Harry Turtledove - Hammer And Anvil

After the messenger departed, Maniakes spent a little while calling curses down on Abivard's head. Had the Makuraner general not urged the course upon him, he never would have sent Triphylles off to Sharbaraz. He had assumed the King of Kings would not mistreat an envoy, and also that Sharbaraz would be interested in extracting tribute money from Videssos.

But Sharbaraz was already extracting money from Videssos. With enough plunder coming in, he cared nothing for tribute. Maniakes kicked at the floor. For an angry moment, he wished Kourikos and Triphylles had never come to Kastavala. Niphone would still be alive if they had stayed in Videssos the city, and it was hard to see how the empire could have been in worse shape under Genesios than it was now under his own rule. And he himself would still have been back on the island of Kalavria with his mistress and his bastard son, and none of the catastrophes befalling his homeland would have been his fault.

He sighed. "Some people are meant to start fires, some are meant to put them out," he said, though no one was there to hear him. "Genesios started this one, and somehow or other I have to figure out how to pour water on it."

He sat down and thought hard. Things were better now than they had been the year before. Then he had tried to match the Makuraners at their own game. It hadn't worked; Videssos had been-and remained-in too much chaos for that. Now he was trying something new. He didn't know how well his strategy of raids and pinpricks would work, but it could hardly fare worse than what had gone before it. With luck, it would rock Abivard back on his heels. The Makuraners in the westlands hadn't had even that much happen to them for a long time.

"Even if it works, it's not enough," he muttered. Harassing Abivard's forces wouldn't drive them off Videssian soil. He couldn't think of anything within the Empire's capacity that would.

Maniakes thrust a parchment at Tzikas. He wished he had the leather tube in which the message had reached Videssos the city; he would have hit his gloomy general over the head with it. "Here, eminent sir, read this," he said. "Do you see?"

Tzikas took his own sweet time unrolling the parchment and scanning its contents. "Any good news is always welcome, your Majesty," he said, politely-and infuriatingly-unimpressed, "but destroying a few Makuraner wagons west of Amorion doesn't strike me as reason enough for Agathios to declare a day of thanksgiving."

By his tone, he would not have been impressed had the message reported the capture of Mashiz. Nothing Maniakes could do would satisfy him, save possibly to hand him the red boots. Had he not been such a good general, Maniakes would have had no qualms about forcing him into retirement-but his being such a good general was precisely what made him a threat now.

Keeping a tight rein on his temper, Maniakes said, "Eminent sir, destroying the wagons is not the point. The point is that we have warriors raiding deep into territory the Makuraners have held since the early days of Genesios' reign-and coming out safe again to tell the tale."

More than your warriors in Amorion did, he thought, all the while knowing that was unfair. Tzikas had done well to hold out in the garrison town for as long as he had. Expecting him to have hit back, too, was asking too much.

The general handed the note back to him. "May we have many more such glorious successes, your Majesty." Was that sarcasm? Luckily for Tzikas, Maniakes couldn't quite be sure.

"May we indeed," he answered, taking the comment at face value. "If we can't win large fights, by all means let us win the small ones. If we win enough small ones, perhaps the Makuraners will have suffered too much damage to engage us in so many of the large ones."

"Did it come to pass, that would be very good," Tzikas agreed. "But, your Majesty-and I hope you will forgive me for speaking so plainly-I don't see it as likely. They have too strong a grip on the westlands for even a swarm of fleabites to drive them out."

"Eminent sir, if neither large fights nor small ones will get the Makuraners out of the westlands, isn't that the same as saying the westlands by rights belong to them these days?"

"I wouldn't go quite that far, your Majesty," Tzikas said, cautious as usual. Maniakes, by now, had the distinct impression Tzikas wouldn't go very far for anything-a more relentlessly moderate man would have been hard to imagine. In a way, that was a relief, for Maniakes could hope it meant Tzikas wouldn't go far in trying to overthrow him, either.

But it limited what he could do with the general. Send Tzikas to lead what should have been a dashing cavalry pursuit and you would find he had decorously ridden after the foe for a few miles before deciding he had done enough for the day and breaking off. No doubt he was a clever, resourceful defensive strategist, but a soldier who wouldn't go out and fight was worth less than he might have been otherwise.

Maniakes gave it up and went to see how his children were doing. Evtropia greeted him with a squeal of glee and came toddling over to wrap her arms around his leg. "Papapapa," she said. "Good!" She talked much more than he remembered Atalarikhos doing at the same age. All the serving women maintained she was astonishingly precocious. Since she seemed a clever child to him, too, he dared hope that wasn't the usual flattery an Avtokrator heard.

A wet nurse was feeding Likarios. Nodding to Maniakes, she said, "He is a hungry one, your Majesty. Odds are that means he'll be a big man when he comes into his full growth."

"We'll have to wait and see," Maniakes answered. That was flattery, nothing else but.

"He quite favors you, I think," the wet nurse said, trying again. Maniakes shrugged. Whenever he looked at his infant son, he saw Niphone's still, pale face in the sarcophagus. It wasn't as if the baby had done that deliberately, nor even that he felt anger at his son because of what had happened to Niphone. But the association would not go away.

Maniakes walked over to look down at the boy. Likarios recognized him and tried to smile with the wet nurse's nipple still in his mouth. Milk dribbled down his chin. The wet nurse laughed. So did Maniakes, in spite of everything-his son looked very foolish.

"He's a fine baby, your Majesty," the wet nurse said. "He eats and eats and eats and hardly ever fusses. He smiles almost all the time."

"That's good," Maniakes said. Hearing his voice, Likarios did smile again. Maniakes found himself smiling back. He remembered Evtropia from the fall before, when she had been a few months older than her little brother was now. She had thrown her whole body into a smile, wiggling and thrashing from sheer glee. She hadn't cared then-she still didn't care-that the Makuraners had conquered the westlands and were sitting in Across. As long as someone had been there to smile at her, she had stayed happy. He envied that.

The wet nurse stuck a cloth up on her shoulder and transferred Likarios from her breast. She patted him on the back till he produced a belch and a little sour milk. "That's a good boy!" she said, and then, to Maniakes, "He's a healthy baby, too." She quickly sketched the sun-circle over her still-bare left breast. "He hasn't had many fevers or fluxes or anything of the sort. He just goes on about his business, is what he does."

"That's what he's supposed to do," Maniakes answered, also sketching the sun-sign. "Nice to see someone doing what he's supposed to do and not fouling up the job."

"Your Majesty?" the wet nurse said. Politics wasn't her first worry, either. Whatever happened outside her immediate circle of attention could have been off beyond Makuran, as far as she was concerned. Maniakes wished he could view matters the same way. Unfortunately, he knew too well that what happened far away now could matter in Videssos the city later. If he and his father hadn't helped restore Sharbaraz to his throne, the westlands likely would have remained in Videssian hands to this day.