"My Empire," Petronas roared.
"Your empire is that fortress you're huddling in," Krispos said. "The rest of Videssos acknowledges me—and my patriarch." If he was stuck with Pyrrhos, he thought, he ought to get some use out of him, even if only to make Petronas writhe in his cage.
"To the ice with your patriarch, the Phos-drunk fanatic!"
Krispos smiled. For once, he and Petronas agreed on something. He had no intention of letting his rival know it. He said, "You're walled up as tightly here as you would be in the monastery of the holy Skirios. How do you propose to get away? You might as well give up and go back to the monastery."
"Never!" Petronas stamped down off the wall. His curses remained audible. He must have noticed that and signaled to his magician, for they cut off in the middle of a foul word.
Krispos nodded to Trokoundos, who chanted a brief spell. When Krispos spoke again, a moment later, his voice had only its usual power once more. "He won't be easy to pry out of there."
"Not without a siege train, which we don't have with us," Mammianos agreed. "Not unless we can starve him out, anyway."
Rhisoulphos stood close by, looking up at the spot on the wall that Petronas had just vacated. He shook his head at Mammianos' words. "He has supplies for months in there. He spent the winter strengthening the place against the chance that the war would turn against him."
"Smart of him." Mammianos also glanced toward the fortress of Antigonos. "Aye, he's near as clever as he thinks he is."
"We'll send for a siege train, by the good god, and sit round the fortress till it gets here," Krispos said. "If Petronas wants to play at being Avtokrator inside till the rams start pounding on the walls, that's all right with me."
"Your sitting here may be just what he wants," Trokoundos said. "Remember that he tried once to slay you by sorcery. Such an effort would be all the easier to repeat with you close by. We've just seen his mage is still with him."
"I can't very well leave before he's taken, not if I intend to leave men of mine behind here," Krispos said.
Mammianos and Rhisoulphos both saluted him, then looked at each other as if taken by surprise. Mammianos said, "Majesty, you may not be trained to command, but you have a gift for it."
"As may be." Krispos did not show how pleased he was. He turned to Trokoundos. "I trust you have me better warded than I was that night."
"Oh, indeed. The protections I gave you then were the hasty sort one uses in an emergency. I thank the lord with the great and good mind that they sufficed. But since you gained the throne, I and my colleagues have hedged you round with far more apotropaic incantations."
"With what?" Krispos wanted to see if the wizard could repeat himself without tripping over his tongue.
But Trokoundos chose to explain instead: "Protective spells. I believe they will serve. With magecraft, one is seldom as sure as one would like,"
"Come to that, we aren't sure Petronas and his wizard will attack me," Krispos said.
"He will, your Majesty," Rhisoulphos said positively. "What other chance in all the world has he now to become Avtokrator?"
"Put that way—" Krispos clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Aye, likely he will. Here I stay, even so. Trokoundos will keep me safe." What he did not mention was his fear that, if he returned to Videssos the city, Petronas might suborn some soldiers and get free once more.
"Maybe," Mammianos said hopefully, "he hasn't had the chance to fill the cisterns in there too full. Summers hereabouts are hot and dry. With luck, his men will get thirsty soon and make him yield."
"Maybe." But Krispos doubted it. He'd seen that Petronas could be matched as a combat soldier. For keeping an army in supplies, though, he had few peers. If he'd taken refuge in the fortress of Antigonos, he was ready to stand siege there.
Krispos ringed his own army round the base of the fortress' hill. He staged mock attacks by night and day, seeking to wear down the defenders. Trokoundos wore himself into exhaustion casting one protective spell after another over Krispos and over the army as a whole. That Petronas' mage bided his time only made Trokoundos certain the stroke would be deadly when it came.
The siege dragged on. The healer-priests were much busier with cases of dysentery than with wounds. A letter let Krispos know that a train of rams and catapults had set out from Videssos the city for Antigonos. Behind a white-painted shield of truce, a captain approached the fortress and read the letter in a loud voice, finishing "Beware, rebels! Your hour of justice approaches!" Petronas' men jeered him from the walls.
Trokoundos redoubled his precautions, festooning Krispos with charms and amulets until their chains seemed heavier than chain mail. "How am I supposed to sleep, wearing all this?" Krispos complained. "The ones that don't gouge my back gouge my chest."
With a look of martyred patience, Trokoundos said, "Your Majesty, Petronas must know he cannot hope to last long once the siege engines arrive. Therefore he will surely try to strike you down before that time. We must be ready."
"Not only will I be ready, I'll be stoop-shouldered, as well," Krispos said. Trokoundos' martyred look did not change. Krispos threw his hands in the air and walked off, clanking as he went.
But that night, alone at last in his tent, he tossed and turned until a sharp-pointed amethyst crystal on one of his new amulets stabbed him just above his right shoulder blade. He swore and clapped his other hand to the injury. When he took it away, his palm was wet with blood.
"That fornicating does it!" he snarled. He threw aside the light silk coverlet and jumped to his feet. He took off the offending chain and flung it on the floor. It knocked over one of the other charms that ringed the bed like a fortress' wall. Finally, breathing hard, Krispos lay down again. "Maybe Petronas' wizard will pick tonight to try to kill me," he muttered, "but one piece more or less shouldn't matter much. And if he does get me, at least I'll die sound asleep."
What with his fury, naturally, he had trouble drifting off even after the chain was gone. He tossed and turned, dozed and half woke. His shoulder still hurt, too.
Some time toward morning, a tiny crunch made him open his eyes yet again. He was frowning even as he came fully awake— the crunch had sounded very close, as if it was inside the tent. A servant who disturbed him in the middle of the night—especially the middle of this miserable night—would regret the day he was born.
But the man crouching not three paces away was no servant of his. He was all in black—even his face was blacked, likely with charcoal. His right hand held a long knife. And under one of his black boots lay the crushed remains of one of Trokoundos' charms. Had he not trod on it, Krispos would never have known he was there until that knife slid between his ribs or across his throat.
The knifeman's dark face twisted in dismay as he saw Krispos wake. Krispos' face twisted, too. The assassin sprang toward him. Krispos flung his coverlet in the fellow's face and shouted as loud as he could. Outside the tent, his Haloga guard also cried out.
While the assassin was clawing free of the coverlet, Krispos seized his knife arm with both hands. His foe kicked him in the shin, hard enough to make his teeth click together in anguish. He tried to knee the knifeman in the crotch. The fellow twisted to one side and took the blow on the point of his hip.
With a sudden wrench, he tried to break Krispos' grip on his wrist. But Krispos had wrestled since before his beard came in. He hung on grimly. The assassin could do what he pleased, so long as he did not get that dagger free.
Thunnk! The abrupt sound of blade biting into flesh filled Krispos' ears and seemed to fill the whole tent. Hot blood sprayed his belly. The assassin convulsed in his arms. A latrine stench said the man's bowels had let go. The knife dropped from his hands. He crumpled to the ground.