«That's so, too, your Majesty,» Ypsilantes said, sounding as if he wished he could engineer the unfortunate condition right out of existence.
Maniakes sent men up and down the length of the Tib and the major canals nearby. They came back with a few boats of various sorts—fewer than he and Ypsilantes had hoped. The Avtokrator also set men to work chopping down date palms so they could use the rather stringy timber they got from them.
That outraged the inhabitants of the Land of the Thousand Cities more than anything else he had done up till then: more even than his having burned a good many of those cities. The farmers fought the lumbering parties as best they could, and began ambushing Videssian soldiers whenever they caught a few away from the main mass of men.
In the pavilion she shared with Maniakes, Lysia held up a jar of date wine, saying, «You'd think the local peasants would thank us for getting rid of the trees that let them make thick, sweet slop like this.»
«Yes, I know,» Maniakes said. «I first drank date wine when I was helping my father put Sharbaraz back on the throne. As far as I can see, the only people who like it are those who know no better.»
«That's what I think of it, too,» Lysia said. «But—»
«Yes, but,» Maniakes agreed. «The locals are bushwhacking us, and some of my men have taken to massacring them whenever they get the chance.» He sighed. «They do something, we pay them back, they do something worse—where does it end?»
Lysia didn't answer, perhaps because the answer was obvious: it ended with the two of them close by the Tib, with their gazes set on Mashiz beyond the river. Eventually, one side hit the other such a blow that it could not respond. That put an end to the fighting– for a generation, sometimes even two.
«Once we break into Mashiz,» Maniakes said, «the Makuraners won't be able to stay in the field against us.» He'd been saying that ever since he'd first conceived of the notion of bypassing the Videssian westlands and taking the war straight to the heart of the realm of the King of Kings. He still believed it. Before long, he hoped to find out whether he was right.
Thinking along with him as she often did, Lysia asked, «How soon can we cross the Tib and make for the capital?»
«A few more days, Ypsilantes tells me,» Maniakes answered. «The squabbles with the peasants have slowed things up, but we finally have enough boats and almost enough timber. Get a little more wood, cut it to the right lengths, and then over the river we go.»
Lysia looked westward. «And then it will be over.» She did not speak in tones of blithe confidence. One way or the other, her words suggested. Maniakes did not try to reprove or correct her. After all the misfortunes he had watched as they befell Videssos, how could he? One way or the other was what he felt, too. Nothing was certain till it happened.
As if to prove that, one of his guards called from outside the tent: «Your Majesty, a scout is here with news.»
«I'll come,» he said, and did.
The scout had already dismounted. He started to perform a proskynesis, but Maniakes, impatient to hear what he had to say, waved for him not to bother prostrating himself. The scout did salute, then said, «Your Majesty, I hate to tell you this, but all those foot soldiers we bypassed back near Qostabash are about to catch up with us again.»
«Oh, a pestilence!» Maniakes burst out, and spent the next couple of minutes swearing with an inventiveness that left the scout pop-eyed. The Avtokrator did not care. He'd spent more time as soldier than as sovereign and had learned how to vent his spleen.
Gradually, he calmed. He and Ypsilantes had known this might happen. Now it had. They would have to make the best of it. The scout watched him. After a moment, the fellow nodded and chuckled once or twice. «Your Majesty, I think there's going to be some Makuraner infantry out there—» He pointed east. «—sorry they were ever born.»
«By the good god, I hope so.» Maniakes stared east, off toward that approaching force of infantry. «You saw only foot soldiers toe?» he demanded of the scout. «None of the Makuraners' boiler boys?»
«No, your Majesty, none to speak of,» the scout answered. «They have a few horsemen with 'em, scouts and messengers and such, but I didn't see a sign of their heavy cavalry. If they'd been there, I'd have spotted 'em, too. You'd best believe that—those bastards can really fight, and I want to know when they're around.»
«So do I,» Maniakes said in abstracted tones, and then, more to himself than to the man who'd brought the unwelcome news, «To the ice with you, Abivard; where have you gone and hidden?» But even that was not the relevant question: when would Abivard emerge from hiding, and how much trouble would he cause once he did?
The Avtokrator nodded to the scout, dismissing him, then sent one of his guards after Ypsilantes. When the chief engineer arrived, Maniakes told him in a few words what had happened. Ypsilantes heard him out before loosing a long sigh. «Well, your Majesty, they never told us this business was going to be easy, now did they?»
«I'm afraid they didn't—whoever they are,» Maniakes agreed. «Can we protect all the timber we've cut and the boats we've collected while we're fighting these cursed foot soldiers?»
«We'd better,» Ypsilantes said bluntly, which made the Avtokrator glad to have him along. He continued, «Aye, I expect we can. The Makuraner infantry moving on us won't come close to that stuff, not unless somebody really pisses in the stew pot. And if those odds and sods across the river have the nerve to try to sneak over here to this side and tear things up while most of us are busy, I'll be the most surprised man in the Land of the Thousand Cities.» Maniakes corrected him: «The second most surprised man.»
Ypsilantes thought that one through, blinked like a frog swallowing a fly, and barked out a couple of syllables' worth of laughter. «I'll make sure it doesn't happen, your Majesty. Count on me.»
«I will,» Maniakes said. «I do.» He waved Ypsilantes away, then started shouting orders, preparing his force to meet the Makuraners. He had more respect for the foe's foot than he'd brought to their first clashes a couple of years before; they had rapidly turned into real soldiers. He looked around the camp, where his own men were starting to stir. He smiled. They were better warriors than they had been a couple of years before, too.
The red-lion banner of Makuran flapped lazily in a light breeze. The enemy standard-bearer was an enormous man with shoulders like a bull's. Maniakes was glad to see him used for ornamental purposes rather than as a true fighter. Every little edge helped.
The Avtokrator looked out over the battle line advancing behind the standard-bearer. The Makuraner general disposed of more men than he did. Since the fight was infantry against cavalry, that mattered less than it would have had he been facing Abivard and the field army. It did not leave him delighted with the world, even so.
Most of the foot soldiers in the enemy army were not, strictly speaking, Makuraners, but rather men from the Thousand Cities. They were shorter and stockier and a little swarthier than the boiler boys from the high plateau to the west, with hair so black it shone with blue highlights, often worn in a neat bun resting on the nape of the neck. Their chief weapon was the bow; they carried knives and clubs for fighting at close quarters. Some of them wore helmets: businesslike iron pots, or sometimes leather caps strengthened with iron bands. Past that, the only armor they bore was their wicker shields.
They could fight. Maniakes had seen that. They hadn't done much fighting in the years before the Videssians had plunged into the Land of the Thousand Cities, but, as he'd thought a little while before, they'd learned their trade since. That was partly Abivard's fault—or to his credit, if you looked at things from the Makuraner point of view. It was also partly Maniakes' fault. By fighting a series of battles against the local infantry, he'd given them a course in how to go about fighting Videssians. Some of them had learned better than he would have wished.