Around them, almost as splendidly mounted, trotted a company of heavy cavalry, their armor and that of their horses stowed in carts or on packhorses since they were traveling through friendly territory and were not expecting to fight. One proud young horseman carried the red war banner.

Off to one side, with the group but not of it, rode Tzikas.

Abivard had been warned of all the horrid things that would happen to him if anything at all happened to Tzikas. He was still trying to work out whether those horrid things were deterrent enough. For the moment they probably were. Once Videssos the city fell, Tzikas would be expendable. And if by some misfortune Videssos the city failed to fall, Sharbaraz would be looking for a scapegoat.

Tzikas no doubt was thinking along similar lines. Abivard glanced over toward him and wasn't surprised to find the Videssian renegade's eyes already on him. He stared at Tzikas for a little while, nothing but challenge in his gaze. Tzikas looked back steadily. Abivard let out a silent sigh. Enemies were so much easier to despise when they were cowards. Yet even though Tzikas was no coward, Abivard despised him anyhow.

He turned in the saddle and said to Romezan, «We're riding in the right direction now.»

«How do you mean that?» Romezan returned. «Away from the palace? Out into the field? Toward the war?»

«Any of those will do,» Abivard said. «They'll all do.» If he had to pick one, away from the palace probably would fit his thought best. In the palace he was slave to the King of Kings, for all his achievements hardly higher in status than sweepers or captive Videssian pedagogues. Away from the palace, away from the King of Kings, he was a marshal of Makuran, a great power in his own right. He had grown very used to that, all those years he'd spent extending the power of Makuran through the Videssian westlands till it reached the Cattle Crossing. Being yanked back under Sharbaraz' control would have been hard on him even had the King of Kings not seen treason lurking under every pillow and behind every door.

Romezan did not dwell on the past. He looked ahead to the cast. Dreamily, he said, «Do you suppose we'll lay Videssos low? How many hundred years have they and we warred? Come this fall, will the fight be over at last?»

«If the God is kind,» Abivard answered. They rode on a while in silence. Then Abivard said, «We'll muster as far forward as we can. As soon as we have word that Maniakes has landed, whether down in Lyssaion or in Erzerum, we move.»

«What if he doesn't land?» Romezan said, looking eastward gain, as if he could span the farsangs and see into the palaces in distant Videssos the city. «What if he decides to stay home for a year? Maniakes never ends up doing what we think he will.»

That was true. Even so, Abivard shook his head. «He'll come,» be said. «I'm sure of it, and Sharbaraz was dead right to assume it.» Hearing him agree so emphatically with the King of Kings was enough to make Romezan dig a finger into his ear as if to make sure it was working as it should. Chuckling, Abivard went on. «What's Maniakes' chief advantage over us?» He answered his own question: «He commands the sea. What has he been doing with that command? He's been using it to take the war out of Videssos and into the realm of the King of Kings. How can he possibly afford not to keep on doing what he's done the past two years?»

«Put that way, I don't suppose he can,» Romezan admitted.

«The real beauty of Sharbaraz' scheme—» Abivard stopped. Now he wondered if he was really talking about the King of Kings that way. He was, and in fact he repeated himself: «The real beauty of Sharbaraz' plan is that it uses Maniakes' strengths against him and Videssos. He takes his ships, uses them to bring his army back to the land of the Thousand Cities, and gets embroiled in fighting well away from the sea. And while he's doing all that, we steal a march and take his capital away from him.»

Romezan thought for a while before nodding. «I like it.»

«So do I,» Abivard said.

«He liked it better by the day. He and his escort made their way through the land of the Thousand Cities toward Qostabash. Peasants were busy in the fields, bringing in the spring harvest. Here and there, though, they were busy at other things, most notably the repair of canals wrecked in the previous fall's fighting and soon to be needed to cope with the sudden rush of water from the spring floods of the Tutub and the Tib and their tributaries. And here and there, across the green quilt of the floodplain, fields went untended, unharvested. Some of the cities that had perched on mounds of their own rubble were now nothing but rubble themselves. Maniakes had made the land of the Thousand Cities pay a terrible price for the many victories Makuran had won in Videssos over the past decade.

Whenever he stopped at one of the surviving Thousand Cities, Abivard examined how well the city governor had kept up the local garrison. He was pleased to find most of those garrisons in better shape than they had been two years earlier, when the Videssians had first entered the floodplain. Before then both city governorships and slots in the city garrison had been the nearest thing to sinecures: but for flood or drought, what ever went wrong among the Thousand Cities? Invasion was not an answer that seemed to have occurred beforehand to many people.

Romezan paid the revived city garrisons what might have been the ultimate compliment when he said, «You know, I wouldn't mind taking a few thousand of these foot soldiers along with us when we go into the Videssian westlands. They really can fight. Who would have thought it?»

«That's not what you said when you came to my aid last summer,» Abivard reminded him.

«I know,» Romezan answered. «I hadn't seen them in action then. I was wrong. I admit it You deserve a lot of credit for turning them into soldiers.»

Abivard shook his head. «Do you know who deserves the credit for turning them into soldiers?»

«Turan?» Romezan snorted dismissively. «He's done well with them, aye, but he's still only a jumped-up captain learning how to be a general.»

«He's done very well, as a matter of fact, but I wasn't thinking of him,» Abivard answered. «The one who deserves the credit for turning them into soldiers is Maniakes. Without him they'd just be the same swaggering bullies they've been for the God only knows how many years. But that doesn't work, not against the Videssians. The ones who are still alive know better now.»

«Something to that, I expect,» Romezan said after a reflective pause.

«It's also one reason why we're not going to take any of those foot soldiers into Videssos,» Abivard said. Romezan's dark, bushy brows pulled down and together in confusion. Abivard explained: «Remember, we want the Videssians heavily engaged here in the land of the Thousand Cities. That means we're going to have to leave behind a good-sized army to fight them, an army with good fighting men in it. Either we leave behind a piece of the field army—»

«No, by the God!» Romezan broke in.

Abivard held up a placatory hand. «I agree. The field army is the best Makuran has. That's what we send against Videssos the city, which will need the best we have. But the next best we have has to stay here to keep Maniakes in play while we move against the city.»

Again Romezan paused for thought before answering. «This is a tricky business, gauging all the separate strengths to make sure each is in the proper place. Me, I'd sooner point my mass of troops at the foe, charge him straight on, and smash him down into the dirt.»

«I know,» Abivard said, which was true. He added, «So would I,» which was less true. «But Maniakes fights like a Videssian, so stealth makes do for a lot of his strength. If we're going to beat the Empire so it stays beaten, we have to do it his way.»