word. He knows what to do.» He hoped—he prayed—the drungarios knew what to do.
«Aye, your Majesty, I'll do that,» the messenger said. «Immodios sent a man to him, too, but I'll go, in case poor Vonos fell off his horse and cracked his hard head or something.» He hurried away.
His boots rang against the mosaic tiles on the hallway floor of the imperial residence. Rhegorios rose from his chair, stiffened to attention, and gave Maniakes a formal salute, right clenched fist over his heart. «You knew,» he said, nothing but admiration in his voice.
Maniakes shook his head. «I still don't know,» he answered. «But I think I'm right, and I think so strongly enough to gamble on it. When Abivard first came to Across and I parleyed with him, he asked me if the Imperial Guards carried silver shields, and he seemed disappointed when I said no. And then there was Bagdasares' magic —»
«Yes, you told me about that the other day,» his cousin answered. «He managed to capture the words some Makuraner seer had given Abivard?»
«That's right, or I think that's right,» Maniakes said. «Wherever they came from, the words were clear enough.» He shifted into the Makuraner tongue: « 'Son of the dihqan, I see a broad field that is not a field, a tower on a hill where honor shall be won and lost, and a silver shield shining across a narrow sea.' « Returning to Videssian, he went on, «Wherever the words came from, as I say, they meant—and mean—a great deal to Abivard. If he asked Etzilios for any one signal to start his army moving, that would be the one– or that's my guess, at any rate.»
«I think you're right,» Rhegorios said. «And so does your father. I've never seen Uncle Maniakes looking so impressed as he did when you set your idea in front of him—and he doesn't impress easily, either.»
«Who, my father?» Maniakes said, as if in surprise. He gave that up; he couldn't bring it off. «I had noticed, thanks.»
«I thought you might have,» his cousin agreed.
Maniakes said, «I couldn't decide for the longest time whether I'd watch the sea fight from the palace quarter here or from the deck of a ship. At last I thought, if I was there on the land wall, I ought to be there on the sea, too. I've ordered Thrax to pick me up at the palace harbor. Will you come, too?»
«Aboard the Renewal!» Rhegorios asked. Maniakes nodded. His cousin said, «If I didn't drown in that one storm, to the ice with me if I think the Kubratoi can do me any harm. Let's go. We'd better hurry, too. If you've told Thrax to pick you up there, he'll wait around and do it even if you don't show up till next month, and he won't care a rotten fig for what that does to the plans for the sea fight.»
Since Rhegorios was undoubtedly right, Maniakes wasted no time arguing with him. The two men hurried out of the imperial residence. A few guards peeled off from the entranceways to the building and trotted along with them, complaining all the while that they should have waited for more men to accompany them. Maniakes wasted no time arguing with the guards, either. He was reveling in having escaped his dozen parasol-bearers. He wondered how they would have done standing at the bow of the Renewal when it climbed up and over a one-trunk boat. With any luck, half of them would have gone into the drink and drowned.
He and Rhegorios reached the quays by the palaces none too soon. Here came the Renewal, oars rising and tailing in perfect unison. The sun shining off Thrax's hair was almost as bright as it would have been, reflected from a silver shield.
As the imperial flagship picked up the Avtokrator and the Sevastos, more dromons—many more dromons —dashed out into the middle of the Cattle Crossing, ready to keep the Kubratoi from reaching the western shore and picking up their Makuraner allies. «If you're right, your Majesty, they've fallen into our hands,» Thrax declared. He sounded confident. Maniakes had told him it would be thus and so. He was going to act on that assumption. If Maniakes was right, all would be well. If Maniakes was wrong, Thrax's blind obedience would make him wronger.
«Let's go get them,» Maniakes said. He would assume he was right, too, and would keep on assuming it for as long as he could. If he was wrong, he hoped he'd notice quickly, because Thrax wouldn't.
