Rhegorios gave him a glance respectful and resentful at the same toe. «Anyone would think we'd grown up together, or something like that,» he said. «How can I sneak anything past you? You know me too well. For that matter, how do you sneak anything past my sister? She knows you too well.»
«How do I try to sneak anything past Lysia?» Maniakes said. «Mostly I don't. It doesn't work well, for some reason. But that has nothing to do with whether we ought to sally against the Kubratoi.»
«I suppose not,» his cousin agreed. «But are we just going to sit here and let them pound on us?»
«That was exactly what I had in mind, as a matter of fact,» the Avtokrator said. «Whenever I've got in trouble, all through my reign, I've tried to do too much. I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to do as little as I can, and let the Kubratoi and Makuraners wear themselves out, banging their heads on our walls. That's why the walls went up in the first place.»
«What kind of battle plan is that?» Rhegorios said indignantly.
«A sensible one?» Maniakes suggested.
«Where's the glory?» Rhegorios demanded. «Where are the heroes parading down Middle Street singing songs of victory?»
«As for the heroes,» Maniakes said, «more of them will be left alive if we play the game cautiously. As for the glory, the Kubratoi and the Makuraners are welcome to it, for all of me. Now wait.» He held up a hand to check his cousin's expostulation. «Whoever wants glory for glory's sake can have it, as far as I'm concerned. If I can win the war by sitting here like a snail pulled back into its shell, I'll do that, and gladly.»
«Cold-blooded way to look at things,» Rhegorios said. Then, after a moment, he admitted, «Your father would tell me the same, though; I will say that much. Which leaves me with only one question: what does a snail do when somebody tries to smash in his shell?»
«That's simple,» Maniakes said. «He twists around and bites him from the inside.» Rhegorios went off, dissatisfied.
Maniakes' attitude toward warfare might well have been more typically Videssian than that of his cousin. Only the Imperial Guards, for instance, had a name and reputation stretching over generations. When the Avtokrator went out to the wall a few days later, then, he was surprised to find a stretch of it defended by a unit of stone-throwers decorated with graffiti proclaiming, the biting snails! don't crack our shells!
«Did my cousin put you up to this?» he demanded with mock severity.
«His highness the Sevastos might have mentioned it, your Majesty, but he didn't put us up to it, like,» their commanding officer said. «The lads and I, we liked the name, so we decided to wear it.»
«May your teeth be sharp, then,» Maniakes said, and the soldiers cheered.
As he walked along the walls, he realized all the defenders, not just the Biting Snails, were going to need sharp teeth. The Kubratoi were dragging their siege towers, one after another, into position for an assault on the city. They stood just beyond the range of the engines the Videssians had mounted on the outer wall.
Immodios was studying the towers, too, and not looking very happy while he did it. Maniakes consoled himself by remembering how seldom Immodios looked happy about anything. The officer said, «Your Majesty, I fear we're going to have a hard time stopping them or even slowing them down much before they reach the wall.»
«I think you're wrong,» Maniakes answered. «I think the darts and the stones and the fire we'll hurl at them from the wall will make sure they never reach it. I think most of them will burn up or be smashed before they get within bowshot of the wall.»
«If the Kubratoi had figured out siege towers on their own, your Majesty, I'd say you were likely to be right,» Immodios said. «They wouldn't build them strong enough. But the Makuraners know what they're doing, same as we do.»
«They just did the showing,» Maniakes said. «The Kubratoi did the building. They've never tried anything like this before. My bet is, they haven't built strong enough.»
«The lord with the great and good mind grant that you have the right of it,» Immodios said. He didn't sound as if he believed it.
He had reason to worry, too, as the Avtokrator soon discovered. Maniakes had even dared hope that the Kubratoi would try to use beasts of burden to haul the siege towers up close to the wall. The Biting Snails, the other dart– and stone-thrower crews, and the arches would have enjoyed targets to dream of, even if massacring beasts of burden was a stomach-turning business in and of itself. But Etzilios, perhaps having ignored one set of instructions from his Makuraner tutors, did not ignore two. No horses or mules ever came within range of the engines on the outer wall. The nomads led the animals away and disconnected the ropes with which they'd been harnessed. Then they herded ragged men—Videssian prisoners again—into the towers, treating them not much differently from the way they used any other beasts of burden. Kubrati warriors went into the towers, too, a few to make the prisoners propel mem forward, most for the assault on Videssos the city.
Very slowly, the towers began to advance. «Now we find out,» Maniakes said. To his dismay, the closer the towers got, the sturdier they looked.
When he said as much, Immodios nodded. «That's so, your Majesty,» he agreed. It wasn't quite I told you so, but it would do.
«Well, well,» Maniakes murmured. «How stupid was I?» He held up a hand before Immodios could speak. «Never mind. You don't have to answer that. In fact, I'd be happier if you didn't answer that.»
Whatever Immodios' opinions were, he dutifully kept them to himself. Foot by foot, the siege towers moved forward. When they came into range of the engines on the walls, the Videssians let fly with everything they had. Some of their darts did pierce the hide covering and shields on the front of the siege towers. Some, no doubt, pierced warriors and haulers in the towers. Such pinprick injuries, though, did little to make the Kubratoi give over their assault.
Stone-throwers hurled their missiles at the towers, too. They hit with loud crashes, but they bounced off without doing any visible damage. Maybe the Kubratoi had listened to the Makuraner engineers, after all. Instead of looking just somber, Immodios looked somber and vindicated. Maniakes did his best not to notice.
But the stone-throwers could throw more than stones. Their crews loaded them with jars full of a nasty mix of tallow and rock oil and naphtha and sulfur, then lighted the mix with torches before flinging it at the foe. Fire dripped down the fronts of the towers. The harsh smoke stank. When it got into Maniakes' eyes, it made them water and burn. Inhaling some, he coughed. «What vile stuff!» he said, coughing some more.
Fire the Kubratoi could not ignore, as they had the darts and stones. Some of them came up onto the tops of the towers and poured water down onto the flames. That did less good than they might have hoped. Instead of putting out the fires, the water only made them run faster down the fronts of the towers.
That sufficed, though, for the flames had trouble igniting the hides that faced the siege towers. Maybe the Kubratoi had soaked them to leave them wet and slimy and hard to burn. Whatever the reason, they did not catch fire. Inch by slow inch, the towers advanced.
Looking north and south, Maniakes spied seven or eight of them. Three moved on the Silver Gate, near which he stood. The others crawled singly toward the wall. Kubrati stone-throwers flung boulders at the outer wall and at the walkway atop it, making it hard and dangerous for the Videssians to concentrate their defenders where the attacks would come.
Maniakes bit his lip. Somewhere back at one of the Kubrati encampments, those Makuraner engineers had to be hugging themselves with glee. The towers were doing everything they wanted, which meant they were doing everything Maniakes didn't want them to do.