Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

"Yes," Krispos said: only two words between them, but words charged with a great weight of meaning.

"Shall I come here to your tent no more then, your Majesty?" Tanilis asked, her voice all at once cool and formal.

"That might be best," Krispos answered miserably.

"As you wish, your Majesty. Do recall, though, that you knew of the Empress'—your wife's—condition before this dispatch arrived. I grant that knowing and being reminded are not the same, but you had the knowledge. And now, by your leave—" She tossed Dara's letter onto the cot, strode briskly to the tent flap, ducked through it, and walked away.

Krispos stared after her. Minutes before they had been gasping in each other's arms. He picked up the letter to read it again. He had another son, and Dara was well. Good news, every bit of it. Even so, he crumpled the parchment into a ball and flung it to the ground.

Scouts pushed ahead before dawn the next morning, probing to make sure no ambushes lay ahead of the imperial army. The main force soon followed, a long column with its supply wagons, protected by a sizable knot of mounted men, rattling along in the middle.

The unwieldy arrangement never failed to make Krispos nervous. "If Harvas had even a few Kubrati horse-archers on his side, he could give us no end of grief," he remarked to Bagradas, who led the force guarding the baggage train. Concentrating on the army's affairs helped Krispos keep his mind off his own, and off the fact that today Tanilis had chosen not to ride beside him, but rather with the rest of the magicians.

Bagradas did not notice that—or if he did, had sense enough not to let on. He said, "Whatever Kubratoi still have fight in them want to come in on our side, your Majesty, not against us. We picked up another few dozen yesterday. Of course, when it comes to real fighting, they may do us as little good as that group that stayed with you out of the pass all the way up until things looked dangerous and then took off." The regimental commander lifted a cynical eyebrow.

"As long as they aren't raiding us, they can do as they please," Krispos said. "We brought along enough of our own folk to do our fighting for us." He lifted a hand from Progress' neck to pluck at his beard. "I wonder how that column I sent out is faring."

"My guess would be that they are still out swinging wide, your Majesty," Bagradas said. "If they turn north too close to us, Harvas might be able to position men in front of them."

"They were warned about that," Krispos said. One more thing to worry about—

He urged Progress ahead toward the group of sorcerers. They were, he saw without surprise, gathered around Tanilis. Zaidas, who had been animatedly chattering with her, looked over with almost comic startlement as Krispos rode up beside him.

"A good thing I'm not Harvas," Krispos remarked dryly. He bowed in the saddle to Tanilis. "My lady, may I speak with you?"

"Of course, your Majesty. You know you have only to command." She spoke without apparent irony and flicked the reins to get her horse into a trot and away from the wizards. Krispos did the same. Zaidas and the other wizards stared after them in disappointment. When enough clear space had opened up to give them some privacy, Tanilis inclined her head to Krispos. "Your Majesty?"

"I just wanted to say I feel bad about the way things ended between us last night."

"You needn't trouble yourself about it," she replied. "After all, you are the Avtokrator of the Videssians. You may do just as you wish."

"Anthimos did just as he wished," Krispos said angrily. "Look what it got him. I want to try to do what's right, so far as I can see what that is."

"You've chosen a harder road than he did." After a small pause, Tanilis went on in a dispassionate tone of voice, "Few would say that bedding a woman not your wife falls into that category."

"I know, I know, I know." He made a fist and slammed it down on his thigh just below the bottom edge of his coat of mail. "I don't make a habit of it, you know."

"I would have guessed that, yes." Now she sounded amused, perhaps not in an altogether pleasant way.

"It isn't funny, curse it." Doggedly, clumsily, he went ahead: "I'd known you—loved you for a while, though I know you didn't love me—for such a long time, and now I'd seen you again, when I never expected to, well, I never worried about what I was doing till I'd done it. Then that note came, and I got brought up short—"

"Aye, you did." Tanilis studied him. "I might have guessed your marriage was one of convenience only, but two sons born close together argues against that, the more so as you've spent a good part of your reign in the field."

"Oh, there's something of convenience in it, for me and for her both," Krispos admitted, "but there turns out to be more to it than that, too." He laughed without mirth. "You noticed that, didn't you? But all the same, when we'd made love and the courier brought the letter, I had no business treating you the way I did. That's not right, either, and I'm sorry for it."

Tanilis rode on for a little while in silence. Then she remarked, "I think riding into battle might be easier for you than saying what you just said." .

Krispos shrugged. "One thing I'm sure of is that putting a crown on my head doesn't make me right all the time. The lord with the great and good mind knows I didn't learn much from Anthimos about how to rule, but I learned that. And if I was wrong, what's the point in being ashamed to say so?"

"Wherever you learned to rule, Krispos—" He warmed to hear her use his name again, rather than his title, "—you appear to have learned a good deal. Shall we return to being friends, then?"

"Yes," he answered with relief. "How could I be your enemy?"

Mischief sparkled in Tanilis' eyes. "Suppose I came to your tent again tonight. Would you take up saber and shield to drive me away?"

In spite of all his good intentions, his manhood stirred at the thought of her coming to his tent again. He ignored it. I'm too old to let my prick do my thinking for me, he told himself firmly. A moment later he added, I hope. Aloud, he said, "If you're trying to tempt me, you're doing a good job." He managed a smile.

"I would not seek to tempt you into something you find improper," Tanilis answered seriously. "If that is how it is, let it be so. I said back in Opsikion, all those years ago, that we would not suit each other over the long haul. It still seems true."

"Yes," Krispos said again, with no small regret. He still wondered if he and Dara suited each other over the long haul. Ever since he became Emperor, he'd been away on campaign so much that they'd had scant chance to find out. He went on, "I'm glad we can be friends."

"So am I." Tanilis looked around at the Kubrati countryside through which they were riding. Her voice sank to a whisper. "Being friendless in such a land would be a dreadful fate."

"It's not that bad," Krispos said, remembering his childhood years north of the mountains. "It's just different from Videssos." The sky was a paler, damper blue than inside the Empire. The land was a different shade of green, too, deeper and more like moss; the gray-green olive trees that gave Videssos so much of its distinctive tint would not grow here. The winters, Krispos knew, had a ferocity worse than any Videssos suffered.

But perhaps Tanilis was not seeing the material landscape that was all Krispos could perceive. "This land hates me," she said, shivering though the day was warm. Her sepulchral tone made Krispos want to shiver, too. Then Tanilis brightened, or rather grew intent on her prey. "If we can pull Harvas down, let it hate me as much as it will."

With that Krispos could not argue. He gazed out at Kubrat again. Far off in the northwest, he spied a rising smudge of dirty gray smoke against the horizon. He pointed to it. "Maybe that's the work of the column I sent out," he said hopefully.