«What will they do next?» That was the elder Maniakes, taking the question his son addressed to the council of war and doing his best to answer it: «Whatever it is, I hope it won't be as bad as what they threw at us today.»

«I expect it will be worse,» Maniakes answered, «In today's fight, they were seeing what they could do. Now, curse them to the ice, they have a pretty good notion.»

Symvatios said, «The khagan will have a rare old time trying to get them to bring the towers forward again, after what we did to them this time. A warrior who's just watched a good many of his friends go up like so many joints of beef isn't going to be dead keen on heading up to the wall to cook himself afterwards.»

«Something to that,» Maniakes said. «A lot to it, I hope.»

Rhegorios said, «What worries me most of all is that these were the Kubratoi. No sign that many Makuraners were in the fighting today.» He pointed westward. «Best we know, they're still over on the other side of the Cattle Crossing. If they once reach this shore—»

«We have more troubles,» the Avtokrator broke in. «That wouldn't be the worst move for Etzilios to make, either. It would make his own men happier, because their allies are helping them, and it would make the attack stronger, too, because—»

The elder Maniakes took a father's privilege of interrupting his sovereign: «Because the Makuraners really know what they're doing.» That hadn't been what Maniakes intended to say, but it fit well enough. His father went on, «If we could, we really ought to find out what the Kubratoi and Makuraners are planning, not what we'd be doing in their sandals. It's not battle magic, not precisely…»

«They'll be warded,» Maniakes said glumly. «I'd bet a gold-piece against a copper that their mages are trying to listen in on us right now. If they learn anything, some heads that are in the Sorcerers' Collegium ought to go up on the Milestone instead.»

«If we don't try, it's sure we won't do it,» the elder Maniakes said.

«That's so,» Maniakes agreed. «Let it be as you say, Father. I'll summon Bagdasares.»

Alvinos Bagdasares said something startled in the throaty Vaspurakaner tongue. Maniakes, though of the same Vaspurakaner blood as the mage, understood that language only haltingly. He did not think, though, that Bagdasares had thanked him for the sorcerous assignment.

«Your Majesty, this will be a difficult conjuration at best, and may well prove impossible,» Bagdasares warned, returning to Videssian.

«If it were easy, I could pick a wizard off a street corner to do it for me,» Maniakes returned. «I know you may not get the answers I want, but I want you to do everything you can to find out what Abivard and Etzilios are plotting against us now.»

Bagdasares bowed. «It shall be as you command, of course, your Majesty.» He tugged at his bushy black beard, muttering in both Videssian and Vaspurakaner. When Maniakes caught a word—affinities—he nodded to himself. Yes, the mage would do his best.

To symbolize Abivard, Bagdasares came up with a shiny silver arket. «I have nothing similar for the Kubrati khagan,» he said unhappily.

«Why not just use one of our goldpieces, then?» Maniakes answered, sounding anything but gleeful himself. «We were going to pay Etzilios enough of them—but not enough to suit him.»

«The analogy needs to be more exact.» Bagdasares didn't notice that Maniakes was indulging in a wry joke—or else whipping himself for past failures. The mage finally chose a Kubrati saber. Its blade shone, too, though with a different sort of gleam from that of the Makuraner coin. Bagdasares looked almost pleased with the world after that. «Now I need but one thing more: you.»

«Me?» Maniakes heard himself squeak, as if he were a youth whose voice broke every other word.

«Certainly, your Majesty.» the wizard said. «You shall be the element transmuting the general to the specific. This is not Etzilios' sword, only a Kubrati weapon. The odds are long against this coin's ever having been in Abivard's beltpouch. But you have met both men. By the working of the law of contagion, you remain in touch with both of them. And that contact strengthens the action of the law of similarity here, linking these artifacts not only with their respective nations but also with the individuals whose plans we are trying to learn.»

Maniakes had hoped to get back to the wall in case Etzilios, instead of conferring with Abivard, simply decided to attack again. If that happened, though, a messenger would no doubt bring him word of it. He could leave when that happened. The urgent needs of battle would give him a good excuse for interrupting Bagdasares' magic. Meanwhile, he resigned himself to wait.

«Take the arket in one hand, your Majesty, and the sword in the other,» Bagdasares said. «Think on the two men whom the objects represent. Think on them talking with each other, and on what they might say in the situation in which they find themselves.»

«I've been doing nothing but thinking on what they might say,» Maniakes answered. «I want to find out what they did say or will say.»

Bagdasares did not reply. Maniakes was not sure Bagdasares even heard. The mage had begun the chanting invocation he would use for the spell and the passes that would accompany it. If a wizard did not fix his mind on the essential, his magic would surely fail.

It might fail even if he did everything perfectly. Bagdasares' frown made him look older. «Wards,» he said to Maniakes in a moment when his hands were busy but he did not need to incant orally. «I am resisted.» His forehead corrugated in thought. When he began to chant again, the rhythm was subtly different from what it had been.

Different, perhaps, but not better. Frown darkened into scowl. «They have a Videssian mage with them,» he said, releasing the words as if from a mouth full of rotting fish. «He has forereadied charms against many things I might try. Many, aye, but not all.»

Once more, the rhythm of the chant shifted. This time, so did the language: from archaic Videssian, he turned to the Vaspurakaner tongue. Now his eyes brightened, his voice firmed—progress, Maniakes judged.

A moment later, he was able to judge progress for himself. He began to feel… something pass between silver coin and iron sword. He did not think he was feeling it with any of the five ordinary senses. It was more akin, or so he judged, to the current that passed from a healer-priest to the person he was helping: as indescribable as that, and as real.

«We have to do this together,» a voice said from out of the air in front of him. «The delay hurts my men, too—half of them want to go north tomorrow.»

«Get enough of my soldiers over the Cattle Crossing and we'll lead the way up the towers and onto the wall,» another voice replied, apparently from that same empty place.

Maniakes started in surprise. It was not so much at hearing Etzilios and Abivard: he'd required that Bagdasares make him able to hear them. Having the mage succeed though he'd doubted whether success was possible gratified the Avtokrator without astonishing him. What he had not expected, though, was that both the khagan of Kubrat and the marshal of Makuran would be speaking Videssian. What did it say when the Empire's two greatest foes had only its language in common?

«And while they're busy fighting the towers—» Maniakes was surprised again, not having expected to hear a third voice there. But, whether Bagdasares had given him anything to mark it or not, he had an affinity for Tzikas, an affinity of longtime common cause soured into near-murder and endless betrayal. Oh, yes, the two of them were connected.

But what did Tzikas know? What had he been trying to show the Kubratoi when Maniakes almost put a dart through him?

The Avtokrator did not find out. Abivard said, «Get the monoxyla over to us. You know the signal to use to let us know when they're coming?»