Harry Turtledove: The Thousand Cities

«The palm of my hand on your backside for being such a greedy thing?» Abivard suggested, and drew back his arm as if to carry out that suggestion.

Varaz set his own hand on the hilt of the little sword-not a toy but a boy-sized version of a man's blade-that hung from his belt. Abivard's second living son grabbed his arm to keep him from spanking Varaz. Shahin was three years younger than his brother; between them lay another child, also a boy, who'd died of a flux before he had been weaned.

Zarmidukh grabbed Abivard's left arm in case he thought of using that one against Varaz. Unlike Shahin, who as usual was in deadly earnest, she laughed up at her father. In all her five years she'd found few things that failed to amuse her.

Not to be outdone, Gulshahr toddled over and seized Varaz' arm. He shook her off, but gently. She'd had a bad flux not long before and was still thin and pale beneath her swarthiness. When she grabbed her brother again, he shrugged and let her hold on.

«Our own little army,» Abivard said fondly. Just then Livania, the Videssian housekeeper, came out to see what the children were up to. Nodding to her, Abivard added, «And the chief quartermaster.»

He'd spoken in the Makuraner language. She answered in Videssian: «As far as that goes, supper is nearly ready.» She hadn't understood the Makuraner tongue when Abivard's horsemen had driven the Videssians out of Across, but now she was fairly fluent.

«It's octopus stew,» Varaz said. The name of the main ingredient came out in Videssian; as Makuran was a nearly landlocked country, its language had no name for many-tentacled sea creatures. All Abivard's children used Videssian as readily as their own tongue, anyhow. And why not? All of them save Varaz had been born in formerly Videssian territory, and all of them had spent far more time there than back in Makuran.

Abivard and Roshnani glanced at each other. Both of them were easily able to control their enthusiasm for octopus. As far as Abivard was concerned, the beasts had the texture of leather with very little redeeming flavor. He would have preferred mutton or goat or beef. The Videssians ate less red meat than did Makuraners at any time, though, and years of war had diminished and scattered their herds. If the choice lay between eating strange beasts that crawled in tide pools and going hungry, he was willing to be flexible.

The stew was tasty, full of carrots and parsnips and cabbage leaves and flavored with garlic and onions. Abivard, his family, Livania, and Venizelos ate in the central courtyard of the house. A fountain splashed there; that struck Abivard, who had grown up in a dry country, as an extravagant luxury.

On the other hand, no bright flowers bloomed in the courtyard, as they would have in any Makuraner home this side of a hovel. Livania had started an herb garden. Most of the plants that grew in it were nondescript to the eye, but their spicy scents cut through the city and camp stinks of smoke and men and animals and garbage and ordure.

Abivard snapped his fingers. «Have to find artisans to repair that broken sewage main or the smell will get worse and the men will start coming down sick by companies. We've been lucky we haven't had anything much going through them, because we've stayed in one place a long time.»

«That's true, most eminent sir,» Venizelos said gravely. «If once a few men are taken ill with a disease, it can race through a host like fire.»

«May it not come to pass.» Abivard twisted his left hand in a sign intended to avert any evil omen.

«When do we get to fight the Videssians again, Father?» Varaz asked, once more setting hand to sword hilt.

«That's up to Maniakes Avtokrator more than it is up to me,» Abivard answered. «We can't get at his soldiers right now-» However much Sharbaraz doesn't care for the notion, he added to himself."-and he won't come to us. What does that leave?»

Varaz frowned, seriously considering the question. The past couple of years Abivard had taken to asking him more and more questions of that sort to get him used to thinking like an officer. Some of his answers had been very good. Once or twice Abivard thought they were probably better than the ones the officer facing the real situation had come up with.

Now Varaz said, «If we can't go over the Cattle Crossing and Maniakes won't cross over here to fight us, we have to find some other way to get at his army and beat it.»

«Wishing for something you can't reach doesn't make it fall into your lap,» Abivard answered, reminded that his eldest son was still a boy, after all. «There is another way for us to get to Videssos the city, but it's not one we can take. It would mean bringing an army over the Pardrayan steppe, all the way around the Videssian sea, and then down into Videssos from the north. How would we defend ourselves from the nomads if we tried that, or keep the army supplied on the long journey it would have to take?»

«We keep our armies supplied here in Videssos,» Varaz said, reluctant to abandon his notion.

«Yes, but here in Videssos they grow all sorts of things,» Abivard said patiently. «This coastal lowland is as rich as the soil of the Thousand Cities between the Tutub and the Tib, I think. And they have towns here, with artisans to make every kind of thing an army needs. It's different on the steppe.»

«What's it like?» Shahin asked. He knew Videssos and little else.

«It's-vast,» Abivard said. «I was only out there once, on the campaign of Peroz King of Kings, the one that failed. Nothing but farsang after farsang of rolling grassland, none of it very rich but so much of it that the nomads can pasture great flocks out there. But it has no cropland, no towns, no artisans except for the few among the Khamorth-and all they know is connected to the herds one way or another.»

«If the country is that bad, why did Peroz King of Kings want it?» Varaz asked.

«Why?» Across a decade and more remembered anger smoldered in Abivard's voice. «I'll tell you why, Son. Because the Videssians spread gold among the Khamorth clans, bribing them to cross the Degird River into Makuran. You can never be top sure about Videssians.»

«Well! I like that,» Livania said indignantly.

Abivard smiled at her. «I didn't mean people like you and Venizelos. I meant the people in the palaces.» He waved east, toward the imperial residence in Videssos the city. «They are devious, they are underhanded, they will cheat you three different ways in a minute's time if they see the chance-and they commonly do see it.»

«But didn't Maniakes Avtokrator help put Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, back on the throne?» Varaz persisted.

«Yes, he did,» Abivard said. «But that was your mother's idea.»

Varaz had heard the story before. He looked proud, not astonished. Abivard thought Shahin had heard it, too, but he must not have understood what it meant, for, with his smaller sisters, he stared at Roshnani with enormous eyes. «Your idea, mother?»

«Smerdis' men had beaten us,» she said. «They'd driven us away from Mashiz and across the Thousand Cities to the edge of the badlands that run between them and the border of the Videssian westlands. We were doomed if we stayed where we were, so I thought we couldn't do worse and might do better if we took refuge with the Videssians.»

«And look what's become of that,» Abivard added, driving the lesson home. «A lot of people-men mostly, but a surprising lot of women, too-think women are foolish just because they're women. They're wrong, all of them. If Sharbaraz hadn't taken your mother's advice, he probably wouldn't be King of Kings today.»

Varaz pondered that with the same careful attention he'd given Abivard's question on strategy. Shahin just nodded and accepted it; he was still at the age when his parents' words had the authority of the Prophets Four. Maybe, if he heard such things often enough when he was small, he would pay more heed to his principal wife once he grew to be a man.