The murmur grew to a great roar: "The river! The river!" Men cheered and wept and pounded one another on the back. Makuran lay ahead of them. No, so many had never expected to see this day. Abivard's eyes filled with tears. No matter how little the land of the Thousand Cities resembled Vek Rud domain, he, too, was coming home.
As he drew nearer, he saw horsemen waiting on the far side of the Tutub. They probably had not looked for Sharbaraz's return, either, and had to be less than delighted to see it now. Some held their places; others rode off to the west, no doubt to warn of Sharbaraz's arrival.
Green and growing things covered both banks of the river. So soon after the spring flood, the greenery extended a long way out from the Tutub. Canals guided every precious drop to plants that would perish without the lifegiving water.
Sharbaraz sent riders up and down the Tutub, a couple of farsangs north and south, to see if Smerdis' men had left behind a bridge of boats on which they could cross. Abivard was unsurprised when they found none.
He had watched the engineers of Peroz King of Kings throw a bridge across the Degird River. That had taken days. Now he saw the Videssian engineers in action. The structure they put together was a lot less impressive than the bridge the Makuraners had run up, but they built it a lot faster. They anchored thick, heavily greased chains to the shore at one end and to a wooden pontoon at the other. Then they rowed out to the pontoon in a tiny boat, anchored a new set of chains to its far side, and hitched them to another pontoon farther out in the Tutub.
They had long planks to reach from pontoon to pontoon and, incidentally, to reduce the distance each newly placed pontoon could drift downstream from its predecessor. They had shorter planks to lay across the long ones. And, in an amazingly short time, they had themselves a bridge.
At first, Smerdis' men on the west bank of the Tutub didn't seem to realize the Videssian engineers were creating a structure on which Sharbaraz's army could cross to attack them. Only when the western end of the bridge was well within bowshot did they send a few arrows toward the laboring engineers. The Khamorth on the north bank of the Degird had harassed Peroz's artisans much more effectively.
As Peroz's men had, the Videssians used soldiers with big shields to hold off most of the arrows. They also brought archers of their own forward along the growing bridge to shoot back at their foes. Before long the bridge was anchored to the west bank of the Tutub as well as the east. Riders began to cross-first Videssians, for the elder Maniakes made his own men use the bridge before he risked Makuraners on it, then Sharbaraz's lancers, and last of all the wagons of the Videssian engineers and the rest of the baggage train.
As soon as the last wagon rolled onto the west bank of the Tutub, the engineers began disassembling the pontoon bridge. Watching, Abivard thought they might have used a magic to aid them in the deconstruction; just as the bridge had grown from the east bank of the Tutub to the west, so now it shrank in the same direction. The engineers rolled up the last heavy, greasy chain, stowed it in the wagon from which it had come, and shouted in Videssian that they were ready to move on.
The elder Maniakes rode up to Abivard and Sharbaraz. Coughing a little, he said, "You understand, I hope, it won't be this easy all the time."
"Oh, indeed," Sharbaraz said. "We caught them by surprise. They'll be more ready to fight back, next crossing we have to force. But being back in Makuran, in my own realm, feels so fine in and of itself that I won't worry about the future till I bump into it."
"The Land of the Thousand Cities isn't much like Vek Rud domain," Abivard said. "I was thinking that a little while ago. Serrhes reminded me a lot more of home: dust and heat-aye, and cold through the winter-and a healthy fear for enemies from over the border."
"You mean us," Sharbaraz said, grinning.
"So I do." Abivard smiled, too. "But I got to thinking what I would have done if an important Khamorth chief crossed the Degird with his clan and came to my stronghold asking for Makuraner help to get him back his grazing lands. What should I do there? Probably about what Kalamos did: act as friendly as I could while I sent a messenger hotfooting it to the capital to find out how I was really supposed to act."
"You couldn't go far wrong doing something like that," Sharbaraz agreed. "Such things have happened now and again, too. Sometimes we'd aid the nomads, sometimes we wouldn't, depending on what looked advantageous."
Abivard thought of Likinios and his beloved map. Yes, the Avtokrator had settled for fewer concessions from Sharbaraz than he had demanded at first, but he had taken a bite out of Makuran just the same. Suppose Sharbaraz had refused to yield that bite. Where would he and his followers be now?
Abivard saw two answers. The first was the one Hosios had promised: the army broken up, with each man getting land according to his rank. In that case, Abivard's grandchildren would likely have ended up as Videssian as the younger Maniakes. Not the worst of fates, but not the best, either.
Given the way Likinios looked at the world, though, the second picture that sprang into being in Abivard's mind struck him as much more likely. What better use for the Avtokrator of the Videssians to get out of a host of Makuraner refugees than to take them to the northeast and hurl them against the Kubratoi? Every nomad horseman they killed would help Videssos, while they did the Emperor no harm even if they died.
The scheme was devious, underhanded, and economical… Likinios to the core. Abivard was glad the Avtokrator had not had the chance to think of it.
Sharbaraz said, "This whole realm is mine, the land of the Thousand Cities no less than any other part of it. Perhaps it helps that I grew up looking out on it from Mashiz and that I visited some of the cities down here on the flood plain. It's not alien to me, though I admit I prefer the highlands. I am a true Makuraner by blood, after all."
"Of that, Majesty, no one had any doubt." Abivard waved to the flat, green landscape ahead. "Where I have doubts is wondering how we're to move here in any direction save the ones Smerdis dictates. Are the Videssian engineers good enough to let us do that?"
"My father always had the greatest respect for them," Sharbaraz said, invoking Peroz as Abivard was wont to invoke Godarz. "Never having fought against them nor seen them in action, I cannot speak from firsthand knowledge. I will say this, though: they'd better be."
As they had before, the cities of the land of the Thousand Cities closed themselves to Sharbaraz's army. As he had before, the rightful King of Kings bypassed them and kept moving. If he beat Smerdis, they would fall to him. If he didn't… Abivard saw no point in worrying about that.
Smerdis did not have a large force between the valleys of the Tutub and the Tib. His men shadowed Sharbaraz's host and the accompanying Videssian army but made no effort to attack. "Cowardice." Sharbaraz snorted. "He thinks he'll stay on the throne if he can outwait me."
"Strategy," the elder Maniakes insisted. "He's holding back to hurt as much as he can, at a time of his choosing."
Being the two men of highest rank in the army, they had trouble finding an arbiter to choose between them, but before long they settled on Abivard. He said, "May it please your Majesty, I think the eminent sir is right. Smerdis isn't quite the fool you made him out to be; if he were, we'd never have needed aid from Videssos."
"He's a thief and a liar," Sharbaraz said.