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Spring came to Serrhes a couple of weeks earlier than it would have in Vek Rud domain. By the time rain replaced snow and closed the roads for a spell, though, Likinios had brought in a good-sized force of cavalry to join Sharbaraz's men against Smerdis.

At the head of the cavalry regiments was a general who reminded Abivard of a fatter version of Zal: a tough fellow in his fifties, not long on polish but liable to be very good in the field. His name was Maniakes. In spite of that, he didn't look like a Videssian; he was blocky, square-featured, with a truly impressive fleshy promontory of a nose and a tangled gray beard that hung halfway down the front of his mail shirt.

"I'm Videssian enough, thanks," he answered when Abivard asked him about it, "even if all four of my grandparents came out of Vaspurakan."

"But—" Abivard scratched his head. "Don't you worship differently from the Videssians?"

"I do, aye, but my son was raised in Videssos' faith," the officer answered. "From what my grandfathers said, that's a smaller change to make than worshiping the God whom you Makuraners were trying to ram down the throat of Vaspurakan."

"Oh." Abivard wondered if the Makuraner overlords of Vaspurakan still behaved as they had in the days of Maniakes' grandfather. He hoped not. If they did, the folk of that land might be more ready to welcome Videssos than Sharbaraz thought.

With the cavalry came a regiment of engineers with wagons full of carefully sawn timbers and lengths of thick rope and fittings of iron and bronze. The men seemed more like mechanics than soldiers. They practiced assembling engines and putting together bridges much more than they went out with bow and spear. In his campaign against Smerdis the year before, Sharbaraz had enjoyed no such aid. That had cost him in the maneuverings between the Tutub and the Tib. It would not cost him this time.

"When do we move out?" Abivard asked the rightful King of Kings after a morning of mock cavalry charges.

"We're ready. The Videssians are ready—and so is their Vaspurakaner general." Sharbaraz made a sour face. He had found out about Maniakes, then. "The trouble is, the Tutub and the Tib aren't ready. This is their flood time. The engineers don't want everything swept away if the flood proves worse than usual—and there's no way to gauge that till it happens."

"The Vek Rud and the Degird wouldn't come into flood so soon," Abivard said. After a moment he went on musingly, "Of course, the snow wouldn't be melting so early in the season up in my part of the world, either." He shrugged, prepared to make the best of it. "More time to spend with Roshnani."

Sharbaraz laughed at him. "Having but one wife along has turned you uxorious. What will the rest of your women think when you go back to your stronghold?"

"They knew she was my favorite before she set out on campaign with us," Abivard said. "I do begin to understand now, as I didn't before, how the Videssians, even the grandees among 'em, make do with but one wife each."

"Some truth to that," Sharbaraz agreed. "Having the wife in question be as clever and lovely as the lady your sister does add to the compensation, I must say."

"You are gracious, Majesty."

"I'm yearning to return to my country," Sharbaraz said. "I wonder what Smerdis is expecting. He'll know we fled to Videssos, of course, and he'll know some of what's been going on here from caravans and single traders. But whether he knows we'll have an imperial army with us when we head west again—that we'll have to find out."

"If he does, he'll be using it to whip up hatred against you," Abivard said. "He'll be calling you things like traitor and renegade."

"All he can call himself is thief and usurper," Sharbaraz answered. "Next to that, he can't do much of a job with the tar brush on me. But you're right—he'll try. Let him." The rightful King of Kings folded his hands into fists. "I'm looking forward to renewing our acquaintance."

* * *

Abivard had always reckoned his own folk pious. He believed in the God and the Prophets Four, he invoked them frequently, and he would not have thought of undertaking anything major without first praying; the same held true for any Makuraner.

But the Videssians were not merely pious, they were ostentatiously pious in a way that was new to him. When their army prepared to sally forth with that of Sharbaraz, the chief prelate of Serrhes came out to bless them in a robe of cloth-of-gold and seed pearls with a blue velvet circle over his heart. Behind him marched a couple of younger men, almost as gorgeously robed, who swung golden censers that distributed puffs of incense widely enough for even Abivard's heathen nostrils to twitch. And behind them came a double line of priests in plain blue robes with cloth-of-gold circles on their breasts. They sang a hymn of praise to Phos. Abivard could not understand all of it, but the music was strong and stirring, a good tune with which to march into battle.

Among all the holy men, the farewell from Kalamos almost got lost in the shuffle. The epoptes made his little speech, the Videssian cavalrymen near enough to hear it clapped their hands a couple of times, and he went back to his residence to sign parchments, stamp seals, and probably do his best to forget that the Makuraners had ever disturbed his nearly vegetative peace.

Sharbaraz made his own speech. Pointing to the gold sunburst on blue that fluttered at the head of the Videssian ranks, he said, "Today the lion of Makuran and Videssos' sun go forth together for justice. The God grant we find it soon."

His men cheered, a roar that dwarfed the spatter of applause the Videssians had deigned to dole out to Kalamos. One thing Sharbaraz knew was how to play to a crowd. He waved, made his horse rear, and then turned it toward the west, toward Makuran and home.

His lancers followed. After them came his baggage train, refurbished and supplemented by the Videssians. Their army did not ride directly behind Sharbaraz's, but on a parallel track. That was not just to keep from having to swallow their new allies' dust—it also served to remind Sharbaraz and those who traveled with him that the Videssians were a force in their own right.

Before long, they rubbed that in even more unmistakably. Videssian scouts trotted up to ride alongside the lead detachments of Sharbaraz's force. That did not sit well with Abivard; he pointed to them as they went past and said, "Don't they trust us to keep a proper watch on what lies ahead?"

Sharbaraz sighed. For the first time since he had learned Likinios would aid him, even if at a price, he seemed almost like the hopeless, despairing self he had shown when things went wrong the summer before. He said, "The short answer is, no. The Videssians will do as they please, and we're in no position to call them on any of it."

"You're in overall command of this army," Abivard insisted. "Likinios agreed to that without a murmur, as he was in honor bound to do."

Now Sharbaraz smiled, but the expression seemed more one of pity than amusement. "Every so often, brother-in-law of mine, you remind me that the world of a dihqan along the Vek Rud differs from that of Mashiz—or of Videssos the city." He held up a hand before Abivard could get angry. "No, I mean no offense. Your way is surely simpler and more honest. But let me ask you one question: If Maniakes declines to obey an order I give, how am I to compel him?"

Abivard bit down on that like a man breaking a tooth on a pebble in his bowl of mutton stew. As many Videssians were riding west as Makuraners, maybe more. Maniakes could more easily force Sharbaraz to do his bidding than the other way round. If he withdrew, Sharbaraz's Makuraners could not beat Smerdis by themselves. They had proved that the year before.

"I begin to think running a realm may be a deeper sorcery than many over which the mages crow," Abivard said at last. "You have to keep so many things in mind to hope to do it properly—and you have to see them to be able to keep them in mind. That one never occurred to me; maybe I am the innocent you say I am."

Sharbaraz leaned over and set a hand on his arm. "You do fine. Better not to have to look for serpents under every cushion before you sit down."

"If they're there, you'd better look for them," Abivard said.

"Oh, indeed, but I wish they weren't there," Sharbaraz replied. "By the God, when I take Mashiz and the throne, I'll kill every one I find."

"That would be splendid, Majesty; may the day come soon." Abivard rode along for a while in silence. Then he said, "In a way, though, I am sorry to be leaving Videssos so soon."

"What? Why?" Sharbaraz asked sharply. "Has your own realm lost its savor after half a year in another?"

"No, of course not." Abivard's fingers twitched in a gesture of rejection. He went on, "It's just that, because Videssos has around it so many seas, I thought Tanshar's prophecy of something shining across a narrow one might come to pass here. I've already seen fulfilled the other two he gave me."

"If that's your reason, I forgive you," Sharbaraz said, nodding. "But prophecy is a risky business."

"That's so." Abivard remembered he hadn't told his sovereign of the scrying he had had Tanshar do of Hosios' future. He described how the water in the scrying bowl had taken on the semblance of blood.

"Now that's . . . intriguing," Sharbaraz said slowly. "Had Likinios refused me aid, I might have used it against him to claim he, like my father, ran the risk of being the last of his line. But since the Videssians do ride with us, I don't know quite what to make of it or how to employ it. Best simply to bear it in mind, I suppose, till the time comes when it proves of value to me." He paused. "I wonder if Likinios' wizards made similar inquiries into my future, and what they learned if they did."

That was something else that hadn't occurred to Abivard. He bowed in the saddle to the rightful King of Kings. "Majesty, henceforward I leave all the searches for serpents and scorpions to your sharp eyes."

"I'd be more flattered at that if I'd spotted Smerdis," Sharbaraz said. Abivard spread his hands, conceding the point. Every pace their horses took moved them farther west.

* * *

Roshnani said, "I'm sorry we're leaving Videssos."

"That's odd." Abivard sat up in her little cubicle in the wagon she shared with Denak. The sudden motion stirred the air and made the lamp's flame flicker. "I said the same thing to the King of Kings earlier today. What are your reasons?"

"Can't you guess?" she asked. "Women there live as your sister and I would."

"Oh." Abivard chewed on that for a little while, then said, "And they also suffer outrages they never would in Makuran. Look what happened to that Videssian lady when Bardiya took her for a woman of no virtue."

"But Bardiya is from Makuran," Roshnani said. "I dare hope, at least, that Videssian men, used to the freedom of their women and not thinking it wrong or sinful, would never behave so."

"I didn't see them doing so, or hear tales of it," Abivard admitted. "But, being a man, I know somewhat of men. If men find themselves around such free women all the time, a good number of them will surely become smooth, practiced seducers of a sort we also do not know in Makuran."

Roshnani bit her lip. "I suppose that is possible," she said. Abivard admired her honesty for admitting it. She went on, "On the other hand, I doubt the Videssians are troubled by problems like the one Ardini caused in your women's quarters last year."

"You're probably right there," he said.

Now she smiled. He did, too, understanding her well. Neither of them was one to deny the other could have a point. Lowering her voice to a whisper, Roshnani said, "Unlike your sister, I don't claim giving women freedom from their quarters will solve all their old problems without causing any new ones. That's not how the world works. But I do think the problems that come will be smaller than the ones that go."

Abivard said, "Do you suppose some women, once freed as you say, might turn into seducers themselves?"

Denak would have got angry at such a suggestion. Roshnani considered it with her usual care. "Very likely some would," she said. "As with men, some are more lecherous than others, and some also less happy with their husbands than they might be." She ran a hand down along his bare chest and belly. "There I proved very lucky."

"And I." He stroked her cheek. He thought of what he had said to Sharbaraz earlier in the day. "With you, I think I'd have no trouble holding to the Videssian custom of having but one wife. My father would laugh at that, I'm sure, but after all, we've been together on this campaign for most of a year, and I've never felt the need for variety." He sighed. "Somehow I doubt, though, that all men are so fortunate."

"Or all women," Roshnani said.

He took her hand in his and guided it a little lower yet. "And what shall we do about that?"

"Again? So soon?" But she was not complaining.

* * *

Even the badlands that lay between Videssos' western outposts and the Land of the Thousand Cities donned a ragged cloak of green in springtime. Bees buzzed among flowers that would soon wilt and crumble, not to be seen again till the following year. Horses pulled plants from the sandy ground as they trotted west, saving some of the fodder the army had brought with it.

Maniakes rode up to Sharbaraz and Abivard. With him came a young man, hardly more than a youth, who was his image but for a beard that showed no sign of gray and features thinner and less scarred. He said, "The worst thing Smerdis could do to us would be to poison the wells along the way. We'd have Skotos' own time making it to the Tutub without stopping for water along the way, even at this time of year when the stream beds may yet hold some."

"He won't," Sharbaraz said confidently.

Maniakes raised a bushy eyebrow. "What makes you so sure?" he wondered. Abivard wondered the same thing, but couldn't have been so blunt about asking it.

Sharbaraz said, "The first thing Smerdis thinks of is money. If he poisons the wells, caravans can't cross between Videssos and Makuran, and he can't tax them. Sooner than that, he'll try to find some other way to deal with us."

"It could be so. You know Smerdis better than I do; nobody in Videssos knows much of him at all." Maniakes kept his voice neutral. He turned to the young man who looked like him and asked, "What do you think?"

In slow Makuraner, the young man replied, "I would not give away a soldierly advantage, sir, to gain money later. But some might. As Smerdis was mintmaster, money may matter much to him."

"Well reasoned," Sharbaraz said.

"Indeed," Abivard said. To Videssians, who loved logic-chopping, that was higher praise than it would have been for a Makuraner; he wondered if the same held true for Vaspurakaners who had adopted Videssian ways. In case it didn't, he nodded to the younger man—who was a few years younger than he—and asked Maniakes, "Your son?"

Maniakes bowed in the saddle—Abivard had pleased him. He said, "Aye, my eldest. Eminent sir," he said, rendering the Videssian title literally into Makuraner, "and your Majesty, allow me to present to you Maniakes the younger."

"Unfair," Sharbaraz said. "Makuran and Videssos are usually foes, not friends, and one of you on Videssos' side is trouble enough for us. Two seems excessive."

The elder Maniakes chuckled. The younger one murmured, "Your Majesty does me too much credit, to rank me with my father so soon."

Abivard noted the qualification of his modesty. He said, "May I ask a question?" After waiting for the two Maniakai to nod, he went on, "How is it that you both share a name? In Makuran, it's against custom to name a child after a living relative; we fear death may get confused and take the wrong one by mistake."

"The Videssians share that rule with us, I think," Sharbaraz put in.

The elder Maniakes rumbled laughter. "Just goes to show that, even if my line follows Videssian orthodoxy, we're still Vaspurakaners under the skin. Phos made us first of all peoples, and we trust him to know one of us from another, no matter what name we bear. Isn't that so, son?"

"Aye," the younger Maniakes answered, but he said no more and looked uncomfortable at having said so much. Abivard suspected he was less Vaspurakaner under the skin than his father thought. After a while, if a family lived among people different from them, wouldn't that family take on more and more of its neighbors' ways?

Spurred by that thought, he asked the elder Maniakes, "Have you any grandchildren, eminent sir?" He used the same non-Makuraner honorific the general had applied to him.

"No, none yet," Maniakes answered, "though a couple of my boys have wed, as will my namesake here if the girl's father ever stops pretending she's made of gold and pearls rather than flesh and blood."

Even though his own father hadn't so much as named the lady to whom he would—or rather, might—be married, the younger Maniakes got a soft, dreamy look in his eyes. Abivard recognized that look; he wore it whenever he thought of Roshnani. From that he concluded that the younger Maniakes not only knew but had already fallen in love with his not-quite-betrothed. That was yet another way the Videssians differed from his own people, among whom bride and groom seldom set eyes on each other before their wedding day.

Or so things worked among the nobility, at any rate. Rules for the common folk were looser, though arranged marriages were most common among them, too. Abivard wondered how lax things were for Videssian commoners, and if they had any rules at all.

The elder Maniakes turned the conversation back toward the business at hand: "Your Majesty, what do we do if the wells are fouled?"

"Either fall back into Videssos or press on toward the Tutub," Sharbaraz answered, "depending on how far we've come and how much water we have with us. I won't lead us across the waste to die of thirst, if that's what you're asking."

"If you try, I won't follow you," the elder Maniakes answered bluntly. "But aye, you talked straight with me, and you'll seldom hear a Vaspurakaner prince—which means any Vaspurakaner, just so you know—complain about that." He snorted. "Sometimes you can go for days before you get a Videssian to come out and tell you what he means."

Again, Abivard glanced toward the general's son. The younger Maniakes didn't say anything but didn't look as if he fully agreed with his father. Abivard chuckled to himself. Aye, Videssos had its hooks deeper in the son than in the father. Knowing that might prove useful one day, though he couldn't guess how.

Sharbaraz pointed ahead. "There's the first oasis, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me. We'll soon find out what Smerdis has been up to here."

* * *

Smerdis had not poisoned the wells. Both armies had their wizards and healers test the water at each stop on the journey west toward Makuran, and used a few horses to drink several hours before the men and the rest of the animals refreshed themselves, just in case the wizards and healers were wrong.

With the last oasis past, nothing but scrub—now rapidly going from green to its more usual brown—lay between the armies and the Tutub. But before they reached the river that marked the eastern boundary of the land of the Thousand Cities, Smerdis sent forth an embassy not to Sharbaraz but to the elder Maniakes.

Abivard had feared that. Smerdis' best hope now was to split the Videssians away from the rightful King of Kings. He had a way to do that, too: by offering more concessions to Likinios than Sharbaraz had. The Videssians were a devious people. For all Abivard knew, Maniakes might have accompanied Sharbaraz precisely to extort those concessions from Smerdis. If he got them, would he turn on Sharbaraz? Or would he simply order his horsemen to turn around and ride for home? That would be disastrous enough by itself.

Scouts had reported to Sharbaraz the arrival of the embassy. Had Sharbaraz been dismounted, he would have paced back and forth. Abivard understood that. When Zal's men had in essence seized his stronghold to force Smerdis' tax levy from him, his fate was taken out of his hands. Now Sharbaraz had to wait for others to decide his destiny.

"If he sells us out, I'll kill him," Sharbaraz snarled, one slow word at a time. "I don't care what happens to me afterward. Better I should fall slaying Videssians than at Smerdis' hands."

"I'll be beside you, Majesty," Abivard answered. Sharbaraz nodded, pleased at the pledge, but his face stayed grim.

Then the elder Maniakes, accompanied by his son, rode toward the rightful King of Kings. Trailing the two Videssian officers came a handful of unhappy-looking Makuraners. The elder Maniakes jerked a thumb back toward them. "They were inquiring into the price of having us switch sides," he remarked.

"Were they?" Sharbaraz fixed Smerdis' envoys with a smile that might have belonged on the face of a wolf. "The God give you good day, Paktyes. So you serve the traitor now, do you?"

One of the envoys—presumably Paktyes—looked even more uncomfortable than he had before. "S-son of Peroz, I serve the authorities in Mashiz," he said.

"By which he means he'll lick any arse that's shoved in his face," Abivard said, his voice greasy with scorn. "I never thought I'd see anything worse than a traitor, but now I have: a man who just doesn't care."

"He is disgusting, isn't he?" Sharbaraz remarked. Talking about Paktyes as if he weren't there was nicely calculated to make the ambassador all the more miserable. Ignoring him again, the rightful King of Kings turned to the elder Maniakes and asked, "Well, my friend, how much is the Pimp of Pimps offering?"

The Videssian general blinked, then guffawed till he coughed. When the coughs subsided to wheezes, he answered, "Oh, these fellows here say he'll give up the whole of Vaspurakan, along with enough silver for a man to walk dryshod from the westlands across to Videssos the city if he poured it into the Cattle Crossing—that's the strait between 'em."

A narrow sea, Abivard thought. Maybe that was what Tanshar had meant. But how likely was he to cross all the wide westlands and come in sight of Videssos' fabled capital?

Thinking of his personal concerns made him miss for a moment the way Sharbaraz stiffened. "That is a considerable offer, and one more, ah, generous than I would care to make," Sharbaraz said carefully. "How have you replied?"

"I haven't, till now," the elder Maniakes answered. "I wanted you to hear it first."

"Why? To make me match it? If Likinios needs silver so badly—"

"Likinios always needs silver," Maniakes interrupted. "And even if he didn't, he'd think he did. I'm sorry, your Majesty—you were saying?"

"If he needs silver, I can pay him some once I regain the throne," Sharbaraz said. "If he must have all of Vaspurakan—" The rightful King of Kings bent his head back, exposing his throat. "Strike now. He shall not have it from me."

"There, do you see?" Paktyes cried. "My master offers you better terms!"

"But my master doesn't care," the elder Maniakes said. "He doesn't like the idea of people stealing thrones that don't belong to them. He'd sooner have an honest man ruling Makuran than a thief, you see. Can you blame him? Whoever's on the throne in Mashiz, Likinios is going to have to live with him, and honest men make better neighbors."

"Very well, then," Paktyes said. He did his best to seem fierce but succeeded only in sounding liverish. Still snapping, he went on, "The brave armies of the King of Kings, may his years be long and his realm increase, have routed the renunciate once. They can surely do it again, even if he has treacherously gained aid from our ancient foes in Videssos."

He and his delegation rode back toward the west. The elder Maniakes turned to Sharbaraz and said, "If he's the best your rival can send out, this campaign will be a walkover. That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Aye, it would," the rightful King of Kings answered. "But I thought my campaign last spring would be a walkover, too. And so it was—for a while. The longer it went on, though, the tougher Smerdis' men got."

Maniakes chuckled. "I know how to fix that: beat him good early so he doesn't have time to get better late." Sketching a salute, he kicked his horse in the ribs and went off to his own army.

"There's a relief," Abivard said. "The Videssians could easily have sold us out, and they didn't."

He thought Sharbaraz would also be pleased, but the rightful King of Kings replied, "So far as we know they didn't. Paktyes and Maniakes could have said anything at all before they came to us. I have no idea how good a mime Maniakes is, but any general needs some of that if he's to adapt himself to the things that can go wrong in war. As for Paktyes, I know for a fact that deceit's in his blood. How could it be otherwise, when he swings this way or that like a bronze weathervane on a farmer's roof, always turning whichever way the wind of influence blows."

"Your Majesty, you are right." Abivard looked over his right shoulder at the elder Maniakes, who had almost rejoined his men. For a few minutes, he had been elated at the idea of the Videssians' probity being assured. Now he saw it was not so. The world remained full of ambiguity.

Sharbaraz said, "The only way to be certain the Videssians stay on our side is to have them actually fight against Smerdis. Even then we won't be absolutely sure until after the last fight is won: any sooner than that and they could be dissembling, building our confidence and trust so as to make betrayal the more devastating when it comes."

Abivard sighed. With every day that passed, he was gladder his brother-in-law was the rightful King of Kings and not himself. Sharbaraz saw and took precautions against treachery in places where Abivard didn't even see the places. He had let down his guard for one moment against his elderly cousin, and that lapse might yet forever cost him his throne. Abivard wondered if Sharbaraz would ever let down his guard for anyone again.

He said, "If the Videssians do betray us, what can we do about it?"

Sharbaraz gave him a very bleak look. "Nothing."

* * *

Even so early in the season, mirages danced and sparkled across the badlands that lay between Serrhes and the land of the Thousand Cities. Abivard had grown used to them, and as used to ignoring them. When he saw water ahead, then, he discounted it as just another illusion.

But this water did not seem to stay the same unchanging, tantalizing distance ahead of him no matter how far he traveled. The farther west he rode, the closer it looked. Before long he could make out the greenery it supported. A murmur ran through the army: "The Tutub. We've come back to the Tutub."

How many of them, when they had left the easternmost river of Makuran and struck out across the desert for Videssos, had really believed they would return—and return with a good chance of restoring Sharbaraz to the throne? Not many was Abivard's guess. He had had doubts himself, and the move had been his own wife's idea. What must the rank-and-file soldiers—those who hadn't deserted the rightful King of Kings—have thought?

The murmur grew to a great roar: "The river! The river!" Men cheered and wept and pounded one another on the back. Makuran lay ahead of them. No, so many had never expected to see this day. Abivard's eyes filled with tears. No matter how little the land of the Thousand Cities resembled Vek Rud domain, he, too, was coming home.

As he drew nearer, he saw horsemen waiting on the far side of the Tutub. They probably had not looked for Sharbaraz's return, either, and had to be less than delighted to see it now. Some held their places; others rode off to the west, no doubt to warn of Sharbaraz's arrival.

Green and growing things covered both banks of the river. So soon after the spring flood, the greenery extended a long way out from the Tutub. Canals guided every precious drop to plants that would perish without the lifegiving water.

Sharbaraz sent riders up and down the Tutub, a couple of farsangs north and south, to see if Smerdis' men had left behind a bridge of boats on which they could cross. Abivard was unsurprised when they found none.

He had watched the engineers of Peroz King of Kings throw a bridge across the Degird River. That had taken days. Now he saw the Videssian engineers in action. The structure they put together was a lot less impressive than the bridge the Makuraners had run up, but they built it a lot faster. They anchored thick, heavily greased chains to the shore at one end and to a wooden pontoon at the other. Then they rowed out to the pontoon in a tiny boat, anchored a new set of chains to its far side, and hitched them to another pontoon farther out in the Tutub.

They had long planks to reach from pontoon to pontoon and, incidentally, to reduce the distance each newly placed pontoon could drift downstream from its predecessor. They had shorter planks to lay across the long ones. And, in an amazingly short time, they had themselves a bridge.

At first, Smerdis' men on the west bank of the Tutub didn't seem to realize the Videssian engineers were creating a structure on which Sharbaraz's army could cross to attack them. Only when the western end of the bridge was well within bowshot did they send a few arrows toward the laboring engineers. The Khamorth on the north bank of the Degird had harassed Peroz's artisans much more effectively.

As Peroz's men had, the Videssians used soldiers with big shields to hold off most of the arrows. They also brought archers of their own forward along the growing bridge to shoot back at their foes. Before long the bridge was anchored to the west bank of the Tutub as well as the east. Riders began to cross—first Videssians, for the elder Maniakes made his own men use the bridge before he risked Makuraners on it, then Sharbaraz's lancers, and last of all the wagons of the Videssian engineers and the rest of the baggage train.

As soon as the last wagon rolled onto the west bank of the Tutub, the engineers began disassembling the pontoon bridge. Watching, Abivard thought they might have used a magic to aid them in the deconstruction; just as the bridge had grown from the east bank of the Tutub to the west, so now it shrank in the same direction. The engineers rolled up the last heavy, greasy chain, stowed it in the wagon from which it had come, and shouted in Videssian that they were ready to move on.

The elder Maniakes rode up to Abivard and Sharbaraz. Coughing a little, he said, "You understand, I hope, it won't be this easy all the time."

"Oh, indeed," Sharbaraz said. "We caught them by surprise. They'll be more ready to fight back, next crossing we have to force. But being back in Makuran, in my own realm, feels so fine in and of itself that I won't worry about the future till I bump into it."

"The Land of the Thousand Cities isn't much like Vek Rud domain," Abivard said. "I was thinking that a little while ago. Serrhes reminded me a lot more of home: dust and heat—aye, and cold through the winter—and a healthy fear for enemies from over the border."

"You mean us," Sharbaraz said, grinning.

"So I do." Abivard smiled, too. "But I got to thinking what I would have done if an important Khamorth chief crossed the Degird with his clan and came to my stronghold asking for Makuraner help to get him back his grazing lands. What should I do there? Probably about what Kalamos did: act as friendly as I could while I sent a messenger hotfooting it to the capital to find out how I was really supposed to act."

"You couldn't go far wrong doing something like that," Sharbaraz agreed. "Such things have happened now and again, too. Sometimes we'd aid the nomads, sometimes we wouldn't, depending on what looked advantageous."

Abivard thought of Likinios and his beloved map. Yes, the Avtokrator had settled for fewer concessions from Sharbaraz than he had demanded at first, but he had taken a bite out of Makuran just the same. Suppose Sharbaraz had refused to yield that bite. Where would he and his followers be now?

Abivard saw two answers. The first was the one Hosios had promised: the army broken up, with each man getting land according to his rank. In that case, Abivard's grandchildren would likely have ended up as Videssian as the younger Maniakes. Not the worst of fates, but not the best, either.

Given the way Likinios looked at the world, though, the second picture that sprang into being in Abivard's mind struck him as much more likely. What better use for the Avtokrator of the Videssians to get out of a host of Makuraner refugees than to take them to the northeast and hurl them against the Kubratoi? Every nomad horseman they killed would help Videssos, while they did the Emperor no harm even if they died.

The scheme was devious, underhanded, and economical . . . Likinios to the core. Abivard was glad the Avtokrator had not had the chance to think of it.

Sharbaraz said, "This whole realm is mine, the land of the Thousand Cities no less than any other part of it. Perhaps it helps that I grew up looking out on it from Mashiz and that I visited some of the cities down here on the flood plain. It's not alien to me, though I admit I prefer the highlands. I am a true Makuraner by blood, after all."

"Of that, Majesty, no one had any doubt." Abivard waved to the flat, green landscape ahead. "Where I have doubts is wondering how we're to move here in any direction save the ones Smerdis dictates. Are the Videssian engineers good enough to let us do that?"

"My father always had the greatest respect for them," Sharbaraz said, invoking Peroz as Abivard was wont to invoke Godarz. "Never having fought against them nor seen them in action, I cannot speak from firsthand knowledge. I will say this, though: they'd better be."

* * *

As they had before, the cities of the land of the Thousand Cities closed themselves to Sharbaraz's army. As he had before, the rightful King of Kings bypassed them and kept moving. If he beat Smerdis, they would fall to him. If he didn't . . . Abivard saw no point in worrying about that.

Smerdis did not have a large force between the valleys of the Tutub and the Tib. His men shadowed Sharbaraz's host and the accompanying Videssian army but made no effort to attack. "Cowardice." Sharbaraz snorted. "He thinks he'll stay on the throne if he can outwait me."

"Strategy," the elder Maniakes insisted. "He's holding back to hurt as much as he can, at a time of his choosing."

Being the two men of highest rank in the army, they had trouble finding an arbiter to choose between them, but before long they settled on Abivard. He said, "May it please your Majesty, I think the eminent sir is right. Smerdis isn't quite the fool you made him out to be; if he were, we'd never have needed aid from Videssos."

"He's a thief and a liar," Sharbaraz said.

"No doubt he is, your Majesty," the elder Maniakes agreed politely. "However wicked those qualities are in most walks of life, though, they often come in very handy in war."

Two days later Smerdis' men broke down the eastern bank of one of the larger canals that stitched together the Land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssian engineers quickly repaired the breach and ended the flood, but that did nothing to deal with the furlongs of black, smelly mud the waters left in their wake.

"Now we see if they earn their silver," Abivard declared.

The engineers earned not only Makuraner silver but also Videssian gold. They used the same planks that had paved the pontoon bridge over the Tutub to lay down a roadway that let the army advance through the flooded zone and up to the canal. They also recovered the planks—except for a few that had been trampled deep into the mud—so they could use them again in either bridge or roadway.

"Now I understand," Sharbaraz said as the engineers matter-of-factly went about bridging the canal. "They let the Videssian army go wherever it wants to. You can't just make a flood or build field fortifications and think you're safe from the imperials: they'll be inside your tent before you even know they're around."

"They are good," Abivard admitted grudgingly. "I haven't had a lot to do with them, but just watching them go about their business, seeing them talking and gambling around campfires of evenings, makes them seem more like ordinary men than they ever did before. Our tales always make Videssians out to be either wicked or ferocious or underhanded or—I don't know what all, but none of it good. And they're just . . . people. It's very strange."

"You take any one man from anywhere and he's apt to be a pretty good fellow," Abivard said. "Even a Khamorth will probably love his children—"

"Or his sheep," Abivard put in.

The rightful King of Kings snorted. "It's rude to interrupt your sovereign when he's waxing philosophical. I don't do it much; maybe it comes from being around Videssians, since they're finer logic-choppers than anyone else. As I was saying, your plainsman will love his children, he won't beat his wife more than she deserves, and he'll care for his horses as well as any groom in Makuran. Put him in the company of a couple of hundred of his clansmates and let him overrun a Makuraner village, though, and he'll do things that will give you nightmares for years afterward."

"But we have a lot more than a couple of hundred Videssians here, and they're still behaving well," Abivard said. "That's what surprises me."

"Part of that, I suppose, is that they're aligned with us: if they act like a pack of demons, they'll make the people here hate them and us both, and so hurt our cause," Sharbaraz said. "And they're more like us than the Khamorth are. When they aren't soldiering, they're farmers or millers or artisans. They don't destroy canals for the fun of watching other farmers starve."

Abivard plucked at his beard. "That makes sense, Majesty. Maybe you should—what did you call it?—wax philosophic more often."

"No, thank you," Sharbaraz answered. "There's also one other thing I didn't tell you: I asked the elder Maniakes to make sure his priests stuck to their own and didn't go about trying to get honest Makuraners to worship their false god. The blue-robes who follow Phos are better organized than our servants of the God, and they go after converts like flies diving into honey."

"They have been quiet," Abivard said. "I didn't realize this isn't the way they usually behave."

"It isn't," Sharbaraz assured him. "They're as certain of the truth of their Phos as we are about the God. And since they think they have the only true god, they're sure anyone who doesn't worship him—or who doesn't worship him the right way—will spend eternity in ice, just as we know misbelievers vanish into the Void and are gone forever. They think they have a duty to get people to worship as they do. Getting Maniakes to muzzle them hasn't been easy."

"Why not?" Abivard asked, puzzled. "If a noble gives an order, those who serve under him had better obey."

Sharbaraz laughed raucously. Abivard looked offended. The rightful King of Kings said, "Brother-in-law of mine, you're not used to dealing with Videssians. From all I've seen, from all I've heard, those blue-robed priests are so drunk with their god, they don't care to take orders from any mere noble. Even the Avtokrator sometimes has trouble getting them to do his bidding."

"We don't do things so untidily in Makuran," Abivard said. "Northerwesterner though I am, I know that much. If the Mobedhan-mobhed ever presumed to displease the King of Kings in any way—"

"—there'd be a new Mobedhan-mobhed inside the hour," Sharbaraz finished for him. "After all, the King of Kings is the sovereign. No one has any business displeasing him." He laughed again, this time at himself. "I've been nothing but displeased since the throne came—or should have come—into my hands. When it's truly mine at last, that won't happen any more."

His voice held great certainty. At first, that pleased Abivard: Sharbaraz needed confidence that he would be restored. Then Abivard wondered if the rightful King of Kings simply meant he would refuse to listen to anything distasteful once he ruled in Mashiz. That worried him. Even a King of Kings might need to be reminded from time to time of how the world worked.

* * *

Something had changed. Abivard knew it as soon as he climbed up into the wagon Roshnani and Denak shared, even before he set eyes on his wife. The serving woman who bowed to him said not a word out of the ordinary, but her voice had a timbre to it he hadn't heard before.

"My husband," Roshnani said as he stepped into her small cubicle. Again, the words were everyday but the tone was not. Then she added, "Close the curtain. It helps keep out some of the mosquitoes that plague this land." That sounded like her.

Abivard obeyed. As he did, he studied Roshnani. She looked—like herself, if a little more tired than usual. He scratched his head, wondering if his imagination was running away with him. "Is anything wrong?" he asked as she tilted her face up for a kiss.

"Wrong? Whatever makes you think that?" She laughed at him, then went on, "Unless I'm very much mistaken, though, I am going to have a baby."

"I'm glad everything's all ri—" Abivard said before what Roshnani had told him got from his ears to his mind. His mouth fell open. When he shut it again, he said, "How did that happen?"

If Roshnani had laughed before, now she chortled, great ringing peals of mirth that left her hiccuping when she finally brought herself back under control. "Unless I'm very much mistaken," she said, deliberately echoing herself, "it happened in the usual way. We've been wed for going on two years now. I was beginning to wonder if I was barren."

Abivard's fingers twisted in a sign to turn aside words of evil omen. "The God prevent it," he said. Then he blinked. "The God has prevented it, hasn't he?"

"Yes, she has," Roshnani said. They both smiled; when a man and a woman talked about the God in back-to-back sentences, the effect could be odd on the ear. Roshnani went on, "May I give you a son."

"May it be so." Abivard sobered. "I wish my father were here, so I could set his first grandchild in his arms. If that child were heir to Vek Rud domain, all the better." He thought of something else, lowered his voice. "I might even wish it weren't Father's first grandchild. Have you told Denak you're with child?"

Roshnani nodded. "I told her this morning; this is the first day I've been sure enough to speak to anyone. She hugged me. I understand what you mean, though: how wonderful it would be if a first grandchild were also heir to the throne of the King of Kings."

"Of course, if Father were alive, Peroz King of Kings would likely also still live, and Denak wouldn't be wed to Sharbaraz King of Kings," Abivard mused. "The more you look at things, the more complicated they get." He spoke quietly again. "I'm glad she's not jealous you've conceived when she hasn't."

"I think perhaps she is, a little," Roshnani said, almost whispering herself. "But then, she's also a little jealous that you visit me more often than the King of Kings comes to see her."

"Is she? Do I?" Abivard knew he wasn't altogether coherent, but he had never before been told he was going to be a father. None of the serving women and occasional courtesans he had bedded had made that claim on him, and they would have with even the slightest suspicion he had put a child in them: as a dihqan's son, he would have been obligated to make sure their babes were well cared for. And none of his other wives had quickened before he left with Sharbaraz. Perhaps he should have fretted over the strength of his seed.

"Yes and yes," Roshnani answered. Everything he said this evening seemed to amuse her. She called to the serving woman for a jar of wine and two cups. The jar was a squat one from the land of the Thousand Cities; when she tilted it to pour, the wine slithered out slowly. She made a wry face. "Not only is it made from dates, the people here seem to think they ought to be able to poke a knife in it and bring it to their mouths that way."

"It doesn't matter, not for this." Abivard took one of the cups from her and raised it in salute. "To our child. May the God grant him—and you—long years, health, and happiness." He drank. So did Roshnani. Not only was the wine thick as molasses, it was nearly as sweet, too. He almost felt the need to chew to get it down.

It did what wine was supposed to do, though. By the time he had finished the cup, the world seemed a more cheerful place. Roshnani poured it full again. As he sipped, the words of his toast came back, and so did worry. Women could die giving birth, or of childbed fever afterwards. The possibility loomed too large to be ignored, but the idea of commending young and vital Roshnani to the God because her span was cruelly cut short sent fear through him.

To keep from thinking about it, he gulped down the second cup of sweet date wine. When he had finished it, he said, "May Denak and Sharbaraz soon know this same happiness." He was happy, despite the worry. He would worry about his sister, too, but he would also be glad for her and her husband.

Roshnani nodded. "Not only will it be good for them, it will be good for the realm as well, especially if it proves to be a boy. Having an heir to the throne can only help settle the realm."

"It should help settle the realm, you mean," Abivard said. "Peroz King of Kings had an heir, too, if you'll recall."

"I recall it perfectly well," Roshnani said. "If Smerdis had recalled it, too, we'd all be better off—except for Smerdis, which, I daresay, was all he thought about."

"Too true." Abivard sighed. "When I was growing up at Vek Rud stronghold, I thought about seeing the land of the Thousand Cities and Videssos, aye, but I expected to go to war against Videssos for the King of Kings, not with Videssian allies against a man who calls himself the King of Kings. Civil war is a strange business."

"When I was growing up, I never thought about seeing anything except the stretch of road between my father's stronghold and yours," Roshnani answered. "I'd known only the stronghold and later only the women's quarters in it. Next to that, my bridal journey seemed travel enough to last me a lifetime." She laughed. "We can't always guess what's to come, can we?"

"No," Abivard said, thinking of Tanshar. "And even if we do learn what's to come, we don't know when or where or how."

"The only thing left for us is to go on as best we can," Roshnani said. "Come to think of it, that's what we'd be doing even if we knew just what all the prophecies meant."

"So it is." Abivard looked at her sidelong. "The best way to go on after finding out you've a child in your belly that I can think of is—"

Roshnani might have had the same thought at the same time. The date wine made Abivard's fingers a little clumsy as he unfastened the wooden toggles at the back of her dress, but after that everything went fine.

* * *

Smerdis' men did their best to delay and misdirect Sharbaraz's army and his Videssian allies by opening canals between the Tib and the Tutub, but their best was not good enough, not when the Videssian engineers could repair holes in the canal banks and plank roads as fast as the enemy damaged them.

"When we cross the Tib, they're ours," Sharbaraz said.

"Aye, Majesty," Abivard answered, though he could not help thinking that Sharbaraz had shown the same confidence the summer before, only to have it prove to be overconfidence.

But perhaps Smerdis came to the same conclusion as his rival. As Sharbaraz's men neared the Tib, their foes drew up in battle array to try to stop them from crossing a major canal. Prominent in the ranks of Smerdis' men were the dismounted archers who had brought such grief to Sharbaraz's forces as they had advanced from the south against Mashiz the previous year.

The elder Maniakes looked down his formidable nose at the bowmen. "If we ever close with them, their souls will be falling down to Skotos' ice quick enough after that," he said.

"Oh, indeed," Sharbaraz answered. "The same holds true for my lancers. But I don't relish trying to force a crossing in the face of all the archery they can bring to bear on us."

He's learning, Abivard thought with something approaching joy. The summer before, Sharbaraz would have chosen the most straightforward way to cross the canal and get at his foes, and would have worried about casualties later, if at all.

"Your Majesty, may I make a suggestion?" the elder Maniakes asked.

"I wish you would," Sharbaraz said. The Videssian commander spoke for several minutes. When he was through, Sharbaraz whistled softly. "You must have a demon lurking in you, to come up with a scheme like that. No wonder Makuran seldom profits as much as it should in its wars against Videssos."

"You're too kind to an old man," the elder Maniakes said, considerably exaggerating his decrepitude. "You would have seen it yourself in a moment, had you but noticed the little hill that town there rests on."

"You'll want us to sit tight through the night and start the attack in the morning, then, won't you, eminent sir?" Abivard said.

"We'll have better hope for success that way, surely," the Videssian general answered. He beamed at Abivard. "You do see what needs doing, eminent sir, and that's a fact. Can't complain about that, and I wouldn't think of trying." He plucked at his gray beard. "Hmm, now that I think on it, 'eminent sir' is probably too low a title for you, what with you being brother to his Majesty's wife, but I mean no harm by it, I promise you."

"I took no offense," Abivard said, "and even if I had, I wouldn't have shown it, not after that lovely plan you came up with."

The elder Maniakes beamed. "The only reason I thought of it was to give my son some glory. I'll have him lead the interesting half."

Sharbaraz turned to Abivard. "The time to trust Videssians least is when they're being modest. Of course, that isn't something you'll run into often enough to have to worry about it much."

"Your Majesty, I am wounded to the quick!" The elder Maniakes clapped both hands over his heart, as if hit by an arrow. "You do me a great injustice."

"The biggest injustice I could do you would be to underestimate you," the rightful King of Kings answered. "You will forgive me, I pray—you're not so young, you're plump, you're droll when you want to be. And you're as dangerous a man as I've ever seen, not least because you don't seem so."

"What do I say about that?" the elder Maniakes wondered aloud. "Only that if you've seen through the act, it isn't as good as it should be, and I'll have to put more work into it." He sounded genuinely chagrined.

The next morning dawned clear and hot, as did almost every morning in late spring, summer, and early fall in the land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssian engineers had enough pontoons and chains and planks to bridge the Tib and Tutub—plenty to bridge an irrigation canal many times over. As soon as it was light, they started throwing a good many bridges across the canal that held them apart from Smerdis' men.

To Abivard's dismay, scouts from Smerdis' army were alert. No sooner had the bridges started to snake across the oily-looking water than the unmounted archers came rushing up from their camp and began shooting at the engineers. As at the crossing of the Tutub, some of the Videssians held big shields to protect the rest from the rain of arrows. As the bridges moved forward, Videssian horse archers rode out onto them and started shooting back at Smerdis' men.

They were badly outnumbered, but did damage to the foe all the same: few of Smerdis' bowmen wore any sort of armor. The heavy cavalry with the foot soldiers gathered in knots in front of the growing bridges to fight off any of Sharbaraz's men who managed to cross.

Sharbaraz's own armored lancers assembled near their end of a bridge that grew ever nearer the west bank of the canal. Abivard sat his horse at their head, wondering how, if the men he led charged over the bridge in one direction while Smerdis' followers charged in the other, the Videssian engineers would keep from getting squashed between them.

He found out: as soon as the engineers got the last planks in place, they dove into the canal and started swimming through the turbid water back toward the eastern bank. No sooner had they splashed down into the water than Abivard cried, "Sharbaraz!" and booted his horse forward.

The bridge swayed, as if in an earthquake, under the galloping hooves of dozens of horses. Abivard met his first foe not quite two thirds of the way toward the west bank of the canal—he might have started a heartbeat sooner than Smerdis' man, and perhaps he was better mounted, too.

He twisted his body away from the questing point of the foe's lance. At the same time, he struck with his own. The blow caught Smerdis' soldier in the chest and pitched him off over his horse's tail. Abivard's mount, a trained warhorse, lashed out at the fallen lancer with iron-shod hooves. Abivard spurred the horse ahead toward the next enemy.

The bridge was not wide. More splashes, some of them big ones, marked men and horses falling or getting pushed into the canal. In their heavy iron armor, most of them did not come up again.

"Sharbaraz!" Abivard cried again. He and the backers of the rightful King of Kings slowly pushed Smerdis' men toward their own end of the bridge. Not one of Sharbaraz's followers, though, had yet set foot on the muddy western bank of the canal. Smerdis' troopers yelled the name of their candidate for the throne as loudly as Sharbaraz's warriors extolled him.

Then, from the north, a new cry rang out along the canal's western bank: "Sarbaraz!" Abivard whooped gleefully. Even if the Videssians couldn't pronounce the sh sound, they were not only good soldiers but subtle planners. The elder Maniakes had predicted Smerdis' soldiers would be so busy fighting the warriors they saw that they would pay no attention to anything else. Some of his engineers had taken advantage of the cover offered by the hillock the Videssian general had mentioned to run one more floating bridge across the canal. A large force of Videssian mounted archers proceeded to cross with no opposition whatever.

They shot up Smerdis' unarmored foot soldiers, then, crying "Sarbaraz!" once more, they charged them, swinging sabers and thrusting with light spears. They weren't quite so deadly as Makuraner lancers would have been, but they were more than enough to rout the dismounted archers, who were useful when they could ply a foe with arrows without being directly assailed in return, but whose clubs and knives offered next to no defense in close quarters.

Smerdis' heavy cavalry had to break off the fight at the bridgeheads to swing back against the Videssians and keep themselves from being surrounded and altogether destroyed. But that let Abivard and his men reach the west bank of the canal, just as the flight of the bowmen let the Videssian engineers finish more bridges so more of Sharbaraz's lancers could cross.

The officer who led the Videssian flanking force had a nice sense of what was essential. He let the archers run and concentrated on Smerdis' horsemen. His own troopers were more heavily armed than nonnoble Makuraner warriors, though they didn't wear iron from head to toe and their horses bore only quilted cloth protection. They could hurt Smerdis' men if those men didn't assail them with everything they had, and could stand up well enough against an all-out charge to ensure that Smerdis' lancers couldn't smash through them and escape from Sharbaraz's men.

Smerdis' lancers were quick to realize that. They began throwing down their long spears and swords. Some cried, "Mercy!" Others shouted Sharbaraz's name. Some fought on. Most of those went down, but a few managed to break away and run.

The Videssian commander—it was the younger Maniakes, Abivard remembered—was not content with victory, but sent his own horsemen after Smerdis' fleeing lancers. They brought down quite a few more before returning to their comrades.

"A cheer for the Maniakai, father and son," Abivard shouted. "The one planned the victory, the other made it real." The Makuraners he had led yelled themselves hoarse. Any of them who happened to be near Videssians pounded their allies on the back, bawled in their ears, and offered them wine from the skins they wore on their belts. For that moment, at least, the ancient enemies could not have been closer friends.

Abivard rode toward the younger Maniakes. "Well done," he said. "You're younger than I am; I envy you your cool head."

The younger man smiled. He had a small cut on his left cheek and a dent and a sparkling line on the bar nasal of his helmet; without the nasal, he would have taken a bad wound. He said, "You did well yourself, eminent sir; if you hadn't pressed them so hard, they might have punched through us and got away in a body."

"That's what I was trying to stop, all right," Abivard said, nodding. "There'll be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in Mashiz when word of this fight gets back to Smerdis Pimp of Pimps."

"Good," the younger Maniakes said, grinning. "That was the idea, after all. And there'll be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the land of the Thousand Cities, too. We used those unmounted archers hard, and anyone with an eye in his head to see with can figure out that we would have used them harder if we hadn't had more important things to do. The folk hereabouts may want to think twice before they back Smerdis over Sar—Sharbaraz." He pumped his fist in the air in triumph at correctly pronouncing the Makuraner sound.

"We beat those archers once and fought them again, but it didn't make the Thousand Cities change their mind," Abivard said. "Maybe this time it will, though. I hope so."

"This fight happened in the middle of the Land of the Thousand Cities, not off in the southern desert," the younger Maniakes said. "And Smerdis' army looks to have broken up, to boot. Every man who gets away alive will go home, and every man who gets home will spread the tale of how we smashed Smerdis' general. That can't do Smerdis' cause any good."

"So it can't." Abivard eyed the Videssian commander's son with new respect. "Not just a fighter, eh? You like to think about the way things work, too; I can see that."

The younger Maniakes had an impressively luxuriant beard for a man of his few years, a trait that, Abivard had learned, testified to his Vaspurakaner blood. In spite of that beard, which reached up almost to his eyes, Abivard saw him flush. He said, "You are generous to a man who, after all, is more likely to be your enemy than your friend."

"I hadn't forgotten that," Abivard assured him. "But maybe, just maybe, the help Likinios Avtokrator is giving to Sharbaraz will bring our two realms a long peace. The God knows we both could use it."

"Phos grant that it be so," the younger Maniakes said. Impulsively, he stuck out his hand. Abivard took it. They squeezed with all their strength and let go, smarting, after a draw.

"All I truly want to do is get back to my domain in the northwest and make sure the Khamorth haven't ravaged my lands too badly—or punish the plainsmen if they have," Abivard said. "Peace with Videssos will ensure that I can do that."

"Peace with Makuran will let the Avtokrator Likinios finish punishing the Kubratoi, too," the younger Maniakes said. "A peace both sides can use is more likely to last than any other kind I can think of."

"Aye." Abivard had agreed before he remembered that Videssian gold had stirred up the Khamorth tribes north of the Degird River against Makuran in the first place. Without that incitement, Peroz King of Kings might never have campaigned against the nomads, which meant Smerdis wouldn't have stolen the throne from Sharbaraz, which meant in turn that Videssos and Makuran wouldn't have joined together against the usurper. Abivard shook his head. Indeed, the more you looked at the world, the more complex it got.

Something else crossed his mind: the more you looked at the world, the more you could learn. Videssos would never directly threaten his domain; the Empire's reach wasn't long enough. But the Khamorth were causing endless trouble in the northwest of Makuran, and that worked to Videssos' advantage. If Makuran ever needed to put similar pressure on Videssos, who could guess what a subsidy to Kubrat might yield?

Abivard stuck the idea away in the back of his mind. Neither he nor any Makuraner could use it now. Makuran had to put its own house in order before worrying about upsetting those of its neighbors. But one of these days . . .

He glanced toward the younger Maniakes. For all his obvious cleverness, the Videssian officer hadn't noticed Abivard was thinking about enmity rather than friendship. Good, Abivard thought. As he had said, he wouldn't mind a spell of peace, even a long one, with Videssos. But certain debts would remain outstanding no matter how long the peace lasted.

The younger Maniakes said, "Do you think they'll try to stop us again this side of the Tib?"

"I doubt it," Abivard answered. "We smashed Smerdis' cavalry, and you were the one who noted that those unmounted bowmen are likelier to make for home than to come back together again. What does that leave?"

"Not bloody much, eminent sir," the younger Maniakes said cheerfully. "That's how I read things, too, but this isn't my realm, and I wondered if I was overlooking something."

"If you are, I'm overlooking it, too," Abivard said. "No, as I see it, we have one fight left to win: the one in front of Mashiz." He had thought as much the summer before, too, but Sharbaraz hadn't won that fight.

After the victory, Sharbaraz's forces and their Videssian allies pushed hard toward the Tib. Smerdis' men broke the banks of canals on their route; the Videssian engineers repaired the damage and the armies kept moving. Smerdis' troops did attempt one stand, along the western bank of a canal wider than the one they had used as a barrier before the battle. Abivard worried when he saw how strong the enemy's position was. So, loudly, did Sharbaraz.

The elder Maniakes remained unperturbed. As the sun was setting on the day the army came up against Smerdis' force, he ostentatiously sent a detachment of engineers and a good many of his horse archers north along the east bank of the canal. Inky darkness fell before they had gone a quarter of a farsang.

When morning came, Smerdis' soldiers were gone.

"You are a demon, eminent sir," Sharbaraz exclaimed, slapping the Videssian general on the back.

"We'd hurt 'em once with that trick," the elder Maniakes replied. "They weren't going to give us a chance to do it again." He chuckled wheezily. "So, by threatening that trick, we won with a different one." The army crossed the canal unopposed and resumed its advance.

After that, city governors from the land of the Thousand Cities began trickling in to Sharbaraz's camp, something they had never done the summer before. They prostrated themselves before him, eating dirt to proclaim their loyalty to him as rightful King of Kings. Not yet in a position where he could avenge himself on them for having stayed loyal to Smerdis so long, he accepted them as if they had never backed his rival. But Abivard watched his eyes. He remembered every slight, sure enough.

Abivard wondered if Smerdis' men would contest the crossing of the Tib. Though the flood season had passed, the river was still wide and swift-flowing. Determined opposition could have made getting across anything but easy. But the west bank was bare of troops when Sharbaraz and his allies reached it. The engineers extended their bridge, one pontoon at a time. The army crossed and moved west again.

 

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