man, they looked wary, ready to fight: all around them, drawn up in far greater numbers, stood the warriors of the Makuraner field force.
The waters of the Cattle Crossing formed the fourth side of the square. Sailors decked out in scarlet tunics for the occasion rowed Maniakes and Rhegorios from the Renewal to the shore. One of them said, «Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I'd sooner jump in a crate full of spiders than go over there.»
«They won't do anything to me or the Sevastos.» Maniakes kept his voice relaxed, even amused. «If they do, they'll have our fathers to deal with, and they know it.» That was true. It was, however, the sort of truth that would do him no good if it came to pass. Sand grated under the planks of the boat. Maniakes and Rhegorios stepped out. As they did so, the Makuraner army burst into cheers. Rhegorios' grin was wide enough to threaten to split his face in two. «Did you ever imagine you'd hear that?» he asked.
«Never once,» Maniakes replied. The Imperial Guards, without moving, seemed to stand easier. They might yet have needed to defend the Avtokrator against being trampled by well-wishers, but not against the murderous onslaught they'd dreaded, knowing they were too few to withstand it if it came.
Out among the Makuraners, deep drums thudded and horns howled. The axe-bearing Halogai and the Videssians with swords and spears tensed anew: that sort of music commonly presaged an attack. But then an iron-lunged Makuraner herald cried: «Forth comes Abivard son of Godarz, Makuran's new sun now rising in the east!»
«Abivard!» the warriors of the field army shouted over and over again, ever louder, till the marshal's name made Maniakes' head ring.
Only a handful of his own soldiers understood what the outcry meant. Not wanting fighting to start from panic or simple error, the Avtokrator called to them: «They're just announcing the marshal.»
Slowly, Abivard made his way through the crush of Makuraners till he stood before the Imperial Guards. «May I greet the Avtokrator of the Videssians?» he asked a massive Haloga axeman.
«Let him by, Hrafnkel,» Maniakes called.
Without a word, the Haloga stood aside. So did the file of guardsmen behind him. Abivard strode past them into the midst of the open space their number defined. As the Makuraner field force could have overwhelmed the Imperial Guards and slain Maniakes before help could reach him, so the guards could have slain Abivard before his men could save him. Maniakes nodded, appreciating the symmetry.
Abivard came up to him and held out his hand for a clasp. That was symmetry of another sort: the greeting of one equal to another. The only equals in all the world the Avtokrators of the Videssians acknowledged were the King of Kings of Makuran.
Maniakes clasped Abivard's hands, acknowledging that equality. As he did so, he asked, «What was your herald talking about—the new sun of Makuran? What's that supposed to mean?»
«It means I still haven't decided whether I'm going to overthrow Sharbaraz on my own account or in the name of my nephew,» Abivard answered. «If I call myself King of Kings now, I've taken the choice away from myself. This way, I keep it.»
«Ah,» Maniakes said. «Fair enough. The more choices you have, the better off you are.» He inclined his head to Abivard. «Over the years, you've given me too bloody few of them.»
«As you well know, I am not excessively burdened with choices myself at the moment,» Abivard answered tartly.
«Shall we get on with the ceremony, your Majesty, your—uh– Sunship?» Rhegorios said with a grin. «The sooner we have it out of the way, the sooner we can find someplace quiet and shady and drink some wine.»
«A splendid notion,» Abivard agreed. Till then, he, the Avtokrator, and the Sevastos had been speaking quietly among themselves while the Imperial Guards and the Makuraner warriors peered in at them and tried to make out what they were saying. Now Abivard raised his voice, as he might have on the battlefield: «Soldiers of Makuran, here is the Videssian Avtokrator, who has dealt honestly and honorably with us. Who is a better friend for us, Maniakes or that mother of all assassins, Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps?»
«Maniakes!» the soldiers shouted. Again, the Avtokrator had the bewildering sensation of hearing himself acclaimed by men who, up till a few days before, had bent all their efforts toward slaying him and sacking his city.
«If Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps wants to slaughter half our officers, what do we tell him?» Abivard asked.
A majority of the men in the field force shouted, «No!» That was the one word Maniakes could make out clearly. The other answers to Abivard's question were far more various, and blurred together into a great din. But, although Maniakes could make little sense of them, he did not think they would have delighted the heart of Sharbaraz back in Mashiz.
Abivard asked the next question: «Shall we make peace with Videssos, then, and go home and settle the man who's tried to ruin all Makuran with this war?»
«Aye!» some of the warriors shouted. Others cried, «Peace!» Other shouts mixed in with those, but Maniakes did not think any of them were cries of dissent.
«On going home,» Abivard continued, «is it agreed that we empty out our garrisons to secure the peace and do no more harm to this country than we must to keep ourselves fed?»
«Aye!» the Makuraners shouted again, not with the heartfelt enthusiasm they'd put into the first couple of questions, but, again, without any complaints Maniakes could hear.
«There you have it,» Abivard said to the Avtokrator. «What you and I agreed to in Videssos the city, the army agrees to as well. Peace lies between us, and we shall evacuate the westlands to seal it.»
«Good enough,» Maniakes said, «or rather, almost good enough. Can you give me one present?—an advance payment on the peace, you might say.»
Abivard might have styled himself the new sun of Makuran, but his face clouded over. «I have carried out our bargain in every particular,» he said stiffly. «If you are going to add new terms to it now—»
«Hear me out,» Maniakes broke in. «I don't think you'll object.»
«Say on.» Every line in Abivard's face expressed doubt.
Smiling, Maniakes made his request: «Give me Tzikas. You have no need to withhold him from me now. Since he's Sharbaraz's creature, you ought to be all the gladder to yield him up, in fact.»
«Ah.» Abivard relaxed. «Yes, I could do that in good conscience.»
He said no more. He had already shown he spoke Videssian well, and could get across subtle shades of meaning in the language of the Empire. Taking note of that, Maniakes said, «You could yield him up, eh? Not, you can yield him up?»
«Just so.» Abivard spread his hands in angry regret. «As soon as I learned Sharbaraz had betrayed me, I realized his protection over the traitor mattered no more—the reverse, as you say. One of the first things I did, even before I announced to the assembled soldiers what Sharbaraz had done, was to send two men to seize him. I would have dealt with him myself, you understand. The two men did not come back. I have not seen Tzikas since that day.»
«Did he slay them?» Rhegorios asked.
«Not so far as I know,» Abivard answered. «I meant exactly what I said—the two men did not come back. Neither did Tzikas. The only thing I have thought of is that he and they escaped together.»
«That is not good,» Maniakes said, one of his better understatements since assuming the imperial throne. «If he's escaped with them—»
«Very likely he's on his way to Sharbaraz, to let him know I'm on my way, too,» Abivard broke in. Maniakes started to glare: how dared this fellow interrupt him? But if Abivard was a sovereign, too, he was not interrupting a superior, only an equal, which might have been rude but wasn't lese majesty. Abivard went on, «I've sent riders after the three of them. The God willing, they'll pull them down.»
«And if they don't?» Maniakes asked. «Tzikas, may Skotos torment him in the ice forevermore, has got out of more trouble than anyone in his right mind would ever get into.»
Abivard shrugged. He waved in the direction of the bearded men in caftans staring in at him from beyond the thin cordon of Maniakes' Imperial Guards. «This is the field force of Makuran. It is, I think, the finest army we have ever put in the field. Do you deny it, Maniakes Avtokrator?»
«I'd be a fool if I did,» Maniakes answered. «It's taken me my whole reign to build my army up to the point where it can stand against your cursed boiler boys.» He finally had troops who could do that, too, but not so many
