Harry Turtledove - Krispos of Videssos

"The good god be praised," Krispos said. He could not be perfectly sure Harvas hadn't been among the freed captives, but the older he got, the less he was perfectly sure of anything. With a nod toward Zaidas, he said, "Ready yourself and your comrades to study the Haloga when they leave Pliskavos."

"We shall be fully prepared," Zaidas promised. "Harvas hale could hope to stand against us. Harvas as he is after the lady Tanilis smote him—" His voice softened as he spoke her name, but his eyes flashed. "—is small beer, as the saying goes. If he is there, we will smoke him out."

"Good." Krispos was not usually vindictive, but he wanted to lay hands on Harvas, to make him suffer for all the suffering he had inflicted on Videssos. Then he remembered a saying himself: "To make rabbit stew, first catch a rabbit."

The Halogai inside Pliskavos gave no sign of breaking the terms to which Ikmor had agreed. Kanaris brought word that the northerners really were building rafts. All the same Krispos held off sending word of his victory south to the city. Once he'd caught his rabbit—or, in this case, seen it across the Astris— would be time enough.

On the fourth morning, he ordered his army to advance on Pliskavos. The soldiers came fully armed and ready for battle. He had strong forces covering each gate, not merely the one through which Ikmor had promised the Halogai would march. Mammianos nodded at that. "If we show 'em we're set for everything, they're less likely to try anything."

Zaidas and the rest of the wizards took their place outside the central gate. They waved to Krispos to show they were ready. He peered into the town through the grid of the portcullis. A lot of men looked to be lined up there. Then the portcullis rose, screeching in its track every inch of the way.

One man came through alone. He tramped past the Videssian mages without sparing them a glance and made straight for the imperial banner. He saluted Krispos. "I am Ikmor. For my folk I stand before you. Do as you will with me if we play you false."

"Go with your people," Krispos said. "I did not ask this of you."

"I know that. I give it to you, for my honor's sake. I shall stay."

Krispos had learned better than to argue about a Haloga's prickly sense of honor. "As you will, northern sir." He undid his canteen, swigged, and passed it to Ikmor. "Share wine with me."

"Aye." Ikmor drank. A couple of drops splashed on his white tunic, which was already none too clean. The Haloga was a well-made man of middle height, snub-nosed and gray-eyed. He was bald on top of his head, but let the hair above his ears grow long. His mustaches were also long, though the rest of his beard was rather thin. In each ear he wore a thick gold ring set with pearls—Iakovitzes would have wanted a pair of them, Krispos thought irrelevantly. When he handed the canteen back to Krispos, it was empty.

The Halogai filed out of Pliskavos a few at a time, walking between Zaidas and the other wizards. Most of the northerners made Ikmor seem immaculate by comparison. More than a few showed the marks of burns from when the wall caught fire, wounds from the latest battle, or both. They glared at the imperials who had overcome them, as if they still could not believe the campaign had gone against them.

Looking at them, Krispos also wondered how he'd won. The Halogai were big, fierce men who might have been specially made for war. Fighting came less naturally to Videssians. In the end, though, trained skill had overcome ferocity.

Mammianos was thinking along similar lines. He remarked, "They want another chance at us. You can see it in their eyes."

"They won't have such an easy time trying again," Krispos answered. "Now that we rule all the way up to the Astris again, I expect we'll keep a flotilla of dromons patrolling the river. I wouldn't want to try crossing it in the face of them."

He spoke as much to Ikmor as to Mammianos. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Haloga chief's mouth turn down. The message had got through, then.

A few minutes later a warrior broke ranks and strode toward Krispos. He touched his sword. His guardsmen tensed, readying themselves to cut the fellow down. But he paused at a safe distance and spoke loudly in his own language. Krispos glanced at Ikmor. "What does he say?"

Ikmor looked even less happy. "He wants to take service with you, Videssian Emperor."

"What? Why?"

Ikmor spoke to the Haloga, then listened to his reply. "He says his name is Odd the son of Aki, and that he will only fight among the best soldiers in the world. Till now he thought those were his own people, but you have beaten us, so he must have been wrong."

"For that I'll find him a place," Krispos said, grinning. Ikmor translated. Odd the son of Aki dipped his head to Krispos, then stepped aside. A Videssian officer took charge of him.

As the day went on, more Halogai broke ranks and asked leave to join the imperial army. Most of them gave the same reason Odd had. By the time the last northerner filed out of Pliskavos, Krispos found he had recruited a good-sized company. Ikmor turned his back on the men who had gone over.

The Halogai marched around Pliskavos toward the quays. More evidence of imperial might awaited them there: Kanaris' warships, holding their place against the current of the Astris like so many sparrowhawks hovering above a mousehole.

Krispos rode Progress up toward the riverbank so he could watch the northerners embark on their rafts. Ikmor paced alongside him, though two guardsmen made sure they were between the chieftain and the Avtokrator at all times.

The Halogai paddled the first raft out onto the Astris a little past noon. A dromon shadowed it all the way across the river, the fearsome siphon tube pointing straight at it. The wallowing raft was completely at the dromon's mercy. No one, Haloga or imperial, could doubt it. More than anything else, that first river crossing brought home who had won and who had lost.

More and more rafts set out. Not all of them enjoyed the attentions of a dromon all the way across the Astris, but the warships stayed close enough to leave no question of what they could do at need. Destroying the northerners' dugout canoes had been an unequal struggle. Attacking the rafts would have been a massacre.

Zaidas made his way through the crowd to Krispos. "All the Halogai passed before me, your Majesty. I found no sign of Harvas' presence."

"Go rest, then," Krispos told him. The young mage had always been reedy. Now he was a thin reed indeed.

Even so, he tried to protest. "I ought to go into the town, to see whether the evil wizard still lurks within." He weakened his own words with an enormous yawn.

"The shape you're in, you're likelier to fall asleep than find him," Krispos said. "I'll keep wizards posted at each gate. If he's in there, he won't get out." He did his best to look stern and imperial. It probably wasn't a very good best; Zaidas winked at him. But the mage went back toward the camp, which was what Krispos had in mind.

The rafts the Halogai had built carried only a fraction of them over the Astris that first day. The northerners who were left behind spread their bedrolls outside of Pliskavos. The countrymen's campfires blazed from the far shore. Between the two groups, up and down, up and down along the river, the dromons of the imperial fleet prowled all night long.

Videssian archers stood guard through the night on the southern bank of the Astris, alert in case the Halogai proved treacherous. But most of the imperial army returned to the camp on the other side of the palisade. At the officers' meeting that evening, Sarkis gave Krispos a sly look. "May I read your mind, Majesty?"

"Go ahead," Krispos told him.

"You're wishing a nice big band of Khamorth would pitch into the Halogai on their way north and finish the job we started."