Videssos Besieged ttot-4 Read online

  «Now you have seen it,» Abivard said before the Avtokrator could reply. «What do you plan to do about it?» His voice had an edge that required no pretense; Sharbaraz truly had ordered his execution.

  «I'm not going to yank out my sword on the spot and carve slices off you, if that's what you mean,» Romezan answered. «If this is real, Sharbaraz has fallen over the edge.» His gaze sharpened, as if, on horseback, he had spotted a new target for his lance. «Is this real, or is it some clever forgery the Videssians have cooked up?»

  He spoke without regard for Maniakes, who stood only a couple of feet away from him. Maniakes was better at holding his features quiet than the Makuraner. Behind the stillness, he was laughing. The only true answer to Romezan's question was both; part of the parchment was real, part clever forgery, though Abivard had had as much to do with that as any Videssian.

  «It's real,» Abivard said, playing the part that benefited Videssos because it also benefited him. «My mages have shown that's so—it's why I summoned them to this side of the Cattle Crossing.»

  «I will hear as much from them,» Romezan said.

  Maniakes nodded to Kameas. Bowing to Romezan, the vestiarios glided out of the audience chamber. He returned in short order with Panteles and Bozorg. Bowing again, he said, «Here they are, eminent sir.»

  To Abivard, Romezan said, «That's right, you brought your tame Videssian along, didn't you?» He dismissed Panteles with a wave of his hand. «Go on, sirrah; what you have to say interests me not at all, for you'll say whatever your master wants you to say.»

  «That is not so,» the Videssian mage replied with dignity.

  Since Maniakes knew perfectly well it was so, he was not surprised to discover Romezan did, too. The Makuraner general said, «Go on, I tell you,» and Panteles perforce went. Romezan turned his attention to Bozorg. «Do you really mean to tell me Sharbaraz was this stupid?»

  The Makuraner mage nodded. «Can you reckon wise any man who would treacherously seek to compass the death of his finest marshal?» He did not say anything about the deaths of all the other officers whose names had been transferred to the King of Kings' letter. Maniakes noted the omission. He had to hope Romezan would not.

  «He truly did send that order?» Romezan sounded thoughtful and, unless Maniakes read him wrong, sad.

  Bozorg nodded. «He did. My magic—and also that of Panteles– confirmed it.» What the wizard said was the truth, as he had promised it would be. What he did not say, and would not say unless specifically asked…

  No doubt intending to keep Romezan from asking the questions Bozorg was liable to answer truthfully, Abivard said, «You still haven't answered the question I put to you when I first showed you this. What do you plan to do about it?»

  «If I do as the King of Kings commanded me, this whole army goes straight into the Void,» Romezan observed, and Abivard nodded. «But if I don't do as the King of Kings commanded me,» Romezan went on, «that by itself makes me into a traitor, and means some other officer—»

  «Tzikas,» Abivard interrupted. By the way he said it, he didn't expect Romezan to like Tzikas. Maniakes wondered whether anyone in the civilized world besides Tzikas liked Tzikas.

  «Some other officer will get a letter like this one,» Romezan finished, as if Abivard had not spoken. «But he won't have orders to get rid of you. He'll have orders to get rid of me.» Romezan sighed. Those broad shoulders sagged. «I never thought I would have to turn away from Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his—» He broke off the honorific formula in the middle. «And to the Void with that, too. May his fundament be removed from the seat of the chair he occupies in Mashiz.» He went down on his belly before Abivard. «Majesty,» he said. «There. Now my rebellion is official.»

  «I hadn't planned to—» Abivard broke off. The logical consequences of being in the situation came crashing down on him. If he stayed loyal to Sharbaraz, he offered his neck to the chopping block. Beside that, rebellion became the more attractive choice.

  Maniakes offered the alternative he'd suggested before: «If you don't care to be King of Kings in your own name, there's still your baby nephew to protect.»

  Still down on hands and knees, Romezan laughed wolfishly, an effect enhanced by his posture. «I've heard a lot of stories about men who rebel in the name of babies,» he said. «Maybe I've heard one where the baby lived and got to rule when he grew up. Maybe I haven't, too.»

  «I don't have to decide that right away,» Abivard answered. «What matters is that I'm in rebellion against Sharbaraz King of Kings—and so are you.» He bent down and tapped Romezan on the shoulder. «Get up.»

  Romezan rose, that wolfish look still in his eye. «By this time tomorrow, the whole field army will be in arms against Sharbaraz. We'll march back to Mashiz, throw him out, get rid of him, put you on the throne, and—» His vision of the future ran out at that point. «And everything will be fine then,» he finished.

  Abivard did indeed look farther ahead than the noble from the Seven Clans. He glanced toward Maniakes. «It's… not going to be quite that simple, I don't think,» he said.

  «No, it's not,» Maniakes agreed. He had been hoping for, and been planning for, a moment like this ever since he became Avtokrator of the Videssians. He had also spent a large stretch of time wondering if it would ever come. He spoke not to Abivard but to Romezan: «What do you propose to do with your garrisons in the westlands while the field army goes up against Sharbaraz?»

  «Leave them there,» Romezan answered at once. «Why not? We'll be back next year, and—» The difficulty Abivard had seen at once now became apparent to him, too. He looked at Maniakes with no great warmth. «Oh. If we leave, you'll start taking those cities back.»

  The Avtokrator shook his head. «No, I won't do anything of the sort,» he answered. Romezan stared at him, angrily suspicious. Even Abivard looked surprised. He didn't blame them. Liberating the cities in the westlands after the Makuraner field force pulled out had been his first plan. Instead of using it, though, he said, «If you leave the garrisons behind, I'll burn everything in front of the field army and I'll attack it the first chance I get.»

  «Why would you want to do a stupid thing like that?» Romezan burst out. «If you do, our campaign against Sharbaraz goes into the latrine.»

  «He knows that,» Abivard said, as if to a child. «He doesn't care– or he doesn't care much. What he wants is to get the westlands back under Videssian rule.»

  «That's right,» Maniakes said. «Agree to put the border back where it was before Likinios Avtokrator got murdered, and I'll help you every way I can. Try to fight your civil war and hold on to the westlands, too, and I'll hurt you every way I can—and I can hurt you badly now.»

  «Suppose we don't march on Mashiz?» Romezan said. «Suppose we just stay where we are? What then?»

  «Then Sharbaraz finds out you didn't execute Abivard,» Maniakes said, a touch of wolf in his own smile. «Then somebody– Kardarigan, maybe, or Tzikas—gets the order to execute you, not for failure, but for rebellion. You said as much yourself.»

  Already swarthy, Romezan darkened further with anger. «You dare to take advantage of our squabbles among ourselves and use them to steal from as?»

  Maniakes threw back his head and laughed in Romezan's face. The noble from the Seven Clans could not have looked more astonished had Maniakes dashed a bucket of cold water over him. The Avtokrator said, «By the good god, Romezan, how do you think you got the westlands in the first place? You marched into them when Videssos looked more like a catfight than an empire, after Genesios murdered Likinios and every general thought he could steal the throne for himself, or at least keep his neighbor from having it. Taking back what was mine is not stealing, not here it isn't.»

  «He's right,» Abivard said, and Maniakes inclined his head to him, respecting his honesty. «I don't like him getting the westlands back, and if I can find any way to keep him from getting them back, I will use it. But trying to get them back doesn't make him a thief.»

  «I
don't think you can find such a way,» Maniakes said. «I don't think you have very long to spend looking for one, either of you. You can bargain with me or you can try to bargain with Sharbaraz. If you have any choices past those two, I don't see them.»

  «You are enjoying this,» Romezan said, as if he were accusing the Avtokrator of lapping soup from a bowl like a dog.

  Again, Maniakes met the challenge straight on. «Every minute of it,» he agreed. «You Makuraners have spent my whole reign, and the one before mine, humiliating Videssos. Now I get a chance to get my own back—literally. You can either give it up and go back to your own land to deal with the King of Kings who put you in this predicament, or you can try to keep it, try to go back, and get chewed up along the way. The choice is yours.»

  «We have no choice,» Abivard said. «Let the borders be as they were before Likinios Avtokrator was murdered.» Romezan looked mutinous but said nothing.

  «That was the start of the trouble between us,» Maniakes said. But Abivard shook his head. «No. Likinios paid gold to the Khamorth tribes north of the Degird to raid into Makuran. When Peroz King of Kings, may the God cherish his spirit, moved against them, he was defeated and slain, which let Smerdis usurp Sharbaraz's throne, which let Likinios interfere in our civil war, which… You know the tale as well as I. Finding a beginning for the strife between us is not easy.»

  «Nor will finding an end to that strife be easy,» Romezan rumbled: a plain note of warning.

  «For now, though, on these terms, we can stop,» Maniakes said. «For now.» Abivard and Romezan spoke together.

  Abivard and Roshnani scrambled down into a boat from the Renewal. The sailors swiftly rowed them over the narrow stretch of water separating the imperial flagship from the beach at Across. When they got out of the boat on the beach, Rhegorios got into it. The sailors brought him back to the dromon.

  «I am well,» he said to Maniakes. «Is all well here?»

  «Well enough,» his cousin answered. The Avtokrator nodded to Romezan. «Your turn now.»

  «Aye, my turn now,» the noble from the Seven Clans said heavily. «And I shall make the most of it.» He got down into the boat. So did Bozorg and Panteles. The Videssian mage in Makuraner pay looked as if he wished he could sit farther from Romezan than the boat permitted.

  After Romezan and the two wizards had got out of the boat again and strode up the beach toward Across, Thrax spoke up: «I expect you'll want to get back to the imperial city now, eh, your Majesty?»

  «What?» Maniakes said. «No, by the good god. Hang about here—a bit out of bowshot, if that suits you. This is where things that matter are going to happen today. I want to be here when they do.»

  «Why not just hop out of the dromon and go on into the Makuraners' camp yourself, then?» Thrax laughed.

  All Maniakes answered was, «No, not yet. The time isn't ripe.» The drungarios of the fleet stared at him; Maniakes was used to having Thrax stare at him. After the fleet had kept the Kubratoi from getting over the Cattle Crossing to join with the Makuraners, he begrudged Thrax his limitations less than he had.

  «I presume we're waiting for the cheers that mean Abivard is reading the letter to a joyous and appreciative audience?» Rhegorios asked, grinning at his own irony.

  «That's what we're waiting for, all right,» Maniakes said. «I asked Abivard to meet with his officers by the seaside, but he said no. He doesn't care to remind them they're going to be cooperating with us any more than he has to, not right now he doesn't. Put that way, he has a point.»

  «Aye, likely so,» Rhegorios agreed. «I'll be glad when we do get back to the city, though; I'll tell you that. They wanted to honor me, so they gave me a Makuraner cook. I've been eating mutton without garlic ever since I traded myself for Romezan. I think the inside of my mouth has fallen asleep.»

  «If that's the worst you suffered, you came through well,» Maniakes said. «I'm just bloody glad the Makuraners let you go again.»

  Thrax pointed toward Across. «Looks like something's going on there, your Majesty. To the ice with me if I can make out what, though.»

  Trees and bushes and buildings—some standing, others ruins– screened most of the interior of the suburb from view from the sea, but Thrax was right: something was going on there. Where things had been quiet, almost sleepy, before Abivard and Romezan returned to the Makuraner field force, now suddenly men were moving through the streets, some mounted, others afoot. As Maniakes watched, more and more soldiers started stirring.

  Shouts rang out, someplace he could not see. To his annoyance, he could not make out the words. «Move closer to shore,» he told Thrax. Reluctantly, the drungarios obeyed the order.

  A couple of horsemen came galloping out of Across. Maniakes and Rhegorios looked at each other. No way to tell what that meant Had the Renewal come any closer to the shore, she would have beached herself. Maniakes should have been able to make out what the Makuraners were shouting. The trouble was, they weren't shouting anything after that first brief outcry. Only the slap of waves against the dromon's hull broke the quiet.

  He waited, wishing he could be a fly on the wall wherever the Makuraners had gathered instead of uselessly staying here on the sea. After a moment, he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Bagdasares' magic might have let him be that fly on the wall, as he had been for a little while listening to Abivard and Etzilios and, unexpectedly, Tzikas.

  Mages on the other side had soon blocked his hearing then. But two of the chief mages for the other side were at least partly on his side now. On the other hand, magic had a way of falling to pieces when dealing with, or trying to deal with, inflamed passions—that was why both battle magic and love magic worked so seldom. And he suspected that passions at the Makuraner assemblage, if not inflamed now, would be soon.

  Hardly had the thought crossed his mind when a great, furious roar arose somewhere near the center of Across. He could make out no words in it, but found himself less annoyed than he had been before. He did not think that angry baying had any words in it, anymore than a pack of hounds cried out with words when they scented blood.

  On and on went the roar, now getting a little softer, now rising again to a new peak of rage. Rhegorios chuckled. «What do you want to bet they're reading through the whole list Abivard came up with?» he said.

  «You're likely right,» Maniakes answered. «When they shout louder it must be because they've just come across some especially popular officer.»

  Abivard had come up with more than three hundred names. Reading them all took a while. At last, silence fell. A moment later, fresh outcry broke out. Now, for the first time, Maniakes could make out one word, shouted as part of a rhythmic chant: the name of the Makuraner King of Kings.

  «If that's not 'Dig up Sharbaraz's bones!' in Makuraner, I'm a shave-pated priest,» Rhegorios exclaimed.

  Maniakes nodded. «Aye, that's the riot call, no doubt about it.» He did several steps of a happy dance, right there on the deck, and slammed his fist into his open palm. «By the good god, cousin of mine, we did it!»

  Where he was uncharacteristically delighted, Rhegorios was as uncharacteristically restrained. «We may have done it,» he said. «We've done part of it, anyhow. But there are still thousands of boiler boys sitting right here next to the Cattle Crossing, only a long piss away from Videssos the city. Getting the buggers out of the westlands and back where they belong is going to take a deal of doing yet.»

  A Makuraner burst out from among the buildings of Across and ran along the beach. He utterly ignored the presence of the Renewal not far offshore—and well he might have, for three of his countrymen were at his heels, their caftans flapping about them like wings as they ran. The swords in their hands glittered and flashed in the sun.

  The fleeing Makuraner, perhaps hearing them gaining on him, turned at bay, drawing his own sword. As with most fights of one against three, this one did not last long. He lay where he had fallen, his blood soaking the sand.

  «Maybe their
whole army will fall apart,» Rhegorios said dreamily. «Maybe they'll have their civil war here and now.»

  «Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I don't think enough Makuraners will stay loyal to Sharbaraz to make much of a civil war, though.»

  «Mm, something to that,» Rhegorios admitted. «For so long, though, we've got less than our due that I don't think the good god will be angry with me if I hope for more than our due for a change.» He shifted from theology to politics, all in one breath: «I wish I knew which side the dead man was on, and which the three who killed him.»

  Maniakes could not grant that wish, but the three Makuraners did, almost as soon as it was uttered. They waved to the Renewal, and bowed, and did everything they could to show they were well inclined to Videssos. One of them pointed to the body of the man they had killed. «He would not spit on the name of Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps!» he shouted, his voice thin across the water of the Cattle Crossing.

  «Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps.» Now Maniakes, echoing the Makuraners, sounded dreamy, his mind far away across the years. «When Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis, that's what his men called the usurper: Smerdis Pimp of Pimps. Now it comes full circle.» He sketched Phos' sun-sign, a circle itself, above his heart.

  «We have the rebellion,» Rhegorios said. Solemnly, he and Maniakes and Thrax clasped hands. As Rhegorios had said, success seemed strange after so many disappointments.

  The Makuraners on the beach were still shouting, now in bad Videssian instead of their own language: «You Avtokrator, you come here, we make friends. No more enemies no more.» «Not yet,» Maniakes shouted back. «Not yet. Soon.»

  A little breeze flirted with the scarlet capes of the Halogai and Videssians of the Imperial Guard as they formed three sides of a square on the beach near Across. The sun mirrored off their gilded mail shirts. Almost to a man, they looked wary, ready to fight: all around them, drawn up in far greater numbers, stood the warriors of the Makuraner field force.