Looking at the ugly, rough-coated little animal, his grooms had been uniformly aghast at the idea. He hadn't had time to persuade them before he set out on campaign. After he got back, if he remembered…

Despite the ruin that had overtaken so much of the westlands, the farmers of the coastal lowlands still lived contented, almost untroubled lives. The warm, moist air and rich soil let them bring in two crops a year, and left them enough after they paid their taxes that famine was no more to be imagined than, say, an invasion from the armies of the King of Kings.

Men dressed in no more than loincloths and women in calf-length shifts of thin linen, the farmers labored in green fields and black earth. The soldiers making their way down the paths through those fields might have come from another world, one that did not impinge on the peasants.

Maniakes sent riders ahead of his little army and off to either side of its route, crying out for men to join the struggle and help cast the invaders from the Empire of Videssos. Only a tiny trickle of would-be warriors presented themselves at each night's campsite, though. Maniakes had horses, weapons, and armor for all of them, and would have had mounts and gear for five times their number.

On the third night out from Videssos the city, he looked at the latest handful of new recruits and asked, "If I sent you men back to your villages to bring in your fellows, do you think you could do a better job of it than my troopers have managed?" As he spoke, he sent up a silent prayer to Phos that the answer would be yes.

But, to a man, the new soldiers shook their heads. One of them slapped his belly and said, "Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but we eat well in these parts. Most of your soldiers, now, they're hungry men."

That was true. Maniakes had seen it often enough: the men likeliest to take up fighting for their trade were those whose farms had failed or who hadn't managed to make a go of it for themselves in the city. He spoke to the fellow who had answered him. "If you have a full stomach, what are you doing here?"

"If I don't fight the Makuraners somewheres else, looks like I'd have to fight

'em on my own land," the farmer told him. "Trouble is, most people, they can't see far enough to worry that kind of way."

"You don't know how right you are," Maniakes said feelingly. "What I ought to do is, I ought to send you back to Videssos the city and make you into a logothete. I have the feeling you'd be wasted as a common soldier. What's your name?"

"I'm Himerios, your Majesty," the peasant said, his eyes wide. "D'you really mean that? Have to tell you, in case you do, I can't read nor write my name."

"That would help, I admit," Maniakes said. "You'd best stay in the army after all, Himerios. I will keep my eye on you, though. I just wish you-and all your comrades here-had brought your brothers and cousins with you when you decided to join us."

"My cousin said good riddance, is what he said," Himerios answered, spitting on the ground to show what he thought of that. "He's got an eye on my plot of ground, he does. His'd be better if he took more time tending it, the fat, lazy son of a donkey." He chuckled. "He's on my mother's side of the family, you gather."

One of the men who evidently knew Himerios dug an elbow into his ribs and said, "Hey, if you could fight as good as you talk, the Makuraners, they'd be running back to their own country already."

Amid general laughter, Himerios cursed his friend up and down, back and forth, inside and out. Maniakes laughed, too, but the mirth slipped from his face after he left the campfire around which the new recruits sat. Better than having Himerios fight like five men would have been his bringing five men with him. That hadn't happened. Because it hadn't, Maniakes would have an even harder time against the Makuraners than he had expected.

The Arandos flowed lazily through the coastal lowlands, its waters turbid with sediment and, downstream from villages, sometimes foul-smelling from the wastes dumped into it. Maniakes made it a point never to camp where the water did smell bad. He had seen armies melt away like snow in the early days of spring when a flux of the bowels ran through them. Some men died, some who didn't got too sick to be worth anything as fighters, and some who got only a touch of the disease took off for home anyhow.

To Parsmanios, he said, "If men start coming down with the flux, we're ruined, because it'll spread faster than the healer-priests can hope to stop it."

"You're not telling me anything I don't know, brother of mine-er, your Majesty," Parsmanios answered. "The one good thing I can say about Vryetion, where I was stuck for so long, is that the water was always pure there. Now that I think on it, it's likely one of the reasons we based ourselves there."

"The one good thing you can say about the town?" Maniakes asked slyly. "I'll have to remember that, come the day I meet your wife. I wonder what she'd have to say about it."

"Something interesting and memorable, I have no doubt," Parsmanios answered.

"No one ever wonders where Zenonis stands about anything."

"She'd need to be headstrong, to stay with one of us," Maniakes said. "Anyone who thinks our clan shy and retiring hasn't met us yet." He spoke with more than a little pride; having a reputation for being cantankerous wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Parsmanios smiled and nodded, but then said, "What of Niphone? Not that I know her well, but she seems quiet enough, willing to stand in your shadow."

"You probably know better than I that what outsiders see of husband and wife isn't everything that's there," Maniakes answered. His brother nodded again. He didn't go on to explain that, had Niphone truly been as modest and self-effacing as she seemed, she wouldn't have had a new baby growing in her belly now.

Parsmanios said, "And what of our cousin, Rhegorios? When do you aim to marry him off?" He spoke carefully, doing his best to conceal his resentment at the place Rhegorios held at court.

"His own father will have a good deal to say about that," Maniakes answered.

"Uncle Symvatios is hardly one to curl up and pretend he's not there, either, though he is better-natured about going after what he wants than some blood kin I could name."

If Parsmanios thought that applied to him, he didn't show it. "The final word will be yours, of course," he said, in his persistence unwittingly proving his brother's point. "You're the Avtokrator, after all. I suppose you'll settle on a girl from one of the high bureaucratic families, to bind it to us. You won't want to pick anyone from too prominent a clan, though, or with backing like that Rhegorios might decide to see how his feet look in the red boots."

"If you already know all the answers, brother of mine, why ask the questions?" Maniakes said. "Actually, I don't worry too much about Rhegorios' trying to steal the throne. This past year, he's seen how much the Avtokrator has to do. By all the signs, it's more than he cares for."

"Maybe so," Parsmanios said darkly, "but you never can tell." Since Videssos' recent history proved how true that was-who would have expected a no-account captain like Genesios to murder his way to the throne?-Maniakes had to nod. Parsmanios went on, "And you'll be thinking about the same sorts of things for Lysia, no doubt. Whoever marries her may get ideas because he's so close to the throne. You'll have to keep an eye on that."

"So I will." Thinking about a husband for Lysia made Maniakes uncomfortable. Recognizing that made him even more uncomfortable. He breathed a silent prayer that Niphone would be safely delivered of a son.