The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Those, along with the wagons carrying noncombatants, made up the core of the army in motion. If Abivard suddenly had to fight, he would maneuver to put his force between the baggage train and the foe, regardless of the direction from which the foe came.

  He ordered the army southwest on the first day's march, away from the coast. He did not want Maniakes' dromons watching every move he made and reporting back to the Avtokrator. He assumed that Maniakes already knew he was heading off to avenge Vshnasp. How fast was he going, and by what route? That was his business, not Maniakes'.

  Peasants who had been busy in the fields took one look at the outriders to Abivard's army and did their best to make themselves invisible. Any who lived near high ground fled there. Those who didn't either hid in their houses or ran off with their wives and families and beasts of burden and whatever they could carry on their backs or those of their oxen and donkeys and horses.

  «Take what you need from those who have run away,» Abivard told his men, «but don't go setting fires for the sport of it.» Some of the warriors grumbled; incendiarism was one of the sports that made war entertaining.

  All was quiet the first night on the march and the second. On the third night someone—a couple of someones—sneaked past the sentries and lobbed arrows into the Makuraner camp. The archers wounded two men and escaped under cover of darkness.

  «They will not play the game that way,» Abivard declared when the unwelcome news reached him. «Tomorrow we burn everything along the line of march.»

  «Well done, lord,» Romezan boomed. «We should have been doing that all along. If the Videssians fear us, they'll leave us alone.»

  «But if they hate us, they'll keep on hitting back at us no matter what we do,» Kardarigan said. «It's a fine line we walk between being frightful and being despised.»

  «I was willing to treat them mildly,» Abivard answered, «but if they shoot at us from ambush out of the night, I won't waste much sympathy on them, either. Actions have consequences.»

  Smoke from a great burning rose the next day. Abivard supposed that sailors on Videssian dromons, looking in from the waters of the Videssian Sea, could use that smoke to figure out where his army was. That made him regret having given the order, but only a little: Maniakes would have learned his whereabouts soon enough, anyhow.

  When darkness fell, several more men shot at the encamped Makuraners. This time Abivard's troops were alert and ready. They swarmed out into the night after the bowmen and caught three of them. The Videssians were a long time dying. Most of the soldiers slept soundly through their shrieks.

  Abivard ordered another day of burning when morning came. Kardarigan said, «If we trade frightfulness for frightfulness, where will this end?»

  «We can hurt the Videssian in the westlands worse than they can hurt us,» Abivard told him. «The sooner they get that idea, the sooner we can stop giving them lessons.»

  «Videssians are supposed to be a clever folk—you'd certainly think so from hearing them talk about themselves,» Romezan added. «If they're too stupid to see that raids against the armies of the King of Kings are more trouble than they're worth, whose hard luck is it? Not ours, by the God. Drop me into the Void if I can work up much sympathy for 'em.»

  For the next couple of days the local Videssians left the Makuraner army alone as it passed through their land. Abivard didn't know what happened after that; maybe his men outrode the news of what they did to the countryside when someone harassed them. Whatever the reason, the Videssians again took to shooting at the army by night.

  The next day the Makuraners sent pillars of smoke billowing up to the sky. The day after that the Videssians caught two men from the vanguard away from the rest, cut their throats, and left them where the rest of the Makuraners would find them. That afternoon a medium-size Videssian village abruptly ceased to be.

  «Lovely sort of fighting,» Kardarigan remarked as Abivard's army made camp for the night. «I wish Maniakes would come forth and meet us. Fighting a real battle against real soldiers would be a relief.»

  «Wait till we get to Vaspurakan,» Abivard told him. «The princes will be happy enough to oblige you.»

  Dispatches from Mikhran reached Abivard every day. The marzban kept urging him not to delay, to rush, to storm, to come to his rescue. All that proved to Abivard was that Mikhran hadn't yet received his first letter promising aid. He began to wonder if his courier had gotten through. If the Videssians harassed his army, what did they do to lone dispatch riders? On the other hand, if they habitually ambushed couriers, how did the ones Mikhran sent keep reaching him?

  The army forded the Eriza River not far south of its headwaters. The Eriza would grow to become a stream of considerable importance, joining the Arandos to become the largest river system in the Videssian westlands. A bridge spanned the river a couple of farsangs south of the ford, or, rather, a bridge had spanned it Abivard remembered watching it go up in flames as the Videssians had tried to halt his army's advance in one of the early campaigns in the westlands. It had yet to be repaired.

  Tzikas remembered the bridge burning, too; he'd ordered it set afire. «You didn't know about the ford then, brother-in-law to the King of Kings,» he said, still proud of his stratagem.

  «That's so, eminent sir,» Abivard agreed. «But if I'd pressed on instead of swinging south, I would have found out about it. The local peasants would have given it away, if for no other reason than to keep us from eating them out of house and home.»

  «Peasants.» Tzikas let out a scornful snort amazingly like the one his horse would have produced. «That's hardly a fit way to run a war.»

  «I thought you Videssians were the ones who seized whatever worked and we Makuraners were more concerned with honor,» Abivard said.

  «Give me horsemen, brother-in-law to the King of Kings,» Tzikas answered. «I will show you where honor lies and how to pursue it. How can you deny me now, when we shall no longer be facing Videssians but heretical big-nosed men of Vaspurakan? Let me serve the King of Kings, may his years be long and his realm increase, and let me serve the cause of Hosios Avtokrator.»

  Whatever the topic of conversation, Tzikas was adept at turning it toward his own desires. «Let us draw closer to Vaspurakan,» Abivard said. The Videssian turncoat scowled at him, but what could he do? He lived on sufferance; Abivard was under no obligation to give him anything at all, let alone his heart's desire.

  And while Tzikas scornfully dismissed the Vaspurakaners as heretics now, might he not suddenly develop or discover the view that they were in fact his coreligionists? Down under the skin weren't Phos worshipers Phos worshipers come what may? If he did something of that sort, he would surely do it at the worst possible moment, too.

  «You do not trust me,» Tzikas said mournfully. «Since the days of Likinios Avtokrator, may Phos' light shine upon him, no one has trusted me.»

  There were good and cogent reasons for that, too, Abivard thought. He'd met Likinios. The Videssian Emperor had been devious enough for any four other people he'd ever known. If anyone could have been confident of outmaneuvering Tzikas at need, he was the man. After fighting against Tzikas, after accepting him as a fugitive upon his failure to assassinate Maniakes, Abivard thought himself justified in exercising caution where the Videssian was concerned.

  Seeing that he would get no immediate satisfaction, Tzikas gave Abivard a curt nod and rode off. His stiff back said louder than words, how indignant he was at having his probity questioned constantly.

  Romezan watched him depart, then came up to Abivard and asked, «Who stuck the red-hot poker up his arse?'

  «I did, I'm afraid,» Abivard answered. «I just don't want to give him the regiment he keeps begging of me.»

  «Good,» Romezan said. «The God keep him from being at my back the day I need help. He'd stand there smiling, hiding a knife in the sleeve of his robe. No thank you.»

  «Sooner or later he will write to Sharbaraz,» Abivard said gloomily. «Odds are, too, that his request w
ill get me ordered to give him everything his cold little heart desires.»

  «The God prevent!» Romezan's fingers twisted in an apotropaic sign. «If that does happen, he could always have an accident.»

  «Like the one Maniakes almost had, you mean?» Abivard asked. Romezan nodded. Abivard sighed. «That could happen, I suppose, though the idea doesn't much appeal to me. I keep hoping he'll want to be useful in some kind of way where I won't have to watch my back every minute to make sure he's not sliding that knife you were talking about between my ribs.»

  «The only use he's been so far is to embarrass Maniakes,» Romezan said. «He doesn't even do that well anymore; the more the Videssians hear about how we came to acquire him, the more they think we're welcome to him.»

  «The King of Kings puts great stock in Videssian traitors,» Abivard said. «Having had his throne usurped by treachery, he knows what damage it can do to a ruler.»

  «If the King of Kings is so fond of Videssian traitors, why don't we ship Tzikas off to Mashiz?» Romezan grumbled. But that was no answer, and he and Abivard both knew it. If Sharbaraz King of Kings expected them to encourage and abet Videssian traitors, they had to do it no matter how much Tzikas raised their hackles.

  The road swung up from the coastal lowlands onto the central plateau. Resaina lay near the northern edge of the plateau, about a third of the way from the crossing of the Eriza to Vaspurakan. Like most good-sized Videssian towns, it had a Makuraner garrison quartered within its walls.

  A plump, graying fellow named Gorgin commanded the garrison. «I've heard somewhat of the Vaspurakaners' outrages, lord,» he said. «By the God, it does my heart good to see you ready to chastise them with all the force at your command.»

  Abivard sliced a bite of meat from the leg of mutton Gorgin had served him—cooked with garlic in the Videssian fashion instead of Makuraner style with mint. He stabbed the chunk and brought it to his mouth with the dagger. While chewing, he remarked, «I notice you do not volunteer the men of your command to join in this chastisement.»

  «I have not enough men here to hold down the city and the countryside against a real revolt,» Gorgin answered. «If you take some of my soldiers from me, how shall I be able to defend Resaina against any sort of trouble whatever? These mad easterners riot at the drop of a skullcap. If someone who fancies himself a theologian rises among 'em, I won't be able to put 'em down.»

  «Are you enforcing the edict ordering their holy men to preach the Vaspurakaner rite?» Abivard asked. «Aye, I have been,» Gorgin told him. «That's one of the reasons I feared riots. Then, a few weeks ago, the Videssians, may they fall into the Void, stopped complaining about the rite.»

  «That's good news,» Abivard said.

  «I thought so,» Gorgin replied gloomily. «But now my spies report the reason why they accept the Vaspurakaners' rituals: it's because the men from the mountains have revolted against us. The Videssians admire them for doing it because they'd like to get free of our yoke, too.»

  «You're right,» Abivard said. «I don't fancy that, not even a little bit. What are we supposed to do about it, though? If we order them to go back to their old rituals, we not only disobey Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, we also make ourselves look ridiculous to the Videssians.»

  «We don't want that, let me tell you,» Gorgin said. «They're hard enough to govern even when they know they have good reason to fear us. When they're laughing at us behind our backs, they're impossible. They'll do any harebrained thing to stir up trouble, but half the time their schemes end up not being harebrained at all. They find more ways to drive me crazy than I'd ever imagined.» He shook his head with the bewildered air of a man who knew he was in too deep.

  «After we beat the Vaspurakaners, the Videssians will see that the revolt didn't amount to anything,» Abivard answered. «As soon as they realize that, the princes will look like heretics again, not heroes.»

  «The God grant it be so,» Gorgin said.

  A moment later Abivard discovered that not all Videssians willingly accepted the Vaspurakaner liturgy. «Torture! Heresy! May-hem!» a man shrieked as he ran into Gorgin's residence. The garrison commander jerked as if stuck by a pin, then exchanged a glance full of apprehension with Abivard. Both men got to their feet. «What have they gone and done now?» Gorgin asked, plainly meaning, What new disaster has fallen on my head?

  But the disaster had fallen on the head of a Videssian priest, not that of Gorgin. The fellow sat in an antechamber, his shaved scalp and part of his forehead puffy and splashed here and there with dried blood. «You see?» cried the Videssian who had brought him in. «Do you see? They captured him, kidnapped him, however you like, and then they—» He pointed.

  Abivard did see. The swelling and the blood came from the words that had been tattooed into the priest's head. Abivard read Videssian only haltingly. After some study, he gathered that the words came from a theological text attacking the Vaspurakaners and their beliefs. The priest would wear those passages for the rest of his life.

  «Do you see?» Gorgin exclaimed, as the local had before him. «Every time you think you have their measure, the Videssians do something like this. Or something not like this but just as hideous, just as unimaginable, in a different way.»

  «We may even be able to make this outrage work to our advantage,» Abivard said. «Take this fellow out and show him off after he heals. We can make him out to be a martyr to his version—our version—of the Videssians' false faith. When you take the heads of the men who did this, people will say they had it coming.»

  «Mm, yes, that's not bad,» Gorgin said after a moment's thought. He looked at the priest who had just become, however unwillingly, a walking religious tract. «If he'd let his hair grow out, after a while you'd only be able to see a little of that.»

  He and Abivard had both been using their own language, assuming that the Videssian priest did not speak it He proved them wrong, saying in fair Makuraner, «A bare scalp is the mark of the good god's servant. I shall wear these lying texts with pride, as a badge of holiness.»

  «On your head be it,» Abivard said. The priest merely nodded. Gorgin stared at him as if he'd said something horrid. After a moment he realized he had.

  The Videssian central plateau put Abivard in mind of the country not far from Vek Rud domain. It was a little better watered and a little more broken up by hills and valleys than the territory in which he'd grown up, but it was mostly herding country, not farmland, and so had a familiar feel to it.

  He didn't think much of the herds of cattle and flocks of sheep moving slowly over the grasslands. Any dihqan back in Makuran would have been ashamed to admit he owned such a handful of ragged, scraggly beasts. Of course, the flocks and herds of Makuran hadn't been devastated by years of civil war and invasion.

  The Videssians certainly thought like their Makuraner counterparts. As soon as they got wind of the approach of Abivard's army, they tried to get their animals as far out of the way as they could. Foraging parties had to scatter widely to bring in the beasts that helped keep the army fed.

  «That's the way,» Romezan said when the soldiers led in a good many sheep one afternoon when the highlands of Makuran were beginning to push their way up over the western horizon. «If they won't give us what we need, we'll bloody well take it—and we'll take so much, we'll make the Videssians, crazed as they are with their false Phos, take starvation for a virtue because they'll see so much of it.»

  «These lands are subject to the rule of Sharbaraz King of Kings and so may not be wantonly oppressed,» Abivard reminded him. But then he softened that by adding, «If the choice lies between our doing without and theirs, we ought not to be the ones going hungry.»

  From the west Mikhran marzban still bombarded him with letters urging haste. From the east he heard nothing. He wondered if Maniakes had retaken Across and whether Venizelos had resumed his post as steward to the logothete of the treasury.

  Farrokh-Zad, one of Kardarigan's l
ieutenants, said, «Let your spirits not be cast down, lord, for surely this fool of a Maniakes, seeing us departed, will overreach himself as has been his habit of old. After vanquishing the vile Vaspurakaners, with their noses like sickles and their beards like thickets of wire, we shall return and take from the Videssian whatever paltry parts of the westlands he may steal from us. For are we not the men of Makuran, the mighty men whom the God delights to honor?»

  He puffed out his chest, twirled the waxed tip of his mustache, and struck a fierce pose, dark eyes glittering. He was younger than Abivard and far more arrogant: Abivard had been on the point of laughing at his magniloquent bombast when he realized that Farrokh-Zad was in earnest

  «May Fraortish eldest of all ask the God to grant your prayers,» Abivard said, and let it go at that. Farrokh-Zad nodded and rode off, a procession of one. Abivard stared after him. Farrokh-Zad probably hadn't set foot in Makuran since his beard had come in fully, but being away hadn't seemed to change his attitudes in the slightest. Those had probably set as hard as cast bronze before he had gotten big enough to defy his mother.

  About half the officers in the army were like that; Romezan was a leader among them. They clung to the usages they'd always known even when those usages fit like a boy's caftan on a grown man. Abivard snorted. He was in the other faction, the ones who had taken on so many foreign ways that they hardly seemed like Makuraners anymore. If they ever did go!home to stay, they were liable to be white crows in a black flock. But then, Abivard thought, he'd been getting around Makuraner traditions since the day he had decided to let Roshnani come along when he and Sharbaraz had launched their civil war against Smerdis the usurper.