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When the sun rose the next morning, Abivard proved as good as his word. He mustered his army, admiring the way the men held their spirit and discipline in the face of the frightening unknown. Maybe, he thought, things will be different this time. The sun is in our face already. Videssian magic often has a lot to do with the sun. If we're already moving toward it, maybe they won't be able to shift us away.

He thought about spreading that idea among the soldiers but in the end decided against it Had he been more confident he was right, he might have chosen differently. He knew too well, though, that he was only guessing.

«Forward!» he shouted, raising a hand to his eyes to peer into the morning glare to try to see what the Videssians on the eastern bank of the canal were doing. The answer seemed to be, Not much. Maniakes did not have his army drawn up in battle array to meet the Makuraners. A few squadrons of cavalry trotted back and forth; that was all.

«Forward!» Abivard shouted again, and urged his horse down into the muddy water of the canal.

He kept his eye on the sun. As long as I ride straight toward it, everything should be all right, he told himself. The canal wasn't that wide. Surely he and his followers could not reverse themselves and go back up onto the bank from which they'd started: not without noticing. No, they couldn't do that… could they?

Closer and closer came the eastern bank. The day, like all summer days in the land of the Thousand Cities, promised to be scorchingly hot. Already the sun glared balefully into Abivard's face. He blinked. Yes, the far bank was very close now. But the bank up onto which his dripping horse floundered was the western one, with the sun now unaccountably at his back.

And here came his army after him, storming up to overwhelm the place they'd just left. Their shouts of amazement and anger and despair said everything that needed saying. No, almost everything: the other thing that needed saying was that he and his army weren't going to be able to cross that cursed canal-the canal that might as well have been literally cursed-till they figured out and overcame whatever sorcery Maniakes was using to thwart them.

Glumly, Abivard ordered the army to reestablish the camp it had just struck. He spent the next couple of hours pacing through it, doing his best to lift the soldiers' sagging spirits. He knew that best would have been better had his own spirits been anywhere but at the bottom of the sea. But he did not have to show the men that, and he didn't

At last he went back to his own pavilion. He didn't know exactly what he'd do there: getting drunk seemed as good a plan as any, since he couldn't come to grips with the Videssians. But when he got to the tent, he found Bozorg and Panteles waiting for him.

«I think I have the answer, eminent sir!» Panteles exclaimed in high excitement.

«I think this Videssian is out of his mind, lord: utterly mad,» Bozorg declared, folding his arms across his chest. «I think he wants only to waste your time, to deceive you, and to give the victory to Maniakes.»

«I think you are as jealous as an ugly girl watching her betrothed talking to her pretty sister,» Panteles retorted-not a comparison a Makuraner was likely to use, not in a land of sequestered women, but a telling one even so.

«I think I'm going to knock your heads together,» Abivard said judiciously. «Tell me whatever you have to tell me, Panteles. I'll judge whether it's trickery. If it is, I'll do as I think best.»

Panteles bowed. «As you say, eminent sir. Here.» He displayed a length of leather about as long as Abivard's forearm: most likely a piece cut from a belt. Joining the ends, he held them together with thumb and forefinger, then pointed to the resulting circle with his other hand. «How many sides does the strap have, eminent sir?»

«How many sides?» Abivard frowned. «What foolishness is this?» Maybe Bozorg had known what he was talking about. «It has two, of course: an inside and an outside.»

«And a strap across the Videssian's backside,» Bozorg added. But Panteles seemed unperturbed. «Just so,» he agreed. «You can trace it with your finger if you like.» He held the leather circle out so Abivard could do just that Abivard dutifully did, hoping against hope Panteles wasn't talking to hear himself talk, as Videssians often did. «Now-» Panteles said.

Bozorg broke in: «Now, lord, he shows you idiotic nonsense. By the God, he should be made to answer for his foolishness with the lash!»

Anything that could so anger the Makuraner mage was either idiotic nonsense, as he'd said, or exactly the opposite. «As I said, I will judge,» Abivard told Bozorg. He turned to Panteles. «Go on. Show me this great discovery of yours, or whatever it is, and explain how it ties up all our troubles like a length of twine around a stack of cured hides.»

«It's not my discovery, and I don't know if it ties up our troubles or not,» Panteles said. Oddly, Abivard liked him more for that, not less. The more spectacular a claim, the less likely it was to be justified.

Panteles held up the length of leather once more and again shaped it into a continuous band. This time, though, he gave it a half twist before joining the two ends together between his thumb and index finger. Bozorg gestured as if to ward off the evil eye, hissing, «Trickery.»

Panteles took no notice either of him or of Abivard's hand upraised in warning. The Videssian wizard said, «This was discovered in the Sorcerers' Collegium in Videssos the city some years ago by a certain Voimios. I don't know whether it's magic or not in any formal sense of the word. Maybe it's only trickery, as the learned Bozorg claims.» Like any Videssian worth his salt, he used irony as a stiletto. «Whatever it is, it's interesting. How many sides does the strap have now?» He held it up so Abivard could trace out his answer as he had before.

«What do you mean, how many sides does it have?» Abruptly, Abivard regretted doubting Bozorg. «It has to have two sides, the same as it did before.»

«Does it?» Panteles' smile was mild, benign. «Show me with your finger, eminent sir, if you'd be so kind.»

With the air of someone humoring a madman, Abivard ran his finger around the outside of the strap. A moment later, he would run it around the inside, and a moment after that he would give Panteles what he deserved for making him the butt of what had to be a foolish joke.

But in tracing the length of leather with his finger, he somehow found himself back where he'd begun after having touched every finger's breadth of it. «Wait a moment,» he said sharply. «Let me try that again.» This time he paid closer attention to his work. But paying closer attention didn't seem to matter. Again he traced the entire length of leather and returned to his starting point.

«Do you see, eminent sir?» Panteles said as Abivard stared down at his own finger as if it had betrayed him. «Voimios' strap-that's the name it took on at the Sorcerers' Collegium- has only one side, not two.»

«That's impossible,» Abivard said. Then he looked at his finger again. It looked as if it knew better.

«You just made a continuous line from your starting point back to your starting point,» Panteles said politely. «How could you do that if you went from one side to another? You just got there backward and were taken by surprise.»

As Panteles had doubtless meant them to, the words hung in the air. «Wait,» Abivard said. «Let me think. You're trying to tell me Maniakes' wizards have turned the canal into a strap of Voimios-is that what you called it?»

«Close enough, eminent sir,» Panteles said.

«Drivel!» Bozorg said. He snatched the leather strap out of Panteles' hand and threw it to the ground. «It's a fraud, a fake, a trick. There's no magic whatever to it, only deception.»

«What do you have to say to that?» Abivard asked Panteles.

«Eminent sir, I never claimed there was any magic in Voimios' strap,» the Videssian wizard answered. «I offered it as analogy, not proof. Besides-» He stooped and picked up the length of leather Bozorg had thrown down. «-this is a flat thing. To twist it so it has only one side, all you need do is this.» He gave it the deft half twist that turned it baffling. «But if you were going to make it so that something with length and width and height turned back on itself the same way, the only twist I can imagine to do such a thing is a magical one.»

Trying again and again to cross the canal and failing had already done more strange things to Abivard's imagination than he'd ever wanted. He turned to Bozorg. «Have you got a different idea how the Videssians could have turned us back on ourselves?»

«No, lord,» Bozorg admitted. «But the one this Videssian puts forward is ridiculous on the face of it. His precious Voimios probably got some of his horse's harness on poorly, then spent the next twenty years cadging cups of wine on the strength of it.»

«Are you denying what Panteles says is true, or are you only disparaging it?» Abivard asked pointedly.

The question had sharp teeth. Bozorg might have been furious, but he was no fool. He said, «What he said about the strap may be true, I suppose, no matter how absurd it sounds. But how could anyone take seriously this nonsense about twisting a canal back on itself?»

«I'd say some thousands of soldiers take the notion seriously, or would if they heard it,» Panteles shot back. «It happened to them, after all.»

«So it did,» Abivard said. «I was one of them, and thinking of it still makes me shiver.» He looked from Panteles to Bozorg and back again. «Do you think the two of you, working together-» He put special stress on those words. «-can find out whether what happened to the canal is the magical equivalent of a Voimios strap?»

Panteles nodded. A moment later, more grudgingly, Bozorg did, too. Panteles said, «Making a magic of this sort cannot have been easy for Maniakes' wizards. If the traces of the sorcery linger on this plane, we shall find them.»

«And if you do?» Abivard asked. «What then?»

«Untwisting the canal should be easier for us than twisting it was for them-if that's what they did,» Panteles answered. «Restoring a natural condition takes far less sorcery than changing away from what is natural.»

«Mm, I can see the sense in that,» Abivard said. «How soon will you be able to find out if Maniakes has turned the canal into a strap of Voimios?»

Bozorg stirred. Abivard looked his way. He said, «Lord, do you feel easy about using a Videssian to fight the Videssians?»

Abivard had been wrestling with that question since he had realized magic was holding him away from Maniakes' army. He'd worried about it less since Panteles had started his elaborate theoretical explanation: any man dedicated enough to put so much effort into figuring out what might have gone into a spell wouldn't be content unless he could have a hand in unraveling it, too… would he?

«How say you, Panteles?» Abivard asked. «Eminent sir, I say I never imagined turning a Voimios strap from an amusement into a piece of creative sorcery,» Panteles answered. «To understand how that's done and then to figure out a spell to counter it-I'm lucky to be living in such exciting times, when anything seems possible.»

His eyes gleamed. Abivard recognized the expression on his pinched, narrow face. Soldiers with that exalted look would ride to their deaths without flinching; minstrels who had it crafted songs that lived for generations. Panteles would go where knowledge and energy and inspiration took him and would pursue his target with the eagerness of a bridegroom going to his bride. «I think it will be all right,» Abivard said to Bozorg. «And if it isn't all right, I trust your skill to hold disaster away from us.»

«Lord, you may honor me beyond my worth,» the Makuraner mage murmured.

«I don't think so,» Abivard said heartily. «And as I've told you, I expect you to work with him. If his idea turns out to be wrong-headed after all, I'll need to hear that from you so we can figure out what to try next.»

He hoped with all his heart that Panteles and Bozorg would be able to find a way around-or through-Maniakes' magic. If they could, the sorcery would be a one-time wonder: if not, every time Makuraners tried to clash with Videssians, they would find themselves going back the way from which they had come. That would be a worse disaster than defeat in battle.

«What one mage has done, another may undo,» Panteles declared. To that Bozorg assented with a cautious nod.

«Finding out what the mage has done can be interesting, though,» Abivard remarked.

«Truth, eminent sir. I do not know if I have proposed the correct explanation, either,» Panteles said. «One of the many things I need to learn-»

«Don't just stand there.» Abivard realized he was being unfair, but urgency counted for more. «Go find out what you can by whatever means you can. I intend to send riders up and down the canal-provided they don't think they're riding north when they're riding south or the other way around. If we can force a crossing somewhere else-»

«Then the notion of the Voimios strap becomes moot,» Panteles interrupted.

Abivard shook his head. «Not quite. Oh, we might be able to get around it this one time, but it would keep on being a trick Maniakes has and we don't. He could use it again, say, in a mountain pass where we didn't have any choice about how we tried to get at him. If we can, I want us to have a way to beat this spell so it doesn't stay in the Avtokrator's arsenal, if you take my meaning.»

Both Panteles and Bozorg bowed as if to say they not only understood but agreed. Abivard waved them off to begin their investigation. At his shouted orders, horsemen did gather to ride off up and down the canal. But before they set out, one of them asked, «Uh, lord, how are we to know whether the spell still holds?»

Abivard wished he hadn't asked that. Sighing, he answered, «The only way I can think of is to ride out into the canal and try to cross it. If you do, you've passed the point where the Videssians' magic works. If you don't-»

One of the riders committed the enormity of interrupting the army commander «If we don't-if we come back where we started from-and we haven't gone crazy before then, that's when we know.»

The other horsemen nodded. The fellow had made a pretty fair joke, or what would have been a pretty fair joke under other circumstances, but none of them laughed or even smiled. Neither did Abivard; nor did he stand on his dignity or rank. He said, «That magic is plenty to drive anyone mad, so my best guess is that we've all gone mad already, and getting bitten by it one more time won't do any harm.»

«You have a good way of looking at things, lord,» said the fellow who had interrupted him. He rode south along the canal. Some men followed him; others headed north.

Was it a good way of looking at things? Abivard didn't know. If Maniakes' magic extended a good distance up and down the canal, some of those men were liable to have to endure having their world twisted several times, not once alone. You could grow used to almost anything… but to that?

Something else occurred to him: was the canal folded back on itself for the Videssians, too? If they tried to cross from east to west to attack him, what would happen? Would they make it over to his side of the canal, or would they, too, end up riding out onto the bank from which they'd departed? The question was so intriguing, he almost summoned Bozorg and Panteles so he could ask it. All that restrained him was the thought that they already had enough to worry about.

And so did he. The riders he'd sent north along the canal came back perhaps sooner than he'd expected with the news that the spell, whether it was some larger version of Voimios' strap or not, extended in that direction as far as they'd traveled. They hadn't traveled so far as he'd hoped, but the fear on their faces said they'd gone into the canal as often as they could stand.

Men who'd ridden south began coming back to Abivard's camp, too, not all at once like those who'd gone the other way but a few at a time, some going back into the canal after others could bear it no more. Whether they came soon or late, they had the same news as the men who had traveled north: when they tried to go east over the canal, they found themselves unable.

Last of all to return was the fellow who had suggested that going into the canal would make a man crazy. By the time he came back, the sun was setting in the west. Abivard had begun to wonder whether he'd gone into the canal and never come out.

He shook his fist at the sun, saying, «I've seen that thing too many times-may it drop into the Void. I tried to ride away from it a dozen times, maybe more, this afternoon, and I ended up coming right back at it every one of them. Sorry lord; that spell goes on a long way south.»

«No cause for you to be sorry,» Abivard answered. «I'd call you a hero for braving the canal more than anyone else did.»

«A hero?» The rider shook his head. «I'll tell you what I'd call me, and that's a bloody fool. By your leave, lord, I'll go off and polish my armor-keep it from rusting as best I can, eh?» Abivard nodded permission. Sketching a salute, the soldier strode off.

Abivard muttered something foul under his breath. Maniakes' mages could certainly hold the spell in place for half a day's ride, or perhaps a bit less, to either side of his own position. That meant that shifting camp wasn't likely to do much good, because the Videssians were liable either to move or to extend the spell to his new position.

If he couldn't go around the twisted canal, he'd have to go through it. Going through it meant beating Maniakes' magic. Between them, Bozorg and Panteles would have to come up with some answers.

Summoning them to his tent, Abivard said, «Can you cut through the spell and let us cross?»

«Cutting a Voimios strap is less easy than it sounds, eminent sir,» Panteles said. «When you do cut one lengthwise, do you know what you get?»

«I was going to say two thinner ones, but that would be too simple and obvious, wouldn't it?» Abivard said, and Panteles nodded. «All right, what do you get?» Abivard asked. «A bowl of oxtail soup? Three arkets and a couple of coppers? A bad case of the itch?»

Panteles gave him a reproachful look; maybe mighty Makuraner marshals, to his way of thinking, weren't allowed to be absurd. He reached into a pouch he wore on his belt and pulled out a Voimios strap made from thin leather and sewn together at the ends so he didn't need to hold them between his long, thin, agile thumb and forefinger. «See for yourself, eminent sir, and you will better understand the difficulty we face.»

«All right, I will.» Abivard drew a sharp dagger, poked it through the leather, and began to cut. He worked slowly, carefully, methodically; a pair of shears would have been better for the job, but he had none. When he got the sharp strap cut nearly all the way around, he thought Panteles had been lying to him, for it did look as if it might split in two, as a simple ring would have. But then he made the last cut, and exclaimed in surprise: he still had one twisted strap, but twice as long and half as wide as it had been before.

«This shows some of the complications we face,» Panteles said. «Some means of countering the magic are caught up in its twists and prove to be of no use against it.»

«Yes, I see,» Abivard said. «This is what happens when you cut with the spell. But when you do this-» He cut the strap across instead of lengthwise."-things look easier.» He handed Panteles the simple length of leather.

The wizard took it and looked at it thoughtfully. «Yes, eminent sir, that is the effect we are trying to create. I shall do everything in my power to imitate the elegance of your solution.» He rolled up the strap into a tight little cylinder, put it back in his belt pouch, and went away.

Abivard awaited results with growing impatience. Every day he and his army stayed stuck on the western side of the canal was another day in which Maniakes had free rein in the east. Maniakes had done enough-too much-damage even when Abivard had opposed him. Without opposition…

For a wonder, both Panteles and Bozorg looked pleased with themselves. «We can break this spell, lord,» Bozorg said to Abivard.

Panteles shook his head. «No, eminent sir,» he said. «Breaking it is the wrong way to express what we do. But we can, I think, cut across it as you did with the Voimios strap a few days ago. That will produce the desired effect, or so we believe.»

«I say breaking is a better way to describe what we do,» Bozorg said. He and Panteles glared at each other.

«I don't care what you call it or how you describe it,» Abivard said. «So long as your spell-or whatever it is-works, names don't matter. Argue all you like about them-later.»

A few Videssian horsemen still patrolled the eastern bank of the canal-not so many now, for Maniakes must have concluded that his spell was keeping Abivard trapped on the other side. At first the Avtokrator's disposition of his army had been cautious, but now he went about the business of destruction as if Abivard and his men were no longer anywhere near.

Maybe we'll give him a surprise, Abivard thought. Or maybe we'll just end up here again, where we started Have to find out, though. That's the worst thing that can happen, and how are we worse off if it does?

Panteles and Bozorg began to chant, the one in Videssian and the other in the Makuraner language. Bozorg sprinkled sparkling crystals into a bowl of water, which turned bright yellow. Abivard looked out to the canal. The water there did not turn bright yellow but remained muddy brown.

Panteles, chanting still, held a knife over a small fire of fragrant wood till the blade glowed red. Then he plunged it into the bowl of yellow water. A hiss and a puff of strong-smelling steam rose from the water. Still holding the blade in his right hand, he took from his belt pouch a Voimios strap like the one he had given to Abivard to cut lengthwise.

He called on Phos. At the same time, either to complement or to confound his invocation, Bozorg called on the God through the Prophets Four. Panteles took the knife and cut the twisted strap of leather with it-cut it clean across, as Abivard had done, so that it became a plain strap once more, not one with the peculiar properties the Voimios strap displayed.

Abivard looked out toward the canal again. He didn't know what he would see. He didn't know if he would see anything. Maybe the spell would produce no visible effect. Maybe it wouldn't work-that was always possible, too.

Bozorg and Panteles stood as if they didn't know whether the spell was working, either. Watching them, Abivard forgot about the canal for a moment. When Panteles gave a sharp gasp, he stared at the Videssian, not at the muddy ditch. Then the Videssian mage pointed to it.

The surface of the canal roiled and bubbled. That was how it began. Slowly, slowly, over minutes, the water in the canal pulled away from itself: that was how Abivard described it to himself afterward. When the process was done, the muddy bottom of the canal lay exposed to the sun-it was as if someone had taken a knife to the waterway and cut it in two.

«The law of similarity,» Panteles said in Videssian.

«Like yields like,» Bozorg said in the Makuraner tongue-two ways of putting the same thought into words.

«Come on!» Abivard shouted to his warriors, who gaped at the gap in the canal. «Now we can reach the Videssians. Now we can make them pay for turning us the wrong way time after time.» He sprang onto his horse. «Are we going to let them get away with what they did to us, or are we going to punish them?»

«Punish!» the Makuraner soldiers howled, savage as a pack of wolves on a cold winter night. Abivard had to boot his horse hard to make sure he entered the canal first. The going was slow, for the mud was thick and slimy and pulled at the horse's legs. But the beast went on.

In the water piled up to either side of the muddy, stinking canal bottom, Abivard saw a fish. It stared out at him, mouth opening and closing, as if it were a stupid old man. He wondered what it thought of him and then whether it thought at all.

Up toward the eastern bank of the canal he rode. Despite the magic of Panteles and Bozorg, he still feared he would somehow end up back on the west side of the canal again. But he didn't.

Floundering and then gaining steadiness, his horse carried him up onto the eastern side at last.

Had the Videssian soldiers there wanted to make a fight of it, they might well have prevented his army from gaining a lodgment. The opening the two mages had made in the canal was not very wide, and only a few horses could get through it at any one time. A determined stand might have held up the whole Makuraner force.

But the Videssians, who had seemed taken aback by the wizards' success in breaking or breaking through their spell, also seemed startled that the Makuraners were exploiting that success so vigorously. Instead of staying and trying to hold back Abivard and his men, they rode off as fast as their horses would carry them. Maybe they were taking Maniakes the news of what had just happened. Had Abivard been Maniakes, he would have been less than delighted to see them come. As things were, he was delighted to see them go.

Later, he wished he had sent men straight after them. At the moment he was just glad he and his followers wouldn't have to fight them. Instead of pursuit, what he thought about was getting as many men across the canal as he could before either the sorcery Bozorg and Panteles had cobbled together or the two men themselves collapsed.

The bulk of the army did get across before Panteles, who had been swaying like a tree in a high wind, toppled to the ground. As he did, the suspended water in the canal came together with a wet slap. Some of the foot soldiers who were caught in it drowned; more, though, struggled forward and crawled out onto the eastern bank, wet and dripping but alive.

At first Abivard and his companions were so busy helping them to dry land, he had no time for thought. Then he realized the soldiers were reaching the eastern bank, not being thrown back to the west. The spell the Videssian and Makuraner mages had used, though vanished now, had left the canal permanently untwisted. It was, in short, as it had been before Maniakes' wizards had begun meddling with it.

By then Bozorg and some of the other men still on the western bank of the canal had flipped water into Panteles' face. Free of the burden of having to maintain the spell, the Videssian wizard managed to stay on his feet and even rejoin Abivard on the eastern side of the waterway.

«Well done!» Abivard greeted him.

«For which I thank you, eminent sir,» Panteles answered. «The relationship between the Voimios strap and the nature of the spell laid on the canal did indeed prove to be close to that which I had envisioned. This conformation between theory and practice is particularly satisfying on those rare occasions when it may be observed.»

«You were right,» Bozorg said. «You were right, you were right, you were right. By the Prophets Four, I admit it.» He spoke as a man might when publicly paying off a bet.

Panteles peered around. Now that the Makuraner army had reached it, the eastern bank of the canal seemed little different from the western: flat, muddy land with a lot of soldiers scattered across it. The Videssian wizard turned to Abivard. «Having gained this side of the canal, eminent sir, what will you do next?»

It was a good question and not one Abivard could answer on the spur of the moment. For the past several days getting across the canal had so consumed him, he'd lost track of the reasons for vhich he'd sought to do so. One thing, however, remained clear: «I am going to hunt Maniakes down and fight him when I do.»

Romezan had never let that escape his mind. Already, with the last of the soldiers across the canal, still muddy and soaked, he was shouting, «Form up, the God curse you. Don't stand around there wasting time. The Videssian patrols rode off to the southeast. You think they went that way by accident? In a horse's pizzle they did! If that's not where we'll find Maniakes, I'll eat my scabbard, metal fittings and all.»

Abivard thought he was right. Maniakes hadn't quite taken for granted the Makuraners' inability to cross the canal, but he had left behind a force too small to fight their whole army, especially after failing to fight when Abivard and the first few men following him had floundered up onto the bank the Videssians had been holding without effort. If they weren't going to fight, the only useful service they could perform was warning the Avtokrator. To do that, they'd have to go where he was. Abivard's army would follow them there.

He raised his voice, adding his outcry to Romezan's relentless shouts. The soldiers responded more slowly than he would have wanted but not, he supposed, more slowly than was to be expected after the trouble they'd had reaching the eastern bank of the canal.

And as the men shook themselves out into a line of march, excitement gradually began to seep into them. They cheered Abivard when he rode up and down the line. «Wasn't for you, lord, we'd still be stuck over there,» somebody called. That made the cheers come louder.

Abivard wondered if Maniakes knew his magic had been defeated even before soldiers had ridden to him with the news. He would have a wizard-more likely wizards-with him. Breaking the Videssian spell probably would have produced a quiver of some sort in the world, a quiver a wizard could sense.

Because of that suspicion, Abivard reinforced what would have been his normal vanguard with picked fighting men who did not usually move at the very fore. He also spread his net of scouts and outriders farther around the army than he normally might have. If trouble threatened, he wanted warning as soon as he could get it.

«Be particularly careful and alert,» he warned the scouts. «Tzikas is liable to be commanding the Videssian rear guard. If he is, you'll have to look for something nasty and underhanded. I wish I could guess what, but I can't. All I can tell you is, keep your eyes open.»

For the first day after crossing the canal he wondered if Maniakes had bothered with a rear guard. His own army surged forward without resistance. They made so much progress, he almost felt as if they'd made up for all the time they'd spent trapped on the far side of the canal.

When he said that to Roshnani after they'd finally camped for the night, she gave him the look she reserved for times when he'd been especially foolish. «Don't be absurd,» she said. «You can't make up that much time in one day, and you know it.»

«Well, yes, so I do,» he admitted, and gave her a look of his own. «I'd bet none of the great minstrels ever had a wife like you.» His voice went falsetto: «No, you can't say his sword sang, dear. Swords don't sing. And was his armor really too heavy for ten ordinary men to lift, let alone wear? That doesn't sound very likely to me. Why don't you change it?»

Roshnani made as if to pick up the pot of saffron rice and black cherries that sat between them and dump it over his head. But she was laughing, too. «Wicked man,» she said.

«Thank you,» he said, making both of them laugh some more. But he quickly grew serious again. «If the magic this morning had failed, I don't know what I would have done. I don't know what the army would have done.»

«The worst you could have done would have been to lay down your command and go back to Vek Rud domain. There are still times I wish you'd done it after Sharbaraz refused to let you summon Romezan.»

«That worked out well in spite of Sharbaraz,» Abivard answered. «Romezan is like me: he sees what the realm needs and goes ahead and takes care of it no matter what the King of Kings may think of the matter.»

Roshnani sniffed. «The King of Kings is supposed to see what the realm needs and take care of it himself. He shouldn't need to rely on others to do that for him. If he can't do it, why is he the one to rule Makuran?»

She spoke in a low voice and looked around before the words left her mouth to make sure no servant-or even her children-could hear. Abivard understood that; unlike Romezan, he found the idea of criticizing the King of Kings daunting at best. And Roshnani wasn't just criticizing. She was suggesting Sharbaraz didn't belong on the throne if he didn't do a better job. And if he didn't belong on that throne, who did?

Abivard answered in a voice as soft as the one his principal wife had used: «I don't want to rebel against Sharbaraz King of Kings. Can you imagine me trying to lord it over the eunuchs in the palace? I only wish Sharbaraz would tend to ruling the realm and let all of us who serve him tend to our own soup without his always sticking his finger in and giving it a stir.»

«He is the King of Kings, and he knows it,» Roshnani said with a wintry sigh. «He knows it too well, maybe. Whenever he can stick his finger in, he feels he has to, as if he wouldn't be ruling if he didn't.»

«I've spent a good part of the past ten years and more hoping- wishing-you were wrong,» Abivard said, sighing, too. «I'm beginning to think you're right. Pound me on the head with a hammer often enough and ideas do sometimes get in. From brief acquaintance with his father, it's in his blood.»

«It might not have been so bad if he hadn't had the throne stolen from him once,» Roshnani said.

Abivard gulped down his wine. «It might not have been so bad,» he said, spacing his words out to emphasize them, «if Smerdis had kept on being King of Kings and no one had ever found out Sharbaraz was hidden away in Nalgis Crag stronghold.»

When the words were out of his mouth, he realized he'd spoken treason-retroactive treason, since Smerdis the usurper was long dead, but treason nonetheless. He waited to hear how Roshnani would react to it. Calmly, she said, «Had matters turned out so, you wouldn't be brother-in-law to the King of Kings, you know.»

«Do you think I care?» he returned. «I don't think my sister would have been less happy if she'd stayed married to Pradtak of Nalgis Crag domain than she is married to Sharbaraz of Makuran. No more happy, maybe, but not less.» He sighed again. «You can't tell about such things, though. Smerdis was busy paying the Khamorth tribute, if you'll remember. That would have touched off a revolt in the Northwest sooner or later. As well, maybe, that we had a proper King of Kings to head it.»

«Maybe.» Roshnani emptied her wine cup, too. «All these might-have-beens can make you dizzier than wine if you spend too much time thinking about them.»

«Everything is simple now,» Abivard said. «All we have to do is beat Maniakes.»

First they had to come to grips with Maniakes. As Abivard had already discovered, that wasn't easy, not when Maniakes didn't care to be gripped. But having defeated the Avtokrator's best sorcery-or what he sincerely hoped was the Avtokrator's best sorcery-he pursued him with more confidence than he would have shown before.

In case his sincere hopes proved mistaken, he stopped ignoring Bozorg and Panteles and had the two wizards ride together in a wagon near his own. Sometimes they got on as well as a couple of brothers. Sometimes they quarreled-also like a couple of brothers. As long as they weren't working magic to do away with each other, Abivard pretended not to see.

He sent his part of cavalry out in a wide sweep, first to find Maniakes' army and then to slow it down so he could come up with the main body of his army and fight the Videssians. «This is what we couldn't do before,» he said enthusiastically, riding along with Turan. «We can move horsemen out ahead and make the Videssians turn and fight, hold them in place long enough for the rest of us to come forward and smash them.»

«If all goes well, we can,» Turan said. «Their rear guard has been fighting hard, though, to keep us from getting hold of the main force Maniakes is leading.»

«They can only do that for so long, though,» Abivard said. «The land between the Tutub and the Tib isn't like the Pardrayan steppe: it doesn't go on forever. After a while you get pushed off the floodplain and out into the scrub country. You can't keep an army alive out there.»

«We talked about that last winter,» his lieutenant answered.

«Maniakes didn't even try then. He just crossed the Videssian westlands till he came to a port, then sailed away, no doubt laughing at us. He could do the same again, every bit as easily.»

«Yes, I suppose he could,» Abivard said. «He could go on to Serrhes, too, in the interior, the way Sharbaraz did all those years ago. I don't think he'll do either one, though. When he came into the land of the Thousand Cities last year, he had doubts. He was tentative; he wasn't sure at first that his soldiers were reliable. He's not worried about that anymore. He knows his men can fight, If he sees a spot he likes, he'll give battle there. He aimed to wreck us when he came back this year.»

«He almost did it a couple of times, too,» Turan agreed. «And then, when that didn't work, he tried to drive us mad with the magic his wizards put on the canal.» He chuckled. «That was such a twisted scheme, I wonder if Tzikas was the one who thought of it.»

Abivard started to answer seriously before realizing Turan was joking. Joke or not, it wasn't the most unlikely notion Abivard had ever heard. As he'd learned from painful experience, Tzikas was devious enough to have done exactly what Turan had said.

Abivard soon had reason to pride himself on his own predictive powers. Not far from the headwaters of the Tutub, where the stream still flowed swift and foamy over stones before taking a generally calmer course, Maniakes chose a stretch of high ground and made it very plain to his pursuers that he intended to be pursued no more.

«We'll smash him!» Romezan shouted. «We'll smash him and be rid of him once and for all.» After a moment he added, «Won't miss him a bit once he's gone, either.»

«That would be very fine,» Abivard agreed. «The longer I look at that position, though, the more I think we'll come out of it like lamb's meat chopped up for the spit if we're not careful.»

«They're only Videssians,» Romezan said. «It's not as if they're going to come charging down at us while we're advancing on them.»

«No, I suppose not,» Abivard said. «But an uphill charge-and it would be a long uphill charge-doesn't strike with so much force as one on level ground. And if I know anything about Maniakes, it's that he doesn't intend just to sit up there and await our charge. He'll do something to break it up and keep it from hitting as hard as it should.»

«What can he do?» Romezan demanded.

«I don't know,» Abivard said. «I wish I did.»

«And I wish you wouldn't shy at shadows,» Romezan said. «Maniakes is only a man, and soldier for soldier our horsemen are better than his. He can make a river flip-or he could till we figured out how to stop him-but he can't make his whole cursed army leap up in the air and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time, now, can he?»

«No,» Abivard admitted.

«Well, then,» Romezan said triumphantly, as if he'd proved his point. Maybe he thought he had; he was as straightforward and aggressive in argument as he was in leading his cavalry into action.

Abivard shook his head. «Go straight into battle against the Videssians and you're asking to come to grief. And not all fields are as open and tempting as they look. Remember how Peroz King of Kings died, leading the flower of the soldiery of Makuran against the Khamorth across what looked like an ordinary stretch of steppe. If my horse hadn't stepped in a hole and broken a leg at the very start of that charge, I expect I would have died there, too, along with my father and my brother and three half brothers.»

Romezan scowled but had no quick comeback. Every Makuraner noble family, whether from the Seven Clans or from the lesser nobility, had suffered grievous loss out on the Pardrayan steppe. After that fight how could you argue for a headlong charge and against at least a little caution?

Sanatruq remained impetuous even after Abivard's blunt warning. «What are we going to do, then, lord?» he demanded. «Did we find a way across the canal only to decide we needn't have bothered? If we're not going to fight the Videssians, we might as well have stayed where we were.»

«I never said we weren't going to fight them,» Abivard said. «But don't you think doing it on our terms instead of theirs matters?»

The argument should have been telling. The argument in fact was telling-to Abivard. Romezan let out a sigh. «I should have stayed in the Videssian westlands and sent Kardarigan to you with this part of the field army. The two of you would have got on better than you and I do, both of you being… cautious. But I thought a cautious man better there, where there were towns to guard, and a fighter better here, where there were battles to wage. Maybe I was wrong.»

That hurt. Abivard turned away so Romezan wouldn't see him wince. And had Romezan not been intrepid enough to leave the westlands and disobey Sharbaraz' order against doing it, to say nothing of being intrepid enough to pitch right into the Videssians when he found them, Abivard would have been in no condition to hold this conversation now. Still-

«A baker thinks bread is the answer to every question,» he said, «while a farrier is sure it's horseshoes. No wonder a battler wants to go straight into the fray. But I don't merely want to fight Maniakes-I want to crush him if we can. If thinking things over instead of wading straight in will help us do that, I'd sooner think.»

Romezan's bow was anything but submissive. «There he is,» he said, pointing toward the banner with a gold sunburst on blue that marked the Avtokrator's position. «He's got water right behind him, enough to keep him from getting thirsty but not enough to keep him from going over it if he has to. He's got the high ground. If he doesn't have plenty of food, I'll be amazed and so will you. He's got no reason to move, in other words. If we want him, we have to go at him. He's not going to come to us.»

All those comments were true. Abivard had been studying the ground and said, «Don't you think the slope is less there on his right-our left?»

«If you say so, lord,» Romezan answered, prepared to be magnanimous now that he scented victory. «Do you want the attack to go in on our left? We can do that, of course.»

Abivard shook his head, and that made Romezan and Sanatruq look suspicious again. He said, «I want to make it seem as if the main attack is going in on our left. I want Maniakes to think that and to shift his forces to meet it. But once he's gone for the feint, I want the true attack to come from the right.»

Romezan toyed with one spiky, waxed mustache tip. «Aye, lord, that's good,» he said at last. «We give them something they don't expect that way.»

«And you'll want the foot to hold the center, the way you've been doing lately?» Turan asked.

«Just so,» Abivard agreed. As Romezan was in the habit of doing, the noble from the Seven Clans looked down his considerable nose at the mere mention of infantry. Before taking over the city garrisons Abivard would have done the same thing. He knew what these men were worth, though. They would fight and fight hard. He slapped Turan on the shoulder. «Get them ready.»

«Aye, lord.» His lieutenant hurried away.

Something else occurred to Abivard. «When we move against the Videssians, Romezan, I will command on the left and you on the right.»

Romezan stared at him. «Lord… you would give me the honor of leading the chief attack? I am in your debt, but are you certain you do not damage your own honor with this generosity?»

«The realm comes first,» Abivard said firmly. «Maniakes will see me there on the left. He'll recognize my banners, and he'll likely recognize me, too. When he sees me there, that will make him more certain the division of the army I command will be the one to try to smash him. He will reason as you do, Romezan: how could I give up the place of honor to another? But honor lies in victory, and for victory over the Videssians I gladly give up this superficial honor.»

Romezan bowed very low, as if Abivard were far superior to him in rank. «Lord, you could do worse than instructing the Seven Clans on the nature of honor.»

«To the Void with that. If they want instruction, we've sent them enough Videssian slaves to serve them as pedagogues for the next hundred years. What we have now is a battle to fight.» Abivard stared over toward the distant banners of Videssos that marked the Avtokrator's position. Outwitting Maniakes got trickier every time he tried it, but he'd managed to come up with something new. Like a boy with a new toy, he could hardly wait to try it.

«Let me understand you, lord,» Romezan said. «You will want my men to hang back somewhat and not show their true courage-they should act as if the steepness of the ground troubles them.»

«That's what I have in mind,» Abivard agreed, his earlier quarrel with Romezan almost forgotten. «I'll press the attack on my flank as hard as I can and do everything I know how to do to draw as many Videssians to me as will come. Meanwhile, you, poor fellow, will be having all sorts of trouble-till the right moment comes.»

«I won't be too soon, lord,» Romezan promised. «And you can bet I won't be too late, either.» He sounded very sure of himself.

For the first time since his recall from Across Abivard had a proper Makuraner army, not some slapped-together makeshift, to lead into battle against the Videssians. Since Likinios' overthrow, he'd won whenever he had led a proper army against them. Indeed, they'd fled before him time after time. He eyed his men. They seemed full of quiet confidence. They were used to bearing the Videssians, too.

He rode to the front of the left wing. On this field he wanted his presence widely advertised. Banners blazoned with the red lion of Makuran fluttered all around him. Here I am, the commander of this host, they shouted to the Videssians up on their low rise. I'm going to lead the main attack-of course I am. Pay me plenty of attention.

Maniakes, by his own banners, led from the center of his army, the most common Videssian practice. He'd invited battle, which meant he felt confident, too. He'd beaten the Kubrati barbarians. He'd beaten Abivard more often than not-when Abivard had been leading a patchwork force. Did that really make him think he could beat the Makuraner field army? If it did, Abivard intended to show him he was wrong.

Abivard nodded to the horn players. «Sound the advance,» he said, and pointed up the slope toward the Videssians. Martial music blared forth. Abivard booted his horse in the ribs. It started forward.

He had to sacrifice a little of the full fury of a Makuraner charge because he was going uphill at the Videssians. He also had to be careful to make sure the horse archers he'd placed to link the heavy cavalry contingents he and Romezan commanded to Turan's infantry kept on linking the different units and didn't go rushing off on some brainstorm of their own. That might open gaps the Videssians could exploit

Horn calls rang out along the Videssian line, too. Peering over the chain mail veil of his helmet, Abivard watched Maniakes' men ride forward to meet his. Whatever else they intended, the Videssians didn't aim to stand solely on the defensive.

Their archers started shooting at the oncoming Makuraner heavy cavalry. Here and there a man slid from his mount or a horse stumbled and went down, and as often as not, other horses would trip over those in the first ranks that had fallen. Had the Videssians done more damage with their archery, they might have disrupted the Makuraner charge.

But the riders of Makuran were armored in iron from head to foot. Their horses wore iron scales, too, sewn into or mounted in pockets on the blankets that covered their backs and sides, while iron chamfrons protected their heads and necks. Arrows found lodging places far less often than they would have against lightly warded men and animals.

No one now rode out between the armies with a challenge to single combat. In principle, such duels were honorable, even if Tzikas' attempts to use them both for and against Makuran had all but driven Abivard mad. But showy displays of honor had given way-on both sides, apparently-to a hard desire to fight things out to the end as soon as possible

Lowering his lance, Abivard picked the Videssian he wanted to spear out of the saddle. The imperial saw him coming, saw the stroke was going to be unavoidable, and twisted in the saddle to try to turn the lance head with his small, round shield.

He gauged the angle well. Sparks spit as the iron point skidded across the iron facing of his shield. That deflection kept the point from his vitals. But the force of the blow still all but unhorsed him and meant his answering sword cut came closer to lopping off one of his mount's ears than to doing Abivard any harm.

«Sharbaraz!» Abivard shouted. He spurred his horse forward, using speed and weight against the Videssian. As the man-he was a good horseman and as game as they came-righted himself in the saddle, Abivard clouted him on the side of the head with the shaft of his lance. The blow caught the Videssian by surprise; it was one a Makuraner was far likelier to make with a broken lance than with a whole one, the point being so much more deadly than the shaft.

But Abivard knew from painful experience how much damage a blow to the head could do even if it didn't cave in a skull. The Videssian reeled. He held on to the sword but looked at it as if he hadn't the slightest idea what it was good for.

His opponent stunned, Abivard had the moment he needed to draw the lance back and slam it into the fellow's throat. Blood sprayed out, then gushed as he yanked the point free. The Videssian clutched at the shaft of the lance, but his grip had no strength to it. His hands slipped away, and he crumpled to the ground.

Another Videssian slashed at Abivard. Awkwardly, he blocked the blow with his lance. The imperial's blade bit into the wood. The soldier cursed horribly as he worked it free; his face was twisted with fear lest he be assailed while he could not use his weapon. He did manage to clear it before another Makuraner attacked him. What happened to him after that, Abivard never knew. As was often the way of battle, they were swept apart.

Abivard had plenty of fighting nonetheless. Because he had made no secret of his rank, the Videssians swarmed against him, trying to cut him down. He did eventually break his lance over the head of one of those Videssians. That blow didn't merely stun the man-it broke his neck. He slid off his horse like a sack of rice after a strap broke.

Throwing the stump of the lance at the nearest Videssian, Abivard yanked his sword free of the scabbard. He slashed an imperial's unarmored horse. The animal screamed and bucked. The soldier aboard it had all he could do to stay on. For the next little while he couldn't fight. Abivard counted that a gain.

Fighting in the first rank himself, he had less sight of the battlefield as a whole than he'd grown used to enjoying. Whenever he looked around to get a picture of what was happening, some Videssian was generally inconsiderate enough to try to take advantage of his lack of attention by puncturing or otherwise maiming him.

One thing he did discover: in Maniakes the Videssians now had a commander who could make them stand and fight. Throughout Genesios' reign the imperials had fled before the Makuraner field army They'd fled through the early years of Maniakes' reign, too, but they fled no more.

Abivard, doing everything he could against them, felt their confidence, their cockiness. Whenever his men managed to hew their way a few feet forward, the Videssians, instead of panicking, rallied and pushed them back. Yes, the imperials had the advantage of terrain, but an advantage of that sort meant little unless the soldiers who enjoyed it were prepared to exploit it. The Videssians were.

«Here, come on!» one of their officers called, waving men forward. «Got to plug the holes, boys, or the wine dribbles out of the jar.» Having learned Videssian, Abivard had often used his knowledge of the language to gain an edge on his foes. Now, overhearing that calm, matter-of-fact reaction to trouble, he began to worry. Warriors who didn't let themselves get fearful and flustered when things went wrong were hard to beat.

He listened for the Videssian horn calls, gauging how many of the enemy were being drawn from Maniakes' left to help deal with the trouble he was causing here. A fair number, he judged. Enough to let Romezan strike a telling blow on that flank? He'd find out.

Turan's foot soldiers poured volleys of arrows into the ranks of the Videssians. Maniakes' men shot back. Groans rose from the ranks of the infantry as one soldier after another fell. As usual, the Videssians suffered fewer casualties than they inflicted on their foes. Abivard thought kindly of the garrison troops he'd turned into real soldiers. If he'd left them in their cities, though, how many men who had died would still be alive today?

He knew no way to answer that question. He did know that a good many men and women in the Thousand Cities-and probably in Mashiz, too-who lived now would almost certainly have been dead had he not gathered the garrisons together and made the swaggering town toughs warriors instead.

As if struck by the same idea at the same time, Turan's soldiers rushed up at Maniakes' men while a couple of troops of imperials detached themselves from the main Videssian mass and rode down against their tormentors. Neither side, then, got what it wanted. The Makuraners who advanced kept the Videssians from getting in among their fellows, while the surge of the Makuraners upslope kept the imperials from galloping down on them and perhaps slashing their way through them.

And over on the right-what was happening over on the right? From where Abivard had placed himself, with so much of Maniakes' army between him and the division Romezan led, he could not tell. He was sure Romezan hadn't yet charged home with all the strength he had. Had he done so, Videssian horn calls-the God willing, dismayed Videssian horn calls-would have alerted Abivard as they summoned more imperials.

Romezan was still holding back, still waiting for Abivard, by the ferocity of his attack, to convince Maniakes that this was where the supreme Makuraner effort lay, that this was where the Videssians would have to bring all their strength if they were going to survive, that the other wing, without the presence of a supreme commander, could not deliver-could not imagine delivering-a strong blow of its own.

Abivard was the one who had to do the convincing, and the Avtokrator was a much more discriminating audience than he had been before. If you were going to act a part, it was best to do it to the hilt. Waving his sword, Abivard shouted to his men, «Press them hard! We'll bring Maniakes back to Mashiz in chains and throw him down at Sharbaraz' feet!»

He got a cheer from his soldiers, who did press the Videssians harder. As he slashed at an imperial with a heavy-featured, swarthy face that argued for Vaspurakaner blood, he felt the irony of the war cry he had just loosed. He wanted to give Maniakes to the King of Kings, but what had Sharbaraz given him lately? Humiliation, mistrust, suspicion-if Romezan hadn't disobeyed Sharbaraz, Abivard would not have been commanding these men.

But to the soldiers Sharbaraz King of Kings might as well have been Makuran incarnate. They knew little of Abivard's difficulties with him and cared less. When they shouted Sharbaraz' name, they shouted it from the bottoms of their hearts. Absurdly, Abivard felt almost guilty for inspiring them with a leader who was, were the truth known, something less than inspiring.

He shook his head, making the chain mail veil he wore clink and clatter. Inspiration and truth barely spoke to each other. Men picked up pieces of things they thought they knew and sewed them together into bright, shining patterns, patching thin spots and holes with hopes and dreams. And the patterns somehow glowed even if the bits of truth in them were invisibly small.

He was trying to make Maniakes see a pattern, too, a pattern like that of many past Makuraner attacks. It was a point of honor for a Makuraner commander to lead the chief assault of his army. Here was Abivard, commanding the army and ostentatiously leading an assault against the Videssians. If you brought over enough good troops to contain the force he led, you won the battle, didn't you? By the pattern of battles past, you did.

«Here I am,» Abivard panted, slashing at an imperial soldier. The fellow took the blow on his shield. The tides of battle swept him away from Abivard before he could return a cut. «Here I am,» Abivard repeated. «You have to pay attention to me, don't you, Maniakes?»

When would the big attack on the right go in? Romezan's instinct was to hit as hard as he could as soon as he could. Abivard marveled that he'd managed to restrain himself so long. The next thing to worry about was, would Romezan, restraining himself from striking too early, restrain himself so thoroughly that he struck too late? He'd said not, back when Abivard had given him his orders, but…

In the press of fighting-Videssians ahead of him, Makuraners behind him trying to move forward to get at the Videssians-Abivard found himself unable to send a messenger to Romezan. It was a disadvantage of leading from the front he hadn't anticipated. He had to rely on Romezan's good judgment-he had to hope Romezan had good judgment.

The longer the fight went on, the more he doubted that. Over here, on the left, his force and the Videssians facing them were locked together as tightly as two lovers in an embrace that went on and on and on. In the center Turan's foot soldiers, keeping their ranks tight, were doing a good job of holding and harassing their mounted foes. And over on the right-

«Something had better happen over on the right,» Abivard said, «or the Videssians will beat us over here before we can beat them over there.»

Nobody paid the least bit of attention to him. Most likely nobody heard him, not with the clangor of combat all around and the iron veil he wore over his mouth muffling his words. He didn't care. He was doing his best to make patterns, too, even if they weren't the ones he would have preferred to see.

«Come on, Romezan,» he said. Nobody heard that, either. What he feared was that Romezan was among the multitude who didn't hear.

Then, when he'd all but given up hope for the attack from the noble of the Seven Clans, the Videssian horns that ordered the movements of imperial troops abruptly blared out a complicated series of new, urgent commands. The pressure against Abivard and his comrades eased. Even above the din of the field shouts of alarm and triumphant cries rang out on the right.

A great weight suddenly seemed to drop from Abivard. For one brief moment battle seemed as splendid, as glorious, as exciting as he'd imagined before he went to war. He wasn't tired, he forgot he was bathed in sweat, he no longer needed to climb down from his horse and empty his bladder. He'd made Maniakes bar the front door-and then had kicked the back door down.

«Come on!» he shouted to the men around him, who were suddenly moving forward again now that Maniakes had thinned his line to rush troops back to the other side to stem Romezan's advance. «If we drive them, they all perish!»

That was how it looked, anyhow. If the Makuraners kept up the pressure from both wings and the center at the same time, how could the Videssian invaders hope to withstand them?

Over the next couple of hours Abivard found out how. He began to mink Maniakes should have been not the Avtokrator but a juggler. No traveling mountebank could have done a neater job of keeping so many sets of soldiers flying this way and that to prevent the Makuraners from turning an advantage into a rout.

Oh, the Videssians yielded ground, especially where Romezan had crumpled them on the right. But they didn't break and flee as they had in so many rights over the years, and they didn't quite let either Romezan's men or Abivard's find a hole in their line, tear through, and cut off part of their army. Whenever that looked like it would happen, Maniakes would find some reserves-or soldiers in a different part of the fight who weren't so heavily pressed-to throw into the opening and delay the Makuraners just long enough to let the Videssians contract and re-form their line.

Abivard tried to send men from his own force around to his left to see if he could get into the Videssians' rear by outflanking them if he couldn't bull his way through. That didn't work, either. For once, the lighter armor the Videssians wore worked to their advantage. Carrying less weight, their horses moved faster than those of Abivard's men, and, even starting later, they were able to block and forestall his force.

«All right, then,» he cried, gathering the men together once more. «A last good push and we'll have them!»

He didn't know whether that was true; under Maniakes the Videssians fought as they hadn't since the days of Likinios Avtokrator. He did know that one more push was all his army had time to make. The sun was going down; darkness would be coming soon. He booted his horse forward. «This time, by the God, we take them!» he shouted.

And for a while he thought his army would take them. Back went the Videssians, back and back again, their ranks thinning, thinning, and no more reserves behind them to plug the gap. And then, with victory in Abivard's grasp, close enough for him to reach out and touch it, a hard-riding regiment of imperials came up and hurled themselves at his men, not only halting them but throwing them back. «Maniakes!» the last-minute rescuers and their commander cried. «Phos and Maniakes!»

Abivard's head came up when he heard that commander shout.

He had to keep fighting for all he was worth to ensure that the Videssians didn't gain too great an advantage in their turn. But he looked this way and that… surely he'd recognized that voice.

Yes! There! «Tzikas!» he cried.

The renegade stared at him. «Abivard!» he said, and then, scornfully, «Eminent sir!»

«Traitor!» they roared together, and rode toward each other.

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