The Thousand Cities

III

The fortified town of Shahapivan lay in a valley south of Poskh. Abivard approached it by himself, holding before him a white-painted shield of truce. «What do you want, herald?» a Vaspurakaner called from the walls. «Why should we talk to any Makuraner after what you have done to our people and to our worship of the lord with the great and good mind who made us before all other men?»

«I am not a herald. I am Abivard son of Godarz, brother-in-law to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase. Is that reason enough to talk with me?»

He had the satisfaction of watching the jaw of the fellow who'd spoken to him drop. All the princes close enough to hear stared down at him. They argued in their own language. He'd learned a few Vaspurakaner curses but nothing more. Even if he did not speak the tongue, though, he easily figured out what was going on: some of the warriors believed him, while others thought he was a liar who deserved to have his presumption punished.

Presently a man with a gilded helmet and a great mane of a beard spilling down over his chest leaned out and said in fluent Makuraner, «I am Tatul, nakharar of Shahapivan valley. If you truly care to do the land of the princes a service, man of Makuran, take up your soldiers and go home with them.»

«I do not wish to speak with you, Tatul nakharar» Abivard answered. Several of the Vaspurakaners up on the wall growled like wolves at that. The growls spread as they translated for their comrades who knew only their own tongue. Abivard went on, «Is not the chief priest of Shahapivan also chief priest of all those who worship Phos by your rite?»

«It is so.» Pride rang in Tatul's voice. «So you would have speech with the marvelously holy Hmayeak, would you?

«I would,» Abivard answered. «Let him come to my camp, where I will treat him with every honor and try to compose the differences between us.»

«No,» the nakharar said flatly. «This past spring Vshnasp, who has now gone to the eternal ice, sought to foully murder the marvelously holy Hmayeak, upon whom Phos' light shines with great strength. If you would be illuminated by the good god's light reflected from his shining soul, enter into Shahapivan alone and entirely by yourself. Give yourself over into our hands and perhaps we shall find you worth hearing.»

Tatul's smile was broad and unpleasant Some of the Vaspurakaners on the wall laughed. «I am not Vshnasp,» Abivard said. «I agree.»

«You-agree?» Tatul said as if he'd forgotten what the Makuraner word meant. The princes on the wall of Shahapivan gaped. After a moment Tatul added, «Just like that?»

«I'm sorry,» Abivard said politely. «Must I fill out a form?» When she found out he was going into Shahapivan alone, Roshnani would roast him over a slow fire. She, however, was back at the baggage train, while he was up here in front of the city gate. He dug the knife in a little deeper. «Or are you afraid I'll take Shahapivan all by myself?»

Tatul disappeared from the wall. Abivard wondered whether that meant the nakharar was coming down to admit him or had decided he was witstruck and so not worth the boon of a Vaspurakaner noble's conversation. He had almost decided it was the latter when, with a metallic rasp of seldom used hinges, a postern gate close by the main gate of Shahapivan swung open. There stood Tatul. He beckoned Abivard forward.

The gate was just tall and wide enough to let a single rider through at a time. When Abivard looked up as he passed through the gateway, he saw a couple of Vaspurakaners peering down at him through the iron grid that screened the murder hole. He heard a fire crackling up there. He wondered what the princes kept in the cauldron above it, what they would pour down through the grid onto anyone who broke down the gate. Boiling water? Boiling oil? Red-hot sand? He hoped he wouldn't find out.

«You have spirit, man of Makuran,» Tatul said as Abivard emerged inside Shahapivan. Abivard was wondering what kind of idiot he'd been to come here. Hundreds of hostile Vaspurakaners stared at him, their dark, deep-set eyes seeming to burn We fire. They were quiet, quieter than a like number of Makuraners, far quieter than a like number of Videssians. That did not mean they would not use the weapons they carried or wore on their belts.

A bold front seemed Abivard's only choice. «I am here as I said I would be. Take me now to Hmayeak, your priest.»

«Yes, go to him,» Tatul said «Here, by yourself, you shall not be able to serve him as Vshnasp served so many of our priests: you shall not cut out his tongue to keep him from speaking the truth of the good god, you shall not break his fingers to keep him from writing that truth, you shall not gouge out his eyes to keep him from reading Phos' holy scriptures, you shall not soak his beard with oil and set it alight, saying it gives forth Phos' holy light None of these things shall you do, general of Makuran.»

«Vshnasp did them?» Abivard asked. He did not doubt Tatul; the nakharar's list of outrages sounded too specific for invention. «All-and more,» Tatul answered. A servitor brought him a horse. He swung up into the saddle. «Come now with me.»

Abivard rode with him, looking around curiously as Tatul led him through the narrow, winding streets of Shahapivan. Mashiz, the capital of Makuran, was also a city sprung from the mountains, but it was very different from the Vaspurakaner town. Though of the mountains, Mashiz looked east to the Thousand Cities on the floodplain of the Tutub and the Tib. Its builders worked in timber and in baked and unbaked brick as well as in stone.

Shahapivan, by contrast, might have sprung directly from the gray mountains of Vaspurakan. All the buildings were of stone: soft limestone, easily worked, took the place of mud brick and cheap timber, while marble and granite were for larger, more impressive structures.

The princes had not done much to enliven their town with plaster or paint, either. Even coats of whitewash were rare. The locals seemed content to live in the midst of gray.

They were not gray themselves. Men swaggered in caftans of fuller cut than Makuraners usually wore and dyed in stripes and dots and swirling patterns of bright colors. Their three-pointed tasseled hats looked silly to Abivard, but they made the most of them, shaking and tossing their heads as they talked so that the tassels, like their darting hands, helped punctuate what they said.

Peasant women and merchants' wives crowded the marketplaces, dickering and gossiping. The sun sparkled from their jewelry: polished copper bracelets and gaudy glass beads on those who were not so wealthy, massy silver necklaces or chains strung with Videssian goldpieces on those who were. Their clothes were even more brilliant than those of their menfolk. Instead of the funny-looking hats the men preferred, they wore cloths of linen or cotton or shimmering silk on their heads. They pointed at Abivard and let loose with loud opinions he could not understand but did not think complimentary.

Amid all those fiery reds, sun-bright yellows, vibrant greens, and blues of sky and water, the Vaspurakaner priests stood out by contrast. Unlike Videssian blue-robes, they wore somber black. They did not shave their heads, either, but gathered their hair, whether black or gray or white, into neat buns at the napes of their necks. Some of their beards, like Tatul's, reached all the way down to their waists.

The temples where they served Phos were like those of their Videssian counterparts in that they were topped with gilded globes. Otherwise, though, those temples were very much of a piece with the rest of the buildings of Shahapivan: square, solid structures with only upright rectangular slits for windows, having the look of being made much more for strength and endurance than for beauty and comfort. Abivard noted how many temples there were in this medium-size city. No one could say the Vaspurakaners did not take their misguided faith seriously.

They were in general a sober folk, given to minding their own business. Swarms of Videssians would have followed Tatul and Abivard through the streets. The same might have been true of Makuraners. It was not true here. The Vaspurakaners let their nakharar deal with Abivard.

He had expected Tatul to lead him to the finest temple in Shahapivan. When the nakharar reined in, though, he did so in front of a building that had seen not just better days but better centuries. Only the gilding on its globe seemed to have been replaced at any time within living memory.

Tatul glanced over to Abivard. «This is the temple dedicated to the memory of the holy Kajaj. He was martyred by you Makuraners-chained to a spit and roasted over coals like a boar-for refusing to abjure the holy faith of Phos and Vaspur the Firstborn. We reverence his memory to this day.»

«I did not kill this priest, ' Abivard answered. «If you blame me for that or even if you blame me for what Vshnasp did, you are making a mistake. Would I have come here if I did not want to compose the differences between you princes and Sharbaraz King of Kings?»

«You are a brave man,» Tatul said. «Whether you are a good man, I do not yet know enough to judge. For evil men can be brave. I have seen this. Have you not also?»

«Few men are evil in their own eyes,» Abivard said.

«There you touch another truth,» Tatul said, «but not one I can discuss with you now. Wait here. I shall go within and bring out to you the marvelously holy Hmayeak.»

«I had thought to go with you,» Abivard said.

«With the blood of Vaspurakaner martyrs staining your hands?» Tatul's eyebrows leapt up toward the rim of his helmet. «You would render the temple ritually unclean. We sometimes sacrifice a sheep to the good god: its flesh, burned in fire, gives Phos' holy light. But for that, though, blood and death pollute our shrines.»

«However you would have it.» When Abivard shrugged, his corselet made small rattling and clinking sounds. «I await him here, then.»

Tatul strode into the temple. When he returned shortly afterward, the black-robed priest he brought with him was a surprise. Abivard had looked for a doddering, white-bearded elder. But the marvelously holy Hmayeak was in his vigorous middle years, his thick black beard only lightly threaded with gray. His shoulders would have done a smith credit

He spoke to Tatul in the throaty Vaspurakaner language. The nakharar translated for Abivard: «The holy priest says to tell you he does not speak your tongue. He asks if you would rather I interpret or if you prefer to use Videssian, which he does know.»

«We can speak Videssian if you like,» Abivard said directly to Hmayeak. He suspected that the priest was trying to annoy him by denying knowledge of the Makuraner tongue and declined to give him satisfaction by showing irk.

«Yes, very well. Let us do that.» Hmayeak spoke slowly and deliberately, maybe to help Abivard understand him, maybe because he was none too fluent in Videssian himself. «Phos has taken for his own the holy martyrs you men of Makuran have created.» He sketched the sun-circle that was his sign of piety for the good god, going in the opposite direction from the one a Videssian would have used. «How now will you make amends for your viciousness, your savagery, your brutality?»

«They were not mine. They were not those of Mikhran marzban. They were those of Vshnasp marzban, who is dead.» Abivard was conscious of how much he wasn't saying. The policy of which Hmayeak complained had been Vshnasp's, true, but it also had been-and still was-Sharbaraz'. And Vshnasp was not merely dead but slain by the Vaspurakaners. For Abivard to overlook that was as much as to admit that the marzban had had it coming.

«How will you make amends?» Hmayeak repeated. He sounded cautious; he might not have expected Abivard to yield so much so soon. To him Vaspurakan was not just the center of the universe but the whole universe.

To Abivard it was but one section of a larger mosaic. He answered, «Marvelously holy sir, I cannot bring the dead back to life, neither your people who died for your faith nor Vshnasp marzban.» If you push me too hard, you'll make me remember how Vshnasp died. Could Hmayeak read between the lines?

«Phos has the power to raise the dead,» Hmayeak said in his deliberate Videssian, «but he chooses not to use it, so that we do not come to expect it of him. If Phos does not use this power, how can I expect a mere man to do so?»

«What do you expect of me?» Abivard asked. Hmayeak looked at him from under thick, bushy bristling brows. His gaze was very keen yet almost childlike in its straightforward simplicity. Maybe he deserved to be called marvelously holy; he did not seem half priest, half politician, as so many Videssian prelates did.

«You have come to me,» he replied. «This is brave, true, but it also shows you know your people have done wrong. It is for you to tell me what you will do, for me to say what is enough.»

Almost, Abivard warned him aloud against pushing too hard. But Hmayeak sounded not like a man who was pushing but like one stating what he saw as a truth. Abivard decided to accept that and see what sprang from it «Here is what I will do,» he said. «I will let you worship in your own way so long as you pledge to remain loyal to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase. If you for your priesthood make this pledge and if the nakharars and warriors of Vaspurakan abide by it, the rebellion here shall be as if it had never been.»

«You will seek no reprisals against the leaders of the revolt?» That was not Hmayeak speaking, but Tatul.

«I will not,» Abivard said. «Mikhran marzban will not. But all must go back to being as it was before the revolt. Where you have driven Makuraner garrisons from towns and fortresses, you must let them return.»

«You ask us to put on once more the chains of slavery we have broken,» Tatul protested.

«If it comes to war between Vaspurakan and Makuran, you will lose,» Abivard said bluntly. «You lived contentedly under the arrangement you had before, so why not go back to it?»

«Who will win in a war among Vaspurakan and Makuran-and Videssos?» Tatul shot back. «Maniakes, I hear, is not Genesios-he is not altogether hopeless at war. And Videssos follows Phos, as we do. The Empire might be glad to aid us against your false faith.»

Abivard scowled for a moment before replying. Tatul, unlike Hmayeak, could see beyond the borders of his mountainous native land. If the past offered any standard for judgment, he was liable to be right, too-if Videssos had the strength to act as he hoped. «Before you dream such dreams, Tatul,» Abivard said slowly, «remember how far from Vaspurakan any Videssian soldiers are.»

«Videssos may be far.» Tatul pointed toward the northeast «The Videssian Sea is close.»

That made Abivard scowl again. The Videssian Sea, like all the seas bordering the Empire, had only Videssian ships upon it. If Maniakes wanted badly enough to send an army to Vaspurakan, he could do so without fighting his way across the Makuraner-held westlands.

Hmayeak held up his right hand. The middle finger was stained with ink. The priest said, «Let us have peace. If we are allowed to worship as we please, it is enough. Videssos as our master would try to force what it calls orthodoxy upon us, just as the Makuraners try to make us follow the God and the Prophets Four. You know this, Tatul; it has happened before.»

Grudgingly, the nakharar nodded. But then he said, «It might not happen this time. Maniakes is of the princes' blood, after all.»

«He is not of our creed,» Hmayeak said. «The Videssians could never stomach an Avtokrator who acknowledged Vaspur the Firstborn. If he comes to drive away the men of Makuran, be sure he will be doing it for himself and for Videssos, not for us. Let us have peace.»

Tatul muttered under his breath. Then he rounded on Abivard again. «Will the King of Kings agree to the arrangement you propose?»

If he has a drop of sense in his head or concealed anywhere else about his person. But Abivard could not say that. «If I make the arrangement, he will agree to it,» he said, and hoped he was not lying.

«Let it be as he says,» Hmayeak told Tatul. «Vshnasp excepted, the Makuraners seldom lie, and he has made a good name for himself in the wars against Videssos. I do not think he is deceiving us.» He spoke in Videssian so that Abivard could understand.

«I shall do as I say,» Abivard declared. «May the Prophets Four turn their backs on me and may the God drop me into the Void if I lie.»

«I believe you will do as you say,» Tatul answered. «I do not need the marvelously holy Hmayeak to tell me you are honorable; by your words today you have convinced me. Would Vshnasp have misted himself among us? It is to laugh. No, you have honor, brother-in-law to the King of Kings. But has Sharbaraz honor?»

«He is the King of Kings,» Abivard declared. «He is the font of honor.»

«Phos grant it be so,» Tatul said, and sketched his god's sun-sign above his heart.

Roshnani stood, hands on hips, outside the wagon in which she had traveled so many farsangs through the Videssian westlands and Vaspurakan. Facing her might have been harder than entering Shahapivan. «Husband of mine,» she said sweetly, «you are a fool.»

«Suppose I say something like No doubt you're right, but I got away with it?» Abivard answered. «If I do that, can we take the argument as already over? If I tell you I won't take such chances again-»

«You'll be lying,» Roshnani interrupted. «You've come back, so we can argue. That takes a lot of cattle away from the stampede, if you know what I mean. But if you hadn't come back, we would have had a furious fight, let me tell you that.»

«If I hadn't come back-» Abivard was tired. He got a quarter of the way through that before realizing it made no logical sense.

«Never mind,» Roshnani said. «I gather the Vaspurakaners agreed. If they hadn't, they would have started sending you out in chunks.» When Abivard didn't deny it, his principal wife asked the same question the nakharar Tatul had: «Will Sharbaraz King of Kings agree?» Abivard could be more direct with her than he had been with the Vaspurakaner. «Drop me into the Void if I know,» he said. «If the God is kind, he'll be so happy to hear we've brought the Vaspurakaner revolt under control without getting tied down in endless fighting here that he won't care how we did it If the God isn't kind-» He shrugged.

«May she be so,» Roshnani said. «I shall pray to the lady Shivini to intercede with her and ensure that she will grant your request»

«It will be as it is, and when we find out how that is, we shall deal with it as best we can,» Abivard said, a sentence dismissing all fortune-telling if ever there was one. «Right now I wouldn't mind dealing with a cup of wine.»

Roshnani played along with the joke. «I predict one lies in your future.»

Sure enough, the wine appeared, and the world looked better for it. Roast mutton with parsnips and leeks improved Abivard's attitude, too. Then Varaz asked, «What would you have done if they'd tried to keep you in Shahapivan, Father?»

«What would I have done?» Abivard echoed. «I would have fought, I think. I wouldn't have wanted them to throw me into some cell in the citadel and do what they wanted with me for as long as they wanted. But after that your mother would have been even more upset with me than she really was.»

Varaz thought that through and then nodded without saying anything more; he understood what his father meant. But Gulshahr, who was too young to follow conversations as closely as Varaz could, said, «Why would Mama have been upset, Papa?»

Abivard wanted to speak no words of evil omen, so he answered, «Because I would have done something foolish-like this.» He tickled her ribs till she squealed and kicked her feet and forgot about the question she'd asked.

He drank more wine. One by one the children got sleepy and went off to their cramped little compartments in the wagon. Abivard got sleepy, too. Yawning, he walked with neck bent-to keep from bumping the roof-down to the little curtain-screened chamber he shared with Roshnani. Several carpets and sheepskins on the floor made sleeping soft; when winter came, he and Roshnani would sleep under several of them rather than on top.

There was no need now. Vaspurakan did not get summer heat to match that of Vek Rud domain, where Abivard had grown to manhood. When you stepped out into the sunshine on a hot day there, within moments you felt your eyeballs start to dry out. It was warm here in the valley of Shahapivan, but not so warm as to make you wonder if you had walked into a bake oven by mistake. Abivard would have rolled over and gone to sleep-or even gone to sleep without rolling over first-but Roshnani all but molested him after she pulled the entry curtain shut behind her. Afterward he peered through the darkness at her and said, «Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but what was that in aid of?»

Like his, her voice was a thread of whisper: «Sometimes you can be very stupid. Do you know that I spent this whole day wondering whether I would ever see you again? That is what that was in aid of.»

«Oh.» After a moment Abivard said, «You're giving me the wrong idea, you know. Now, whenever I see a hostile city, I'll have an overpowering urge to go into it and talk things over with whoever is in command»

She poked him in the ribs. «Don't be more absurd than you can help,» she said, her voice sharper than it usually got.

«I obey you as I would obey Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» Abivard said with an extravagant gesture that was wasted in the darkness. He paused again, then added, «As a matter of fact, I'd sooner obey you. You have better sense.»

«I should hope so,» Roshnani said.

Panteles went to one knee before Abivard, one step short of the full prostration the Videssian wizard would have granted to Maniakes. «How may I serve you, most eminent sir?» he asked, his dark eyes eager and curious.

«I have a question I'd like answered by magical means,» Abivard said.

Panteles coughed and brought a hand up to cover his mouth. Like his face, his hands were thin and fine-boned: quick hands, clever hands. «What a surprise!» he exclaimed now. «And here I'd thought you'd summoned me to cook you up a stew of lentils and river fish.»

«One of the reasons I don't summon you more often is that viper you keep in your mouth and call a tongue,» Abivard said. Far from abashing Panteles, that made him preen like a peacock. Abivard sighed. Videssians were sometimes sadly deficient in notions of servility and subordination. «I presume you can answer such a question.»

«Oh, I can assuredly answer it, most eminent sir,» Panteles replied. He didn't lack confidence: Abivard sometimes thought that if Videssians were half as smart as they thought they were, they would rule the whole world, not just the Empire. «Whether knowing the answer will do you any good is another question altogether.»

«Yes, I've started to see that prophecy is about as much trouble as it's worth,» Abivard said «I'm not asking for divination, only for a clue. Will Sharbaraz King of Kings approve of the arrangement I've made here in Vaspurakan?»

«I can tell you this,» Panteles said. By the way he flicked an imaginary speck of lint from the sleeve of his robe, he'd expected something more difficult and complicated. But then he leaned forward like a hunting dog taking a scent «Why do you not ask your own mages for this service, rather than me?»

«Because news that I've put the question is less likely to get from you to Sharbaraz than it would be from a Makuraner wizard,» Abivard answered.

«Ah.» Panteles nodded. «Like the Avtokrator, the King of Kings is sensitive when magic is aimed his way, is he? I can understand that»

«Aye.» Abivard stopped there. He thought of Tzikas, who had tried to slay Maniakes by sorcery and had been lucky enough to escape after his attempt had failed. Sovereigns had good and cogent reasons for wanting magicians to leave them alone.

«A simple yes or no will suffice?» Panteles asked. Without waiting for an answer, he got out his paraphernalia and set to work. Among the magical materials was a pair of the round Vaspurakaner pastries covered with powdered sugar.

Pointing to them, Abivard said, «You need princes' balls to work your spell?»

«They are a symbol of Vaspurakan, are they not?» Panteles said. Then he let out a distinctly unsorcerous snort. He cut one of the pastries in half, setting each piece in a separate bowl. Then he poured pale Vaspurakaner wine over the two halves.

That done, he cut the other pastry in half. Those halves he set on the table, close by the two bowls. He tapped the rim of one bowl and said, «You will see a reaction here, most eminent sir, if the King of Kings is likely to favor the arrangement you have made.»

«And I'll see one in the other bowl if he opposes?» Abivard asked.

Panteles nodded. Abivard found another question: «What sort of reaction?»

«Without actually employing the cantrip, most eminent sir, I cannot say, for that will vary depending on a number of factors: the strength of the subject's feelings, the precise nature of the question, and so on.»

«That makes sense, I suppose,» Abivard said. «Let's see what happens.»

With another nod Panteles began to chant in a language that after a moment Abivard recognized as Videssian, but of so archaic a mode that he could understand no more than every other word. The wizard made swift passes with his right hand, first over the bowl where Sharbaraz' approval would be indicated. Nothing happened there. Abivard sighed. He hadn't really expected the King of Kings to be happy about his plan. But how unhappy would Sharbaraz be?

Panteles shifted his attention to the princes' ball soaking in the other bowl. Almost at once the white wine turned the color of blood. The wizard's eyebrows-so carefully arched, Abivard wondered if he plucked them-flew upward, but he continued his incantation. The suddenly red wine began to bubble and steam. Smoke started rising from the Vaspurakaner pastry in the bowl with it.

And then, for good measure, the other half of that princes' ball, the one not soaked in wine, burst into flame there on the table. With a startled oath Panteles snatched up the jar of Vaspurakaner wine and poured what was left in it over the pastry. For a moment Abivard wondered if the princes' ball would keep burning anyhow, as the fire some Videssian dromons threw would continue to burn even when floating on the sea. To his relief, the flaming confection suffered itself to be extinguished.

«I believe,» Panteles said with the ostentatious calm that masks a spirit shaken to the core, «I believe, as I say, Sharbaraz has heard ideas he's liked better.»

«Really?» Abivard deliberately made his eyes go big and round. «I never would have guessed.»

The messenger shook his head. «No, lord,» he repeated. «So far as I know, the Videssians have not gone over the strait to Across.»

Abivard kicked at the dirt in front of his wagon. He wanted Maniakes to do nice, simple, obvious things. If the Avtokrator of the Videssians had moved to reoccupy the suburb just on the far side of the Cattle Crossing, Abivard would have had no trouble figuring out what he was up to or why. As things were- «Well, what have the Videssians done?»

«Next to nothing, lord,» the messenger answered. «I have seen as much-or, rather, as little-with my own eyes. Their warships remain ever on patrol. We have had reports they are fighting the barbarians to the north again, but we do not know that for a fact. They seem to be gathering ships at the capital, but it's getting late in the year for them to set out on a full-scale campaign.»

«That's so,» Abivard agreed. Before too long, storms would make the seas deadly dangerous and the fall rains would turn the roads into muck through which one couldn't move swiftly and sometimes couldn't move at all. Nobody in his right mind, or even out of it, wanted to get stuck in that kind of mess. And after the fall rains came snow and then another round of rain… He thought for a while. «Do you suppose Maniakes aims to wait till the rains start and then take back Across, knowing we'll have trouble moving against him?»

«Begging your pardon, lord, but I couldn't even begin to guess,» the messenger said.

«You're right, of course,» Abivard said. The messenger was a young man who knew what his commander had told him and what he'd seen with his own eyes. Expecting him to have any great insights into upcoming Videssian strategy was asking too much.

More dust flew up as Abivard kicked again. If he pulled out of Vaspurakan now, the settlement he'd almost cobbled together here would fall apart. It was liable to fall apart anyhow; the Vaspurakaners, while convinced of his good faith, still didn't trust Mikhran, who had served under the hated Vshnasp and who formally remained their governor. Abivard could make them believe he'd go against Sharbaraz' will; Mikhran couldn't.

«Is there anything else, lord?» the messenger asked.

«No, not unless you-» Abivard stopped. «I take that back. How was your journey across the westlands? Did you have any trouble with Videssians trying to make sure you never got here?»

«No, lord, nothing of the sort,» the messenger answered. «I had a harder time prying remounts out of some of our stables than I did with any of the Videssians. In fact, there was this one girl-» He hesitated. «But you don't want to hear about that.»

«Oh, I might, over a mug of wine in a tavern,» Abivard said. «This isn't the time or the place for such stories, though; you're right about that. Speaking of wine, have yourself a mug or two, then go tell the cook to feed you till you can't eat any more.»

He stared thoughtfully at the messenger's back as the youngster headed off to refresh himself. If the Videssians weren't doing more to harass lone Makuraners traveling through their territory, they didn't think Maniakes had any plans for this year. Maybe that was a good sign.

Rain pattered down on the cloth roof of the wagon. Abivard reminded himself to tell his children not to poke a forefinger up there against the fabric so that water would go through and run down it. He reminded them of that at the start of every rainy season and generally had to punctuate the reminders with swats on the backside till they got the message.

The rain wasn't hard yet, as it would be soon. So far it was just laying the dust, not turning everything into a quagmire. Probably it would ease up by noon, and they might have a couple of days of sun afterward, perhaps even a couple of days of summerlike heat.

From outside the wagon, Pashang the driver called out to Abivard: «Lord, here comes a Vaspurakaner; looks like he's looking for you.» After a moment he added, «I wouldn't want him looking for me.»

No one had ever accused Pashang of being a hero. All the same, Abivard belted on his sword before peering out. As raindrops splashed his face, he wished the pilos he was wearing had a brim.

He quickly discovered that donning the sword had been a useless gesture. The Vaspurakaner was mounted on an armored horse and wore full armor. He'd greased it with tallow; water beaded on his helmet and corselet but did not reach the iron.

«I greet you, Gazrik son of Bardzrabol,» Abivard said mildly. «Do you come in search of me armed head to foot?»

«Not in search of you, brother-in-law to the King of Kings.» Gazrik shook his head. Water sprayed out of his beard. «You treated me with honor, there when I bade you turn aside from Vaspurakan. You did not heed me, but you did not scorn me, either. One of your marshals, though, called me dog. I hoped to find him on the field when our force fought yours, but Phos did not grant me that favor. And so I have come now to seek him out»

«We were enemies then,» Abivard reminded him. «Now there is truce between Makuran and Vaspurakan. I want that truce to grow stronger and deeper, not to see it broken.»

Gazrik raised a thick, bushy eyebrow. «You misunderstand me, Abivard son of Godarz. This is not a matter of Vaspurakan and Makuran; this is a matter of man and man. Did a nakharar show me like insult, I would seek him out as well. Is it not the same among you? Or does a noble of Makuran suffer his neighbor to make his name into a thing of reproach?»

Abivard sighed. Gazrik was making matters as difficult as he could, no doubt on purpose. The Vaspurakaner knew whereof he spoke, too. Makuraner nobles were a proud and touchy lot, and the men of one domain often fought those of the next on account of some slight, real or imagined.

«Give me the name of the lout who styled me insolent dog,» Gazrik said.

«Romezan son of Bizhan is a noble of the Seven Clans of Makuran,» Abivard answered, as if to a backward child. By blood, Romezan was more noble than Abivard, who was but of the dihqan class, the minor nobility… but who was Sharbaraz' brother-in-law and marshal.

In any case, the distinction was lost on Gazrik, who judged by different standards. «No man not a prince of Vaspurakan can truly be reckoned of noble blood,» he declared; like Abivard, he was explaining something so obvious to him, it hardly needed explanation. He went on, «Regardless, I care nothing for what blood he bears, for I purpose spilling it. Where in this camp of yours can I find him?»

«You are alone here,» Abivard reminded him.

Gazrik's eyebrows twitched again. «And so? Would you keep a hound from the track? Would you keep a bear from the honey tree? Would you keep an insulted man from vengeance? Vshnasp excepted, you Makuraners are reputed to have honor; you yourself have shown as much. Would you throw that good name away?»

What Abivard would have done was throw Gazrik out of the encampment That, though, looked likely to cause more problems than it solved. «You will not attack Romezan without warning?»

«I am a man of honor, brother-in-law to the King of Kings,» Gazrik said with considerable dignity. «I wish to arrange a time and place where the two of us can meet to compose our differences.»

By composing their differences, he meant that one of them would start decomposing. Makuraner nobles were known to settle disputes in that fashion, although a mere dihqan would rarely presume to challenge a man of the Seven Clans. By Gazrik's bearing, though, he reckoned all non-Vaspurakaners beneath him and was honoring Romezan by condescending to notice himself insulted.

Abivard pointed to a sprawling silk pavilion a couple of furlongs away. Peroz King of Kings might have taken a fancier one into the field when he went over the Degird on his ill-fated expedition against the Khamorth, but not by much-and Romezan, however high his blood, was not King of Kings. «He dwells there.»

Gazrik's head turned toward the pavilion. «It is very fine,» he said. «I have no doubt some other man of your army will draw enjoyment from it once Romezan needs it no more.»

He bowed in the saddle to Abivard, then rode off toward Romezan's tent. Abivard waited uneasily for shouts and screams to break out, as might have happened had Gazrik lied about going simply to deliver a challenge. But evidently Gazrik had spoken the truth. And if Romezan acknowledged him as noble enough to fight, the man of the Seven Clans would grant his foe every courtesy-until the appointed hour came, at which point he would do his considerable best to kill him.

Abivard wished kingdoms and empires could settle their affairs so economically.

It was a patch of dirt a furlong in length and a few yards wide: an utterly ordinary patch of ground, one occasionally walked across by a Vaspurakaner or even a Makuraner but not one to have had itself recorded in the memories of men, not till today.

From now on, though, minstrels would sing of this rather muddy patch of ground. Whether the minstrels who composed the boldest, most spirited songs would wear pilos or three-crowned caps would be determined today.

Warriors from Makuran and Vaspurakan crowded around the long, narrow strip of ground, jostling one another and glaring suspiciously when they heard men close by speaking the wrong language, whichever that happened to be. Sometimes the glares and growls persisted; sometimes they dissolved in the excitement of laying bets.

Abivard stood in the middle of the agreed-upon dueling ground. When he motioned Romezan and Gazrik toward him from the opposite ends of the field, the throng of spectators fell into expectant silence. The noble of the Seven Clans and the Vaspurakaner nakharar slowly approached, each on his armored steed. Both men were armored, too. In their head-to-toe suits of mail and lamellar armor, they were distinguishable from each other only by their surcoats and by the red lion painted on Romezan's small, round shield. The Makuraner's chain mail veil hid the waxed spikes of his mustache, while Gazrik's veil came down over his formidable beard.

«You are both agreed combat is the only way you can resolve the differences between you?» Abivard asked. With faint raspings of metal, two heads bobbed up and down. Abivard persisted: «Will you not be satisfied with first blood here today?»

Now, with more rasping noises, both heads moved from side to side. «A fight has no meaning, be it not to the death,» Romezan declared.

«In this, if in no other opinion, I agree with my opponent,» Gazrik said.

Abivard sighed. Both men were too stubborn for their own good. Each saw it in the other, not in himself. Loudly, Abivard proclaimed, «This is a fight between two men, each angry at the other, not between Makuran and Vaspurakan. Whatever happens here shall have no effect on the truce now continuing between the two lands. Is it agreed?»

He pitched that question not to Romezan and Gazrik but to the crowd of spectators, a crowd that could become a brawl at any minute. The warriors nodded in solemn agreement. How well they would keep the agreement when one of their champions lay dead remained to be seen.

«May the God grant victory to the right,» Abivard said. «No, Phos and Vaspur the Firstborn, who watches over his children, the princes of Vaspurakan,» Gazrik said, sketching his deity's sun-circle above his left breast with a gauntleted hand. Many of the Vaspurakaners among the spectators imitated his gesture. Many of the Makuraners responded with a gesture of their own to turn aside any malefic influence.

«Ride back to your own ends of the field here,» Abivard said, full of misgivings but unable to stop a fight both participants wanted so much. «When I signal, have at each other. I tell you this: in spite of what you have said, you may give over at any time, with no loss of honor involved.» Romezan and Gazrik nodded. The nods did not say, We understand and agree. They said, Shut up, get out of the way, and let us fight.

Romezan, Abivard judged, had a better horse than did Gazrik, who was mounted on a sturdy but otherwise unimpressive gelding of Vaspurakaner stock. Other than that, he couldn't find a copper's worth of difference between the two men. He knew how good a warrior Romezan was; he did not know Gazrik, but the Vaspurakaner gave every impression of being able to handle himself. Abivard raised his hand. Both men leaned forward in the saddle, couching their lances. He let his hand fall. Because their horses wore ironmongery like their own, neither Romezan nor Gazrik wore spurs. They used reins, voice, their knees, and an occasional boot in the ribs to get their beasts to do as they required. The horses were well trained. They thundered toward each other, dirt fountaining up under their hooves.

Each rider brought up his shield to protect his left breast and most of his face. Crash! Both lances struck home. Romezan and Gazrik flew over their horses' tails as the crowd shouted at the clever blows. The horses galloped down to the far ends of the field. Each man's retainers caught the other's beast.

Gazrik and Romezan got slowly to their feet. They moved hesitantly, as if half-drunk; the falls they'd taken had left them stunned. In the shock of collision Gazrik's lance had shivered. He threw aside the stub and drew his long, straight sword. Romezan's lance was still intact. He thrust at Gazrik: he had a great advantage in reach now.

Clang! Gazrik chopped at the shaft of the lance below the head, hoping to cut off that head as if it belonged to a convicted robber. But the lance had a strip of iron bolted to the wood to thwart any such blow.

Poke, poke. Like a cat toying with a mouse, Romezan forced Gazrik down the cleared strip where they fought, not giving him the chance to strike a telling blow of his own-until, with a loud cry, the Vaspurakaner used his shield to beat aside the questing lance head and rushed at his foe.

Romezan could not backpedal as fast as Gazrik bore down on him. He whacked Gazrik in the ribs with the shaft of the lance, trying to knock his foe off balance. That was a mistake. Gazrik chopped at the shaft again and this time hit it below the protective strip of iron. The shaft splintered. Cursing, Romezan threw it down and yanked out his sword.

All at once both men seemed tentative. They were used to fighting with swords from horseback, not afoot like a couple of infantrymen. Instead of going at each other full force, they would trade strokes, each draw back a step as if to gauge the other's strength and speed, and then approach for another short clash.

«Fight!» somebody yelled from the crowd, and in an instant a hundred throats were baying the word.

Romezan was the one who pressed the attack. Gazrik seemed content to defend himself and wait for a mistake. Abivard thought Romezan fought the same way he led his men: straight ahead, more than bravely enough, and with utter disregard for anything but what lay before him. Tzikas had used flank attacks to maul bis troopers a couple of times.

Facing only one enemy, Romezan did not need to worry about an attack from the side. Iron belled on iron as he hacked away at Gazrik. Sparks flew as they did when a smith sharpened a sword on a grinding wheel. And then, with a sharp snap, Gazrik's blade broke in two.

Romezan brought up bis own sword for the killing stroke. Gazrik, who had self-possession to spare, threw the stub and hilt of his ruined weapon at the Makuraner's head. Then he sprang at Romezan, both hands grabbing for his right wrist

Romezan tried to kick his feet out from under him and did, but Gazrik dragged him down, too. They fell together, and their armor clattered about them. Gazrik pulled out a dagger and stabbed at Romezan, trying to slip the point between the lamellae of his corselet. Abivard thought he'd succeeded, but Romezan did not cry out and kept fighting.

Gazrik had let go of Romezan's sword arm to free his own knife. Romezan had no room to swing the sword or cut with it. He used it instead as a knuckle-duster, smashing Gazrik in the face with the jeweled and weighted pommel. The Vaspurakaner groaned, and so did his countrymen.

Romezan hit him again. Now Gazrik wailed. Romezan managed to reverse the blade and thrust it home point first, just above the chain mail veiling that warded most but not all of Gazrik's face. Gazrik's body convulsed, and his feet drummed against the dirt. Then he lay still.

Very slowly, into vast silence, Romezan struggled to his feet. He took off his helmet. His face was bloody. He bowed to Gazrik's corpse, then to the grim-featured Vaspurakaners in the crowd. «That was a brave man,» he said, first in his own language, then in theirs.

Abivard hoped that would keep the Vaspurakaners in the crowd calm. No swords came out, but a man said, «If you call him brave now, why did you name him a dog before?»

Before Romezan answered, he shed his gauntlets. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, mixing sweat and grime and blood but not doing much more. At last he said, «For the same reason any man insults his foe during war. What have you princes called us? But when the war was over, I was willing to let it rest. Gazrik came seeking me; I did not go looking for him.»

Though you certainly did on the battlefield, and though you were glad to fight him when he came to you, Abivard thought. But Romezan had given as good an answer as he could. Abivard said, «The general of Makuran is right. The war is over. Let us remember that, and let this be the last blood shed between us.»

Along with his countrymen, he waited to see if that would be reply enough or if the Vaspurakaners, in spite of his words and Romezan's, would make blood pay for blood. He kept his own hand away from the hilt of his sword but was ready to snatch it out in an instant.

For a few heartbeats the issue hung in the balance. Then, from the back of the crowd, a few Vaspurakaners turned and trudged back toward the frowning gray walls of Shahapivan, their heads down, their shoulders bent, the very picture of dejection. Had Abivard had any idea who they were, he would have paid them a handsome sum of silver arkets or even of Videssian goldpieces. Peaceful, disappointed withdrawal gave their countrymen both the excuse and the impetus to leave the site of the duel without trying to amend the result.

Abivard permitted himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. Things could hardly have gone better: Not only had Romezan beaten his challenger, he'd managed to do it in a way that didn't reignite the princes' rebellion.

He walked up to his general. «Well, my great boar of Makuran, we got by with it.»

«Aye, so we did,» Romezan answered, «and I stretched the dog dead in the dirt, as he deserved.» He laughed at Abivard's flabbergasted expression. «Oh, I spoke him fair for his own folks, lord. I'm no fool: I know what needed doing. But a dog he was, and a dead dog he is, and I enjoyed every moment of killing him.» Just for a moment his facade of bravado cracked, for he added, «Except for a couple of spots where I thought he was going to kill me.»

«How did you live, there when he was stabbing at you through your suit?» Abivard asked. «I thought he pierced it a couple of times, but you kept on.»

Romezan laughed. «Aye, I did, and do you know why? Under it I wore an iron heart guard, the kind foot soldiers put on when they can't afford any other armor. You never know, thought I, when such will come in handy, and by the God I was right. So he didn't kill me, and I did kill him, and that's all that matters.»

«Spoken like a warrior,» Abivard said. Romezan, as best he could tell, had no great quantity of wit, but sometimes, as now, the willingness to take extra pains and a large helping of straightforward courage sufficed.

Fall drew on. Abivard thought hard about moving back into the Videssian westlands before the rains finished turning the roads to mud but in the end decided to hold his mobile force in Vaspurakan. If the princes broke their fragile accord with Makuran, he didn't want to give them the winter in which to consolidate themselves.

Also weighting his judgment was how quiet Maniakes had been. Instead of plunging ahead regardless of whether he had the strength to plunge, as he had before, the Videssian Avtokrator was playing a cautious game. In a way that worried Abivard, for he wasn't sure what Maniakes was up to. In another way, though, it relieved him: even if he kept the mobile force here in Vaspurakan, he could be fairly sure the Avtokrator would not leap upon the westlands.

Keeping the mobile force in Vaspurakan also let him present to Sharbaraz the settlement he'd made with the princes as a reconquest and occupation of their land. He made full use of that aspect of the situation when at last he wrote a letter explaining to the King of Kings all he'd done. If one didn't read that letter with the greatest of care, one would never notice that the Vaspurakaners still worshiped at their old temples to Phos and that Abivard had agreed not to try to keep them from doing so.

«The King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, is a very busy man,» he said when he gave the carefully crafted letter to Mikhran marzban for his signature. «With any luck at all, he'll skim through this without even noticing the fine points of the arrangement.» He hoped that was true, considering what Panteles had told him about how Sharbaraz was likely to react if he did notice. He didn't mention that to the marzban.

«It would be fine, wouldn't it?» Mikhran said, scrawling his name below Abivard's. «It would be very fine indeed, and I think you have a chance of pulling it off.»

«Whatever he does, he'll have to do it quickly,» Abivard said. «This letter should reach him before the roads get too gloppy to carry traffic, but not long before. He'll need to hurry if he's going to give any kind of response before winter or maybe even before spring. I'm hoping that by the time he gets around to answering me, so many other things will have happened that he'll have forgotten all about my letter.»

«That would be fine,» Mikhran repeated. «In fact, maybe you should even arrange for your messenger to take so long that he gets stuck in the mud and makes your letter later still.»

«I thought about that,» Abivard said. «I've decided I dare not take the risk. I don't know who else has written to the King of Kings and what he or they may have said, but I have to think some of my officers will have complained about the settlement we've made. Sharbaraz needs to have our side of it before him, or he's liable to condemn us out of hand.»

The marzban considered that, then reluctantly nodded. «I suppose you're right, lord, but I fear this letter will be enough to convict us of disobedience by itself. The Vaspurakaners are not worshiping the God.»

«They aren't assassinating marzbans and waylaying soldiers, either,» Abivard returned. «Sharbaraz will have to decide which carries the greater weight.»

There the matter rested. Once the letter was properly signed and sealed, a courier rode off to the west with it. It would pass through the western regions of Vaspurakan and the Thousand Cities before it came to Mashiz-and to Sharbaraz' notice. As far as Abivard could see, he was obviously doing the right thing. But Panteles' magic made him doubt the King of Kings would agree.

Several days after the letter left his hands he wished he had it back again so he could change it-or so he could change his mind and not send it at all. He even started to summon Panteles to try to blank the parchment by sorcery from far away but ended up refraining. If Sharbaraz got a letter with no words from him, he'd wonder why and would keep digging till he found out. Better to give, him something tangible on which to center his anger.

Abivard slowly concluded that he would have to give Tzikas something tangible, too. The Videssian turncoat had fought very well in Vaspurakan; how in justice could Abivard deny him a command commensurate with his talent? The plain truth was, he couldn't.

«But oh, how I wish I could,» he told Roshnani one morning before a meeting with Tzikas he'd tried but failed to avoid. «He's so-polite.» He made a gesture redolent of distaste.

«Sometimes all you can do is make the best of things,» Roshnani said. She spoke manifest truth, but that did not make Abivard feel any better about the way Tzikas smiled.

Tzikas bowed low when Abivard approached his pavilion. «I greet you, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase. May he and his kingdom both prosper.»

«I greet you, eminent sir,» Abivard answered in Videssian far more ragged than it had been a few months before. Don't use a language and you will forget it, he'd discovered.

Tzikas responded in Makuraner, whether just for politeness' sake or to emphasize how much he was himself a man of Makuran, Abivard couldn't guess. Probably both, he thought, and wondered whether Tzikas himself knew the proportions of the mix. «Brother-in-law to the King of Kings, have I in some way made myself odious to you? Tell me what my sin is and I shall expiate it, if that be in my power. If not, I can do no more than beg forgiveness.»

«You have done nothing to offend me, eminent sir.» Abivard stubbornly stuck to Videssian. His motives were mixed, too: not only did he need the practice, but by using the language of the Empire he reminded Tzikas that he remained an outsider no matter what services he'd rendered to Makuran.

The Videssian general caught that signal: Tzikas was sometimes so subtle, he imagined signals that weren't there, but not today. He hesitated, then said, «Brother-in-law to the King of Kings, would I make myself more acceptable in your eyes if I cast off the worship of Phos and publicly accepted the God and the Prophets Four?»

Abivard stared at him. «You would do such a thing?»

«I would,» Tzikas answered. «I have put Videssos behind me; I have wiped her dust from the soles of my sandals.» As if to emphasize his words, he scraped first one foot and then the other against the soil of Vaspurakan. «I shall also turn aside from Phos; the lord with the great and good mind has proved himself no match for the power of the God.»

«You are a-» Abivard had to hunt for the word he wanted but found it-"a flexible man, eminent sir.» He didn't altogether mean it as a compliment; Tzikas' flexibility, his willingness to adhere to any cause that looked advantageous, was what worried Abivard most about him.

But the Videssian renegade nodded. «I am,» he declared. «How could I not be when unswerving loyalty to Videssos did not win me the rewards I had earned?»

What Tzikas had was unswerving loyalty to Tzikas. But if that could be transmuted into unswerving loyalty to Makuran… it would be a miracle worthy of Fraortish eldest of all. Abivard chided himself for letting the nearly blasphemous thought cross his mind. Tzikas was a tool, like a sharp knife, and, like a sharp knife, he would cut your hand if you weren't careful.

Abivard had no trouble seeing that much. What lay beyond it was harder to calculate. One thing did seem likely, though: «Having accepted the God, you dare not let the Videssians lay hands on you again. What do they do to those who leave their faith?»

«Nothing pretty, I assure you,» Tzikas answered, «but no worse than what they'd do to a man who tried to slay the Avtokrator but failed.»

«Mm, there is that,» Abivard said. «Very well, eminent sir. If you accept the God, we shall make of that what we can.»

He did not promise Tzikas his regiment. He waited for the renegade to beg for it or demand it or try to wheedle it out of him, all ploys Tzikas had tried before. But Tzikas, for once, did not push. He answered only, «As you say, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, Videssos shall reject me as I have rejected her. And so I accept the God in the hope that Makuran will accept me in return.» He bowed and ducked back inside his pavilion.

Abivard stared thoughtfully after him. Tzikas had to know that, no matter how fervently and publicly he worshiped the God, the grandees of Makuran would never stop looking on him as a foreigner. They might one day come to look on him as a foreigner who made a powerful ally, perhaps even as a foreigner to whom one might be wise to marry a daughter. From Tzikas' point of view that would probably constitute acceptance.

Sharbaraz already thought well of Tzikas because of his support for the latest «Hosios Avtokrator.» Add the support of the King of Kings to the turncoat's religious conversion and he might even win a daughter of a noble of the Seven Clans as a principal wife. Abivard chuckled. Infusing some Videssian slyness into those bloodlines would undoubtedly improve the stock. As a man who knew a good deal about breeding horses, he approved.

Roshnani laughed when he told her the conceit later that day, but she did not try to convince him he was wrong.

The first blizzard roared into Vaspurakan from out of the norm-west without warning. One day the air still smelled sweet with memories of fruit just plucked from trees and vines; the next, the sky turned yellow-gray, the wind howled, and snow poured down. Abivard had thought he knew everything about winter worth knowing, but that sudden onslaught reminded him that he'd never gone through a hard season in mountain country.

«Oh, aye, we lose men, women, families, flocks to avalanches every year,» Tatul said when he asked. «The snow gets too thick on the hillsides, and down it comes.»

«Can't you do anything to stop that?» Abivard inquired.

The Vaspurakaner shrugged, as Abivard might have had he been asked what he could do about Vek Rud domain's summer heat «We might pray for less snow,» Tatul answered, «but if the lord with the great and good mind chooses to answer that prayer, the rivers will run low the next spring, and crops well away from them will fail for lack of water.»

«Nothing is ever simple,» Abivard murmured, as much to himself as to the nakharar. Tatul nodded; he took the notion for granted.

Abivard made sure all his men had adequate shelter against the cold. He wished he could imitate a bear and curl up in a cave till spring came. It would have made life easier and more pleasant. As things were, though, he remained busy through the winter. Part of that was routine: he drilled the soldiers when weather permitted and staged inspections of their quarters and their horses' stalls when it did not

And part was anything but routine. Several of his warriors- most of them light cavalry with no family connections, but one a second son of a dihqan-fell so deep in love with Vaspurakaner women that nothing less than marriage would satisfy them. Each of those cases required complicated dickering between the servants of the God and the Vaspurakaner priests of Phos to determine which holy men would perform the marriage ceremony.

Some of the soldiers were satisfied with much less than marriage. A fair number of Vaspurakaner women brought claims of rape against his men. Those were hard for him to decide, as they so often came down to conflicting claims about what had really happened. Some of his troopers said the women had consented and were now changing their minds; others denied association of any sort with them.

In the end he dismissed about half the cases. In the other half he sent the women back to their homes with silver-more if their attackers had gotten them with child-and put stripes on the backs of the men who, he was convinced, had violated them.

The nakharar Tatul came out from the frowning walls of Shahapivan to watch one of the rapists take his strokes. Encountering Abivard there for the same reason, he bowed and said, «You administer honest justice, brother-in-law to the King of Kings. After Vshnasp's wicked tenure here, this is something we princes note with wonder and joy.»

Craack! The lash scored the back of the miscreant. He howled. No doubt about his guilt: he'd choked his victim and left her for dead, but she had not died. Abivard said, «It's a filthy crime. My sister, principal wife to the King of Kings, would not let me look her in the face if I ignored it.» Craack!

Tatul bowed again. «Your sister is a great lady.»

«That she is.» Abivard said no more than that. He did not tell Tatul how Denak had let herself be ravished by one of Sharbaraz' guards when the usurper Smerdis had imprisoned the rightful King of Kings in Nalgis Crag stronghold, thereby becoming able to pass messages to and from the prisoner and greatly aiding in his eventual escape. His sister would have had special reason to spurn him had he gone soft here. Craack!

After a hundred lashes the prisoner was cut down from the frame. He screamed one last time when a healer splashed warm salt water on his wrecked back to check the bleeding and make the flesh knit faster.

Once all the Vaspurakaner witnesses were gone and the punished rapist had been dragged off to recover from his whipping, Farrokh-Zad came up to Abivard. Unlike Tatul, Kardarigan's fiery young subordinate did not approve of the sentence Abivard had handed down. «There's a good man who won't be of any use in a fight for months, lord,» he grumbled. «Sporting with a foreign slut isn't anything big enough to have stripes laid across your back on account of it.»

«I think it is,» Abivard answered. «If the Vaspurakaners came to your domain in Makuran and one of their troopers forced your sister's legs apart, what would you want done to him?»

«I'd cut his throat myself,» Farrokh-Zad answered promptly.

«Well, then,» Abivard said.

But Farrokh-Zad didn't see it even after Abivard spelled it out in letters of fire a foot in front of his nose. As far as Farrokh-Zad was concerned, anyone who wasn't a Makuraner deserved no consideration; whatever happened, happened, and that was all there was to it. The time Abivard had spent in Videssos and Vaspurakan had convinced him that foreigners, despite differences of language and faith, were at bottom far closer to the folk of Makuran than he'd imagined before he had left Vek Rud domain. Plainly, though, not all his countrymen had drawn the same lesson.

Maybe that gloomy thought was what brought on the next spell of gloomy weather. However that was, a new blizzard howled in the next afternoon. Had Abivard scheduled the rapist's chastisement for that day, the fellow might have frozen to death while taking his lashes. Abivard wouldn't have missed him a bit.

With storms like that, you could only stay inside whatever shelter you had, try to keep warm-or not too cold-and wait till the sun came out again. Even then, you wouldn't be comfortable, but at least you could emerge from your lair and move about in a world gone white.

The fall and spring rains stopped all traffic on the roads for weeks at a time. While it was raining, a road was just a stretch of mud that ran in a straight line. You could move about in winter provided that you had the sense to find a house or a caravansaray while the blizzard raged.

During a lull a courier rode into Shahapivan valley from out of the west. He found Abivard's wagon and announced himself, saying, «I bring a dispatch from Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.» He held out a message tube stamped with the lion of Makuran.

Abivard took it with something less than enthusiasm. After undoing the stopper, he drew out the rolled parchment inside and used his thumbnail to break the red wax seal, also impressed with a lion from Sharbaraz' signet, that held the letter closed. Then, having no better choice, he opened it and began to read.

He skipped quickly through the grandiloquent titles with which the King of Kings bedizened the document: he was after meat. He also skipped over several lines' worth of reproaches; he'd heard plenty of those already. At last he came to the sentence giving him his orders: «You are to come before us at once in Mashiz to explain and suffer the consequences for your deliberate defiance of our will in Vaspurakan.» He sighed. He'd feared as much.