Videssos Besieged ttot-4 Read online

  Videssos Besieged

  ( The Time of Troubles - 4 )

  Harry Turtledove

  Гарри Тертлдав

  With the arrival of spring, the Emperor Maniakes vows to unleash his troops against the enemy capital, where a hated despot sits arrogantly upon the throne. But from the moment Maniakes reaches the land of the Thousand Cities, he is plagued by a question no one can answer. Where is his nemesis, the ruthless commander whose cavalry no opposing force can withstand?

  Harry Turtledove – Videssos Besieged

  I

  Outside the imperial residence in Videssos the city, the cherry trees were in bloom. Soon their pink and white petals would drift the ground and walks around the residence in much the same way as the snow had done till a few weeks earlier.

  Maniakes threw wide the shutters and peered out at the grove that made the residence the only place in the palace quarter where the Avtokrator of the Videssians could find even a semblance of privacy. One of the many bees buzzing by made as if to land on him. He drew back in a hurry. When spring came, the bees were a nuisance: they were, in fact, almost the only thing he disliked about spring.

  «Phos be praised,» he said, sketching the good god's sun-circle above his heart, «now that good sailing weather is here again, we can get out of the city and fight another round with the men of Makuran.» He made a sour face. «I know the Makuraners are my enemies. Here in the capital, foes come disguised, so they're harder to spot.»

  «Once we've beaten the Makuraners, things will go better here,» said his wife, Lysia. She came over and took his hand and also looked at the flowering cherry trees. When another bee tried to fly into the chamber, she snatched up a sheet of parchment from Maniakes' desk and used it to chivvy the bee back outside. Then she smiled at him. «There. That's more use than we usually get out of tax registers.»

  «How right you are,» he said fondly. Lysia had a gift for not taking the ponderous Videssian bureaucratic machine too seriously, while to the army of tax collectors and clerks and scribes and Account reckoners it was not only as important as life itself but was in fact life itself. Better yet, she helped Maniakes not take the bureaucracy too seriously, either, a gift he often thought beyond price.

  He hugged her. The two of them were not very far apart in height They were a little stockier, a little swarthier than the Videssian norm, being of Vaspurakaner blood even if almost completely Videssian in the way they thought Both had lustrous, almost blue-black hair, bushy eyebrows—though Lysia plucked hers to conform to imperial standards of beauty—and high-arched, prominent noses. Maniakes' thick, heavy beard covered his cheeks and chin, but under the beard that chin, he suspected, was a match for Lysia's strong one.

  Their resemblance was no mere accident of having sprung from the same homeland, nor was it a case of husband and wife coming to look like each other over the course of living together—such cases being more often joked about than seen. They were not just husband and wife; they were also first cousins—Lysia's father, Symvatios, was younger brother to Maniakes' father, with whom the Avtokrator shared his name.

  Lysia said, «When we sail for the west to fight the Makuraners, have you decided whether to use the northern or southern route?»

  «The southern, I think,» Maniakes answered. «If we land in the north, we have to thread our way through all the valleys and passes of the Erzerum Mountains. That's the longer way to have to go to aim for Mashiz, too. I want Sharbaraz—» He pronounced it Sarbaraz; like most who spoke Videssian, he had trouble with the sh sound, though he could sometimes bring it out. «—King of Kings to be sweating in his capital the way I've sweated here in the city.»

  «He's had to worry more than we have, the past couple of years,» Lysia said. «The Cattle Crossing holds the Makuraners away from Videssos the city, but the Tutub and the Tib are only rivers. If we can beat the soldiers the Makuraners put up against us, we will sack Mashiz.»

  She sounded confident. Maniakes felt confident. «We should have done it last year,» he said. «I never expected them to be able to hold us when we were moving down the Tib.» He shrugged. «That's why you have to fight the war, though: to see which of the things you don't expect come true.»

  «We hurt them even so,» Lysia said. She spoke consolingly, but what she said was true. Maniakes nodded. «I'd say the Thousand Cities between the Tutub and the Tib are down to about eight hundred, thanks to us.» He knew he was exaggerating the destruction the Videssians had wrought, but he didn't think there really were a thousand cities on the flood-plain, either. «Not only do we hurt the Makuraners doing that, but we loosen their hold on the westlands of Videssos, too.»

  «This is a strange war,» Lysia observed.

  Maniakes nodded again. Makuran held virtually all of the Videssian westlands, the great peninsula on the far side of the Cattle Crossing. All his efforts to drive them out of the westlands by going straight at them had failed. But Makuran, a landlocked power till its invasion of Videssos, had no ships to speak of. Controlling the sea had let Maniakes strike at the enemy's heartland even if he couldn't free his own.

  He slipped an arm around Lysia's waist. «You're falling down on the job, you know.» She raised an eyebrow in a silent question. He explained: «The last two years, you've had a baby while we were on campaign in the Land of the Thousand Cities.»

  She laughed so hard, she pulled free of him. He stared at her in some surprise; he hadn't thought the small joke anywhere near that fanny. Then she said, «I was going to tell you in a few more days, when I was surer, but… I think I'm expecting again.»

  «Do you?» he said. Now Lysia nodded. He hugged her, shaking his head all the while. «I think we're going to have to make the imperial residence bigger, with all the children it will be holding.»

  «I think you may be right,» Lysia answered. Maniakes had a young daughter and son, Evtropia and Likarios, by his first wife, Niphone, who had died giving birth to Likarios. Lysia had borne him two boys, Symvatios and Tatoules. The one, a toddler now, was named for her father—Maniakes' uncle—the other for Maniakes' younger brother, who had been missing for years in the chaos that surrounded the Makuraner conquest of the westlands. Maniakes knew Tatoules almost had to be dead, and had chosen the name to remember him.

  Maniakes also had a bastard son, Atalarikhos, back on the eastern island of Kalavria. His father had governed there before their clan rose up against the vicious and inept rule of the previous Avtokrator, Genesios, who had murdered his way to the throne and tried to stay on it with even more wholesale slaughter. Now Maniakes prudently mentioned neither Atalarikhos nor his mother, a yellow-haired Haloga woman named Rotrude, to Lysia.

  Instead of bringing up such a sticky topic, he said, «Shall we hold a feast to celebrate the good news?»

  To his surprise and disappointment, Lysia shook her head. «What would be the point? The clan stands by us, and your soldiers do, because you've managed to make the Makuraners thoughtful about fighting Videssians, but most of the nobles would find polite reasons to be someplace else.»

  He scowled, his eyebrows coming down in a thick black line above his eyes. She was right, and he knew it, and he hated it «The patriarch gave us a dispensation,» he growled.

  «So he did,» Lysia agreed, «after you almost sailed back to Kalavria three years ago. That frightened Agathios into it. But only about half the priests acknowledge it, and far fewer than half the nobles.»

  «I know what will make everyone acknowledge it,» Maniakes said grimly. Lysia half turned away from him, as if to say nothing would make people acknowledge the legitimacy of their union. But he found a magic word, one as potent as if spoken by a chorus of the most powerf
ul mages from the Sorcerers' Collegium: «Victory.»

  Maniakes rode through the streets of Videssos the city toward the harbor of Kontoskalion on the southern side of the capital. Before him marched a dozen parasol-bearers, their bright silk canopies announcing to all who saw that the Emperor was moving through his capital. Because that thought might not fill everyone with transports of delight, around him tramped a good-sized bodyguard.

  About half the men in the detachment were Videssians, the other half Halogai—mercenaries from out of the cold north. The native Videssians were little and dark and lithe, armed with swords. The Halogai, big, fair men, some of whom wore their long, pale hair in braids, carried long-handled axes that could take a head with one blow.

  At the front of the procession marched a herald who shouted, «Way! Make way for the Avtokrator of the Videssians!» People on foot scrambled out of the street. People riding horses or leading donkeys either sped up or found side streets. One teamster driving a heavy wagon neither sped up nor turned. A Haloga suggested, «Let's kill him,» to Maniakes.

  He made no effort to lower his voice. Maniakes did not think he was joking: the Halogai had a very direct way of looking at the world. Evidently, the teamster didn't think he was joking, either. All of a sudden, the wagon not only sped up but also moved onto a side street. No longer impeded, the procession moved on toward the harbor of Kontoskalion.

  Maniakes rode past one of the hundreds of temples in Videssos the city dedicated to the worship of Phos. Perhaps drawn by the herald's cries, the priest who served the temple came out to look at the Avtokrator and his companions. Like other clerics, he shaved his pate and let his beard grow full and bushy. He wore a plain wool robe, dyed blue, with a cloth-of-gold circle representing Phos' sun sewn above his left breast.

  Maniakes waved to him. Instead of waving back, the priest spat on the ground, as if rejecting Phos' evil rival, Skotos. Some of the Videssian guardsmen snarled at him. He glared back toward them, armored in his faith and therefore unafraid. After a moment, he deliberately turned his back and went into the temple once more.

  «Bastard,» one of the Videssian guards snarled. «Anybody who insults you like that, your Majesty—»

  «We kill him.» Three Halogai said it together. They cared nothing for Videssian priests; they did not follow Phos, but still cleaved to the bloodthirsty gods of Halogaland. If ever a priest needed killing, they were the men to do the job.

  But Maniakes said, «No, no. I can't afford trouble with the priesthood now. Just let it go. One of these days, maybe—»

  That satisfied the Halogai, whose waits for revenge could span years, even generations. Inside, though, Maniakes ached at the priest's gesture. The half of the clergy who accepted his marriage to Lysia did so grudgingly, as if against their better judgment. The ones who rejected it as incestuous, though, did so ferociously and altogether without hesitation.

  «One more reason to get to Makuran,» Maniakes muttered. Makuraner custom saw nothing out of the ordinary about two first cousins marrying, or even uncles marrying nieces. And the Makuraners Worshiped the God, not Phos; the only Videssian priests anywhere near Maniakes would be the ones he brought along for their gift of the healing art and for enspiriting the army. All of those would be men who tolerated his family arrangements, at least nominally.

  Reaching the harbor was a relief. The sailors greeted him with genuine affection; they, like his soldiers, cared more that he led them to victory man that he'd married his first cousin. He had hoped the whole Empire of Videssos would come to see things the same way. It hadn't happened yet. He was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

  Most of the ships tied up to the wharfs at the harbor of Kontoskalion were beamy merchantmen that would carry his men and horses and gear to the harbor of Lyssaion, where they would disembark and begin their campaign. Almost all the war galleys that would protect the fleet of merchant vessels were moored in the Neorhesian harbor, on the northern shore of Videssos the city.

  Maniakes' flagship, the Renewal, was an exception to the rule. The Renewal was neither the biggest nor the swiftest nor the newest galley in the fleet. It was, however, the galley in which Maniakes had sailed from the island of Kalavria to Videssos the city when he rebelled against Genesios, and so had sentimental value for him. It stayed in the harbor of Kontoskalion because that was where it had first landed at the capital: sentiment again.

  Thrax, the drungarios of the fleet, sprang from the deck of the Renewal to the wharf to which it was tied and hurried toward Maniakes. «Phos bless you, your Majesty,» he said. «It's good to see you.»

  «And you,» Maniakes said, wondering for what was far from the first time whether he also kept Thrax around for sentimental reasons. The drungarios looked like a sailor: he was lean and lithe, with the sun-dark skin and carved features of a man who'd lived his whole life outdoors. He was not old, but his hair and beard had gone shining silver, which gave him a truly striking aspect.

  He'd captained the Renewal on the journey from Kalavria to the capital. Now he headed the whole Videssian navy. He'd never done anything to make Maniakes think giving him that post was a dreadful mistake. On the other hand, he'd never done anything to make Maniakes delighted he'd given him the post. Competent but uninspired summed him up.

  As now: he said, «Your Majesty, we'll be ready to sail on the day you appointed.» When he told you something like that, you could rely on it.

  «Can we be ready five days earlier than that?» Maniakes asked. «The sooner we sail, the sooner we take the war back to Makuran.» And, he added to himself, the sooner Lysia and I can get out of Videssos the city.

  Thrax frowned. «I'm not so sure about that, your Majesty. I've set everything up to meet the day you first asked of me. To change it would be hard, and probably not worth doing.» He hadn't thought about speeding up, then, and didn't want to think about it.

  «See what you can do,» Maniakes told him. When Thrax knew in advance what he was supposed to do, he did it with unruffled ease. When he had to improvise, he didn't come off so well. One thing that seemed to be missing from his makeup was any capacity for original thought.

  «I'll try, your Majesty,» he said after a moment.

  «It's not that hard,» Maniakes said encouragingly. He was used to improvising; both his campaigns in the Land of the Thousand Cities had been nothing but improvisation from beginning to end, as, for that matter, had been the campaign against Genesios that had won him the throne. He'd seen, though, that not everyone had the knack for seizing what the moment presented.

  A cart rattled up the wharf to one of the merchantmen. The driver scrambled down, gave his mule a handful of raisins, and started tossing sacks of grain—or possibly beans—to the sailors, who stowed them below the deck and, with luck, out of the bilgewater.

  Maniakes pointed to the carter. «You need to find out where he and all the people like him are coming from, how long they travel, how long they take to unload here, and how long to get back again. Then you need to sit down with the heads of the storehouses and see if there's anything they can do to make things move faster. If They can load more carts at once than we're sending, for instance—»

  He broke off there, because Thrax was clutching both hands to his head as if it were about to explode like a tightly stoppered jar left too long in a cook fire. «Have mercy on my poor wits, your Majesty!» the drungarios cried. «How am I supposed to remember all that?»

  «It's not that hard,» Maniakes repeated, but, by Thrax's tormented expression, it was indeed that hard, or maybe harder. He felt as if he were the ecumenical patriarch, trying to explain some abstruse theological point to a drunken peasant who didn't care about theology in the first place and was more interested in pissing on his shoes.

  «Everything will be ready on the day you first set me,» Thrax promised, and Maniakes believed that. Thrax heaved a martyred sigh, as the holy Kveldoulphios might have done when he discovered his fellow Halogai weren't going to join him in converting to the worship
of Phos, but were going to slay him to stop him from preaching at them. Sighing again, the drungarios went on, «And I'll try to have things ready as far before then as I can, even if I have to turn this whole harbor all cattywumpus to do it.»

  «That's the spirit!» Maniakes slapped him on the back. «I know you'll do what needs doing, and I know you'll do it well.»

  What a liar I've come to be since I donned the red boots, Maniakes thought. But a Thrax who was trying to meet the demands he'd put on him was far preferable to a Thrax who was merely… trying.

  As Thrax and Maniakes walked from one wharf to the next, the drungarios did his best to be helpful. He knew what was supposed to be happening by the original schedule, and talked knowledgeably about that. He also began thinking about what he'd have to do to make that schedule move faster. Having once rejected changes out of hand, he now took the view that any cooperation he showed afterward was bound to be reckoned an improvement. He was right, too, though Maniakes did his best not to let on about that.

  Once Maniakes had done everything he could to encourage the drungarios, he remounted and rode off: Thrax wasn't the only man under whom he had to light a fire. He made a point of returning to the palace quarter by a route different from the one he'd used to go out to the harbor of Kontoskalion, not wanting to meet again the priest who had spurned him.

  But it was difficult to travel more than a couple of blocks in Videssos the city without passing a temple, whether a magnificent one like the High Temple or the one dedicated to the memory of the holy Phravitas where Avtokrators and their close kin were entombed or a little building distinguishable from a house only by the spire topped by a gilded globe springing from its roof.

  And so, passing by one of those temples, Maniakes found himself watched and measured by another priest, watched and measured and rejected. For a copper or two, he would have set his Haloga guards on the blue-robe this time. But, however tempting he found the notion of taking a bloody revenge, he set it aside once more. It would embroil him with the ecumenical patriarch, and he could not afford that. Being at odds with the temples would put a crimp, maybe a fatal crimp, into the war against Makuran.