«Do you think I care?» he returned. «I don't think my sister would have been less happy if she'd stayed married to Pradtak of Nalgis Crag domain than she is married to Sharbaraz of Makuran. No more happy, maybe, but not less.» He sighed again. «You can't tell about such things, though. Smerdis was busy paying the Khamorth tribute, if you'll remember. That would have touched off a revolt in the Northwest sooner or later. As well, maybe, that we had a proper King of Kings to head it.»
«Maybe.» Roshnani emptied her wine cup, too. «All these might-have-beens can make you dizzier than wine if you spend too much time thinking about them.»
«Everything is simple now,» Abivard said. «All we have to do is beat Maniakes.»
First they had to come to grips with Maniakes. As Abivard had already discovered, that wasn't easy, not when Maniakes didn't care to be gripped. But having defeated the Avtokrator's best sorcery—or what he sincerely hoped was the Avtokrator's best sorcery—he pursued him with more confidence than he would have shown before.
In case his sincere hopes proved mistaken, he stopped ignoring Bozorg and Panteles and had the two wizards ride together in a wagon near his own. Sometimes they got on as well as a couple of brothers. Sometimes they quarreled—also like a couple of brothers. As long as they weren't working magic to do away with each other, Abivard pretended not to see.
He sent his part of cavalry out in a wide sweep, first to find Maniakes' army and then to slow it down so he could come up with the main body of his army and fight the Videssians. «This is what we couldn't do before,» he said enthusiastically, riding along with Turan. «We can move horsemen out ahead and make the Videssians turn and fight, hold them in place long enough for the rest of us to come forward and smash them.»
«If all goes well, we can,» Turan said. «Their rear guard has been fighting hard, though, to keep us from getting hold of the main force Maniakes is leading.»
«They can only do that for so long, though,» Abivard said. «The land between the Tutub and the Tib isn't like the Pardrayan steppe: it doesn't go on forever. After a while you get pushed off the floodplain and out into the scrub country. You can't keep an army alive out there.»
«We talked about that last winter,» his lieutenant answered.
«Maniakes didn't even try then. He just crossed the Videssian westlands till he came to a port, then sailed away, no doubt laughing at us. He could do the same again, every bit as easily.»
«Yes, I suppose he could,» Abivard said. «He could go on to Serrhes, too, in the interior, the way Sharbaraz did all those years ago. I don't think he'll do either one, though. When he came into the land of the Thousand Cities last year, he had doubts. He was tentative; he wasn't sure at first that his soldiers were reliable. He's not worried about that anymore. He knows his men can fight, If he sees a spot he likes, he'll give battle there. He aimed to wreck us when he came back this year.»
«He almost did it a couple of times, too,» Turan agreed. «And then, when that didn't work, he tried to drive us mad with the magic his wizards put on the canal.» He chuckled. «That was such a twisted scheme, I wonder if Tzikas was the one who thought of it.»
Abivard started to answer seriously before realizing Turan was joking. Joke or not, it wasn't the most unlikely notion Abivard had ever heard. As he'd learned from painful experience, Tzikas was devious enough to have done exactly what Turan had said.
Abivard soon had reason to pride himself on his own predictive powers. Not far from the headwaters of the Tutub, where the stream still flowed swift and foamy over stones before taking a generally calmer course, Maniakes chose a stretch of high ground and made it very plain to his pursuers that he intended to be pursued no more.
«We'll smash him!» Romezan shouted. «We'll smash him and be rid of him once and for all.» After a moment he added, «Won't miss him a bit once he's gone, either.»
«That would be very fine,» Abivard agreed. «The longer I look at that position, though, the more I think we'll come out of it like lamb's meat chopped up for the spit if we're not careful.»
«They're only Videssians,» Romezan said. «It's not as if they're going to come charging down at us while we're advancing on them.»
«No, I suppose not,» Abivard said. «But an uphill charge—and it would be a long uphill charge—doesn't strike with so much force as one on level ground. And if I know anything about Maniakes, it's that he doesn't intend just to sit up there and await our charge. He'll do something to break it up and keep it from hitting as hard as it should.»
«What can he do?» Romezan demanded.
«I don't know,» Abivard said. «I wish I did.»
«And I wish you wouldn't shy at shadows,» Romezan said. «Maniakes is only a man, and soldier for soldier our horsemen are better than his. He can make a river flip—or he could till we figured out how to stop him—but he can't make his whole cursed army leap up in the air and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time, now, can he?»
«No,» Abivard admitted.
«Well, then,» Romezan said triumphantly, as if he'd proved his point. Maybe he thought he had; he was as straightforward and aggressive in argument as he was in leading his cavalry into action.
Abivard shook his head. «Go straight into battle against the Videssians and you're asking to come to grief. And not all fields are as open and tempting as they look. Remember how Peroz King of Kings died, leading the flower of the soldiery of Makuran against the Khamorth across what looked like an ordinary stretch of steppe. If my horse hadn't stepped in a hole and broken a leg at the very start of that charge, I expect I would have died there, too, along with my father and my brother and three half brothers.»
Romezan scowled but had no quick comeback. Every Makuraner noble family, whether from the Seven Clans or from the lesser nobility, had suffered grievous loss out on the Pardrayan steppe. After that fight how could you argue for a headlong charge and against at least a little caution?
Sanatruq remained impetuous even after Abivard's blunt warning. «What are we going to do, then, lord?» he demanded. «Did we find a way across the canal only to decide we needn't have bothered? If we're not going to fight the Videssians, we might as well have stayed where we were.»
«I never said we weren't going to fight them,» Abivard said. «But don't you think doing it on our terms instead of theirs matters?»
The argument should have been telling. The argument in fact was telling—to Abivard. Romezan let out a sigh. «I should have stayed in the Videssian westlands and sent Kardarigan to you with this part of the field army. The two of you would have got on better than you and I do, both of you being… cautious. But I thought a cautious man better there, where there were towns to guard, and a fighter better here, where there were battles to wage. Maybe I was wrong.»
That hurt. Abivard turned away so Romezan wouldn't see him wince. And had Romezan not been intrepid enough to leave the westlands and disobey Sharbaraz' order against doing it, to say nothing of being intrepid enough to pitch right into the Videssians when he found them, Abivard would have been in no condition to hold this conversation now. Still—
«A baker thinks bread is the answer to every question,» he said, «while a farrier is sure it's horseshoes. No wonder a battler wants to go straight into the fray. But I don't merely want to fight Maniakes—I want to crush him if we can. If thinking things over instead of wading straight in will help us do that, I'd sooner think.»
Romezan's bow was anything but submissive. «There he is,» he said, pointing toward the banner with a gold sunburst on blue that marked the Avtokrator's position. «He's got water right behind him, enough to keep him from getting thirsty but not enough to keep him from going over it if he has to. He's got the high ground. If he doesn't have plenty of food, I'll be amazed and so will you. He's got no reason to move, in other words. If we want him, we have to go at him. He's not going to come to us.»