"Aye," Abivard said mournfully. "If that one band hadn't gone over to you, we might still be fighting-or we might have lost."
"This had crossed my mind," Sharbaraz admitted, adding a moment later, "however much I wish it hadn't." He sighed again. "I want pocket bread filled with raisins and cheese and onions, and I want a great huge cup of wine. Then I'll show myself to Denak, so she'll know I came through alive and well. But what I want most is a good night's sleep. I've never been so worn in my life; it must be the terror slowly leaking out of me."
"Your Majesty, those all strike me as excellent choices," Abivard said, "though I'd sooner have sausage than raisins with my onions and cheese."
"We may just be able to grant you so much leeway," Sharbaraz said. Both men laughed.
Roshnani said, "Almost I wish I'd stayed back at the stronghold. What war truly is doesn't look much like what the minstrels sing of." Her eyes, which looked larger than they were in the dim lamplight of Abivard's tent, filled with horror at what she had seen and heard. "So much anguish-"
I told you so, bubbled up in Abivard's mind. He left the words unsaid. They would have done no good in any case. He couldn't keep his principal wife from seeing what she had seen now that she was here, and he couldn't send her back to Vek Rud domain. Godarz would have said something like, Now that you've mounted the horse, you'd better ride it.
Since he couldn't twit her, he said, "I'm glad your brother only took a couple of small cuts. He'll be fine, I'm sure."
"Yes, so am I," Roshnani said, relief in her voice. "He was so proud of himself when he came back to see me yesterday after the battle, and he looked as if he'd enjoyed himself in the fighting." She shook her head. "I can't say I understand that."
"He's young yet," Abivard said. "I thought I'd surely live forever, right up till the moment things went wrong on the steppe last year."
Roshnani reached out to set a hand on his arm. "Women always know things can go wrong. We wonder sometimes at the folly of men."
"Looking back, I wonder at some of our folly, too," Abivard said. "Thinking Smerdis' men would give up or go over to us without much fight, for instance. The war will be harder than we reckoned on when we set out from the stronghold."
"That's not what I meant," Roshnani said in some exasperation. "The whole idea … Oh, what's the use? I just have to hope we win the fight and that you and Okhos and Sharbaraz come through it safe."
"Of course we will," Abivard said stoutly. The groans of the wounded that pierced the wool tent cloth like arrows piercing flesh turned his reassurances to the pious hopes they were.
Roshnani didn't say that, not with words. She was not one who sought to get her way by nagging her husband until he finally yielded. Abivard's will was as well warded against nagging as Nalgis Crag stronghold against siege. But something-he could not have said precisely what-changed in her face. Perhaps her eyes slipped from his for a moment at a particularly poignant cry of pain. If they did, he didn't notice, not with the top of his mind. But he did come to know he had done nothing to allay her fears.
He was irked to hear how defensive he sounded as he continued, "Any which way, what we stand to gain is worth the risk. Or would you sooner live under Smerdis and see all our arkets flow across the Degird to the nomads?"
"Of course not," she said at once; she was a dihqan's daughter. Now he recognized the expression she wore: calculation, the same sort he would have used in deciding if he wanted to pay a horsetrader's price for a four-year-old gelding. "If the three of you live and we win, then you're right. But if any of you falls, or if we lose, then you're not. And since you and Sharbaraz and Okhos are all right at the fore-"
"Would you have us hang back?" Abivard demanded, flicked on his pride.
"For my sake, for your own sake, indeed I would," Roshnani answered. Then she sighed. "If you did, though, that would make the army lose spirit, which would in turn make you likelier to be hurt. Finding the right thing to do isn't always easy."
"We chased that rabbit round the bush when we were talking about how-or if-you'd be able to come out of the women's quarters." Abivard laughed. "After a while, you quit chasing-you jumped over the bush and squashed poor bunny flat, or how else did you and Denak get to come along with the host?"
Roshnani laughed, too. "You take it with better will than I thought you would. Most men, I think, would still be angry at me."
"What's the point to that?" Abivard said. "It's done, you've won, and now I try to make the best I can of it, just as I did when I came back from the steppe last summer."
"Hmm," Roshnani said. "I don't think I fancy being compared to the Khamorth. And you didn't lose a battle to me, because you'd already said you were giving up the war."
"I should hope so," Abivard said. "You and Denak outgeneraled me as neatly as the plainsmen bested Peroz."
"And what of it?" Roshnani asked. "Has the army gone to pieces because of it? Has one dihqan, even one warrior with no armor, no bow, and a spavined nag, gone over to Smerdis because Denak and I are here? Have we turned the campaign into a disaster for Sharbaraz?"
"No and no and no," Abivard admitted. "We might have done better with the two of you commanding our right and left wings. I don't think the officers we had out there distinguished themselves."
He waited for Roshnani to use the opening he had given her to tax him about the iniquities and inequities of the women's quarters and to get him to admit how unjust they were. She did nothing of the kind, but asked instead about how the wounded were faring. Only later did he stop to think that, if her arguments sprang to life in his mind without her having to say a word, she had already won a big part of the battle.
The farther south and east Sharbaraz's army advanced, the more Abivard had the feeling he was not in the Makuran he had always known. The new recruits who rallied to Sharbaraz's banner spoke with what he thought of as a lazy accent, wore caftans that struck his eye as gaudy, and irked him further by seeming to look down on the men who had originally favored the rightful King of Kings as frontier bumpkins. That caused fights, and led to the sudden demise of a couple of newcomers.
But when Abivard complained about the southerners' pretensions, Sharbaraz laughed at him. "If you think these folk different, my friend, wait till you make the acquaintance of those who dwell between the Tutub and the Tib, in the river plain called the land of the Thousand Cities."
"Oh, but they aren't Makuraners at all," Abivard said, "just our subjects." Sharbaraz raised an eyebrow. "So it may seem to a man whose domain lies along the Degird. But Mashiz, remember, looks out over the Land of the Thousand Cities. The people who live down in the plain are not of our kind, true, but they help make the realm what it is. Many of our clerks and record keepers come from among them. Without such, we'd never know who owed what from one year to the next."
Abivard made a noise that said he was less than impressed. Had anyone but his sovereign extolled the virtues of such bureaucrats, he would have been a good deal cruder in his response.
Perhaps sensing that, Sharbaraz added, "They also give us useful infantry. You'll not have seen that, because they're of no use against the steppe nomads, so Kings of Kings don't take them up onto the plateau of Makuran proper. But they're numerous, they make good garrison troops, and they've given decent service against Videssos."