"I know that," Krispos said. "I'm glad to see you do, too."
Sarkis rode up. In spite of bloody bandages, the cavalry general seemed in high spirits. "We shattered 'em and scattered 'em, your Majesty," he boomed.
"Aye, so we did." Krispos sounded less gleeful. He'd learned to think in bigger terms than battles, or even campaigns. He wanted more from this victory than the two years' respite Phostis had suggested. He scratched his nose, which wasn't as impressive as Sarkis' but did exceed the Videssian norm. "By the good god," he said softly.
"What is it?" Katakolon asked.
"My father—after whom you're named, Phostis—always said we had Vaspurakaner blood in us, even though we lived far from here, up by—and sometimes over—what used to be the border with Kubrat. My guess is that our ancestors had been resettled there on account of some crime or other."
"Very likely," Sarkis said, as if that were a matter for pride.
"We could do the same with the Thanasioi," Krispos said. "If we uproot the villages where the heresy flourishes most and transplant those people over near Opsikion in the far east, say, and up near the Istros—what used to be Kubrat still needs more folk to work the land—those Thanasioi would be likely to lose their beliefs in a generation or two among so many orthodox folk, just as a pinch of salt loses itself in a big jug of water."
"It might work," Sarkis said. "Videssos has done such things before—else, as you say, your Majesty, your own forebears would not have ended up where they did."
"So I've read," Krispos said. "We can even run the transfer both ways, sending in orthodox villagers to loosen the hold the Thanasioi have on the region round Etchmiadzin. It will mean a great lot of work, but if the good god is willing it will put an end to the Thanasiot problem once and for all."
"Moving whole villages—thousands, tens of thousands of people—from one end of the Empire to the other? Moving more thousands back the other way?" Phostis said. "Not the work alone—think of the hardships you'll be making."
Krispos exhaled in exasperation. "Remember, these men we just beat down have sacked and ravaged Kyzikos and Garsavra just lately, Pityos last year, and the lord with the great and good mind only knows how many smaller places. How much hardship did they make? How much more would they have made if we hadn't beaten them? Put that in the balance against moving villagers around and tell me which side of the scale goes down."
"They believe in the Balance in Khatrish and Thatagush," Phostis said. "Have you beaten one heresy, Father, only to join another?"
"I wasn't talking about Phos' Balance, only the one any man with a dram of sense can form in his own mind," Krispos said irritably. Then he saw Phostis was laughing at him. "You scamp! I didn't think you'd stoop to baiting me."
As was his way, Phostis quickly turned serious again. "I'm sorry. I'll build that balance and tell you what I think."
"That's fair," Krispos said. "Meanwhile, no need to apologize. I can stand being twitted. If I couldn't, Sarkis here would have spent these last many years in a cell under the government office buildings—assuming he'd fit into one."
The cavalry commander assumed an injured expression. "If you'd jailed me many years ago, your Majesty, I shouldn't have attained to my present size. Not on what you feed your miscreants, I shouldn't."
"Hrmph." Krispos turned back to Phostis. "What did your balance tell you?"
"If it must be done, then it must." Phostis neither looked nor sounded happy. Krispos didn't mind that. He wasn't happy himself. He and his village had been resettled twice when he was a boy, once forcibly by Kubrati raiders, and then again after the Empire ransomed them from the nomads. He knew the hardship relocating entailed. Phostis went on, "I wish it didn't have to be done."
"So do I," Krispos said. Phostis blinked, which made Krispos snort. "Son, if you think I enjoy doing this, you're daft. But I see that it has to be done, and I don't shrink from it. Liking all of what you do when you wear the red boots is altogether different from doing what needs doing whether you like it or not."
Phostis thought about that. It was a very visible process. Krispos gave him credit for it; before he'd been snatched, he would have been more likely to dismiss out of hand anything Krispos said. At last, biting his Up, Phostis nodded. Krispos nodded back, well pleased. He'd actually managed to get a lesson home to his hardheaded son.
"Come on, move!" a soldier shouted, with the air of a man who's already shouted the same thing twenty times and expects to shout it another twenty before the day is through.
The woman in faded gray wool, her head covered by a white scarf, sent the horseman a look of hatred. Back bent under the bundle she bore, she trudged away from the thatch-roofed hut that had housed her since she wed, away from the village that had housed her family for untold generations. Tears carved tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "The good god curse you to the ice forever," she snarled.
The imperial trooper said, "If I had a goldpiece for every time I've been cursed these past weeks, I'd be rich enough to buy this whole province."
"And heartless enough to rule it," the peasant woman retorted.
To her obvious dismay, the trooper thought that was funny: Having no choice—the soldier and his comrades confronted the villagers with sabers and drawn bows and implacable purpose—she kept walking, three children trailing behind her, and then her husband, who carried an even bigger pack on his back and held lead ropes for a couple of scrawny goats.
Phostis watched the family join the stream of unwilling peasants shambling east. Soon they were gone from sight, as one drop of water loses itself in a river. For a little while longer, he could hear the goats bleating. Then their voices, too, were lost amid murmurs and complaints and lowing cattle and creaking axles from richer farmers' carts and the endless shuffle of feet.
This had to be the dozenth village he'd watched empty. He wondered why he kept making himself witness the process over and over again. The best answer he came up with was that he was partly responsible for what was happening to these people, and so he had the obligation to understand it to the fullest, no matter how pained and uncomfortable it made him.
That afternoon, as the sun sank toward the not so distant mountains of Vaspurakan, he rode with another company that descended on another village. As the peasants were forcibly assembled in the marketplace, a woman screamed, "You have no right to treat us so. We're orthodox, by the good god. This for the gleaming path!" She spat in the dust.
"Is that so?" Phostis worriedly asked the officer in charge of the company.
"Young Majesty, you just wait till they're all gathered here and then you'll see for yourself," the captain answered.
The people kept coming until at last the village marketplace was full. Phostis frowned. He told the officer, "I don't see anything that makes them look either orthodox or Thanasiot."
"You don't know what to look for, then," the man replied. He waved at the glum crowd. "Do you see more men or women, young Majesty?"
Phostis hadn't noticed one way or the other. Now he examined villagers with a new eye. "More women, I'd say."
"I'd say so, too, young Majesty," the captain said, nodding. "And note the men, how many of them are either graybeards or else striplings with the down just sprouting on their cheeks and chins. Not a lot of fellows in their prime, are there? Why do you suppose that is?"
Phostis studied the shouting, sweating crowd once more. "I see what you're saying. Why, though?"
The officer glanced upward for a moment, perhaps in lieu of calling the heir to the imperial throne dense. "Young Majesty, it's on account of most of the men in their prime were in Livanios' army, and we either killed 'em or caught 'em. So you can believe that skirt is orthodox if you choose, but me, I have to doubt it."