Spring painted the fields around Vek Rud Stronghold with a green that, while it wouldn't last long, was lovely to look at for the time being. So Abivard found it most years, at any rate. Not now. Turning to Frada, he said, "By the God, I'll be glad when we ride south tomorrow. Another fortnight of feeding the fighters and their horses and our storehouses would be empty. Our own folk will need food, too, especially if the harvest isn't a good one."
"Aye." Frada took a couple of paces along the walkway, kicking at the stone under his feet. "I wish I were coming with you when you ride. All I ever do, it seems, is get left behind."
"Don't complain about that," Abivard said sharply. "If you hadn't been left behind last summer, odds are you wouldn't be alive to whine about it now. We've been over this ground a thousand times. I have to ride with Sharbaraz, and that means you have to stay here and protect the domain from whatever comes against it, be that Smerdis' men, or Pradtak's, or the Khamorth."
Frada still looked mutinous. "At the start of winter, you were saying land was most important because it lasted. If that's so, you ought to stay here to watch the land while I go out and fight."
"I hadn't thought through the politics then," Abivard said, reluctant to admit Denak had played a big part in making him change his mind. "Smerdis will know by now the part I played in freeing Sharbaraz from Nalgis Crag stronghold. For better or worse, I rise and fall with the rightful King of Kings. If I'm not at his side, people will say it's because I'm afraid. I can't have that."
"How can anyone say you're afraid of anything when they're probably singing that new song about you in Videssos by now?"
Abivard's ears got hot. "The song's about you, too," he said feebly.
"No, it's not. My name's in it a time or three, but it's about you." Much to Abivard's relief, Frada didn't sound jealous. Such things would have torn apart some clans, but Godarz had made jealousy among his sons a sin to rank with blasphemy. Frada went on, "It'll be your way, of course. How can I deny you know more about what's best than I do? I just wish I could shove a lance into Smerdis myself."
"When we ride against Videssos, you'll have your chance," Abivard said. Frada nodded. Everyone would ride against Makuran's great enemy.
"LookSharbaraz has come out," Frada said, sticking an elbow into Abivard's ribs. "You'd better go down into the courtyard with him; you know as well as I do that Mother will pitch a fit if the ceremony doesn't come off perfectly."
"Right you are." Abivard went down the stone stairs and took his place alongside the rightful King of Kings. The last time the women of Vek Rud stronghold had come forth from their quarters was the summer before, when he had stood with his father and brother and half brothers; of them all, only he had got home alive. And now his mother and sister and half sisters and wives had to wish him good fortune as he set out on another campaign. A woman's life was anything but easy.
The door to the living quarters opened. Denak and Burzoe came out together, as they had before. This time, though, Denak preceded her mother as they walked toward the waiting men: as principal wife to the King of Kings, she held higher ceremonial rank than anyone merely of Vek Rud domain.
She nodded to Abivard, then passed him to take her place by Sharbaraz. Burzoe stood in front of Abivard. Her face, which had seemed calm at first glance, showed deep and abiding anger when he looked more closely. He scratched his head; could his mother be offended because Denak took precedence over her? It seemed out of character.
Behind Burzoe came Roshnani. Like Burzoe's, her face appeared calm until Abivard got a good look at it. Where his mother hid anger, though, his principal wife was trying to concealmirth? Excitement? He couldn't quite tell, and wondered what new convulsion had shaken the women's quarters to set Burzoe at odds with Denakand with Roshnani, too, he saw, for his mother's fury plainly included both of them. Not wanting to borrow trouble, he didn't ask. He might find out, or the trouble might blow over without his ever learning what had gone wrong. He hoped it would.
Whatever it was, the rest of his wives and his young half sisters didn't look to know anything about it. They stared and chattered quietly among themselves, enjoying the chance to see something wider than the halls of the women's quarters. For them, this was a pleasant outing, nothing more.
Burzoe turned toward Denak. Her lips tightened slightly as she did so; maybe she was angry her daughter had usurped her place at the head of the ceremony. Abivard clicked his tongue between his teeth; he hadn't thought her so petty.
Denak said, "We are met here today to bid our men safety and good fortune as they travel off to war." Burzoe stirred but did not speak. Fury seemed to radiate from her in waves; had it been heat, Ganzak might have set her in the smithy in place of his furnace. Denak went on, "We shall surely triumph, for the God stretches forth her arms to protect those whose cause is just, as ours is."
A stir of applause ran through the men and women who listened to her. Abivard joined it, though he was not so convinced by what she said as he would have been before the previous summer. How had the God protected those who followed Peroz into Pardraya? The short answer was none too well.
Denak took a step back, beckoned to Burzoe. With exquisite grace, her mother prostrated herself before Sharbaraz. "The God keep you safe, Majesty," she said, and rose. She embraced Abivard. "The God watch over you, as she did before."
Words, gesturesall unexceptionable. What lay behind them . . . Abivard wished he could disrupt the ceremony to inquire of Burzoe. But custom inhibited him no less than it had Pradtak back at Nalgis Crag stronghold.
In her turn, Burzoe stepped back and nodded to Roshnani. Polite as usual, Roshnani nodded back, but her gaze went to Denak. Their eyes met. Suddenly scenting conspiracy, Abivard wondered what his sister and principal wife had cooked up between them. Whatever it was, his mother didn't like it.
As Burzoe had, Roshnani gave the King of Kings his ceremonial due and wished him good fortune. Then she hugged Abivard, tighter than decorum called for. He didn't mindon the contrary. She said, "The God keep you safe from all danger."
"What I'll think about most is coming home to you," he answered. For some reason, that seemed to startle his principal wife, but she managed a smile in return.
Abivard walked down the line of waiting women, accepting the best wishes of his other wives and half sisters. If the God listened to a tenth of their prayers, he would live forever and be richer than three Kings of Kings rolled together.
His youngest half sister started back toward the living quarters. The procession that had emerged withdrew in reverse order, those who had come out first going in last. Soon Burzoe's turn came. She let out a scornful sniff and, her back stiff with pride, stalked away toward the open door of the living quarters.
Roshnani and Denak still stood in the courtyard.
Abivard needed perhaps longer than he should have to realize they didn't intend to go back to the women's quarters. "What are you doing?" His voice came out a foolish squeak.
Roshnani and Denak looked at each other again. Sure enough, the two of them had come up with a plot together. Denak spoke for them both. "My brother, my husband" She turned to Sharbaraz. "we are going to come with you."
"What, to fight? Are you mad?" Sharbaraz said.
"No, not to fight, Majesty, may it please you," Roshnani answered. "We would fight for you, the God knows, but we have not the skill and training to do it well; we would be more liability than asset. But every army has its baggage train. The minstrels are not in the habit of singing of itit lacks glamour, when set beside those whose only duty is to go into battlebut they say enough for us to know it exists, and know an army would starve or run out of arrows without one. And we know one more wagon, a wagon bearing the two of us, would not slow the host, nor endanger your cause."
The rightful King of Kings gaped. He hadn't expected reasoning as careful as that of a courtier who'd had a tutor from Videssos, but then he hadn't truly made Roshnani's acquaintance till this moment. He started to say something, then stopped and sent Abivard a look of appeal.
"It's against all custom," Abivard said, the best argument he could come up with on the spur of the moment. To himself, he added, It's also getting ahead of the promise I made you of more freedom to move around after the war with Smerdis was over. He couldn't say that aloud, because he didn't want to admit he had made the promise. He did add, "No wonder Mother is furious at the two of you." If anyone embodied Makuraner propriety, Burzoe was that woman.
Roshnani bore up under the charge with equanimity; Burzoe was but her mother-in-law, to be respected, yes, but not the guardian of proper behavior since childhood. The accusation hit Denak harder, but she was the one who answered: "It was against propriety for Smerdis to steal the throne from him to whom it rightfully belongs. It was against custom for me, a woman, to set his rescue in motion." She looked down at the ground. Of necessity, she had done other things that went against custom, too, things that ate at her still despite the honor Sharbaraz had shown her. She did not speak of them in public, but the people among whom the argument centered knew what they were.
Sharbaraz said, "What possible good could the two of you bring that would outweigh not only setting custom aside but also setting men aside to protect you when the fighting starts?" When the King of Kings retreated from absolute rejection, Abivard knew the war was lost.
But it still had to be played out "You value our counsel when we are in a stronghold," Roshnani said. "Do we suddenly lose our wits when we're in the field? Abivard planned with both Denak and meaye, and with his mother, toobefore he left to set your Majesty free."
"Having the two of you along would scandalize the dihqans who back me," Sharbaraz said.
"I already told Roshnani as much," Abivard agreed.
"Enough to make them head back to their domains?" Denak said. "Enough to make them go over to Smerdis? Do you really believe that?" Her tone said she didn't, not for a moment. It also said she didn't think Sharbaraz did, either. She might not have known him long, but she had come to know him well.
"What would you say if I forbid it?" he asked.
Had he simply forbid it, that would have been that. Making it a hypothetical question was to Abivard another sign he would yield. It probably was for Denak, too, but she gave no hint of that, saying in a meek voice most unlike the one she usually used, "I would obey your Majesty, of course."
"A likely story," Sharbaraz said; he had come to know Denak, too. He turned to Abivard. "Well, brother-in-law of mine, what shall we do with 'em?"
"You're asking me?" Abivard said, appalled. "As far as I'm concerned, we can give them both gilded corselets and style 'em generals. My guess is that they'd do a better job than three quarters of the men you might name."
"My guess is that you're right." Sharbaraz shook his head. "My father would pitch a fit at thishe took only tarts on campaign, and not many of thembut my father is dead. I'm going to say aye to your sister, Abivard. What will you say to your wife?"
If you want to be stern and stodgy, go ahead, he seemed to mean. Abivard knew he couldn't get away with it, not if he wanted peace in the women's quarters ever again. He chose the most graceful surrender he could find: "Where you lead, Majesty, I shall follow."
Roshnani's face lit up like the summer sun at noon. "Thank you," she said quietly. "A chance at seeing the world tempts me to do something most publicly indecorous to show how grateful I am."
"You and Denak have already been indecorous enough for any three dozen women I could think of," Abivard growled in his severest tones. His principal wife and sister hung their heads and looked abashed. Why not? They had won what they wanted.
Abivard started to scold them some more, but then got to wondering whether something publicly indecorous might not be privately enjoyable. That distracted him enough that the scolding never got delivered.
In the saddle and southbound . . . Abivard rode joyfully toward civil war. The rightful King of Kings rode at his side, on a horse from his stables. A good copy of the lion banner of Makuran floated at the fore of Sharbaraz's host.
Warriors rode by clan, each man most comfortable with comrades from the same domain. Abivard worried about how well they would fight as a unit, but reflected that Peroz's army, which had ridden forth against the Khamorth, was no more tightly organized, which meant Smerdis' troops weren't likely to be, either.
When he remarked on that, Sharbaraz said, "No, I don't expect them to be. If we were riding against Videssians, I'd worry about how loose-jointed our arrangements are, but they won't hurt us against our own countrymen."
"How are the Videssians different?" Abivard asked. "I've heard endless tales of them, but no two the same."
"My guess is that that's because of how different they are," Sharbaraz answered seriously. "They care nothing for clans when they fight, but go here and there in big blocks to the sound of their officers' horns and drums. They might as well be so many cups on the rim of a water wheel or some other piece of machinery. They take discipline better than our men, that's certain."
"Why don't they sweep everything before them, then?" Abivard asked; the picture Sharbaraz had painted was an intimidating one.
"Two main reasons," the rightful King of Kings answered. "First, they prefer the bow to the lance, which means a strong charge into their midst will often scatter 'em. And second and more important, they may have discipline, but they don't have our fire. They fight as if to win points in a game, not for the sake of it, and often they'll yield or flee where we might go on and win."
Abivard filed the lore away in his mind. He was building himself a picture of the foes he had never seen, against the day when Makuran's internal strife ended and Sharbaraz would begin to settle scores. Much of the Empire of Videssos bordered the sea. Abivard wondered if he would meet the third part of Tanshar's prophecy there.
No way to know that but to await the day. He glanced back toward the baggage train, where Tanshar rode with several other fortune-tellers and wizards their lords had brought with the warriors. Abivard wondered if the men could ward the army against the more polished magicians Smerdis might gather from Mashiz. He was glad to have Tanshar along; every familiar face was welcome.
Also traveling with the baggage train was a wagon that carried not wheat or smoked mutton or hay for the horses or arrows neatly tied in sheaves of twenty to fit into quivers and bowcases but his sister, his principal wife, and a couple of serving women from Vek Rud stronghold. He had nothing but misgivings about the venture, but hoped it would turn out wellor not too disastrously.
For the time being, the horses were not eating much of the fodder the army had brought along for them. In spring, even the dun land between oases and rivers took on a coat of green. Soon the sun would bake it dry again, but the animals could graze and nibble while it lasted.
That was as well, for Sharbaraz's host swelled with every new domain it approached. Horsemen flocked to his banner, calling down curses on Smerdis' usurping gray head. When yet another such contingent rode in, Abivard exclaimed to Sharbaraz, "Majesty, this is no campaign, just a triumphal procession."
"Good," Sharbaraz answered. "We threw away too many lives against the plainsmen last summer; we can't afford to squander more in civil war, lest winning prove near as costly as losing. We still need to protect ourselves from our foes and take vengeance on them. In fact, I've even sent a rider on ahead to Smerdis to tell him I'll spare his worthless life if he gives up the throne without a fight."
Abivard weighed that, nodding. "I think you did well. He never showed ambition till the once, and you'd watch him so close, he'd never get another chance."
"Wouldn't I?" Sharbaraz said. "He couldn't sit his arse down in the backhouse without an eye on him."
But before Sharbaraz formally heard from his rival for the throne, he got his answer another way. Off to the east, the snowcapped peaks of the Dilbat Mountains showed the way southward; the army would have to skirt them and then come back up on the far side of the range to approach Mashiz. Already the weather was noticeably hotter than Abivard would have expected so early in the season.
A scout came galloping back toward the main body of Sharbaraz's host, shouting "There's troopers up ahead looking for a fight. They shot enough arrows at me to make a good-size tree; the God's own mercy I wasn't pincushioned."
"Looking for a fight, are they?" Sharbaraz said grimly. "I think we shall oblige them."
Horns blared; drums thudded. From what Sharbaraz had said to Abivard, that would have been plenty to move units of a Videssian army as if they were pieces going from square to square on a gameboard. Abivard wished his countrymen were as smooth. Zal and his squadron of ironclad professionals came forward front and center, to form the spearhead of the force. Despite martial music and endless shouts both from their own dihqans and from the officers Sharbaraz had appointed, most of the rest of the warriors, at least to Abivard's jaundiced eye, did more milling about than forming.
But by the time he saw dust ahead, the host had shaken itself out into a battle line of sorts. Zal shouted frantically at anyone who would listen. The only trouble was, next to nobody listened. A raw army with raw officers wouldn't win battles by discipline and maneuver. Courage and fury and numbers would have to do instead.
Okhos rode by, his fuzz-bearded face alight with excitement. He drew his sword and flourished it to Abivard; he almost cut off the ear of the man next to him, but never noticed. Roshnani's younger brother said, "We'll slaughter them all and wade in their blood!"
Minstrels sang such verses when they wandered from stronghold to stronghold, hoping to cadge a night's supper on the strength of their songs. Grown men who knew war smiled at them and enjoyed the poetry without taking it seriously. Trouble was, Okhos wasn't a grown man; he had fewer summers behind him than Frada. Minstrels' verses were all he knew of the battlefield, or had been until the Khamorth started raiding his domain.
Then Abivard stopped worrying about how his brother-in-law would fare and started worrying about himself. On across the flat ground came Smerdis' army, growing closer faster than Abivard would have thought possible. At their fore flew the lion banner of Makuran. Beside Abivard, Sharbaraz murmured, "The curse of civil war: both sides bearing the same emblem."
"Aye," Abivard said, though that was more philosophical than he felt like being with battle fast approaching. "Well, if they don't see for themselves that they picked the wrong man to follow, we'll have to show them." The oncoming troops seemed resolute enough. Abivard filled his lungs and shouted defiance at them: "Sharbaraaaz!"
In an instant, the whole host took up the cry. It drowned in a cacophony of hatred whatever signals officers and musicians were trying to give. At last the nobles of the northwest and their retainers had a chance to come to grips with the man who had not only stolen the throne but stolen their money and given it to the barbarians who had killed their kinwithout keeping those barbarians off their lands afterward as promised.
Inevitably, an answering cry came back: "Smerdis!" As inevitably, it sounded effete and puny to Abivard, who was less than an unbiased witness. He wondered how men could still lay their lives on the line for a ruler who had proved himself both thief and liar.
However they managed it, support Smerdis they did. Arrows began to fly; lanceheads came down in a glittering wave. Abivard picked a fellow in the opposite line as a target and spurred his horse into a full gallop. "Sharbaraz!" he yelled again.
The two armies collided with a great metallic clangor. Abivard's charge missed its man; he had swerved aside to fight someone else. A lance glanced off Abivard's shield. He felt the impact all the way up to his shoulder. Had the hit been squarer, it might have unhorsed him.
A lancer's main weapon was the force he could put behind his blow from the weight and speed of his charging horse. With that momentum spent after the first impact, the battle turned into a melee, with riders stabbing with lances, slashing with swords, and trying to use their horses to throw their foes' mountsand their foesoff balance for easy destruction.
Sharbaraz fought in the middle of the press, laying about him with the broken stub of a lance. He clouted an enemy in the side of the head. The fellow was wearing a helm, but the blow stunned him even so. Sharbaraz hit him again, this time full in the face. Dripping blood, he slid out of the saddle, to be trampled if he still lived after those two blows. Sharbaraz shouted in triumph.
Abivard tried to fight his way toward his sovereign. If the rightful King of Kings went down, the battle, even if a victory, would still prove a final defeat. He had tried to talk Sharbaraz out of fighting in the front ranksas well tell the moon not to go from new to full and back again as to have him listen.
An armored warrior who shouted "Smerdis!" got between Abivard and the King of Kings. The soldier must have lost his lance or had it break to pieces too small to be useful, for he hacked at the shaft of Abivard's lance with his sword. Sparks flew as the blade belled against the strip of iron that armored the shaft against such misfortune.
Abivard drew back the lance and thrust with it. The enemy ducked and cut at it again. By then they were almost breast to breast. Abivard tried to smash the fellow in the face with the spiked boss to his shield. A moment later he counted himself lucky not to get similarly smashed.
He and Smerdis' follower cursed and strained and struggled until someoneAbivard never knew whoslashed the other fellow's horse. When it screamed and reared, Abivard speared its rider. He screamed, too, and went on screaming after Abivard yanked out the lance. His cry of agony was all but lost among many othersand cries of triumph, and of hatredthat dinned over the battlefield.
"I wonder how this fight is going," Abivard muttered. He was too busy trying to stay alive to have much feel for the course of the action as a whole. Had he advanced since his charge ended, or had he and Sharbaraz's men given ground? He couldn't tell. Just getting back up with the rightful King of Kings seemed hard enough at the moment.
When he finally made it to the King of Kings' side, Sharbaraz shouted at him: "How fare we?"
"I hoped you knew," Abivard answered in some dismay.
Sharbaraz grimaced. "This isn't as easy as we hoped it would be. They aren't falling all over themselves to desert, are they?"
"What did you say, Majesty?" Abivard hadn't heard all of that; he had been busy fending off one of Smerdis' lancers. Only when the fellow sullenly drew back could he pay attention once more.
"Never mind," Sharbaraz told him. By now, the King of Kings' lance was long gone; his sword had blood on the blade. For one of the rare times since Abivard had known him, he looked unsure what to do next. The stubborn resistance Smerdis' men were putting up seemed to baffle him.
Then, just as he was starting to give orders for another push against the foe, wild, panic-filled shouts ripped through the left wing of Smerdis' army. Some men were crying "Treason!" but more yelled "Sharbaraz!" They turned on the warriors still loyal to Smerdis and attacked them along with Sharbaraz's soldiers.
With its left in chaos, Smerdis' army quickly unraveled. Men at the center and right, seeing their position turned, either threw down their weapons and surrendered or wheeled in flight. Here and there, stubborn rearguard bands threw themselves away to help their comrades escape.
"Press them!" Sharbaraz cried. "Don't let them get away." Now that striking hard had been rewarded, he was back in his element, urging on his warriors to make their victory as complete as they could.
For all his urging, though, a good part of Smerdis' army broke free and fled south. His own force had fought too hard through the morning to make the grinding pursuit that might have destroyed the enemy for good and all.
At last, he seemed to realize that and broke off the chase. "If I order them to do something they can't, next time they may not listen to me when I tell them to do something they can," he explained to Abivard.
"We did have a solid victory there," Abivard answered.
"It's not what I wanted," Sharbaraz said. "I had in mind to smash the usurper's men so thoroughly no one would think of standing against me after this. Just a victory isn't enough." Then he moderated his tone. "But it will have to do, and it's ever so much better than getting beat."
"Isn't that the truth?" Abivard said.
Sharbaraz said, "I want to question some of the men we caught who fought so hard against us: I want to learn how Smerdis managed to keep them loyal after they learned I hadn't given up my throne of my own free will. The sooner I find out, the sooner I can do something about it."
"Aye," Abivard said, but his voice was abstracted; he had only half heard the rightful King of Kings. He was looking over the field and discovering for the first time the hideous flotsam and jetsam a large battle leaves behind. He had not seen the aftermath of the fight on the Pardrayan steppe; he had fled to keep from becoming part of it. The other fights in which he had joined were only skirmishes. What came after them was like this in kind, but not in degree. The magnitude of suffering spread out over a farsang of ground appalled him.
Men with holes in them or faces hacked away or hands severed or entrails spilled lay in ungraceful death amid pools of blood already going from scarlet to black, with flies buzzing around them and ravens spiraling down from the sky to peck at their blindly staring eyes and other dainties. The battlefield smelled something like a slaughterhouse, something like a latrine.
The crumpled shapes of dead horses cropped up here and there amid the human wreckage. Abivard pitied them more than the soldiers; they hadn't had any idea why they died.
But worse than the killed, men or beasts, were the wounded. Hurt horses screamed with the terrible sopranos of women in agony. Men groaned and howled and cursed and wailed and wept and bled and tried to bandage themselves and begged for aid or their mothers or death or all three at once and crawled toward other men whom they hoped would help them. And other men, or jackals who walked on two legs, wandered over the field looking for whatever they could carry away and making sure that none of those they robbed would live to avenge themselves.
Still others, to their credit, did what they could for the injured, stitching, bandaging, and setting broken bones. A couple of the village wizards had healing among their talents. They could treat wounds that would have proved fatal save for their aid, but at terrible cost to themselves. One of them, his hands covered with the blood of a man he had just brought back from the brink of death, got up from the ground where he had knelt, took a couple of steps toward another wounded warrior, and pitched forward onto his face in a faint.
"Looking at this, I wish we hadn't brought our wives," Abivard said. "Even if they don't picture us among the fallen, they'll never be easy in their minds about the chances of war."
Sharbaraz looked back toward the baggage train, which lay well to the rear of the actual fighting. That distance seemed to ease his mind. "It will be all right," he said. "They can't have seen too much." Abivard hoped he was right.
The prisoner wore only ragged linen drawers. One of Sharbaraz's followers who had started the day in boiled leatheror perhaps in just his caftannow had a fine suit of mail from the royal armories. The captured warrior held a dirty rag around a cut on his arm. He looked tired and frightened, his eyes enormous in a long, dark face.
Realizing who Sharbaraz was frightened him even more. Before the guards who had manhandled him into Sharbaraz's presence could cast him down to the ground, he prostrated himself of his own accord. "May your years be long and your realm increase, Majesty," he choked out.
Sharbaraz turned to Abivard. "He says that now," the rightful King of Kings observed. "This morning, though, he'd cheerfully have speared me out of the saddle."
"Amazing what a change a few hours can bring," Abivard agreed.
The prisoner ground his face into the dust. "Majesty, forgive!" he wailed.
"Why should I?" Sharbaraz growled. "Once you knew I'd not abandoned my throne of my own free will, how could you have the brass to fight against me?"
"Forgive!" the prisoner said. "Majesty, I am a poor man, and ignorant, and I know nothing save what my officers tell me. They saidI give you their very words, by the God I swear itthey said you had indeed given up the throne of your own accord, and then wickedly changed your mind, like a woman who says 'I want my red shoes. No, my blue ones.' They said you could not go back on an oath you swore, that the God would not smile on Makuran if you seized the rule. Now, of course, I see this is not so, truly I do." He dared raise his face a couple of inches to peer anxiously at Sharbaraz.
"Take him away, back with the others," Sharbaraz told the guards. They hauled the prisoner to his feet and dragged him off. The rightful King of Kings let out a long, weary sigh and turned to Abivard. "Another one."
"Another one," Abivard echoed. "We've heardwhat?six now? They all sing the same song."
"So they do." Sharbaraz paced back and forth, kicking up dirt. "Smerdis, may he drop into the Void this instant, is more clever than I gave him credit for. This tale of my renouncing my oath of abdication may be a lie from top to bottom, but it gives those who believe it a reason to fight for him and against me. I thought his forces would crumble at the first touch, like salt sculptures in the rain, but it may prove harder than that."
"Aye," Abivard said mournfully. "If that one band hadn't gone over to you, we might still be fightingor we might have lost."
"This had crossed my mind," Sharbaraz admitted, adding a moment later, "however much I wish it hadn't." He sighed again. "I want pocket bread filled with raisins and cheese and onions, and I want a great huge cup of wine. Then I'll show myself to Denak, so she'll know I came through alive and well. But what I want most is a good night's sleep. I've never been so worn in my life; it must be the terror slowly leaking out of me."
"Your Majesty, those all strike me as excellent choices," Abivard said, "though I'd sooner have sausage than raisins with my onions and cheese."
"We may just be able to grant you so much leeway," Sharbaraz said. Both men laughed.
Roshnani said, "Almost I wish I'd stayed back at the stronghold. What war truly is doesn't look much like what the minstrels sing of." Her eyes, which looked larger than they were in the dim lamplight of Abivard's tent, filled with horror at what she had seen and heard. "So much anguish"
I told you so, bubbled up in Abivard's mind. He left the words unsaid. They would have done no good in any case. He couldn't keep his principal wife from seeing what she had seen now that she was here, and he couldn't send her back to Vek Rud domain. Godarz would have said something like, Now that you've mounted the horse, you'd better ride it.
Since he couldn't twit her, he said, "I'm glad your brother only took a couple of small cuts. He'll be fine, I'm sure."
"Yes, so am I," Roshnani said, relief in her voice. "He was so proud of himself when he came back to see me yesterday after the battle, and he looked as if he'd enjoyed himself in the fighting." She shook her head. "I can't say I understand that."
"He's young yet," Abivard said. "I thought I'd surely live forever, right up till the moment things went wrong on the steppe last year."
Roshnani reached out to set a hand on his arm. "Women always know things can go wrong. We wonder sometimes at the folly of men."
"Looking back, I wonder at some of our folly, too," Abivard said. "Thinking Smerdis' men would give up or go over to us without much fight, for instance. The war will be harder than we reckoned on when we set out from the stronghold."
"That's not what I meant," Roshnani said in some exasperation. "The whole idea . . . Oh, what's the use? I just have to hope we win the fight and that you and Okhos and Sharbaraz come through it safe."
"Of course we will," Abivard said stoutly. The groans of the wounded that pierced the wool tent cloth like arrows piercing flesh turned his reassurances to the pious hopes they were.
Roshnani didn't say that, not with words. She was not one who sought to get her way by nagging her husband until he finally yielded. Abivard's will was as well warded against nagging as Nalgis Crag stronghold against siege. But somethinghe could not have said precisely whatchanged in her face. Perhaps her eyes slipped from his for a moment at a particularly poignant cry of pain. If they did, he didn't notice, not with the top of his mind. But he did come to know he had done nothing to allay her fears.
He was irked to hear how defensive he sounded as he continued, "Any which way, what we stand to gain is worth the risk. Or would you sooner live under Smerdis and see all our arkets flow across the Degird to the nomads?"
"Of course not," she said at once; she was a dihqan's daughter. Now he recognized the expression she wore: calculation, the same sort he would have used in deciding if he wanted to pay a horsetrader's price for a four-year-old gelding. "If the three of you live and we win, then you're right. But if any of you falls, or if we lose, then you're not. And since you and Sharbaraz and Okhos are all right at the fore"
"Would you have us hang back?" Abivard demanded, flicked on his pride.
"For my sake, for your own sake, indeed I would," Roshnani answered. Then she sighed. "If you did, though, that would make the army lose spirit, which would in turn make you likelier to be hurt. Finding the right thing to do isn't always easy."
"We chased that rabbit round the bush when we were talking about howor ifyou'd be able to come out of the women's quarters." Abivard laughed. "After a while, you quit chasingyou jumped over the bush and squashed poor bunny flat, or how else did you and Denak get to come along with the host?"
Roshnani laughed, too. "You take it with better will than I thought you would. Most men, I think, would still be angry at me."
"What's the point to that?" Abivard said. "It's done, you've won, and now I try to make the best I can of it, just as I did when I came back from the steppe last summer."
"Hmm," Roshnani said. "I don't think I fancy being compared to the Khamorth. And you didn't lose a battle to me, because you'd already said you were giving up the war."
"I should hope so," Abivard said. "You and Denak outgeneraled me as neatly as the plainsmen bested Peroz."
"And what of it?" Roshnani asked. "Has the army gone to pieces because of it? Has one dihqan, even one warrior with no armor, no bow, and a spavined nag, gone over to Smerdis because Denak and I are here? Have we turned the campaign into a disaster for Sharbaraz?"
"No and no and no," Abivard admitted. "We might have done better with the two of you commanding our right and left wings. I don't think the officers we had out there distinguished themselves."
He waited for Roshnani to use the opening he had given her to tax him about the iniquities and inequities of the women's quarters and to get him to admit how unjust they were. She did nothing of the kind, but asked instead about how the wounded were faring. Only later did he stop to think that, if her arguments sprang to life in his mind without her having to say a word, she had already won a big part of the battle.
The farther south and east Sharbaraz's army advanced, the more Abivard had the feeling he was not in the Makuran he had always known. The new recruits who rallied to Sharbaraz's banner spoke with what he thought of as a lazy accent, wore caftans that struck his eye as gaudy, and irked him further by seeming to look down on the men who had originally favored the rightful King of Kings as frontier bumpkins. That caused fights, and led to the sudden demise of a couple of newcomers.
But when Abivard complained about the southerners' pretensions, Sharbaraz laughed at him. "If you think these folk different, my friend, wait till you make the acquaintance of those who dwell between the Tutub and the Tib, in the river plain called the land of the Thousand Cities."
"Oh, but they aren't Makuraners at all," Abivard said, "just our subjects."
Sharbaraz raised an eyebrow. "So it may seem to a man whose domain lies along the Degird. But Mashiz, remember, looks out over the Land of the Thousand Cities. The people who live down in the plain are not of our kind, true, but they help make the realm what it is. Many of our clerks and record keepers come from among them. Without such, we'd never know who owed what from one year to the next."
Abivard made a noise that said he was less than impressed. Had anyone but his sovereign extolled the virtues of such bureaucrats, he would have been a good deal cruder in his response.
Perhaps sensing that, Sharbaraz added, "They also give us useful infantry. You'll not have seen that, because they're of no use against the steppe nomads, so Kings of Kings don't take them up onto the plateau of Makuran proper. But they're numerous, they make good garrison troops, and they've given decent service against Videssos."
"For that I would forgive them quite a lot," Abivard said.
"Aye, it does make a difference," Sharbaraz agreed. "But I'll be less fond of them if they give decent service against me."
"Why would they do that?" Abivard asked. "You're the proper King of Kings. What on earth would make them want to fight for Smerdis and not for you?"
"If they believe the lie about my renouncing my renunciation, that might do it," Sharbaraz answered. "Or Smerdis might just promise more privileges and fewer taxes for the land of the Thousand Cities. That might be enough by itself. They've been under Makuran a long time, because we're better warriors, but they aren't truly of Makuran. Most of the time, that doesn't matter. Every once in a while, it jumps up and bites a King of Kings in the arse."
"What do we do about it?" Abivard knew he sounded worried. He had learned about some of what Sharbaraz had mentioned, but till this moment dust had lain thick over what he had studied. Now he saw it really mattered.
Sharbaraz reached out and set a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't mean to put you in a tizzy. I've sent men on to the valleys of the Tutub and the Tib. I can match whatever promises Smerdis makes, however much I'd rather not. And infantry is only so much good against horsemen. Men afoot move slowly. Often they don't get to where they're neededand even if they do, you can usually find a way around them."
"I suppose so. I know about as much of the art of fighting against infantry as I do of the usages of Videssos' false priests."
"No, you wouldn't have the need, not growing up where you did." Sharbaraz chewed on his mustache. "By the God, I don't want the war against Smerdis to drag on and on. If the northwest frontier stays bare too long, the nomads will swarm across in force, and driving them back over the Degird will mean we can't give the Empire the time and attention it deserves."
Abivard didn't reply right away. It wasn't that he disagreed with anything Sharbaraz had said. But his concern with nomads over the border had little to do with what that would mean for the grand strategy of Makuran. He worried about what would happen to his domain: to the flocks and the folk who tended them, to the qanats and the farmers who used their waters to grow grain and nuts and vegetables, and most of all to Vek Rud stronghold and his brother and mother and wives, his half brothers and half sisters. Strongholds rarely fell to nomadsup in the northwest they were made strong not least to hold out the Khamorthbut it had happened. Being a worrier by nature, Abivard had no trouble imagining the worst.
Sharbaraz gave a squeeze with that hand on his shoulder. "Don't fret so, brother-in-law of mine. Frada strikes me as able and more than able. Vek Rud domain will still be yours when you go home wreathed in victory."
"You ease my mind," Abivard said, which was true. To him, Frada had seldom been more than a little brother, sometimes a pest, rarely anyone to take seriously. That had changed some after Frada's whiskers sprouted, and more after Abivard came back from the Pardrayan steppe. Still, hearing the rightful King of Kings praise his younger brother made him glow with pride.
But going home wreathed in victory? First there was Smerdis to beat, and then the Khamorth, and after them Videssos. And after Videssos had at last been punished as it deserved, who could say what new foes would have arisen, perhaps in the uttermost west, perhaps on the plains once more?
"Majesty," Abivard said with a laugh that sounded shaky even to him, "with so much fighting yet to do, only the God knows when I'll ever see home again."
"So long as we keep winning, you shall one day," Sharbaraz answered, with which Abivard had to be content.
He was doing his best not to think about the consequences of defeat when scouts came riding in with word of an army approaching from the south. Horns blared. Sharbaraz's forces, aided by officers who now had one battle's worth of experience more than they had enjoyed before, began the complicated business of shifting from line of march into line of battle.
Sharbaraz said, "If the usurper and his lackeys will not tamely yield, I shall have to rout them out. With comrades like you, Abivard, I know we'll succeed."
Such talk warmed Abivardfor a moment. After that, he was too busy to stay warm. His first automatic glance was toward the rear, to make sure the baggage train kept out of harm's way . . . and kept Roshnani and Denak safe with it. That taken care of, he started shouting orders of his own. One thing he had seen was that Sharbaraz did not care for close companions who were nothing but companions: the rightful King of Kings expected his followers to be able to lead, as well.
As he helped position Sharbaraz's riders, Abivard also scanned the southern skyline for the cloud of dust that would announce the coming of Smerdis' warriors. Soon enoughtoo soon to suit himhe spied it, a little farther east than he had expected from what the scouts had said. That gave him an idea.
He had to wait for Sharbaraz to stop barking orders of his own. When he gained his sovereign's ear, he pointed and said, "Suppose we position a band behind that high ground? By the direction from which the enemy approaches, they may not spot our men till too late."
Sharbaraz considered, working his jaws as he chewed on the notion as if it were so much flatbread. Then, with the abrupt decision that marked him, he nodded. "Let it be as you say. Take a regiment and wait there for the right moment. Two long horn calls and one short will be your signal."
"You want me to lead the regiment?" To his dismay, Abivard's voice rose in a startled squeak.
"Why not?" Sharbaraz answered impatiently. "The idea's yours, and it's a good one. You deserve the credit if it succeeds. And if you fought at my right hand in the last battle, you can lead a regiment on your own in this one."
Abivard gulped. The most men he had directly commanded at any one time was the couple of dozen he had led against Khamorth raiders not long before he found out Pradtak was holding Sharbaraz captive. But to say that would be to lose face before the King of Kings. "Majesty, I'll do my best," he managed, and went off to gather his men.
Some of the officers he ordered to shift position gave him distinctly jaundiced looks. They were professionals who had left Smerdis' force for Sharbaraz's. As far as they were concerned, what was he but a frontier dihqan of uncertain but dubious quality? The answer to that, however, was that he was also the King of Kings' brother-in-law. So, however dubious they looked, they obeyed.
"We wait for the signal," Abivard told the troopers as he led them into the ambush position. "Then we burst out and take the usurper's men in flank. Why, the whole battle could turn on us."
The horsemen buzzed excitedly. Unlike their skeptical captains, they seemed eager to follow Abivard. Of course, a lot of them came out of northwestern domains, too. Those men weren't polished professionals; they were here because their dihqansand they themselveswanted to overthrow Smerdis and restore Sharbaraz to his rightful place. Did enthusiasm count for more than professionalism? Abivard hoped so.
He had taken his contingent well behind the low swell of ground he had spotted, the better to conceal it from Smerdis' advancing men. The only problem was, that also meant Abivard and his followers couldn't see the first stages of the fighting. He hadn't worried about that till it was too late to do anything about it without giving away his position.
He hoped sound would do what sight could not: show him how the battle was going. But that proved less easy to gauge than he had expected. He could tell by the racket where the fighting was heaviest, but not who had the advantage at any given spot. He shifted nervously in the saddle until his horse caught his unease and began snorting and pawing at the ground.
The men he led were just as anxious as the animal. "Let us go, Lord Abivard," one of them called. "Hurl us against the usurper!"
Others echoed that, but Abivard shook his head. "We wait for the signal," he repeated, thinking, Or until I'm sure the battle's swung against us. That would be time to do what he could. For the warriors, though, he added, "If we move too soon, we give away the advantage of the ambush."
He hoped that would hold them. They twitched every time a horn soundedand so did he. Sooner or later, they would burst from cover no matter what he did to hold them back. He felt worthlessSharbaraz would see he wasn't suited to command after all.
Blaaart. Blaaart. Blart. A shiver ran through Abivard. Now the waiting regiment could move, and he would still seem to be in control of it. "Forward!" he shouted. "We'll show Smerdis the proper punishment for trying to steal the throne. The cry is"
"Sharbaraz!" burst from a thousand throats. Abivard dug his heels into his horse's sides. The beast squealed, half with rage at him and half with relief at being allowed to run at last. It went from walk to trot to gallop as fast as any animal Abivard had ever ridden. Even so, he was hard pressed to stay at the head of the regiment.
"Sharbaraz!" the riders cried again as they burst from concealment. Abivard stared, quickly sizing up the battle. On this wing, Smerdis' men had driven Sharbaraz back a couple of furlongs. Abivard couched his lance and thundered at the enemy.
It worked, he thought exultantly. Startled faces turned to stare at him in dismay while shouts of alarm rang out among Smerdis' followers. He had only moments in which to savor them. Then he speared from the saddle a soldier who had managed to turn only halfway toward him. That struck him as less than fair but most effective.
Sharbaraz's backers shouted, too, with fresh spirit. Abivard and his men rolled up the left wing of Smerdis' army. Its commander had savvy to spare: he pulled men from the center and right to stem the rout before everything was swept away. But a fight that had looked like a victory for the usurper suddenly turned into another stinging defeat.
Smerdis' host had trumpeters, too. Abivard recognized the call they blew: retreat. He screamed in delight: "Pursue! Pursue!" The shout rang through not only the regiment he led but from the rest of Sharbaraz's army, as well. Just as retreat made Smerdis' men lose heart, victory enspirited Sharbaraz's soldiers. They pressed the enemy hard, doing their best to keep him from re-forming his ranks.
The warrior who had urged Abivard to loose the regiment before the signal happened to ride close to him now. The fellow had a cut on his forehead from which blood spilled down over his face, but his grin was enormous. "Lord Abivard, you were right and I was wrong and I'm man enough to admit it," he declared. "We've smashed them to kindlingkindling, I tell you."
Another soldier, this one with more gray than black in his beard, caught Abivard's eye. "Lord, you'd better cherish that," he said. "You'll count the times your men own that you were smarter than them on the thumbs of one handand that's if you're lucky, mind."
"You're likely right, friend," Abivard said. Some of Smerdis' men staged a countercharge to buy their comrades time to get away. The fierce fighting that followed swept Abivard away from the cynical graybeard.
"To the Void with the renunciate! Smerdis King of Kings!" a lancer shouted as his mount pounded toward Abivard. Abivard dug heels into his own horse; the last thing he wanted was to receive an attack with no momentum of his own. He got his shield up just before they slammed together.
The enemy lance shattered on the shield. His own held, but Smerdis' horseman deflected it with his shield so it did him no harm. That left them at close quarters. Faster than Abivard had expected him to be, his foe hit him in the side of the head with the stump of his lance.
His iron helm kept his skull from caving in, but his head suddenly knew what a piece of iron caught between hammer and anvil felt like. His sight blurred; staying on his horse became all he could do. He noticed he didn't have his own lance any more but had no idea where he had dropped it.
The next thing he fully remembered was a tired, thin, worried-looking man holding a candle a couple of fingers'-breadths away from one eye. The fellow moved it to the other eye, then let out a long, wheezing breath. "The pupils are of different sizes," he said to someoneAbivard turned his head and saw Sharbaraz. "He's taken a blow to the head."
"That I have," Abivard said, all at once aware of a headache like a thousand years of hangovers all boiled down into a thick, sludgy gelatin of pain. That made him sad; he hadn't even had the fun of getting drunk. "Did we hold the victory? I lost track there after I got clouted." He found himself yawning.
"Majesty, he needs rest," the worried-looking man said; Abivard realized he was a physician.
"I know; I've seen cases like his," the King of Kings answered. To Abivard he said, "Aye, we won; we drive them still. I'm going to have Kakia here take you back to the wagon your wife and sister share; they'll be the best ones to nurse you for the next few days."
"Days?" Abivard tried to sound indignant. Instead, he soundedand feltsick. He gulped, trying to keep down what was in his belly. The ground swayed beneath his feet as if it had turned to sea.
Kakia put Abivard's arm over his own shoulder. "Lord, it's nothing to be ashamed of. You may not bleed, but you're wounded as sure as if you were cut. With your brains rattled around inside your skull like lentils in a gourd, you need some time to come back to yourself."
Abivard wanted to argue, but felt too weak and woozy. He let the physician guide him back toward the baggage train. The serving women who had accompanied Roshnani and Denak exclaimed in dismay when Kakia brought him to the wagon in which they traveled.
"I'm all right," he insisted, though the gong chiming in his head tolled out Liar with every beat of his heart.
"Should the God grant, which I think likely in this case, the lord will be right again in three or four days," Kakia said, which set off a fresh paroxysm of weeping from the women. With the curious disconnection the blow to the head had caused, Abivard wondered how they would have carried on had the physician told them he wouldn't be all right. Even louder, he suspected. They were quite loud enough as it was.
Climbing the steps up into the wagon took every bit of balance and strength he had left. Still twittering like upset birds, the women took charge of him and led him into the little cubicle Roshnani used as her own.
She started to smile when he walkedor rather staggeredin, but the expression congealed on her face like stiffening tallow when she saw the state he was in. "What happened?" she whispered.
"I got hit in the side of the head," he said; he was getting tired of explaining. "I'mkind of addled, and they say I'm supposed to rest until I'm more myself. A day or two." If he told that to Roshnani, maybe he would believe it, too.
"What were you doing?" Roshnani demanded as he sank down to the mat on which she was sitting.
Even in his battered state, that struck him as a foolish question. "Fighting," he said.
She went on as if he hadn't spoken: "You could have been killed. Here, you just lie quiet; I'll take care of you. Would you like some wine?"
He started to shake his head but thought better of it, contenting himself with a simple, "No. I'm queasy. If I drink anything right now, I'll probably spew it up." And if I try to heave right now, I'm sure the top of my head will fall off. He rather wished it would.
"Here." Roshnani opened a little chest, took out a small pot, and undid the stopper. In a tone that brooked no argument, she said, "If you won't take wine, drink this. I don't think you'll give it back, and it will do you good."
Abivard was too woozy to quarrel. He gulped down whatever the little jar held, though he made a face at the strong, medicinal taste. After a while, the ache in his head faded from unbearable to merely painful. He yawned; the stuff had made him sleepier than he already was, too. "That's done some good," he admitted. "What was it?"
"You'll not be angry at the answer?" Roshnani asked.
"No," he said, puzzled. "Why should I be?"
Even in the dim light of the cubicle, he saw Roshnani flush. "Because it's a potion women sometimes take for painful courses," she answered. "It has poppy juice in it, and I thought that might ease you. But men, from all I've heard, have a way of being touchy about having to do with women's things."
"That's so." Abivard raised a languid hand, then let it fall on Roshnani's outstretched arm. "There. You may, if you like, consider that I've beaten you for your presumption."
She stared at him, then dissolved in giggles. Drugged and groggy though he was, Abivard knew the joke didn't rate such laughter. Maybe, he thought, relief had something to do with it.
Just then Denak came into the cubicle, stooping to get through the low entranceway. She looked from Roshnani to Abivard and back again. "Well!" she said. "Things can't be too bad, if I walk in on a scene like this."
"Things could be better," Abivard said. "If they were, one of Smerdis' rotten treacherous men wouldn't have tried using my head for a bell to see if he liked the tone. But if they were worse, he'd have smashed it like a dropped pot, so who am I to complain?" He yawned again; staying awake was becoming an enormous effort.
"The servants say the physician who brought him here thinks he'll get better," Roshnani said to Denak, as if Abivard were either already unconscious or part of the furniture. "But he'll need a few days' rest."
"This is the place for it," Denak said, an edge of wormwood in her voice. "It's as if we brought the women's quarters with us when we left Vek Rud stronghold. A women's quarters on four wheelswho would have imagined that? But we're just as caged here as we were back there."
"I didn't expect much different," Roshnani said; she was more patient, less impetuous than her sister-in-law. "That we are allowed out is the victory, and everything else will flow from it. Some years from now, many women will be free to move about as they please, and nobody will recall the terms we had to accept to get the avalanche rolling."
"The avalanche rolled over me," Abivard said.
"Two foolish jokes nowyour brains can't be altogether smashed," Roshnani said.
Thus put in his place, Abivard listened to Denak say, "By the God, it's not right. We've escaped the women's quarters, and so we should also escape the strictures the quarters put on us. What point to leaving if we still dare not show our faces outside the wagon unless summoned to our husbands' tents?"
Roshnani surely made some reply, but Abivard never found out what it was; between them, the knock on the head and the poppy juice in the medicine she had given him sent him sliding down into sleep. The next time he opened his eyes, the inside of the cubicle was dark but for a single flickering lamp. The lamp oil had an odd odor; he couldn't remember where he had smelled it in the past. He fell asleep again before the memory surfaced.
When he woke the next morning, he needed a minute or so to figure out where he was; the shifting of the wagon as it rattled along and his pounding, muzzy head conspired to make him wonder whether he was getting up in the middle of an earthquake after a long night of drinking.
Then Roshnani sat up on the pallet by his. "How's the spot where you got hit?" she asked.
Memory returned. He gingerly set a finger to his temple. "Sore," he reported.
She nodded. "You have a great bruise there, I think, though your hair hides most of it. You're lucky the usurper's man didn't smash your skull."
"So I am." Abivard touched the side of his head again and winced. "He didn't miss by much, I don't think." Roshnani blew out the lamp. This time, Abivard recognized the smell. "It's burning that what-do-they-call-it? Rock oil, that's it. Peroz's engineers used it to fire the bridge over the Degird after the few stragglers came back from Pardraya. They said the southern folk put it in their lamps."
"I don't like itit smells nasty," Roshnani said. "But we ran low on lighting oil, and one of the servants bought a jar of it. It does serve lamps well enough, I suppose, but I can't imagine that it would ever be good for anything else."
The serving women fixed Abivard a special breakfast: tongue, brains, and cow's foot, spiced hot with pepper. His head still ached, but his appetite had recovered; he didn't feel he was likely to puke up anything he put in his stomach. All the same, Roshnani wouldn't let him get up for any reason save to use the pot.
Sharbaraz came to see him around midmorning. "The God give you good day, Majesty," Abivard said. "As you see, I've already prostrated myself for you."
The rightful King of Kings chuckled. "You're healing, I'd say," he remarked, unconsciously echoing Roshnani. "I'm glad." Sentiment out of the way, he reminded Abivard he was Peroz's son with a blunt, "To business, then. The usurper's army has made good its withdrawal. We still have some horsemen shadowing us, but they can't interfere as we advance."
"Good news," Abivard said. "Nothing to keep us from getting south of the Dilbat Mountains and then turning north and east to move on Mashiz, eh?"
"On the surface, no," Sharbaraz said. "But what we ran into yesterday troubles me, and not a little, either. Aye, we won the fight, but not the way I'd hoped. Not a man, not a company, went over to us. We had to beat them, and when we did, they either fell back or, if they were cut off, surrendered. Not one of them turned on the others who back Smerdis."
"That is worrying." Abivard could feel he was slower and stupider than he should have been, which left him angry: Sharbaraz needed the best advice he could give. After a moment, he went on, "Seems to me the only thing we can do is press ahead, all the same. We can't very well give up just because things aren't as easy as we thought they'd be."
"I agree," Sharbaraz said. "As long as we keep winning, Smerdis falls sooner or later." He pounded a fist against his thigh, once, twice, three times. "But I was so sure the usurper would go down to ignominious defeat as soon as it was known I lived and hadn't abdicated on my own."
"One of the things my father always said was that the longer you lived, the more complicated life looked," Abivard said. "He said only boys and holy men were ever certain; men who had to live in the world got the idea it was bigger and more complicated than they could imagine."
"I think I've told you my father praised your father's good sense," Sharbaraz said. "The more I listen to Godarz through you, the more I think my father knew whereof he spoke."
"Your Majesty is gracious to my father's memory," Abivard said, warmed by the praise and wishing Godarz were there to hear it. "What do you plan to do next? Keep on with the straight-ahead drive toward the capital?"
"Aye, what else?" The rightful King of Kings frowned. "I know it's not subtle, but we have no other good choices. Smerdis has already had one army wrecked and another beaten; he'll hesitate to hazard a third. With luck, we'll be able to closely approach Mashiz before he tries fighting us head-on again. We win that fight and the city is oursand if Smerdis wants to flee to Nalgis Crag stronghold, say, he'll learn we have the patience to starve him out." His eyes glowed with anticipation.
In the space of a few minutes, Sharbaraz had gone from gloom about the way Smerdis' backers declined to go over to him to excitement at the prospect of starving his rival into submission. Abivard wished he could lose his depressions as readily. But he, like Godarz before him, seemed a man who went through life without sinking deep into the valleys or climbing high on the peaks.
He said, "First things first, Majesty. Once we have Mashiz, assuming we don't bag Smerdis with it, then we can worry about hunting him down. Otherwise we're riding our horses before we bridle and saddle them." He laughed ruefully. "I have to say I'm just as well pleased we're not storming the capital tomorrow. I'd not be much use to you, even on a horse already bridled and saddled."
"You let yourself mend," Sharbaraz said, as if giving an order to some recalcitrant underling. "Thank the God we won't be doing much in the way of fighting till you're ready to play your proper part once more. You set me straight very smartly there when I let enthusiasm push me like a leaf on the breeze."
"Your Majesty is kind." Abivard was pleased with Sharbaraz. As long as the rightful King of Kings could recognize when he was letting his passion of the momentwhatever it might berun away with him, he would do well. The question was, how long would that last after he won his civil war?
Sharbaraz reached out and touched him on the shouldergently, so as not to jostle his poor battered head. "I have to go off and see to the army. I expect I'll be back this evening, to visit you and Denak both. Rest easy till then."
"Your Majesty, what choice have I?" Abivard said. "Even if I wanted to be out and doing, Roshnani would flatten me should I try to get up without her leave. Men usually keep their wives shut up in women's quarters, but here she has me trapped."
Sharbaraz laughed loud and long at that, as if it hadn't been true. He ducked out of the cubicle; Abivard listened to him getting onto his horse and riding away. He was already shouting orders, as if he had forgotten all about the man he had just visited. Rationally, Abivard knew that wasn't so, but it irked him anyhow.
As a proper Makuraner wife should, Roshnani had stayed out of sight while another man visited her husband. She returned to the cubicle as soon as Sharbaraz was gone. "So I've trapped you here, have I?" she said.
"You were listening."
"How could I help it, when only curtains separate one part of the wagon from the next?" Looking innocent and mischievous at the same time, she pulled shut the curtain that opened onto the cubicle. "So you're trapped here, are you?" she repeated, and knelt beside him. "Trapped and flat on your back, are you?"
"What are you doing?" Abivard squawked as she hiked up his caftan. She didn't answer, not in words; her long black hair spilled over his belly and thighs. He did his best to rise to the occasion, and his best proved quite good enough.