«Pity,» Beroshesh said again. He pointed to a silver flagon. «More wine?»
It was date wine. «No, thank you,» Abivard said. He would drink a cup for politeness' sake but had never been fond of the cloying stuff.
Quite seriously Beroshesh asked, «Could you not put your soldiers on barges and in skin boats and cross this Cattle Crossing without the Videssians' being the wiser till you appeared on the far shore?»
Beroshesh had never seen the sea, never seen a Videssian war galley. Abivard remembered that as he visualized a fleet of those swift, maneuverable, deadly galleys descending on rafts and round skin boats trying to make their way over the Cattle Crossing. He saw in his mind's eye rams sending some of them to the bottom and dart-throwers and fire-throwers wrecking many more. He might get a few men across alive, but even fewer in any condition to fight; he was all too sure of that.
Out of respect for Beroshesh's naivete, he didn't laugh in the city governor's face. All he said was, «That has been discussed, but no one seems to think it would turn out well.»
«Ah,» Beroshesh said «Well, I didn't want to take the chance that you'd overlooked something important.» Abivard sighed.
«Lord!» A member of the city garrison of Nashvar came running up to Abivard. «Lord, a messenger comes with news of the Videssians.»
«Thank you,» Abivard said. «Bring him to me at once.» The guardsman bowed and hurried away.
Waiting for his return, Abivard paced back and forth in the room Beroshesh had returned to him when he had come back to Nashvar. Soon, instead of having to guess, he would know how Maniakes intended to play the game this year and how he would have to respond.
The soldier came back more slowly than he'd hoped, leading the messenger's horse. The messenger probably would have gotten there sooner without the escort, but after so long a wait, a few minutes mattered little, and the member of the garrison got to enjoy his moment in the light.
Bowing low to Abivard, the messenger cried, «Lord, the Videssians come down from the north, from the land of Erzerum, where treacherous local nobles let them land and guided them through the mountains so they could descend on the land of the Thousand Cities!»
«Down from the north,» Abivard breathed. Had he bet on which course Maniakes would take, he would have expected the Avtokrator to land in the south and move up from Lyssaion once more. He knew nothing but relief that he'd committed no troops to backing his hunch. He wouldn't have to double back against his foe's move.
«I have only one order for the city governors in the north,» he told the messenger, who poised himself to hear and remember it. «That order is, Stand fast! We will drive the invaders from our soil.»
«Aye, lord!» the messenger said, and dashed off, his face glowing with inspiration at Abivard's ringing declaration. Behind him Abivard stood scratching his head, wondering how he was going to turn that declaration into reality. Words were easy. Deeds mattered more but were harder to produce on the spur of the moment.
The first thing that needed doing was reassembling the army. He sent messengers to the nearby cities where he'd billeted portions of his infantry. The move would undoubtedly delight the governors of those cities and just as undoubtedly dismay Beroshesh, for it would mean Nashvar would have to feed all his forces till they moved against Maniakes.
As the soldiers from the city garrisons whom Abivard had hastily gathered together the spring before began returning to Nashvar, they found ways to let him know they were glad he was back to command them. It wasn't that they obeyed him without grumbling; the next army to do that for its leader would be the first. But whether they grumbled or not, they did everything he asked of them and did it promptly and well.
And they kept bringing tidbits here and tidbits there to the cook who made the meals for him and Roshnani and their children, so that they ended up eating better than they had at the palace in Mashiz. «It's almost embarrassing when they do things like this,» Abivard said, using a slender dagger to spear from its shell a snail the cook had delicately seasoned with garlic and ginger.
«They're fond of you,» Roshnani said indignantly. «They ought to be fond of you. Before you got hold of them, they were just a bunch of tavern toughs-hardly anything better. You made an army out of them. They know it, and so do you.»
«Well, put that way, maybe,» Abivard said. A general whom his men hated wouldn't be able to accomplish anything. That much was plain. A general whom his men loved… was liable to draw the watchful attention of the King of Kings. Abivard supposed that was less an impediment for him than it might have been for some other marshals of Makuran. He already enjoyed-if that was the word-Sharbaraz' watchful attention.
Seeing how much better at their tasks the soldiers were than they had been the spring before gratified Abivard as much as their affection did. He'd done his job and given mem the idea that they could go out and risk maiming and death for the good of a cause they didn't really think about. He sometimes wondered whether to be proud or ashamed of that.
Sooner than he'd hoped, he judged the army ready to use against Maniakes. Sharbaraz King of Kings had been right in thinking the officers Abivard had left behind could keep the men in reasonably good fighting trim. That pleased Abivard and irked him at the same time: was he really necessary?
Turan and Tzikas were getting along well, too. Again, Abivard didn't know what to make of that. Had the Makuraner succumbed to Tzikas' charm? Abivard would have been the last to deny that the Videssian renegade had his full share of that-and then some.
«He's a fine cavalry officer,» Turan said enthusiastically after he, Tzikas, and Abivard planned the move they'd be making in a couple of days. «Having commanded a cavalry company myself, I was always keeping an eye on the officers above me, seeing how they did things. Do you know what I mean, lord?» He waited for Abivard to nod, then went on, «And Tzikas, he does everything the way it's supposed to be done.»
«Oh, that he does.» Abivard's voice was solemn. «He's a wonderful officer to have for a superior. It's only when you're his superior that you have to start watching your back.»
«Well, yes, there is that,» Turan agreed. «I hadn't forgotten about it. Just like you, I made sure I had his secretary in my belt pouch, so a couple of letters never did travel to Mashiz.»
«Good,» Abivard said. «And good for you, too.»
However much Abivard loathed him, Tzikas had done a fine job making the cavalry under his command work alongside the infantry. That wasn't how the men of Makuran usually fought Light cavalry and heavy horse worked side by side, but infantry was at best a scavenger on the battlefields where it appeared. Those were few and far between; in most fights cavalry faced cavalry.
«I didn't think Videssian practice so different from our own, Abivard remarked after watching the horsemen practice a sweep from the flank of the foot soldiers. «Or to put it another way, you didn't fight against us like this when you were on the other side in the westlands »
«By the God, I am a Makuraner now,» Tzikas insisted. But then his pique, if it had been such, faded. «No, Videssians did not fight that way. Cavalry rules their formations no less than ours.» He was playing the role of countryman to the hilt, Abivard thought. Thoughtfully, the renegade went on, «I've just been wondering how best to use the two arms together now that you and Turan have made these infantrymen into real soldiers. This is the best answer I found.»
Abivard nodded-warily. He heard the flattery there: not laid on as thickly as was the usual Videssian style but perhaps more effective on account of that. Or it would have been more effective had he not suspected everything Tzikas said. Didn't Tzikas understand that? If he did, he concealed it well.