The Tale of Krispos (65 page)

He sketched the sun-sign over his heart. Iakovitzes did the same. Krispos promised, “We’ll avenge you, avenge this. I’ve just sent out a force under Agapetos to harry Harvas’ land. When I’m done with Petronas, Harvas will face the whole army.”

Again Iakovitzes tried to reply with spoken words, again he had to stop in frustration. He nodded instead, held up one finger while he pointed to the west, then two while he pointed northeastward. He nodded again, to show he approved of Krispos’ course. Krispos was glad of that; while Iakovitzes had helped him form his priorities the winter before, he could hardly have blamed the noble for changing his mind after what had befallen him. That he hadn’t helped convince Krispos he was on the right course.

Iakovitzes turned to the attendant and mimed scrubbing himself. The man led him out of the chamber.

“I am in your debt,” Krispos said to Nazares.

“Nonsense.” The healer-priest waved his words away. “I praise the good god that I was able to end Iakovitzes’ agony. I only regret his injury is such that it will continue to trouble him greatly despite being healed. And the charm set on the wound to keep from healing it…that was most wicked, Your Majesty.”

“I know.” Krispos opened the waxed tablet and read again the words that had cost Iakovitzes his tongue. No man unwilling to say Phos’ name, or even to hear it, was likely to be good.
If only Harvas were as inept as he was evil,
Krispos thought,
and if only Petronas would disappear, and if only Pyrrhos would grow mild, and if only I could be certain I’m Phostis’ father, and if only I could rule by thinking “if only”…

E
VEN IN EARLY SPRING, THE COASTAL LOWLANDS WERE HOT AND
sticky. The roads were still moist enough, though, that armies on the march kicked up only a little dust—as good a reason as any for campaigning in the spring, Krispos thought as he trotted along on Progress toward the Eriza River.

The army in whose midst he traveled was the biggest he had ever seen, more than ten thousand men. Had Sarkis captured or killed Petronas over the winter, this new round of civil war would not have been needed. By keeping Anthimos’ uncle from gaining ground, though, the Vaspurakaner soldier had managed the next best thing: he’d convinced the generals of the local provinces that Krispos was the better bet. Those generals and their troopers rode with the force from Videssos the city now.

Krispos saw the inevitable host of farmers busy in their fields on either side of the road. Though the force with which he traveled was far larger than the one that had fought Petronas the previous fall, fewer farmers fled. He took that for a good sign. “They know we’ll keep good order,” he remarked to Trokoundos, who rode nearby. “Peasants shouldn’t fear soldiers.”

“This far before harvest, they have little to steal anyhow,” Trokoundos said. “They know that, too, and take courage from it.”

“You’ve been drinking sour wine this morning,” Krispos said, a trifle startled; such cynicism was worthy of Iakovitzes.

“Maybe so,” Trokoundos said. “We also have supplies for the army well arranged, this being territory that stayed loyal to you. We’ll see how the men behave when we enter country that had been under Petronas’ hand.”

“Oh, aye, we’ll do a bit of plundering if our supply train has trouble,” said Mammianos, one of the provincial generals who had at last cast his lot with Krispos. He was in his mid-fifties and quite round, but a fine horseman for all that. “But we’ll do a bit of fighting, too, which makes up for a lot.”

Krispos started to say nothing could make plundering his own people right. He kept the words to himself. If folk farther westward worked for his rival and against him, they and their fields became fair targets for his soldiers—Petronas’ men, he was sure, would not hold back if they reached territory he controlled. Either way, the Empire and the fisc would suffer.

When he did speak aloud, he said, “Civil war,” as if it were a curse.

“Aye, the times are hard,” Mammianos agreed. “There’s but one thing worse than fighting a civil war, and that’s losing it.” Krispos nodded.

Two days later he and his army forded the Eriza—the ruined bridges were yet to be rebuilt. This time the crossing was unopposed, though Krispos found himself looking back over his shoulder lest some imperial courier come riding up with word of a new disaster. But no couriers appeared. That in itself buoyed Krispos’ spirits.

He began seeing traces of the fighting Sarkis had done the previous winter: wrecked villages, fields standing idle and unplanted, the shells of burned-out buildings. Peasants on this side of the Eriza, those who were left, fled his soldiers as if they were so many demons.

The land began to rise toward the westlands’ rugged central plateau. The rich, deep black earth of the lowlands grew thinner, dustier, grayer. Because of the early season, the countryside was still bright green, but Krispos knew the sun would bake it dry long before summer was done. In the lowlands, they sometimes raised two crops a year. On the central plateau, they were lucky to get one; broad stretches of land were better suited to grazing cattle than growing crops.

Krispos’ advance stopped being a walkover about halfway between the Eriza and the town of Resaina. He had started to wonder if Petronas would ever stand and fight. Then, all at once, the scouts who rode ahead of his army came pelting back toward the main body of men. He watched them turn to shoot arrows back over their shoulders, then saw other horsemen pursuing them.

“Those must be Petronas’ men!” he exclaimed, pointing. Only by the way they attacked his own cavalry could he be sure: Their gear was identical to what his own forces used. One more hazard of civil war that hadn’t occurred to him, he thought uneasily.

“Aye, by the good god, those are the rebels,” Mammianos said. “A whole bloody great lot of them, too.” He turned his head to shout orders to the musicians whose calls set the army in motion. As martial music blared out and units hurried from column to line of battle, Mammianos sped them into place with bellowed commands. “Faster there, the ice take you! Here’s the fight we’ve been waiting for, the chance to smash the stinking traitor once for all. Come on, deploy, deploy, deploy!”

The fat general showed more energy in a couple of minutes than he had used all through the campaign thus far, so much more that Krispos stared at him in surprise. The curses he kept calling down on Petronas’ head, and the spleen with which he hurled them forth, were also something new. When Mammianos paused to draw breath, Krispos said, “General, forgive me for ever having doubted your loyalty.”

Mammianos’ eyes were shrewd. “In your boots, Majesty, I’d doubt my own shadow if it wasn’t in front of me. May I speak frankly?”

“I hope you will.”

“Aye, you seem to,” Mammianos said judiciously. “I know I didn’t lend you much aid last fall.”

“No, but you didn’t aid Petronas, either, for which I’m grateful.”

“As well you might be. Truth to tell, I was sitting tight. I won’t apologize for it, either. If you’d stolen the throne without deserving it, Petronas would’ve made quick hash of you. Likely I would have joined him afterward, too; the Empire doesn’t need a weakling Avtokrator now. But since you did well enough against him, and since most of the decrees you’ve issued have made sense”—Mammianos clapped his hands together in savage glee—“I’ll help you nail the whoreson’s hide to the wall instead. Put me on the shelf, will he?”

“On the shelf?” Krispos echoed, perplexed. “But you’re the general of—”

“—a province that usually needs a general about as much as a lizard needs a bathtub,” Mammianos interrupted. “I was with Petronas when he invaded Vaspurakan a couple of years ago. I told him to his face he didn’t have the wherewithal to push the Makuraners out.”

“I told him the same, back at the palaces,” Krispos said.

“What’d he do to you?” Mammianos asked.

“He tried to kill me.” Krispos shivered, remembering Petronas’ sorcerous assault. “He almost did, too.”

Mammianos grunted. “He told me that if I didn’t want to fight, he’d send me someplace where I wouldn’t have to, which is how I got stuck in the lowlands where nothing ever happens. Except now it has, and I get a chance to pay the bastard back.” He shook his fist at Petronas’ horsemen. “You’ll get yours, you lice!”

Krispos watched the oncoming soldiers, too. His military eye was still unpracticed, but he thought his rival’s army was about the size of his own. His lips skinned back from his teeth. That was only likely to make the battle more expensive but less decisive.

A blue banner with gold sunburst flew above the center of Petronas’ force, a twin to the one a standardbearer carried not far from Krispos. He shook his head. This sort of fight was worse than confusing. It was as if he battled himself in a mirror.

A great shout rose from his men: “Krispos! Krispos Avtokrator!” Petronas’ men shouted back, crying out the name of their commander.

Krispos drew his sword. He was no skilled soldier, but had learned that did not always matter in the confusion of the battlefield. A company of Halogai, the sharpened edges of their axe blades glittering in the spring sunshine, formed up in front of him to try to make sure he did no fighting in any case. He’d given up arguing with them. He knew he might see action in spite of them; not even a captain of guardsmen could always outguess combat.

Arrows flew in beautiful, deadly arcs. Men fell from their saddles. Some thrashed and tried to rise; others lay still. Horses fell, too, crushing riders beneath them. Animals and men screamed together. More horses, wounded but not felled, ran wild, carrying the soldiers on them out of the fight and injecting chaos into their comrades’ neat ranks.

The two lines closed with each other. Now, here and there, men thrust with light lances and slashed with sabers rather than shooting arrows at one another. The din of shouts and shrieks, drumming hooves, and clashing metal was deafening. Peering this way and that, Krispos could see no great advantage for either side.

He looked across the line, toward that other imperial banner. With a small shock, he recognized Petronas, partly by the gilded armor and red boots his rival also wore, more by the arrogant ease with which Anthimos’ uncle sat his horse. Petronas saw him, too; though they were a couple of hundred yards apart, Krispos felt their eyes lock. Petronas swung his sword down, straight at Krispos. He and the men around him spurred their mounts forward.

Krispos dug his roweled heels into Progress’ flanks. The big bay gelding squealed in pain and fury and bounded ahead. The Halogai, though, were waiting for Krispos. One big man after another grabbed at Progress’ reins, at his bridle, at the rest of his trappings. “Let me through, curse you!” Krispos raged.

“No, Majesty, no,” the northerners yelled back. “We will settle the rebel for you.”

Petronas and his companions were very close now. He had no Haloga guards, but the men who rode with him had to be his closest retainers, the bravest and most loyal of his host. Sabers upraised and gleaming, lances poised and ready, they crashed into the ranks of the imperial bodyguards.

For all the tales he had heard, Krispos had never actually seen the Halogai fight before. Their first couple of ranks simply went down, bowled over by their foes’ horses or speared before they were close enough to swing their axes. But Petronas’ men fell, too; their chain mail might have been linen for all it did to keep those great axes from their flesh. Their horses, which wore no armor, suffered worse. The axes abattoir workers used to slaughter beeves were shorter, lighter, and less keen than the ones in the northerners’ strong hands. One well-placed blow dropped any horse in its tracks; another usually sufficed for its rider.

A barricade of flesh, some dead, some writhing, quickly formed between Krispos’ men and Petronas’. The Halogai hacked over it. Petronas’ mounted men kept trying to bull their way through. The ranks of the guardsmen thinned. Krispos found himself ever closer to the fighting front. Now the Halogai, battling for survival themselves, could not keep him away.

And there was Petronas! Red smeared his saber; no one had told him he was too precious to risk. Krispos spurred Progress toward him. With warrior’s instinct, Petronas’ head whipped round. He snarled at Krispos, blocked his cut, and returned one that clattered off Krispos’ helmet.

They cursed each other, the same words in both their mouths. “Thief! Bandit! Bastard! Robber! Whoreson!”

More Halogai still stood than Petronas’ companions. Shouting Krispos’ name, they surged toward the rebel. Petronas was too old a soldier to stay and be slaughtered. Along with those of his guards who yet lived, he pulled back, pausing only to shake his fist one last time at Krispos. Krispos answered with a two-fingered gesture he’d learned on the streets of Videssos the city.

The center had held. Krispos looked round to see how the rest of the battle was doing. It still hung in the balance. His own line sagged a little on the left, Petronas’ on the right. Neither commander had enough troops to pull some out of line and exploit his small advantage without the risk of giving his foe a bigger one. And so men hacked and thrust and hit and swore and bled, all to keep matters exactly as they had been before the battle started.

That tore at Krispos. To his way of thinking, if war had any purpose whatsoever, it was to make change quick and decisive. Such suffering with nothing to show for it seemed a cruel waste.

But when he said as much to Mammianos, the general shook his head. “Petronas has to go through you before he can move on the capital. A drawn fight gains him nothing. This is the first real test of fighting skill and loyalty for your men. A draw for you is near as good as a win, because you show the Empire you match him in those things. Given that, and given that you hold Videssos the city, I like your chances pretty well.”

Reluctantly Krispos nodded. Mammianos’ cool good sense was something he tried to cultivate in himself. Applying it to this wholesale production of human agony before him, though, took more self-possession than he could easily find.