Harry Turtledove: The Thousand Cities

Varaz knew what Sharbaraz intended. He had even less patience than Abivard, being wild to leave the foothills for the flatlands to the east, the flatlands that were the gateway to Videssos. «You need to wait,» his father told him. «Leaving too soon doesn't get us anywhere-or not soon enough, anyhow.»

«I'm sick of waiting!» Varaz burst out, a sentiment with which Abivard had more than a little sympathy. «I've spent the last three winters waiting here in the palace. I want to get out, to get away. I want to go to the places where things will happen.»

Pretty soon, Abivard thought, Varaz would be old enough to make things happen rather than just watching them happen. He was taller than his mother now. Before long, his beard would begin to grow and he would make the discovery every generation finds astounding: that mankind includes womankind and is much more interesting on account of it.

Abivard hadn't cared for being cooped up three winters running, either, even if conditions had improved from one winter to the next. He had borne it more easily than had his son, though. But Varaz was going to escape from Mashiz, to return first to the land of the Thousand Cities, then to Across, and then, if the God was willing, to enter Videssos the city.

«Count yourself lucky,» Abivard told his elder son. «Your cousin Jarireh may never leave the palace till the day she marries.»

«She's a girl, though,» Varaz said. Had Roshnani heard the tone in which he said it, she probably would have boxed his ears. He went on, «Besides, her baby brother's going to be King of Kings.»

«That won't help her get out and see the world-or at least I don't think it will,» Abivard said. «It will make picking someone for her to marry harder than it would be, though.»

«Marriage-so what?» Varaz said, nothing but scorn in his voice-he remained on the childish side of the great divide. «Your family picks someone for you, the two of you go before the servant of the God, and that's it. That's how it works most of the time, anyhow.»

«Are you making an exception for your mother and me?» Abivard asked dryly.

«Well, yes, but the two of you are different,» Varaz said. «Mother goes out and does things, almost as if she were a man; she doesn't stay in the women's quarters all the time. And you let her.»

«No,» Abivard said. «I don't 'let' her. I'm glad she does. In a number of ways she's more clever than I am. I'm only lucky in that I'm clever enough to see she is more clever.»

«I don't follow that,» Varaz said. He quickly held up a hand. «I probably wouldn't follow it in Videssian, either, no matter how logical it's supposed to be, so don't bother trying.»

Thus forestalled, Abivard threw his hands in the air. Varaz escaped from his presence and went dashing down a palace hallway. Watching him, Abivard sighed. No, waiting was never easy.

But even Sharbaraz had been forced to wait for his ambassadors to return. In another sense he'd had to wait more than a dozen years after the Empire of Videssos had fallen into civil strife to be able to assail its capital with any hope of success. In still another sense Makuran as a whole had been waiting centuries for this opportunity to come around.

Abivard snapped his fingers. Lands didn't wait-people did. And, like his son, he was very tired of waiting.

Pashang clucked to the horses and flicked the reins. The wagon rattled away from Mashiz. Abivard rode beside it on a fine black gelding, the gift of Sharbaraz King of Kings. Romezan rode another that might have been a different foal of the same mare.

Around them, almost as splendidly mounted, trotted a company of heavy cavalry, their armor and that of their horses stowed in carts or on packhorses since they were traveling through friendly territory and were not expecting to fight. One proud young horseman carried the red war banner.

Off to one side, with the group but not of it, rode Tzikas.

Abivard had been warned of all the horrid things that would happen to him if anything at all happened to Tzikas. He was still trying to work out whether those horrid things were deterrent enough. For the moment they probably were. Once Videssos the city fell, Tzikas would be expendable. And if by some misfortune Videssos the city failed to fall, Sharbaraz would be looking for a scapegoat.

Tzikas no doubt was thinking along similar lines. Abivard glanced over toward him and wasn't surprised to find the Videssian renegade's eyes already on him. He stared at Tzikas for a little while, nothing but challenge in his gaze. Tzikas looked back steadily. Abivard let out a silent sigh. Enemies were so much easier to despise when they were cowards. Yet even though Tzikas was no coward, Abivard despised him anyhow.

He turned in the saddle and said to Romezan, «We're riding in the right direction now.»

«How do you mean that?» Romezan returned. «Away from the palace? Out into the field? Toward the war?»

«Any of those will do,» Abivard said. «They'll all do.» If he had to pick one, away from the palace probably would fit his thought best. In the palace he was slave to the King of Kings, for all his achievements hardly higher in status than sweepers or captive Videssian pedagogues. Away from the palace, away from the King of Kings, he was a marshal of Makuran, a great power in his own right. He had grown very used to that, all those years he'd spent extending the power of Makuran through the Videssian westlands till it reached the Cattle Crossing. Being yanked back under Sharbaraz' control would have been hard on him even had the King of Kings not seen treason lurking under every pillow and behind every door.

Romezan did not dwell on the past. He looked ahead to the cast. Dreamily, he said, «Do you suppose we'll lay Videssos low? How many hundred years have they and we warred? Come this fall, will the fight be over at last?»

«If the God is kind,» Abivard answered. They rode on a while in silence. Then Abivard said, «We'll muster as far forward as we can. As soon as we have word that Maniakes has landed, whether down in Lyssaion or in Erzerum, we move.»

«What if he doesn't land?» Romezan said, looking eastward gain, as if he could span the farsangs and see into the palaces in distant Videssos the city. «What if he decides to stay home for a year? Maniakes never ends up doing what we think he will.»

That was true. Even so, Abivard shook his head. «He'll come,» be said. «I'm sure of it, and Sharbaraz was dead right to assume it.» Hearing him agree so emphatically with the King of Kings was enough to make Romezan dig a finger into his ear as if to make sure it was working as it should. Chuckling, Abivard went on. «What's Maniakes' chief advantage over us?» He answered his own question: «He commands the sea. What has he been doing with that command? He's been using it to take the war out of Videssos and into the realm of the King of Kings. How can he possibly afford not to keep on doing what he's done the past two years?»

«Put that way, I don't suppose he can,» Romezan admitted.

«The real beauty of Sharbaraz' scheme-» Abivard stopped. Now he wondered if he was really talking about the King of Kings that way. He was, and in fact he repeated himself: «The real beauty of Sharbaraz' plan is that it uses Maniakes' strengths against him and Videssos. He takes his ships, uses them to bring his army back to the land of the Thousand Cities, and gets embroiled in fighting well away from the sea. And while he's doing all that, we steal a march and take his capital away from him.»

Romezan thought for a while before nodding. «I like it.»

«So do I,» Abivard said.

«He liked it better by the day. He and his escort made their way through the land of the Thousand Cities toward Qostabash. Peasants were busy in the fields, bringing in the spring harvest. Here and there, though, they were busy at other things, most notably the repair of canals wrecked in the previous fall's fighting and soon to be needed to cope with the sudden rush of water from the spring floods of the Tutub and the Tib and their tributaries. And here and there, across the green quilt of the floodplain, fields went untended, unharvested. Some of the cities that had perched on mounds of their own rubble were now nothing but rubble themselves. Maniakes had made the land of the Thousand Cities pay a terrible price for the many victories Makuran had won in Videssos over the past decade.