Abivard glanced over, not at Tzikas this time but at Romezan. The noble of the Seven Clans would have had only one answer when in doubt, go ahead, and worry afterward about what happens afterward. Romezan reckoned Abivard a man of excessive caution. This time the two of them were likely to be thinking along the same lines.
«If you can pierce that fog, pierce it,» Abivard told the two wizards. «The longer we stay stuck here, the farther ahead of us Maniakes gets. If he gets too far ahead, he escapes. We don't want that.»
Panteles bowed, a gesture of respect the Videssians gave to any superior. Bozorg didn't. It wasn't that he minded acknowledging Abivard as being far superior to him in rank; he'd done that before. But to do it now would have been to acknowledge that he thought Abivard was right, and he clearly didn't.
Whether he thought him right or not, though, he obeyed. As at the twisted canal, Panteles took the lead in the answering magic; being a Videssian, he was likely to be more familiar with the sort of sorcery Maniakes' mages employed than Bozorg was.
«We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector,» Panteles intoned, «watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor.»
Along with the other Makuraners who understood the Videssian god's creed, Abivard bristled at hearing it. Panteles said, «We have a fog ahead. We need Phos' holy light to pierce it.»
Since Bozorg kept quiet, Abivard made himself stay calm, too. Panteles incanted steadily and then, with a word of command that might not have been Videssian at all—that hardly sounded like any human language—stabbed out his finger at what lay ahead. Abivard expected something splendid and showy, perhaps a ray of scarlet light shooting from his fingertip. Nothing of the sort happened, so it seemed the sort of gesture a father might have used to send an unruly son to his room after the boy had misbehaved.
Then Bozorg grunted and staggered as if someone had struck him a heavy blow, though no one stood near him. «No, by the God!» he exclaimed, and gestured with his left hand. «Fraortish eldest of all, lady Shivini, Gimillu, Narseh—come to my aid!»
He straightened and steadied. Panteles repeated Phos' creed. The two wizards shouted together, both crying out the same word that was not Videssian—it might not have been a word at all, not in the grammarians' sense of the term.
Abivard was watching Tzikas. The renegade started to sketch Phos' sun-circle but checked himself with the motion barely begun. Instead, his left hand twisted in the gesture Bozorg had used. Almost forgot whose camp you were in, didn't you? Abivard thought.
But Tzikas' return to the Makuraner fold did not seem to have been a trap or a snare. He'd warned of magic ahead, and magic ahead there had been. He'd done Abivard a service the general could hardly ignore. The last time they'd seen each other, Tzikas had done his best to kill him. That had been a more honest expression, no doubt, of how the renegade felt—not that Abivard had any great and abiding love for him, either.
The wizards, meanwhile, continued their magic. At length Abivard felt a sharp snap somewhere right in the middle of his head. By the way the soldiers around him exclaimed, he wasn't the only one. Afterward the world seemed a little clearer, a little brighter.
«We have pierced the sorcerous fog, revealing it for the phantasm it is,» Panteles declared.
«And what lies behind it?» Abivard demanded. «What other magic was it concealing?»
Panteles and Bozorg looked surprised. In defeating the first magic, they'd forgotten for a moment what came next. More hasty incanting followed. In a voice that suggested he had trouble believing what he was saying, Bozorg answered, «It does not seem to be concealing any other magic.»
«Bluff!» Romezan boomed. «All bluff.»
«A bluff that worked, too,» Abivard said unhappily. «We've wasted a lot of time trying to break through that screen of theirs. We were almost on their heels, but we're not, not anymore.»
«Let's go after them, then,» Romezan said. «The longer we stand around jabbering here, the farther away they get.»
«That's so,» Abivard said. «You don't suppose—» He glanced over at Tzikas, then shook his head. The renegade would not have come to the Makuraner army Abivard commanded for the sole purpose of delaying it. Maniakes could not have forced that from Tzikas, not when he knew Abivard was as eager as the Avtokrator to dispose of him… could he?
Romezan's gaze swung to Tzikas, too. «What do we do about him now?»
«Drop me into the Void if I know. He said there was magic being worked, and there was. He's no wizard or he would have tried to murder Maniakes himself instead of hiring someone to do it for him.» That made Tzikas bite his lip. Abivard ignored him, continuing: «He had no way to know the magic wasn't worse than what it turned out to be, and so he warned us. That counts for something.»
«Far as I'm concerned, it means we don't torture him—just hew off his head and have done,» Romezan said.
«Your generosity is remarkable,» Tzikas told him.
«What do you think we should do with you?' Abivard asked, curious to hear what the renegade would say.
Without hesitation Tzikas replied, «Give me back my cavalry command. I did nothing to give anyone the idea I don't deserve it.»
«Nothing except slander me to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» Abivard said. «Nothing except offer to slay me in single combat. Nothing except blunt my troops in battle and keep Maniakes from being wrecked. Nothing except—»
«I did what I had to do,» Tzikas said.
How slandering Abivard to Sharbaraz counted as something he had had to do, he did not explain. Abivard wondered if he knew. The most likely explanation was that aggrandizing Tzikas was indeed something Tzikas had to do. Whatever the explanation, though, it was beside the point at the moment. «You will not lead cavalry in my army,» Abivard said. «Until such time as I know you can be trusted, you are a prisoner, and you may thank the God or Phos or whomever you're worshiping on any particular day that I don't take Romezan's suggestion, which would without a doubt make my life easier.»
«I find no justice anywhere,» Tzikas said, melodrama throbbing in his voice.
«If you found justice, you would be short a head,» Abivard retorted. «If you're going to whine because you don't find as much mercy as you think you deserve, too bad.» He turned to some of his soldiers. «Seize him. Strip him and take away whatever weapons you find. Search carefully, search thoroughly, to make sure you find them all. Hold him. Do him no harm unless he tries to escape. If he tries, kill him.»
«Aye, lord,» the warriors said enthusiastically, and proceeded to give the command the most literal obedience imaginable, stripping Tzikas not only of his mail shirt but also, their pattings not satisfying them, of his undertunic and drawers as well, so that he stood before them clad in nothing more than irate dignity. Abivard groped for a word to describe his expression and finally found one in Videssian, for the imperials did more reveling in suffering for the sake of their faith than did Makuraners. Tzikas, now—Tzikas looked martyred.
For all their enthusiasm, the searchers found nothing out of the ordinary and suffered him to dress once more. Seeing that Tzikas was not immediately dangerous—save with his tongue, a weapon Abivard would have loved to cut out of him—the bulk of the army rode off in pursuit of Maniakes' force.
The Videssians, though, had used well the time their sorcerous smoke screen had bought them. «We aren't going to catch them,» Abivard said, bringing his horse up to trot beside Romezan's. «They're going to make their way down to Lyssaion and get away to fight next spring.»