Just then a call he knew sang out, loud and insistent: Hold in place. His shoulders sagged with relief. Mammianos was thinking along with him. Videssians began pulling up, taking off their helmets to wipe their brows. Those who had come through unhurt started chattering about what a splendid fight it had been.
A Haloga came up beside Krispos. He gasped and started to raise his saber before he realized the fellow wore the raiment of the imperial guard. Geirrod looked at him with doubly reproachful eyes. "Majesty, you should not leave us. We serve to keep you safe."
"I know, Geirrod. Will you forgive me if I admit I made a mistake?"
Geirrod blinked, taken off guard by such quick and abject surrender. "Aye, well," he said, "I suppose the man in you threw down the Emperor. That is not bad." He saluted and walked off. But Krispos knew he had made a mistake. He had to be Avtokrator first and man second. If he threw his life away on a foolish whim, far more than he alone would suffer. The lesson was hard. He hoped one day to learn it thoroughly.
Jubilation ran high in camp that night, despite the continuing groans and cries of the wounded. From the excitement the men showed, they were as excited and overjoyed at their victory as was Krispos himself, likely for the same reason: Down deep, they must have doubted they could beat Harvas. Now that they had done it once, the next time might come easier.
"Tonight we feast!" Krispos shouted, which only made the camp more joyful. Cattle were slaughtered as quickly as they could be led up, adding further to the blood that drenched the area. Soon every trooper seemed to have a big gobbet of beef roasting over a fire. Krispos' nostrils twitched at the savory scent, which reminded him he'd eaten nothing since morning. He stood in line to get some meat of his own.
After he'd eaten, he met with his generals. Several of them had men they wanted promoted for bravery on the battlefield. "We'll do it right now," Krispos said. "That way everyone will be able to applaud them."
The musicians played Assembly. The troops packed themselves around the imperial tent. One by one Krispos called names. As the soldiers came forward to be rewarded, their commanders shouted out what they had done. Their comrades cheered lustily.
"Who's next?" Krispos whispered.
"A file leader named Inkitatos," Mammianos whispered back.
"File leader Inkitatos!" Krispos yelled as loud as he could, then again. "File leader Inkitatos!"
Inkitatos elbowed his way through the crush to stand on the podium between Krispos and Mammianos. Mammianos called to the listening soldiers, "File leader Inkitatos' brave and well-trained war horse dashed out the brains of four northerners with blows from its hooves."
"Hurrah!" the men shouted.
"File leader Inkitatos, I am proud to promote you to troop leader," Krispos declared. The soldiers cheered again. Grinning, Krispos added, "And I promote your horse, too." The troops whooped and waved and yelled louder than ever.
"If he's promoted, do I get his new pay?" Inkitatos asked with the accent and ready opportunism of a man born in Videssos the city.
Krispos laughed out loud. "By the good god, you've earned it." He turned to the military scribe who was recording the night's promotions. "Note that Inkitatos here will draw troop leader's pay once for himself and once for his horse." The scribe's indulgent chuckle broke off when he saw that Krispos meant it. He was shaking his head as he made the notation.
It must have been close to midnight by the time the last promotion was awarded. By then the crowd round the imperial tent had thinned out. Krispos envied the troopers who could go off to their bedrolls any time they felt like it. He had to stay up on me podium until the whole ceremony was done. When he did finally get to bed, he remembered nothing after he lay down.
Sunrise came far too soon. Krispos' eyes felt gritty and his head ached. He knew he should have been eager to press on after Harvas, but found exhausting the prospect of anything more vigorous than an enormous yawn. Yawning over and over, he went outside for breakfast.
When the army moved out, archers were in the van, ready to harass Harvas' men as they retreated. With them rode the wizards, Zaidas in front of them all. Harvas could have left any number of sorcerous ambushes behind to delay or destroy the Videssians. Krispos worried even more that the raiders would choose to stand siege in Imbros. With the leisure that would bring Harvas, who could guess what wickedness he might invent?
Delays the army found. Haloga rearguards twice stood and fought. They sold their lives as bravely as Videssians might have if they were protecting their countrymen. The imperial army rode over them and pressed on.
Imbros was almost in sight when a wall of darkness, twice the height of a man, suddenly rose up before the soldiers. Zaidas waved for everyone to halt. The soldiers were more than willing. They had no idea whether the wall was dangerous and did not care to learn the hard way.
The wizards went into a huddle. Trokoundos cast a spell toward that blank blackness. The sorcerous wall drank up the spell and remained unchanged. Trokoundos swore. The wizards tried a different spell. The black wall drank up that one, too. Trokoundos swore louder. A third try yielded results no better. What Trokoundos said should have been hot enough to melt the wall by itself.
"What now?" Krispos asked. "Are we blocked forever?" The wall stretched east and west, far as the eye could see.
"No, by the lord with the great and good mind!" Trokoundos' scowl was as dark as the barrier Harvas had placed in the imperial army's path. "Were such facile creations as potent as this one appears, the sorcerous art would be altogether different from what in fact it is." He paused, as if listening to his own words. Then, right hand outstretched, he walked up to the black wall and tapped it with a fingertip.
The other mages and Krispos, not believing he would dare do that, cried out in dismay. Zaidas reached out to pull Trokoundos back—too late. Lightning crackled, surrounding Trokoundos in a dreadful nimbus. But when it faded, the wall faded, too. The wizard was left unharmed.
"I thought as much," he said, his voice silky with self-satisfaction. "Just a bluff, designed to keep us dithering here as long as we would."
"You were very brave and very foolish," Krispos said. "Please don't do that again—I expected to see you die there."
"I didn't, and now the way lies open," Trokoundos answered. With that Krispos could not argue. He signaled to the musicians. The call Advance, all eager horns and pounding drums, rang forth. The army moved ahead.
What with rearguards and sorcerous ploys, Harvas had succeeded in putting space between himself and his pursuers. When Imbros came into sight late that afternoon, Krispos approached the town with more than a little trepidation, fearing Harvas had used the time he'd gained to establish himself inside.
But Imbros stood empty, surrounded by its forest of stakes. Over the winter, most of the impaled corpses had fallen from them; bone gleamed whitely on the ground. Here and there, though, a mummified body still stood, as if in macabre welcome.
Krispos' soldiers' muttered to themselves as they made camp not far away. They had heard of Harvas' atrocity, but only a relative handful had seen it till now. Stories heard, no matter how vile, could be discounted in the mind. What came before the eye was something else again.
An imperial guardsman stuck his head into Krispos' tent. "The general Bagradas would see you, Majesty."