between us is not easy.»
«Nor will finding an end to that strife be easy,» Romezan rumbled: a plain note of warning.
«For now, though, on these terms, we can stop,» Maniakes said. «For now.» Abivard and Romezan spoke together.
Abivard and Roshnani scrambled down into a boat from the Renewal. The sailors swiftly rowed them over the narrow stretch of water separating the imperial flagship from the beach at Across. When they got out of the boat on the beach, Rhegorios got into it. The sailors brought him back to the dromon.
«I am well,» he said to Maniakes. «Is all well here?»
«Well enough,» his cousin answered. The Avtokrator nodded to Romezan. «Your turn now.»
«Aye, my turn now,» the noble from the Seven Clans said heavily. «And I shall make the most of it.» He got down into the boat. So did Bozorg and Panteles. The Videssian mage in Makuraner pay looked as if he wished he could sit farther from Romezan than the boat permitted.
After Romezan and the two wizards had got out of the boat again and strode up the beach toward Across, Thrax spoke up: «I expect you'll want to get back to the imperial city now, eh, your Majesty?»
«What?» Maniakes said. «No, by the good god. Hang about here—a bit out of bowshot, if that suits you. This is where things that matter are going to happen today. I want to be here when they do.»
«Why not just hop out of the dromon and go on into the Makuraners' camp yourself, then?» Thrax laughed.
All Maniakes answered was, «No, not yet. The time isn't ripe.» The drungarios of the fleet stared at him; Maniakes was used to having Thrax stare at him. After the fleet had kept the Kubratoi from getting over the Cattle Crossing to join with the Makuraners, he begrudged Thrax his limitations less than he had.
«I presume we're waiting for the cheers that mean Abivard is reading the letter to a joyous and appreciative audience?» Rhegorios asked, grinning at his own irony.
«That's what we're waiting for, all right,» Maniakes said. «I asked Abivard to meet with his officers by the seaside, but he said no. He doesn't care to remind them they're going to be cooperating with us any more than he has to, not right now he doesn't. Put that way, he has a point.»
«Aye, likely so,» Rhegorios agreed. «I'll be glad when we do get back to the city, though; I'll tell you that. They wanted to honor me, so they gave me a Makuraner cook. I've been eating mutton without garlic ever since I traded myself for Romezan. I think the inside of my mouth has fallen asleep.»
«If that's the worst you suffered, you came through well,» Maniakes said. «I'm just bloody glad the Makuraners let you go again.»
Thrax pointed toward Across. «Looks like something's going on there, your Majesty. To the ice with me if I can make out what, though.»
Trees and bushes and buildings—some standing, others ruins– screened most of the interior of the suburb from view from the sea, but Thrax was right: something was going on there. Where things had been quiet, almost sleepy, before Abivard and Romezan returned to the Makuraner field force, now suddenly men were moving through the streets, some mounted, others afoot. As Maniakes watched, more and more soldiers started stirring.
Shouts rang out, someplace he could not see. To his annoyance, he could not make out the words. «Move closer to shore,» he told Thrax. Reluctantly, the drungarios obeyed the order.
A couple of horsemen came galloping out of Across. Maniakes and Rhegorios looked at each other. No way to tell what that meant Had the Renewal come any closer to the shore, she would have beached herself. Maniakes should have been able to make out what the Makuraners were shouting. The trouble was, they weren't shouting anything after that first brief outcry. Only the slap of waves against the dromon's hull broke the quiet.
He waited, wishing he could be a fly on the wall wherever the Makuraners had gathered instead of uselessly staying here on the sea. After a moment, he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Bagdasares' magic might have let him be that fly on the wall, as he had been for a little while listening to Abivard and Etzilios and, unexpectedly, Tzikas.
Mages on the other side had soon blocked his hearing then. But two of the chief mages for the other side were at least partly on his side now. On the other hand, magic had a way of falling to pieces when dealing with, or trying to deal with, inflamed passions—that was why both battle magic and love magic worked so seldom. And he suspected that passions at the Makuraner assemblage, if not inflamed now, would be soon.
Hardly had the thought crossed his mind when a great, furious roar arose somewhere near the center of Across. He could make out no words in it, but found himself less annoyed than he had been before. He did not think that angry baying had any words in it, anymore than a pack of hounds cried out with words when they scented blood.
On and on went the roar, now getting a little softer, now rising again to a new peak of rage. Rhegorios chuckled. «What do you want to bet they're reading through the whole list Abivard came up with?» he said.
«You're likely right,» Maniakes answered. «When they shout louder it must be because they've just come across some especially popular officer.»
Abivard had come up with more than three hundred names. Reading them all took a while. At last, silence fell. A moment later, fresh outcry broke out. Now, for the first time, Maniakes could make out one word, shouted as part of a rhythmic chant: the name of the Makuraner King of Kings.
«If that's not 'Dig up Sharbaraz's bones!' in Makuraner, I'm a shave-pated priest,» Rhegorios exclaimed.
Maniakes nodded. «Aye, that's the riot call, no doubt about it.» He did several steps of a happy dance, right there on the deck, and slammed his fist into his open palm. «By the good god, cousin of mine, we did it!»
Where he was uncharacteristically delighted, Rhegorios was as uncharacteristically restrained. «We may have done it,» he said. «We've done part of it, anyhow. But there are still thousands of boiler boys sitting right here next to the Cattle Crossing, only a long piss away from Videssos the city. Getting the buggers out of the westlands and back where they belong is going to take a deal of doing yet.»
A Makuraner burst out from among the buildings of Across and ran along the beach. He utterly ignored the presence of the Renewal not far offshore—and well he might have, for three of his countrymen were at his heels, their caftans flapping about them like wings as they ran. The swords in their hands glittered and flashed in the sun.
The fleeing Makuraner, perhaps hearing them gaining on him, turned at bay, drawing his own sword. As with most fights of one against three, this one did not last long. He lay where he had fallen, his blood soaking the sand.
«Maybe their whole army will fall apart,» Rhegorios said dreamily. «Maybe they'll have their civil war here and now.»
«Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I don't think enough Makuraners will stay loyal to Sharbaraz to make much of a civil war, though.»
«Mm, something to that,» Rhegorios admitted. «For so long, though, we've got less than our due that I don't think the good god will be angry with me if I hope for more than our due for a change.» He shifted from theology to politics, all in one breath: «I wish I knew which side the dead man was on, and which the three who killed him.»
Maniakes could not grant that wish, but the three Makuraners did, almost as soon as it was uttered. They waved to the Renewal, and bowed, and did everything they could to show they were well inclined to Videssos. One of them pointed to the body of the man they had killed. «He would not spit on the name of Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps!» he shouted, his voice thin across the water of the Cattle Crossing.
«Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps.» Now Maniakes, echoing the Makuraners, sounded dreamy, his mind far away across the years. «When Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis, that's what his men called the usurper: Smerdis Pimp of Pimps. Now it comes full circle.» He sketched Phos' sun-sign, a circle itself, above his heart.
«We have the rebellion,» Rhegorios said. Solemnly, he and Maniakes and Thrax clasped hands. As Rhegorios had said, success seemed strange after so many disappointments.
The Makuraners on the beach were still shouting, now in bad Videssian instead of their own language: «You Avtokrator, you come here, we make friends. No more enemies no more.» «Not yet,» Maniakes shouted back. «Not yet. Soon.»
A little breeze flirted with the scarlet capes of the Halogai and Videssians of the Imperial Guard as they formed three sides of a square on the beach near Across. The sun mirrored off their gilded mail shirts. Almost to a
