"I've already had three brats. One more won't wreck Videssos, I expect, not if the lot of you haven't managed it. And yes, at my age, as I told you back in the city. The parts do still work, you see."
"Well, yes, I suppose so, but really ..." Katakolon seemed to think that was a complete sentence. It probably meant something like just because they work doesn't mean you have any business going around using them.
Krispos parried, "Maybe you'll learn something watching how I handle things. The way you go on, boy, you're going to sire enough bastards to make up your own cavalry company. Katakolon's Whoresons they could call themselves, and be ferocious-sounding and truthful at the same time."
He'd hoped to abash his youngest son—he'd long since given up trying to shame him over venery—but the idea delighted Katakolon. He clapped his hands and exclaimed, "And if I sire a company, Father, the lads can father themselves a couple of regiments, and my great-grandsons will end up being the whole Videssian army."
Every so often with Iakovitzes, Krispos had to throw his hands in the air and own himself beaten. Now he found himself doing the same with Katakolon. "You're incorrigible. Go tell Sarkis I want to see him, and try not to seduce anyone between this tent and that one."
"Haloga guards are not to my taste," Katakolon replied with dignity bordering on hauteur. "Now, if their daughters and sisters took service with Videssos—" Krispos made as if to throw a folding chair at him. Laughing, the youth ducked out of the tent. Krispos remembered the exotically blond and pink Haloga doxy at a revel of Anthimos, a generation before. Katakolon surely would have liked her very well.
Krispos forced his wits away from lickerish memories and back toward the map. As best he could tell, the Thanasioi were popping up everywhere at once. That made it hard for him to figure out how to fight them.
One of the guards stuck his head into the tent. Krispos straightened, expecting him to announce Sarkis. But instead he said, "Your Majesty, the mage Zaidas would have speech with you."
"Would he? Yes, of course I'll listen to what he has to say."
As usual, Zaidas started to prostrate himself; as usual, Krispos waved for him not to bother. Both men smiled at the little ritual. But the wizard's lips quickly fell from their happy curve. He said, "May it please your Majesty, these past few days my magic has enabled me to track the whereabouts of the young Majesty Phostis."
"He's not stayed in the same place all the while?" Krispos asked. "I thought he was still at Etchmiadzin." Because Zaidas hadn't detected any motion from Phostis since he'd managed to pierce the screen of Makuraner magic, Krispos had dared hope his heir was prisoner rather than convert to the gleaming path.
"No, your Majesty, I'm afraid not. Here, let me show you." Zaidas drew from his belt pouch a square of leather. "This is from the tanned hide of a deer, the animal having been chosen because the melting tenderness of its gaze symbolically represents the affection you feel for your kidnapped son. See these marks—here, here, here?"
Krispos saw the marks: they looked as if the deerskin had been burned here and there with the end of a hot awl. "I see them, magical sir, but I must say I don't grasp what they mean."
"As you know, I've at last been able to locate Phostis through the law of contagion. Were he remaining in Etchmiadzin, the scorch marks you see would be virtually one on top of the other. As it was, their dispersal indicates he moved some considerable distance, most probably to the south and east, and then returned to the place whence he had departed."
"I see." Krispos scowled down at the piece of deerskin.
"And why do you think he's been making these—-movements?"
"Your Majesty. I am sufficiently pleased to be able to infer that he has moved, or rather moved and returned. Why he has done so is beyond the scope of my art." Zaidas spoke with quiet determination, as if to say he did not want to know why Phostis had gone out from the Thanasiot stronghold and then back to it.
The mage was both courtier and friend; no wonder he found discretion the easier path to take. Krispos said harshly, "Magical sir, isn't the likeliest explanation that he went out on a raid with the fanatics and then rode—rode home again?"
"That is certainly a possibility which must be considered,"
Zaidas admitted. "And yet, many other explanations are possible."
"Possible, yes, but likely? What I said fits the facts better than anything else I can think of." Half -a lifetime of judging cases had convinced Krispos that the simplest explanation was most often the right one. What could be simpler than Phostis' joining the rebels and going out to fight for them? Krispos crumbled the deerskin in his fist and threw it to the ground. "I wish that cursed Digenis were still alive so I could have the pleasure of executing him now."
"I sympathize, your Majesty, and believe me, I fully appreciate the gravity of the problem this presents."
"Problem, yes." That was a nice, bloodless way to put it. What were you supposed to do when your son and heir turned against you? However fond he was of making plans, Krispos hadn't made one for that set of circumstances. Now, of necessity, he began to. How would Evripos shape as heir? He'd be delighted, certainly. But would he make a good Avtokrator? Krispos didn't know.
Zaidas must have been thinking along with him. The wizard said, "No need to deal with this on the instant, your Majesty.
Perhaps the campaign will reveal the full circumstances of what's gone on."
"It probably will," Krispos said gloomily. "The trouble is, the full circumstances may be ones I'd sooner not have learned."
Before Zaidas could answer that, Katakolon led Sarkis into the imperial pavilion. The youth nodded easily to the mage; Zaidas, having been around the palaces since before Katakolon was born, was familiar to him as the furniture. Sarkis sketched a salute, which Zaidas returned. They'd both prospered handsomely under Krispos; if either was jealous of the other, he hid it well.
"What's toward, your Majesty?" Sarkis said, and then, "Anything to eat in here? I'm peckish."
Krispos pointed to a bowl of salted olives. The cavalry general picked up a handful of them and popped them into his mouth one after another, spitting the seeds on the ground. As soon as he finished his first helping, he took another.
"Here." Krispos pointed to the map. "Some things occurred to me—late, perhaps, but better late than not at all. The trouble with this campaign is that the Thanasioi know just where we are. If they don't want to meet us in the field, they don't have to. They can just divide themselves up and raid endlessly: even if we smash some of their bands, we haven't done anything to break the back of the movement."
"Truth," Sarkis mumbled around an olive. "It's the curse of fighting folk who are only one step up from hill bandits. We move slow, with horns playing and banners waving, while they bounce over the landscape like fleas on a hot griddle. Belike they have spies in camp, too, to let them know right where we are at any hour of the day or night."
"I'm sure they do," Krispos said. "Here's what I have in mind, then: suppose we detach, say, fifteen hundred men from this force, take 'em back to the coast, and put 'em on board ship. Don't tell them where to land in advance; let the drungarios in charge of the fleet pick a coastal town—Tavas, Nakoleia, or Pityos—after they've set out. The detachment would be big enough to do us some good when it landed, maybe big enough to force Livanios to concentrate quickly against it ... at which point, the good god willing, we'd be close enough to hit him with the rest of the army. Well?" He knew he was an amateur strategist, and wasn't in the habit of giving orders for major moves till he'd talked them over with professionals.