the habit of getting into stand-up fights with us. They tried it here this once, and they've paid for it.»
«That they have,» Maniakes said. «If they haven't thrown away more men here on the sea than they did trying to storm the city's walls, I'll be astonished.»
A ripple showed near one of the corpses floating in the Cattle Crossing. A moment later, it floated no more. Land battles quickly drew ravens and buzzards and foxes. Sea fights had their scavengers, too.
«Remind me not to eat seafood for a while,» Rhegorios said.
Maniakes gulped. «I'll do that. And I won't do that for a while myself.» His cousin nodded, having no trouble sorting through the clumsy phrasing.
The Avtokrator gauged the sun. It wasn't that far past noon, and it hadn't been long before noon when he and Rhegorios boarded the Renewal. In the space of a couple of hours, Etzilios' hopes, and those of Sharbaraz, too, had gone to ruin in the narrow sea between Videssos the city and Across.
«I wonder how much gold we've spent on the fleet over the years—over the centuries, by Phos,» the Avtokrator said musingly. «So much of it must have looked like nothing but waste. However much we spent, though, what we did here today made every copper of it worthwhile.»
«That's right, your Majesty. That's exactly right,» Thrax said.
«And so next year, when I ask for gold for new ships and for keeping the old ones in the shape they should be, you'll give me all I ask for, won't you?»
Scratch a drungarios, find a courtier. In a mock-fierce voice, Maniakes growled, «If you ask me for so much as one Makuraner silver arket, Thrax, I will beat you with a club studded with nails. Is that plain?»
«Yes, your Majesty.» Not even Thrax, naive and stolid as he was, could take the threat seriously.
Rhegorios said, «Etzilios' plans have gone down the latrine, and so have those of Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his arse covered in boils. What about Abivard's plans?» The Sevastos pointed over toward Across, where Makuraner soldiers still waited near the shore for boats that would never come.
«I don't know,» Maniakes said. «We'll have to find out. He can't do anything to the capital now. That, I think, is certain. He can still do quite a lot to the westlands—or he may pull back to the Land of the Thousand Cities against a move from us. No way to tell till it happens.»
«I suppose not,» Rhegorios said. «I wish we could pry him loose from Sharbaraz, the way he pried Tzikas loose from you.»
«He didn't pry Tzikas loose from me. Tzikas pried himself loose from me,» Maniakes answered. «When he didn't manage to kill me, taking refuge with the Makuraners looked like the best way to keep me from prying his head loose from his shoulders.» He made a sour face. «It worked too bloody well.»
«Abivard seems loyal.» Rhegorios made it sound like a disease. Maniakes felt the same way, at least where Abivard was concerned. A disloyal Makuraner marshal would have been a great boon to the Empire of Videssos. Thinking of loyalty in such disparaging terms made Maniakes realize how completely a Videssian he'd become in spite of his Vaspurakaner heritage. His great-grandparents surely would have praised loyalty even in a foe. He shrugged. His great-grandparents hadn't known everything there was to know, either.
«What now, your Majesty?» Thrax asked. Having thought himself a true Videssian, Maniakes had an idea of truly Videssian duplicity. «Let's go over to the shore near the Kubrati camp,» he answered. «I want to deliver a message to Etzilios.»
As he'd guessed, the sight of the Renewal cruising not far away brought a crowd of Kubratoi to the seaside to see why he was there. «What youse am wantings?» one of them shouted in Videssian so mangled that he recognized the speaker at once.
«Moundioukh, take my words to your khagan, the magnifolent Etzilios.» Full of triumph, Maniakes used the contorted epithet without hesitation. «Tell him that, since my fleet has disposed of those poor, sorry toys he called boats, nothing now prevents me from shipping a force to the coast north of Videssos the city, landing it there, and making sure he never escapes from the Empire of Videssos. «
«Youse am bluffing,» Moundioukh shouted across the water. He did not sound confident, though. He sounded frightened.
«You'll see. So will Etzilios,» Maniakes said, and then, to Thrax, «Move us out of bowshot now, if you'd be so kind.»
«Aye, your Majesty,» the drungarios replied. For a wonder, he understood exactly what Maniakes had meant, and said «Back oars!» loud enough to let the oarmaster know what was required but not so loud as to alert the Kubratoi on the shore.
«That's—demonic, cousin of mine,» Rhegorios said admiringly. «By the good god, we really could do it, too.»
«I know we could,» the Avtokrator said. «Etzilios has to know it, too. We did it once, three years ago, and we almost put paid to him. He has to think we'd try it again. I'm not going to ship an army out of Videssos the city, on the off chance that he'd try using his siege towers again instead of retreating, and get inside because we'd weakened the garrison. But he won't know that, and I'm going to make it look as much as if we are moving troops as I can.»
«What now, your Majesty?» Thrax asked again.
«Now we go back to Videssos the city,» Maniakes answered. «We've sown the seed. We have to see what kind of crop we get from it.»
Agathios the ecumenical patriarch called for a service of thanksgiving in the High Temple. He sent the call through Videssos the city without the least urging from Maniakes, who was almost as surprised as he was pleased. Agathios displayed initiative only a little more often than Thrax did.
Maniakes was also surprised at the fervor of the Videssians who flocked to the Temple to worship and to give thanks to the good god. A fair number of them also seemed willing to give him some credit for having smashed the Kubratoi at sea. They knew how desperate their situation had been, and knew also that, while the Kubratoi still besieged them, the risk of the Makuraners' joining the assault was gone.
And then, with timing Maniakes could not have hoped to emu-late, a messenger rushed into the High Temple just as the service was ending and before more than a handful of people had filed out «Your Majesty!» the fellow cried out in a great voice. «Your Majesty, the Kubratoi are withdrawing! They're burning their towers and engines and riding away!»
«We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind!» Agathios exclaimed, and his voice came echoing back from the dome wherein the great mosaic image of Phos stern in judgment looked down on his congregation. Even Phos' majestic face seemed less harsh at that moment, the Avtokrator thought.
«This I will see for myself,» Maniakes declared. For the first time since marrying Lysia, he left the High Temple accompanied by cheers. Though judging those cheers aimed less at himself than at the news the messenger brought, Maniakes was glad of them all the same.
He saw long before reaching the city wall that the messenger had spoken the truth. Black clouds of smoke rose into the sky to the east. Maniakes had seen such clouds before, when the Kubratoi came down to raid as far as the wall. Then they had been Videssian fields and farmlands going up in flames.
This time, the Kubratoi had not merely come up to the wall. They had set foot on it, which no invaders in all the history of the Empire of Videssos had done before them. But, though they had done so much, they had done no more; the defenders and the great strength of the walls themselves had made sure of that. What they burned now was of their own substance, which they could not take with them lest it slow them in their retreat, and which they did not care to leave lest the Videssians take it and use it against them.
When Maniakes went up onto the wall, the picture became sweeter still. The siege towers the Videssians had not been able to set afire burned now. So did the stone-throwers the Makuraner engineers had taught the Kubratoi to build. «We would have saved those, had this been our campaign,» a Videssian officer said, pointing out toward them.
«Aye, so we would,» Maniakes answered. He'd carried a baggage train full of the parts needed for siege engines throughout the Land of the Thousand Cities. «They're nomads, though. They didn't bring supply wagons along with them, and they've been living off the countryside.»
«They won't be back soon, not after this,» the officer said. «They've failed against us twice running now, and they can't be happy about it. With any luck, they'll have a nice little civil war over what went wrong and who was to blame.»
«From your mouth to Phos' ear,» Maniakes said fervently. It didn't look as if any stone-throwers at all were
