"I'll see to it, your Majesty," Bagradas promised. He spun on his heel and set hands on hips as he glared at the gaggle of men still milling around Rhisoulphos' tent. "Come on, come on, you lugs!" he shouted. "We still have to ride today, whether the eminent sir is here or not. Get cracking, if you please!"
The men moved smartly to obey. Krispos nodded to himself; Rhisoulphos had been a canny soldier, but the regiment would not suffer under its new leader.
The army moved out a few minutes later than it might have, out not enough to upset even the veteran underofficers who were responsible for keeping their units in good order. Krispos rode Progress up and down the long line of march. Wherever he went, the troopers were buzzing about Rhisoulphos' disappearance. Some thought Bagradas had got rid of his commander; others blamed sorcery; others, not surprisingly, were lewd. "He'll be back in a couple of days, all sleepy and with his breeches unbuttoned," one fellow guessed.
"Oh, go on, Dertallos, you've just saying what you'd do in his sandals," a mate replied.
"If I were in his sandals right now, I wouldn't be wearing sandals, if you know what I mean," Dertallos said. Half a dozen voices barked deep male laughter.
One slow mile followed another. Halfway through the day, Krispos reported that Nogeto had been telling the truth. "He was drugged somehow, poor sod," the wizard said.
"How very strange," Krispos answered. "All right, then; let him return to duty."
Scouts rode well in advance of the main imperial army. With them rode wizards, not the journeymen who had accompanied Krispos' last northern foray but masters for the Sorcerers' Collegium. If they could not sniff out a trap, no one could. If no one could, Krispos was uneasily aware, that trap would close on his army. And who then would defend Videssos the city, his wife, his heir, and his son to be? No one. He knew that all too well.
The farther north the army traveled, the fewer the farms Krispos saw being worked. That tore at him. Next to harvesttime, spring should have been the busiest season of the year, with men and oxen in the fields plowing, planting, and watering. But what was the point, when raiders might sweep down at any moment? Many little farming villages stood deserted, their former inhabitants fled to ground they hoped safer. If somehow he beat Harvas, Krispos knew he would have to import peasants to replace the ones who had ran away or been slain. Otherwise the whole land would start to go back to wilderness.
As the Paristrian Mountains climbed higher into the northern sky, men began to peer suspiciously at every clump of brush, every stand of elms they passed. Krispos had known that same feeling the summer before as he approached Imbros: wondering how and where Harvas would strike. Now that he neared Imbros again, he knew it again, doubly strong.
About two days south of the murdered city, a scout came galloping back to Krispos. The fellow saluted and said, "Majesty, one of the wizards thinks he senses something up ahead. He can't tell what, he's not even sure it's there, but—maybe something." The scout looked irked at having to report what likely was just a mage's vagary.
The most Krispos hoped for, though, was detecting Harvas' snares at all. Expecting them to announce themselves with bells and whistles was too much to ask. He turned to the army musicians. "Play Form line of battle, then Hold in place. We'll see what's gong on up ahead." As the music rang out and the soldiers began to move, Krispos reflected that he'd be wasting a good part of a day's travel if the wizard had discovered nothing more than his overactive imagination. But better that than ignoring a true warning and throwing away his army.
He touched Progress' flanks with his heels, urging the horse forward. Soon he had pressed ahead of the main body of soldiery. A few other riders advanced with him—wizards all. They knew what a halt had to mean. Trokoundos waved from atop a gray that trotted with a dancer's grace. Krispos waved back.
He reined Progress in close behind a knot of scouts and sorcerers. To his untrained senses, the country ahead looked no different from that through which the army had been traveling: fields—too many of them untended—punctuated by stands of oak, maple, elm, and fir. Shadows raced over them, keeping time with the fluffy clouds that drifted across the sky. It all seemed too lovely, too peaceful, to have anything to do with Harvas.
"What's wrong?" Krispos asked.
One of the sorcerers, a young, gangly man whose thin beard imperfectly covered his acne scars, bowed and said, "Your Majesty, I'm called Zaidas. I feel—not a wrongness ahead, nor even a lack of rightness, but rather—oh, how best to say it?—an absence of both rightness and wrongness, which could be unusual." He cracked his knuckles and peered nervously at the innocent-appearing countryside.
"If you don't sense anything, who knows what's hiding there? Is that what you're saying?" Krispos asked. Zaidas nodded. Krispos turned to the other mages. "Do you also feel this, ah, absence?"
"No, Majesty," one of them said. "That does not mean it is not there, though. Despite his youth, Zaidas has great and unusual sensitivity, which is the reason we bade him accompany us. What he perceives, or fails to perceive, may well be genuine." Zaidas' larynx bobbed up and down as he shot his colleague a grateful glance.
Krispos made a sour face. " 'May well be' cuts no ice, sorcerous sirs. I could starve, hunting a grouse that may well be there. How do we find out?"
Trokoundos strolled up just then to join the discussion. "We find out by testing. Is it not so, brothers?" The other wizards nodded. Trokoundos went on, "The Lord with the great and good mind willing, we may even surprise Harvas, who should be confident we've noticed nothing."
Trokoundos was an able mage, but no general. "If he's there, he'll know we've noticed," Krispos said. "We don't form line of battle every time a rabbit hops across the road. What we have to find out is, what is our line of battle moving toward?"
"You're right, of course, your Majesty." Trokoundos shook his head in chagrin, then began a technical discussion with the rest of the wizards that lost Krispos by the fourth sentence. He was beginning to wonder if they would spend the whole morning chattering at one another when Trokoundos seemed to remember he was there. The mage said, "Your Majesty, a number of spells could create the illusion of normality ahead. We think one is more likely, given that Harvas could both pervert and amplify its power through blood sacrifice. We will try to break through it now, assuming it to be the one we guess."
"Do it," Krispos said at once. Acting against Harvas instead of reacting to him felt like a victory in itself.
The wizards went to work with the practiced efficiency of a squad of soldiers who had fought side by side for years. Krispos watched Trokoundos, who smeared his eyelids with an ointment another mage ceremoniously handed him. "The gall of a cat mixed with the fat of an all-white hen," Trokoundos explained. "It gives the power to see that which others may not."
He held up a pale-green stone and a goldpiece, touched the two of them together. "Chrysolite and gold drive away foolishness and expel fantasies, the good god willing." Behind him, the voice of the rest of the wizards rose and fell as some invoked Phos while others chanted to bring their building spell to sharper focus.
A wizard threw a gray-green leaf on a brazier; the puff of smoke that arose smelled sweet. Trokoundos set a small, sparkling stone in a copper bowl, smashed it to fragments with a silver hammer. "Opal and laurel, when used with the proper spell, may render a man—or, with sufficient strength, maybe, an army—invisible. Thus we destroy both, and thus we destroy with spell." With the last words Trokoundos' voice rose to a shout. His right finger stabbed out toward the peaceful-looking landscape ahead. For a long moment, for more than a moment, nothing happened. Krispos glared at Zaidas, who was watching the unchanged terrain with the same dejected expression his colleagues bore. Aye, he was very sensitive, Krispos thought—he could even detect traps that weren't there.