«We quarrels?» Moundioukh shrugged. «Then we quarrels. Not having mores of quarrels with Videssians, not nevers again. Magnifolent Etzilios sezzing, that worths any sizes of quarrelings with Makuran.»
The khagan was probably right, too, when you looked at things from the Kubrati point of view. If Videssos the city fell, it would be a frontier province to the Makuraners, far from their center. But Videssos the city was the very heart of the Empire of Videssos. Cut it out and the Empire had no heart left. Free rein hereabouts, near enough—that was the stake for which Etzilios was playing. «And beside,» Moundioukh added, «you beat Etzilios. He pay youse back how youse am deservings.»
For a barbarian, the khagan was a rational man. But a hunger for revenge, coupled with sound reasons of policy, could make him unreasonable—and apparently had made him so. «If I hadn't beaten him, he would have been down here by the city years before,» Maniakes pointed out.
«Should has beed,» Moundioukh said. «Should has killed you in trick making treaty. Save Kubrat shitpot full troubles, that beed happening.»
«I'm so sorry,» Maniakes said dryly. «I should have killed Etzilios, that last fight where I landed troops behind your raiders. That would have saved me a lot of trouble.»
«Now youse gots troubles, Etzilios gots troubles, all gots troubles,» Moundioukh said, apparently in agreement. «Am time of troubles.»
«No agreement from the khagan, then?» Maniakes said unhappily.
«Nones,» Moundioukh said. «He says I says no. Youse pushing, I says no and futter yourself, youse pushings hard and I tells youse something really with lots of juices in it. You wants I should?» He sounded delighted to oblige.
«Never mind,» Maniakes told him. He didn't bother waving the torchbearers away from the postern gate now—if any Makuraners saw Moundioukh coming back, maybe they'd think the Kubratoi were betraying them even when they weren't. «Let him out,» he said to the men in charge of the gate. «We're not going to be able to come to terms.»
Having opened once, the gate proved more willing to do so quietly the second time—when Maniakes would have preferred it noisy. The Videssian soldiers slid the gangway out across the ditch. Moundioukh walked across it. This time, no one urged him to be careful. If he fell down and broke his neck in the ditch now, what difference would it make? None Maniakes could see.
«I think that was worth a try, your Majesty,» the officer in charge of the gate said. «We're no worse off now than we were before.»
«That's true.» Maniakes remembered throwing away his crown and the rest of the imperial regalia to escape the Kubratoi when they'd ambushed him in that treaty ceremony. «Aye,» he said, half to himself, «I've had worse from the nomads. This time, Moundioukh didn't cost me anything but my dignity.»
«I kept hoping it wasn't true,» Maniakes said, looking out from a tower thrusting up from the inner wall.
«Well, it bloody well is true,» Rhegorios answered. He was looking in the same direction. «You're not going to try and tell me the Kubratoi could build those all on their lonesome, are you?»
Those were siege engines, some of them stone– and dart-throwers, other the skeletal beginnings of towers to overtop the outer wall. On the timber frames, the Kubratoi would soon add raw hides to make the towers harder to burn. If they could bring them up to the wall, they'd be able to put men on the walkway. If they did that, anything could happen.
«You're right, of course—they couldn't,» Maniakes said unhappily. «Abivard, Skotos curse him to the ice—» He turned his head and performed the ritual expectoration. «—did sneak one of his engineers, or maybe more than one, over the Cattle Crossing. Those are Makuraner-style engines, or else I'm a wolf with a purple pelt.»
«Nothing would surprise me, not anymore,» his cousin said. «The only worse thing would be having to try handstrokes with all those heavy-armored Makuraners.»
«That mail is better for horseback,» Maniakes said.
«I know,» Rhegorios replied. «But it's not so heavy they can't use it afoot, either, and I wouldn't want to be in their way if they tried.»
«Well, neither would I,» the Avtokrator admitted. «The key to making sure that doesn't happen is keeping them on… the far side of the Cattle Crossing.» He scowled, angry at himself. «I almost said, keeping them on their own side of the Cattle Crossing. It's not theirs. It's ours. I aim to get it back, too.»
«Sounds fine to me,» Rhegorios said. «How do you propose to do that?»
«Which? Keep them on that side of the Cattle Crossing or get the westlands back?»
«Whichever you'd rather tell me about. You're the Avtokrator, after all.» Rhegorios gave him a saucy grin.
«And you're incorrigible,» Maniakes retorted. «We've got dromons prowling up and down the coast, north and east from the city. Whenever they find any of the Kubrati monoxyla, they burn them or sink them. The trouble is, they don't find that many. The cursed things are too fornicating easy to hide. We're doing what we can. I console myself with that.»
«Something,» his cousin agreed. «Maybe not much, but something. How about getting the westlands back?»
«How about that?» Maniakes said, deadpan, and then made as if not to go on. When Rhegorios was somewhere between lese majesty and physical assault, the Avtokrator, chuckling, deigned to continue: «Once this siege fails, I don't think they'll be able to mount another one for a long time. That gives the choice of what to do next back to me. How does another trip to the Land of the Thousand Cities sound? Better that Sharbaraz should worry about his capital than that we worry about ours.»
«That's the truth.» Rhegorios sent him a respectful look. «You really do have it figured out, don't you?»
Maniakes coughed, spluttered, and finally laughed out loud. «I know what I'd like to do, yes. How much I'm going to be able to do is another question, and a harder one, worse luck.»
Rhegorios looked thoughtful. «Maybe we ought to use our ships against the Kubratoi the way we did three years ago: land troops behind their army and catch 'em between hammer and anvil.»
«Maybe,» Maniakes said. «I've thought about it. The trouble is, Etzilios is looking for it this time. The dromon captains report that he's got squads posted along the coast every mile or so, to bring him word if we do land. We wouldn't catch him by surprise, the way we did then. And the likeliest thing for him to do would be trying to storm the city as soon as he heard we'd pulled out some of the garrison.»
«That makes unfortunately too much sense,» Rhegorios said. «You're quite sharp when you get logical, you know. You should have been a theologian.»
«No, thank you,» Maniakes said at once. «I've had so much double from the theologians, I wouldn't want to inflict another one on the world. Besides, I'd be an indifferent theologian at best, and I'm vain enough to think I make something better than an indifferent Avtokrator.»
«I'd say so,» Rhegorios agreed. «Of course, if I said anything else, I'd get to find out how the weather is up at Prista this time of year.» He was joking; he didn't expect to be sent into exile across the Videssian Sea. The joke, though, illustrated the problem Maniakes had in getting straight answers from his subjects, no matter how much he needed them.
And some of the answers he got from his subjects he didn't like far other reasons. As he was riding back to the palace quarter from the walls, a fellow in a dirty tunic shouted to him, «This is your fault, curse you! If you hadn't married your cousin, Phos wouldn't be punishing all of Videssos and letting Skotos loose here for your sins!»
Some of the Avtokrator's guardsmen tried to seize the heckler, but he escaped them. Once away from Middle Street, he lost himself in the maze of lanes and alleys that made up most of the city's roads. The guards came back looking angry and disappointed.