The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  «Rally on the baggage train!» Abivard commanded. «We won't let them have that, will we, lads?»

  That order surely would have made the field army fight harder. All the booty those soldiers had collected in years of triumphant battle traveled in the baggage train; if they lost it, some of them would have lost much of their wealth. The men who had come from the city garrisons were poorer and had not spent years storing up captured money and jewels and weapons. Would they battle to save their supplies of flour and smoked meat?

  As things turned out, they did. They used the wagons as small fortresses, fighting from inside them and from the shelter they gave. Abivard had hoped for that but had not ordered it for fear of being disobeyed.

  Again and again the Videssians tried to break their tenuous hold on the position, to drive them away from the baggage train so they could be cut down while flying or forced into the big canal and drowned.

  The Makuraners would not let themselves be dislodged. The fight raged through the afternoon. Abivard broke his lance and was reduced to clouting Videssians with the stump. Even with its scale mail armor, his horse took several wounds. He had an incentive to hold the baggage wagons: his wife and family were sheltering among them.

  Maniakes drew his troops back from combat about an hour before sunset. At first Abivard thought nothing of that, but the Avtokrator of the Videssians did not send them forward again. Instead, singing a triumphant hymn to their Phos, they rode off toward the nearest town.

  Abivard ordered his horn players to blow the call for pursuit He had the satisfaction of seeing several Videssians' heads whip around in alarm. But despite the defiant horn calls, he was utterly unable to pursue Maniakes' army, and he knew it. The mounted foes were faster than his own foot soldiers, and despite the protection they'd finally gotten from the wagons of the baggage train, his men had taken a far worse drubbing. He began riding around to see just how bad things were.

  A soldier sat stolidly while another one sewed up his wounded shoulder. He nodded to Abivard. «You must be one tough general, lord, if you beat them buggers year in and year out. They can fight some.» He laughed at his own understatement.

  «You can fight some yourself,» Abivard answered. Though beaten, the garrison troops had done themselves proud. Abivard knew that was so and also knew that Sharbaraz King of Kings would not see it the same way. Having done his best to make victory impossible, Sharbaraz now insisted that nothing less would do. If the miracle inexplicably failed to materialize, he would not blame himself—not while he had Abivard.

  Weary soldiers began lighting campfires and seeing about supper. Abivard grabbed a lump of hard bread—that better described the misshapen object the cook gave him than would a neutral term such as loaf—and a couple of onions and went from fire to fire, talking with his men and praising them for having held their ground as well as they had.

  «Aye, well, lord, sorry it didn't work out no better than it did,» one of the warriors answered, picking absently at the black blood on the edges of a cut that ran from just below his ear to near the corner of his mouth. «They beat us, is all.»

  «Maybe next time we beat them,» another warrior put in. He drew a dagger from his belt. «Give you a chunk of mutton sausage—» He held it up."—for half of one of those onions.»

  «I'll make that trade,» Abivard said, and did. Munching, he reflected that the soldier might well be right. If his army got another chance against the Videssians, they might well beat them. Getting that chance would be the hard part. He'd stolen a march on Maniakes once, but how likely was he to be able to do it twice? When you had one throw of the dice and didn't roll the twin twos of the Prophets Four, what did you do next?

  He didn't know, not in any large sense of the word, not with the force he had here. On a smaller scale, what you did was keep your men in good spirits if you could so that they wouldn't brood on this defeat and expect another one in the next fight. Most of the men with whom he talked didn't seem unduly downhearted. Most of them in fact seemed happier about the world than he was.

  When he finally got back to his tent, he expected to find everyone asleep. As it had the night before, the moon told him it was past midnight Snores from soldiers exhausted after the day's marching and fighting mingled with the groans of the wounded. Out beyond the circles of light the campfires threw, crickets chirped. Mosquitoes buzzed far from the fires and close by. Every so often someone cursed as he was bitten.

  Seeing Pashang beside the fire in front of the tent was not a large surprise, nor was having Roshnani poke her head out when she heard his approaching footsteps. But when Varaz stuck his head out, too, Abivard blinked in startlement.

  «I'm angry at you, Papa,» his elder son exclaimed. «I wanted to go and fight the Videssians today, but Mama wouldn't let me– she said you said I was too little. I could have hit them with my bow; I know I could.»

  «Yes, you probably could,» Abivard agreed gravely. «But they could have hit you, too, and what would you have done when the fighting got to close quarters? You're learning the sword, but you haven't learned it well enough to hold off a grown man.»

  «I think I have,» Varaz declared.

  «When I was your age, I thought the same thing,» Abivard told him. «I was wrong, and so are you.»

  «I don't think I am,» Varaz said.

  Abivard sighed. «That's what I said to my father, too, and it got me no further with him than you're getting with me. Looking back, though, he was right. A boy can't stand against men, not if he hopes to do anything else afterward. Your time will come—and one fine day, the God willing, you'll worry about keeping your son out of fights he isn't ready for.»

  Varaz looked eloquently unconvinced. His voice had years to go before it started deepening. His cheeks bore only fine down. To expect him to think of the days when he'd be a father himself was to ask too much. Abivard knew that but preferred argument to breaking his son's spirit by insisting on blind obedience.

  There was, however, a time and place for everything. Roshnani cut off the debate, saying, «Quarrel about it tomorrow. You'll get the same answer, Varaz, because it's the only one your parents can give you, but you'll get it after your father has had some rest.»

  Abivard hadn't let himself think about that. Hearing the word made him realize how worn he was. He said, «If you two don't want my footprints on your robes, you'd best get out of the way.» Before long he was lying in the crowded tent on a blanket under mosquito netting. Then, no matter how his body craved sleep, it would not come. He had to fight the battle over again, first in his own mind and then, softly, aloud for his principal wife. «You did everything you could,» Roshnani assured him. «I should have realized Maniakes had split his army, too,» he said. «I thought it looked small, but I didn't know how many men he really had, and so—»

  «Only the God knows all there is to know, and only she acts in perfect lightness on what she does know,» Roshnani said. «This once, the Videssians were luckier than we.»

  Everything she said was true and in perfect accord with Abivard's own thoughts. Somehow that helped not at all. «The King of Kings, may his years be long and his realm increase, entrusted me with this army to—»

  «To get you killed or at best ruined,» Roshnani broke in quietly but with terrible venom in her voice.

  He'd had those thoughts, too. «To defend the realm,» he went on, as if she hadn't spoken. «If I don't do that, nothing else I do, no matter how well I do it, matters anymore. Any soldier would say the same. So will Sharbaraz.»

  Roshnani stirred but did not speak right away. At last she said, «The army still holds together. You'll have your chance at revenge.»

  «That depends,» Abivard said. Roshnani made a questioning noise. He explained: «On what Sharbaraz does when he hears I've lost, I mean.»

  «Oh,» Roshnani said. On that cheerful note they fell asleep.

  When Abivard emerged from the wagon the next morning, Er-Khedur, the town north and east of the battle site, was burning. H
is mouth twisted into a thin, bitter line. If his army couldn't keep the Videssians in check, why should the part of the garrison of Er-Khedur he'd left behind?

  He didn't realize he'd asked the question aloud till Pashang answered it: «They did have a wall to fight from, lord.»

  That mattered less in opposing the Videssians than it would have against the barbarous Khamorth, perhaps less than it would have in opposing a rival Makuraner army. The Videssians were skillful when it came to siegecraft. Wall or no wall, a handful of half-trained troops would not have been enough to keep them out of the city.

  Abivard thought about going right after the imperials and trying to trap them inside Er-Khedur. Reluctantly, he decided not to. They'd just mauled his army once; he wanted to drill his troops before he put them into battle again. And he doubted the Videssians would tamely let themselves be trapped. They had no need to stay and defend Er-Khedur; they could withdraw and ravage some other city instead.

  The Videssians didn't have to stay and defend any one point in the Thousand Cities. The chief reason they were there was to do as much damage as they could. That gave them more freedom of movement than Abivard had had when he was conquering the westlands from the Empire. He'd wanted to seize land intact first and destroy it only if he had to. Maniakes operated under no such restraints.

  And how were the westlands faring these days? As far as Abivard knew, they remained in the hands of the King of Kings. Dominating the sea as he did, Maniakes hadn't had to think about freeing them before he invaded Makuran. Now each side in the war had forces deep in the other's territory. He wondered if that had happened before in the history of warfare. He knew of no songs that suggested that it had. Groundbreaking was an uncomfortable sport to play, as he'd found out when ending Roshnani's isolation from the world.

  If he couldn't chase right after Maniakes, what could he do? One thing that occurred to him was to send messengers south over the canal to find out how close Turan was with the rest of the assembled garrison troops. He could do more with the whole army than he could with this battered piece of it

  The scouts rode back late that afternoon with word that they'd found the host Turan commanded. Abivard thanked them and then went off away from his men to kick at the rich black dirt in frustration. He'd come so close to catching Maniakes between the halves of the Makuraner force; that the Videssians had caught him between the halves of theirs seemed most unfair.

  He posted sentries out as far as a farsang from his camp, wanting to be sure Maniakes could not catch him by surprise. He had considerably more respect for the Videssian Avtokrator now than he'd had when his forces had been routing Maniakes' at every turn.

  When he said as much, Roshnani raised an eyebrow and remarked, «Amazing what being beaten will do, isn't it?» He opened his mouth, then closed it, discovering himself without any good answer.

  Turan's half of the Makuraner army reached the canal a day and a half later. After the officer had crossed over and kissed Abivard's cheek by way of greeting, he said, «Lord, I wish you could have waited before you started your fight.»

  «Now that you mention it, so do I,» Abivard answered. «We don't always have all the choices we'd like, though.»

  «That's so,» Turan admitted. He looked around as if gauging the condition of Abivard's part of the army. «Er—lord, what do we do now?»

  «That's a good question,» Abivard said politely, and then proceeded not to answer it. Turan's expression was comical, or would have been had the army's plight been less serious. But here, unlike in his conversations with his wife, Abivard understood he would have to make a reply. At last he said, «One way or another we're going to have to get Maniakes out of the land of the Thousand Cities before he smashes it all to bits.»

  «We just tried that,» Turan answered. «It didn't work so well as we'd hoped.»

  «One way or another, I said,» Abivard told him. «There is something we haven't tried in fullness, because as a cure it's almost worse than the sickness of invasion.»

  «What's that?» Turan asked. Again Abivard didn't answer, letting his lieutenant work it out for himself. After a while Turan did. Snapping his fingers, he said, «You want to do a proper job of flooding the plain.»

  «No, I don't want to do that,» Abivard said. «But if it's the only way to get rid of Maniakes, I will do it.» He laughed wryly. «And if I do, half the Thousand Cities will close their gates to me because they'll think I'm a more deadly plague than Maniakes ever was.»

  «They're our subjects,» Turan said in a that-settles-it tone.

  «Yes, and if we push them too far, they'll be our rebellious subjects,» Abivard said. «When Genesios ruled Videssos, he had a new revolt against him every month, or so it seemed. The same could happen to us.»

  Now Turan didn't answer at all. Abivard started to try to get him to say something, to say anything, then suddenly stopped. One of the things he was liable to say was that Abivard might lead a revolt himself. Abivard didn't want to hear that. If he did hear it, he would have to figure out what to do about Turan. If he let his lieutenant say it without responding, he would in effect be guilty of treasonous conspiracy. If Turan wanted to take word of that back to Sharbaraz, he could. But if Abivard punished him for saying such a thing, he would cost himself an able officer.

  And so, to forestall any response, Abivard changed the subject: «Do your men still have their fighting spirit?»

  «They did till they got here and saw bodies out in the sun starting to stink,» Turan said. «They did till they saw men down with festering wounds or out of their heads from fever. They're garrison troops. Most of 'em never saw what the aftermath of a battle—especially a lost battle—looks like before. But your men seem to be taking it pretty well.»

  «Yes, and I'm glad of that,» Abivard said. «When we'd beat the Videssians, they'd go all to pieces and run every which way. I thought my own raw troops would do the same thing, but they haven't, and I'm proud of them for it.»

  «I can see that, since it would have been your neck, too, if they did fall apart,» Turan said judiciously. «But you can fight another battle with 'em, and they're ready to do it, too. My half of the army will be better for seeing that.»

  «They are ready to fight again,» Abivard agreed. «That surprises me, too, maybe more than anything else.» He waved toward the northeast, the direction in which Maniakes' army had gone. «The only question is. Will we be able to catch up with the Videssians and bring them to battle again? It's because I have my doubts that I'm thinking so hard of flooding the land between the Tutub and the Tib.»

  «I understand your reasons, lord,» Turan said, «but it strikes me as a counsel of desperation, and there are a lot of city governors it would strike the same way. And if they're not happy—» He broke off once more. They'd already been around to that point on the wheel.

  Abivard didn't know how to keep them from going around again, either. But before he had to try, a scout interrupted the circle, crying, «Lord, cavalry approach from out of the north!»

  Maybe Maniakes hadn't been satisfied to beat just one piece of the Makuraner army, after all. Maybe he was coming back to see if he could smash the other half, too. Such thoughts ran through Abivard's mind in the couple of heartbeats before he shouted to the trumpeters: «Blow the call for line of battle!»

  Martial music rang out. Men grabbed weapons and rushed to their places more smoothly than he would have dared hope a couple of weeks before. If Maniakes was coming back to finish the job, he'd get a warm reception. Abivard was pleased to see how well Turan's troops moved along with his own, who had been blooded. The former squadron commander had done well with as large a body of men.

  «Sharbaraz!» roared the Makuraner troops as the on-rushing cavalry drew near. A few of them yelled «Abivard!» too, making their leader proud and apprehensive at the same time.

  And then they got a better look at the approaching army. They cried out in wonder and delight, for it advanced under the red-lion banner of the King of Kings. A
nd its soldiers also cried Sharbaraz name, and some few of them the name of their commander as well: «Tzikas!»

  VI

  One of the lessons Abivard's father, Godarz, had drilled into him was not asking the God for anything he didn't really want, because he was liable to get it anyhow. He'd forgotten that principle on this campaign, and now he was paying for it.

  The look on Turan's face probably mirrored the one on his own. His lieutenant asked, «Shall we welcome them, lord, or order the attack?»

  «A good question.» Abivard shook his head, as much to suppress his own temptation as for any other reason. «Can't do that, I'm afraid. We welcome them. Odds are, Tzikas doesn't know I know he sent those letters complaining of me to Sharbaraz.»

  If the Videssian renegade did know that, he gave no sign of it. He rode out in front of the ranks of his own horsemen and through the foot soldiers—who parted to give him a path—straight up to Abivard. When he reached him, he dismounted and went down on one knee in what was, by Videssian standards, the next closest thing to an imperial greeting. «Lord, I am here to aid you,» he declared in his lisping Makuraner.

  Abivard, for his part, spoke in Videssian: «Rise, eminent sir. How many men have you brought with you?» He gauged Tzikas' force. «Three thousand, I'd guess, or maybe a few more.»

  «Near enough, lord,» Tzikas answered, sticking to the language of the land that had adopted him. «You gauge numbers with marvelous keenness.»

  «You flatter me,» Abivard said, still in Videssian; he would not acknowledge Tzikas as a countryman. Then he showed his own fangs, adding, «I wish you had been so generous when you discussed me with Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase.»

  A Makuraner, thus caught out, would have shown either anger or shame. Tzikas proved himself foreign by merely nodding and saying, «Ah, you found out about that, did you? I wondered if you would.»

  Abivard wondered what he was supposed to make of that. It sounded as if in some perverse way it was a compliment. However Tzikas meant it, Abivard didn't like it. He growled, «Yes, I found out about it, by the God. It almost cost me my head. Why shouldn't I bind you and give you to Maniakes to do with as he pleases?»