Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

Tanilis' gaze swung that way. "Aye, it is your column," she said, but she did not sound hopeful. Krispos tried to make himself believe she was still fretting over the way the land affected her.

But the next morning, as the main body of the army was getting ready to break camp, riders began straggling in from the west. Krispos did not want to talk with the first few of them; as he'd learned, men who got away first often had no idea what had really gone wrong—if anything had.

Sarkis came in about midmorning. A fresh cut seamed one cheek; his right forearm was bandaged. "I'm sorry, Majesty," he said. "I was the one who made the mistake."

"You own up to it, anyhow," Krispos said. "Tell me what happened."

"We came across a village—a town, almost—that isn't on our old maps," the scout commander answered. "I'm not surprised—it looked as if the Halogai were still building it: longhouses are their style, anyhow. Not a lot of men were in it, but those who were came boiling out, and their women with them, armed and fighting as fierce as they were."

Sarkis picked at a flake of dried blood on his face. "Majesty, beating them wasn't the problem. We had plenty of men for that. But I knew our true goal was Pliskavos and I wanted to get there as quick as I could. So instead of doing much more than skirmishing and setting the village ablaze—"

"We saw the smoke," Krispos broke in.

"I shouldn't wonder. Anyhow, I didn't want to lose time by riding around the place, either. So I swung us in on this side instead, and we rode straight north—right into a detachment from Harvas' army. They had more troopers than we did and they beat us, curse 'em."

"Oh, a plague," Krispos said, as much to himself as to Sarkis. He thought for a few seconds. "Any sign of magic in the fight?"

"Not a bit of it," Sarkis answered at once. "The northerners looked to be heading west themselves, to try to cut us off from riding around their army. Thanks to that miserable, stinking flea-farm of a village, they got the chance and they took it. Let me have another go at them, your Majesty, or some new man if you've lost faith in me. The plan was good, and we still have enough room to maneuver to make it work."

Krispos thought some more and shook his head. "No. A trick may work once against Harvas if it catches him by surprise. I can't imagine him letting us try one twice. Something ghastly would be waiting for us; I feel it in my bones."

"You're likely right." Sarkis hung his head. "Do what you will with me for having foiled you."

"Nothing to be done about it now," Krispos answered. "You tried to pick the fastest way to carry out my orders, and it happened not to work. May you be luckier next time."

"May the good god grant it be so!" Sarkis said fervently. "I'll make you glad you've trusted me—I promise I will."

"Good," Krispos said. Sarkis saluted and rode away to see the men who were still coming in from the column. Krispos sighed as he watched him go. It would have to be the hard way, then, with the butcher's bill that accompanied the hard way.

He'd already thought about putting peasants back into the border regions south of the mountains. He would also have to find soldiers to replace those who fell in this campaign. Where, he wondered, would all the men come from? He laughed at himself, though it wasn't really funny. Back in his days on the farm, he'd never imagined the Emperor could have any reason to worry, let alone a reason so mundane as finding the people to do what needed doing. He laughed again. Back in his days on the farm, he'd never imagined a lot of things.

Harvas skirmished, screened, avoided pitched battle. He seemed content to let the war turn on what happened after he got to Pliskavos. That worried Krispos. Even the Kubratoi and the Videssian-speaking peasants who flocked to his army and acclaimed him as a liberator failed to cheer him. Kubrat would return to imperial rule if he beat Harvas, aye. If he lost, the nomads and peasants both would only suffer more for acclaiming him.

As his force neared Pliskavos, he began sending out striking columns again, not to cut Harvas off from the capital of Kubrat but rather to ensure that he and his army went nowhere else. One of the columns sent men galloping back in high excitement. "The Astris! The Astris!" they shouted as they returned to the main force from the northwest. They were the first imperial soldiers to reach the river in three hundred years.

Another column came to the Astris east of Pliskavos a day later. Instead of sending back proud troopers to boast of what they'd done, they shouted for reinforcements. "A whole raft of Halogai are crossing the river on boats," a rider gasped as he rode in, mixing his metaphors but getting the message across.

Krispos dispatched reinforcements on the double. He also sent a company of soldiers from the first column that had reached the Astris to ride west along its bank toward the Videssian Sea. "Find Kanaris and bring him here," he ordered. "This is why we have ships on the Astris. Let's see the northerners put more men across it once he sails up."

He saw the Astris himself the next day. The wide gray river flowed past Pliskavos, which lay by its southern bank. The stream was wide enough to make the steppes and forests on the far bank seem distant and unreal. Unfortunately quite real, however, were the little boats that scurried across it. Each one brought a new band of Halogai to help Harvas hold the land he'd seized. Krispos raged, but could do little more until the grand drungarios of the fleet arrived. While he waited, the army began to built a palisade around Pliskavos.

"Something occurs to me," Mammianos said that evening. "I don't know as much as I'd like about fighting on water or much of anything about magic, but what's to keep Harvas from hurting our dromons when they do come up the Astris?"

Krispos gnawed on his lower lip. "We'd better talk with the magicians."

By the time the talk was done, Krispos found himself missing Trokoundos not just because the mage had been a friend. Trokoundos had been able to make sorcerous matters clear to people who were not wizards. His colleagues left Krispos feeling as confused as he was enlightened. He gathered, though, that sorcery aimed at targets on running water tended to be weakened or to go astray altogether.

He didn't care for the sound of that tended to . "I hope Harvas has read the same magical books you have," he told the wizards.

"Your Majesty, I see no sorcerous threat looming over Kanaris' fleet," Zaidas said.

"Nor do I," Tanilis agreed. Zaidas blinked, then beamed. He sent Tanilis a worshipful look. She nodded to him, a regal gesture Krispos knew well. The force of it seemed to daze Zaidas, who was younger and more susceptible than Krispos ever had been when he knew her. Krispos shook his head; noticing how young other people were was a sign he wasn't so young himself. But he had as much assurance from his wizards as he could hope for. That was worth a slight feeling of antiquity.

The palisade around Pliskavos grew stronger over the next couple of days. The troopers dug a ditch and used the dirt from it to build a rampart behind it. They mounted shields on top of the rampart to make it even higher. All the same, the gray stone wall of Pliskavos stood taller still.

The Halogai sallied several times, seeking to disrupt the men who were busy strengthening the palisade. They fought with their folk's usual reckless courage and paid heavily for it. Each day, though, dugouts brought fresh bands of northerners across the Astris and into Pliskavos.

"Halogaland must be grim indeed, if so many of the northerners brave the trip across Pardraya in hopes of settling here," Krispos observed at an evening meeting with his officers.

"Aye, true enough, for the lands hereabouts are nothing to brag of," Mammianos said. Krispos did not entirely trust the fat general's sense of proportion; the coastal lowlands where Mammianos had been stationed were the richest farming country in the whole Empire.