«Don't worry about it,» Maniakes said resignedly. «Skotos will have his way with that fellow. I hope he enjoys ice, because he's going to see an eternity of it.»
He hoped that, by making light of the incident, he would persuade the guards it wasn't worth mentioning. Otherwise, they would gossip about it with the serving women, and from them it would get back to Lysia. He was also glad Rhegorios had stayed back at the wall and hadn't heard the heckler. Predicting that such troubles would be long-lasting, his cousin had proved himself a better prophet than Maniakes. The Avtokrator didn't stay at the imperial residence long. Likarios, his son by Niphone and the heir to the throne, asked him seriously, «Papa, when they're bigger, will my little brothers throw me out of the palaces?»
«By the good god, no!» Maniakes exclaimed, sketching the sun-circle over his heart. «Who's been filling your head with nonsense?» Likarios didn't give a direct answer; he'd very quickly learned to be circumspect. «It was just something I heard.»
«Well, it's something you can forget,» Maniakes told him. His son nodded, apparently satisfied. Maniakes wished he were satisfied himself. Though Likarios was his heir, the temptation remained to disinherit the boy and place the succession in the line of his sons by Lysia.
She had never urged that course on him. Had she done so, he would have worried she was out for her own advantage first and the Empire's only afterward. But that did not keep the idea from cropping up on its own.
He went out to the seawall to escape it. A dromon glided over the water of the Cattle Crossing. The sight, though, was far less reassuring than it had been when the Makuraners were encamped in Across before. Monoxyla crept out at night and made nuisances of themselves, just as mice did even in homes where cats prowled. Then a different image occurred to him. Two or three times, in barns and stables, he'd seen snakes with their coils wrapped around rats or other smaller animals. The rats would wiggle and kick and sometimes even work a limb free for a little while, but in the end that wouldn't matter. They'd be squeezed from so many directions, they ended up dead in spite of all their thrashing.
He wished that picture hadn't come to mind. In it, the Empire of Videssos was rat, not snake.
What did Abivard plan, over there in Across? He couldn't smuggle his whole army to this side of the Cattle Crossing ten and twenty men at a time, not if he aimed to take Videssos the city before winter came. Maniakes' guess was that he wanted to take the city as fast as he thought he could. The Kubratoi couldn't indefinitely maintain the siege on their own. They'd eat the countryside empty, and then they'd have to leave.
That meant… what? Probably an effort on Abivard's part to get a good-sized chunk of the Makuraner field force over here to the eastern side of the Cattle Crossing fairly soon now. If the fleet managed to stop him, the siege would probably collapse of its own weight. If the fleet didn't stop him, Videssos the city was liable to fall, all past history of invincibility notwithstanding. For the Makuraners to teach the Kubratoi siegecraft was bad enough—worse than bad enough. For the Makuraners to conduct the siege would be worse still. Unlike the nomads, they really knew what they were doing.
«I wish I had a better drungarios of the fleet,» Maniakes murmured. Erinakios, the prickly former commander of the fleet of the Key, would have been ideal… had Genesios' chief wizard not slain him by sorcery while the tyrant was trying to hold off Maniakes.
A guardsman came trotting toward him. «Your Majesty, there's a messenger from the land wall waiting for you in the imperial residence,» the fellow called.
«I'll come,» Maniakes said at once. «Has the attack begun?» The Kubrati siege towers weren't finished yet, but that might not figure. If the attack had begun, all Maniakes' worries about what might be would vanish, subsumed into worries over what was. Those, at least, would be immediate, and—with luck—susceptible to immediate repair.
But the guardsman shook his head. «I don't think so, your Majesty—we'd hear the racket from here, wouldn't we? The fellow acts like it's important even so.»
«You're probably right about the racket,» Maniakes admitted. He followed the soldier at a pace halfway between fast walk and trot As he hurried along, he scratched his head. He'd been at the wall only a little while before the guard arrived. What had changed of such importance, he had to find out about it right away? He forced a shrug, and forced relaxation on himself as well. He was only moments from learning.
The messenger started to prostrate himself. Maniakes, losing the patience he'd cultivated, waved for him not to bother. The man came straight to the point: «Your Majesty, Immodios, who knows him well, has spotted Tzikas out beyond the wall.»
Maniakes stiffened and twitched, as if lightning had struck close by. Well, maybe that wasn't so far wrong. «Spotted him, has he?» he said. «Well, has he tried killing him yet?»
«Uh, no, your Majesty,» the messenger said. «By the good god, why not?» Maniakes demanded. He shouted for Antelope—or, if his warhorse wasn't ready, any other animal that could be saddled in a hurry. The gelding he ended up riding lacked Antelope's spark, but got him out to the wall fast enough to keep him from losing all of his temper. The messenger led him up to the outer wall, close by one of the siege towers. Immodios stood there. He pointed outward. «There he is, your Majesty. Do you see him? The tall, lean one prowling around with the Kubratoi?»
«I see him,» Maniakes answered. Tzikas stalked out beyond archery range. He wore a Makuraner caftan that billowed in the breeze, and had let his beard grow fuller than the neatly trimmed Videssian norm, but was unmistakable nonetheless. His build, as Immodios had said, set him apart from the stocky nomads who kept him company, but Maniakes thought he would have recognized him even among Makuraners, whose angular height came closer to matching his. All you had to do was wait till you saw him point at something, at anything. I want it radiated from every pore of his body.
A dart-thrower stood a few paces away, ready to fling its missiles at the Kubratoi when they attacked in earnest. Darts waited ready beside it, in wicker baskets that did duty for outsized quivers. It would hurl those darts farther than the strongest man could shoot a bow.
Maniakes' father had made sure Maniakes knew how to operate every sort of engine the Videssian army used. The Avtokrator could almost hear the elder Maniakes saying, «Learning doesn't do you any lasting harm, and every once in a while some piece of it—and you never know which one beforehand—will come in handy.»
After sketching a salute to his father, Maniakes remarked, «I make the range out to the son of a whore to be about a furlong and a half. Does that seem about right to you, Immodios?»
«Uh, aye, your Majesty,» Immodios replied. Though the question had caught him by surprise, he'd considered before he spoke. Maniakes approved of that.
He seized a dart, set it in the catapult's groove, and said, «Then perhaps you'll do me the honor of serving on the other windlass there. I don't know if we can hit him, but to the ice with me if I don't intend to try.»
Immodios blinked again, then worked the windlass with a will. For a range of a furlong and a half, you wanted fifteen revolutions of the wheel; more would wind the ropes too tight and send the dart too far, while fewer and it would fall short. The wooden frame of the catapult creaked under the building tension of the rope skeins.
The dart-thrower didn't point in quite the right direction. Maniakes used a handspike to muscle it toward Tzikas. He checked his aim with two pins driven into the frame parallel to the groove. Still not quite right. He levered the engine around a little further with the handspike, then grunted in satisfaction. Tzikas paid no attention to the activity of the wall. He was pointing to something at ground level, something to which the Kubratoi were paying rapt attention. Maniakes hoped they would go right on paying rapt attention to it. He looked over to Immodios. «Are we ready?»