"Aye, Father," Katakolon said dolefully.
"You don't suppose he'll 'accidentally' lose that, do you?" Sarkis said.
"He'd better not," Krispos answered; the same thought had crossed his mind. He remembered his talk with Evripos back in the city. If his sons thought strongly enough that they were right, they would follow their own wills, not his. They were turning into men—at the most inconvenient time possible.
Had Phostis done that? When he chose to walk the gleaming path, was he making his own judgments as best he knew how, no matter how wrongheaded they seemed to Krispos? Or had he merely found someone whose lead he preferred to his father's? Krispos shook his head. He wondered if Phostis knew.
As he had so often over the years, he forced personal worries—and worries about which he could do nothing—to the back of his mind. Enough other business remained to occupy him. The army was up on the plateau now, with everyone a bit on the hungry side because supply arrangements hadn't kept up with the changed route.
Of Livanios' force there was no sign. That worried Krispos. If the Thanasioi scattered before he could smite them, what point to the campaign? How was he supposed to beat them if they turned back into harmless-looking herders and farmers and tanners and candlemakers and what-have-you? If he went back to Videssos the city, they'd be raiders again the moment his dust vanished over the horizon. He was bitterly certain of that.
The army camped for the night by a stream that wouldn't have water in it too much longer. Now, though, it would serve. The men saw to their horses before they cared for themselves. Krispos strolled through the encampment, checking to make sure his orders on that score were obeyed. He'd served as groom first for Iakovitzes and then for Petronas after he came to the imperial city; he knew what went into tending horses.
He was sound asleep on his folding cot in the imperial tent when a Haloga called "Your Majesty" over and over until it woke him. He groaned as he made himself sit; his eyes felt as if someone had poured sand into their sockets. The guardsman said, "Your pardon, Majesty, but out here waits a courier who must see you."
"Aye, send him in," Krispos said in a voice that sounded nothing like his own.
He waved for the courier not to bother prostrating himself; the sooner the fellow was gone, he thought, the sooner he could get back to sleep. "May it please your Majesty," the courier said, and Krispos braced himself for bad news. The man delivered it: "I have to report that the Thanasioi have fallen on and taken the city of Kyzikos."
"Kyzikos?" Still foggy, Krispos needed a moment to place the town on the map. It lay down in the coastal plain, east of Garsavra. "What's Livanios doing there?" As soon as he raised the question, the answer became obvious: "The imperial mint!"
"Aye, your Majesty, it's taken and burned," the courier said. "The temple is burned, as well, and so is much of the central part of the city—like many towns in the western lowlands, Kyzikos has, or rather had, no wall to hold invaders at bay. And the farmland round the city is ravaged as if locusts had been at it."
"Aye," Krispos said. "A heavy blow." If Livanios' warriors could ravage Kyzikos, no place in the westlands was safe from them. And if Livanios had the gold from the mint in Kyzikos. he could work untold mischief with it, too. Gold and the Thanasioi did not normally mix, but Krispos did not think Livanios was a typical Thanasiot. If he read the heresiarch aright, Livanios cared more about Livanios than about the gleaming path.
But no matter how much damage they had done—Krispos' wits began working a little faster—they'd also made what might prove a bad mistake: they'd given the imperial army the chance to interpose itself between them and their stronghold near the border with Vaspurakan.
"If you stick your neck out too far, it gets chopped," Krispos said.
"Your Majesty?" the courier asked
"Never mind." Clad only in his linen drawers, the Avtokrator strode out into the night. Ignoring the grunts of surprise that rose from the Haloga guards, he started bawling for his generals. If he couldn't sleep, he wouldn't let them sleep, either, not with work to be done.
Two days later, Sarkis said, for about the dozenth time, "The trick, your Majesty, will be to make sure they don't get by us."
"Yes," Krispos said, also for the dozenth time. The west-lands' central plateau was not flat like the lowlands; it was rough, broken country, gullies running into ravines running into valleys. If the imperial army didn't position itself correctly, slipping between the Thanasioi and Etchmiadzin wouldn't matter because the raiders would get past without being noticed till too late. That was probably the gamble Livanios had made when he decided to strike Kyzikos.
Sarkis found a new question to ask: "How will you choose the right spot?"
"The best way I can figure is this," Krispos said: "I'll station us near one of the central valleys and fan scouts out widely ahead of us and to either side. It's no guarantee of anything, of course, but it's what we'll do unless you have a better idea. I hope you will."
"I was thinking something along the same lines," Sarkis said. "The trouble is, it's what Livanios will think is in our minds, too."
"That's so," Krispos admitted. "But if we play the game of if-he-then-we and if-we-then-he, we're liable to get lost in the maze. I'll cut through it and just do what I think best under the circumstances."
"Against any other foe I would say you were wise, your Majesty, but Livanios ... Livanios never seems to do what you'd expect." Sarkis turned his head at the sound of galloping hoofbeats. So did Krispos. Sarkis said, "Looks like another courier coming up—no, two of 'em together."
"Oh, Phos, what now?" It was more a groan than a prayer. Every courier who'd ridden up to Krispos lately had brought bad news with him. How much longer could that go on?
Sure enough, the riders made straight for the imperial standard that marked Krispos' place in the line of march. They're sending out babies, he thought. One of the couriers had no beard. The other didn't seem much older.
Krispos braced for the call of "May it please your Majesty" and the displeasing message that would follow it. The bearded rider spotted him under the sunburst standard, then raised a hand to his mouth to make a shout carry farther. But he didn't yell "May it please your Majesty." Instead, he called, "Father!"
Krispos' first thought was that Katakolon was playing some kind of trick on him, and not a funny one. Then he recognized the voice. He hadn't been sure he'd ever hear that voice again, or want to. "Phostis," he whispered.
His son approached, and the other rider with him. Several Halogai quickly moved to put themselves between Phostis and Krispos—they knew where Phostis had been, and did not know what he'd become. Krispos wanted to thank them and punch them at the same time.
"It's all right, Father—I've escaped the gleaming path," Phostis said.
Before Krispos answered, one of the Halogai said, "What proof of this have you, young Majesty?" The big fair men from the north did not stand aside.
What proof could Phostis possibly have? Krispos wondered. But he produced some: "Allow me to present Olyvria, the daughter of Livanios."
By then, Krispos had figured out that Phostis' companion was a woman. To remove any doubt, she doffed her traveler's hat with a flourish and let her piled-up hair tumble out in a curly black waterfall. "Your Majesty," she said, bowing in the saddle to Krispos.
She's not just accompanying Phostis, Krispos realized. She's with him. Phostis' eyes did not want to leave her, even to look at his father. Katakolon got that mooncalf gaze, but never over the same girl for more than a couple of months. Krispos hadn't seen it on Phostis before. Olyvria looked at Phostis the same way.