going back north with the Kubratoi. He wondered if their artisans would be able to make new ones without models before them. They probably would, he thought with no small regret. Underestimating how clever his foes were did no good.
«Are we going to pursue, your Majesty?» the officer asked, avid as any Videssian to pick up news that was really none of his business.
«Right now, I think I'm willing to let them go,» the Avtokrator said. The officer's disappointed look would have drawn applause had he been a mime in a Midwinter's Day show. So would the way he brightened with excitement when Maniakes added, «And I'll tell you why.» He went on, «I don't want my soldiers chasing the Kubratoi away from what has to be the main center of action. The most important thing we can do is get the westlands back from the Makuraners. Chasing the Kubratoi, however delightful it might be, distracts us from what needs doing more.»
«Ah.» The captain saluted. «This I can understand.» Videssians could be, and often were, ruthlessly pragmatic when it came to war.
Maniakes watched the Kubratoi engines smolder. The wind shifted, blowing harsh smoke into his face. His eyes stung. He coughed several times. And then he started to laugh. The officer stared at him for a moment. He started laughing, too. The sweet sound spread up and down the wall, till every soldier in the garrison seemed to be letting out his relief in one long burst of hilarity. Maniakes hoped the Kubratoi had not fled too far to hear that laughter. It would have wounded them almost as badly as the Videssians' stalwart defense had done. Take that, magnifolent Etzilios the Avtokrator thought.
The elder Maniakes raised a silver winecup high. «Here's to half the battle won!» he said, and drained the cup.
Maniakes drank that toast without hesitation. It was exactly how he viewed the situation himself. Lysia, however, spoke with gome asperity: «It's more than half the battle, I'd say. The Kubratoi and the Makuraners had the one chance to work together, and we've ruined it. They'll never put that alliance back together again, because we'll never let them.»
«You're right, lass, you're right,» the elder Maniakes said, making a placating gesture. «Every word you say is true—and far be it from me to argue with my daughter-in-law. My son would probably put my head up on the Milestone for that, with a big placard saving what a naughty fellow I'd been.» He made as if to shrink from the Avtokrator.
«It would need to be a very big placard, to get all that on,» Maniakes said with a snort. But even his father's drollery had calculation in it. Lysia had been the elder Maniakes' niece all her life. He did not mention that family tie now, as Rhegorios often did. He would not speak out against the marriage Maniakes had made, but he did not speak for it, either.
«You're right, Lysia—and you're wrong,» Symvatios said. «Yes, we've forced the Kubratoi and the Makuraners apart again, and that's a very great triumph again. I don't say it isn't. But—» He pointed west. «— there's Abivard still, practically close enough to spit on. Till we drive him back where he belongs, we're missing a good piece from a whole victory.»
«Will we sail back to Lyssaion, or through the Videssian Sea to Erzerum?» Rhegorios asked. «Getting late in the year to do either, worse luck.»
«I'd like to,» Maniakes said. «Now that we don't have to worry about the Kubratoi any more—or don't have to worry about them sacking the city, anyhow—we could.»
He looked from his father to his uncle to his cousin to his wife. None of them seemed to think much of the idea. After a brief pause, the elder Maniakes said, «It's late in the year to hope to accomplish much unless you intend to winter in the Land of the Thousand Cities.»
«I could,» Maniakes said. «They bring in crops the year around. The army would eat well enough.»
«Late in the year for a fleet to be setting out, too,» Rhegorios observed. «We've been through one bad storm already this campaigning season. That's plenty for me.»
«If I order Thrax to sail west, he will sail,» Maniakes said.
«You can order Thrax to do whatever you please, and he will do it,» the elder Maniakes put in. «That doesn't make him smart. It only makes him obedient.»
«The Avtokrator of the Videssians can command his subjects as he pleases,» Symvatios added, «but I've never heard that even the Avtokrator can order wind and wave to obey his will.»
Maniakes didn't have such an inflated view of his own place in the world as to disagree with that. Had he had such an inflated view, the storm he and his cousin and the entire fleet barely survived would have made him revise it. He said, «I'll have Bagdasares check what sort of weather we'll have if we sail. He warned me of this storm coming home, and we couldn't get away from it no matter what we did. If he says the sailing will be good, we'll go. If not, not. Does it please you?»
Everyone beamed at him.
Bagdasares prostrated himself when Maniakes came into his sorcerous study. Having risen, the Vaspurakaner wizard said, «How may I serve you, your Majesty?»
If he did not know what Maniakes had in mind, the Avtokrator would have been astonished. Bagdasares would have needed no divination to know; palace gossip was surely plenty. But the forms had to be observed. Formally, Maniakes said, «I want to know if the fleet will enjoy good weather sailing west to Lyssaion later this campaigning season.»
«Of course, your Majesty,» Bagdasares said, bowing low. «You have seen how this spell is performed. If you will be good enough to bear with me while I assemble the necessary ingredients—»
He did that with such quick efficiency as to remove all doubt from Maniakes' mind as to whether he'd known this visit was coming. He even had several little wooden ships already made to symbolize the vessels of the fleet. Maniakes hid his smile. Had everyone served him as well as Bagdasares, he would have been the most fortunate Avtokrator in Videssian history.
Into the bowl went the ships carved from chips of wood. They rode the ripples there, as real ships would ride over the waves of the Sailors' Sea. Bagdasares began to chant; his hands moved in swift passes above the bowl.
Developments were not long in coming. Maniakes vividly remembered the storm the mage's spell had predicted for the return Journey from Lyssaion. The miniature tempest Bagdasares raised this time was worse, with lightning like sparks and thunder like a small drum. One of the little lightning bolts smote a sorcerous ship, which burned to the waterline.
«Your Majesty, I cannot in good conscience recommend that you undertake this course,» Bagdasares said with what struck Maniakes as commendable understatement.
«A pestilence!» Maniakes muttered under his breath. «All right– suppose we sail the Videssian Sea to Erzerum, then?» He didn't want to do that. It made for a longer journey to Mashiz, and one in which the Makuraners would have plenty of chances to slow and perhaps even stop him before he ever brought his army down into the Land of the Thousand Cities.
«I shall attempt to see what may be seen, your Majesty,» the wizard replied. Like most in his art, he had a sober countenance, but now his eyes twinkled for a moment. «As this route would bring you close to Vaspurakan, so will the sorcery become more precise, more accurate.»
«Really?» Maniakes asked, intrigued in spite of his annoyance at the earlier prediction; Bagdasares had never claimed anything like that before.
The Vaspurakaner mage sighed. «I wish it were true. Logically, it should be true, Vaspur the Firstborn and his descendants being the primary focus of Phos' activity here on earth. But if you order me to prove to you it is true, I fear I cannot.»
«Ah, well,» Maniakes said. «If you could, you'd have a lot of mages in the Sorcerers' Collegium—and in Mashiz, too, I shouldn't wonder—hopping mad at you. All right, you can't be more accurate about what happens on the Videssian Sea. If you can be as accurate, I'll take that.»
What he meant was, If you can show me how to do what I want to do, even if I have to do it in this inconvenient way, I'll take that. Bagdasares spent some little while incanting over the bowl and the water and the little ships he had made—except for the one that had burned—sorcerously persuading them they now represented a fleet on the Videssian Sea, not one on the Sailors' Sea.
When he was satisfied the components of his magic understood their new role, he began the spell proper.
