You will stay here and you will be safe, Rhavas vowed to himself. You will, or on my head be it.
IV
The Khamorth stayed away from Skopentzana longer than Rhavas or anyone else there would have dared hope after the local mages and the prelate came back defeated from trying to force them away by sorcery. Koubatzes came to Rhavas' study and said, "Maybe our magic did more good than we thought. They hit us, yes, but we hit them, too."
"It could be so," Rhavas replied. "I would not presume to tell you it is not so, sorcerous sir. But I would tell you this: I prefer to account for it with the prayers the whole city offered up to the lord with the great and good mind."
"It could be so, very holy sir." Koubatzes' tone of voice was almost identical to the one Rhavas had used moments before. It showed polite skepticism, but skepticism unmistakable for anything else.
"Why do you disbelieve?" Rhavas asked.
"I don't disbelieve." Now Koubatzes showed alarm. Understandably so: the whole weight of the ecclesiastical and governmental hierarchies fell on a man who descended into heresy or apostasy. "I do not disbelieve," the wizard repeated, with even more emphasis than before. "But men have offered up prayers on all sorts of things over years uncounted without having them heard. How can you be so sure these were?"
That was a legitimate question. Rhavas said, "I will answer you in two ways. First, this prayer was for something of extraordinary importance to the city and to the Empire of Videssos. We are the ones who worship rightly, and so we may hope Phos will hear us. We cannot demand anything of the good god, but we may humbly beseech him. We may, and we have." Koubatzes stirred on his stool. Rhavas held up a hand. "I had not finished. The other thing I would say is, if our prayers failed, where are the barbarians?"
"I already gave you one other possible explanation, very holy sir," Koubatzes reminded him. "But if you think I will quarrel, if you think I will complain, you can think again. I do not know where the barbarians are. I do know that I miss them not in the least."
"Nor will I quarrel or complain over that, sorcerous sir," Rhavas said. When Koubatzes went his way, the two men were on good terms.
Rhavas began doing something he had not been in the habit of doing till then: strolling along the walkway atop Skopentzana's walls whenever the weather was good enough to let him see out into the distance and whenever it wasn't too bitterly cold to keep everyone indoors who didn't have the most urgent reasons for venturing outside.
Militiamen marched regardless of the weather, of course. Some of them greeted Rhavas with jokes when he did appear. "No wonder you didn't show up yesterday," one of them called after a day bitterly cold even by Skopentzana's stern standards. "You'd have frozen the top of your head right off."
Rhavas flipped back his hood and let his tonsured scalp shine forth for a moment. This day was also anything but warm. "Still seems to be there," he said, and the militiaman laughed.
Toxaras and some others, though, did not smile and joke when they saw the prelate. They couldn't be openly rude, not when Rhavas might punish them with anathemas. But they made a point of staying as far away from him as they could, and of being selectively deaf when he asked them questions. They remained convinced he was mistaken.
Because of that, he was surprised when Toxaras came to his residence one afternoon and said, "Please walk out to the wall with me, very holy sir, if you'd be so kind. There's something you need to see."
"Oh?" Rhavas got to his feet. "Yes, of course I'll come. Can you tell me what it is?"
"You'll know it when you see it," the mason answered, glowering at Rhavas from under his bushy brows. Rhavas feared he knew what that meant. But he was also sure Toxaras was waiting for him to ask again, so he didn't. He refused to give the militia leader the satisfaction.
By the way Toxaras kept scowling as they tramped out from the heart of Skopentzana to the western wall, he'd expected Rhavas to probe harder, and was annoyed when he failed to. Toxaras' anger was the least the prelate had to worry about.
Up the stairs they climbed, Toxaras not breathing hard, Rhavas panting a little by the time they got to the top. The militiamen atop the wall seemed much more alert than they had the last time Rhavas saw them. Nobody joked with him now. The grim-faced men were staring out to the snow-covered ground beyond the city.
"Well, go on," Toxaras said roughly, all but shoving Rhavas toward the outer perimeter. "So much for all your fancy prayers, very holy sir. There are the Khamorth. Have a look for yourself."
Like a man trapped in a nightmare, Rhavas strode out to the edge of the wall. Against all logic and reason, he hoped till the very last instant that Toxaras would prove mistaken. The leader of the militia wasn't wrong, of course. There were the nomads, just as he had said. They wore fur hats and fur jackets and unkempt beards that blended in with the one and the other. They had leather trousers and felt boots that were supposed to keep their feet warm no matter how cold it got. The small steppe ponies they rode were shaggy of mane and tail and coat in general, which only added to the animal impression the barbarians created.
"Yes, I see them," Rhavas said quietly. "They are there."
"Are you satisfied with your handiwork now?" Toxaras demanded.
"My handiwork?" Rhavas shook his head. "I had nothing to do with bringing them here. You must blame that on the civil war. I did everything I knew how to do to keep them away from Skopentzana. Obviously, I failed."
Toxaras blinked. He'd blamed Rhavas for so much, he'd plainly included some things for which the prelate was not responsible. He shrugged now. "They're there, and we've got all those stinking peasants in the city. How are we supposed to stand siege?"
"I don't know," Rhavas answered. "How are they supposed to lay siege to a city like this? I've never heard that they were the masters of rams and catapults and siege towers."
"Who says they need to be?" Toxaras returned. "All they have to do is stay around while we get hungrier and hungrier."
Rhavas looked out at the plainsmen once more. None of them was within bowshot of the walls, or even within catapult range. They just sat on their horses, eyeing Skopentzana with, perhaps, as much thoughtful—even speculative—interest as Rhavas and Toxaras and the rest of the militiamen were giving them.
"They have to eat, too," Rhavas said. "What will they live on while they wait for us to starve?"
"Their flocks. Whatever they can steal from us," Toxaras answered.
"Will it be enough?"
"How do I know? How do you know it won't be? We'd have a better chance if we had fewer useless mouths in here."
"Who are the barbarians?" Rhavas asked. "Those outside the walls, or those within?"
"Very holy sir, I'm not going to argue with you about that. You can talk rings around me. We both know it," Toxaras said. "But I'll tell you one other thing I know: I know which side I'm on. And I know you haven't done my side any good." He spat on the paving stones, rejecting Rhavas as if he were Skotos.
Propriety and holiness forgotten, Rhavas swung at him. The blow was clumsy and unpracticed. Toxaras ducked under it. Rhavas swung again, in a blind fury. Toxaras blocked with his left forearm. Then he swung. The next thing Rhavas knew, he was sitting on his backside on those paving stones, gasping and fighting for breath, the pit of his stomach one vast ache.
"Get up," Toxaras said, breathing hard. "Get up and get out of here, Skotos eat you. I didn't want to do that. I've got all the witnesses in the world that you tried to slug me first, but I still didn't want to do that. Go on. Get out. If I see you up here again, I'm liable to try and murder you."