Krispos the Emperor

XII

Katakolon pointed to the rising cloud of dust ahead. "Soon now, Father," he said.

"Aye, very soon," Krispos agreed. Through the dust, the early morning sun sparkled off the iron heads of arrows and javelins, off chain mail shirts, off the polished edges of sword blades. The Thanasioi were hurrying through the pass, heading back toward Etchmiadzin after a raid that had spanned most of the length of the westlands.

Sarkis said, "Now, your Majesty?"

Krispos tasted the moment. "Aye, now," he said.

Sarkis waved. Quietly, without the trumpet calls that usually would have ordered them into action, two regiments of cavalry rode up the pass from the imperial lines. Sarkis' grin filled his fat face. "That should give them something new to think about. If Zaidas spoke truly, they don't know we're anywhere nearby, let alone in front of them."

"I hope he spoke truly," Krispos said. "I think he did. By all the signs his magic could give, their Makuraner mage is altogether stifled."

"The good god grant it be so," Sarkis said. "I have no love for Makuraners; every so often they take it into their heads that the princes of Vaspurakan should be forced to reverence their Prophets Four rather than Phos."

"One day, maybe, Videssos can do something about that," Krispos said. The Empire, he thought, ought to protect all those who followed the lord with the great and good mind. But

Vaspurakan had lain under the rule of the Kings of Kings of Makuran for a couple of hundred years.

"Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I'd sooner we were free altogether," Sarkis said. "Likely your hierarchs would make spiritual masters no more pleasant than the men from Mashiz. Your folk would be as harsh on us as heretics as the Makuraners are on us as infidels."

"Seems to me you're both quarreling over the taste of a loaf you don't have," Katakolon said.

Krispos laughed. "You're probably right, son—no, you are right." Thin in the distance, shouts said that the Thanasioi and the regiments Krispos had sent out to delay them were knocking heads.

This time, Krispos waved. Now trumpets and drums and pipes rang loud. The imperial force that had been aligned parallel to the direction of the pass swung in a great left wheel to block its mouth and keep the heretics from breaking through.

As the imperials raised their own dust and then as they came into view, the shouts from the Thanasioi got louder. Their red banners waved furiously. They might have been taken by surprise, but there was no quit in them. On they came, driving the lead regiments back on the main body of Krispos' force.

The Avtokrator, who now stood at his army's extreme right rather than to the fore, admired the bravery of the Thanasioi. He would have admired it even more had it been aimed at the Empire's foreign enemies rather than against him.

Phostis tapped him on the shoulder, pointing to the center of the heretics' line. "That's Livanios, Father: the fellow in the gilded shirt between those two flags there."

Krispos' eye followed Phostis' finger. "I see the man you mean. His helm is gilded, too, isn't it? For someone who leads a heresy where all men are condemned to the least they can stand, he likes imperial trappings well, doesn't he?"

"He does," Phostis agreed. "That's one of the reasons I decided I couldn't stomach the Thanasioi: too much hypocrisy there for me to stand."

"I see," Krispos said slowly. Had Livanios been a sincere fanatic rather than an opportunist, then, he might have used Phostis' self-righteousness to draw him deep into the Thanasiot movement. But a sincerely destructive fanatic would not have gone after the imperial mint at Kyzikos. Had Krispos needed any further explication of Livanios' character, that raid would have given it to him.

Which was not to say he lacked courage. He threw himself into the thick of the fighting, flinging javelins and slashing with his saber when the battle came to close quarters.

It was, to all appearances, a fight devoid of tactical subtlety. The Thanasioi wanted to break through the imperial line; Krispos' soldiers aimed to keep them bottled up inside the pass. They plied the heretics with arrows from a line several men deep. Even when the first ranks had to struggle hand to hand, those behind them kept shooting at the Thanasioi who piled up ever tighter against the barrier the imperials had formed.

Fewer Thanasioi were archers. In any case, archery by itself would not sweep aside Krispos' men. In spite of the galling wounds they received, the heretics charged again and again, seeking to hew a path through their foes. "The path!" they cried. "The gleaming path!"

Along with trying to break through in the center, the Thanasioi also sent wave after wave of fighters against Krispos and his retinue. With their shields, mail shirts, and heavy axes, the Halogai stood like a dam between the Avtokrator and the fighters who sought to lay him low. But the northerners could not hold all arrows away from him. He had a shield of his own, and needed it to protect his face.

His horse let out a frightened squeal and tried to rear. Krispos fought the animal back under control. An arrow protruded from its rump. Poor beast, he thought—it knew nothing of the differences in worship because of which it had been wounded.

The Thanasioi charged again. This time some of them broke through his screen of bodyguards. Phostis traded saber strokes with one, Katakolon with another. That left Krispos facing two at once. He slashed at the one on his right side, used his shield to hold off the blows of the one to his left, and hoped someone would come to his aid soon.

Suddenly the horse of the Thanasiot to his right screamed, far louder and more terribly than his own mount had a few minutes before. A Haloga axe had bitten into its spine, just behind its rider. The horse foundered. The Haloga raised his axe again and slew the Thanasiot.

That let Krispos turn against his other foe. He still remembered how to use a sword himself, and slashed the fellow on the forearm. Another Haloga guard, his axe dripping gore, bore down on the heretic. The Thanasiot ignored him, bending every effort toward slaying the Avtokrator. He paid the price for his fanaticism: the guardsman hacked him out of the saddle.

"Thanks." Krispos panted. Sweat ran down his forehead and stung his eyes. "I'm getting old for this business, much as I hate to admit it."

"No man is young enough to be happy fighting two," the Haloga said, which made him feel a little better.

Among them, his sons and the northerners had put an end to the other Thanasioi who'd broken through. Katakolon had a cut that stretched halfway across one cheek, but managed a blood-spattered smile for Krispos. "Iakovitzes won't like me so well anymore," he shouted.

"Ah, but all the girls will sigh over how brave you are," Krispos answered, which made his youngest son's smile wider.

Another Thanasiot surge. The Halogai on foot and Videssians on horseback contained it. Krispos gauged the fighting. He had not asked a great deal of his men, only that they hold their place against the onslaught of the Thanasioi. So much had they done. The heretics were bunched against them, still trying to force their way out of the valley.

"Send for Zaidas," Krispos commanded. A messenger rode off.

He soon returned with the wizard, who had not been far away. "Now, your Majesty?" Zaidas asked.

"The time will never be better," Krispos said.

Zaidas set to work. Most of his preparations for this magic had been made ahead of time. It was not. properly speaking, battle magic, nor directed against the Thanasioi. Battle magic had a way of failing; the stress of fighting raised emotions to such a pitch that a spell which might otherwise have been fatal failed to bite at all.

"Let it come forth!" Zaidas cried, and stabbed a finger up toward the sky. From his fingertip sprang a glowing green fireball that rose high above the heaving battle line, growing and getting brighter as it climbed. A few soldiers from both sides paused for an instant to call Phos' name or sketch the sun-sign above their hearts. Most, however, were too busy fighting for their lives to exclaim over the fireball or to notice it at all.

Zaidas turned to Krispos. "What magic may do, magic has done," he said. His voice was ragged and worn; sorcery cost those who worked it dear.

Little by little, the green fireball faded. Before too long, it was gone. Watching the indecisive fight to which he had committed his army, Krispos wondered if it had been sent skyward in vain. Men should have been watching for its flare ... but one of the lessons he'd learned after close to half a lifetime on the throne was the chasm that sometimes yawned between should have been and were.

His head went rapidly back and forth from one side of the valley to the other. "Where are they?" he demanded, not of anyone in particular but of the world at large.

As if that had been a cue, martial music rang out in the distance. Soldiers in the imperial army cheered like men possessed; the Thanasioi stared about in sudden confusion and alarm. Down into the valley from left and right rode fresh regiments of horsemen in line. "Krispos!" they cried as they bent their bows.

"Taken in both flanks, by the good god!" Sarkis exclaimed. "Your Majesty, my hat's off to you." He doffed the iron pot he wore on his head to show he meant his words literally.

"You helped come up with the plan," Krispos said. "Besides, we both ought to thank Zaidas for giving a signal the watchers from both concealed flanking parties could see and use. Better by far than trying to gauge when to come in by the sandglass or any other way I could think of."

"Very well." Sarkis took off his helmet for Zaidas, too.

The wizard's grin took years off his age and reminded Krispos of the eager, almost painfully bright youngster he'd been when he began his sorcerous service. That had been in the last campaign against Harvas, till now the hardest one Krispos had known. But civil war—and religious civil war at that—was worse than any attack from a foreign foe.

Where the Avtokrator and the general had praised his sorcery, Zaidas thought about the fighting that remained ahead. "We still have to win the battle," he said. "Fail in that and the best plan in the world counts for nothing."

Krispos studied the field. Had the Thanasioi been professional soldiers, they might have salvaged something by retreating as soon as they discovered themselves so disastrously outflanked. But all they understood of the military art was going forward no matter what. That only got them more thoroughly trapped.

For the first time since fighting began, Krispos turned loose a smile. "This is a battle we are going to win," he said.

Phostis was only a few feet from his father when Krispos claimed victory. He was no practiced strategist himself, but he could see that a foe attacked on three sides at once was on the way to destruction. He was glad Olyvria had stayed back at the camp. Though she'd given herself to him without reservation, seeing all her father's hopes go down in ruin could only bring her pain.

Phostis knew pain, too, but of a purely physical sort. His shoulder ached with the effort it took to hold up a shield against arrows and saber slashes. In another couple of weeks it could have borne the burden without complaint, but not yet.

Screeching "The gleaming path!" for all they were worth, the Thanasioi mounted yet another charge. And from the midst of the fanatics' ranks. Phostis heard another cry, one not fanatical at all: "If we slay the Avtokrator, lads, it's all up for grabs!"

Fueled by desperation, fervor, and that coldly rational cry, the heretics surged against the right wing of the imperial line. As they had once before, they shot and hacked their way through the Halogai and Videssians protecting Krispos. All at once, being of high rank stopped mattering.

Off to one side of Phostis, Sarkis laid about him with a vigor that denied his bulk. To the other, Krispos and Katakolon were both engaged. Before Phostis could spur his horse to their aid, someone landed what felt like a hammer blow to his shield.

He twisted in the saddle. His foe was yelling at the top of his lungs; his was the voice that had urged the Thanasioi against Krispos. "Syagrios!" Phostis yelled.

The ruffian's face screwed into a gap-toothed grimace of hate. "You, eh?" he said. "I'd rather carve you than your old man—I owe you plenty, by the good god." He sent a vicious cut at Phostis' head.

Just staying alive through the next minute or so was as hard as anything Phostis had ever done. He didn't so much as think of attack; defense was enough and more. Intellectually, he knew that was a mistake—if all he did was try to block Syagrios' blows, sooner or later one would get through. But they came in such unrelenting torrents that he could do nothing else. Syagrios was twice his age and more, but fought with the vigor of a tireless youth.

As he slashed, he taunted Phostis: "After I'm done with you, I'll settle accounts with that little whore who crowned me. Pity you won't be around to watch, on account of it'd be worth seeing. First I'll cut her a few times, just so she hurts while I'm—" He went into deliberately obscene detail.

Fury all but blinded Phostis. The only thing that kept him from attacking wildly, foolishly, was the calculating look in Syagrios' eyes as he went through his speech. He was working to enrage, to provoke. Refusing to give him what he wanted was the best thing Phostis saw to do.

A Haloga came up on Syagrios' left side. The ruffian had no shield, but managed to turn aside the guardsman's axe with the flat of his blade. That wouldn't work every time, and he knew it. He spurred his horse away from the northerner—and from Phostis.

As he drew back, Phostis cut at him. The stroke missed. Phostis laughed. In the romances, the hero always slashed the villain into steaks. In real life, you were lucky if you didn't get hacked to bits yourself.

Since he was for the moment not beset, Phostis looked around to see how his comrades were faring. He found Krispos in the midst of a sea of shouting Thanasioi. The Avtokrator, badly beset, slashed frantically this way and that.

Phostis spurred toward him. To the Thanasioi, he was nothing—just another soldier, a nuisance, not a vital target like Krispos. He wounded three heretics from behind in quick succession. That sort of thing wasn't in the romances, either; they went on and on about glory and duels and fair fights. Real war, Phostis was discovering in a hurry, didn't concern itself with such niceties. If you stayed alive and the other fellow didn't, that was a triumph of strategy.

The Halogai also fought their way in Krispos' direction. So did all the reserves who saw he was in danger. Quite suddenly, no living Thanasioi were near the Avtokrator. Krispos' helmet had been battered so that it sat at a crazy angle on his head. He had a cut on his cheek—almost a match for Katakolon's— and another on his sword arm. His gilded mail shirt and shield were splashed with sticky red.

"Hello, everyone," he said. "Rather to my surprise, I find myself still in one piece."

Several variations of Glad you are rose into the air, Phostis' among them. He looked round for Syagrios, but did not see him. Real battle lacked the romances' neat resolutions, too.

Krispos went in the blink of an eye from a horseman fighting wildly for his life to the commander of a great host. "Drive them hard!" he shouted, pointing toward the center of the line. "See them waver? One good push and they'll break."

Had Zaidas not said Krispos lacked all talent for magic, Phostis might have believed him a wizard then. No sooner had he called attention to the sagging Thanasiot line than crimson banners began falling or being wrested from the hands of the heretics who bore them. The roar that went up from the imperials at that rang through the valley like a great horn call.

"How could you tell?" Phostis demanded.

"What? That?" Krispos thought for a moment, then looked sheepish. "Part of it comes from seeing a lot of fights. My eye knows the signs even if my mouth doesn't. And part of it— sometimes, don't ask me how, you can make your will reach over a whole battlefield."

"Maybe it is magic."

Phostis didn't realize he'd spoken out loud until Krispos nodded soberly. "Aye, it is, but not of the sort Zaidas practices. Evripos has a touch of it; I've seen that. You haven't yet had the chance to find out. You can rule without it, not doubt of that, but it makes life easier if it's there."

One more thing to worry about, Phostis thought. Then he shook his head. He needed to worry about two things, not one: whether he had the magic of leadership, and how vulnerable he would be if Evripos had it and he didn't.

At any other time, he might have occupied himself for hours, maybe days, with worries over those two. Now, with the battle swinging the imperials' way at last—could it be past noon already?—he had no leisure for fretting.

"Forward!" came the cry all along the line. Phostis was glad to press the fighting. It relieved him of having to think. As he'd found in Olyvria's arms, that could be a blessing of sorts. The only trouble was, worries didn't go away. When the fighting or the loving was done, they reared their heads again.

But not now. Shouting "Forward!" with the rest, he rode against the crumbling resistance of the Thanasioi.

Krispos looked out at victory and found it as appalling as it usually is. Pierced and mangled men and horses were the building blocks of what the chroniclers would one day call a splendid triumph of arms. At the moment, it reminded Krispos of nothing so much as an open-air slaughterhouse, down to the stink of entrails and the buzz of hungry flies.

Healer-priests wandered through the carnage, now and then stooping to aid some desperately wounded man. Their calling did not let them discriminate between Krispos' followers and the Thanasioi. Once, though, Krispos saw a blue-robe stand up and walk away from someone, shaking his shaven head in bewilderment. He wondered if a dying Thanasiot had possessed the courage to tell the healer he would sooner walk the gleaming path.

Most of the heretics, though, were glad enough to get any help the imperials gave them. They held out gashed arms and legs for bandages and obeyed their captors' commands with the alacrity of men who knew they might suffer for any transgression. In short, they behaved like other prisoners of war Krispos had seen over the years.

Katakolon rode up to the Avtokrator. "Father, they've run down the heretics' baggage train. In it they found some of the gold, ah, abstracted from the mint at Kyzikos."

"Did they? That's good news," Krispos said. "How much of the gold gold was recovered?"

"Something less than half the amount reported taken," Katakolon answered.

"More than I expected," Krispos said. Nevertheless, he suspected the troopers who'd captured the baggage train were richer now than when they'd started their pursuit. That was part of the price the Empire paid for civil war. If he tried to squeeze the gold out of them, he'd get a name for niggardliness that might lead to another revolt a year or three down the line.

"Your Majesty!" Another messenger waved frantically. "Your Majesty, we think we have Livanios!"

The gilded mail shirt that weighed on Krispos' shoulders all at once seemed lighter. "Fetch him here," the Avtokrator ordered. Then he raised his voice. "Phostis!"

"Aye, Father?" His eldest looked worn, but so did everyone else in the army.

"Did you hear that? They think they've caught Livanios. Will you identify him for me? You've see him often enough."

Phostis thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No," he said firmly.

"What?" Krispos glared at him. "Why not?"

"He's Olyvria's father," Phostis said. "How am I to live with her if I point the finger at him for the headsman?"

"Your mother's father plotted against me when you were a baby, do you know that?" Krispos said. "I exiled him to a monastery at Prista." The outpost on the northern shore of the Videssian Sea was as grim a place of exile as the Empire had.

"But did Mother tell you of his plot?" Phostis demanded. "And would you have taken his head if he'd not been her father?"

The questions, Krispos admitted to himself, were to the point. "No and yes, in that order," he said. Even after exiling Rhisoulphos, he'd been nervous about sleeping in the same bed with Dara for a while.

"There, you see?" Phostis said. "Livanios was an officer of ours. You'll have others here who can name him for you."

Krispos thought about ordering Phostis to do as he'd said, but not for long. He had learned better than to give orders that had no hope of being obeyed—and in any case, Phostis was right. "Let it be as you say, son," the Avtokrator said.

He watched in some amusement as Phostis, obviously ready to argue more, deflated. "Thank you," the younger man said, his voice full of relief.

Krispos nodded, then called, "Who among my soldiers knows the traitor and rebel Livanios by sight?"

The question ran rapidly through the army. Before long, several men sat their horses close by Krispos. Among them was Gainas, the officer who'd sent back to Videssos the city the dispatch warning of Livanios' defection to the gleaming path.

The prisoner himself took a while to arrive. When he did.

Krispos saw why: he was afoot, one of several captives with hands tied behind their backs so they could not even walk quickly. Phostis said, "The one on the left there, Father, is the mage Artapan."

"Very good," Krispos said quietly. If Artapan was in this group, then Livanios probably was. too. Phostis had, in fact, all but said he was. Here, though, the all but was important. Krispos turned to the men he'd assembled. "Which of them is Livanios?"

Without hesitation, they all pointed to the fellow two men away from Artapan. The captive straightened and glared at Krispos. He was doing his best to keep up a brave front. "I am Livanios. Do as you please with my body. My soul will walk the gleaming path beyond the sun and dwell with Phos forever."

"If you were so set on walking the gleaming path, why did you rob the mint at Kyzikos and not just burn it?" Phostis asked. "You didn't despise material things enough to keep from dirtying your hands with them."

"I do not claim to be the purest among the followers of the holy Thanasios," Livanios said. "Nevertheless, I follow the truth he preached."

"The only place you'll follow him. I think, is to the ice," Krispos said. "And since I've beaten you and taken you in arms against me. I don't need to argue with you." He turned to one of the Halogai. "Trygve, you're still carrying your axe. Strike off his head and have done."

"Aye, Majesty." The big blond northerner strode over to Livanios and pushed him so he went to his knees. Trygve spoke with neither cruelty nor any great compassion, merely a sense of what needed doing: "Bend your neck. you. It will be over soonest then."

Livanios started to obey, but then his eyes found Phostis. With a quick glance toward Krispos, he asked, "May I put a last question?"

Krispos thought he knew what that question would be. "Be quick about it."

"Yes, your Majesty." Livanios did not sound sarcastic—but then, Krispos did not have to give him an easy end, and he knew it. He turned to Phostis. "D'you have my daughter? Syagrios said he thought you did, but—"

"Yes, I have her," Phostis said.

Livanios bowed his head. "I die content. My blood goes on."

Krispos did not want him having the last word. "My father-in-law died in exile up in Prista, a traitor," he said. "My son's father-in-law will die before he even properly gains that title, also a traitor. Temptation, it seems, rides Emperors' fathers-in-law hard—too hard." He gestured to Trygve.

The axe came down. It wasn't a broad-bladed, long-handled headsman's weapon, but the big man who wielded it was strong enough that that didn't matter. Krispos turned his head away from the convulsions of Livanios' corpse. Phostis, who had watched, looked green. Executions were harder to stomach than deaths in combat.

Unfortunately, they were also sometimes necessary. Krispos turned to Artapan. "If your hands were free, sirrah, I daresay you'd be making magic from his death agony there."

"I would try." Artapan's mouth twisted. "You have a strong mage at your side, Videssian Emperor. With him opposing, perhaps I'd not succeed."

"Did Rubyab King of Kings know you were a death-drinker when he sent you forth to help our heretics?" Krispos asked.

"Oh, indeed." The Makuraner magician's mouth twisted again, this time in a different way—wry amusement. "I was under sentence of death from the Mobedham-mobedh—the high patriarch, you would say—when the King of Kings plucked me from my cell and told me what he required. I had nothing to lose by the arrangement. Nor did he."

"True enough," Krispos said. If Artapan had failed in the mission Rubyab set him, he would die—but he was condemned to die anyhow. And if he succeeded, he would do more good for Makuran than for himself. Rubyab had never been anything but a wily foe to Videssos, but this piece of double-dealing was as devious as any Krispos had ever imagined.

He nodded again to Trygve. Artapan jerked free of his captors and tried to run. With his hands bound behind him, with so many men chasing him, he didn't get more than a couple of paces. The meaty sound of the axe striking cut off his last scream.

"Foolishness," Trygve said from where he cleaned the blade on the wizard's caftan. "Better to die well, since die he would. Livanios did it properly."

Katakolon pointed to the other two captive Thanasioi, who stood in glum and shaky silence. "Will you take their heads, too, Father?"

Krispos started to ask if they would abandon their heresy, then remembered the answer meant little: the Thanasioi felt no shame at lying to save their skins, and might keep their beliefs in secret. Instead, the Avtokrator turned to Phostis and asked, "How big are these fish we've caught?"

"Medium size," Phostis answered. "They're officers, but they weren't part of Livanios' inner circle."

"Take them away and put them with the rest of the prisoners, then," Krispos said to the guards who stood behind the captives. "I'll figure out what to do with them later."

"I've never seen—I've never imagined—so many captives." Katakolon pointed toward long rows of Thanasiot prisoners, each bound to the man in front of him by a line that wrapped round his wrists and then his neck: any effort to flee would only choke those near him. Katakolon went on, "What will you do with them all?"

"I'll figure that out later, too," Krispos said. His memory went back across two decades, to the fearsome massacres Harvas Black-Robe had worked among the captives he'd taken. Seeing those pathetic corpses, even so long ago, had burned away forever any inclination toward slaughter Krispos might have had. He could imagine no surer road to the eternal ice.

"You can't just send them back to their villages," Phostis said. "I did come to know them while I was in their hands. They'll promise anything, and then a year from now, or two, or three, they'll find themselves a new leader and start raiding again."

"I know that," Krispos said. "I'm glad to see you do, too."

Sarkis rode up. In spite of bloody bandages, the cavalry general seemed in high spirits. "We shattered 'em and scattered 'em, your Majesty," he boomed.

"Aye, so we did." Krispos sounded less gleeful. He'd learned to think in bigger terms than battles, or even campaigns. He wanted more from this victory than the two years' respite Phostis had suggested. He scratched his nose, which wasn't as impressive as Sarkis' but did exceed the Videssian norm. "By the good god," he said softly.

"What is it?" Katakolon asked.

"My father—after whom you're named, Phostis—always said we had Vaspurakaner blood in us, even though we lived far from here, up by—and sometimes over—what used to be the border with Kubrat. My guess is that our ancestors had been resettled there on account of some crime or other."

"Very likely," Sarkis said, as if that were a matter for pride.

"We could do the same with the Thanasioi," Krispos said. "If we uproot the villages where the heresy flourishes most and transplant those people over near Opsikion in the far east, say, and up near the Istros—what used to be Kubrat still needs more folk to work the land—those Thanasioi would be likely to lose their beliefs in a generation or two among so many orthodox folk, just as a pinch of salt loses itself in a big jug of water."

"It might work," Sarkis said. "Videssos has done such things before—else, as you say, your Majesty, your own forebears would not have ended up where they did."

"So I've read," Krispos said. "We can even run the transfer both ways, sending in orthodox villagers to loosen the hold the Thanasioi have on the region round Etchmiadzin. It will mean a great lot of work, but if the good god is willing it will put an end to the Thanasiot problem once and for all."

"Moving whole villages—thousands, tens of thousands of people—from one end of the Empire to the other? Moving more thousands back the other way?" Phostis said. "Not the work alone—think of the hardships you'll be making."

Krispos exhaled in exasperation. "Remember, these men we just beat down have sacked and ravaged Kyzikos and Garsavra just lately, Pityos last year, and the lord with the great and good mind only knows how many smaller places. How much hardship did they make? How much more would they have made if we hadn't beaten them? Put that in the balance against moving villagers around and tell me which side of the scale goes down."

"They believe in the Balance in Khatrish and Thatagush," Phostis said. "Have you beaten one heresy, Father, only to join another?"

"I wasn't talking about Phos' Balance, only the one any man with a dram of sense can form in his own mind," Krispos said irritably. Then he saw Phostis was laughing at him. "You scamp! I didn't think you'd stoop to baiting me."

As was his way, Phostis quickly turned serious again. "I'm sorry. I'll build that balance and tell you what I think."

"That's fair," Krispos said. "Meanwhile, no need to apologize. I can stand being twitted. If I couldn't, Sarkis here would have spent these last many years in a cell under the government office buildings—assuming he'd fit into one."

The cavalry commander assumed an injured expression. "If you'd jailed me many years ago, your Majesty, I shouldn't have attained to my present size. Not on what you feed your miscreants, I shouldn't."

"Hrmph." Krispos turned back to Phostis. "What did your balance tell you?"

"If it must be done, then it must." Phostis neither looked nor sounded happy. Krispos didn't mind that. He wasn't happy himself. He and his village had been resettled twice when he was a boy, once forcibly by Kubrati raiders, and then again after the Empire ransomed them from the nomads. He knew the hardship relocating entailed. Phostis went on, "I wish it didn't have to be done."

"So do I," Krispos said. Phostis blinked, which made Krispos snort. "Son, if you think I enjoy doing this, you're daft. But I see that it has to be done, and I don't shrink from it. Liking all of what you do when you wear the red boots is altogether different from doing what needs doing whether you like it or not."

Phostis thought about that. It was a very visible process. Krispos gave him credit for it; before he'd been snatched, he would have been more likely to dismiss out of hand anything Krispos said. At last, biting his Up, Phostis nodded. Krispos nodded back, well pleased. He'd actually managed to get a lesson home to his hardheaded son.

"Come on, move!" a soldier shouted, with the air of a man who's already shouted the same thing twenty times and expects to shout it another twenty before the day is through.

The woman in faded gray wool, her head covered by a white scarf, sent the horseman a look of hatred. Back bent under the bundle she bore, she trudged away from the thatch-roofed hut that had housed her since she wed, away from the village that had housed her family for untold generations. Tears carved tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "The good god curse you to the ice forever," she snarled.

The imperial trooper said, "If I had a goldpiece for every time I've been cursed these past weeks, I'd be rich enough to buy this whole province."

"And heartless enough to rule it," the peasant woman retorted.

To her obvious dismay, the trooper thought that was funny: Having no choice—the soldier and his comrades confronted the villagers with sabers and drawn bows and implacable purpose—she kept walking, three children trailing behind her, and then her husband, who carried an even bigger pack on his back and held lead ropes for a couple of scrawny goats.

Phostis watched the family join the stream of unwilling peasants shambling east. Soon they were gone from sight, as one drop of water loses itself in a river. For a little while longer, he could hear the goats bleating. Then their voices, too, were lost amid murmurs and complaints and lowing cattle and creaking axles from richer farmers' carts and the endless shuffle of feet.

This had to be the dozenth village he'd watched empty. He wondered why he kept making himself witness the process over and over again. The best answer he came up with was that he was partly responsible for what was happening to these people, and so he had the obligation to understand it to the fullest, no matter how pained and uncomfortable it made him.

That afternoon, as the sun sank toward the not so distant mountains of Vaspurakan, he rode with another company that descended on another village. As the peasants were forcibly assembled in the marketplace, a woman screamed, "You have no right to treat us so. We're orthodox, by the good god. This for the gleaming path!" She spat in the dust.

"Is that so?" Phostis worriedly asked the officer in charge of the company.

"Young Majesty, you just wait till they're all gathered here and then you'll see for yourself," the captain answered.

The people kept coming until at last the village marketplace was full. Phostis frowned. He told the officer, "I don't see anything that makes them look either orthodox or Thanasiot."

"You don't know what to look for, then," the man replied. He waved at the glum crowd. "Do you see more men or women, young Majesty?"

Phostis hadn't noticed one way or the other. Now he examined villagers with a new eye. "More women, I'd say."

"I'd say so, too, young Majesty," the captain said, nodding. "And note the men, how many of them are either graybeards or else striplings with the down just sprouting on their cheeks and chins. Not a lot of fellows in their prime, are there? Why do you suppose that is?"

Phostis studied the shouting, sweating crowd once more. "I see what you're saying. Why, though?"

The officer glanced upward for a moment, perhaps in lieu of calling the heir to the imperial throne dense. "Young Majesty, it's on account of most of the men in their prime were in Livanios' army, and we either killed 'em or caught 'em. So you can believe that skirt is orthodox if you choose, but me, I have to doubt it."

Orthodox or heretic—and Phostis found the company commander's logic compelling—the villagers, carrying and leading what they could, shuffled away on the first stage of their journey to new homes at the far end of the Empire. Some of the company quartered themselves in abandoned houses. Phostis went back with the rest to the main imperial camp.

The place was becoming more like a semipermanent town than the encampment of an army on the march. Krispos' men fanned out from it every day to resettle villagers who followed—or might follow—the gleaming path. Supply wagons rumbled in every day—with occasional lapses as unsubdued Thanasioi raided them—to keep the army fed. Tents were not pitched at random, but in clumps with ways—almost streets—through them. Phostis had no trouble finding his way to the tent he shared with Olyvria.

When he ducked through the flap, she was lying on her bedroll. Her eyes were closed, but came open as soon as he walked in, so he did not think she'd been asleep. "How are you?" she asked listlessly.

"Worn," he answered. "Saying you're going to resettle some peasants is one thing; it sounds simple and practical enough. But seeing what it entails—" He shook his head. "Ruling is a hard, cruel business."

"I suppose so." Olyvria sounded indifferent.

Phostis asked, "How are you?" She'd wept through the night when she learned her father's fate. In the days since then, she'd been like this—very quiet, more than a little withdrawn from what happened around her. He hadn't touched her, except accidentally, since he'd held her while she cried herself out that night.

Now she answered, "All right," as she had whenever he'd asked her since then. The response was as flat and unemphatic as everything else she'd said lately.

He wanted to shake her, to force some life into her. He did not think that was a good idea. Instead, he unrolled his own blanket. Under a surcoat, his mail shirt jingled as he sat down beside her. He said, "How are you really?"

"All right," she repeated, as indifferently as before. But now a small spark came into her eyes. "I'll truly be all right in time; I'm sure I will. It's just that... my life has turned upside down these past weeks. No, even that's not right. First it turned upside down—I turned it upside down—and then it flipped again, when, when—"

She didn't go on, not with words, but she started to cry again, as she had not done since Krispos, sparing Phostis that duty, brought her word of what he'd ordered done to Livanios. Phostis thought there might be healing in these tears. He held his arms open, hoping she would come to him. After a few seconds, she did.

When she was through, she dried her eyes on the fabric of his surcoat. "Better?" he asked, patting her back as if she were a child.

"Who can say?" she answered. "I made the choice; I have to live with it. I love you. Phostis, I do, but I hadn't thought through everything that might happen after I got onto that fishing boat with you. My father—" She started to cry again.

"That would have happened anyhow, I think," he said. "You didn't have anything to do with it. Even when we were on the worst of terms—which seemed like much of the time—I knew my father did what he did well. I doubt the Thanasioi would have won the civil war even with us, and if they lost it ... Early in his reign, my father paid a price for showing his enemies more mercy than they deserved. One of the things that set him apart from most people is that he learns from his mistakes. He gives rebels no second chance these days."

"But my father wasn't just a rebel," she said. "He was my father."

To that, Phostis had no good answer. Luckily for him, he didn't have to grope for a poor one. From outside the tent, a Haloga guard called, "Young Majesty, here's a man would have speech with you."

"I'm coming," Phostis answered. To Olyvria, he added in a low voice, "Probably a messenger from my father. Who else would disturb me?"

He climbed to his feet. Tired as he was, the iron he wore felt doubly heavy. He blinked against the bright afternoon sunshine as he stepped outside, then stopped in surprise and horror. "You!" he gasped.

"You!" Syagrios roared. The ruffian wore a long-sleeved tunic to cover the knife he'd strapped to his forearm. He flipped it into his hand now, and stabbed Phostis in the belly with it before the Haloga guard could spring between them.

As Phostis remembered, Syagrios was strong as a bear. He cried out when the tip of the knife bit him and grabbed Syagrios' right arm with both hands.

"I'll get you," Syagrios panted. "I'll get you and then I'll get that little whore you're swiving. I'll—"

Phostis never did find out what Syagrios would do next. The guardsman's frozen surprise did not last longer than a heartbeat. Syagrios screamed hoarsely as the Haloga's axe went into his back. He broke free of Phostis and whirled, trying to come to grips with the northerner. The Haloga struck him again, this time full in the face. Blood sprayed over Phostis. Syagrios crumpled. The guardsman methodically smote him again and again until he stopped twitching.

Olyvria burst out of the tent, a knife in her hand, her eyes wild. The guardsman, however, needed no help. Olyvria gulped at Syagrios' dreadful wounds. Though an officer's daughter, she wasn't altogether accustomed to fighting's grim aftermath.

Then the Haloga turned to Phostis. "Are you yet hale, young Majesty?"

"I don't know." Phostis yanked up his mail shirt and surcoat together. He had a bleeding scratch a couple of inches above his navel, but nothing worse. He let the mail shirt fall back down with a clink of iron rings.

"Aye, here we are. Look, young Majesty." The northerner poked the mail shirt with a forefinger. "You had luck with you. The knife went into a ring—see the bright cuts here and here? It went in, but could go no farther. Had it slid between two rings, more of your gore would have spilled."

"Yes." Phostis started to shake. So much luck in life—a fingernail's breadth to either side and he'd be lying on the ground beside dead Syagrios, trying to hold his guts in. Maybe a healer-priest would have been able to save him, but he was ever so glad he didn't have to make the test. He told the guard, "My thanks for slaying him, Viggo."

The Haloga guardsman looked disgusted with himself. "I should never have let him draw near enough to stab you. I thank the gods you were not worse hurt." He lifted Syagrios' corpse by the heels and dragged it away. The ruffian's blood soaked blackly into the thirsty soil.

By then, curious and concerned faces pressed close; the fight and the outcries had raised a crowd as if by magic. Phostis waved to show he was all right. "No harm done," he called, "and the madman got what he deserved." He pointed to the trail Syagrios left behind, as if he were a snail filled with blood rather than slime. The soldiers cheered.

Phostis waved again, then ducked back into the tent. Olyvria followed. Phostis looked again at the little cut he'd taken. He didn't require much imagination to make it bigger in his mind's eye. If the knife had slipped between rings, or if he'd taken off the mail shirt, the better to comfort Olyvria ... He shuddered. He didn't even want to think about that.

"I fought with him during the battle," he said. "I guessed he'd flee, but he must have been wild for revenge."

"You never wanted to cross Syagrios," Olyvria agreed soberly. "And—" She hesitated, then went on, "And I'd known he wanted me for a long time."

"Oh." Phostis made a sour face at that. But it made sense— how doubly mortifying and infuriating to be struck down by someone you lusted after. "No wonder he didn't run, then." His laugh was shaky. "I wish he would have—he came too close to getting his vengeance and letting the air out of me in the process."

Katakolon stuck his head into the tent. "Ah. good, you still have your clothes on," he said. "Father's right behind me, and I don't suppose you'd care to be caught as I was."

Before Phostis could do more than gape at that or ask any of the myriad questions that suggested themselves, Krispos came in. "I'm glad you're all right," he said, folding Phostis into a bear hug. When he let Phostis go, he stood back and eyed him quizzically. "Someone didn't care for you there, son."

"No, he didn't," Phostis agreed. "He helped kidnap me—" He watched Krispos, but the Avtokrator's eyes never moved toward Olyvria: discipline and style. "—and he was my, I guess you'd say keeper, in Etchmiadzin. He couldn't have been very happy when I escaped."

"Your keeper, eh? So that was Syagrios?" Krispos asked.

Phostis nodded, impressed at his memory for detail. He said, "He was a bad man, but not of the worst. He played the board game well, and he drew the arrow from my shoulder when I got shot while I was along with the Thanasiot raiding party."

"A slim enough eulogy, but the best he'll get, and likely better than he deserves, too," Krispos said. "If you think I'll say I'm sorry he's gone, you can think again: good riddance, say I. I just praise the good god that you weren't hurt." He embraced Phostis again.

"I'm glad you're not ventilated, too," Katakolon said. "It's good having you back, especially in one piece." He ducked to get out of the tent. Krispos followed a moment later.

"What was that your brother said about getting caught with his clothes off?" Olyvria kept her voice low so no one but Phostis would hear, but she couldn't stop the giggle that welled up from deep inside.

"I don't know," Phostis said. "As a matter of fact, I don't think I want to know. Knowing Katakolon, it was probably something spectacular. Sometimes I think he takes after Anthimos, even if—" He'd been about to say something like even if I'm the one Anthimos might have fathered. That was just what he didn't want to say to Olyvria.

"Even if what?" she asked.

"Even if Anthimos was four years dead before Katakolon was born," Phostis finished, more smoothly than he would have thought possible.

"Oh." Olyvria sounded disappointed, which meant his answer had convinced her. He nodded to himself. Krispos would have approved. And he'd lived through a completely unexpected attack. He approved of that himself.

Krispos studied the gloomy stone pile of Etchmiadzin. It had been built to hold off men at arms, but the ones its designers had in mind came from Makuran. The stone, however, knew nothing of that. It would—and did—defy Videssians as readily as any others.

The fanatics on those grim stone walls still screamed defiance at the imperial army below. Most of the territory the Thanasioi had once held was back in Krispos' hands again. Dozens of villages were empty; he'd given the orders to send streams of orthodox peasants on the way to replace those uprooted from the area. Pityos and its hinterland had fallen to Noetos' cavalry, advancing west along the coast from Nakoleia.

But if Etchmiadzin held until the advancing season made Krispos withdraw, much of what he'd accomplished was likely to unravel. The Thanasioi would still have a base from which to grow once more. He'd already seen the consequences of their growth. He didn't care for them.

Storming the fortress, though, was easier to talk about than to do. Videssian engineers had labored mightily to make it as near impregnable as they could. So far as Krispos knew, it had never fallen to the Makuraners, despite several sieges. It didn't look likely to fall to his army, either.

"If they won't fall, maybe I can trip them," Krispos muttered.

"How's that, your Majesty?"

Krispos jumped. There beside him stood Sarkis. "I'm sorry—I didn't notice you'd come up. I was trying to work out some way to inveigle the cursed Thanasioi into coming out of Etchmiadzin without storming the place."

"Good luck to you," Sarkis said skeptically. "Hard enough to trick a foe in the confusion of the battlefield. Why should the heretics come out from their citadel for anything you do short of leaving? Even if they stand and fight and die, they think they go up their gleaming path to heaven. Next to that, any promise you can make is a small loaf."

"Aye, they're solidly against me, stiff-necked as they are." Krispos' voice was gloomy—but only for a moment. He turned to Sarkis. "They're solidly against me—for now. But tell me, eminent sir, what do you have if you put three Videssians together and tell them to talk about their faith for a day?"

"Six heresies," Sarkis answered at once. "Each one's view of his two comrades. Also a big brawl, probably a knifing or two, a couple of slit purses. Begging your pardon. Majesty, but that's how it looks to a poor stolid prince from Vaspurakan, anyhow."

"That's how it looks to me, too," Krispos said, smiling, "even if I have only a touch of princes' blood in me. I think like a Videssian, no matter whose blood I have, and I know full well that if you give Videssians a chance to argue about religion, they're sure to take it."

"I don't hold your breeding against you, your Majesty," Sarkis said generously, "but how do you propose to get the Thanasioi squabbling among themselves when to them you're the impious heretic they've all joined together to fight?"

"It's not even my idea," Krispos said. "Phostis thought of it and gave it to Evripos."

"To Evripos?" Sarkis scratched his head. "But he's back in Videssos the city. How could anything there have to do with the Thanasioi here? Did Evripos write you a letter and—" The cavalry commander stopped. His black, black eyes sparkled. Just for a moment, through the sheath of heavy flesh, Krispos saw the eager young scout with whom he'd ridden like a madman back to the imperial capital in the days when his reign was new. He said, "Wait a minute. You're not going to—"

"Oh, yes, I am," Krispos said. "Right out there where they can all watch from the walls. If it wouldn't brew more scandal than it was worth, I'd have them consummate it out there, too, not that it hasn't been consummated already."

"You're a demon, you are—but then, you used to revel with Anthimos. now that I think of it." Sarkis let out a theatrical sigh. "Too bad you couldn't get by with that. She's a fine-looking young woman. I wouldn't mind watching that marriage consummated, not one bit I wouldn't."

"Shameless old stallion." Krispos lowered his voice. "I wouldn't, either." They both laughed.

For a day, the imperial army besieging Etchmiadzin had sent no darts, no arrows, no stones against those frowning gray walls. Instead, heralds bearing white-painted shields of truce had approached the walls, bidding the Thanasioi also desist from battle "so that you may join us in observing a celebration at noon."

The choice of words must have intrigued the heretics; they had gone along with the heralds' suggestion, at least thus far. Phostis wondered how long they would remain calm when they observed what was about to happen. Not long, he thought.

He'd suggested to Evripos that he marry Olyvria to help calm the rampaging Thanasioi of the city. Trust Krispos to take his suggestion and turn it into a weapon of war against the belligerent heretics here at Etchmiadzin.

"Noon" was an approximation; the only sundial in the imperial army was a little brass one that belonged to Zaidas. But men accustomed to gauging the apex of the sun's path when they were working in the fields had no trouble doing the same while on campaign. Imperial soldiers gathered to protect the wooden platform that had been built safely out of bowshot of Etchmiadzin's walls. On those walls, the Thanasioi also gathered.

A herald with a shield of truce strode from the imperial lines toward the rebel-held fortress. In a huge bass voice, he called to the Thanasioi: "His imperial Majesty the Avtokrator Krispos bids you welcome to the marriage of his son Phostis to the lady Olyvria, daughter of the late Livanios."

Phostis wished the herald had omitted the late; the words would hurt Olyvria. But at the same time, he understood why Krispos had told the man to include them: they would remind Etchmiadzin's defenders of the defeats their cause had already suffered.

The Thanasioi rained curses on the herald's head. A couple of them shot at him, too. He lifted the shield of truce to protect his face; he wore a helmet and a mail shirt that covered him down to the knee.

When the arrows stopped coming, the man lowered the white-faced shield and resumed: "The Avtokrator bids you ponder the import of this wedding: not only what it says about your fortune in battle, but how it reminds you of the joy that life holds and the way it continues—and should continue— from one generation to the next."

More curses—and more arrows—flew at him. Having delivered his message, he needed to stand up under them no more, but hastily drew back out of range.

The wedding party ascended to the makeshift stage. It was not a large group, certainly not the horde that would have been involved had the marriage taken place at the High Temple in Videssos the city. Ahead of Phostis and Olyvria came a healer-priest named Glavas, who would perform the ceremony. Behind them walked Krispos, Katakolon, and Zaidas. That was all.

Even Zaidas' presence was not directly required by the ceremony, though Phostis was glad to have him close by. But the wizard was there mainly because he owned a small magic that would let the voices of the people on the platform carry farther than they would have without it: Krispos wanted the Thanasioi to listen to all that passed here.

The priest said, "Let us praise the lord with the great and good mind." He recited Phos' creed. So did Phostis and Olyvria; so as well did Krispos, Katakolon, and Zaidas. Phostis also heard the watching soldiers echo the prayer they made several times every day of their lives.

"We are come together in this unusual place to celebrate an unusual union," Glavas said. "After the boon of many healthful years, the greatest gift the good god can grant his worshipers is continuance of their line. A marriage is a time of rejoicing not least because it marks hope and expectation for that continuance.

"When the marriage comes from the imperial family, more hopes ride on it than those of the family alone. Continuance of the dynasty, generation upon generation, is our best guarantee against the disaster of civil war."

Phostis noticed he did not mention that Krispos was the first member of his family to hold the imperial throne, or indeed anything more than a peasant plot. The priest went on, "And with this marriage, we also have the chance to heal a rift that has opened among the faithful of Videssos, to symbolize the return to their familiar faith by those who for a time thought differently in the union of the young majesty Phostis to Olyvria the daughter of Livanios."

That, Phostis thought, was as conciliatory toward the Thanasioi as Krispos could be without following the gleaming path himself. He hadn't even had Glavas call them heretics. He wanted to make them forget their beliefs, not stubbornly cling to them.

The priest went on for some time about the qualities bride and groom should bring to a marriage to ensure its success. Phostis' mind wandered. He was taken unawares when Glavas asked, "Are the two of you prepared to cleave to these virtues, and to each other, so long as you both may live?"

From behind, Krispos nudged Phostis. He realized he had to speak first. "Yes," he said, and was glad Zaidas' magic made his voice larger than it was.

"Yes, for all my life—this is the path I will walk," Olyvria responded firmly.

Krispos and Katakolon set on her head and Phostis' garlands of sweet-smelling herbs—the crown of marriage that completed the ceremony. The priest stepped down from the platform. As quickly as that, it was over. "I'm married," Phostis said. Even to himself, he sounded surprised.

The Thanasioi on the wall screamed insults and catcalls for all they were worth. Ignoring them, Krispos slapped Phostis on the back and said, "So you are, son—and to a wise woman, too." He turned to Olyvria and added, "That last touch was perfect. Phos willing, they'll do a lot of stewing over it."

Katakolon poked Phostis in the ribs. "Now you're supposed to grab her and carry her off to your—well, to your tent it would be here."

Phostis had a well-founded suspicion that Olyvria would not permit any such thing. He glanced over to her. Sure enough, a steely glint in her eye warned him he'd better not try it.

"I've heard ideas that sounded more practical," Krispos said; the amusement in his voice said he'd seen that glint, too. "But do go on back to your tent. You would anyhow—that's what the day is for—but you should do it now, while you're still decked in the crowns of marriage."

That tickled Phostis' curiosity. He extended his arm to Olyvria. She took it. As they headed away from the hastily built platform, some of the soldiers cheered and others called lewd advice. Phostis smiled foolishly at Olyvria. She smiled back. Lewd advice from the bystanders came with every wedding celebration.

A grinning Haloga held the tent flap wide, then let it fall behind the newly weds. "We'll not see you for a while, I think," he said.

"Will you look at that?" Olyvria exclaimed.

Phostis looked. At the top corners of their unfolded blankets, someone—maybe Krispos himself, maybe a man acting at his orders—had driven stout sticks into the ground to stimulate bedposts. "It's good luck to hang the crowns on them," Phostis said. He doffed his and carefully set it on top of one post.

Olyvria did the same on the other side. "It starts to feel real," she said.

"It is real." Phostis lowered his voice so the guardsmen outside would not hear—not that they wouldn't know perfectly well what was going on in there, but the forms had to be observed. "As long as it's real, and as long as we're here by ourselves and no battle's going on right this moment—"

"Yes? What then?" Olyvria played the game with him. She spoke quietly, too; her hands worked at the catch of the white linen dress Krispos had given her for the wedding. It came open. "What then?" she repeated softly.

Between the two of them, they figured out what then. Because Phostis was still quite a young man, they got to try again soon, and again after that. Phostis had lost track of the hour by then, though the sun still lit one side of the tent. He yawned, wiped his sweaty forehead with a sweaty forearm, and dozed off. Beside him, Olyvria had already fallen asleep.

It was dark when a horrible racket woke him. He sat up and looked around, blinking. Olyvria lay beside him, still sleeping—snoring just a little—a small smile on her face. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, he put on a robe and walked outside. A new shift of Halogai ringed his tent. "What's toward?" he asked one of them.

The northerner pointed toward Etchmiadzin. The ruddy light of campfires and torches gave him the look of a man made of bronze. "Fighting in there," he said.

"By Phos," Phostis murmured, smacking a fist into the other palm. He looked over toward the imperial pavilion not far away. Krispos was outside, too, watching. Phostis felt a surge of relief that he'd not thrown in his lot with the Thanasioi. One way or another, he was more sure now than ever, Krispos would have found a way to beat them no matter what they did.

Inside Etchmiadzin, they sounded as if they were going at each other with everything they had. They probably were, Phostis thought. The men and women who followed the gleaming path were fanatics—whatever views they held, they held with all their hearts and all their souls. If Krispos had managed to drive a wedge between two groups of them over the propriety of Olyvria's marriage, they'd fight each other as savagely as—maybe more savagely than—they'd opposed the imperial army.

The Haloga pointed again. "Ha! Look, young Majesty— smoke. With blazing brand they burn their burg."

Sure enough, a thick column of smoke rose from inside the walls, orange-tinted gray against the black of the night sky. Phostis tried to figure out where in the town the fire had flared. His best guess was that it wasn't far from the Vaspurakaner cobbler's shop where he and Olyvria had first made love.

Another plume of smoke sprang up, and a few minutes later yet another. A tongue of yellow fire, perhaps from a burning roof, leapt into sight above the walls like a live thing, then sullenly fell back.

Before long, more and more flames sprang into view, and not all of them died down again. Fire was a terror in any city; it could so easily race ahead of anything men were able to do to hold it back. Fire in a city at war with itself was a horror to rank with the ice in Skotos' hell: how could you hope to fight it when your hand was turned against your neighbor, your friend—and his against you?

The answer was, you couldn't. The fires in Etchmiadzin burned on and on. The air of the imperial camp grew thick with the stink of smoke and, now and again, of burned flesh. Screams rent the air, some of terror, some of agony, but most of hate. In the burning streets, the battle among the Thanasioi went on.

After a while, Olyvria came out of the tent to stand beside Phostis. She slipped her hand into his without saying anything. Silently, they watched Etchmiadzin burn. Olyvria wiped at her eyes. The smoke made Phostis' sting, too. For the sake of his own peace of mind, he assumed that smoke was why she dabbed at hers.

He yawned and said, "I'm going back inside the tent. Maybe the air will be fresher in there."

Olyvria followed him in, still without speaking. Only when they were away from the guards did she say in a low voice, "There is the dowry I bring to you and your father— Etchmiadzin."

"You knew that," he answered. "You must have known it, or you'd not have answered the priest as you did."

"I suppose I did know, in a way. But knowing in advance what a thing is and seeing what it looks like when it comes to pass are not the same. Tonight I'm finding out how different they can be." She shook her head.

Had Krispos been in the tent, Phostis suspected he would have said that was one of the lessons of growing up. Phostis couldn't put a middle-aged rasp in his voice to make that sound convincing. He asked, "If you'd known, would you have done differently?"

Olyvria stayed quiet so long, he wondered if she'd heard. At last she said, "No, I suppose I would have left things as they were, but I'd have thought about them more beforehand."

"That's fair," Phostis agreed. He yawned again. "Shall we try to get some more sleep? I don't think they're going to sally against us; they're too busy warring with each other."

"I suppose so." Olyvria lay down and closed her eyes. Phostis lay down beside her. To his surprise, he dropped off almost at once.

Olyvria must have fallen asleep, too, for she jerked up at the same time as he when a great cheer roared through the encampment. He needed a moment to realize what time it was— sunshine against the east side of the tent meant dawn had broken.

As he had the night before, he poked out his head and asked a Haloga what was going on. The northerner answered, "Those in there, they have yielded themselves. The gates are thrown wide."

"Then the war is over," Phostis blurted. When he realized what he'd said, he repeated it: "The war is over." He wanted to say it again and again; he couldn't imagine four more wonderful words.