Shouts rang out, someplace he could not see. To his annoyance, he could not make out the words. «Move closer to shore,» he told Thrax. Reluctantly, the drungarios obeyed the order.

A couple of horsemen came galloping out of Across. Maniakes and Rhegorios looked at each other. No way to tell what that meant Had the Renewal come any closer to the shore, she would have beached herself. Maniakes should have been able to make out what the Makuraners were shouting. The trouble was, they weren't shouting anything after that first brief outcry. Only the slap of waves against the dromon's hull broke the quiet.

He waited, wishing he could be a fly on the wall wherever the Makuraners had gathered instead of uselessly staying here on the sea. After a moment, he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Bagdasares' magic might have let him be that fly on the wall, as he had been for a little while listening to Abivard and Etzilios and, unexpectedly, Tzikas.

Mages on the other side had soon blocked his hearing then. But two of the chief mages for the other side were at least partly on his side now. On the other hand, magic had a way of falling to pieces when dealing with, or trying to deal with, inflamed passions—that was why both battle magic and love magic worked so seldom. And he suspected that passions at the Makuraner assemblage, if not inflamed now, would be soon.

Hardly had the thought crossed his mind when a great, furious roar arose somewhere near the center of Across. He could make out no words in it, but found himself less annoyed than he had been before. He did not think that angry baying had any words in it, anymore than a pack of hounds cried out with words when they scented blood.

On and on went the roar, now getting a little softer, now rising again to a new peak of rage. Rhegorios chuckled. «What do you want to bet they're reading through the whole list Abivard came up with?» he said.

«You're likely right,» Maniakes answered. «When they shout louder it must be because they've just come across some especially popular officer.»

Abivard had come up with more than three hundred names. Reading them all took a while. At last, silence fell. A moment later, fresh outcry broke out. Now, for the first time, Maniakes could make out one word, shouted as part of a rhythmic chant: the name of the Makuraner King of Kings.

«If that's not 'Dig up Sharbaraz's bones!' in Makuraner, I'm a shave-pated priest,» Rhegorios exclaimed.

Maniakes nodded. «Aye, that's the riot call, no doubt about it.» He did several steps of a happy dance, right there on the deck, and slammed his fist into his open palm. «By the good god, cousin of mine, we did it!»

Where he was uncharacteristically delighted, Rhegorios was as uncharacteristically restrained. «We may have done it,» he said. «We've done part of it, anyhow. But there are still thousands of boiler boys sitting right here next to the Cattle Crossing, only a long piss away from Videssos the city. Getting the buggers out of the westlands and back where they belong is going to take a deal of doing yet.»

A Makuraner burst out from among the buildings of Across and ran along the beach. He utterly ignored the presence of the Renewal not far offshore—and well he might have, for three of his countrymen were at his heels, their caftans flapping about them like wings as they ran. The swords in their hands glittered and flashed in the sun.

The fleeing Makuraner, perhaps hearing them gaining on him, turned at bay, drawing his own sword. As with most fights of one against three, this one did not last long. He lay where he had fallen, his blood soaking the sand.

«Maybe their whole army will fall apart,» Rhegorios said dreamily. «Maybe they'll have their civil war here and now.»

«Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I don't think enough Makuraners will stay loyal to Sharbaraz to make much of a civil war, though.»

«Mm, something to that,» Rhegorios admitted. «For so long, though, we've got less than our due that I don't think the good god will be angry with me if I hope for more than our due for a change.» He shifted from theology to politics, all in one breath: «I wish I knew which side the dead man was on, and which the three who killed him.»

Maniakes could not grant that wish, but the three Makuraners did, almost as soon as it was uttered. They waved to the Renewal, and bowed, and did everything they could to show they were well inclined to Videssos. One of them pointed to the body of the man they had killed. «He would not spit on the name of Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps!» he shouted, his voice thin across the water of the Cattle Crossing.

«Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps.» Now Maniakes, echoing the Makuraners, sounded dreamy, his mind far away across the years. «When Sharbaraz was fighting Smerdis, that's what his men called the usurper: Smerdis Pimp of Pimps. Now it comes full circle.» He sketched Phos' sun-sign, a circle itself, above his heart.

«We have the rebellion,» Rhegorios said. Solemnly, he and Maniakes and Thrax clasped hands. As Rhegorios had said, success seemed strange after so many disappointments.

The Makuraners on the beach were still shouting, now in bad Videssian instead of their own language: «You Avtokrator, you come here, we make friends. No more enemies no more.» «Not yet,» Maniakes shouted back. «Not yet. Soon.»

A little breeze flirted with the scarlet capes of the Halogai and Videssians of the Imperial Guard as they formed three sides of a square on the beach near Across. The sun mirrored off their gilded mail shirts. Almost to a man, they looked wary, ready to fight: all around them, drawn up in far greater numbers, stood the warriors of the Makuraner field force.

The waters of the Cattle Crossing formed the fourth side of the square. Sailors decked out in scarlet tunics for the occasion rowed Maniakes and Rhegorios from the Renewal to the shore. One of them said, «Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I'd sooner jump in a crate full of spiders than go over there.»

«They won't do anything to me or the Sevastos.» Maniakes kept his voice relaxed, even amused. «If they do, they'll have our fathers to deal with, and they know it.» That was true. It was, however, the sort of truth that would do him no good if it came to pass. Sand grated under the planks of the boat. Maniakes and Rhegorios stepped out. As they did so, the Makuraner army burst into cheers. Rhegorios' grin was wide enough to threaten to split his face in two. «Did you ever imagine you'd hear that?» he asked.

«Never once,» Maniakes replied. The Imperial Guards, without moving, seemed to stand easier. They might yet have needed to defend the Avtokrator against being trampled by well-wishers, but not against the murderous onslaught they'd dreaded, knowing they were too few to withstand it if it came.

Out among the Makuraners, deep drums thudded and horns howled. The axe-bearing Halogai and the Videssians with swords and spears tensed anew: that sort of music commonly presaged an attack. But then an iron-lunged Makuraner herald cried: «Forth comes Abivard son of Godarz, Makuran's new sun now rising in the east!»

«Abivard!» the warriors of the field army shouted over and over again, ever louder, till the marshal's name made Maniakes' head ring.

Only a handful of his own soldiers understood what the outcry meant. Not wanting fighting to start from panic or simple error, the Avtokrator called to them: «They're just announcing the marshal.»

Slowly, Abivard made his way through the crush of Makuraners till he stood before the Imperial Guards. «May I greet the Avtokrator of the Videssians?» he asked a massive Haloga axeman.

«Let him by, Hrafnkel,» Maniakes called.

Without a word, the Haloga stood aside. So did the file of guardsmen behind him. Abivard strode past them into the midst of the open space their number defined. As the Makuraner field force could have overwhelmed the Imperial Guards and slain Maniakes before help could reach him, so the guards could have slain Abivard before his men could save him. Maniakes nodded, appreciating the symmetry.