The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  «Also,» Sharbaraz said, «for cavalry to match the horsemen Maniakes brings against us, we give you leave to recall Tzikas from Vaspurakan. His familiarity with the foe will win many Videssians to our side. Further, you may take Hosios Avtokrator with you when you go forth to confront the foe.»

  Abivard opened his mouth, then closed it again. Sharbaraz was living in a dream world if he thought any Videssian would abandon Maniakes for his pretender. But then, insulated by the court from reality, in many ways Sharbaraz was living in a dream world.

  Tzikas was a different matter. Unlike Sharbaraz' puppet, he did have solid connections within the Videssian army. If he got down to the land of the Thousand Cities soon enough, he might help solidify whatever force Abivard had managed to piece together from the local garrisons. Abivard suspected that Sharbaraz didn't know he knew what Tzikas had been saying about him; that meant Denak's maidservant was more reliable than Abivard had thought

  «Speak!» the King of Kings exclaimed. «What say you?»

  «May it please you, Majesty, but I would sooner not have the eminent Tzikas—» Abivard gave the title in Videssian to emphasize the turncoat's foreignness. «—under my command.» About the only thing I'd like less would be the God dropping all Makuran into the Void.

  For a wonder, Sharbaraz took the hint. «Perhaps another commander, then,» he said. Abivard had feared he'd insist; he didn't know what he would have done then. Arranged for Tzikas to have an accident, maybe. If any man ever deserved an accident, Tzikas was the one.

  «Perhaps so, Majesty,» Abivard answered. Curse it, how did you tell the King of Kings he'd made a harebrained suggestion? You couldn't, not if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders. From what he'd seen, the Avtokrator of the Videssians had a similar problem, perhaps in less acute form.

  Sharbaraz said, «We are confident you will hold the enemy far away from us and far away from Mashiz, preserving our complete security.»

  «The God grant it be so,» Abivard said. «The men of Makuran have beaten the Videssians many times during your glorious reign.» He had led Sharbaraz' troops to a lot of those victories, too. Now the King of Kings suddenly recalled that: he needed one more victory, or maybe more than one. Abivard went on, «I shall do all I can for you and for Makuran. The Videssians, though, I must say, fight with more spirit for Maniakes than they ever did for Genesios.»

  «We are confident,» the King of Kings repeated. «Go forth, Abivard son of Godarz: go forth and defeat the foe. Then return in triumph to the bosom of your wife and family.»

  Almost, Abivard missed the meaning lurking there. That made the surge of fury all the more ferocious when it came. Sharbaraz was going to hold Roshnani and his children hostage to guarantee he would neither rebel once he had an army under his command again nor go over to the Videssians.

  He thinks he is. Abivard said, «Majesty, my wife and children have always taken the field with me, ever since the days when you guested at Vek Rud stronghold.»

  The days when you were first a prisoner whom I helped rescue and then a rebel against the King of Kings ruling in Mashiz, he meant. From behind him came the faintest of murmurs: Sharbaraz' courtiers took the point. By the way the countenance of the King of Kings darkened, so did he. He tried to put the best face on it that he could: «We think only for their safety. Here in Mashiz all their needs will be met, and they will be in no danger from vicious marauding Videssians.»

  Abivard looked Sharbaraz in the face. That was not quite a discourtesy, or did not have to be, but the way he held Sharbaraz' eyes certainly was. «If you rely on me to protect you and your capital, Majesty, surely you can rely on me to protect my kin.»

  The murmur behind him got louder. He wondered how long it had been since someone had defied the King of Kings, no matter how politely, in his own throne room. Generations, probably. By the dazed expression on Sharbaraz' face, it had never happened to him before.

  He tried to rally, saying, «Surely we know better than you the proper course in this affair, that which would be most expedient for all Makuran.»

  Abivard shrugged. «I have enjoyed the company of my wife and children all through the winter. May it please you, Majesty, I would just as soon return to them in the chambers you so generously granted us.» If I don't take them with me, I won't go out.

  «It does not please us,» Sharbaraz answered in a hard voice. «We place the good of the realm ahead of that of any one man.»

  «The good of the realm will not be harmed if I take my family with me.» Abivard gave the King of Kings a sidelong look. «I will have one more reason to repel the Videssians if my wife and children are at my side.»

  «That is not our view of the matter,» Sharbaraz said.

  The murmurs behind Abivard were almost loud enough now for him to make out individual voices and words. People would speak of this scandal for years. «Perhaps, Majesty, you would be better served with a different general in command of these garrison troops,» he said.

  «Had we wanted a different general, be sure we should have selected one,» the King of Kings replied. «We are aware we have a great many from among whom we may choose. Rest assured you were not picked at random.»

  You're the one who's done best. That was what he meant. Abivard felt like laughing in his face. If he wanted Abivard and no one else, that limited his choices. He couldn't do anything dreadful to Roshnani or the children, not if he expected Abivard to serve him. What better way to get Abivard to do what he said he would not do and go over to Videssos?

  How long had it been since the King of Kings had wanted someone to do something but had not gotten his way? By the frustrated glare on Sharbaraz' face, a long time. «Do you presume to disobey our will?» he demanded.

  «No, Majesty,» Abivard said. Yes, Majesty—again. «Loose me against the Videssians and I will do everything I can to drive them from the realm. So the King of Kings has ordered; so shall it be. My family will watch as I oppose Maniakes with every fiber of my being.»

  And if my family isn't there to watch—well, it doesn't matter then, anyhow, for I won't be there doing the fighting. Abivard smiled at his brother-in-law. No, Sharbaraz was not giving the orders here. How long would he need to realize as much?

  He was not stupid. Arrogant, certainly, and stubborn, and long accustomed to having others leap to fulfill his every wish, but not stupid. «It shall be as you say,» he replied at length. «You and your family shall go forth against Maniakes. But as you have set the terms under which you deign to fight, so you have also set for yourself the terms of the fight. We shall look for victory from you, nothing less.»

  «If you send forth a general expecting him to fail, you've sent forth the wrong general,» Abivard answered. A nasty chill of worry ran down his back. Again he wondered if Sharbaraz was setting him up to fail so he could justify eliminating him.

  No. Abivard could not believe it. The King of Kings needed no such elaborate justifications. Once Abivard was away from his army and in Mashiz, Sharbaraz could have eliminated him whenever he chose.

  The King of Kings gestured brusquely. «We dismiss you, Abivard son of Godarz.» It was as abrupt an end to an audience as could be imagined. The hum of talk behind Abivard made him think the courtiers never had imagined anything like it.

  He prostrated himself once more, symbolizing the submission he'd subverted. Then he rose and backed away from Sharbaraz' throne until he could turn around without causing a scandal—a bigger scandal than I've caused already, he thought, amused by the contrast between ritual and substance.

  The beautiful eunuch fell in beside him. They walked out of the throne room together, neither of them saying a word. Once they were in the hallway, though, the eunuch turned blazing eyes on Abivard. «How dare you defy the King of Kings?» he demanded, his voice beautiful no more but cracking with rage.

  «How dare I?» Abivard echoed. «I didn't dare leave my family behind in his clutches, that's how.» No doubt every word he said would go straight back to Sharbaraz, but he
got the idea that words would go back to Sharbaraz whether he said anything or not. If he didn't, the eunuch would invent something.

  «He should have given you over to the torturers,» the eunuch hissed. «He should have given you over to the torturers when first you came here.»

  «He needs me,» Abivard answered. The beautiful eunuch recoiled, almost physically sickened at the idea that the King of Kings could need anyone. Abivard went on, «He needs me in particular. You can't pick just anyone and order him to go out and win your battles for you. Oh, you could, but you wouldn't care for the results. If people can win battles for you, giving them to the torturers is wasteful.»

  «Do not puff yourself up like a pig's bladder at me,» the eunuch snarled. «All your pretensions are empty and vain, foolish and insane. You shall pay for your presumption; if not now, then in due course.»

  Abivard did not answer, on the off chance that keeping quiet would prevent the beautiful eunuch from growing more angry at him still. He was even gladder than he had been while facing down Sharbaraz that he'd managed to pry his family out of the palace. If the eunuch was any indication, the servitors to the King of Kings distrusted and feared him even more than Sharbaraz did.

  And for what? The only thing he could think of was that he'd been too successful at doing Sharbaraz' bidding. If the King of Kings was lord over all the realm of Makuran, could he afford such successful servants? Evidently he didn't think so.

  «I hope you lose,» the beautiful eunuch said. «No matter how you boast, Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, is rash in putting his faith in you. The God grant that the Videssians bewilder you, befuddle you, and beat you.»

  «An interesting prayer,» Abivard answered. «Should the God grant it, I expect Maniakes would be here a few days later to burn Mashiz around your ears. Shall I tell Sharbaraz you wished for that?»

  The eunuch glared again. They had come to hallways Abivard knew. In a moment they rounded a last corner and came up to the guarded door behind which Abivard had passed the winter. At the beautiful eunuch's brusque gesture, the guardsmen opened the door. Abivard went in. The door slammed shut.

  Roshnani pounced on him. «Well?» she demanded.

  «I was summoned before the King of Kings,» he told her.

  «And?»

  «There's more to the world than this suite of rooms,» Abivard told her. She hugged him. Their children squealed.

  V

  In early spring even the parched country between Mashiz and the westernmost tributaries of the Tib bore a thin carpet of green that put Abivard in mind of the hair on top of a balding man's head: you could see the bare land beneath, as you could see the bald man's scalp, and you knew it would soon prevail over the temporary covering.

  For the first few farsangs out of the capital, though, such fine distinctions were the last thing on Abivard's mind, or his principal wife's, or those of their children. Breaming fresh air, seeing the horizon farther than a wall away—those were treasures beside which the riches in the storerooms of the King of Kings were pebbles and lumps of brass by comparison.

  And happy as they were to escape their confinement, Pashang, their driver, was more joyful yet. They had been confined in genteel captivity: mewed up, certainly, but in comfort and with plenty to eat. Pashang had gone straight to the dungeons under the palace.

  «The God only knows how far they go, lord,» he told Abivard as the wagon rattled along. «They're getting bigger all the time, too, for Sharbaraz has gangs of Videssian prisoners driving new tunnels through the rock. He uses 'em hard; when one dies, he just throws in another one. I was lucky they didn't put me in one of those gangs, or somebody else would be driving you now.»

  «We took a lot of Videssian prisoners,» Abivard said in a troubled voice. «I'd hoped they were put to better use than that.»

  Pashang shook his head. «Didn't look so to me, lord. Some of those poor buggers, they'd been down underground so long, they were pale as ghosts, and even the torchlight hurt their eyes. Some of 'em, they didn't even know Maniakes was Avtokrator in Videssos; they were trying to figure out what year of Genesios' reign they were in.»

  «That's… alarming to think about,» Abivard said. «I'm glad you're all right, Pashang; I'm sorry I couldn't protect you as I would have liked.»

  «What could you do, when you were in trouble yourself?» the driver answered. «It could have been worse for me, too. I know that. They just held me in a cell and didn't try to work me to death, till they finally let me out.» He glanced down at his hands. «First time in more years'n I can remember I don't have calluses from the reins. I'll blister, I suppose, then get 'em back.»

  Abivard set a hand on his shoulder. «I'm glad you'll have the chance.»

  The soldiers who had accompanied him to the capital now accompanied him away from it. Their fate had been milder than his and far milder than Pashang's. They'd been quartered apart from the rest of the troops in Mashiz, as if they carried some loath-some and contagious illness, and they'd been subjected to endless interrogations designed to prove that either they or Abivard was disloyal to the King of Kings. After that failed, they'd been left almost as severely alone as Abivard had.

  One of them rode up to him as he was walking back to the wagon from a call of nature. The trooper said, «Lord, if we weren't angry at Sharbaraz before we got into Mashiz, we are now, by the God.»

  He pretended he hadn't heard. For all he knew, the trooper was an agent of the King of Kings, trying to entrap him into a statement Sharbaraz could construe as treasonous. Abivard hated to think that way, but everything that had happened to him since he had been recalled from Vaspurakan warned him that he'd better.

  When he came to Erekhatti, one of the westernmost of the Thousand Cities, he got his next jolt the sort of men Sharbaraz expected him to forge into an army with which to vanquish Maniakes. The city governor assembled the garrison for his inspection. «They are bold men,» the fellow declared. «They will fight like lions.»

  What they looked like to Abivard was a crowd of tavern toughs or, at best, tavern bouncers: men who would probably be fierce enough facing foes smaller, weaker, and worse armed than themselves but who could be relied on to panic and flee under any serious attack. Though almost all of them wore iron pots on their heads, a good quarter were armed with nothing more lethal than stout truncheons.

  Abivard pointed those men out to the city governor. «They may be fine for keeping order here inside the walls, but they won't be enough if we're fighting real soldiers—and we will be.»

  «We have spears stored somewhere, I think,» the governor said doubtfully. After a moment he added, «Lord, garrison troops were never intended to go into battle outside the city walls, you know.»

  So much for fighting like lions, Abivard thought. «If you know where those spears are, dig them up,» he commanded. «These soldiers will do better with them than without.»

  «Aye, lord, just as you desire, so shall it be done,» the governor of Erekhatti promised. When Abivard was ready to move out the next morning with the garrison in tow, the spears had not appeared. He decided to wait till afternoon. There was still no sign of the spears. Angrily, he marched out of Erekhatti. The governor said, «I pray to the God I did not distress you.»

  «As far as I'm concerned, Maniakes is welcome to this place,» Abivard snarled. That got him a hurt look by way of reply.

  The next town to which he came was called Iskanshin. Its garrison was no more prepossessing than the one in Erekhatti—less so, in fact, for the city governor of Iskanshin had no idea where to lay his hands on the spears that might have turned his men from bravos into something at least arguably resembling soldiers.

  «What am I going to do?» Abivard raved as he left Iskanshin.

  «I've seen two cities now, and I have exactly as many men as I started out with, though three of those are down with a flux of the bowels and useless in a fight»

  «It can't all be this bad,» Roshnani said.

&
nbsp; «Why not?» he retorted.

  «Two reasons,» she said. «For one, when we were forced through the Thousand Cities in the war against Smerdis, they defended themselves well enough to hold us out. And second, if they were all as weak as Erekhatti and Iskanshin, Videssos would have taken the land between the Tutub and the Tib away from us hundreds of years ago.»

  Abivard chewed on that. It made some of his rage go away– some, but not all. «Then why aren't these towns in any condition to meet an attack now?» he demanded not so much of Roshnani as of the world at large.

  The world didn't answer. The world, he'd found, never answered. His wife did: «Because Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, decided the Thousand Cities couldn't possibly be in any danger and so scanted them. And one of the reasons he decided the Thousand Cities were safe for all time was that a certain Abivard son of Godarz had won him a whole great string of victories against Videssos. How could the Videssians hope to trouble us after they'd been beaten again and again?»

  «Do you know,» Abivard said thoughtfully, «that's not me answerless question it seems to be when you ask it that way. Maniakes has started playing the game by new rules. He's written off the westlands for the time being, which is something I never thought I'd see from an Avtokrator of the Videssians. But the way he's doing it makes a crazy kind of sense. If he can strike a blow at our heart and drive it home, whether we hold the westlands won't matter in the long run, because we'll have to give them up to defend ourselves.»

  «He's never been foolish,» Roshnani said. «We've seen that over the years. If this is how he's fighting the war, it's because he thinks he can win.»

  «Far be it from me to argue,» Abivard exclaimed. «By all I've seen here, I think he can win, too.»

  But his pessimism was somewhat tempered by his reception at Harpar, just east of the Tib. The city governor there did not seem to regard his position as an invitation to indolence. On the contrary: Tovorg's garrison soldiers, while not the most fearsome men Abivard had ever seen, all carried swords and bows and looked to have some idea what to do with them. If they ever got near horsemen or in among them, they might do some damage, and they might not run in blind panic if enemy troopers moved toward them.