Swallowing, he grudged Abivard a curt nod. «It is accomplished,» he said, and reached for another songbird. More tiny bones crunched.
«So it is, for which I thank you,» Abivard answered with a bow. He could not resist adding, «And done well, in spite of its not being done as you first had in mind.»
That got him a glare; he would have been disappointed if it hadn't Utpanisht held up a bony, trembling hand. «Speak not against Glathpilesh, lord,» he said in a voice like wind whispering through dry, dry straw. «He served Makuran nobly this day.»
«So he did,» Abivard admitted. «So did all of you. Sharbaraz King of Kings owes you a debt of gratitude.»
Glathpilesh spit out a bone that might have choked him had he swallowed it. «What he owes us and what we'll get from him are liable to be two different things,» he said. His shrug made his flabby jowls wobble. «Such is life: what you get is always less than you deserve.»
Such a breathtakingly sardonic view of life would have annoyed Abivard most of the time. Now he said only, «Regardless of what Sharbaraz does, I shall reward all six of you as you deserve.»
«You are generous, lord,» Utpanisht said in that dry, quavering voice.
«Just deserts, eh? Glathpilesh said with his mouth full. He studied Abivard with eyes that, while not very friendly, were disconcertingly keen. «And will Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase-» He made a mockery of the honorific formula."-reward you as you deserve?»
Abivard felt his face heat. «That is as the King of Kings wishes. I have no say in the matter.»
«Evidently not,» Glathpilesh said scornfully.
«I am sorry,» Abivard told him, «but your wit is too pointed for me today. I'd better go and find the best way to take advantage of what your flood has done to the Videssians. If we had a great fleet of light boats… but I might as well wish for the moon while I'm at it.»
«Use well the chance you have,» Utpanisht told him, almost as if prophesying. «Its like may be long in coming.»
«That I know,» Abivard said. «I did not do all I could with our journey by canal. The God will think less of me if I let this chance slip, too. But-» He grimaced. «-it will not be so easy as I thought when I asked you to flood the canals for me.»
«When is anything ever as easy as you think it will be?» Glathpilesh demanded. He pointed to the tray of songbirds, which was empty now. «There. You see? As I said, you never get all you want.»
«Getting all I want is the least of my worries,» Abivard answered. «Getting all I need is another question altogether.»
Glathpilesh eyed him with sudden fresh interest and respect «For one not a mage-and for one not old-to know the difference between those two is less than common. Even for mages, need shades into want so that we must ever be on our guard against disasters spawned from greed.»
To judge from the empty tray in front of him, Glathpilesh was intimately acquainted with greed, perhaps more intimately acquainted than he realized-no one needed to devour so many songbirds, but he'd certainly wanted them. The only disaster to which such gluttony could lead, though, Abivard thought, was choking to death on a bone, or perhaps getting so wide that you couldn't fit through a door.
Utpanisht said, «May the God grant you find a way to use our magic as you had hoped and drive the Videssians and their false god from the land of the Thousand Cities.»
«May it be as you say,» Abivard agreed. He was less sure it would be that way now than he had been when he had decided to use the flood as a weapon against Maniakes. But no matter what else happened, the Videssians would not be able to move around on the plain between the Tutub and the Tib as freely as they had been doing. That would reduce the amount of damage they could inflict.
«It had better be as Utpanisht says,» Glathpilesh said. «Otherwise a lot of time and effort will have gone for nothing.»
«A lot of time,» Abivard echoed. The wizards, as far as he was concerned, had wasted a good deal of it all by themselves. They, no doubt, would vehemently disagree with that characterization and would claim they had spent time wisely. But whether wasted or spent, time had passed-quite a bit of it. «Not much time is left for this campaigning season. We've held Maniakes away from Mashiz for the year, anyhow.»
That was exactly what Sharbaraz King of Kings had sent him out to do. Sharbaraz had expected he'd do it by beating the Videssians, but making them shift their path, making them fight even if he couldn't win, and then using water as a weapon seemed to work as well.
«As harvest nears, the Videssians will leave our land, not so?» Utpanisht said. «They are men; they must harvest like other men.»
«The land of the Thousand Cities grows enough for them to stay here and live off the countryside if they want to,» Abivard said, «or it did before the flood, at any rate. But if they do stay here, who will bring in the harvests back in their homeland? Their women will go hungry; their children will starve. Can Maniakes make them go on while that happens? I doubt it.»
«And I as well,» Utpanisht said. «I raised the question to be certain you were aware of it»
«Oh, I'm aware of it,» Abivard answered. «Now we have to find out whether Maniakes is-and whether he cares.»
With the countryside flooded around them, the Videssians no longer rampaged through the land of the Thousand Cities. Not even their skill at engineering let them do that. Instead, they stayed near the upper reaches of one of the Tutub's tributaries, from which they could either resume the assault they had carried on through the summer or withdraw back into the westlands of their own empire.
Abivard tried to force them to the latter course, marching out and joining up with Turan's force before moving-sometimes single file along causeways that were the only routes through drowned farmlands-against the Videssians. He sent a letter off to Romezan up in Vaspurakan, asking him to use the cavalry of the field force to attack Maniakes once he got back into Videssos. The garrisons holding the towns in the Videssian westlands weren't much better equipped for mobile warfare than were those that had held down the Thousand Cities.
Word came from out of Videssian-held territory that Maniakes' wife, Lysia-who was also his first cousin-not only was with the Avtokrator but had just been delivered of a baby boy. «There-do you see?» Roshnani said when Abivard passed the news to her. «You're not the only one who takes his wife on campaign.»
«Maniakes is only a Videssian bound for the Void,» Abivard replied, not without irony. «What he does has no bearing on the way a proper Makuraner noblewoman should behave.»
Roshnani stuck out her tongue at him. Then she grew serious once more. «What's she like-Lysia, I mean?»
«I don't know,» Abivard admitted «He may take her on campaigns with him, but I've never met her.» He paused thoughtfully. «He must think the world of her. For the Videssians, marrying your cousin is as shocking as letting noblewomen out in public is for us.»
«I wonder if that's part of the reason he's brought her along,» Roshnani mused. «Having her with him might be safer than leaving her back in Videssos the city while he's gone.»
«It could be so,» Abivard said. «If you really want to know, we can ask Tzikas. He professed to be horrified about Maniakes' incest-that's what he called it-when he came over to us. The only problem is, Tzikas would profess anything if he saw as much as one chance in a hundred that he might get something he wants by doing it.»
«If I thought you were wrong, I would tell you,» Roshnani said. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. «If finding out about Lysia means asking Tzikas, I'd rather not know.»