As things were, the quartermasters attached to the Videssian army had a harder time keeping it fed than they'd expected. «The cursed peasants get word we're on the way, your Majesty,» one of them said indignantly, «and they light out for the nearest hills they can find. And what's worse, they lead all their livestock with them and bury their grain in the ground in jars. How are we supposed to find it then?»
«Magic?» Maniakes suggested.
The quartermaster shook his head. «We've tried it, your Majesty. It does no good. Passion is magic's foe. When the peasants hide their food, they aren't thinking kind thoughts about the people from whom they're hiding it—» «I wonder why that is,» Maniakes said.
«I don't know,» the quartermaster answered, showing he was better suited to counting sacks of beans than to understanding the people who grew them. «The net result, though, is that we haven't got as much as I wish we did.»
«Have we got enough?» Maniakes asked. «Oh, aye, a sufficiency,» the quartermaster sniffed, «but we should do better than that.» Even in matters of supply, he wanted to turn a profit.
«A sufficiency will, uh, suffice,» Maniakes said. «After all, if everything goes as we want, after this campaign—which isn't even a fighting campaign, at that—we'll have the westlands back. If we can't get a surplus with the whole Empire restored, that will be time enough for worry.» The quartermaster's nod was reluctant, but it was a nod.
Everything went smoothly till the army came to Patrodoton, a good-sized village a couple of days' ride east of the Eriza, a south-flowing tributary of the Arandos, the biggest river in the westlands. Patrodoton, though not large enough to boast a city wall, had hosted a Makuraner garrison, a couple of dozen men who'd made sure the local peasants gave a share of their crops and animals, and the handful of local merchants a share of their money, to support the Makuraner occupation.
Getting the garrison to leave Patrodoton was not the problem. The Makuraners had already pulled out by the time Maniakes' outriders neared the village. Three of the occupiers had married Videssian women, apparently intending to settle down in the area for good. Two of those brides headed back toward Makuran with their husbands, and the father of one of them left with the garrison, too. That was the start of the problem, right there.
The village ypepoptes, or headman, was a gray-bearded miller named Gesios. After performing a proskynesis before Maniakes, he said, «It's a good thing you're here, your Majesty, to settle all the treason that's gone on in this town while the heathen Makuraners were running things. If Optatos hadn't run off with Optila and the heathen she gave herself to, I expect you'd already have shortened him by a head. He was the worst, I reckon, but he's a long way from the only one.»
«Wait.» Maniakes held up a warning hand. «I tell you right now, a lot of this I don't and won't want to hear about. Once the westlands are in our hands again, we're all going to have to live with one another. If someone turned his neighbors over to the Makuraners to be killed, that's treason, and I'll listen to it. If people went on quietly living their lives, I'm going to let them keep on doing it. Have you got that?»
«Aye, your Majesty.» Gesios sounded more than disappointed. He sounded angry. «What about the priest, then? These past years, Oursos has been preaching the worst nonsense you ever did hear, about Vaspur the Firstborn and all sorts of heresy, enough to make your beard curl. Boiler boys made him do it.»
Maniakes didn't bother mentioning that his own father still clung to the Vaspurakaner beliefs that Makuraners had tried to impose on Videssos. What he did say was, «Now that the boiler boys are gone, will the holy Oursos return to the orthodox faith? If he will, no one will punish him for what he preached under duress.»
«Oh, he will,» Gesios said. «He's already done it, matter of fact. Thing of it is, though, he's been preaching the other way for so long now, about one in four has decided it's the right way to believe.»
You could plunge a burning torch into a bucket of water. That would put out the fire. What it wouldn't do was restore the torch to the way it had been before the fire touched it. And having the Makuraners pull out of the westlands would not restore them to what they had been, either. They'd been tormented for years. They Wouldn't heal overnight.
«Have the holy Oursos talk with them,» the Avtokrator said with as much patience as he could find. «The good god willing, he'll bring them back to orthodoxy in a while. And if he doesn't—well, that's something to worry about later. Right now, I've got more to worry about than I can hope to handle, and as for later—» He laughed, though he didn't think Gesios saw the joke.
Not only he, but also Rhegorios and nearly every other officer above the level of troop leader, was bombarded with claims from the locals while the army spent the night outside Patrodoton. The officers dismissed a lot of claims out of hand—which meant Maniakes found out about them only afterward, and was sure he never found out about them all—but some got passed up the line till they came to him.
Next morning, he looked at the villagers, all of them in the best tunics that were too often the worst and only tunics they owned. «I am not going to punish anyone for fraternizing with the Makuraners,» he said. «I wish that hadn't happened, but the boiler boys were here for years because we were so weak. So—if those are the complaints you have to make, go home now, because I will not hear them.»
An old man and his wife left. Everyone else stayed. Maniakes listened to charges and countercharges and to peasants calling one another liars till long after he should have been in bed. But that was the price that came with the return of Videssian authority, and he was Videssian authority personified.
The hardest and ugliest case involved a man named Pousaios and his family. What made it even harder and uglier than it would have been otherwise was that he was obviously the richest man in Patrodoton. By the standards of Videssos the city, he would have been a small fish, but Patrodoton was farther from Videssos the city than the few days' travel getting from one to the other took. That had been true before the Makuraners seized the village, and was all the truer now.
Everyone loudly insisted Pousaios had got his wealth by licking the occupiers' boots or some other, more intimate, portions of their persons. As loudly, the prosperous peasant denied it. «I didn't do anything the rest of you didn't,» he insisted.
«No?» Gesios questioned. «What about those two troopers—our troopers—who rode into town in the middle of the night six or eight years ago? Who told the Makuraners which house they were hiding in? Who's living in that house today, because it's finer than the one he used to have?»
Pousaios said, «Blemmydes was my wife's cousin. Why shouldn't I have moved into his house after he died?»
That produced fresh outcry. «He didn't just die,» Gesios said shrilly. «A boiler boy killed him, and nobody ever saw those two soldiers again.»
«I don't know anything about it,» Pousaios insisted. «By Phos the good god, I swear I don't. Nobody ever proved a thing, and the reason's simple: nobody can prove a thing, because there's nothing to prove. Your Majesty, you can't let them do this to me!»
Maniakes bit his lip. The case cried out for slow, careful investigation, but that was the last thing the people of Patrodoton wanted. They were out for vengeance. The question was, did they deserve to get it?
Since he couldn't be sure, not on what he'd heard so far, he didn't give it to them, saying, «I'll be gone from here tomorrow, but from this day forth the land here is under Videssian rule once more. I swear by the good god—» He sketched the sun-circle over his heart. «—to send in a team of mages to learn the truth here by sorcery. When they do, I shall act as their findings dictate, with double punishment for the side that turns out to have been lying to me.»