The waters of the Cattle Crossing formed the fourth side of the square. Sailors decked out in scarlet tunics for the occasion rowed Maniakes and Rhegorios from the Renewal to the shore. One of them said, «Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I'd sooner jump in a crate full of spiders than go over there.»
«They won't do anything to me or the Sevastos.» Maniakes kept his voice relaxed, even amused. «If they do, they'll have our fathers to deal with, and they know it.» That was true. It was, however, the sort of truth that would do him no good if it came to pass. Sand grated under the planks of the boat. Maniakes and Rhegorios stepped out. As they did so, the Makuraner army burst into cheers. Rhegorios' grin was wide enough to threaten to split his face in two. «Did you ever imagine you'd hear that?» he asked.
«Never once,» Maniakes replied. The Imperial Guards, without moving, seemed to stand easier. They might yet have needed to defend the Avtokrator against being trampled by well-wishers, but not against the murderous onslaught they'd dreaded, knowing they were too few to withstand it if it came.
Out among the Makuraners, deep drums thudded and horns howled. The axe-bearing Halogai and the Videssians with swords and spears tensed anew: that sort of music commonly presaged an attack. But then an iron-lunged Makuraner herald cried: «Forth comes Abivard son of Godarz, Makuran's new sun now rising in the east!»
«Abivard!» the warriors of the field army shouted over and over again, ever louder, till the marshal's name made Maniakes' head ring.
Only a handful of his own soldiers understood what the outcry meant. Not wanting fighting to start from panic or simple error, the Avtokrator called to them: «They're just announcing the marshal.»
Slowly, Abivard made his way through the crush of Makuraners till he stood before the Imperial Guards. «May I greet the Avtokrator of the Videssians?» he asked a massive Haloga axeman.
«Let him by, Hrafnkel,» Maniakes called.
Without a word, the Haloga stood aside. So did the file of guardsmen behind him. Abivard strode past them into the midst of the open space their number defined. As the Makuraner field force could have overwhelmed the Imperial Guards and slain Maniakes before help could reach him, so the guards could have slain Abivard before his men could save him. Maniakes nodded, appreciating the symmetry.
Abivard came up to him and held out his hand for a clasp. That was symmetry of another sort: the greeting of one equal to another. The only equals in all the world the Avtokrators of the Videssians acknowledged were the King of Kings of Makuran.
Maniakes clasped Abivard's hands, acknowledging that equality. As he did so, he asked, «What was your herald talking about—the new sun of Makuran? What's that supposed to mean?»
«It means I still haven't decided whether I'm going to overthrow Sharbaraz on my own account or in the name of my nephew,» Abivard answered. «If I call myself King of Kings now, I've taken the choice away from myself. This way, I keep it.»
«Ah,» Maniakes said. «Fair enough. The more choices you have, the better off you are.» He inclined his head to Abivard. «Over the years, you've given me too bloody few of them.»
«As you well know, I am not excessively burdened with choices myself at the moment,» Abivard answered tartly.
«Shall we get on with the ceremony, your Majesty, your—uh– Sunship?» Rhegorios said with a grin. «The sooner we have it out of the way, the sooner we can find someplace quiet and shady and drink some wine.»
«A splendid notion,» Abivard agreed. Till then, he, the Avtokrator, and the Sevastos had been speaking quietly among themselves while the Imperial Guards and the Makuraner warriors peered in at them and tried to make out what they were saying. Now Abivard raised his voice, as he might have on the battlefield: «Soldiers of Makuran, here is the Videssian Avtokrator, who has dealt honestly and honorably with us. Who is a better friend for us, Maniakes or that mother of all assassins, Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps?»
«Maniakes!» the soldiers shouted. Again, the Avtokrator had the bewildering sensation of hearing himself acclaimed by men who, up till a few days before, had bent all their efforts toward slaying him and sacking his city.
«If Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps wants to slaughter half our officers, what do we tell him?» Abivard asked.
A majority of the men in the field force shouted, «No!» That was the one word Maniakes could make out clearly. The other answers to Abivard's question were far more various, and blurred together into a great din. But, although Maniakes could make little sense of them, he did not think they would have delighted the heart of Sharbaraz back in Mashiz.
Abivard asked the next question: «Shall we make peace with Videssos, then, and go home and settle the man who's tried to ruin all Makuran with this war?»
«Aye!» some of the warriors shouted. Others cried, «Peace!» Other shouts mixed in with those, but Maniakes did not think any of them were cries of dissent.
«On going home,» Abivard continued, «is it agreed that we empty out our garrisons to secure the peace and do no more harm to this country than we must to keep ourselves fed?»
«Aye!» the Makuraners shouted again, not with the heartfelt enthusiasm they'd put into the first couple of questions, but, again, without any complaints Maniakes could hear.
«There you have it,» Abivard said to the Avtokrator. «What you and I agreed to in Videssos the city, the army agrees to as well. Peace lies between us, and we shall evacuate the westlands to seal it.»
«Good enough,» Maniakes said, «or rather, almost good enough. Can you give me one present?—an advance payment on the peace, you might say.»
Abivard might have styled himself the new sun of Makuran, but his face clouded over. «I have carried out our bargain in every particular,» he said stiffly. «If you are going to add new terms to it now—»
«Hear me out,» Maniakes broke in. «I don't think you'll object.»
«Say on.» Every line in Abivard's face expressed doubt.
Smiling, Maniakes made his request: «Give me Tzikas. You have no need to withhold him from me now. Since he's Sharbaraz's creature, you ought to be all the gladder to yield him up, in fact.»
«Ah.» Abivard relaxed. «Yes, I could do that in good conscience.»
He said no more. He had already shown he spoke Videssian well, and could get across subtle shades of meaning in the language of the Empire. Taking note of that, Maniakes said, «You could yield him up, eh? Not, you can yield him up?»
«Just so.» Abivard spread his hands in angry regret. «As soon as I learned Sharbaraz had betrayed me, I realized his protection over the traitor mattered no more—the reverse, as you say. One of the first things I did, even before I announced to the assembled soldiers what Sharbaraz had done, was to send two men to seize him. I would have dealt with him myself, you understand. The two men did not come back. I have not seen Tzikas since that day.»
«Did he slay them?» Rhegorios asked.
«Not so far as I know,» Abivard answered. «I meant exactly what I said—the two men did not come back. Neither did Tzikas. The only thing I have thought of is that he and they escaped together.»
«That is not good,» Maniakes said, one of his better understatements since assuming the imperial throne. «If he's escaped with them—»
«Very likely he's on his way to Sharbaraz, to let him know I'm on my way, too,» Abivard broke in. Maniakes started to glare: how dared this fellow interrupt him? But if Abivard was a sovereign, too, he was not interrupting a superior, only an equal, which might have been rude but wasn't lese majesty. Abivard went on, «I've sent riders after the three of them. The God willing, they'll pull them down.»
«And if they don't?» Maniakes asked. «Tzikas, may Skotos torment him in the ice forevermore, has got out of more trouble than anyone in his right mind would ever get into.»
Abivard shrugged. He waved in the direction of the bearded men in caftans staring in at him from beyond the thin cordon of Maniakes' Imperial Guards. «This is the field force of Makuran. It is, I think, the finest
army we have ever put in the field. Do you deny it, Maniakes Avtokrator?»
«I'd be a fool if I did,» Maniakes answered. «It's taken me my whole reign to build my army up to the point where it can stand against your cursed boiler boys.» He finally had troops who could do that, too, but not so many of them as Abivard had gathered here.
«Just so,» Abivard said, waving again. «These are the best warriors of all Makuran. Since that is so, where will Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps come up with their like? We may start the fight against him a little farther east than otherwise, but what of it?» «Something to that,» Maniakes admitted.
«Something,» Rhegorios said, «but not enough. If you're not worried about what Tzikas is doing or where he's going, why did you send men after him?»
«Because I wanted him dead,» Abivard snapped, sounding very much like a man who would be King of Kings. «And,» he added grudgingly, «because with Tzikas and Sharbaraz, you never know, not for certain, not till too late.»
«I certainly found that out about Sharbaraz,» Maniakes said with feeling.
«He was a good man, or as good a man as a pampered prince could be, when he got his throne back a dozen or so years ago. Abivard sighed. «The court and the eunuchs and the women's quarters all worked together to ruin him.»
«He had something to do with it, too—what he is, I mean.» Maniakes said. «My court is as stifling as the one in Mashiz; you've seen my eunuch chamberlains, and how many women you can choose from doesn't matter all that much, I don't think.»
«You give me hope,» Abivard said.
«Take it where you find it,» Maniakes said. «Plenty of times when I've had to look for it under flat stones myself, so to speak. But Tzikas, now… whatever Tzikas does, it will be for himself first. As long as you understand that, you have a portrait of the man.»
«This I have seen with my own eyes, I assure you,» Abivard answered. For the second time, he waved out to the men of the Makuraner field army. «Do you want to say something to them? They'd like to hear you, I think. The times we've met before haven't been times for talk.»
«Haven't been for talk, indeed.» Maniakes snorted; Abivard had an unsuspected gift for understatement himself. «My Makuraner is only fair at best.» Abivard shrugged, as if to say, So what? Maniakes took a deep breath and raised his voice: «Men of Makuran!» Silence rippled outward from the warriors closest to the Imperial Guards. «Men of Makuran!» Maniakes called again. «For years, I have pursued and chased after peace. I fought, but I never wanted this war. Sharbaraz forced it on me—and on you. Now, then, let us take up weapons against each other no more. Let us welcome the peace we have found. Let us put out the flame of war, before it burns us all.»
He wondered how that would go over. The Makuraners were proud and fierce; they might take the longing for peace as an admission of weakness. When they stayed quiet after he finished speaking, he feared that was what they had done.
Then the cheering started. The Makuraners pressed harder on the Videssian guards than they had when tension curdled the air. They pressed so hard, they broke through, which they might not have done so fast had they and the guardsmen used weapons against one another. They swarmed toward Maniakes, Rhegorios, and Abivard.
Maniakes wore at his side the sword he commonly carried into battle. He did not draw it: what point to drawing it? With so many Makuraners bearing down on him, if one of them was a murderer, the fellow would have his way. If Tzikas had planned for this very moment, Maniakes was in peril.
No blows came. Tzikas, never popular himself, had apparently failed to imagine an outpouring of affection from the Makuraners for a Videssian Avtokrator. Maniakes had trouble thinking him obtuse for that. He'd never imagined such a thing, either.
A Makuraner shouting his name grabbed him around the waist. The fellow was not trying to wrestle him to the ground. Instead, grunting, he hoisted Maniakes up onto his shoulders. Once up there, the Avtokrator discovered that Rhegorios and Abivard had been similarly elevated. The cheering got louder than ever.
The Makuraners passed the two Videssians and their own almost King of Kings back and forth among themselves. It would have been scandalous if… Maniakes shook his head. It was scandalous, but he, like the soldiers, was having too much fun to care. Presently, he discovered he was riding atop one of his own Haloga guards rather than a Makuraner. «Put me down!» he shouted, trying to make himself heard through the din.
The Haloga shook his big blond head. «No, your Majesty,» he boomed in slow, sonorous Videssian. «You need this. Soldiers need this.» As if Maniakes weighed nothing, he tossed him through the air to a couple of Makuraners who caught him and kept him from smashing to the ground below.
They, in turn, threw him to some of their friends. He nearly did fall then; one of the Makuraners grabbed him around the waist in the nick of time. «Careful, Amashpiit!» exclaimed another Makuraner nearby. «Don't drop him.»
«I didn't,» Amashpiit answered. «I won't.» The fellow who'd warned him helped him lift Maniakes up above them once more. Then the two of them—and other eager, shouting, grinning Makuraners—propelled the Avtokrator through the air again.
In the course of his wild peregrinations, he passed close enough to Rhegorios to yell, «If Kameas saw me now, he'd fall over dead.» His cousin laughed—or so he thought, though the crowd swept him away almost before he could be sure.
At last, when he was certain every boiler boy had bounced him through the air at least one and most of them two, three, or four times, his feet touched the ground. The couple of men closest to him, instead of seizing him and hurling him up onto yet another bumpy road, helped straighten him. «I thank you,» he told them, most sincerely.
Someone was shouting his name: Abivard. By what had to be luck, the Makuraner marshal had alighted not far from him.
«Whew!» Maniakes said when they clasped hands again. «As part of our ritual for crowning the Avtokrator, his soldiers lift him onto a shield—but they don't throw him around afterward.»
«That wasn't part of our ritual, either,» Abivard answered."Just something that happened. That's what life is, you know: just one cursed thing after another.»
«I wouldn't call this a cursed thing,» Maniakes said injudicious tones. «More on the lines of—interesting. There's a good word.» He looked around. «What happened to Rhegorios? Did they fling him into the Cattle Crossing?»
He and Abivard—and, soon, the men around them—raised their voices, calling for his cousin. Rhegorios turned out to be about as far from them as he could have been while remaining on the same beach. When they finally rejoined one another, the Sevastos said, «Now I know how a horse feels when it's ridden for the first time. All jumps and bounds and hard landings—have we got an imperial masseur?»
«I've never asked for one,» Maniakes said, «but one of the eunuchs or another will know who the best in the city is.» Taking stock of his body, he realized he was going to be bruised and sore in some unusual places. «Cousin of mine, that's not a bad idea.»
Abivard brought matters back to the business at hand. «For the moment, we are friends, you and I, you and my army,» he said. «If we Makuraners are going to leave the westlands, we had best do it quickly, while that friendship holds. Will you in your turn do all you can to keep us supplied as we travel, or will you understand when we take what we may need from the countryside?»
«As Videssos hasn't held most of the westlands since before I became Avtokrator, I don't know how much I can do to resupply you,» Maniakes said. «As for the other, you know the difference between requisitioning and plundering, or I hope you do.»
«Certainly,» Abivard said at once. «Requisitioning is what you do when someone is watching you.» He dipped his head to Maniakes. «Since we are friends—for the moment—and since you will be watching, we shall requisition. Does that suit you?»
Maniakes opened his mouth, then closed it again on realizing he had nothing to say. He had, for once, met his match in the cynicism that came with ruling or aspi
ring to rule a great empire.
Later, sailing back to Videssos the city, Rhegorios remarked, «Smerdis King of Kings didn't suit us, so we helped the Makuraners get rid of him and put Sharbaraz King of Kings on the throne. Sharbaraz turned out to be more dangerous than Smerdis ever dreamt of being, which meant he didn't suit us, either. So now we're helping the Makuraners get rid of him and put Abivard King of Kings, or whatever he ends up calling himself, on the throne. And Abivard is liable to turn out to be…» He let Maniakes finish the progression for himself.
«Oh, shut up,» Maniakes said loudly and sincerely. Rhegorios laughed. So did the Avtokrator. They both sounded nervous.
The Videssian army exercised on the meadow near the southern end of the city wall. The soldiers rode and hurled javelins and shot arrows from horseback into bales of straw with more enthusiasm than Maniakes had ever known them to show. Immodios said, «They didn't care for being cooped up in the siege, your Majesty. They want to be out and doing.»
«So I see,» the Avtokrator said. «They would have been doing in Mashiz, if only Sharbaraz hadn't turned out to be more clever than we thought.» Rhegorios' comment went through his mind. Resolutely, he ignored it. If Genesios hadn't overthrown Likinios, Sharbaraz would have been a good enough neighbor to the Empire of Videssos. Since no one was going to overthrow him… He laughed, though it wasn't very funny. He knew how lucky he was to remain on his own throne.
Immodios said, «We won't have quite the numbers the boiler boys do, once we go over into the westlands.»
«I know we won't,» Maniakes answered. «Their army will get bigger as they go, too, because they'll be adding garrison troops to it. But that'll make them slow, less likely to up and strike at us: not that they aren't already aimed at Sharbaraz. And besides, I expect we'll recruit a few men of our own once we get over there.»
«Oh, aye, no doubt,» Immodios said, «men who used to be Videssian soldiers, but who've been making their living as bandits and robbers while the Makuraners held the westlands. The ones who can recall what they used to be will be worth having. The others—»
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