of them as Abivard had gathered here.
«Just so,» Abivard said, waving again. «These are the best warriors of all Makuran. Since that is so, where will Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps come up with their like? We may start the fight against him a little farther east than otherwise, but what of it?» «Something to that,» Maniakes admitted.
«Something,» Rhegorios said, «but not enough. If you're not worried about what Tzikas is doing or where he's going, why did you send men after him?»
«Because I wanted him dead,» Abivard snapped, sounding very much like a man who would be King of Kings. «And,» he added grudgingly, «because with Tzikas and Sharbaraz, you never know, not for certain, not till too late.»
«I certainly found that out about Sharbaraz,» Maniakes said with feeling.
«He was a good man, or as good a man as a pampered prince could be, when he got his throne back a dozen or so years ago. Abivard sighed. «The court and the eunuchs and the women's quarters all worked together to ruin him.»
«He had something to do with it, too—what he is, I mean.» Maniakes said. «My court is as stifling as the one in Mashiz; you've seen my eunuch chamberlains, and how many women you can choose from doesn't matter all that much, I don't think.»
«You give me hope,» Abivard said.
«Take it where you find it,» Maniakes said. «Plenty of times when I've had to look for it under flat stones myself, so to speak. But Tzikas, now… whatever Tzikas does, it will be for himself first. As long as you understand that, you have a portrait of the man.»
«This I have seen with my own eyes, I assure you,» Abivard answered. For the second time, he waved out to the men of the Makuraner field army. «Do you want to say something to them? They'd like to hear you, I think. The times we've met before haven't been times for talk.»
«Haven't been for talk, indeed.» Maniakes snorted; Abivard had an unsuspected gift for understatement himself. «My Makuraner is only fair at best.» Abivard shrugged, as if to say, So what? Maniakes took a deep breath and raised his voice: «Men of Makuran!» Silence rippled outward from the warriors closest to the Imperial Guards. «Men of Makuran!» Maniakes called again. «For years, I have pursued and chased after peace. I fought, but I never wanted this war. Sharbaraz forced it on me—and on you. Now, then, let us take up weapons against each other no more. Let us welcome the peace we have found. Let us put out the flame of war, before it burns us all.»
He wondered how that would go over. The Makuraners were proud and fierce; they might take the longing for peace as an admission of weakness. When they stayed quiet after he finished speaking, he feared that was what they had done.
Then the cheering started. The Makuraners pressed harder on the Videssian guards than they had when tension curdled the air. They pressed so hard, they broke through, which they might not have done so fast had they and the guardsmen used weapons against one another. They swarmed toward Maniakes, Rhegorios, and Abivard.
Maniakes wore at his side the sword he commonly carried into battle. He did not draw it: what point to drawing it? With so many Makuraners bearing down on him, if one of them was a murderer, the fellow would have his way. If Tzikas had planned for this very moment, Maniakes was in peril.
No blows came. Tzikas, never popular himself, had apparently failed to imagine an outpouring of affection from the Makuraners for a Videssian Avtokrator. Maniakes had trouble thinking him obtuse for that. He'd never imagined such a thing, either.
A Makuraner shouting his name grabbed him around the waist. The fellow was not trying to wrestle him to the ground. Instead, grunting, he hoisted Maniakes up onto his shoulders. Once up there, the Avtokrator discovered that Rhegorios and Abivard had been similarly elevated. The cheering got louder than ever.
The Makuraners passed the two Videssians and their own almost King of Kings back and forth among themselves. It would have been scandalous if… Maniakes shook his head. It was scandalous, but he, like the soldiers, was having too much fun to care. Presently, he discovered he was riding atop one of his own Haloga guards rather than a Makuraner. «Put me down!» he shouted, trying to make himself heard through the din.
The Haloga shook his big blond head. «No, your Majesty,» he boomed in slow, sonorous Videssian. «You need this. Soldiers need this.» As if Maniakes weighed nothing, he tossed him through the air to a couple of Makuraners who caught him and kept him from smashing to the ground below.
They, in turn, threw him to some of their friends. He nearly did fall then; one of the Makuraners grabbed him around the waist in the nick of time. «Careful, Amashpiit!» exclaimed another Makuraner nearby. «Don't drop him.»
«I didn't,» Amashpiit answered. «I won't.» The fellow who'd warned him helped him lift Maniakes up above them once more. Then the two of them—and other eager, shouting, grinning Makuraners—propelled the Avtokrator through the air again.
In the course of his wild peregrinations, he passed close enough to Rhegorios to yell, «If Kameas saw me now, he'd fall over dead.» His cousin laughed—or so he thought, though the crowd swept him away almost before he could be sure.
At last, when he was certain every boiler boy had bounced him through the air at least one and most of them two, three, or four times, his feet touched the ground. The couple of men closest to him, instead of seizing him and hurling him up onto yet another bumpy road, helped straighten him. «I thank you,» he told them, most sincerely.
Someone was shouting his name: Abivard. By what had to be luck, the Makuraner marshal had alighted not far from him.
«Whew!» Maniakes said when they clasped hands again. «As part of our ritual for crowning the Avtokrator, his soldiers lift him onto a shield—but they don't throw him around afterward.»
«That wasn't part of our ritual, either,» Abivard answered.'Just something that happened. That's what life is, you know: just one cursed thing after another.»
«I wouldn't call this a cursed thing,» Maniakes said injudicious tones. «More on the lines of—interesting. There's a good word.» He looked around. «What happened to Rhegorios? Did they fling him into the Cattle Crossing?»
He and Abivard—and, soon, the men around them—raised their voices, calling for his cousin. Rhegorios turned out to be about as far from them as he could have been while remaining on the same beach. When they finally rejoined one another, the Sevastos said, «Now I know how a horse feels when it's ridden for the first time. All jumps and bounds and hard landings—have we got an imperial masseur?»
«I've never asked for one,» Maniakes said, «but one of the eunuchs or another will know who the best in the city is.» Taking stock of his body, he realized he was going to be bruised and sore in some unusual places. «Cousin of mine, that's not a bad idea.»
Abivard brought matters back to the business at hand. «For the moment, we are friends, you and I, you and my army,» he said. «If we Makuraners are going to leave the westlands, we had best do it quickly, while that friendship holds. Will you in your turn do all you can to keep us supplied as we travel, or will you understand when we take what we may need from the countryside?»
«As Videssos hasn't held most of the westlands since before I became Avtokrator, I don't know how much I can do to resupply you,» Maniakes said. «As for the other, you know the difference between requisitioning and plundering, or I hope you do.»
«Certainly,» Abivard said at once. «Requisitioning is what you do when someone is watching you.» He dipped his head to Maniakes. «Since we are friends—for the moment—and since you will be watching, we shall requisition. Does that suit you?»
Maniakes opened his mouth, then closed it again on realizing he had nothing to say. He had, for once, met his match in the cynicism that came with ruling or aspiring to rule a great empire.
Later, sailing back to Videssos the city, Rhegorios remarked, «Smerdis King of Kings didn't suit us, so we helped the Makuraners get rid of him and put Sharbaraz King of Kings on the throne. Sharbaraz turned out to be more dangerous than Smerdis ever dreamt of being, which meant he didn't suit us, either. So now we're helping the Makuraners get rid of him and put Abivard King of Kings, or whatever he ends up calling himself, on the throne. And Abivard is liable to turn out to be…» He let Maniakes finish the progression for himself.
«Oh, shut up,» Maniakes said loudly and sincerely. Rhegorios laughed. So did the Avtokrator. They both
