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wherein the lord with the great and good mind nearly despaired over the wicked
way of mankind. The fugitives took it up again and again: "Amorion is fallen!"
" is fallen!" " is fallen!" " is fallen!"
As the cry echoed and reechoed, Maniakes' men cried out, too, in anger and
alarm. They knew he had taken pains to impress upon them how important the
city at the west end of the Arandos was. And, unschooled in formal logic
though they were, they could reason out the misfortune its fall implied.
"Does Tzikas still live?" Maniakes called to the man who had stopped.
"Aye, so he does," the cavalryman answered, and then, recognizing Maniakes'
regalia, added, "your Majesty." He wiped sweat from his forehead with the
sleeve of his surcoat before going on. "He commands the rear guards; Phos
bless him and keep him safe, he's still trying to hold the boiler boys away
from the rest of us."
"Get into line with us," Maniakes said, not just to him but to all the
fugitives within earshot. "We'll ride forward to Tzikas' aid and, the good god
willing, surprise the Makuraners and steal a victory from them."
His calm and the good order of the force he led persuaded some of the soldiers
who had abandoned Amorion to try fighting again. Others, though, kept on
going, thinking flight their only refuge. Maniakes did not have enough men to
hold them in line by force. And their fear infected some of the warriors who
had been with him since Videssos the city, so that they wheeled their horses
and fled with the fugitives. Their companions tried to stop them, but too
often in vain.
Another scout rode back to Maniakes from the vanguard. Saluting, the fellow
said, "Your Majesty, the most eminent sir your brother bids me warn you his
force is cracking to pieces like the ice on a stream at the start of
springtime. His very words."
"Tell him he may fall back on the main body here, but " Maniakes waved an arm
to show the chaos all around him. " we're in the same boat, and I fear the
boat is sinking." The scout saluted and rode back toward the vanguard. The
scores of men coming the other way stared at him and shouted out warnings. One
or two took courage from his example and stayed to fight alongside the
Avtokrator. Most, though, just shook their heads and kept on fleeing.
Along with the vanguard Parsmanios commanded, a new group of warriors
approached Maniakes and his men. Among them was a standard bearer still
holding the Videssian banner, gold sunburst on blue, on high. Next to him rode
a gray-bearded fellow in gilded chain mail on a fine gray horse.
"Eminent Tzikas!" Maniakes shouted, loud as he could.
The gray-bearded man's head came up. Maniakes waved to him. He started to wave
back, then seemed to recognize Maniakes and changed the gesture to a salute.
"Your Majesty!" he called, and rode toward the Avtokrator.
Maniakes waved at the chaos all around them. "What happened?" he asked. "After
holding so long "
Tzikas shrugged, as if to deny that any of the sorry spectacle was his fault.
"We lost, your Majesty," he answered. "That's what happens when every
Makuraner in the world comes at you, when none of the other generals in the
westlands will lend you a counterfeit copper's worth of aid, when all we hear
from Videssos the city is that there's no help to be had there, either, or
else that your head is forfeit if you ever take a pace away from the soldiers
who protect you " He made a disgusted gesture. "I could go on, but what's the
use? To the ice with it. To the ice with everything."
"Amorion's gone to the ice, seems like," Maniakes said. He remembered that
Tzikas had blamed the failings of one of his fellow generals for the defeat in
which Tatoules disappeared, and wondered if the man knew how to take
responsibility for his own actions.
"Do you think you'd have done better, your Majesty?" Tzikas growled almost the
same question Genesios had put to Maniakes when he was captured.
"Who can say?" Maniakes looked Tzikas up and down. "Splendid footgear you have
there, eminent sir," he remarked. But for a couple of narrow black stripes,
Tzikas' boots were of imperial crimson. At any distance, they would have
looked like the red boots reserved for the Avtokrator alone.
The general shrugged again. "The way things have been, all the Videssian
authority around these parts has been invested in me nothing much coming from
the capital but trouble, as I said. I thought I ought to look the part, or
come as close to it as I could in law and custom."
He was on this side of both law and custom barely on this side, but inarguably
so. Maniakes wondered if, one fine day, he might have pulled on boots without
any black stripes. The Avtokrator wouldn't have been a bit surprised. Taking
Tzikas to task, though, would have to wait. "Are you pursued?" he asked the
ever-so-punctilious general.
"We're not riding east to settle our supper, your Majesty," Tzikas answered.
"Aye, the boiler boys are on our trail, great droves of 'em." He peered north,
then south, gauging the forces Maniakes had with him. "No point even standing
in their way. They'll go through you like a knife through fat bacon."
"Mm, not necessarily," Maniakes answered after a moment's thought. "They're
chasing what they think is a broken band of fugitives, after all. If we hit
the ones out in front of the pursuit and hit them hard, we may be able to
knock their whole army back on its heels. Phos willing, we'll save the Arandos
valley for this year, or most of it, anyhow."
Tzikas' face was pinched and narrow, not one for showing joy under the best of
circumstances. Now that circumstances were far from the best, he all but
radiated gloom. "Your Majesty, if you press forward and see the numbers
arrayed against us, you will know resistance is hopeless."
"Until I see them for myself, I don't know anything of the kind," Maniakes
answered. "Eminent sir, if you and as many of your men as you can bring want
to ride with us, you'll be welcome and you can give useful aid. If not, then
kindly keep running east; don't stay around infecting us with the notion that
everything is lost."
He waited to see how Tzikas would take that. The general scowled; he wasn't
used to taking orders or to being dismissed so peremptorily. After a moment, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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