True, Maniakes' army could move faster than his. But that army, burdened by a baggage train, could not outrun the scouting detachments Abivard sent galloping southward to check me likely halting places along the Tutub. If the scouts came back, they would bring news of where the Videssians were. And if one detachment did not come back, that would also tell Abivard where the Videssians were.
All the detachments came back. None of them had found Maniakes and his men. Abivard was left scratching his head. «He hasn't vanished into the Void, however much we wish he would,» he said. «Can he be mad enough to try crossing the Videssian westlands on horseback?»
«I don't know anything about that, lord,» answered the scout to whom he'd put the question. «All I know is I haven't seen him.» Snarling, Abivard dismissed him. The scout hadn't done anything wrong; he'd carried out the orders Abivard had given him, just as his fellows had. Abivard's job was to make what the scouts had seen-and what they hadn't seen-mean something. But what?
«He hasn't gone south,» he said to Roshnani that evening. «I don't want to believe that, but I haven't any choice. He can't have chosen to fight his way across the westlands. I won't believe that; even if he made it, he'd throw away most of his army in the doing, and he hasn't got enough trained men to use them up so foolishly.»
«Maybe he headed into Vaspurakan to try to rouse the princes against our field force again,» Roshnani suggested.
«Maybe,» Abivard said, unconvinced. «But that would tie him down in long, hard fighting and make him winter in Vaspurakan. I have trouble thinking he'd risk so much with such a distance and so many foes between him and country he controls.»
«I'm no general-the God knows that's so-but I can see that what you say makes sense,» Roshnani said. «But if he hasn't gone south and he hasn't gone into the Videssian westlands and he hasn't gone to Vaspurakan, where is he? He hasn't gone west, has he?»
Abivard snorted. «No, and that's not his army camped around us, either.» He plucked at his beard. «I wonder if he could have gone north, up into the mountains and valleys of Erzerum. He might find friends up there no matter how isolated he was.»
«From what the tales say, you can find anything up in Erzerum,» Roshnani said.
«The tales speak true,» Abivard told her. «Erzerum is the rubbish heap of the world.» The mountains that ran from the Mylasa Sea east to the Videssian Sea and the valleys set among them were as perfectly defensible a terrain as had ever sprung from the mind and hand of the God. Because of that, almost every valley there had its own people, its own language, its own religion. Some were native, some survivors whose cause had been lost in the outer world but who had managed to carve out a shelter for themselves and hold it against all comers.
«The folk in some of those valleys worship Phos, don't they?» Roshnani asked.
«So they do,» Abivard said. «What I'd like to see is Videssos pushed back into one of those valleys and forgotten about for the rest of time.» He laughed. «It won't happen any time soon. And the Videssians would like to see us penned back there for good. That won't happen, either.»
«No, of course not,» Roshnani said. «The God would never allow such a thing; the very idea would appall her.» But she didn't let Abivard distract her, instead continuing with her own train of thought: «Because some of them worship Phos, wouldn't they be likely to help Maniakes?»
«Yes, I suppose so,» Abivard agreed. «He might winter up there. I have to say, though, I don't see why he would. He couldn't keep it a secret the winter long, and we'd be waiting for him to try to come back down into the low country when spring came.»
«That's so,» Roshnani admitted. «I can't argue with a word of it. But if he hasn't gone north, south, east, or west, where is he?»
«Underground,» Abivard said. But that was too much to hope for.
He made his own arrangements for the winter, billeting his troops in several nearby cities and overcoming the city governors' remarkable lack of enthusiasm for keeping them in supplies.
«Fine,» he told one such official when the man flatly refused to aid the soldiers. «When the Videssians come back next spring, if they do, we'll stand aside and let them burn your town without even chasing them afterward.»
«You couldn't do anything so heartless,» the city governor exclaimed.
Abivard looked down his nose at him. «Who says I can't? If you don't help feed the soldiers, sirrah, why should they help protect you?»
The soldiers got all the wheat and vegetables and poultry they needed.
Only a couple of days after Abivard had won that battle a messenger reached him with a letter from Romezan. After the usual greetings the commander of the field forces came straight to the point: «I regret to tell you that the cursed Videssians, may they and their Avtokrator fall into the Void and be lost forever, slipped past my army, which was out hunting them. Following the line of the Rhamnos River, they reached Pityos, on the Videssian Sea, and took it by surprise. With the port in their hands, ships came and carried them away; my guess is that they have returned to Videssos the city by now, having also succeeded in embarrassing us no end. By the God, lord, I shall have my revenge on them.»
«Is there a reply, lord?» the messenger asked when Abivard rolled up the message parchment once more.
«No, no reply,» Abivard answered. «Now I know where the Videssians disappeared to, and I rather wish I didn't.»
Winter in the land of the Thousand Cities meant mild days, cool nights, and occasional rain-no snow to speak of, though there were a couple of days of sleet that made it all but impossible to go outside without falling down. Abivard found that a nuisance, but his children enjoyed it immensely.
Although Maniakes would not be back till the following spring, if then, Abivard did not let his army rest idle. He drilled the foot soldiers every day the ground was dry enough to let them maneuver. The more he worked with them, the happier he grew. They would make decent fighting men once they had enough practice marching and got used to the idea that the enemy could not easily crush them so long as they stood firm.
And then, as the winter solstice approached, Abivard got the message he'd been waiting for and dreading since Sharbaraz had ordered him into the field against Maniakes with a force he knew to be inadequate: a summons to return to Mashiz at once.
He looked west across the floodplain toward the distant Dilbat Mountains. News of the order had spread very fast. Turan, who had rejoined him after Maniakes had escaped, came up beside him and said, «I'm sorry, lord. I don't know what else you could have done to hold the Videssians away from Mashiz.»
«Neither do I,» Abivard said wearily. «Nothing would have satisfied the King of Kings, I think.»
Turan nodded. He couldn't say anything to that. No, there was one thing he could say. But the question, Why don't you go into rebellion against Sharbaraz? was not one a person could ask his commander unless that person was sure his answer would be something like, Yes, why don't I? Abivard had never let-had been careful never to let-anyone get that impression.
Every now and then he wondered why. These past years he'd generally been happiest when farthest away from Sharbaraz. But he'd helped Sharbaraz cast down one usurper simply because Smerdis had been a usurper. Having done that, how could he think of casting the legitimate King of Kings from a throne rightfully his? The brief answer was that he couldn't, not if he wanted to be able to go on looking at himself in the mirror.
And so, without hope and without fear, he left the army in Turan's hands-better his than Tzikas', Abivard judged-and obeyed Sharbaraz' order. He wanted to leave Roshnani and his children behind, but his principal wife would not hear of it. «Your brother and mine can avenge us if we fall,» she said. «Our place is at your side.» Glad of her company, Abivard stopped arguing perhaps sooner than he should have.