The Thousand Cities

IX

«Lord,» the messenger said with a bow as he presented the message tube, «I bring you a letter from Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase.»

«Thank you,» Abivard lied, taking the tube. As he opened it, he reflected on what he'd said to Roshnani a few days before. When you were more worried about what your own sovereign would do to hamstring your campaign than you were about the enemy, things weren't going as you had hoped when you'd embarked on that campaign.

He broke the seal, unrolled the parchment, and began to read. The familiar characters and turns of phrase of his own language were a pleasant relief after struggling through the Videssian intricacies of the dispatch from Maniakes he'd intercepted before it could get to Sharbaraz.

He waded through the list of Sharbaraz' titles and pretensions with amused resignation. With every letter, the list got longer and the pretensions more pretentious. He wondered when the King of Kings would simply declare he was the God come down to earth and let it go at that. It would save parchment, if nothing else.

After the bombast Sharbaraz got down to the meat: «Know that we are displeased you have presumed to summon our good and loyal servant Romezan from his appointed duties so that he might serve under you in the campaign against the usurper Maniakes. Know further that we have sent under our seal orders to Romezan, commanding him in no way to heed your summons but to continue on the duties upon which he had been engaged prior to your illegal, rash, and foolish communication.»

«Is there a reply, lord?» the messenger asked when Abivard looked up from the parchment.

«Hmm? Oh.» Abivard shook his head. «Not yet, anyhow. I have the feeling Sharbaraz King of Kings has a good deal more to say to me than I can answer right at this moment.»

He read on. The next chunk of the letter complained about his failure to drive the Videssians out of the land of the Thousand Cities and keep them from ravaging the floodplain between the Tutub and the Tib. He wished he were in a building of brick or sturdy stone, not a tent. That would have let him pound his head against a wall. Sharbaraz didn't care for what was going on now but didn't want him to do anything about it, either. Lovely, he thought. No matter what I do, I end up getting blamed. He'd seen that before, too, more times than he cared to remember.

«Know also,» Sharbaraz wrote, «that we are informed you not only let the general Tzikas fall into the hands of the foe but also connived at, aided, and abetted his capture. We deem this an act both wretched and contemptible and one for which only a single justification and extenuation may be claimed: which is to say, your success against the Videssians without Tzikas where you failed with him. Absent such success during this campaigning season, you shall be judged most harshly for your base act of betrayal.»

Abivard let out a sour laugh there. He was being blamed for betraying Tzikas, oh yes, but had Tzikas ever been blamed betraying him? On the contrary-Tzikas had found nothing but favor with the King of Kings. And Sharbaraz had ordered him to go out and win victories or face the consequences, all without releasing Romezan's men, who might have made such victory possible.

«Have you a reply, lord?» the messenger asked again. The one that came to mind was scatological. Abivard suppressed it. With Maniakes in the field against him, he had no time for fueling a feud with the King of Kings, especially since in such a feud he was automatically the loser unless he rebelled, and if he started a civil war in Makuran, he handed not only the land of the Thousand Cities but also Vaspurakan to the Empire of Videssos. He understood that from direct experience: Makuran held the Videssian westlands because of the Empire's descent into civil war during Genesios' reign. «Lord?» the messenger repeated.

«Yes, I do have a reply,» Abivard said. He called for a servant to fetch parchment, pen, and ink. When he got them, he wrote his own name and Sharbaraz', then meticulously copied all the titles with which the King of Kings adorned himself-he didn't want Yeliif or someone like him imputing disloyalty because of disrespect. When that was finally done, halfway down the sheet, he got to his real message: Majesty, I will give you the victory you desire even if you do not give me the tools I need to make it. He signed his name, rolled up the message, and stuffed it into the tube. He did not care whether the messenger read it.

When the fellow had ridden off, Abivard turned and looked west toward the Dilbat Mountains and Mashiz. Half of him wished he had the letter back; he knew he'd promised more than he could deliver and knew he would be punished for failing to deliver. But the other half of him did not care. The promise aside, he'd told Sharbaraz nothing but the truth, a rarity in the palace at Mashiz. He wondered if the King of Kings would recognize it when he heard it.

He told Roshnani what he'd done. She said, «It's not enough. You said you would resign your command if Sharbaraz countermanded your order to Romezan. He has.» She cocked her head to one side and waited to hear how he would answer.

«I know what I said.» He didn't want to meet her eye. «Now that it's happened, though… I can't I wish I could, but I can't. Talking of it was easy. Doing it-» Now he waited for the storm to burst on his head.

Roshnani sighed. «I was afraid you would find that was so.» She smiled wryly. «To tell you the truth, I thought you would find that was so. I wish you hadn't. You have to beat Maniakes once to make the King of Kings shut up, and that won't be easy. But you have to do it anyway, so I don't see you've made yourself any worse off in Mashiz than you were already.»

«That's what I thought,» Abivard said, grateful that his wife was accepting his change of heart with no more than private disappointment. «That's what I hoped, at any rate. Now I have to figure out how to give myself the best chance of making my boast come true.»

Maniakes seemed to have given up on the notion of assaulting Mashiz and was going through the land of the Thousand Cities as he had the year before, burning and destroying. Hooding the plain between the Tutub and the Tib had proved less effective than Abivard had hoped. If he was going to stop the Videssians, he'd have to move against them and fight them where he could.

He left the encampment along the Tib with a certain amount of trepidation, sure that Sharbaraz would interpret his move as leaving Mashiz uncovered. He was, though, so used to being in the bad graces of the King of Kings that making matters a little worse no longer worried him as much as it once had.

He wished he had more cavalry. His one effort to use Tzikas' regiment as a major force in its own right had been at best a qualified success. If he tried it again, Maniakes was all too likely to anticipate his move and pinch off and destroy the regiment

«You can't do the same thing to Maniakes twice running,» he told Turan, as if his lieutenant had disagreed with him. «If you do, he'll punish you for it. Why, if we had another traitor to feed him, we'd have to do it a different way this time, because he'd suspect a trap if we didn't.»

«As you say, lord,» Turan answered. «And what new stratagem will you use to surprise and dazzle him?»

«That's a good question,» Abivard said. «I wish I had a good answer to give you. Right now the best I can think of is to close with him-if he'll let us close with him-and see what sorts of chances we get.»

To make sure the Videssians did not take him by surprise, he decided to use his cavalry not so much as an attacking force but as screens and scouts, sending riders much farther out ahead of his main body of foot soldiers than usual. Sometimes he thought more of them were galloping back and forth with news and orders than were actually keeping track of Maniakes' army, but he found he had no trouble staying informed about where the Videssians were going and even, after he'd been watching them for a while, guessing what they were liable to do next. He vowed to shadow his foes more closely in future fights, too.

Maniakes' force did not move as quickly as it might have. Every day Abivard drew closer. Maniakes did not turn and offer battle but made no move to avoid it, either. He might have been saying, If you're sure this is what you want, I'll give it to you. Abivard still wondered that the Videssians had such confidence; he was used to imperial armies that fled before his men.

The only exception to that rule, he remembered with painful irony, had been the men under Tzikas' command. But the army Abivard commanded now, he silently admitted, was only a shadow of the striking force he'd once led. And the Videssians had gotten used to the idea that they could win battles. He knew how much difference that made.

He began putting his horsemen into larger bands to skirmish with the Videssians. If Maniakes would accept battle, he intended to give it to the Avtokrator. His foot soldiers, having stood up to Maniakes' cavalry twice, were loudly certain they could do it again. He would let them have their chance. If he didn't fight the Videssians, he had no hope of beating them.

After a few days of small-scale clashes he drew his army up in a battle line on gently rising ground not far from Zadabak, one of the Thousand Cities, inviting an attack if Maniakes cared to make it. And Maniakes, sure enough, brought the Videssians up close to look over the Makuraner position and camped for the night close enough to make it clear he intended to fight when morning came.

Abivard spent much of the night exhorting his soldiers and making final dispositions for the battle to come. His own disposition was somewhere between hopeful and resigned. He was going to make the effort to drive the Videssians from the land of the Thousand Cities. If the God favored him, he would succeed. If not, he would have done everything he could with the force Sharbaraz had allowed him. The King of Kings might blame him but would have trouble doing so justly.

When morning came, Abivard scowled as his troops rose from their bedrolls and went back into line. They faced east, into the rising sun, which meant the Videssians had the advantage of the light, being able to see his forces clearly instead of having to squint against glare. If the fight quickly went against the Makuraners, that would be an error over which Sharbaraz would have every right to tax him.

He summoned Sanatruq and said, «We have to delay the general engagement till the sun is higher in the sky.»

The cavalry commander gauged the light and nodded. «You want me to do something about that, I take it.»

«Your men can move about the field faster than the foot soldiers, and they're lancers, not archers; the sun won't bother them so much,» Abivard answered. «I hate to ask you to make a sacrifice like that-I feel almost as if I'm… betraying you.» He'd almost said treating you as I did Tzikas. But Sanatruq didn't know about that, and Abivard didn't want him to learn. «I wish we had more cavalry, too.»

«So do I, lord,» Sanatruq said feelingly. «For that matter, I wish we had more infantry.» He waved toward the slowly forming line, which was not so long as it might have been. «But we do what we can with what we have. If you want me to throw my men at the Videssians, I'll do it.»

«The God bless you for your generous spirit,» Abivard said, «and may you-may we all-come through safe so you can enjoy the praise you will have earned.»

Sanatruq saluted and rode off to what was left of his regiment Moments later they trotted toward the ranks of the Videssians. As they drew near, they lowered their lances and went from trot up to thunderous gallop. The Videssians' response was not so swift as it might have been; perhaps Maniakes did not believe the small force would attack his own till the charge began.

Whatever the reason, the Makuraner heavy horse penetrated deep into the ranks of the Videssians. For a few shining moments Abivard, who was peering into the sun, dared to hope that the surprise assault would throw his enemies into such disorder that they would withdraw or at least be too shaken to carry out the assault they'd obviously intended.

A couple of years before he probably would have been right, but no more. The Videssians took advantage of their superior numbers to neutralize the advantage the Makuraners had in armor for men and horses and in sheer weight of metal. The imperials did not shrink from the fight but carried on with a businesslike competence that put Abivard in mind of the army Maniakes' father had led to the aid of Sharbaraz King of Kings during the last years of the reign of the able but unlucky and unloved Avtokrator Likinios.

Sanatruq must have known, or at least quickly seen, that he had no hope of defeating the Videssians. He fought on for some time after that had to have become obvious, buying the foot soldiers in Abivard's truncated battle line the time needed so that the archers would no longer be hampered by shooting straight into the sun.

When at last the choice was continuing the unequal struggle to the point of destruction or pulling back and saving what he could of his force, the cavalry commander did pull back, but more toward the north than to the west, so that if Maniakes chose to pursue, he could do so only by pulling men away from the force with which he wanted to assail Abivard's line of infantrymen.

To Abivard's disappointment, Maniakes did not divide his force in that way. The Avtokrator had teamed the trick or acquired the wisdom of concentrating on what he really wanted and not frittering away his chances of gaining it by going after three other things at the same time. Abivard wished his foe would have proved more flighty.

Horns blaring, the Videssians moved across the plain and up the gently sloping ground against Abivard's men. The horsemen plied Abivard's soldiers with arrows, raising their shields to ward themselves from the Makuraners' reply. Here and there a Videssian or a horse would go down, but only here and there. More lightly armed infantrymen were pierced than their opponents.

Some Videssians, brandishing javelins, rode out ahead of their main force. They pelted Abivard's men with the throwing spears from close range. He itched to order his troops forward against them but deliberately restrained himself. Infantry charging cavalry opened gaps into which the horsemen could force their way, and if they did that, they could break his whole army to pieces in the same way a wedge, well driven home, would split a large, thick piece of wood.

He suspected that Maniakes was trying to provoke him into a charge for that very reason. The javelin men stayed out there in front of his own army, temptingly close, as if itching to be assailed. «Hold fast!» Abivard shouted, over and over. «If they want us so badly, let them come and get us.»

Had he ever imagined that the Videssians lacked the stomach for close combat, their response when they saw their foes refusing to be lured out of their position would have disabused him of the notion forever. Maniakes' men drew their swords and rode forward against the Makuraners. If Abivard would not hand them a breach in the Makuraner line, they'd manufacture one for themselves.

The Makuraners thrust with spears at their horses, used big wicker shields to turn aside their slashes, and hit back with clubs and knives and some swords of their own. Men on both sides cursed and gasped and prayed and shrieked. Though not Makuraner heavy cavalry, the Videssians used the weight of their horses to force Abivard's line to sag back in the center like a bent bow.

He rode to where the battle raged most fiercely, not only to fight but to let the soldiers from the garrisons of the Thousand Cities, men who up till the summer before had never expected to do any serious fighting, know he was with them. «We can do it!» he called to them. «We can hold the imperials back and drive them away.»

Hold the Makuraners did, and well enough to keep the Videssians from smashing through their line. Maniakes sent a party to try to outflank Abivard's relatively short line but had little luck there. The ground at the unanchored end was soft and wet, and his horsemen bogged down. His whole attack bogged down not far from victory. He kept feeding men into the fight till he was heavily engaged all along the line.

«Now!» Abivard said, and a messenger galloped away. The fight went on, for now did not translate to immediately. He wished he'd arranged some special signal, but he hadn't, and he would just have to wait till the messenger got where he was going.

He also had to worry about whether he'd waited too long before releasing the rider. If the battle was lost here before he could put his scheme into play, what point was there to having had the idea in the first place?

Actually, the battle didn't look as if it would be lost or won any time soon. It was a melee, a slugging match, neither side willing to go back, neither able to force its way forward. Abivard had not expected the Videssians to make that kind of fight. Perhaps Maniakes had not expected the Makuraners, the former garrison troops, to withstand it if he did.

If he hadn't, he found himself mistaken. His men hewed and cursed at Makuraners who hewed and cursed back, the two armies locked together as tightly as lovers. And with them locked together thus, Zadabak's gates came open and a great column of foot soldiers, all yelling like fiends, rushed down the artificial hill and across the gently sloping flatlands below toward the Videssians.

Maniakes' men yelled, too, in surprise and alarm. Now, instead of trying to fight their way forward against the Makuraners, they found themselves taken in the flank and forced to a sudden, desperate defense. The horns directing their movements blared urgent orders that often were impossible to fulfill.

«Let's see how you like it!» Abivard shouted at the Videssians. He'd had a year and a half of having to react to Maniakes' moves and hadn't liked it a bit. As men will, he'd conveniently forgotten that for some years before he'd driven the Videssians back across the length of the westlands. «Let's see!» he yelled again. «What are you made of? Have you got ballocks, or are you just the bunch of prancing, mincing eunuchs I think you are?»

If word of that taunt ever got back to Yeliif, he was in trouble. But then, he was in trouble with the beautiful eunuch no matter what he said or did, so what did one taunt matter? Along with his soldiers, he screamed more abuse at the Videssians.

To his surprise and disappointment Maniakes' men did not break at the new challenge. Instead, they turned to meet it, the soldiers on their left facing outward to defend themselves against the Makuraner onslaught. Romezan's veterans might have done better, but not much. Instead of the Videssians' having their line rolled up, they only had it bent in, as Abivard's had been not long before.

The Videssian horns blared anew. Now, as best they could, the imperials did break off combat with their foes, disengaging, pulling back. They had the advantage there; even moving backward, they were quicker than their foes. They regrouped out of bowshot, shaken but not broken.

Abivard cursed. Just as his men had proved better and steadier than Maniakes had thought, so the Videssians had outdone what he had thought they could manage. The end result of that was a great many men on both sides dead or maimed for no better reason than that each commander had underestimated the courage of his opponents.

«We rocked them!» Turan shouted to Abivard.

«Aye,» Abivard said. But he'd needed to do more than rock the Videssians. He'd needed to wreck them. That hadn't happened. As before up at the canal, he'd come up with a clever stratagem and one that hadn't failed, not truly… but one that hadn't succeeded to the extent he'd hoped, either.

And now, as then, Maniakes enjoyed the initiative once more. If he wanted, he could ride away from the battle. Abivard's men would not be able to keep up with his. Or, if he wanted, he could renew the attack on the battered Makuraner line in the place and manner he chose.

For the moment he did neither, simply waiting with his force, Perhaps savoring the lull as much as Abivard was. Then the Videssian ranks parted and a single rider approached the Makuraners, tossing a javelin up into the air and catching it as it came down again. He rode up and down between the armies before shouting in accented Makuraner: «Abivard! Come out and fight, Abivard!»

At first Abivard thought of the challenge only as a reversal of the one his men had hurled at Maniakes before the fight by the Tib. Then he realized it was a reversal in more ways than one, for the warrior offering single combat was none other than Tzikas.

He wasted a moment admiring the elegance of Maniakes' scheme. If Tzikas slew him, the Avtokrator profited by it-and could still dispose of Tzikas at his leisure. If, on the other hand, he slew Tzikas, Maniakes would still be rid of a traitor but would not suffer the onus of putting Tzikas to death himself. No matter what happened, Maniakes couldn't lose.

Admiration, calculation-they did not last long. There rode Tzikas, coming out from the enemy army, a legitimate target at last. If he killed the renegade-the double renegade-now, the only thing Sharbaraz could do would be to congratulate him. And since he wanted nothing so much as to stretch Tzikas' body lifeless in the dirt, he spurred his horse forward, shouting, «Make way, curse you!» to the foot soldiers standing between him and his intended prey.

But the sight of Tzikas back serving the Videssians once more after renouncing not only mem but their god inflamed the members of the Makuraner cavalry regiment that had fought so long and well under his command. Before Abivard could charge the man who had betrayed Maniakes and him both, a double handful of horsemen were thundering at the Videssian. Tzikas had shown himself no coward, but he'd also shown himself no fool. He galloped back to the protection of the Videssian line.

All the Makuraner cavalrymen screamed abuse at their former leader, reviling him in the foulest ways they knew. Abivard started to join them but in the end kept silent, savoring a more subtle revenge: Tzikas had failed in the purpose to which Maniakes had set him. What was the Avtokrator of the Videssians likely to do with-or to-him now? Abivard didn't know but enjoyed letting his imagination run free.

He did not get to enjoy such speculation long. Videssian horns squalled again. Shouting Maniakes' name-conspicuously not shouting Tzikas' name-the Videssian army rode forward again. Fewer arrows flew from their bows, and fewer from those of the Makuraners as well. A lot of quivers were empty. Picking up shafts from the ground was not the same as being able to refill those quivers.

«Stand fast!» Abivard called. He had never seen a Videssian force come into battle with such grim determination. Maniakes' men were out to finish the fight one way or the other. His own foot soldiers seemed steady enough, but how much more pounding could they take before they broke? In a moment he'd find out.

Swords slashing, the Videssians rode up against the Makuraner line. Abivard hurried along the line to the place that looked most threatening. Trading strokes with several Videssians, he acquired a cut-luckily a small one-on the back of his sword hand, a dent in his helmet, and a ringing in the ear by the dent. He thought he dealt out more damage than that, but in combat, with what he saw constantly shifting, he had trouble being sure.

Peering up and down the line, he saw the Videssians steadily forcing his men back despite all they could do. He bit his Up. If the Makuraners did not hold steady, the line would break somewhere. When that happened, Maniakes' riders would pour through and cut up his force from in front and behind. That was a recipe for disaster.

Forcing the enemy back seemed beyond his men's ability now that his stratagem had proved imperfectly successful. What did that leave him? He thought for a moment of retreating back into Zadabak, but then glanced over toward the walled city atop its mound of ancient rubbish. Retreating uphill and into the city was liable to be a nightmare worse than a Videssian breakthrough down here on the flatlands.

Which left… nothing. The God did not grant man's every prayer. Sometimes, even for the most pious, even for the most virtuous, things went wrong. He had done everything he knew how to do here to beat the Videssians and had proved to know not quite enough. He wondered if he would be able to retreat on the flat without tearing the army to pieces. He didn't think so but had the bad feeling he would have to try it anyhow before long.

Messengers rode and ran up to him, reporting pressure on the right, pressure on the left, pressure in the center. He had a last few hundred reserves left and fed them into the fight more in the spirit of leaving nothing undone than with any serious expectation that they would turn the tide. They didn't, which left him facing the same dilemma less than half an hour later, this time without any palliative to apply.

If he drew back with his left, he pulled away from the swamp anchoring that end of the line and gave the Videssians a free road into his rear. If he drew back with his right, he pulled away from Zadabak and its hillock. He decided to try that rather than the other plan, hoping the Videssians would fear a trap and hesitate to push between his army and the town.

A few years before the ploy might have given Maniakes pause, but no more. Without wasted motion or time he sent horsemen galloping into the gap Abivard had created for him. Abivard's heart sank. Whenever he'd been beaten before, here in the land of the Thousand Cities, he'd managed to keep his army intact, ready to fight another day. For the life of him, he didn't see how he was going to manage that this time.

More Videssian horn calls rang out. Abivard knew those calls as well as he knew his own. As people often do, though, at first he heard what he expected to hear, not what the trumpeters blew. When his mind as well as his ear recognized the notes, he stared in disbelief.

«That's retreat» Turan said, sounding as dazed as Abivard felt. «I know it is,» Abivard answered. «By the God, though, I don't know why. We were helpless before them, and Maniakes surely knew it.»

But the flankers who should have gotten around to Abivard's rear and started the destruction of the Makuraner army instead reined in and, obedient to the Avtokrator's command, returned to their own main body. And then that main body disengaged from Abivard's force and rode rapidly off toward the southeast, leaving Abivard in possession of the field.

«I don't believe it,» he said. He'd said it several times by then. «He had us. By the God, he had us. And he let us get away. No, he didn't just let us get away. He ran from us even though we couldn't make him run.»

«If battle magic worked, it would work like that,» Turan said. «But battle magic doesn't work or works so seldom that it's not worth the effort. Did he up and go mad all of a sudden?»

«Too much to hope for,» Abivard said, to which his lieutenant could only numbly nod. He went on, «Besides, he knew what he was doing, or thought he did. He handled that retreat as smoothly as any other part of the battle. It's only that he didn't need to make it… did he?»

Turan did not answer that. Turan could not answer that any more than Abivard could. They waited and exclaimed and scratched their heads but came to no conclusions.

In any other country they would have understood sooner than they could on the floodplain between the Tutub and the Tib. On the Pardrayan steppe, on the high plateau of Makuran, in the Videssian westlands, an army on the move kicked up a great cloud of dust. But the rich soil hereabouts was kept so moist, little dust rose from it. They did not know the army was approaching till they saw the first outriders off to the northeast.

Spying them gave rise to the next interesting question: whose army were they? «They can't be Videssians, or Maniakes wouldn't have run from them,» Abivard said. «They can't be our men, because these are our men.» He waved to his battered host.

«They can't be Vaspurakaners or men of Erzerum, either, or Khamorth from off the steppe,» Turan said. «If they were any of those folk Maniakes would have welcomed them with open arms.»

«True. Every word of it true,» Abivard agreed. «That leaves nobody, near as I can see. By the kind of logic the Videssians love so well, then, that army there doesn't exist.» His shaky laugh said what such logic was worth.

He did his best to make his army ready to fight at need. Seeing the state his men were in, he knew how forlorn that best was. The army from which Maniakes had fled drew closer. Now Abivard could make out the banners that army flew. As with the Videssian horn calls, recognition and understanding did not go together.

«They're our men,» he said. «Makuraners, flying the red lion.»

«But they can't be,» Turan said. «We don't have any cavalry force closer than Vaspurakan or the Videssian westlands. I wish we did, but we don't.»

«I know,» Abivard said. «I wrote to Romezan, asking him to come to our aid, but the King of Kings, in his wisdom, countermanded me.»

Still wondering, he rode out toward the approaching horsemen. He took a good-sized detachment of his surviving cavalry with him, still unsure this wasn't some kind of trap or trick-though why Maniakes, with a won battle, would have needed to resort to tricks was beyond him.

A party to match his separated itself from the main body of the mysterious army. «By the God,» Turan said softly.

«By the God.» Abivard echoed. That burly, great-mustached man in the gilded armor- Now, at last, Abivard rode out ahead of his escort. He raised his voice: «Romezan, is it really you?»

The commander of the Makuraner mobile force shouted back: «No, it's just someone who looks like me.» Roaring laughter, he spurred his horse, too, so that he and Abivard met alone between their men.

When they clasped hands, Romezan's remembered strength made every bone in Abivard's right hand ache. «Welcome, welcome, three times welcome,» Abivard said most sincerely, and then, lowering his voice though no one save Romezan was in earshot, «Welcome indeed, but didn't Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, order you to stay in the westlands?»

«He certainly did,» Romezan boomed, careless of who heard him, «and so here I am.»

Abivard stared. «You got the order-and you disobeyed it?»

«That's what I did, all right,» Romezan said cheerfully. «From what you said in your letter, you needed help, and a lot of it. Sharbaraz didn't know what was happening here as well as you did. That's what I thought, anyhow.»

«What will he do when he finds out, do you think?» Abivard asked.

«Nothing much-there are times when being of the Seven Clans works for you,» Romezan answered. «If the King of Kings gives us too hard a time, we rise up, and he knows it.»

He spoke with the calm confidence of a man bom into the high nobility, a man for whom Sharbaraz was undoubtedly a superior but not a figure one step-and that a short one-removed from the God. Although Abivard's sister was married to the King of Kings, he still retained much of the awe for the office, if not for the man who held it for the moment, that had been inculcated in him since childhood. When he thought it through, he knew how little sense that made, but he didn't-he couldn't-always pause to think it through.

Romezan said, «Besides, how angry can Sharbaraz be once he finds out we've made Maniakes run off with his tail between his legs?»

«How angry?» Abivard pursed his lips. «That depends. If he decides you came here to join forces with me, not so you could go after Maniakes, he's liable to be very angry indeed.»

«Why on earth would he think that?» Romezan boomed laughter. «What does he expect the two of us would do together, move on Mashiz instead of twisting Maniakes' tail again?»

«Isn't this a pleasant afternoon?» Abivard said. «I don't know that I've seen the sun so bright in the sky since, oh, maybe yesterday.»

Romezan stared at him, the beginning of a scowl on his face. «What are you talking about?» he demanded. Fierce as fire in a fight, he wasn't the fastest man Abivard had ever seen in pursuit of an idea But he wasn't a fool, either; he did eventually get where he was going. After a couple of heartbeats the scowl vanished. His eyes widened. «He truly is liable to think that? Why, by the God?»

For all his blithe talk a little while before about going into rebellion, Romezan drew back when confronted with the actual possibility. Having drawn back himself, Abivard did not think less of him for that. He said, «Maybe he thinks I'm too good at what I do.»

«How can a general be too good?» Romezan asked. «There's no such thing as winning too many battles.»

His faith touched Abivard. Somehow Romezan had managed to live for years in the Videssian westlands without acquiring a bit of subtlety. «A general who is too good, a general who wins all his battles,» Abivard said, almost as if explaining things to Varaz, «has no more foes to beat, true, but if he looks toward the throne on which his sovereign sits…»

«Ah,» Romezan said, his voice serious now. Yes, talking of rebellion had been easy when it had been nothing but talk. But he went on, «The King of Kings suspects you, lord? If you're not loyal to him, who is?»

«If you knew how many times I've put that same question to him.» Abivard sighed. «The answer, as best I can see, is that the King of Kings suspects everyone and doesn't think anyone is loyal to him, me included.»

«If he truly does think that way, he'll prove himself right one of these days,» Romezan said, tongue wagging looser than was perfectly wise.

Wise tongue or not, Abivard basked in his words like a lizard in the sun. For so long everyone around him had spoken nothing but fulsome praises of the King of Kings-oh, not Roshnani, but her thought and his were twin mirrors. To hear one of Sharbaraz' generals acknowledge that he could be less man wise and less than charitable was like wine after long thirst.

Romezan was looking over the field. «I don't see Tzikas anywhere,» he remarked.

«No, you wouldn't,» Abivard agreed. «He had the misfortune to be captured by the Videssians not so long ago.» His voice was as bland as barley porridge without salt: how could anyone imagine he'd had anything to do with such a misfortune? «And, having been captured, the redoubtable Tzikas threw in his lot with his former folk and was most definitely seen not more than a couple of hours ago, fighting on Maniakes' side again.» That probably wasn't fair to the unhappy Tzikas, who had problems of his own-a good many of them self-inflicted-but Abivard couldn't have cared less.

«The sooner he falls into the Void, the better for everybody,» Romezan growled. «Never did like him, never did trust him. The idea that a Videssian could ape Makuraner manners-and to think we'd think he was one of us… not right, not natural. How come Maniakes didn't just up and kill him after he caught him? He owes him a big one, eh?»

«I think he was more interested in hurting us than in hurting Tzikas, worse luck,» Abivard said, and Romezan nodded. Abivard went on, «But we'll hurt him worse than the other way around. I've been so desperately low in cavalry till you got here, I couldn't take the war to Maniakes. I had to let him choose his moves and then respond.»

«We'll go after him.» Romezan looked over the field once more. «You took him on with just foot soldiers, pretty much, didn't you?» Abivard nodded. Romezan let out a shrill little whistle. «I wouldn't like to try that, not with infantry alone. But your men seem to have given the misbelievers everything they wanted. How did you ever get infantry to fight so well?»

«I trained them hard, and I fought them the same way,» Abivard said. «I had no choice: it was use infantry or go under. When they have confidence in what they're doing, they make decent troops. Better than decent troops, as a matter of fact.»

«Who would have thought it?» Romezan said. «You must be a wizard to work miracles no one else could hope to match. Well, the days of needing to work miracles are done. You have proper soldiers again, so you can stop wasting your time on infantrymen.»

«I suppose so.» Oddly, the thought saddened Abivard. Of course cavalry was more valuable than infantry, but he felt a pang over letting the foot soldiers he'd trained slip back into being nothing more than garrison troops once more. It seemed a waste of what he'd made them. Well, they'd be good garrison troops, anyhow, and he could still get some use out of them in this campaign.

Romezan said, «Let's clean up this field here, patch up your wounded, and then we'll go chase ourselves some Videssians.»

Abivard didn't need to hear that notion twice to like it. He hadn't been able to chase the Videssians in all his campaigning through the land of the Thousand Cities. He'd put himself where they would be a couple times, and he'd lured them into coming to him, too. But to go after them, knowing he could catch them «Aye,» he said. «Let's.»

Maniakes very quickly made it clear that he did not intend to be brought to bay. He went back to the old routine of wrecking canals and levees behind him to slow the Makuraner pursuit. Even with that, though, not all was as it had been before Romezan had come to the land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssians did not enjoy the luxury of leisure to destroy cities. They had to content themselves with burning crops and riding through fields to trample down grain: wreckage, yes, but of a lesser sort.

Abivard wrote a letter to Sharbaraz, announcing his victory over Maniakes. Romezan also wrote one with Abivard looking over his shoulder as he drafted it and offering helpful suggestions. It apologized for disobeying the orders he'd gotten from the King of Kings and promised that if forgiven, he'd never again make such a heinous blunder. After reading it, Abivard felt as if he'd eaten too much fruit that had been too sweet to begin with and then had been candied in honey.

Romezan shook his head as he stamped his signet-a wild boar with great tushes-into the hot wax holding the letter closed. «If someone sent me a letter like this, I'd throw up.»

«So would I,» Abivard said. «But it's the sort of thing Sharbaraz likes to get. We've both seen that: tell the truth straight out and you're in trouble, load up your letter with this nonsense and you get what you want.»

The same courier carried both letters off toward the west, toward a Mashiz no longer in danger from the Videssian army, toward a King of Kings who was likely to care less about that than about his orders, no matter how foolish, being obeyed. Abivard wondered what sort of letter would come out of the west, out of the shadows of the Dilbat Mountains, out of the shadows of a court life only distantly connected to the real world.

He also wondered when he would hear that Tzikas had been put to death. When he did not hear of the renegade's premature- though not, to his way of thinking, untimely-demise, he wondered when he would hear of Tzikas' leading the rear guard against his own men.

That did not happen, either. The longer either of those things took to come about, the more unhappy he got. He'd handed Tzikas over to Maniakes in the confident expectation-which Maniakes had fostered-that the Avtokrator would put him to death. Now Maniakes was instead holding on to him: to Abivard it seemed unfair.

But he knew better than to complain. If the Avtokrator had managed to trick him, that was his own fault, no one else's. Maybe he'd get the chance to pay Maniakes back one day soon. And maybe he wouldn't have to rely on trickery. Maybe he'd run the Videssians to earth as if they were a herd of wild asses and ride them down. Amazing, the thoughts to which the arrival of a real cavalry force could give rise.

Sharbaraz King of Kings did not delay in replying to the letters he'd gotten from Abivard and Romezan. When Abivard received a messenger from the King of Kings, he did so with all the enthusiasm he would have shown going off to get a rotting tooth pulled from his head.

By the same token, the leather message tube the fellow handed him might as well have been a venomous serpent. He opened it, broke the seal on the parchment, and unrolled it with no small trepidation. As usual, Sharbaraz had made his scribe waste several lines with his titles, his accomplishments, and his hopes. He seemed to take forever to get to the gist…

«We are, as we have said, angered that you should presume to summon to your aid the army commanded by Romezan son of Bizhan, which we had purposed using for other tasks during this campaigning season. We are further vexed with the aforesaid Romezan son of Bizhan for hearkening to your summons rather than ignoring it, as was our command, the aforesaid Romezan being separately admonished in a letter directed specifically to him.

Only one possible circumstance can mitigate the disobedience the two of you have demonstrated both individually and collectively, the aforementioned circumstance being complete and overwhelming victory against the Videssians violating the land of the Thousand Cities. We own ourselves delighted one such victory has been gained and look forward either to Maniakes' extermination or to his ignominious retreat. The God grant that you soon have the opportunity to inform me of one or the other of these happy results.»

As messengers did, this one asked Abivard, «Is there a reply, lord?»

«Wait a bit,» Abivard answered. He read the letter again from top to bottom. It was no more vituperative in the second reading than it had been in the first. Abivard stepped out of the tent and spotted Pashang coming by, swigging on a jug of date wine. «Go find Romezan and fetch him to me,» he told the driver.

«Aye, lord,» Pashang said, and went off for Romezan. His pace was slower than Abivard would have desired; Abivard wondered how much of the wine he'd had.

But he did find Romezan and bring him back. The Makuraner general was waving a parchment as he approached; Abivard assumed that that was because he'd just gotten his letter from the King of Kings, too. And so it proved. Romezan called, «There, you see? I told you that you worry too much.»

«So you did,» Abivard admitted. By the way Romezan was acting, his letter wasn't actively painful, either. Turning to the messenger, Abivard said, «Please tell Sharbaraz King of Kings we'll do everything we can to obey him.» Romezan nodded vigorously.

The messenger bowed. «It shall be as you say, lords.» To him Abivard and Romezan were figures almost as mighty as Sharbaraz himself: the one brother-in-law to the King of Kings, the other a great noble of the Seven Clans. Abivard clicked his tongue between his teeth. It all depended on how, and from what station, you looked at life.

When the fellow was gone, Abivard turned to Romezan in some bemusement. «I had expected the King of Kings to be angry at us,» he said.

«I told you,» Romezan answered. «Victory atones for any number of sins.»

«It's not that simple,» Abivard insisted to Roshnani over stewed kid that night. «The more victories I won in the Videssian westlands, the more suspicious of me Sharbaraz got. And then here, in the land of the Thousand Cities, I couldn't satisfy him no matter what I did. If I lost, I was a bungling idiot. But if I won, I was setting myself up to rebel against him. And if I begged for some help to give me a chance to win, why then I was obviously plotting to raise up an army against him.»

«Until now,» his principal wife said.

«Until now,» Abivard echoed. «He didn't fall on Romezan like an avalanche, either, and Romezan flat disobeyed his orders. Till now he's screamed at me even though I've done everything he told me to do. I don't understand this. What's wrong with him?» The incongruity of the question made him laugh as soon as it had passed his lips, but he'd meant it, too.

Roshnani said, «Maybe he's finally come to see you really do want to do what's best for him and for Makuran. The years pile up on him the same as they do on everyone else; maybe they're getting through.»

«I wish I could believe that-that's he's grown up at last, I mean,» Abivard said. «But if he has, it's very sudden. I think something else is going on, but for the life of me I have no idea what.»

«Well, let's see if we can figure it out,» Roshnani said, logical as a Videssian. «Why is he ignoring things that would have made him angry if he were acting the way he usually does?»

«The first thing I thought of is that he's trying to lull Romezan and me into feeling all calm and easy when he really does intend to fall on us like an avalanche,» Abivard said. «But if that's so, we'll have to look out for people trying to separate us from the army in the next few days, either that or people trying to murder us right in the middle of it. That could be, I suppose. We'll have to keep an eye out.»

«Yes, that certainly is possible,» Roshnani agreed. «But again, it's not the way he's been in the habit of behaving. Maybe he really is pleased with you.»

«That would be even more out of character,» Abivard said, his voice bitter. «He hasn't been, not for years.»

«He was… better this past winter than the one before,» Roshnani said. Odd for her to be defending the King of Kings and for Abivard to be assailing him. «Maybe he's warming up to you again. And then-» She paused before going on thoughtfully. «And then, your sister is drawing nearer to her time every day. Maybe he remembers the family connection.»

«Maybe.» Abivard sounded imperfectly convinced, even to himself. «And maybe he remembers that, if he does have a boy, all he has to do is die for me to become uncle and maybe regent to the new King of Kings.»

«Absent assassins, that doesn't add up,» Roshnani said, to which Abivard had to nod. His principal wife sighed. «Day by day we'll see what happens.»

«So we will,» Abivard said. «One of the things that will happen, by the God, is that I'll drive Maniakes out of the land of the Thousand Cities.»

With Romezan's cavalry added to the infantry he'd trained, Abivard knew he had a telling advantage over the force Maniakes had operating between the Tutub and the Tib. Making the telling advantage actually tell was another matter altogether. Maniakes proved an annoyingly adroit defender.

What irked Abivard most was the Avtokrator's mutability. When Maniakes had had the edge in numbers and mobility, he'd pressed it hard. Now that his foes enjoyed it, he was doing everything he could to keep them from getting the most out of it

Wrecked canals, little skirmishes, nighttime raids on Abivard's camp-much as Abivard had raided him the year before-all added up to an opponent who might have smeared butter over his body to make himself too slippery to be gripped. And whenever Maniakes got the chance, he would storm another town on the floodplain; another funeral pyre rising from an artificial hillock marked a success for him, a failure for Makuran.

«Never have liked campaigning in this country,» Romezan said. «I remember it from the days when Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis. Too may things can go wrong here.»

«Oh, yes, I remember that, too,» Abivard said. «And, no doubt, so does Maniakes. He's giving us as much grief as we can handle, isn't he?»

«That he is,» the cavalry general said. «He doesn't care about proper battle, does he, not so long as he can have a good time raiding?»

«That's what he's here for,» Abivard agreed. «It's worked, too, hasn't it? You're not fighting him in the Videssian westlands, and I'm not sitting in Across going mad trying to figure out how to get to Videssos the city.»

«You're right, lord,» Romezan said, using the title as one of mild, perhaps even amused, respect. «I wish you'd found a way, too; I'd be lying if I said anything else.»

«We haven't got any ships, curse it,» Abivard said. «We can't get any ships. Our mages couldn't conjure up the number of ships we'd need. Even if they could, it would be battle magic and liable to fall apart when we needed it most. And even if it didn't, the Videssians are a hundred times the sailors we are. They could sink magical ships the same as any others, I fear.»

«You're probably right,» Romezan admitted. «What we really need-»

«What we really need,» Abivard interrupted, «is a mage who could make a giant silvery bridge over the Cattle Crossing into Videssos the city so our warriors could cross dryshod and not have to worry about Videssians in ships. The only trouble with that is-»

«The only trouble with that is,» Romezan said, interrupting in turn, «a mage who could bring off that kind of conjuration wouldn't be interested in helping the King of Kings. He'd want to be King of Kings himself or, more likely, king of the world. So it's a good thing there's no such mage.»

«So it is,» Abivard said with a laugh. «Or it's mostly a good thing, anyhow. But it does mean we'll have to do more of the work ourselves-no, all of the work ourselves, or as near as makes no difference.»

A couple of days later a scout brought back a piece of news he'd been dreading and hoping for at the same time: at the head of a troop of Videssian cavalry Tzikas had delivered a formidable attack against Romezan's horsemen. As long as Tzikas stayed in his role, he made a formidable opponent to whichever side he didn't happen to be on at the moment. Since he refused to stay in his role for long, odds were good he wouldn't stay on that particular side forever.

When Abivard passed the news on to Roshnani, she asked, «What are you going to do if he wants to serve Makuran again one day?»

«By the God!» He clapped a hand to his forehead. «You're a step ahead of me there. He probably will want to come back to us one day, won't he?»

«Sooner rather than later,» Roshnani guessed «He's only defamed you, and you don't rule Makuran. He's tried to murder the Avtokrator, and he's renounced Videssos' god for ours. He has to be biding his time in that camp; he can't be happy or comfortable there.»

«He's probably renounced the God again for Phos,» Abivard said, «or maybe for Skotos, the Videssians' dark god. When he does finally die, I expect there'll be a war in the heavens over whether to torment his soul forever in Skotos' snow and ice or drop it into the Void and make it as if it had never been.» The idea struck him as deliriously blasphemous.

At the urging of both Romezan and Turan, Abivard dealt with Tzikas' reappearance in the field by ordering his men to try to kill the renegade whenever they saw him, regardless of what that meant to the rest of the fight. The command struck him as safe enough: Tzikas would not be commanding any vital part of whatever forces were engaged, for Maniakes would not be so stupid as to trust him with anything vital. Abivard remained disappointed that Maniakes had allowed Tzikas to keep breathing, but the Avtokrator must have decided to squeeze whatever use against Makuran he could from the traitor.

Abivard would have loved to squeeze Tzikas-by the neck, if at all possible. Doing that, though, meant catching up to the Videssians. His army, despite the addition of Romezan's cavalry, still moved more slowly than did Maniakes'.

And then the Avtokrator halted on the east side of a large canal that ran north and south through the land of the Thousand Cities. He kept cavalry patrols along the bank of the canal in strength enough to stop Abivard from getting a detachment across it or gaining control of a big enough stretch of bank to let his whole army cross. The Videssians not on patrol resumed the depredations that had grown too familiar over the past couple of campaigning seasons.

Abivard moved more forces forward, expecting to make Maniakes withdraw from the line of the canal; he could not hope to hold it against several simultaneous strong crossings. But Maniakes did not withdraw. Nor did he bring the whole of his army back to the canal to fight the Makuraners once they crossed. He went on about the business of plunder and rapine as if Abivard and his men had fallen into the Void.

«He's making a mistake,» Abivard said in glad surprise at a council of war. «How best do we make him pay?»

«Get across the water, smash his patrols, hammer the rest of his army,» Romezan said. Abivard looked to his other officers. Sanatruq, who had commanded the cavalry till Romezan had arrived, nodded. So did Turan. So, in the end, did Abivard. Romezan was never going to be accused of subtlety, but you didn't need to be subtle all the time. Sometimes you just had to get in there and do what needed doing. This looked to be one of those times.

As best he could, Abivard readied his host to cross with overwhelming strength and speed. The canal was half a bowshot wide and, peasants said, better than waist-deep everywhere. The Videssians could make getting over it expensive. But instead of concentrating against his force, they rode back and forth, back and forth, along the eastern bank of the canal.

He chose a late-afternoon attack: let the Videssians fight with the sun in their faces for a change. He formed his army with the infantry in the center and the cavalry on both wings. He commanded the right, Romezan the left, and Turan the foot soldiers in the center.

Horns blared. Standard-bearers waved the red-lion banners of Makuran and the smaller flags and streamers marking regiments and companies. Shouting Sharbaraz' name, the army moved forward and splashed down into the canal.

The muddy water was just the temperature of blood. The muck on the bottom had not been stirred up since the last time the canal had been dredged out, however many years before that might have been. When hooves and feet roiled it, a horrible stench rose. Choking a little, Abivard rode farther out into the canal.

He looked back over his shoulder. The rest of the horsemen on the right were following him into the water, shouting abuse at the Videssians on the far bank as they came. Maniakes' men quietly sat their horses and waited for the onslaught. Had they been Abivard's, he would have had them doing more: if nothing else, riding up to the edge of the canal and plying their foes with arrows. But they simply waited and watched. Maybe the might of the Makuraner force had paralyzed them with dread, he thought.

His head swam. He shook it and sent a curse down to the stinking muck that surely made every man who had to endure it reel in the saddle. If the God was kind, he would grant that no one would get woozy enough to fall off his horse and drown in the dirty water.

Here came the bank of the canal after what seemed like much too long in it. Abivard hoped no leeches were cringing to him or to his horse. He spurred the animal up onto solid ground once more. The red disk of the sinking sun glared into his face.

For a moment he simply accepted that, as one does with any report from the eyes. Then he gave a great cry of amazement and alarm, echoed by the more alert among the soldiers he led. They had ridden into the canal with the sun at their backs. Here they were, coming out with it in their eyes.

Abivard looked back over his shoulder again. Here came the whole army up out of the canal. There, on the far bank, the Videssians still sat on their horses, quietly, calmly, as if nothing in the least out of the ordinary had happened. No, not quite like that: a couple of them were sketching circles over the left side of their chests, the gesture they used when invoking their god.

Seeing that made Abivard's wits, stunned till then, begin to work once more: Whether well or poorly he could not guess, but thought started replacing the blank emptiness between his ears. He shouted the first word that came into his mind: «Magic!» A moment later he amplified it: «The Videssians have used magic to keep us from crossing the canal and giving them what they deserve!»

«Aye!» Hundreds, then thousands of voices took up that cry and others like it. Like sunshine burning away fog, fury ousted fear. That did Abivard's heart good. The angrier his men were, the less likely whatever crafty spell the Videssians had used was to seize and hold them. Passion weakened sorcery. That was why both battle magic and love philters failed more often than they succeeded.

«Are we going to let them get away with this outrage?» Abivard shouted. «Are we going to let them blind us with treacherous battle magic?»

«No!» the troopers roared back. «No, by the God! We'll pay them back for the affront!» someone shouted. Had Abivard known who, he would cheerfully have paid the fellow a pound of silver, a paid shill could have done no better.

«Battle magic fails!» Abivard cried. «Battle magic fades! Battle magic feeds on fears. Angry men don't let themselves be seduced. Now that we know what we're up against, we'll show the Videssians their charms and spells are useless. And when we've crossed the canal, we'll punish them doubly for seeking to befool us with their wizards' games.»

His men roared approval at him. The cavalrymen brandished their lances. Foot soldiers waved clubs and swung swords. Encouraged by their fury, he booted his horse in its armored flanks and urged it toward the canal once more.

The animal went willingly. Whatever the wizards of Videssos had done, it didn't disturb the beasts. The horse snorted a little as its hooves stirred up the muck on the bottom of the canal, but that was only because new noxious bubbles rose to the surface and burst foully and flatulently.

There, straight ahead, were the same Videssians who had watched Abivard cross the canal-or, rather, try to cross the canal-before. This time, the battle magic having been spotted for what it was, he would ride upon them and spear them out of the saddle one after another. Not normally a man who delighted in battle for its own sake, he wanted to fight now, to purge the rage coursing through him at Maniakes' trickery.

Closer and closer to the Videssians he came. Here was the bank of the canal. Here was his horse setting foot on the bank. He couched his lance, ready to charge hard at the first Videssian he saw.

Here was… the setting sun, almost touching the western horizon, shining straight into his face.

Once more he led his army up onto the bank of the canal from which they'd departed. Once more he had no recollection of turning around. Once more he didn't think he had turned around. By the shouts and oaths coming from his men, they didn't think they'd turned around, either. But here they were. And there, on the far-the indisputably eastern-bank of the canal the Videssian cavalry patrols trotted back and forth or simply waited, staring into the sunset-the sunset that should have blinded them in the fighting-at the Makuraners who could not reach them.

Abivard gauged that treacherous sun. If he made another try, it would be in darkness. If the Videssians had one magic working, maybe they had more than one. He decided he dared not take the chance. «We camp here tonight,» he declared. A moment later he sent messengers to seek Turan and Romezan and order them to his tent.

The first thing he wanted to find out was whether his officers had experienced anything different from his own mystifying trips into and out of the canal. They looked at each other and shook their heads.

«Not me, lord,» Turan said. «I was in the canal. I was moving forward all the time. I never turned around-by the God, I didn't! But when I came up onto dry land, it was the same dry land I'd left. I don't know how and I don't know why, but that's what it was.»

«And I the same, lord,» Romezan said heavily. «I was in the canal. There, ahead, the Videssians sat their horses, waiting for me to spit them like a man putting meat and onions on a skewer to roast in the fire. I spurred my own mount ahead, eager to slaughter them-ahead, not back, I tell you. I came up onto the bank, and it was this bank. As Turan said, how or why I do not know-I am but a poor, stupid fighting man-but it was.» He bowed to Abivard «Honor to your courage, lord. My bowels turned to jelly within me at the magic. I would never have been so brave as to lead our men into the canal that second time. And they followed you-I followed you-too.» He bowed again.

«I don't think I believed it the first time, not all the way through,» Abivard said. «And I thought an aroused army would be plenty to beat down Videssian battle magic.» He laughed ruefully. «Only shows what I know, doesn't it?»

«What do our own brilliant mages have to say about this?» Turan asked. «I put the question to a couple of the wizards with the infantry: men from the Thousand Cities of the same sort as the ones who worked your canal magic last year, and all they do is gape and mumble. They're as baffled as we are.»

Abivard turned to Romezan. «Till now we've had so little need of magic since you arrived, I haven't even thought to ask what sorts of sorcerers you have with you. Are Bozorg and Panteles still attached to the field force?»

«Aye, they are.» Romezan hesitated, then said, «Lord, would you trust a Videssian to explain-more, to fight back against- Videssian sorcery? I've kept Panteles with us, but I've hesitated to use him.»

«I can see that,» Abivard agreed, «but I'd still like to find out what he has to say, and Bozorg, too. And Bozorg should be able to if he's lying. If we do decide to use him to try to fight the spell, Bozorg should be able to tell us if he's making an honest effort, too.»

Romezan bowed. «This is wisdom. I know it when I hear it.» He stepped out of the tent and bawled for a messenger. The man's sandals rapidly pattered away. Romezan came back in and folded broad arms across his chest. «They have been summoned.»

Waiting gnawed at Abivard. He'd done too much of it, first in Across, then in the King of Kings' palace, to feel happy standing around doing nothing. He wanted to charge into the canal again- but if he came out once more on the bank from which he started, he feared he'd go mad.

The messenger needed a while to find the wizards in the confusion of a camp Abivard hadn't expected to have to make. At last, though, the fellow returned with them, each warily eyeing the other. They both bowed low to Abivard, acknowledging his rank as far superior to theirs.

«Lord,» Bozorg said in Makuraner.

«Eminent sir,» Panteles echoed in Videssian, putting Abivard in mind of Tzikas, who presented a problem of which he did not want to be reminded at the moment.

«I think the two of you may have some idea why I've called you here tonight,» Abivard said, his voice dry.

Both wizards nodded. They looked at each other, respect mixed with rivalry. Bozorg spoke first: «Lord, whatever this spell may be, it is not battle magic.»

«I figured that much out for myself,» Abivard answered even more dryly. «If it had been, we would have gotten over on the second try. But if it's not battle magic, what is it?»

«If it were battle magic, it would have been aimed at your soldiers, and their attitude would indeed have influenced the spell,» Bozorg said. «Since their attitude did not influence it, I conclude it pertains to the canal, whose emotional state is not subject to flux.»

Panteles nodded. Romezan snorted. Turan grinned. Abivard said, «A cogent point, the next question being, What do we do about it?

The wizards looked at each other again. Again Bozorg spoke for them: «As things stand now, lord, we do not know.» Panteles nodded once more.

Romezan snorted again, on an entirely different note. «Glad to have you along, mages; glad to have you along.» Panteles looked down at the ground. Bozorg, who had served at the palace of the King of Kings, glared.

Abivard sighed and waved to dismiss both mages. «Bend all your efforts to finding out what Maniakes' wizards have done. When you know-no, when you have even a glimmer-come to me. I don't care what I may be doing; I don't care what hour of the day or night it may be. With you or without you, I intend to keep trying to cross that canal. Come-do you understand?»

Both wizards solemnly nodded.