Harry Turtledove - Hammer And Anvil

Maniakes sent the religious foundations a little gold and a little grain to help them bear the burden. That was all he could do. With the Makuraners holding the westlands and the Kubratoi swooping down toward the capital, the lands recognizing his authority were straitened indeed.

He visited a monastery common room. For one thing, he wanted to show the refugees he knew they were suffering. The fervent greetings he got made him uneasily aware of how much power his office held over the hearts and minds and spirits of the Videssian people. Had he sailed off to Kalavria, they might indeed have lost hope-though he had no intention of ever admitting that to Agathios.

He also wanted to get a feel for what the Kubratoi had in mind with their invasion. "I just saw maybe ten or twenty," one man said in a rustic accent.

"Didn't wait for no more-not me, your Majesty. I hightailed it fast as I could go."

"Saw 'em out on some flat ground," another fellow said. "They weren't bunched up or nothin'-ridin' along all kind of higgledy-piggledy, like."

"They would have got me sure," a third man offered, his face breaking out in sweat as he recalled his escape, "only they stopped to kill my pigs and loot my house and so I was able to get away."

The stories confirmed what Maniakes had come to believe from other reports: unlike the Makuraners, the Kubratoi did not plan to make any permanent conquests. They had swarmed into Videssos for loot and rape and destruction, and spread themselves thin across the landscape.

He summoned his father and Rhegorios to a council of war. "If we can catch them before they're able to concentrate, we'll maul them," he said.

"I ask the question you would want me to ask," Rhegorios said: "Are you looking for us to do more than we can?"

"And here's another question along with that one," the elder Maniakes added.

"So what if we do beat them? They'll just scoot back to Kubrat, faster than we can chase them. When they ride north, they'll torch whatever they missed burning on the way south. Even a win seems hardly worth it."

"No, that's not so, or at least I think I have a way to make it not so." The Avtokrator pointed to the map of the region north of Videssos the city that lay on the table in front of him. He talked for some time.

When he was through, the elder Maniakes and Rhegorios looked at each other.

"If I'd been so sneaky when I was so young," the elder Maniakes rumbled, "I'd have had the red boots instead of Likinios, and you, lad-" He pointed at Maniakes. "-would be standing around waiting for me to die."

Before Maniakes could say anything to that, Rhegorios declared, "It all still depends on that first victory."

"What doesn't?" Maniakes said. "If we do go wrong, though, we'll be able to retreat inside the walls of Videssos the city. We won't be caught in a place where we can be hunted down and slaughtered." He slammed his fist onto the tabletop. "I don't want to think about retreat, not now." He hit the table again. "No, that's not right-I know I need to think about it. But I don't want the men to know it's ever crossed my mind, or else it'll be in the back of theirs."

"Ah, there you come down to the rub," the elder Maniakes said. "But you're going to try this scheme of yours?"

Maniakes remembered the ambush Etzilios had set, remembered his failure in the campaign up the valley of the Arandos. As Rhegorios had said, he had tried to do too much in both of them. Was he making the same mistake now? He decided it didn't matter. "I will try it," he said. "We aren't strong enough to wrest the westlands away from Makuran. If we also aren't strong enough to keep the Kubratoi away from Videssos the city, I might as well have sailed to Kalavria, because it would be about the only place our foes couldn't come after me. That was one of the reasons I wanted to go there."

"Always Haloga pirates," Rhegorios said helpfully.

"Thank you so much, cousin and brother-in-law of mine," Maniakes said. "Does either of you think the risk isn't worth taking?" If anyone would tell him the truth, his father and cousin would. They both sat silent. Maniakes slammed his fist down on the table for a third time. "We'll try it."

Sunburst banners flapping in the breeze, Maniakes' army rode forth from the Silver Gate. The Avtokrator glanced south toward the practice field where his soldiers had spent so much time at drill. This was no drill. This was war. Now he would find out how much the men had learned.

Scouts galloped out ahead of the main body. Finding the foe would not be hard, not at the start of this campaign. All Maniakes had to do was lead his army toward the thickest smoke. He absently wondered why all warriors, regardless of their nation, so loved to set fires. But finding the foe was not the only reason to send out scouts. You also wanted to make sure the foe did not find you before you were ready.

"Haven't been on campaign in a goodish while," Symvatios said, riding up alongside Maniakes. "If you don't do this every year, you forget how heavy chainmail gets-and I'm not as young as I used to be, not quite." He chuckled.

"I expect I'll still remember what needs doing, though."

"Uncle, I'm sorry to have to ask you to come along, but I'm short a couple of senior officers," Maniakes answered. "If Tzikas has a command these days, it's on the wrong side, and Parsmanios-" He didn't go on. That grief wouldn't leave him soon, if ever.

"I am a senior officer, by the good god," Symvatios agreed, laughing again. He had always been more easygoing than the elder Maniakes. "Not quite ready for the boneyard, though I hope to show you."

What Maniakes hoped was that his uncle would have the sense not to get mixed up in hand-to-hand fighting with barbarous warriors a third his age. He didn't say that, for fear of piquing Symvatios and making him rush into danger to prove he could still meet it bravely.

Towns and nobles' villas and estates clustered close to the imperial capital: rich pickings for raiders who managed to get so far south. The Kubratoi had managed. Maniakes' troopers ran into them on the afternoon of the day they had left Videssos the city.

When the scouts came pounding back with the news, the first question Maniakes asked was, "Are we riding into an ambush?"

"No, your Majesty," one of the horsemen assured him. "The barbarians-a couple of hundred of 'em, I'd guess-never spied us. They were busy plundering the little village they were at, and there's open country beyond it, so nobody's lurking there waiting to jump us."

"All right, we'll hit them." Maniakes slammed a fist down on the mailcoat that covered his thighs. He turned to Symvatios. "Hammer and anvil."

"Right you are," his uncle answered. "That's the way we'll be running this whole campaign, isn't it?" He called orders to the regiments he commanded: no horn signals now, for fear of alerting the foe. His detachment peeled off from the main force and rode away to the northeast on a long swing around the hamlet the nomads were looting.

Maniakes made the main force wait half an hour, then waved them forward. Following the scouts, he headed almost straight for the Kubrati-infested village: he swung his troopers slightly westward, to come on the Kubratoi from the southwest.

That worked out even better than he had expected, for an almond grove screened his approach from the Kubratoi. Only when the first ranks of Videssian horsemen rode out from the cover of the trees did the barbarians take alarm. Their frightened shouts were music to his ears. He shouted for music of his own. Now the trumpeters blared forth the charge.

A lot of the Kubratoi had dismounted. Several of them stood around waiting their turn with a luckless, screaming woman who hadn't been able to flee. The fellow who lay atop her at the moment sprang to his feet and tried to run for his steppe pony, but tripped over the leather breeches he hadn't fully raised. When the first arrow penetrated him, he screamed louder than the woman had. A couple of more hits and he sagged to the ground once more and lay still.