"Yes." Abivard's voice was distracted. He pointed. "Do you think that's them, or is it only a flock?"
Sharbaraz squinted as he looked down along Abivard's outstretched arm. "Your eyes must be better than mine. No, wait, I see what you're pointing at. Those aren't cattle or sheep, I fear. Those are horsemen."
"I think so, too." Abivard would have been surer on a sunny day, with light sparking off lanceheads and horse trappings and chainmail. But the purposeful way the distant specks kept moving north told him all he needed to know.
"There aren't that many of them," Sharbaraz said after a bit.
"No. The rider who brought word said it was a small band," Abivard said.
"Seems he was right." He looked toward the approaching troop. "I don't see any more behind them, either."
"Nor I." Sharbaraz sounded indignant, as if he thought Smerdis wasn't playing the game by the rules. "What can he hope to do by sending a boy-no, an unweaned babe-in place of a man?"
"If I knew, I would tell you," Abivard answered. "We'll find out within the half hour, though, I expect."
The royal soldier reined in at the base of the knob atop which Vek Rud stronghold perched. Some of the folk who lived in the town on the knob had fled up to the stronghold before Abivard ordered the gates closed. The rest did their best to pretend they were invisible.
One warrior rode up toward the stronghold with a whitewashed shield upraised as a sign of truce. He called in a loud voice, "Is it true Sharbaraz son of Peroz has taken up residence here?"
Abivard recognized the voice a moment before he recognized the face. "None of your affair, Zal," he called back. "Whether the answer is yea or nay, d'you think I'd let you in here again after the way you used me the last time you saw the courtyard?"
Zal's grin was wide and unashamed. "I just followed the orders I was given. But I think I have a token that will buy my way in."
"Do you? I'll believe that when I see it."
"Good thing the weather is so cold," Zal remarked as he reached back to open a saddlebag. "Otherwise this would stink a lot worse than it does." The comment made no sense to Abivard until the royal officer held up by the hair a severed head that, as he had said, was less than perfectly fresh but that had until recently without a doubt adorned the shoulders of the famous Murghab.
Gulping a little, Abivard said, "You're trying to convince me you're for Sharbaraz, not against him?"
Beside him, Sharbaraz whispered, "Whose head is that?"
"It belonged to Smerdis' tax collector, the one who extorted eighty-five hundred arkets from me as tribute for the Khamorth," Abivard whispered back. He raised his voice and called to Zal, "How say you?"
"Of course I'm for his Majesty," Zal cried. "I served Smerdis just as you did, thinking Sharbaraz had truly given up the throne. Then my men and I ran into a courier who had word from Nalgis Crag that his Majesty-his genuine Majesty, I mean-had escaped from imprisonment. That put a whole new light on things. I got rid of the courier and then I got rid of this thing-" He held Murghab's head a little higher. "-but I saved enough to maybe convince you I'm no assassin in the night."
"You ran into a courier, you say?" Abivard answered. "If that's so, you've taken your own sweet time getting here."
Zal shook his graying head. "Not so, youngster. I was a long way south, heading back toward Mashiz myself, when the fellow caught up with me. My best guess is that Smerdis Pimp of Pimps still hasn't heard the real King of Kings is loose."
Abivard and Sharbaraz looked at each other. If that was so… "It can't last forever," Abivard said.
"No," Sharbaraz agreed. "But the God would turn his back on us in disgust if we didn't make the best use of it we could."
"Are you two going to spend the whole day blathering up there?" Zal demanded impatiently. "Or will you open up so I can come in and we can talk without lowing at one another like cattle on the plains?"
"Open the gates," Abivard called to the men who served them. To Zal he said, "Come ahead-but you alone, for the time being. I still remember what happened the last time you got men in my stronghold."
"I wish I could give you back your silver, but this thing-" Zal raised Murghab's head. "-had already sent it on to the treasury. Only way for you to get repaid now is to fight and win that treasury for yourself."
He rode through the gates as they opened. Archers on the wall and in the courtyard covered him. Abivard shifted nervously from foot to foot. The soldiers down at the bottom of the knob were all cased in iron, and so were their horses; the King of Kings-even if he was now Pimp of Pimps, as Zal had called him-could afford to keep a great host of smiths busy turning iron strips into wire and wire into rings. If they galloped up for all they were worth, they might get in before the gates slammed, and if they got in, no telling how much damage they would do.
"Your Majesty, it were wiser for you to stay on the wall or on the stairs higher than a lance can reach," Abivard said.
"Wiser some ways, maybe, but not others." Without another word, Sharbaraz hurried down the stairway. He had said-and Abivard had seen, to his and Makuran's dismay-that his father Peroz had tended to strike first and ask questions later. By that standard, Sharbaraz was very much his father's son.
Zal swung down from his horse; though far from young, he was still smooth and limber. Careless of the slush in the courtyard, and of his coat and the armor under it, he went down onto his belly before Sharbaraz, knocking his forehead against the cobblestones.
"Get up, man," Sharbaraz told him. "You're Zal son of Sintrawk, one of the senior guard captains out of Mashiz?"
"Aye, that's me, Majesty." Zal sounded impressed and surprised that Sharbaraz should know of him. Abivard was also impressed, but less surprised. He had already seen Sharbaraz's mastery of detail.
Sharbaraz said, "When word I live does get out, how many other officers will also rally to my call?"
"A good number, Majesty, a good number." Zal went on, "The God willing, enough so all you'll have to do about Smerdis is hunt him down and lop off his head as I did with the famous Murghab. Only trouble is, I don't know whether the God will be that willing."
"Always an interesting question, isn't it?" Sharbaraz turned to Abivard. "This is your stronghold, lord dihqan; I would not presume to order you in its administration. But do you judge that Zal's men may safely be admitted here?"
The turn had offered Sharbaraz's back to Zal. At first, that alarmed Abivard: it struck him as a foolish chance to take. Then he realized Sharbaraz had done it on purpose. That left him no less alarmed, but he admired the nerve of the rightful King of Kings. Zal made no move to snatch out the sword or dagger that hung from his belt.
Seeing him pass that test, Abivard said, "Very well, Majesty." He asked Zal, "Would you sooner summon them yourself, or shall I do it?"
"Let me," Zal said. "They're less likely to think it's some kind of trap that way. In fact, given how far off they are, why don't I just ride back to them and let them know all's well?"
Abivard felt a whole new set of qualms: what was to keep Zal and his heavily armored fighters from heading back to Mashiz? Hunting them down would not be easy. He shook his head-if he had to reach that far for worries, they weren't worth the reach. He nodded to Zal. The guard captain got back onto his horse and headed down the knob.
Abivard glanced over to Sharbaraz. The rightful King of Kings was not as calm as he looked; he fidgeted most unregally. That made Abivard nervous again, too. He wanted to say something like This was your idea, but he couldn't, not to his sovereign.