Harry Turtledove - Hammer And Anvil

"Loose!" Thrax cried again. Another dart leapt forth. This time the sailors-and Maniakes with them-cursed and groaned, for it hit no one. But the Makuraners scattered like frightened birds even so. That changed Maniakes' curses into cries of delight. Soldier against soldier, the boiler boys were still more than the Videssians could face with any hope of victory. But, when they came up against the imperial fleet, the Makuraners found foes they could not withstand.

"We rule the westlands!" Maniakes shouted, making the sailors stare at him before he added, "Or as much of them as isn't more than two bowshots from shore."

The sailors laughed, which was what he had had in mind. Thrax, earnest and serious as usual, said, "If it please your Majesty, I'll order the dromons in close to shore so they can shoot at clumps of the enemy who have come down too close to the sea."

"Yes, do that," Maniakes said. "It will remind them we don't tamely yield our land to Abivard and the King of Kings. It may even do the Makuraners a little real harm, too, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."

Maniakes hoped darts flying at them from beyond bow range would convince the Makuraners to stay away from the seaside, which might have let him land raiders with impunity. Instead, Abivard's men set up catapults of their own, close by the edge of the sea. Some of them threw stones big and heavy enough to sink a dromon if they hit it square. But they didn't-they couldn't-and in a few days the engines vanished from the beaches. The Makuraner engineers weren't used to turning their machines to aim at a target more mobile than a wall, and especially weren't used to shifting them to hit a target that was not only moving but doing its best not to get hit.

And the Videssian sailors, who compensated for wave action whenever they used their dart-throwers and who practiced hitting land targets, had a fine time shooting at catapults that had to stay in one place and take it. They damaged several and killed a fair number of the engineers who served them before Abivard figured out he was involved in a losing game and pulled back his machines.

A few days later, the first snow fell. Maniakes hoped Abivard's men would freeze inside Across, yet at the same time could not wish for too savage a winter. If the Cattle Crossing iced up, Abivard might have his revenge for the little wounds the catapult crews on the dromons had inflicted on his force. Maniakes wished his father hadn't told him the story of that dreadful winter.

He went back to drilling his soldiers on the practice field out by the southern end of the city wall. As they had the winter before, the Makuraners sometimes came out to see what they could see. Sometimes, now, a dromon would chase them away from the beach of Across. Maniakes took considerable satisfaction whenever he saw that happen.

No less an authority than Tzikas said, "Your Majesty, they look more like fighting men than they did a year ago-and you have more of them now, too." He tempered that by adding, "Whether you have enough men, whether they'll be good enough: those are different questions."

"So they are." Maniakes shaded his eyes with his hand and peered west over the Cattle Crossing. He saw no Makuraners today; a dromon slid smoothly through the channel, not pausing to harass any of Abivard's men. But Maniakes knew they were there, whether he could see them or not. Not all the smoke that rose above Across came from cookfires. The Makuraners were busy wrecking the suburb all over again.

"Come the spring, I expect you will put them to the test." By the way Tzikas sounded, that was more a judgment against Maniakes' character than an expression of hope for victory.

"Spring feels a million years, a million miles away." Maniakes kicked at the yellow-brown dead grass under his boots. Frustration gnawed at him like an ulcer that would not heal. "I want to go against them now, to drive them off Videssian soil with a great swift blow."

"You tried that once, your Majesty. The results were imperfectly salubrious, from our point of view." Tzikas might have been a litterateur criticizing a bad piece of poetry rather than a general commenting on a campaign.

Maniakes regarded him with reluctant respect. That he criticized his sovereign at all bespoke a certain courage and integrity-or perhaps such a perfect confidence in his own rightness as to blind him to any offense he might give.

Either way, he also seemed blind to how much Maniakes hated acknowledging himself unable to strike back at Abivard's army. He was glad to get back inside the walls of Videssos the city. In there, try as he would, he could not see the Cattle Crossing, let alone the land on the western shore. He could try to pretend all of it still yielded up taxes to the fisc, still recognized him as its ruler.

Before he had gone far into the city, he discovered-not for the first time-he was no good at fooling himself. When he got to the palace quarter, he could distinguish once more the smoke, rising from Across, from that coming off the myriad fires within Videssos the city. Even had his pretense survived so long, that would have killed it.

Oblivious to his worries, Rhegorios said, "To the ice with Tzikas; he's the sort who'd order up a lemon for his sweet." That was true, but did little to lift Maniakes' spirits. When he didn't answer, Rhegorios let out an indignant sniff. At the imperial residence, he went off in a huff.

"Wine, your Majesty?" Kameas asked. The only reply he got was a shake of the head. He was trained not to show annoyance, and very emphatically didn't show it. Maniakes wondered if the night's supper would suffer on account of that. No, he decided. Kameas also had great pride in service.

"Nice to know someone has pride in something," Maniakes muttered. Everything he had spent so much time and effort and gold rebuilding in the spring and summer had fallen to pieces in a few weeks as fall approached. Maybe things would get better when spring came once more… or maybe the good weather would just lead to yet another round of catastrophes.

He went into the chamber where he was in the habit of trying to match the dribbles of revenue that came into the fisc with the unending flood of gold that poured out of it. He had had a new, slender trickle of gold coming in from those parts of the westlands closest to Videssos the city, but he couldn't rob-or even borrow from-the temples nearly so much this year: they didn't have much, either. That meant he had to pay out less or cheapen the currency again, which amounted to the same thing.

If he stopped paying everyone but the soldiers… he wouldn't have any bureaucrats to collect next year's taxes. If he put more copper in the goldpieces, people would start hoarding good money, traders would stop doing business… and he wouldn't have much in the way of taxes to collect next year.

Someone rapped on the door. "Go away," he growled without looking up, assuming it was Kameas coming to try to make him feel better.

But the voice that said "Very well" didn't belong to Kameas: it was Lysia's. Maniakes' head came up with a jerk. There weren't many people in the city he didn't want to irk, but she was one of them.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were someone else. Please come in." She had already started to turn away. For a moment, he thought she would ignore the invitation; stubbornness ran all through his family. He said, "If you don't come in here this instant, cousin of mine, I'll call you up before the Avtokrator on a charge of lese majesty through wanton and willful disobedience."

He hoped that would amuse her instead of making her angry, and it did. "Not that!" she cried. "Anything but that! I abase myself before your Majesty."

She really did start a proskynesis. "Never mind that, by the good god," Maniakes exclaimed. They both started to laugh, then looked warily at each other. Since Niphone died, they had been cautious when they were together, and they hadn't been together much. Maniakes sighed, scowled, and shook his head.