In the end he dismissed about half the cases. In the other half he sent the women back to their homes with silver-more if their attackers had gotten them with child-and put stripes on the backs of the men who, he was convinced, had violated them.
The nakharar Tatul came out from the frowning walls of Shahapivan to watch one of the rapists take his strokes. Encountering Abivard there for the same reason, he bowed and said, «You administer honest justice, brother-in-law to the King of Kings. After Vshnasp's wicked tenure here, this is something we princes note with wonder and joy.»
Craack! The lash scored the back of the miscreant. He howled. No doubt about his guilt: he'd choked his victim and left her for dead, but she had not died. Abivard said, «It's a filthy crime. My sister, principal wife to the King of Kings, would not let me look her in the face if I ignored it.» Craack!
Tatul bowed again. «Your sister is a great lady.»
«That she is.» Abivard said no more than that. He did not tell Tatul how Denak had let herself be ravished by one of Sharbaraz' guards when the usurper Smerdis had imprisoned the rightful King of Kings in Nalgis Crag stronghold, thereby becoming able to pass messages to and from the prisoner and greatly aiding in his eventual escape. His sister would have had special reason to spurn him had he gone soft here. Craack!
After a hundred lashes the prisoner was cut down from the frame. He screamed one last time when a healer splashed warm salt water on his wrecked back to check the bleeding and make the flesh knit faster.
Once all the Vaspurakaner witnesses were gone and the punished rapist had been dragged off to recover from his whipping, Farrokh-Zad came up to Abivard. Unlike Tatul, Kardarigan's fiery young subordinate did not approve of the sentence Abivard had handed down. «There's a good man who won't be of any use in a fight for months, lord,» he grumbled. «Sporting with a foreign slut isn't anything big enough to have stripes laid across your back on account of it.»
«I think it is,» Abivard answered. «If the Vaspurakaners came to your domain in Makuran and one of their troopers forced your sister's legs apart, what would you want done to him?»
«I'd cut his throat myself,» Farrokh-Zad answered promptly.
«Well, then,» Abivard said.
But Farrokh-Zad didn't see it even after Abivard spelled it out in letters of fire a foot in front of his nose. As far as Farrokh-Zad was concerned, anyone who wasn't a Makuraner deserved no consideration; whatever happened, happened, and that was all there was to it. The time Abivard had spent in Videssos and Vaspurakan had convinced him that foreigners, despite differences of language and faith, were at bottom far closer to the folk of Makuran than he'd imagined before he had left Vek Rud domain. Plainly, though, not all his countrymen had drawn the same lesson.
Maybe that gloomy thought was what brought on the next spell of gloomy weather. However that was, a new blizzard howled in the next afternoon. Had Abivard scheduled the rapist's chastisement for that day, the fellow might have frozen to death while taking his lashes. Abivard wouldn't have missed him a bit.
With storms like that, you could only stay inside whatever shelter you had, try to keep warm-or not too cold-and wait till the sun came out again. Even then, you wouldn't be comfortable, but at least you could emerge from your lair and move about in a world gone white.
The fall and spring rains stopped all traffic on the roads for weeks at a time. While it was raining, a road was just a stretch of mud that ran in a straight line. You could move about in winter provided that you had the sense to find a house or a caravansaray while the blizzard raged.
During a lull a courier rode into Shahapivan valley from out of the west. He found Abivard's wagon and announced himself, saying, «I bring a dispatch from Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.» He held out a message tube stamped with the lion of Makuran.
Abivard took it with something less than enthusiasm. After undoing the stopper, he drew out the rolled parchment inside and used his thumbnail to break the red wax seal, also impressed with a lion from Sharbaraz' signet, that held the letter closed. Then, having no better choice, he opened it and began to read.
He skipped quickly through the grandiloquent titles with which the King of Kings bedizened the document: he was after meat. He also skipped over several lines' worth of reproaches; he'd heard plenty of those already. At last he came to the sentence giving him his orders: «You are to come before us at once in Mashiz to explain and suffer the consequences for your deliberate defiance of our will in Vaspurakan.» He sighed. He'd feared as much.
IV
Mikhran marzban put a hand on Abivard's shoulder. «I should be going with you. You came to my rescue, you promulgated this policy for my benefit, and you, it seems, will have to suffer the consequences alone.»
«No, don't be a fool-stay here,» Abivard told him. «Not only that: keep on doing as we've been doing till Sharbaraz directly orders you to stop. Keep on then, too, if you dare. If the princes rise up against us, we aren't going to be able to conquer Videssos.»
«What-?» Mikhran hesitated but finished the question: «What do you suppose the King of Kings will do to you?»
«That's what I'm going to find out,» Abivard answered. «With luck, he'll shout and fuss and then calm down and let me tell him what we've been doing and why. Without luck-well, I hope I'll have reason to be glad he's married to my sister.»
The marzban nodded, then asked, «Whom will you leave in command of the army here?»
«It has to be Romezan,» Abivard answered regretfully. «He's senior, and he has the prestige among our men from killing Gazrik. I'd give the job to Kardarigan if I could, but I can't.»
«He may have more prestige among us, but the princes won't be happy to see him in charge of our warriors,» Mikhran said.
«I can't do anything about that, either,» Abivard said. «You're in overall command here, remember: over Romezan, over everyone now that I'm not going to be around for a while. Use that power well and the Vaspurakaners won't notice that Romezan leads the army.»
«I'll try,» Mikhran said. «But I wasn't part of this army, so there's no guarantee they'll heed me as they would one of their own.»
«Act so natural about it that they never think to do anything else,» Abivard advised him. «One of the secrets to command is never giving the men you're leading any chance to doubt you have the right. That's not a magic Bogorz knows, or Panteles either, but it's nonetheless real even so.»
«Vshnasp spoke of that kind of magic, too,» Mikhran said, «save that he said that so long as you never seemed to doubt a woman would come to your bed, in the end she would not doubt it, either. I'd sooner not emulate his fate.»
«I don't expect you to seduce Romezan-for which I hope you're relieved,» Abivard said, drawing a wry chuckle from the marzban. «I only want you to keep him under some sort of rein till I return. Is that asking too much?»
«Time will tell,» Mikhran replied in tones that did not drip optimism.
Roshnani, understanding why Abivard had been recalled to Mashiz, shared his worries. Like him, she had no idea whether they would be returning to Vaspurakan. Their children, however, went wild with excitement at the news, and Abivard could hardly blame them. Now, at last, they were going back to Makuran, a land that had assumed all but legendary proportions in their minds. Any why not? They'd heard of it but had hardly any memories of seeing it.
When the King of Kings ordered his general to attend him immediately, he got what he desired. The day after his command reached Shahapivan, Pashang got the wagon in which Abivard and his family traveled rattling westward. With them rode an escort of fourscore heavy cavalry, partly to help clear the road at need and partly to persuade bandits that attacking the wagon would not be the best idea they'd ever had. Past Maragha, the mountains of Vaspurakan began dwindling down toward hills once more and then to a rolling steppe country that was dry and bleak and cool in the winter, dry and bleak and blazing hot in summertime.