Immodios considered that, then nodded. «Sharbaraz has a long reach and a sure one, if he can keep his mind on what he does here and far away at the Cattle Crossing, both at the same time.»
«This year, Sharbaraz has shown me more than in all the time before this I've had on the throne,» Maniakes replied, genuine regret in his voice. «Making an alliance with Kubrat against us—no King of Kings ever thought of anything like that before. He's a good deal more clever than I dreamed he could be. But he's not so clever as he thinks he is, not if you think back to that shrine we found, the one where he was made out to be the Makuraner God. He doesn't live at the very center of the world and have it all spin round him, no matter what he thinks.»
«Ah, that shrine. I'd forgotten that.» Immodios sketched Phos' sun-circle above his heart. «You're right, your Majesty. Anyone who's foolish enough to think of himself as a god, well, it doesn't matter how smart he is other ways. Sooner or later, he's going to make a bad mistake. Another bad mistake, I should say.»
«Sooner or later,» Maniakes echoed. «I think you're right. No, I know you're right. It would be nice, though, with things as they are, to have the mistake come sooner. We could use it.»
His army crossed the major north-south canal between the Tutub and the Tib. Getting over it made him smile; Bagdasares' magic had done a good job of delaying the Makuraners there the year before. Then Maniakes' smile congealed on his face. Abivard was supposed to have a Videssian wizard with him, someone he'd scooped up as he conquered the westlands. Absent that, the magic of the Voimios strap might have held the Makuraners at bay even longer than it had done.
When he'd left Videssos the city, Maniakes had been content– had been more than content, if less eager than Lysia—to leave behind reports of and from the imperial capital. Now that he moved toward the city once more, he hungered for news about it. Was he rushing back toward a town already fallen to the foe? What would he do if that turned out to be so? He did not want such macabre imaginings loose in his mind, but felt reluctant to dismiss them. If they stayed, he might come up with answers for them.
He'd been concentrating on how to go about attacking Mashiz when the messengers brought word first of the Kubratoi invasion of Videssos and then of Abivard's joining forces with the nomads. He'd seen no messengers since. Had the Makuraners captured them before they ever got to him? If they had, they would know more than he about what was going on at the heart of the Empire. Or had his own people—Phos! his own family—not sent out more men, either because they were too pressed or because they could not? Anxiety on account of his ignorance ate at him.
One day when the army was a little more than halfway across the Land of the Thousand Cities, Rhegorios rode up next to him and asked, «If you were the Makuraner commander and you knew we were leaving this country, what would you do to make things hard for us?»
«What the enemy is doing, more or less,» the Avtokrator answered, «skirmishes and floods and anything else that would slow us up.»
Rhegorios nodded, but then went on, «That's true, but it's not what I meant, or not all of what I meant, anyhow. What's he going to do with the men he doesn't have skirmishing with us now?»
«Ah, I see what you're saying.» Maniakes' thick eyebrows came down together in a frown. When you asked the question as Rhegorios had, you also indicated the answer: «He's going to put them where they'll do the best job of blocking us: down by Qostabash and maybe in the hill country where the Tutub rises.»
His cousin nodded. «That's what I thought, too. I was hoping you would tell me this heat has melted the brains right out of my head. How are we going to get through them if they do that?»
As long as we and they are on the floodplain, it won't matter so much, because we'll be able to outmaneuver them. Up in those hills, though—» Maniakes broke off. «I'm going to have to think about that.»
«Always happy to hand you something to take your mind off your worries,» Rhegorios said, so blithely that Maniakes had only a little trouble fighting down the urge to punch him in the face.
Maniakes did think about what Rhegorios had suggested. The more he thought, the less he liked it. He went to check with Ypsilantes, who had such maps of the Land of the Thousand Cities as the Videssians had been able to put together, along with others dating back to an invasion several centuries before. After studying the maps for a while, he took counsel with Rhegorios, Ypsilantes, and Immodios.
He pointed to his cousin. «This is your fault, you know. It's what you get for complicating my life—no, not my life, all our lives.»
«Thank you,» Rhegorios said, which was not the answer Maniakes had been looking for but not one to surprise him, either.
To Ypsilantes and Immodios, Maniakes said, «His Highness the Sevastos there—the one with the tongue hinged at both ends—made me realize we ought to get to the hill country between the headwaters of the Tutub and those of the Xeremos as fast as we can.» He explained why, then went on, «Unless I'm dead wrong, going back by way of Qostabash isn't the best route, either.»
«Then why have we been doing it?» Immodios asked. «Going back by way of Qostabash, I mean.»
Maniakes tapped two parchment maps, one new, one old. «As near as I can tell, the answer is, force of habit. Here, look: the trade route down to Lyssaion runs through Qostabash nowadays.» He ran his finger along the red squiggle of ink showing the route. Then he traced it on the other map, the old one. «It's been running through Qostabash for a long time. But just because the trade route runs through Qostabash, that doesn't mean we have to go that way ourselves.»
He traced another path with his finger, this one running well east of the town that was the southern gate to the Land of the Thousand Cities. «If we take this route, we save ourselves a day or two of travel—and, with luck, we don't have so many enemies waiting for us at the other end of it.»
Immodios frowned. He had a face made for frowning, with tight, almost cramped features. «I don't follow all of that, your Majesty. Yes, we reach the hill country faster by your route, which is to the good. But what's to keep the Makuraners from shifting forces from Qostabash—if they have them there—to the east to try to block us? That would eat up the time we save.»
«What's to keep them from doing it?» The smile Maniakes wore was broad but felt a little unnatural, as if he were trying too hard to be Rhegorios. «You are.»
«Me?» Immodios looked splendidly surprised; no wonder, Maniakes thought, his cousin had so much fun in life.
«You,» the Avtokrator said. «You're going to take a regiment, maybe a regiment and a half, of soldiers and you're going to ride to Qostabash as if you had the whole Videssian army with you. Burn the fields as you go, set out lots of fires at night, make as big a nuisance of yourself as you can.» «If you want a nuisance, you should send me,» Rhegorios said.
«Hush,» Maniakes told him. «You're a nuisance by yourself; for this job, I want someone who takes a little more professional approach.» He turned back to Immodios. «Your task is to keep the Makuraners too busy noticing you to pay any attention to the rest of us as we slide south. Have you got that?»
«I think I have, your Majesty.» Immodios pointed to one of the imperial banners, gold sunburst on sky blue, that floated not far away. «Let me have my fair share and more of those, so anyone who sees my detachment will think you're with it.»
«All right,» Maniakes said, fighting down misgivings. He wondered whether he shouldn't have given Rhegorios the assignment after all. If Immodios failed and the banners were captured, Videssos would be embarrassed. And if Immodios decided that bearing imperial banners gave him the right to other imperial pretensions, Videssos would be worse than embarrassed: the Empire would have a new civil war on its hands.