A Makuraner, thus caught out, would have shown either anger or shame. Tzikas proved himself foreign by merely nodding and saying, «Ah, you found out about that, did you? I wondered if you would.»

Abivard wondered what he was supposed to make of that. It sounded as if in some perverse way it was a compliment. However Tzikas meant it, Abivard didn't like it. He growled, «Yes, I found out about it, by the God. It almost cost me my head. Why shouldn't I bind you and give you to Maniakes to do with as he pleases?»

«You could do that.» Though Tzikas continued to speak Makuraner, even without his accent Abivard would have had no doubt he was dealing with a Videssian. Instead of bellowing in outrage or bursting into melodramatic tears, the renegade sounded cool, detached, calculating, almost amused. «You could—if you wanted to put the realm in danger or, rather, in more danger man it's in already.»

Abivard wanted to hit him, to get behind the calm mask he wore to the man within… if there was a man within. But Tzikas, like a rider controlling a restive horse, had known exactly where to flick him with the whip to get him to jump in the desired direction. Abivard tried not to acknowledge that, saying, «Why should removing you from command of your force here have anything to do with how well the troopers fight? You're good in the field, but you're not so good as all that.»

«Probably not—not in the field,» Tzikas answered, sparring still. «But I am very good at picking the soldiers who go into my force, and, brother-in-law to the King of Kings, I am positively a genius when it comes to picking the officers who serve under me.»

Abivard had learned something of the subtle Videssian style of fighting with words while in exile in the Empire and later in treating with his foes. Now he said, «You may be good at picking those who serve under you, eminent sir, but not in picking those under whom you serve. First you betrayed Maniakes, then me. Beware falling between two sides when both hate you.»

Tzikas bared his teeth; that had pierced whatever armor he had put around his soul. But he said, «You may insult me, you may revile me, but do you want to work with me to drive Maniakes from the land of the Thousand Cities?»

«An interesting choice, isn't it?» Abivard said, hoping to make Tzikas squirm even more. Tzikas, though, did not squirm but merely waited to see what Abivard would say next—which required Abivard to decide what he would say next. «I still think I should take my chances on how your band performs without you.»

«Yes, that is what you would be doing,» the renegade said. «I've taught them everything I know—everything.»

Abivard did not miss the threat there. What Tzikas knew best was how to change sides at just the right—or just the wrong– moment. Would the soldiers he commanded go over to Maniakes if something—even something like Maniakes, if Abivard handed Tzikas to him—happened to him? Or would they simply refuse to fight for Abivard? Would they perhaps do nothing at all except obey their new commander?

Those were all interesting questions. They led to an even more interesting one: could Abivard afford to find out?

Reluctantly, he decided he couldn't. He desperately needed that cavalry to repel the Videssians, and Tzikas, if loyal, made a clever, resourceful general. The trouble was, he made a clever, resourceful general even if he wasn't loyal, and that made him more dangerous than an inept traitor. Abivard did his best not to worry about that. His best, he knew, would not be good enough.

Hating every word, he said, «If you keep your station, you do it as my hunting dog. Do you understand, eminent sir? I need not give you to the Avtokrator to be rid of you. If you disobey me, you are a dead man.»

«By the God, I understand, lord, and by the God, I swear I will obey your every command.» Tzikas made the left-handed gesture every follower of the Prophets Four used. He probably meant it to reassure Abivard. Instead, it only made him more suspicious. He doubted Tzikas' conversion as much as he doubted everything else about the renegade.

But he needed the horsemen Tzikas had led down from Vaspurakan, and he needed whatever connections Tzikas still had inside Maniakes' army. Treachery cut both ways, and Tzikas still hated Maniakes for being Avtokrator in place of someone more deserving—someone, for instance, like Tzikas.

Abivard chuckled mirthlessly. «What amuses you, lord?» Tzikas asked, the picture of polite interest.

«Only that one person, at least, is safe from your machinations,» Abivard said. One of Tzikas' disconcertingly mobile eyebrows rose in silent question. With malicious relish Abivard explained: «You may want my post, and you may want Maniakes' post, but Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, is beyond your reach.»

«Oh, indeed,» Tzikas said. «The prospect of overthrowing him never once entered my mind.» By the way he said it and by his actions, the same did not apply to Abivard or Maniakes.

Abivard watched glumly as, off in the distance, another of the Thousand Cities went up in flames. «This is madness,» he exclaimed. «When we took Videssian towns, we took them with a view to keeping them intact so they could yield revenue to the King of Kings. A burned city yields no one revenue.»

«When we went into Videssos, we went as conquerors,» Turan said. «Maniakes isn't out for conquest. He's out for revenge, and that changes the way he fights his war.»

«Well put,» Abivard said. «I hadn't thought of it in just that way, but you're right, of course. How do we stop him?»

«Beat him and drive him away,» his lieutenant answered. «No other way to do it that I can think of.»

That was easy to say, but it had proved harder to do. Being uninterested in conquest, Maniakes didn't bother garrisoning the towns he took: he just burned them and moved on. That meant he kept his army intact instead of breaking it up into small packets that Abivard could have hoped to defeat individually.

Because the Videssian force was all mounted, Maniakes moved through the plain between the Tutub and the Tib faster than Abivard could pursue him with an army still largely made up of infantry. Not only that, he seemed to move through the land of the Thousand Cities faster than Abivard's order to open the canals and flood the plain reached the city governors. Such inundations as did take place were small, hindered Maniakes but little, and were repaired far sooner that they should have been.

Abivard, coming upon the peasants of the town of Nashvar doing everything they could to make a broken canal whole once more, angrily confronted the city governor, a plump little man named Beroshesh. «Am I to have my people starve?» the governor wailed, making as if to rend his garment. His accented speech proclaimed him a local man, not a true Makuraner down from the high plateau to the west.

«Are you to let all the Thousand Cities suffer because you do not do all you can to drive the enemy from our land?» Abivard returned.

Beroshesh stuck out his lower lip, much as Abivard's children did when they were feeling petulant. «I do as much as any of my neighbors, and you cannot deny this, lord. For you to single me out—where is the justice there? Eh? Can you answer?'

«Where is the justice in not rallying to the cause of the King of Kings?» Abivard answered. «Where is the justice in your ignoring the orders that come from me, his servant?»

«In the same place as the justice of the order to do ourselves such great harm,» Beroshesh retorted, not retreating by so much as the width of a digit. «If you could by some great magic make all my fellow officials obey to the same degree, this would be another matter. All would bear the harm together, and all equally. But you ask me to take it all on my own head, for the other city governors are lazy and cowardly and will not do any such thing, not unless you stand over them with whips.»