«Maybe.» Abivard sounded imperfectly convinced, even to himself. «And maybe he remembers that, if he does have a boy, all he has to do is die for me to become uncle and maybe regent to the new King of Kings.»
«Absent assassins, that doesn't add up,» Roshnani said, to which Abivard had to nod. His principal wife sighed. «Day by day we'll see what happens.»
«So we will,» Abivard said. «One of the things that will happen, by the God, is that I'll drive Maniakes out of the land of the Thousand Cities.»
With Romezan's cavalry added to the infantry he'd trained, Abivard knew he had a telling advantage over the force Maniakes had operating between the Tutub and the Tib. Making the telling advantage actually tell was another matter altogether. Maniakes proved an annoyingly adroit defender.
What irked Abivard most was the Avtokrator's mutability. When Maniakes had had the edge in numbers and mobility, he'd pressed it hard. Now that his foes enjoyed it, he was doing everything he could to keep them from getting the most out of it
Wrecked canals, little skirmishes, nighttime raids on Abivard's camp-much as Abivard had raided him the year before-all added up to an opponent who might have smeared butter over his body to make himself too slippery to be gripped. And whenever Maniakes got the chance, he would storm another town on the floodplain; another funeral pyre rising from an artificial hillock marked a success for him, a failure for Makuran.
«Never have liked campaigning in this country,» Romezan said. «I remember it from the days when Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis. Too may things can go wrong here.»
«Oh, yes, I remember that, too,» Abivard said. «And, no doubt, so does Maniakes. He's giving us as much grief as we can handle, isn't he?»
«That he is,» the cavalry general said. «He doesn't care about proper battle, does he, not so long as he can have a good time raiding?»
«That's what he's here for,» Abivard agreed. «It's worked, too, hasn't it? You're not fighting him in the Videssian westlands, and I'm not sitting in Across going mad trying to figure out how to get to Videssos the city.»
«You're right, lord,» Romezan said, using the title as one of mild, perhaps even amused, respect. «I wish you'd found a way, too; I'd be lying if I said anything else.»
«We haven't got any ships, curse it,» Abivard said. «We can't get any ships. Our mages couldn't conjure up the number of ships we'd need. Even if they could, it would be battle magic and liable to fall apart when we needed it most. And even if it didn't, the Videssians are a hundred times the sailors we are. They could sink magical ships the same as any others, I fear.»
«You're probably right,» Romezan admitted. «What we really need-»
«What we really need,» Abivard interrupted, «is a mage who could make a giant silvery bridge over the Cattle Crossing into Videssos the city so our warriors could cross dryshod and not have to worry about Videssians in ships. The only trouble with that is-»
«The only trouble with that is,» Romezan said, interrupting in turn, «a mage who could bring off that kind of conjuration wouldn't be interested in helping the King of Kings. He'd want to be King of Kings himself or, more likely, king of the world. So it's a good thing there's no such mage.»
«So it is,» Abivard said with a laugh. «Or it's mostly a good thing, anyhow. But it does mean we'll have to do more of the work ourselves-no, all of the work ourselves, or as near as makes no difference.»
A couple of days later a scout brought back a piece of news he'd been dreading and hoping for at the same time: at the head of a troop of Videssian cavalry Tzikas had delivered a formidable attack against Romezan's horsemen. As long as Tzikas stayed in his role, he made a formidable opponent to whichever side he didn't happen to be on at the moment. Since he refused to stay in his role for long, odds were good he wouldn't stay on that particular side forever.
When Abivard passed the news on to Roshnani, she asked, «What are you going to do if he wants to serve Makuran again one day?»
«By the God!» He clapped a hand to his forehead. «You're a step ahead of me there. He probably will want to come back to us one day, won't he?»
«Sooner rather than later,» Roshnani guessed «He's only defamed you, and you don't rule Makuran. He's tried to murder the Avtokrator, and he's renounced Videssos' god for ours. He has to be biding his time in that camp; he can't be happy or comfortable there.»
«He's probably renounced the God again for Phos,» Abivard said, «or maybe for Skotos, the Videssians' dark god. When he does finally die, I expect there'll be a war in the heavens over whether to torment his soul forever in Skotos' snow and ice or drop it into the Void and make it as if it had never been.» The idea struck him as deliriously blasphemous.
At the urging of both Romezan and Turan, Abivard dealt with Tzikas' reappearance in the field by ordering his men to try to kill the renegade whenever they saw him, regardless of what that meant to the rest of the fight. The command struck him as safe enough: Tzikas would not be commanding any vital part of whatever forces were engaged, for Maniakes would not be so stupid as to trust him with anything vital. Abivard remained disappointed that Maniakes had allowed Tzikas to keep breathing, but the Avtokrator must have decided to squeeze whatever use against Makuran he could from the traitor.
Abivard would have loved to squeeze Tzikas-by the neck, if at all possible. Doing that, though, meant catching up to the Videssians. His army, despite the addition of Romezan's cavalry, still moved more slowly than did Maniakes'.
And then the Avtokrator halted on the east side of a large canal that ran north and south through the land of the Thousand Cities. He kept cavalry patrols along the bank of the canal in strength enough to stop Abivard from getting a detachment across it or gaining control of a big enough stretch of bank to let his whole army cross. The Videssians not on patrol resumed the depredations that had grown too familiar over the past couple of campaigning seasons.
Abivard moved more forces forward, expecting to make Maniakes withdraw from the line of the canal; he could not hope to hold it against several simultaneous strong crossings. But Maniakes did not withdraw. Nor did he bring the whole of his army back to the canal to fight the Makuraners once they crossed. He went on about the business of plunder and rapine as if Abivard and his men had fallen into the Void.
«He's making a mistake,» Abivard said in glad surprise at a council of war. «How best do we make him pay?»
«Get across the water, smash his patrols, hammer the rest of his army,» Romezan said. Abivard looked to his other officers. Sanatruq, who had commanded the cavalry till Romezan had arrived, nodded. So did Turan. So, in the end, did Abivard. Romezan was never going to be accused of subtlety, but you didn't need to be subtle all the time. Sometimes you just had to get in there and do what needed doing. This looked to be one of those times.
As best he could, Abivard readied his host to cross with overwhelming strength and speed. The canal was half a bowshot wide and, peasants said, better than waist-deep everywhere. The Videssians could make getting over it expensive. But instead of concentrating against his force, they rode back and forth, back and forth, along the eastern bank of the canal.
He chose a late-afternoon attack: let the Videssians fight with the sun in their faces for a change. He formed his army with the infantry in the center and the cavalry on both wings. He commanded the right, Romezan the left, and Turan the foot soldiers in the center.
Horns blared. Standard-bearers waved the red-lion banners of Makuran and the smaller flags and streamers marking regiments and companies. Shouting Sharbaraz' name, the army moved forward and splashed down into the canal.
The muddy water was just the temperature of blood. The muck on the bottom had not been stirred up since the last time the canal had been dredged out, however many years before that might have been. When hooves and feet roiled it, a horrible stench rose. Choking a little, Abivard rode farther out into the canal.