Krispos of Videssos

XI

Krispos and Tanilis rode side by side. They'd ridden side by side ever since the imperial army entered Kubrat. By now, more than a week later and half the way to the Astris River, no one even gave them a sidelong glance. No one had ever had the temerity to say anything to Krispos about it.

Perhaps someone might have, had Tanilis not proven her worth so solidly. The mages from the Sorcerers' Collegium—all, Krispos noted, save Zaidas—had muttered when she included herself in their labors against Harvas, but the mutters died away soon enough. Inside of a day she became as much their spearhead as Trokoundos had ever been. Again and again Harvas' sorcerous assaults failed. Again and again his army, outflanked by the more mobile Videssians, had to retreat.

"I think he's falling back on Pliskavos," Krispos said. "In all of Kubrat, it's the only place where he could hope to stand siege." The prospect of Harvas under siege still worried him. A siege would give the evil wizard the leisure he needed to exercise his ingenuity to the fullest. Krispos grimaced at the prospect of facing whatever that exercised ingenuity came up with.

Tanilis' gaze became slightly unfocused. "Yes," she said, a few seconds too late for a proper reply. "He is falling back on Pliskavos." She sounded as certain as if she'd said the sun would rise the next morning. A moment later she came back to herself, a small frown on her face. "I have a headache," she remarked. Krispos passed her his canteen. "Here's some wine," he said. As she drank, he ran his hands over his arms, trying to smooth down the gooseflesh that had prickled up at her foretelling. He'd seen the mantic fit take her far more strongly than that, not least on the day when he'd first met her, the day she'd terrified him by calling him Majesty.

Then he'd wondered if she saw true. Now he knew she did. Knowing that, he thought to take advantage of her gift. He called for a courier. "Get Sarkis over here," he said. The courier saluted and rode away.

He soon returned with the scout commander. "What can I do for you, your Majesty?" Sarkis asked.

"Time to send out another column," Krispos said, and watched Sarkis grin. "Harvas is on his way back to Pliskavos." Sarkis caught his certainty and glanced over to Tanilis. Krispos nodded. He went on, "If we can put a few thousand men into the place before he gets there, say, or burn down a good part of it-"

Sarkis' grin got wider. "Aye, your Majesty, we can try that. We can swing wide and get around behind his men, the good god willing. Horses go faster than shank's mare. It should work. I'll get right on it."

"Good." Krispos grinned, too, savagely. Let Harvas find out for a change what being hunted was like, feel what it meant to move to someone else's will, to move in fear lest the tiniest error bring the fabric of all his designs down in ruin. He'd inflicted misery on Videssos for too long—perhaps for the whole span of his unnatural life. Only fitting and proper to mete misery out to him at last.

The column clattered away from the main Videssian army late that afternoon, heading off to the west to circle round Harvas' Halogai. The troopers who stayed on the primary line of march whooped as their comrades departed. One outflanking move had forced Harvas out of his strong position in the pass. Another might ruin him altogether. The soldiers were cheerful as they encamped for the night.

As was his habit, Krispos picked a line at random and patiently advanced toward the cookpot at the end of it. Anthimos, with his love of rare delicacies, would have turned up his toes at army fare. Used to worse for much of his life, Krispos minded it not at all. Peas, beans, onions, and cheese made a savory stew, enlivened, as it had seldom been in his peasant days, with small chunks of salty sausage and beef. He slapped his stomach and raised a belch. The men around him laughed. They knew they ate better because he shared their food.

After he had eaten, Krispos walked along the lines of tethered horses, stopping to chat now and then with a trooper grooming his mount or prying a pebble out from under a horseshoe. His years as a groom after he came to Videssos the city made him easy with horsy talk, though he was not one of the fairly common breed who cared for nothing else by day or night. For the most part, the men treated their animals well; their lives might depend on keeping the beasts in good condition.

The short, full darkness of summer night had fallen by the time Krispos made his way back to his own tent, which stood, as always, in the center of the camp. The Haloga guardsmen in front of it came to attention as he approached. "As you were," he said, and ducked through the flap. Unlike the heavy canvas under which most of the troopers sweltered, his summer tent was of silk. He got whatever breeze there was. Tonight there was no breeze.

He was not ready to sleep yet, not quite. He sat down in a folding chair of wood and wicker, set his chin in his hand, and thought about what the coming days would bring. He no longer believed Harvas would be able to enspell his army this side of Pliskavos. He'd had to summon most of the sorcerous talent in the Empire to match the undying renegade, but he'd done it. He thought Harvas was beginning to understand that, too. If his magic would not serve him, that left his soldiers. Some time soon he might try battle. If he found a piece of ground that suited him—

Outside the tent, the sentries shifted their weight. Their boots scuffed the dirt; their mail shirts rang softly. The small sounds so close by made Krispos glance up toward the entrance. His right hand stole toward the hilt of his saber. Then one of the sentries said, "How do we serve you, my lady?"

In all the sprawling imperial camp, there was only one "my lady." Tanilis said, "I would speak with his Majesty, if he will see me."

One of the guardsmen stuck his head into the tent. Before he could speak Krispos said, "Of course I will see the lady." He felt his heartbeat shift from walk to trot. However they rode during the day, Tanilis had not come to his tent at night before.

The guard held the flap wide for her. Silk rustled as it fell after she came in. Krispos got to his feet, taking a step toward a second chair so he could unfold it for her. Before he reached it, Tanilis went smoothly to her knees and then to her belly. Her forehead touched the ground in the most graceful act of proskynesis he had ever seen.

He felt his face grow hot. "Get up," he said, his voice so soft the guards could not listen but rough with emotions he was still sorting through. "It's not right—not fitting—for you to prostrate yourself before me."

"And wherefore not, your Majesty?" she asked as she rose with the same liquid elegance she had used in the proskynesis. "You are my Avtokrator; should I not grant you the full honor your station deserves?"

He opened the other chair. She sat in it. He went back to the one in which he had been sitting. His thoughts refused to muster themselves into any kind of order. At last he said, "It's not the same. You knew me before I was Emperor. By the lord with the great and good mind, my lady, you knew me before I was much of anything."

"I gave you leave long ago, as a friend, to call me by my name. I could scarcely deny my Emperor the same privilege." A tiny smile tugged up the corners of Tanilis' mouth. "And you seem to have become quite a lot of something, if I may take a friend's privilege and point it out."

"Thank you." Krispos spoke carefully, to ensure that he did not stammer. Being with Tanilis took him back to the days when he had been more nearly boy than man. He did not want to show that, not to her of all people. Now he made himself think clearly and said, "And thank you also for making sure I left Opsikion— and you—that spring, whether I wanted to or not."

She inclined her head to him. "Now you have come into a man's wisdom, to see why I did as I did. I could tell that Opsikion was too small for you—and I, at the time I was rather too large. You were not yet what you would become."

Her words so paralleled his own thoughts that he nodded in turn. As he did, he gazed at her. She had held her beauty well enough to remain more than striking even in harshest daylight. Lamps were kinder; now she seemed hardly to have aged a day. Seeing her, hearing her, also reminded him of how they had spent a good part of their time together. He'd gone on campaign before without seriously wanting to bring a woman into his tent to keep his cot warm. Part of that, he admitted to himself with a wry grin, was nervousness about Dara. But another part, a bigger part, came from fondness for his wife. Now he found he wanted Tanilis. None of what he felt for Dara had gone away. It just did not seem relevant anymore. He'd known Tanilis, known her body, long before he'd ever imagined he would meet Dara. Wanting to take her to bed again did not feel like being unfaithful; it felt much more like picking up an old friendship.

He did not stop to wonder what his taking Tanilis to bed would feel like to Dara. He got up, stretched, and walked over to the map table in one corner of the tent. Videssos had not ruled in Kubrat for three hundred years; the imperial archives nevertheless held detailed if archaic maps of the land, stored against the day when it might become a province of the Empire once more.

But he only glanced at the ragged parchment with its ink going brown and pale from age. He stretched again, then walked about as if at random. It was no accident, though, that he ended up behind Tanilis' chair. He rested a hand on her shoulder.

She twisted her head up and back to look at him. Her small smile grew. She made a pleased noise, almost a purr, deep in her throat. Her hand covered his. Her skin was smooth, her flesh soft. A ruby ring on her index finger caught the dim lamplight and glowed like warm blood.

Krispos bent down and lightly kissed her. "Like old times," he said.

"Aye, like old times." Her pleased purr got louder. Her eyes were almost all pupil. Then, suddenly, those huge eyes seemed to be looking past Krispos, or through him. "For a little while," she said in a voice altogether different from the one she'd used a moment before. That distant expression faded before Krispos was quite sure he'd seen it. Her voice returned to normal, too, or better than normal. "Kiss me again," she told him.

He did, gladly. When the kiss ended, she got to her feet. Afterward he was never sure which of them took the first step toward the cot. She pulled her robe over her head, slid out of her drawers, and lay down to wait while he undressed. She did not wait long. "Do you want to blow out the lamps?" she whispered.

"No," he answered as softly. "For one thing, it would tell the guardsmen just what we're doing. For another, you're beautiful and I want to see you." Even more than her face, her body had retained its youthful tautness.

Her eyes lit. "No wonder I recall you so happily." She held up her arms to him. He got down beside her.

The cot was narrow for two; the cot, in truth, was narrow for one. They managed all the same. Tanilis was as Krispos remembered her, or even more so, an all but overwhelming blend of passion and technique. Soon his own excitement drove memory away, leaving only the moment.

Even after they were spent, they lay entangled—otherwise one of them would have fallen off the cot. Tanilis' hand stole down his side and stroked him with practiced art. "Another round?" she murmured, her breath warm in his ear.

"In a bit, maybe," he answered after taking stock of himself. "I'm older than I was when I visited Opsikion, you know. I wasn't spending long days in the saddle then, either." One of his eyebrows quirked upward against the velvety skin of her throat. "At least, not on horseback."

She bit him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt. He started to yelp, but checked himself in time. The small pain seemed to spur him, though; sooner than he had expected, he found himself rising to the occasion once more. Tanilis let out a voiceless sigh as they began again.

From outside the tent one of the guardsmen called, "Majesty, a courier is here with a dispatch from the city."

Krispos did his best not to hear the Haloga. "Don't be foolish," Tanilis said; she retained as much self-control as Krispos remembered. She made a small pushing motion against his chest. "Go on; see what news the rider brings. I'll be here when you get back."

Knowing she was right helped only so much. More than a little grumpily, he separated from her, climbed off the cot, dressed, and went out into the night. "Here you are, your Majesty," the courier said, handing him a sealed roll of parchment. After a salute, the fellow twitched his mount's reins and headed out toward the long lines of tethered horses.

Krispos ducked back into the tent. As he did so, his cheeks started to flame. The Halogai had never been shy about sticking their heads inside when they needed him to come out. If they called now, it had to be because they knew what he was doing in there. "Oh, to the ice with it," he muttered. The longer he ruled, the more resigned he became to having no privacy.

The sight of Tanilis waiting for him drove such minor annoyances clean out of his mind. He yanked off his robe and let it fell to the ground. Tanilis frowned. "The dispatch—"

"Whatever it is, it will keep long enough."

She lowered her eyes in acquiescence. "Then hurry here, your Majesty." Krispos hurried.

Afterward, languid, he wanted to forget about the roll of parchment, but he knew Tanilis would think less of him for that—and he would think less of himself when morning came. He got into his robe again and broke the seal on the message. Tanilis projected an air of silent approval as she, also, put her clothes back on.

His impatient thoughts full of her, he hadn't bothered to hold the dispatch up to a lamp to find out who'd sent it. Now, as he read the note inside, he learned: "The Empress Dara to her husband Krispos, Avtokrator of the Videssians: Greetings. Yesterday I gave birth to our second son, as Mavros' mother Tanilis foretold. As we agreed, I've named him Evripos. He is large and seems healthy, and squalls at all hours of the day and night. The birth was hard, but all births are hard. The midwife acts pleased with him and me both. The good god grant that you are soon here in the city once more to see him and me."

Krispos had felt no guilt before. Now it all crashed down on him at once. When he said nothing for some time, Tanilis asked, "Is the news so very bad, then?" Wordlessly he passed the letter to her. She read quickly and without moving her lips, something Krispos still found far from easy. "Oh," was all she said when she was done.

"Yes," Krispos said: only two words between them, but words charged with a great weight of meaning.

"Shall I come here to your tent no more then, your Majesty?" Tanilis asked, her voice all at once cool and formal.

"That might be best," Krispos answered miserably.

"As you wish, your Majesty. Do recall, though, that you knew of the Empress'—your wife's—condition before this dispatch arrived. I grant that knowing and being reminded are not the same, but you had the knowledge. And now, by your leave—" She tossed Dara's letter onto the cot, strode briskly to the tent flap, ducked through it, and walked away.

Krispos stared after her. Minutes before they had been gasping in each other's arms. He picked up the letter to read it again. He had another son, and Dara was well. Good news, every bit of it. Even so, he crumpled the parchment into a ball and flung it to the ground.

Scouts pushed ahead before dawn the next morning, probing to make sure no ambushes lay ahead of the imperial army. The main force soon followed, a long column with its supply wagons, protected by a sizable knot of mounted men, rattling along in the middle.

The unwieldy arrangement never failed to make Krispos nervous. "If Harvas had even a few Kubrati horse-archers on his side, he could give us no end of grief," he remarked to Bagradas, who led the force guarding the baggage train. Concentrating on the army's affairs helped Krispos keep his mind off his own, and off the fact that today Tanilis had chosen not to ride beside him, but rather with the rest of the magicians.

Bagradas did not notice that—or if he did, had sense enough not to let on. He said, "Whatever Kubratoi still have fight in them want to come in on our side, your Majesty, not against us. We picked up another few dozen yesterday. Of course, when it comes to real fighting, they may do us as little good as that group that stayed with you out of the pass all the way up until things looked dangerous and then took off." The regimental commander lifted a cynical eyebrow.

"As long as they aren't raiding us, they can do as they please," Krispos said. "We brought along enough of our own folk to do our fighting for us." He lifted a hand from Progress' neck to pluck at his beard. "I wonder how that column I sent out is faring."

"My guess would be that they are still out swinging wide, your Majesty," Bagradas said. "If they turn north too close to us, Harvas might be able to position men in front of them."

"They were warned about that," Krispos said. One more thing to worry about—

He urged Progress ahead toward the group of sorcerers. They were, he saw without surprise, gathered around Tanilis. Zaidas, who had been animatedly chattering with her, looked over with almost comic startlement as Krispos rode up beside him.

"A good thing I'm not Harvas," Krispos remarked dryly. He bowed in the saddle to Tanilis. "My lady, may I speak with you?"

"Of course, your Majesty. You know you have only to command." She spoke without apparent irony and flicked the reins to get her horse into a trot and away from the wizards. Krispos did the same. Zaidas and the other wizards stared after them in disappointment. When enough clear space had opened up to give them some privacy, Tanilis inclined her head to Krispos. "Your Majesty?"

"I just wanted to say I feel bad about the way things ended between us last night."

"You needn't trouble yourself about it," she replied. "After all, you are the Avtokrator of the Videssians. You may do just as you wish."

"Anthimos did just as he wished," Krispos said angrily. "Look what it got him. I want to try to do what's right, so far as I can see what that is."

"You've chosen a harder road than he did." After a small pause, Tanilis went on in a dispassionate tone of voice, "Few would say that bedding a woman not your wife falls into that category."

"I know, I know, I know." He made a fist and slammed it down on his thigh just below the bottom edge of his coat of mail. "I don't make a habit of it, you know."

"I would have guessed that, yes." Now she sounded amused, perhaps not in an altogether pleasant way.

"It isn't funny, curse it." Doggedly, clumsily, he went ahead: "I'd known you—loved you for a while, though I know you didn't love me—for such a long time, and now I'd seen you again, when I never expected to, well, I never worried about what I was doing till I'd done it. Then that note came, and I got brought up short—"

"Aye, you did." Tanilis studied him. "I might have guessed your marriage was one of convenience only, but two sons born close together argues against that, the more so as you've spent a good part of your reign in the field."

"Oh, there's something of convenience in it, for me and for her both," Krispos admitted, "but there turns out to be more to it than that, too." He laughed without mirth. "You noticed that, didn't you? But all the same, when we'd made love and the courier brought the letter, I had no business treating you the way I did. That's not right, either, and I'm sorry for it."

Tanilis rode on for a little while in silence. Then she remarked, "I think riding into battle might be easier for you than saying what you just said." .

Krispos shrugged. "One thing I'm sure of is that putting a crown on my head doesn't make me right all the time. The lord with the great and good mind knows I didn't learn much from Anthimos about how to rule, but I learned that. And if I was wrong, what's the point in being ashamed to say so?"

"Wherever you learned to rule, Krispos—" He warmed to hear her use his name again, rather than his title, "—you appear to have learned a good deal. Shall we return to being friends, then?"

"Yes," he answered with relief. "How could I be your enemy?"

Mischief sparkled in Tanilis' eyes. "Suppose I came to your tent again tonight. Would you take up saber and shield to drive me away?"

In spite of all his good intentions, his manhood stirred at the thought of her coming to his tent again. He ignored it. I'm too old to let my prick do my thinking for me, he told himself firmly. A moment later he added, I hope. Aloud, he said, "If you're trying to tempt me, you're doing a good job." He managed a smile.

"I would not seek to tempt you into something you find improper," Tanilis answered seriously. "If that is how it is, let it be so. I said back in Opsikion, all those years ago, that we would not suit each other over the long haul. It still seems true."

"Yes," Krispos said again, with no small regret. He still wondered if he and Dara suited each other over the long haul. Ever since he became Emperor, he'd been away on campaign so much that they'd had scant chance to find out. He went on, "I'm glad we can be friends."

"So am I." Tanilis looked around at the Kubrati countryside through which they were riding. Her voice sank to a whisper. "Being friendless in such a land would be a dreadful fate."

"It's not that bad," Krispos said, remembering his childhood years north of the mountains. "It's just different from Videssos." The sky was a paler, damper blue than inside the Empire. The land was a different shade of green, too, deeper and more like moss; the gray-green olive trees that gave Videssos so much of its distinctive tint would not grow here. The winters, Krispos knew, had a ferocity worse than any Videssos suffered.

But perhaps Tanilis was not seeing the material landscape that was all Krispos could perceive. "This land hates me," she said, shivering though the day was warm. Her sepulchral tone made Krispos want to shiver, too. Then Tanilis brightened, or rather grew intent on her prey. "If we can pull Harvas down, let it hate me as much as it will."

With that Krispos could not argue. He gazed out at Kubrat again. Far off in the northwest, he spied a rising smudge of dirty gray smoke against the horizon. He pointed to it. "Maybe that's the work of the column I sent out," he said hopefully.

Tanilis' gaze swung that way. "Aye, it is your column," she said, but she did not sound hopeful. Krispos tried to make himself believe she was still fretting over the way the land affected her.

But the next morning, as the main body of the army was getting ready to break camp, riders began straggling in from the west. Krispos did not want to talk with the first few of them; as he'd learned, men who got away first often had no idea what had really gone wrong—if anything had.

Sarkis came in about midmorning. A fresh cut seamed one cheek; his right forearm was bandaged. "I'm sorry, Majesty," he said. "I was the one who made the mistake."

"You own up to it, anyhow," Krispos said. "Tell me what happened."

"We came across a village—a town, almost—that isn't on our old maps," the scout commander answered. "I'm not surprised—it looked as if the Halogai were still building it: longhouses are their style, anyhow. Not a lot of men were in it, but those who were came boiling out, and their women with them, armed and fighting as fierce as they were."

Sarkis picked at a flake of dried blood on his face. "Majesty, beating them wasn't the problem. We had plenty of men for that. But I knew our true goal was Pliskavos and I wanted to get there as quick as I could. So instead of doing much more than skirmishing and setting the village ablaze—"

"We saw the smoke," Krispos broke in.

"I shouldn't wonder. Anyhow, I didn't want to lose time by riding around the place, either. So I swung us in on this side instead, and we rode straight north—right into a detachment from Harvas' army. They had more troopers than we did and they beat us, curse 'em."

"Oh, a plague," Krispos said, as much to himself as to Sarkis. He thought for a few seconds. "Any sign of magic in the fight?"

"Not a bit of it," Sarkis answered at once. "The northerners looked to be heading west themselves, to try to cut us off from riding around their army. Thanks to that miserable, stinking flea-farm of a village, they got the chance and they took it. Let me have another go at them, your Majesty, or some new man if you've lost faith in me. The plan was good, and we still have enough room to maneuver to make it work."

Krispos thought some more and shook his head. "No. A trick may work once against Harvas if it catches him by surprise. I can't imagine him letting us try one twice. Something ghastly would be waiting for us; I feel it in my bones."

"You're likely right." Sarkis hung his head. "Do what you will with me for having foiled you."

"Nothing to be done about it now," Krispos answered. "You tried to pick the fastest way to carry out my orders, and it happened not to work. May you be luckier next time."

"May the good god grant it be so!" Sarkis said fervently. "I'll make you glad you've trusted me—I promise I will."

"Good," Krispos said. Sarkis saluted and rode away to see the men who were still coming in from the column. Krispos sighed as he watched him go. It would have to be the hard way, then, with the butcher's bill that accompanied the hard way.

He'd already thought about putting peasants back into the border regions south of the mountains. He would also have to find soldiers to replace those who fell in this campaign. Where, he wondered, would all the men come from? He laughed at himself, though it wasn't really funny. Back in his days on the farm, he'd never imagined the Emperor could have any reason to worry, let alone a reason so mundane as finding the people to do what needed doing. He laughed again. Back in his days on the farm, he'd never imagined a lot of things.

Harvas skirmished, screened, avoided pitched battle. He seemed content to let the war turn on what happened after he got to Pliskavos. That worried Krispos. Even the Kubratoi and the Videssian-speaking peasants who flocked to his army and acclaimed him as a liberator failed to cheer him. Kubrat would return to imperial rule if he beat Harvas, aye. If he lost, the nomads and peasants both would only suffer more for acclaiming him.

As his force neared Pliskavos, he began sending out striking columns again, not to cut Harvas off from the capital of Kubrat but rather to ensure that he and his army went nowhere else. One of the columns sent men galloping back in high excitement. "The Astris! The Astris!" they shouted as they returned to the main force from the northwest. They were the first imperial soldiers to reach the river in three hundred years.

Another column came to the Astris east of Pliskavos a day later. Instead of sending back proud troopers to boast of what they'd done, they shouted for reinforcements. "A whole raft of Halogai are crossing the river on boats," a rider gasped as he rode in, mixing his metaphors but getting the message across.

Krispos dispatched reinforcements on the double. He also sent a company of soldiers from the first column that had reached the Astris to ride west along its bank toward the Videssian Sea. "Find Kanaris and bring him here," he ordered. "This is why we have ships on the Astris. Let's see the northerners put more men across it once he sails up."

He saw the Astris himself the next day. The wide gray river flowed past Pliskavos, which lay by its southern bank. The stream was wide enough to make the steppes and forests on the far bank seem distant and unreal. Unfortunately quite real, however, were the little boats that scurried across it. Each one brought a new band of Halogai to help Harvas hold the land he'd seized. Krispos raged, but could do little more until the grand drungarios of the fleet arrived. While he waited, the army began to built a palisade around Pliskavos.

"Something occurs to me," Mammianos said that evening. "I don't know as much as I'd like about fighting on water or much of anything about magic, but what's to keep Harvas from hurting our dromons when they do come up the Astris?"

Krispos gnawed on his lower lip. "We'd better talk with the magicians."

By the time the talk was done, Krispos found himself missing Trokoundos not just because the mage had been a friend. Trokoundos had been able to make sorcerous matters clear to people who were not wizards. His colleagues left Krispos feeling as confused as he was enlightened. He gathered, though, that sorcery aimed at targets on running water tended to be weakened or to go astray altogether.

He didn't care for the sound of that tended to. "I hope Harvas has read the same magical books you have," he told the wizards.

"Your Majesty, I see no sorcerous threat looming over Kanaris' fleet," Zaidas said.

"Nor do I," Tanilis agreed. Zaidas blinked, then beamed. He sent Tanilis a worshipful look. She nodded to him, a regal gesture Krispos knew well. The force of it seemed to daze Zaidas, who was younger and more susceptible than Krispos ever had been when he knew her. Krispos shook his head; noticing how young other people were was a sign he wasn't so young himself. But he had as much assurance from his wizards as he could hope for. That was worth a slight feeling of antiquity.

The palisade around Pliskavos grew stronger over the next couple of days. The troopers dug a ditch and used the dirt from it to build a rampart behind it. They mounted shields on top of the rampart to make it even higher. All the same, the gray stone wall of Pliskavos stood taller still.

The Halogai sallied several times, seeking to disrupt the men who were busy strengthening the palisade. They fought with their folk's usual reckless courage and paid heavily for it. Each day, though, dugouts brought fresh bands of northerners across the Astris and into Pliskavos.

"Halogaland must be grim indeed, if so many of the northerners brave the trip across Pardraya in hopes of settling here," Krispos observed at an evening meeting with his officers.

"Aye, true enough, for the lands hereabouts are nothing to brag of," Mammianos said. Krispos did not entirely trust the fat general's sense of proportion; the coastal lowlands where Mammianos had been stationed were the richest farming country in the whole Empire.

Sarkis put in, "I wonder how many villages like the one that gave me trouble have been planted on Kubrati soil. We'll have to finish the job of uprooting them once we're done here." A gleam came into his dark eyes. "I wouldn't mind uprooting one or two of those gold-haired northern women myself."

Several of the men in Krispos' tent nodded. Fair hair was rare—and exotically interesting—in Videssos. "Have a care now, Sarkis," Mammianos rumbled. "From what you've told us, the Haloga wenches fight back."

Everyone laughed. "You should have tried sweet talk, Sarkis," Bagradas said. The laughter got louder.

"I hadn't gone there to woo them then," Sarkis answered tartly.

"Back to business," Krispos said, trying without much success to sound stern. "How soon can we be ready to storm Pliskavos?"

His officers exchanged worried looks. "Starving the place into submission would be a lot cheaper, your Majesty," Mammianos said. "Harvas can't have supplies for all the men he's jammed in there, no matter how full his warehouses are. His troops'll start taking sick before long, too, crowded together the way they must be."

"So will ours, in spite of everything the healer-priests can do," Krispos answered. Mammianos nodded; camp fevers could cost an army more men than combat. Krispos went on, "Even so, I'd say you were right most of the time. But not against Harvas Black-Robe. The more time he has to ready himself in there, the more I fear him."

Mammianos sighed. "Aye, some truth in what you say. He is a proper bugger, isn't he?" He glanced around to the other officers, as if hoping one of them would speak out for delay. No one did. Mammianos sighed again. "Well, Majesty, we have ladders and such in the baggage train, and all the metal parts and cordage for siege engines. We'll need some time to knock down trees for their frames and cut the wood to fit, but as soon as that's done we can take a crack at it."

"How long?" Krispos insisted.

"A week, maybe a day or two less," Mammianos said, obviously reluctant to be pinned down. "Other thing is, though, that Harvas'd have to be blind not to see what we're up to as we prepare. He's a lot of nasty things, but blind isn't any of them."

"I know," Krispos said. "Still, he knows what we're here for anyhow. We didn't fight our way across Kubrat to offer to harvest his turnips. Let's get those engines started." Mammianos and the rest of the officers saluted. With orders given, they would obey.

The next morning, armed parties rode out to chop timber. By midday horses and mules began hauling back roughly trimmed logs. Under the watchful eyes of the engineers who would assemble and direct the use of the catapults and rams, soldiers cut the wood to proper lengths. The noise of carpentry filled the camp.

Mammianos had been right: the Halogai on Pliskavos' walls had no doubt what the imperials were doing. They jeered and waved their axes and swords in defiance. The ones with a few words of Videssian yelled out what sort of welcome the attackers were likely to receive. Some of Krispos' soldiers yelled back. Most just kept working.

A tall, thin pillar of smoke rose into the sky from somewhere near the center of Pliskavos. When Zaidas saw it, he turned pale and drew the sun-circle over his heart. All the wizards with the imperial army redoubled their apotropaic spells.

"What exactly is Harvas up to?" Krispos asked Zaidas, reasoning he would be most likely to know because of his sensitive sorcerous vision.

But the young mage only shook his head. "Nothing good," was the sole answer he would give. "That smoke—" He shuddered and sketched the sun-sign again. This time Krispos did the same.

The wizards' concern made Krispos more and more edgy. Nor was his temper improved when a dozen more dugouts full of Halogai landed at Pliskavos' quays before the sun reached its zenith. In the late afternoon, Videssian watchers on the shore of the Astris spied another small flotilla getting ready to set out from the northern bank.

The news went straight to Krispos. He slammed his fist down onto his portable desk and scowled at the messenger. "By the good god, I wish we could do something about these bastards," he growled. "Every one of them who gets into town means another one who'll be able to kill our men."

Seldom in a man's life are prayers answered promptly; all too seldom in a man's life are prayers answered at all. But Krispos was still fuming when another messenger burst into his tent, this one fairly hopping with excitement. "Majesty," he cried, "we've spotted Kanaris' ships rowing their way upstream against the current!"

"Have you?" Krispos said softly. He rolled up the message he'd been reading. It could wait. "This I want to see for myself." He hurried out of the tent, shouting for Progress. He booted the gelding into a gallop. In a few minutes, the horse stood blowing by the riverbank.

Krispos peered west, using a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Sure enough, up the river stormed the lean shark-shapes of the imperial dromons. Their twin banks of oars rose and fell in swift unison. Spray flew from the polished bronze rams the ships bore at their bows. Sailors and marines hurried about on the decks, readying the dromons for combat.

The Halogai had paddled their dugout canoes scarcely a quarter of the way across the Astris. They might have turned around and got back safe to the northern shore, but they did not even try: retreat was a word few northerners knew. They only bent their backs and paddled harder. A few of the dugouts sported small masts. Sails sprouted from those now.

For a moment Krispos thought the Halogai might win their race into Pliskavos, but the Videssian warships caught them a couple of hundred yards from the quays. Darts flew from the catapults at the dromons' bows. So did covered clay pots, which trailed smoke as they arced through the air. One burst in the middle of a dugout. In an instant the canoe was ablaze from one end to the other. So were the men inside. Thinned by long travel over water, their screams came to Krispos' ears. The Halogai who could plunged into the Astris. Their mail shirts dragged them to the bottom, an easier end than one filled with flame.

A dromon's ram broke a dugout in half. More Halogai, these unburned, thrashed in the water, but not for long. Videssian marines shot those who did not sink at once from the weight of their armor.

Another canoe broke free from the midriver melee and sprinted for the protection of Pliskavos' docks. Halogai on the walls of the town cheered their countrymen on. But a dromon quickly closed on the canoe. Instead of ramming, the captain chose a different form of fire. A sailor aimed a wooden tube faced inside with bronze at the fleeing dugout. Two more men worked a hand pump similar to the ones the fire brigades used in Videssos the city. But they did not pump water—out spurted the same incendiary brew that had incinerated the first Haloga canoe. This one suffered a like fate, for the sheet of fire that covered it was nearly as long as it was. The northerners writhed and wilted in the fire like moths in a torchflame.

Krispos' head swiveled back and forth as he looked around for more dugout canoes. He saw none. In the space of a couple of minutes, the imperial dromons had swept the river clear. Only a couple of chunks of flaming debris that drifted downstream and were gone said any folk but the Videssians had ever been on the Astris.

The soldiers by the water who had watched the fight yelled themselves hoarse as the dromons came in to beach themselves on the riverbank. Inside Pliskavos, the Halogai were as silent as if the town were uninhabited.

The grand drungarios' barred pennant snapped at the stern of a galley not far from Krispos. He rode Progress over to the dromon and got there just as Kanaris was coming down the gangplank to the ground. "Well done!" Krispos called.

Kanaris waved to him, then saluted more formally. "Well done yourself, Majesty," he answered, his deep, gruff voice pitched to carry over wind and wave. "Sorry we were west of here, but who thought you'd push all the way to Pliskavos? Well done indeed."

Praise from a longtime warrior always made Krispos proud, for he knew what an amateur he was in matters military. He called for a messenger. When one came up, he told the fellow, "Fetch some of the wizards here. The fleet will need them."

As the messenger rode away, Kanaris said, "We have our own wizards aboard, Majesty."

"No doubt," Krispos aid. "But I've brought the finest mages from the Sorcerers' Collegium up with the army. Harvas Black-Robe is no ordinary enemy, and you've given him special reason to hate you and your ships right now."

"Have it your way, then, Majesty," the grand drungarios said. "By the look of things, you've been right so far."

"Aye, so far." Krispos sketched the sun-sign to turn aside any evil omen. He also reminded himself never to take anything for granted against a foe like Harvas.

Krispos raised his cup. "To tomorrow," he said. "To tomorrow," the officers in the imperial tent echoed. They, too, held their wine cups high, then emptied them and filed out. Twilight still tinged the western sky, but they all had many things to see to before they sought their bedrolls. Tomorrow the imperial army would attack Pliskavos.

Krispos paced back and forth, trying again to find holes in the plan he and his generals had hammered out. For all their planning, there would be holes and the attack would reveal them. War, he had learned, was like that. If he could find one or two of them before the trumpets blew, he would save lives.

But he could not. He kept pacing for a while anyhow, to work off nervous energy. Then he blew out all the lamps save one, undressed, and lay down on his cot. Sleep would be slow coming. Best to start seeking it early.

He was warm and relaxed and just drifting off when Geirrod poked his head into the tent. "Majesty, the lady Tanilis would see you," the imperial guardsman said. "Must see you," Tanilis corrected from outside. "Wait a minute," he said muzzily. Cursing under his breath at having rest jerked out from under him, he pulled a robe on over his head and relit a couple of the lamps he'd put out not long before. As he went about that homely labor, his bad temper eased and his wits began to clear. He nodded to Geirrod. "Let her come in."

"Aye, Majesty." The Haloga managed to bow and hold the tent flap open at the same time. "Go in, my lady," he said, his voice as respectful as if Tanilis were of imperial rank.

Any thought that she was seeking to seduce him for her own advantage disappeared when Krispos got a good look at her face. For the first time he saw her haggard, her hair awry, her eyes hollow and dark-circled, lines harshly carved on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. "By the good god!" he exclaimed. "What's wrong?"

Without asking leave—again most unlike her—Tanilis sank into a folding chair. The motion held none of her usual grace, only exhaustion. "You will assail Harvas in his lair tomorrow," she said.

It was flat statement, not question. She had not been at the officers' conclave, but the signs of a building attack were hard to hide. Krispos nodded. "Aye, we will. What of it?"

"You must not." Again Tanilis' voice held no room for doubt; only Pyrrhos, perhaps, pronouncing on some point of dogma, could have sounded as certain. "If you do, much the greater part of the army will surely be destroyed."

"You've—seen—this?" Even as the words passed his lips, Krispos knew how foolish they were. Tanilis would not trouble him with ordinary worries.

She did not twit him for stupidity, either, as she might have were the matter less urgent and she less worn. She simply answered, "I have seen this." She rested for a moment, slumped down with her chin in her hands. Then, drawing on some reserve of resolution, she straightened. "Yes, I have seen. When I wrote you after Mavros was slain, I said I know Harvas' power was greater than mine, but I hoped to face him nonetheless. Now I have faced him. His power—" She shivered, though the night was warm and muggy. When she slumped again, the heels of her hands covered her eyes.

Krispos went to her and put his hand on her shoulder. He'd done the same just before they made love, but this touch had nothing of the erotic to it. It was support and care, as he might have given any friend brought low by killing labor. He said, "What did you do, Tanilis?"

The words dragged from her, one by one. "Since Harvas was wiling to stand siege, I sought to spy, to seek—aye, to sneak— from his mind how he aimed to answer us when the time came. I did not plan to confront him directly; had I done so, I would now be lying dead in my tent. I came near enough to that as it was."

She paused to rest again. Krispos poured her a cup of wine. She seemed a little restored after she drank it. Her voice was stronger as she went on, "Even entering the corners of that mind is like tiptoeing through a maze of death. He has shields and spike-filled snares in his head, snares beyond counting. Be thankful you are mindblind, dear Krispos, that you never need to touch such evil. I made myself very small, hoping he would not notice me ..." Tears ran down her cheeks. She did not seem to know they were there. "What did you do?" Krispos asked again. "I found what I sought. Were Harvas less arrogant, less sure of himself, he would have caught me no matter what I did. But down deep, he will not believe any mere mortal truly able to challenge him. And so, beneath his notice, I found what he intended—and I fled."

Of themselves, Krispos' hands curled into fists. "And what is waiting for us?" he demanded.

"Fire." Tanilis answered. "I know not how—nor did I stay to try to learn—but Harvas has made the city wall of Pliskavos a great reservoir of flame. At his will or signal, the wall can be ignited. Most likely he would wait until our men are on it everywhere, perhaps beginning to drop down into Pliskavos. Then he could burn those on the wall and climbing up it, and also trap the intrepid souls who aimed to take the fight farther."

"But he'd burn the defenders on the wall, too," Krispos said. "Would he care?" Tanilis asked brutally. "No," Krispos admitted, "not if they served his purpose. It would, too—he wouldn't have to have many Halogai up there, just enough to slow us, to make us think we were overpowering them because of our might. And then—" He did not want to think about "and then," not so soon after watching what the dromons' invincible fire did to dugout canoes and men.

"Exactly so," Tanilis said. "You see you must delay the attack, then, until our mages devise some suitable countermeasure to abate the menace of this—"

"Hold on," Krispos said. Tanilis tried to continue. He shook his head at her. "Hold on," he repeated, more sharply this time. A couple of ideas rattled around in his head. If he could bring them together ... He did, with almost an audible click. His eyes widened. "Suppose we lit the wall first," he whispered. "What then?"

Fatigue fell from Tanilis like a discarded cloak as she surged to her feet. "Yes, by the lord with the great and good mind!" She and Krispos hugged, not so much like lovers as like conspirators who realized they'd hatched the perfect plot.

Krispos stuck his head out of the tent. Geirrod came to smart attention. "Never mind that," Krispos said. "Get me Mammianos and then get me Kanaris."

Drawn up in full battle array, the imperial army ringed the entire landward perimeter of Pliskavos. Horns and drums and pipes whipped the soldiers toward full martial fury. The men shouted Krispos' name and bellowed abuse and threats at the Halogai on the walls.

The Halogai roared back, crying defiance to the sky. "Come on, little men, try us!" one shouted. "We make you littler still!" He threw his axe high in the air and caught it with a flourish.

Siege engines bucked and snapped. Stones and great darts flew toward Pliskavos. Engineers returned the machines' throwing arms to their proper positions, checked ropes, reloaded, then hauled on windlasses to tighten the cordage to the point where the engines could cast again. Meanwhile archers skipped forward to add their missiles to those of the catapults.

Not many Halogai were bowmen; the fighting they reveled in was hand to hand. Those who had bows shot back. A couple of Videssians fell; more northerners tumbled from the wall. The main body of imperial troops shouted and made as if to surge toward the wall. The Halogai roared back.

Krispos watched all that from the riverbank west of Pliskavos. It was a fine warlike display, with banners flying and polished armor gleaming under the morning sun. He hoped Harvas found it as riveting as he did himself. If all the wizard's attention focused there, he would pay no heed to the pair of dromons now gliding up the Astris toward his town.

With their twin banks of oars, thirty oars to a bank, the war galleys reminded Krispos of centipedes striding over the water. Such smooth motion seemed impossible. As with anything else, it came by dint of endless practice. .

Closer and closer to the quays at the bottom of the wall came the two dromons. Krispos watched the marines who were busy at their bows. A few Halogai watched, too, watched and jeered. A whole fleet of dromons might have carried enough warriors to attack Pliskavos from the river. Two were no threat.

Aboard each vessel, an officer raised his hand, then let it fall. The marines at the hand pumps swing their handles up and down, up and down. Twin sheets of flame belched from the wood-and-bronze siphon tubes. The quays caught at once. Black smoke shot skyward. Then the flames splashed against the wall.

For most of a minute, as the marines aboard the dromons kept pumping out their incendiary mixture, Krispos could not tell whether Tanilis had stolen the truth from Harvas' mind, whether his own scheme could disrupt the wizard's plan. Then the tubs of firemix went dry. The fiery streams stopped pouring from the siphons. The wall still burned.

Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker, the flames spread. The dromons backed oars to get away from a conflagration greater than any they were intended to confront. The Halogai atop the river wall poured buckets of water down onto the fire. It kept burning, kept spreading. The Halogai poured again, with no better luck. Krispos saw them stare down, the images of their bodies wavering through heat-haze. Then they gave up and ran away.

The flames were already running as fast as a man could. They burned a brilliant yellow, brighter and hotter than the orange-red fire that had spawned them. They reached the top of the wall and threw themselves high into the air, as if in play.

"By the good god," Krispos whispered. He sketched Phos' sun-sign. At the same time, he narrowed his eyes against the growing glare from Pliskavos. His face heated, as if he were standing in front of a fireplace. So he was, but several hundred yards away.

Halogai ran all along the wail now, even where the flames had not yet reached. Their terrified shouts rose above the crackle and hiss of the fire. Then the flames that had gone one way around Pliskavos met those that had gone the other, and there was nowhere to run anymore. Harvas' city was a perfect ring of fire.

The wall itself burned with a clean, almost smokeless flame. Before long, though, smoke did start rising up from inside Pliskavos—and no wonder, Krispos thought. By then he had already moved back from the fire twice. Houses and other buildings could not move back. So close to so much heat, they had to ignite, too.

Kanaris came up to Krispos. The grand drungarios of the fleet pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as he watched Pliskavos burn. "There's a grim sight," he said. As a lifelong sailing man, he feared fire worse than any foe.

Krispos remembered the fright fire had given him the winter before, when wind whipped Midwinter's Day blazes out of control. All the same he said, "It's winning our war for us. Would you sooner have watched our soldiers burn as they tried to storm those walls? Harvas intended the flames for us, you know."

"Oh, aye, he and his deserve them," Kanaris answered at once, "and the ice they'll meet in the world to come, as well. But there are easier ways of dying." He pointed toward the base of the wall.

Some Halogai had chosen to leap to their deaths rather than burn. As is the way of such things, not all had killed themselves cleanly. They burned anyway, most of them, and had the added torment of splintered bones and crushed organs to accompany the anguish of the fire that ate their flesh. The strongest and luckiest tried to crawl away from the flames toward the Videssian line. Forgetting for a moment that they were deadly enemies, imperial troopers darted out to drag two or three of them to safety. Healer-priests hurried up to do what they could for the Halogai.

The fire burned on and on. Krispos ordered his men out of their battle line. Until the flames subsided, they screened Pliskavos better than the wall from which they sprang. The soldiers watched the fire with something approaching awe. They cheered Krispos almost frantically, whether for having raised the fire or for having saved them from it he could not tell.

He wondered what Harvas was doing, was thinking, there inside his burning wall. After three hundred years of unnatural life, did the evil wizard have teeth left to gnash? Whether or no, his hopes were burning with the wall. A sudden savage grin twisted Krispos' mouth. Maybe Harvas had even been on the wall when it went up. That would be justice indeed!

Afternoon came, and evening. Pliskavos kept burning. The sky grew dark; the evening star appeared. It might still have been noon in the Videssian camp, so brilliant was the firelight. Only its occasional flicker said that light was born of flames rather than the sun.

Krispos made himself go into his tent. Sooner or later the flames would die. When they did, the army would need orders.

He wanted to be fresh, to be sure he gave the right ones. But how was he to sleep when the glow that came through the silk fabric of his tent testified to the fearful marvel outside?

And outside one of the guards said, "Aye, my lady, he's within." The Haloga looked into the tent. "The lady Tanilis would see you, Majesty. Ah, good, you're up and about." Krispos hadn't been, but hearing my lady had bounced him from his cot fester than anything short of a sally out of Pliskavos.

When Tanilis came in, Krispos pointed to the bright light that played on the silk. "That victory is yours, Tanilis," he said. Then he gave her the salute properly reserved for the Emperor alone: "Thou conquerest!" He took her in his arms and kissed her.

He'd intended nothing more than that, but she returned the kiss with a desperate intensity unlike anything he'd known from her before. She clung to him so tightly that he could feel her heartbeat through her robe and his. She would not let him go. Before long, all his continent intentions, all his promises to control himself and his body, were swept away in a tide of furious excitement that seemed as hot and fiery as Pliskavos' flaming wall. Still clutching each other, he and Tanilis tumbled to the cot, careless of whether it broke beneath them, as it nearly did.

"Quickly, oh, quickly," she urged him, not that he needed much urging. The cool, practiced competence she usually brought to bed was gone now, leaving only desire. When she arched her back beneath him and quivered at the final instant, she cried out his name again and again. He scarcely heard her. A moment later, he, too, cried out, wordlessly, as he spent himself.

The world apart from their still-joined bodies returned to him little by little. He leaned up on his elbows, or began to, but Tanilis' arms tightened round his back. "Don't leave me," she said. "Don't go. Don't ever go."

Her eyes, scant inches from his own, were huge and staring. He wondered if she was truly looking at him. The last time— the only time—he'd seen eyes so wide was when Gnatios met the executioner. He shook his head; the comparison disturbed him. "What's wrong?" He stroked her cheek.

She did not respond directly. "I wish we could do it again, right now, one last time," she said.

"Again?" Krispos had to laugh. "After that, Tanilis, I'm not sure I could do it again in a week, let alone right now." Then he frowned as he listened again in his own mind to all of what she'd said. "What do you mean, one last time?"

Now she shoved him away from her. "Too late," she whispered. "Oh, too late for everything."

Once more Krispos hardly heard her. This time, though, it was not because of passion but rather pain. Agony such as he had never known filled every crevice of his body. Again he thought of the burning walls of Pliskavos. Now that fire seemed to blaze within his bones, to be consuming him from the inside out. He tried to scream, but his throat was on fire, too, and no sound came forth.

A new voice echoed in the tiny corner of his mind not given over to torment: "Little man, thinkest thou to thwart me? Thinkest thou thy fribbling futile mages suffice to save what I would slay? Aye, they cost me effort, but with effort cometh reward. Learn of my might as thou diest, and despair."

Tanilis must have heard that cold, hateful voice, too, for she said, "No, Harvas, you may not have him." Her tone now was as calm and matter-of-fact as if the wizard were in the tent with them.

Krispos felt a tiny fragment of his anguish ease as Harvas shifted his regard to Tanilis. "Be silent, naked slut, lest I deal with thee next."

"Deal with me if you can, Harvas." Tanilis' chin went up in defiance. "I say you may not have this man. This I have foreseen."

"Damnation to thy foreseeing, and to thee." Harvas returned. "Since thou'dst know the wretch's body, know what it suffereth now, as well."

Tanilis gasped. With a great effort of will, Krispos turned his eyes toward her. She was biting her lip to keep from crying out. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. But she would not yield. "Do your worst to me," she told Harvas. "It cannot be a tithe of the harm Krispos and I worked against your wicked scheme this day."

Harvas screamed then, so loudly that for a moment Krispos wondered why no guardsmen burst in to see who was slaying whom. But the scream sounded only in his mind, and in Tanilis'. More torment lifted from him. Tanilis said, "Here, Harvas. As you give, so shall you get. Let me be a mirror, to reflect your gifts. This is what I feel from you now."

Harvas screamed again, but in an altogether different way. He was used to inflicting pain, not to receiving it. Krispos' anguish went away. He thought Tanilis had forced the wizard to yield, simply by making him experience what he was used to handing out. But when Krispos glanced over at her, he saw her fine features were still death-pale and twisted in torment. Her struggle with Harvas was not yet done.

Krispos drew in a long, miraculously pain-free breath. He opened his mouth to shout for more wizards to come to Tanilis' rescue. No sound emerged. Despite everything Tanilis was doing to him—everything he was doing to himself—Harvas still had the strength to enjoin silence on Krispos. And Tanilis agreed. "This is between the two of us now, Krispos." She returned her attention to her foe. "Here, Harvas: This is what I felt when I learned you had slain my son. You should know all your gifts in full."

Harvas howled like a wolf with its leg crushed in the jaws of a trap. But he was trapper as well as victim. He had endured a great deal in his sorcerously prolonged span of days. Though Tanilis wounded him as he had never been wounded before, he did not release her from agony he, too, felt. If he could bear it longer than she, victory would in the end be his. Krispos caught an echo of what he whispered, longingly, again and again to Tanilis: "Die. Oh, die."

"When I do, may you go with me," she answered. "I will rise to Phos' light while you spend eternity in the ice of your master Skotos."

"I usher in my master's dominion to the world. Thy Phos hath failed; only fools feel it not. And thou hast not the power to drag me into death with thee. See now!"

Tanilis whimpered on the cot beside Krispos. Her hand reached out and clutched his forearm. Her nails bit into his flesh, deep enough to draw blood. Then all at once that desperate grip went slack. Her eyes rolled up; her chest no longer rose and fell with breath. Krispos knew she was dead.

While the link with Harvas held, he heard in his mind the beginning of a frightened wail. But the link was abruptly cut, clean as a cord sword-severed. Had Tanilis succeeded in taking the evil wizard down to death with her? If not, she had to have left him hurt and weakened. But the price she'd paid—

Krispos bent down to brush his lips against those that had so recently bruised his. Now they did not respond. "May you be avenged," he said softly.

A new and bitter thought crossed his mind: he wondered if she'd foreseen her own doom when she set out from Opsikion to join the imperial army. Being who and what she was, she must have. Her behavior argued for it—she'd acted like someone who knew she had very little time. But she'd come all the same, heedless of her safety. Krispos shook his head in wonder and renewed grief.

He heard rapid footsteps outside, footsteps that came to a sudden stop in front of the imperial tent. "What do you want, wizard?" a Haloga guardsman demanded.

"I must see his Majesty," Zaidas answered. His young, light voice cracked in the middle of the sentence.

"You must, eh?" The guardsman did not sound impressed. "What you must do, young sir, is wait."

"But-"

"Wait," the guard said implacably. He raised his voice, pitching it so Krispos would notice it inside the tent. "Majesty, a wizard out here would have speech with you." The guard did not poke his head right into the tent now, not after Tanilis had gone in. Yes, he had his own ideas about what was going on in there. Krispos wished he was right.

Wishing did as much good as usual, no more and no less. Krispos slowly got to his feet. "I'll be with you soon," he called to the guard and Zaidas. He put on his robe, then covered Tanilis' body with hers. He straightened. No help for it now. "Let the wizard come in."

Zaidas started to fall to his knees to prostrate himself before Krispos but broke off the ritual gesture when he saw Tanilis lying dead on the cot. Her eyes were still open, staring up at nothing.

"Oh, no," Zaidas whispered. He sketched the sun-sign over his heart. Then he looked at Tanilis again, this time not in shocked surprise but with the trained eye of a mage. He turned to Krispos. "Harvas' work," he said without hesitation or doubt.

"Yes." Krispos' voice was flat and empty.

Lines of grief etched Zaidas' face; in that moment, Krispos saw what the young man would look like when he was fifty. "I sensed the danger," Zaidas said, "but only the edges of it, and not soon enough, I see. Would I had been the one to lay down life for you, Majesty, not the lady."

"Would that no one ever needed to lay down life for me," Krispos said as flatly as before.

"Oh, aye, your Majesty, aye," Zaidas stammered. "But the lady Tanilis, she was—she was—something, someone special." He scowled in frustration at the inadequacy of his words. Krispos remembered how Zaidas had hung on everything Tanilis said when the wizards gathered together, remembered the worshipful look in the younger man's eye. He'd loved her, or been infatuated with her—at his age, the difference was hard to know. Krispos remembered that, too, from Opsikion.

Love or infatuation, Zaidas had spoken only the truth. "Someone special? She was indeed," Krispos said. Harvas had cost him so many who were dear to him: his sister Evdokia, his brother-in-law, his nieces, Mavros, Trokoundos, now Tanilis. But Tanilis had hit back, hit back harder than Harvas could have expected. How hard? Now Krispos' voice held urgency. "Zaidas, see what you can sense of Harvas for me."

"Of his plans, do you mean, your Majesty?" the young mage asked in some alarm. "I could not probe deeply without his detecting me; probing at all is no small risk—"

"Not his plans," Krispos said quickly. "Just see if he's there and active inside Pliskavos."

"Very well, your Majesty; I can do that safely enough, I think," Zaidas said. "As you've seen, even the subtlest screening techniques leave signs of their presence, the more so if they screen a presence as powerful as Harvas'. Let me think. We bless thee, Phos, lord with the—"

Zaidas' voice grew dreamy and far away as he repeated Phos' creed to focus his concentration and slide into a trance, much as a healer-priest might have done. But instead of laying hands on a wounded man, Zaidas turned toward Pliskavos. His eyes were wide and unblinking and seemed sightless, but Krispos knew they sensed more than any normal man's.

After a couple of minutes of turning ever so slightly this way and that, as if he were a hunting dog unsure of a scent, Zaidas slowly came back to himself. He still looked like a puzzled hound, though, as he said, "Your Majesty, I can't find him. I feel he ought to be there, but it's as if he's not. It's no screen I've ever met before. I don't know what it is." He did not enjoy confessing ignorance.

"By the good god, magical sir, I think I know what it is. It's Tanilis." Krispos told Zaidas the whole story of her struggle against Harvas Black-Robe.

"I think you're right, your Majesty," Zaidas said when he was through. The young mage bowed to the cot on which Tanilis lay as if she were a living queen. "Either she slew Harvas as she herself was slain, or at the very least hurt him so badly that his torch of power is reduced to a guttering ember too small for me even to discern."

"Which means all we face in Pliskavos is an army of ferocious Halogai," Krispos said. He and Zaidas beamed at each other. Next to the prospect of battling Harvas Black-Robe again, any number of berserk, fearless axe-swinging northerners seemed a stroll in the meadow by comparison.