The next day, a lookout shouted, «The Key! The Key off the starboard bow!»
Maniakes turned to see the island for himself. The Key had got its name because its position, south and east of Videssos the city, made it crucial for holding the capital in any naval campaign—any naval campaign fought by Videssian ships, anyhow. The Makuraners and Kubratoi seemed to have come up with a different idea.
Though it was merely a smudge on the horizon, seeing it also reassured him because of its two excellent harbors, Gavdos in the south and Sykeota in the north. If the storm did come, they would give the fleet more places to shelter.
They had other uses, too. Thrax came up to Maniakes and said, «By your leave, your Majesty, I'd like to put in at Gavdos, draw food there, and refill the water casks, too. We've spent more time at sea all at once than I think I've ever done, and we're lower on supplies than I'd like.»
Maniakes frowned. Having come so far, he grudged any delay. But good food and water and keeping the ships and their sails in top condition counted, too. «Go ahead,» he told Thrax, and did his best not to show the stop bothered him.
«We'll pick up news of the capital there,» Lysia said after he'd confessed he was going to grant Thrax's request. One corner of her mouth twitched up in a wry smile. «You don't need to tell me in the tone of voice you'd use to let me know you were unfaithful.»
«Oh, yes, I've had a lot of chances for that during this campaign,» he said, holding up his hand. « 'Stop the battle, please, and bring me the latest wench.' «
The cabin they shared was cramped for two; the cabin they shared would have been cramped for one. Maniakes couldn't escape when Lysia reached out to poke him in the ribs. «Who is this latest wench?» she asked darkly.
«Right now, she's carrying my child,» he answered, and took her in his arms. The cabin did have a door, and shutters over the windows, but sailors still walked past it every minute or so. That meant, for dignity's sake, they had to be very quiet. To his surprise, Maniakes had found that sometimes added something. So did the gentle motion of the Renewal on the sea—for him, at least. Lysia could have done without it.
«Get off me,» she whispered when they had finished. She looked slightly green, which made Maniakes obey her faster than he might have otherwise. She gulped a couple of times, but things stayed down. She started to dress. As she pulled her undertunic on over her head, she said in reflective tones, «It's just as well my belly will stop you from getting on top after a while. My breasts are sore, too, and you squashed them.»
«I'm sorry,» he answered. He'd said that during each of her pregnancies. She believed it each time—believed it enough to stay friendly, and more than friendly, at any rate. A good thing, too, he thought. Without her, he would have felt altogether alone against the world, as opposed to merely overmatched.
Behind Gavdos rose the mountains in the center of the Key. Thrax let out a small laugh. «I remember the first time I brought the Renewal into this port, your Majesty.»
«So do I. I'm not likely to forget,» Maniakes answered. He'd been a rebel then and had managed to bring part of the fleet that sailed from the Key over to his side. Had the rest of that fleet not gone over to him after he sailed into Gavdos… had that not happened, Genesios would still be Avtokrator of the Videssians.
Maniakes' mouth twisted into a thin, bitter line. Everything Genesios did had been a catastrophe—but when Maniakes overthrew him, Videssos had still held a good chunk of the westlands, and the lord with the great and good mind knew no Makuraners had come over the Cattle Crossing to stare up close at the walls of Videssos the city with hungry, clever eyes.
He cursed Genesios. He'd spent a lot of time cursing Genesios, these past half-dozen years. The incompetent butcher had left him nothing—less than nothing—with which to work.
And yet… Just before he'd taken Genesios' head, the wretch had asked him a question that had haunted him ever since: «Will you do any better?» So far, he could not say with certainty the answer was yes.
Oarsmen guided the Renewal alongside a quay. Sailors leapt up onto it and made the dromon fast. More sailors set the gangplank in place, to let people go back and forth more readily. When Maniakes set foot on the wharf, he wondered if he'd arrived in the middle of an earthquake: the planks were swaying under his feet, weren't they? After a moment, he realized they weren't. He'd never spent so long at sea before, and found himself without his land legs.
Waiting to greet him was the drungarios of the fleet of the Key, a plump, fussy-looking fellow named Skitzas who had a reputation for aggressive seamanship that belied his appearance. «Hello, your Majesty,» he said, saluting. «Good to see you're here and not there.» He pointed west.
«I wish I were there and not here, and my army, too,» Maniakes answered. «But, from the messages that got through to me, Sharbaraz and Etzilios have made that a bad idea.»
«I'm afraid you're right,» Skitzas said. «The Kubratoi are playing it smart, may Skotos drag them down to the eternal ice. Their monoxyla aren't a match for dromons: they've learned that the hard way. So they aren't even trying to fight us. They just keep sneaking across to the westlands, mostly at night, and carrying Makuraners back toward Videssos the city. After a while, they'll have a good many of them on the side where they don't belong.»
«Makuraners don't belong on either side of the Cattle Crossing,» Maniakes said, and Skitzas nodded. The Avtokrator went on, «What are you doing about it?»
«What we can,» the officer answered. «Every so often, we'll meet up with a one-trunk boat in the water and put paid to it. We've been scouring the coast north and east of Videssos the city, too, doing everything we can to catch the monoxyla beached. We've burned a good many.» He made a sour face. «Trouble is, the cursed things are easy to drag up well out of the water and hide. Once the masts are off them, they're only tree trunks, after all. We aren't having all the luck we ought to, I own that.»
«All right,» Maniakes said, and then held up a hand. «All right that you've given me a straight answer, I mean; I needed one. What's going on by the city isn't all right, not even a little bit.»
«I know that, your Majesty,» Skitzas said. «The one thing we and the fleet in Videssos the city have done is, we've managed to keep the Kubratoi from getting a big flotilla of monoxyla over to the westlands and ferrying the whole Makuraner army over the Cattle Crossing in one swoop. To the ice with me if I ever thought I'd be happy about delaying the enemy instead of beating him, but that's how it is right now.»
«They caught us with our drawers down,» Maniakes said, which wrung a grunt of startled laughter out of Skitzas. «Delaying them counts; I was wondering if I'd come back only to find the city Men.»
«The good god forbid it.» Skitzas sketched the sun-circle. «Anything I can do to help you along—»
«I think Thrax has that well in hand,» Maniakes said. The drungarios of the fleet was bellowing instructions at the officers who had advanced to see what he required. He told them in alarming detail. When he had a chance to prepare in advance, he was a nonpareil.
Before long, laborers started carrying sacks of flour, sacks of beans, barrels of salted beef, and jars of wine aboard the ships of his fleet. Others brought coils of rope, canvas, casks of pitch, and other nautical supplies. By the time the sun went down, the fleet was in better shape than it had been since the day after it sailed out of Lyssaion.
Sunset turned clouds in the west the color of blood. Maniakes noted that, at first made nothing of it, and then turned back to look at the sunset again. He hadn't seen clouds in the west for a good long while now. Were they harbingers of the storm Bagdasares had predicted?