Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

"So you do." Krispos took a deep breath and brought up his arm to point. "Forward!"

The pass was as narrow and winding as he remembered. If the sides did not seem quite so overwhelmingly high, he was now a full-grown man on horseback rather than a boy stumbling along afoot. He was as afraid now as then, though. A squad of Harvas' Halogai could plug the pass; if men waited up above with boulders, the evil wizard would need no wizardry to rid himself of this entire column.

The troopers felt the danger as starkly as he did. They leaned forward over their horses' necks, gently urging the animals to more and more speed. And the horses responded; they liked being in that narrow, echoing, gloomy place—it was so steep, the sun could not reach down to the bottom—no better than did their riders.

"How long till we're through?" Sarkis asked Krispos as the gloom began to deepen toward evening. "By the good god, Majesty, I don't want to have to spend the night in this miserable cleft."

"Neither do I," Krispos said. "I think we're close to the end of it."

Sure enough, less than an hour later the advance guard of the column burst out of the pass and into the foothill country on the northern side of the mountains. Looking north, Krispos saw nothing but those hills leading down to a flatter country of plains and patches of forest. He turned round to the granite mass of the mountains. To have them behind him instead of before seemed strange and unnatural, as if sky and land had changed places on the horizon.

Full darkness was close at hand. The evening star dominated the western sky, though a thin fingernail-paring of moon also hung there. More and more stars came out as crimson and then gray faded into black.

The soldiers buzzed with excitement as they set up camp. They'd flanked Harvas and he didn't know it. Day after tomorrow they would crash into his unguarded rear; he and his men would be caught between their hammer and the anvil of the main imperial army. One trooper told his tentmate, "They say the bastard's a good wizard. He'll need to be better than good to get away from us now."

"He is better than good," the second soldier answered.

Krispos sketched Phos' sun-circle over his heart to avert any possible omen. Then he went to check with Trokoundos. The mage said, "No, we are not found. I still feel we are sought, but I would also have that feeling because of Harvas' sorcerous scrutiny of the supposed southward journey of this army."

"How much longer can that trick hold up?" Krispos asked.

"Long enough, I hope. The farther Harvas' magic has to reach, the less omniscient it becomes. There are no guidelines, I admit, the more so for a unique sorcerer like Harvas. But as say, what we have done should suffice."

That was as much reassurance as Krispos could reasonably expect. He arranged himself in his bedroll confident that Harvas would not turn him into a spider while he slept. And sleep he did; despite aches in every riding muscle, he went out like a blown lamp while he was still trying to get a blanket up to his chin.

Camp broke quickly the next morning. Everyone knew the column had stolen a march on Harvas, and everyone wanted to take advantage of it. Underofficers had to warn men not to wear out their horses by riding too hard too soon.

Off in the distance Krispos saw other small mounted parties. They saw his men, too, and promptly fled. He did not know what to feel as he watched them gallop away. So these were the fierce Kubratoi who had scourged Videssos' northern provinces all through his childhood! Now they only wanted to escape.

His pride at that was punctured when Trokoundos remarked, "I wonder whether they think we're really who we are or some of Harvas' men."

Near noon a band of about a dozen nomads approached the column instead of running away. "You horsemen, you imperials?" one of them called in broken Videssian.

"Aye," the soldiers answered, ready to kill them if they turned to take that news to Harvas Black-Robe.

But the Kubrati went on, "You come to fight Harvas?"

"Aye," the soldiers repeated, with a yell this time.

"We fight with you, we fight for you." The nomad held his bow over his head "Harvas and his axemen, they worst in world. You Videssians, you gots to be better. Better you rule over us than Harvas any day, any day better." He spoke to his companions in their own language. They shouted what had to be agreement.

Krispos lifted his helmet so he could scratch his head. Kubratoi had meant enemies to him since he was six years old. Even imagining them as comrades came hard. But the nomad had spoken the truth in a way he probably did not suspect. The land of Kubrat had been Videssian once. If the imperial army beat Harvas, it would become Videssian again—Krispos did not intend to turn it over to some Kubrati chieftain who would stay grateful until the day he thought he could safely raid south of the mountains, and not a moment longer. Gnatios had taught him some hard lessons about how long loyalty was apt to last.

Still, if he did succeed in annexing—reannexing, he reminded himself—Kubrat, the goodwill of the locals would be worth something. "Aye, join us," he told the nomads. "Help drive the invaders out of Kubrat." He did not say out of your land. None of the Kubratoi noticed the fine distinction. Most of the nomads who saw the flying column continued to avoid it. But several more groups came in, so that by the end of the day close to a hundred Kubratoi camped with the Videssians. Their furs and boiled-leather cuirasses contrasted oddly with the linen surcoats and iron shirts the imperials wore. Their ponies also looked like nothing much next to the bigger, handsomer horses that came from south of the mountains. But those ponies hadn't breathed hard while they kept up with the column, and Krispos knew the Kubratoi could fight. He was glad to have them.

"We can't be more than three or four hours away from Harvas," Krispos said to Sarkis, "but we haven't seen a single Haloga. He doesn't know we're here."

"So it seems, your Majesty." Sarkis' white teeth flashed in the firelight, very bright against his thick black beard and mustaches. "I said a couple of years ago, when I first served under you, that things wouldn't be dull. Who else would have found a way to sneak up on the nastiest wizard the world's ever seen?"

"I hope we are sneaking up on him," Trokoundos said. "My feeling of being sought grows ever stronger. It worries me, and yet surely Harvas would assail us if he knew we were here. I wish Zaidas were along, to tell me all my fears are so much moonshine. The good god grant that I hold Harvas befooled yet a little longer."

"So may it be," Krispos and Sarkis said in the same breath. They both sketched the sun-sign.

Sarkis added, "This also shows the risk of depending too much on magic. If Harvas had his scouts properly posted, he'd already know we were loose in his country."

"It's not his country," Krispos said. "It's ours." He explained the thoughts he'd had when the first Kubrati party attached itself to the column, finishing, "We'll never have another chance like this to bring Kubrat back under our rule."

Sarkis let out a soft, approving grunt. Trokoundos cocked his head to one side and studied Krispos. "You've grown, your Majesty," he said. "You've come into the long view of things you need to make a proper Avtokrator. Who but a man with that long view would say that taking Kubrat, which has been a thorn in our flesh for three centuries now, is bringing it back under our rule?"

Both pleased and amused, Krispos said, "The good god willing, I've learned a bit from that long past of ours." He yawned. "Right now, this whole day seems a very long past all by itself. It's hard to remember when I've been out of the saddle except to squat by the side of the road or to sleep, which is what I'm going to do now."