"Two more days and we're back in the city," Maniakes said, trying to hearten them further. "We'll get reinforcements and we'll have our revenge." A few of the men raised a cheer. That made Maniakes feel worse, not better. Where would he come up with reinforcements, with so much of Videssos in turmoil? If he did come up with them, where would he get the goldpieces to pay them? Those were conjurations he would gladly have assigned to the mages of the Sorcerers' Collegium, if only he had thought they had some hope of success.
Then all thoughts of what might happen and what probably wouldn't happen were swept away by a cry of despair from the rearguard: "The Kubratoi! The Kubratoi are on our heels!"
Maniakes looked back over his shoulder. He had some hope of driving the barbarians off-till he saw their numbers. Those offered but one remedy. "Fly!" he shouted. "They'll ride us into the mud if we don't." He no longer thought Etzilios was following him in particular. It seemed far more likely the Kubratoi were just taking advantage of Videssian weakness to plunder as far south, as close to the imperial city, as they could. The cause didn't matter. The result did-and it was quite as bad as deliberate pursuit.
The horses were worn to shadows of themselves. What should have been gallops were exhausted trots. Had the Kubratoi pursued harder, they might have overhauled and overwhelmed the Videssian stragglers. But their horses were frazzled, too.
It made for a strange sort of chase. Maniakes was reminded of a mime troupe he had once seen at a Midwinter's Day celebration, where everyone moved as if half frozen, drawing out each action to preposterous lengths for the sake of a laugh from the crowd. Even the memory might have been funny had he not been fleeing for his life and had he not also remembered the Kubratoi sweeping down on the two mime troupes he had brought from the capital in hopes of amusing them.
Rain started coming down again, hard and cold. Road and fields alike turned to mire, which made both pursued and pursuers slower still. Normally, the downpour would have helped Maniakes shake the Kubratoi off his trail. Now, though, they knew he was heading for Videssos the city. They didn't need to see him to follow him.
He thought about breaking off and making for some provincial town instead. But the Kubratoi had already sacked Imbros, one of the more strongly fortified cities in their path. That meant no provincial town was safe from them. If he could get behind the indomitable walls of Videssos the city, the barbarians would storm against them in vain. IfBagdasares' mirror had shown him approaching the imperial city. Had he not known-or at least strongly believed-he would get that far, he might have given way to despair. As it was, he kept riding, hoping to meet a rescuing force coming out of the capital and turning the tables on the nomads who pursued him.
No rescuers came forth. He was forced to conclude that he, his comrades, and, worse luck, the Kubratoi had outridden news of their coming. As far as anyone in Videssos the city knew, he had paid Etzilios his tribute and bought three years' peace in return.
"I wish I only knew as far as they did," he said when that thought crossed his mind.
At last, he and those of his fellows whom the Kubratoi had not taken came into sight of the imperial capital. The sun had come out and was shining in a watery sort of way, as if to warn that this stab at decent weather would not last long. Even watery sunlight, though, was enough to make the gilded globes that marked Phos' temples glitter and sparkle.
Here was the view the magic mirror had given him. From now on, he realized, he was on his own. Past this point, he had no guarantee of his own safety. He dug his heels into the barrel of the poor worn steppe pony. The beast snorted in exhausted protest but somehow managed to shamble on a little faster.
Maniakes and the riders with him began shouting toward the walls. "A rescue! By the good god, come to our aid!"
An arrow whined past Maniakes' head. Some of the Kubratoi still had shafts to shoot, then. Perhaps twenty feet away, a man cried out, slumped in the saddle, and slid from his horse: how cruel, to have escaped so much and yet to fall within sight of safety. Maniakes urged on his mount yet again. He was not safe himself, either.
And then, at last, a sound sweeter to him than the chorus of monks who hymned Phos' praises in the High Temple, catapults up on the wall and in the siege towers began to buck and thump, throwing darts and great stones at the Kubratoi. Chains rumbling, an iron-faced portcullis lifted. A regiment of mounted archers and javelin men rode out against the barbarians.
Resentfully, the Kubratoi withdrew, shooting over their shoulders at the Videssians who had driven them back from the walls of the capital. The imperials did not chase them far; they had a way of turning and mauling pursuers who broke ranks thinking the foe was done for.
The Videssians' commander, a handsome fellow on a handsome horse, looked down his nose at the draggled men he had rescued. "Who," he asked scornfully, "is in charge of this ragtag and bobtail?"
"I am," Maniakes answered, weary in every pore and hardly daring to believe he had won free to the capital at last.
He had forgotten what sort of spectacle he must have seemed, filthy, dressed in ill-fitting peasant clothes, and riding a Kubrati pony on its last legs. The impressive officer set hands on hips and demanded, "And who, sirrah, are you?"
Worn as they were, some of the men who had come down from Imbros muttered back and forth and smiled a little, waiting to see how he would respond to that.
"I am Maniakes son of Maniakes," he said. "Who are you, excellent sir?"
The handsome officer started to laugh, but was not quite altogether a fool. He looked at Maniakes' face, then at his boots, which, however mud-spattered they had become, were undeniably red beneath the grime. "Forgive your servant Ipokasios!" he cried, suddenly solicitous rather than scornful. "I failed to recognize you, your Majesty. A thousand pardons!"
In his alarm, he grew almost as flowery as a Makuraner. Maniakes held up a hand to stem the tide of self-reproach. "Excellent Ipokasios, for driving the Kubratoi from my trail I would forgive you a great deal more than not knowing who I am, though I hope you'll greet the next ragged traveler with a touch more forbearance than you showed me."
Ipokasios hung his handsome head. "It shall be just as you say, your Majesty." Maniakes wouldn't have risked a copper to win a pile of goldpieces that it would be as he had said-he knew well-bred arrogance when he saw it-but perhaps the officer believed he was telling the truth, and was properly apologetic any which way.
From behind Ipokasios, one of his men cried, "But, your Majesty, what happened?"
That was the question Ipokasios should have come up with himself. Maniakes and his comrades explained: variations on the theme of treachery. The men from Videssos the city cursed to hear what had happened to the imperial camp, the priests, the mimes, and the gold.
"To say nothing of all the peasants the Kubratoi raped away from the northern marches after they routed us," Maniakes added glumly. Without enough peasants, the rest of the Empire would soon grind to a halt, though city folk had trouble remembering it.
"Peasants." Ipokasios dismissed them with a short, contemptuous wave, which proved only that he had never paused to think about where the bread he ate every day came from.
"Enough chatter," Maniakes said; making Ipokasios understand that his view of the way the Empire worked was too simple would have taken more time than Maniakes had to spare and might have taken longer than winning the war would have done. "I need to get back to the palaces as fast as I can go. I blundered into disaster; now I have to start setting it to rights."
Few people on the streets of Videssos the city recognized him as he made his way across town toward the palace quarter. That he found refreshing; being the focus of everyone's gaze had quickly come to seem a trial. Next time he achieved the present effect, though, he vowed not to use such drastic means.