Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

"Will we have enough mages to hold him in check?"

"There, your Majesty, I can be less certain," Trokoundos said. "By the lord with the great and good mind, though, we now have a better notion of how to try to cope with him, thanks to the researches of Gnatios."

"Thanks to Gnatios," Krispos repeated, not altogether happily. Now instead of a patriarch who backed him absolutely but thought nothing of setting the whole Empire ablaze for the sake of perfect orthodoxy, he had once more a patriarch who was theologically moderate but not to be trusted out of sight—or in it, for that matter. He hoped the trade would prove worthwhile.

Trokoundos continued, "When I faced Harvas last year, I took him for a barbarian wizard, puissant but—why are you laughing, your Majesty?"

"Never mind," Krispos said, laughing still. "Go on, please."

"Ahem. Well, as I say, I reckoned Harvas Black-Robe to be powerful but unschooled. Now I know this is not the case—just the reverse obtains, in fact. Having now, thanks to Gnatios, a better notion of the sort of magic he employes, and having also with me more—and more potent—colleagues, I do possess some hope that we shall be able to defend against his onslaughts."

All the finest mages of the Sorcerers' Collegium rode with the army. If Trokoundos could but hope to withstand Harvas by their combined efforts, that in itself spoke volumes about the evil wizard's strength. They were not volumes Krispos cared to read. He said, "Can we sorcerously strike back at the northerners who follow Harvas?"

"Your Majesty, we will try," Trokoundos said. "The good god willing, we will distract Harvas from the magics he might otherwise hurl at us. Past that, I have no great hope. Because battle so inflames men's passions, magic more readily slips aside from them then and is more easily countered. That is why battle magic succeeds so seldom ... save Harvas'." Krispos wished the wizard had not tacked on that codicil.

Rhisoulphos rode by at a fast trot. "Why aren't you with your regiment?" Krispos called.

His father-in-law reined in and looked around, as if wondering who presumed to address him with such familiarity. His face cleared when he saw Krispos. "Greetings, your Majesty," he said, saluting. "I just gave a courier a note to a friend in the city, and now I am indeed returning to my men. By your leave ..."He waited for Krispos' nod, then dug his heels into his horse's flanks and urged the animal on again.

Krispos followed him with his eyes. Rhisoulphos did not look back. He rode as if in a competition of horsemanship, without a single wasted motion. "He's so smooth," Krispos said, as much to himself as to Trokoundos. "He rides smoothly, he talks smoothly, he has smooth good looks and smooth good sense."

"But you don't like him," Trokoundos said. It was not a question.

"No, I don't. I want to. I ought to. He's Dara's father, after all. But with so much smoothness on the top of him, who can be sure what's underneath? Petronas guessed wrong and paid for it, too."

"Set next to Harvas—"

"Every other worry is a small one. I know. But I have to keep an eye on the small things, too, for fear they'll grow while my back was turned. I wonder who he was writing to. You know, Trokoundos, what I really need is a spell that would give me eyes all around my head and let me stay awake day and night both. Then I'd sleep better—except I wouldn't sleep, would I?" Krispos stopped. "I've confused myself."

Trokoundos smiled. "Never mind, your Majesty. No wizard can give you what you asked for, so there's no point in fretting over it."

"I suppose not. Fretting over Rhisoulphos, though, is something else again." Krispos looked ahead once more, but the general had vanished—smoothly—among the swarms of riders heading north.

The army did not cover much more ground in a day than a walking man might have. When the troopers moved, they set a decent pace. But getting them moving each morning and getting them into camp every night ate away at the time they were able to spend on the road. That had also been true of the forces Krispos led against Petronas and against Harvas the summer before, but to a lesser degree. One of the things a huge army meant was huge inefficiency.

"That's just the way it goes," Mammianos said when Krispos complained. "We can't move out in the morning till the slowest soldiers are ready to go. If we let quicker regiments just rush on ahead, after a few days we'd have men strung out over fifty miles. The whole point of a big army is to be able to use all the troops you've brought along."

"Supplies—" Krispos said, as if it were a complete sentence.

Mammianos clapped him on the shoulder. "Majesty, unless we crawl north on our hands and knees, we'll manage. The quartermasters know how fast—how slow, if you like—we travel. They've had practice keeping armies this size in bread, I promise you."

Krispos let himself be reassured. The Videssian bureaucracy had kept the Empire running throughout Anthimos' antic reign and through worse reigns than his in the past. Avtokrators came, ruled, and were gone; the gray, efficient stewards, secretaries, and logothetes went on forever. The army quartermasters belonged to the same breed.

He wondered what would happen if one day an Emperor died and no one succeeded him. He suspected the bureaucrats would go on ruling competently if unspectaculariy ... at least until some important paper needed signing. Then, for want of a signature, the whole state would come crashing down. He chuckled softly, pleased at his foolish conceit.

The next day the army rode past the field when Harvas' raiders had beaten and killed Mavros. The mass graves Krispos' men had dug afterward still scarred the earth. Now new grass, green and hopeful, was spreading over the squares of raw dirt. Krispos pointed to it. "Like the grass, may our victory spring from their defeat."

"From your lips to the ear of Phos," Trokoundos said, sketching the sun-sign with his right hand. He sent Krispos a sly look. "I hadn't thought your Majesty had so much of a poet in him."

"Poet?" Krispos snorted. "I'm no poet, just a former—well, a man who used to be a farmer. The grass will grow tall over those graves, with the bodies of so many brave men manuring the fields."

The mage nodded soberly. "That's a less pleasing image, but I daresay a truer one."

They camped three or four miles past the battlefield, far enough, Krispos hoped, to keep the troopers from brooding on it. As was his habit each evening, Krispos wrote a brief note to Iakovitzes detailing the day's progress. When he was done, he called for a courier.

A rider came trotting up to the imperial tent hardly a minute later. He saluted Krispos and said, "All right, your Majesty, let's have yours, too, and I'll be off for the city."

He sat his horse with a let's-get-on-with-it, don't-waste-my-time attitude that made Krispos smile. That attitude and the blithe cheek of his words left Krispos certain he was a city man himself. "Mine, too, is it, eh? Well, sir, with whose letter is mine lucky enough to travel?"

"It's all in the family, you might say, your Majesty: yours and your father-in-law's will go together, both in the same pouch."

"Will they?" Krispos raised an eyebrow. He knew his use of the gesture did not have the flair that Chihor-Vshnasp, say, put into it, but it got the job done. "And to whom is the eminent Rhisoulphos writing?"

"Just let me look and I'll tell you." Like any man from Videssos the city, the courier took it for granted that he knew things lesser mortals didn't. He opened his leather dispatch pouch and drew out a roll of parchment sealed with enough wax to keep a poor family in candles for a month. He had to turn it between his fingers to find out where the address was. "Here we go, your Majesty. It's to the most holy patriarch Gnatios, it is. Leastways, I think he's most holy patriarch this week, unless you made him into a monk again while I wasn't looking, or maybe into a prawn salad."