Smiling, Maniakes made his request: «Give me Tzikas. You have no need to withhold him from me now. Since he's Sharbaraz's creature, you ought to be all the gladder to yield him up, in fact.»
«Ah.» Abivard relaxed. «Yes, I could do that in good conscience.»
He said no more. He had already shown he spoke Videssian well, and could get across subtle shades of meaning in the language of the Empire. Taking note of that, Maniakes said, «You could yield him up, eh? Not, you can yield him up?»
«Just so.» Abivard spread his hands in angry regret. «As soon as I learned Sharbaraz had betrayed me, I realized his protection over the traitor mattered no more—the reverse, as you say. One of the first things I did, even before I announced to the assembled soldiers what Sharbaraz had done, was to send two men to seize him. I would have dealt with him myself, you understand. The two men did not come back. I have not seen Tzikas since that day.»
«Did he slay them?» Rhegorios asked.
«Not so far as I know,» Abivard answered. «I meant exactly what I said—the two men did not come back. Neither did Tzikas. The only thing I have thought of is that he and they escaped together.»
«That is not good,» Maniakes said, one of his better understatements since assuming the imperial throne. «If he's escaped with them—»
«Very likely he's on his way to Sharbaraz, to let him know I'm on my way, too,» Abivard broke in. Maniakes started to glare: how dared this fellow interrupt him? But if Abivard was a sovereign, too, he was not interrupting a superior, only an equal, which might have been rude but wasn't lese majesty. Abivard went on, «I've sent riders after the three of them. The God willing, they'll pull them down.»
«And if they don't?» Maniakes asked. «Tzikas, may Skotos torment him in the ice forevermore, has got out of more trouble than anyone in his right mind would ever get into.»
Abivard shrugged. He waved in the direction of the bearded men in caftans staring in at him from beyond the thin cordon of Maniakes' Imperial Guards. «This is the field force of Makuran. It is, I think, the finest army we have ever put in the field. Do you deny it, Maniakes Avtokrator?»
«I'd be a fool if I did,» Maniakes answered. «It's taken me my whole reign to build my army up to the point where it can stand against your cursed boiler boys.» He finally had troops who could do that, too, but not so many of them as Abivard had gathered here.
«Just so,» Abivard said, waving again. «These are the best warriors of all Makuran. Since that is so, where will Sharbaraz Pimp of Pimps come up with their like? We may start the fight against him a little farther east than otherwise, but what of it?» «Something to that,» Maniakes admitted.
«Something,» Rhegorios said, «but not enough. If you're not worried about what Tzikas is doing or where he's going, why did you send men after him?»
«Because I wanted him dead,» Abivard snapped, sounding very much like a man who would be King of Kings. «And,» he added grudgingly, «because with Tzikas and Sharbaraz, you never know, not for certain, not till too late.»
«I certainly found that out about Sharbaraz,» Maniakes said with feeling.
«He was a good man, or as good a man as a pampered prince could be, when he got his throne back a dozen or so years ago. Abivard sighed. «The court and the eunuchs and the women's quarters all worked together to ruin him.»
«He had something to do with it, too—what he is, I mean.» Maniakes said. «My court is as stifling as the one in Mashiz; you've seen my eunuch chamberlains, and how many women you can choose from doesn't matter all that much, I don't think.»
«You give me hope,» Abivard said.
«Take it where you find it,» Maniakes said. «Plenty of times when I've had to look for it under flat stones myself, so to speak. But Tzikas, now… whatever Tzikas does, it will be for himself first. As long as you understand that, you have a portrait of the man.»
«This I have seen with my own eyes, I assure you,» Abivard answered. For the second time, he waved out to the men of the Makuraner field army. «Do you want to say something to them? They'd like to hear you, I think. The times we've met before haven't been times for talk.»
«Haven't been for talk, indeed.» Maniakes snorted; Abivard had an unsuspected gift for understatement himself. «My Makuraner is only fair at best.» Abivard shrugged, as if to say, So what? Maniakes took a deep breath and raised his voice: «Men of Makuran!» Silence rippled outward from the warriors closest to the Imperial Guards. «Men of Makuran!» Maniakes called again. «For years, I have pursued and chased after peace. I fought, but I never wanted this war. Sharbaraz forced it on me—and on you. Now, then, let us take up weapons against each other no more. Let us welcome the peace we have found. Let us put out the flame of war, before it burns us all.»
He wondered how that would go over. The Makuraners were proud and fierce; they might take the longing for peace as an admission of weakness. When they stayed quiet after he finished speaking, he feared that was what they had done.
Then the cheering started. The Makuraners pressed harder on the Videssian guards than they had when tension curdled the air. They pressed so hard, they broke through, which they might not have done so fast had they and the guardsmen used weapons against one another. They swarmed toward Maniakes, Rhegorios, and Abivard.
Maniakes wore at his side the sword he commonly carried into battle. He did not draw it: what point to drawing it? With so many Makuraners bearing down on him, if one of them was a murderer, the fellow would have his way. If Tzikas had planned for this very moment, Maniakes was in peril.
No blows came. Tzikas, never popular himself, had apparently failed to imagine an outpouring of affection from the Makuraners for a Videssian Avtokrator. Maniakes had trouble thinking him obtuse for that. He'd never imagined such a thing, either.
A Makuraner shouting his name grabbed him around the waist. The fellow was not trying to wrestle him to the ground. Instead, grunting, he hoisted Maniakes up onto his shoulders. Once up there, the Avtokrator discovered that Rhegorios and Abivard had been similarly elevated. The cheering got louder than ever.
The Makuraners passed the two Videssians and their own almost King of Kings back and forth among themselves. It would have been scandalous if… Maniakes shook his head. It was scandalous, but he, like the soldiers, was having too much fun to care. Presently, he discovered he was riding atop one of his own Haloga guards rather than a Makuraner. «Put me down!» he shouted, trying to make himself heard through the din.
The Haloga shook his big blond head. «No, your Majesty,» he boomed in slow, sonorous Videssian. «You need this. Soldiers need this.» As if Maniakes weighed nothing, he tossed him through the air to a couple of Makuraners who caught him and kept him from smashing to the ground below.
They, in turn, threw him to some of their friends. He nearly did fall then; one of the Makuraners grabbed him around the waist in the nick of time. «Careful, Amashpiit!» exclaimed another Makuraner nearby. «Don't drop him.»
«I didn't,» Amashpiit answered. «I won't.» The fellow who'd warned him helped him lift Maniakes up above them once more. Then the two of them—and other eager, shouting, grinning Makuraners—propelled the Avtokrator through the air again.
In the course of his wild peregrinations, he passed close enough to Rhegorios to yell, «If Kameas saw me now, he'd fall over dead.» His cousin laughed—or so he thought, though the crowd swept him away almost before he could be sure.
At last, when he was certain every boiler boy had bounced him through the air at least one and most of them two, three, or four times, his feet touched the ground. The couple of men closest to him, instead of seizing him and hurling him up onto yet another bumpy road, helped straighten him. «I thank you,» he told them, most sincerely.