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what signal the
Kubratoi are using?"
That was a good question. It was, in fact, the question of the moment. It
wouldn't have been, had Etzilios' wizards or perhaps Abivard's not discovered
Bagdasares'
sorcery till another few moments had gone by. But they had discovered it, and
now
Maniakes had to live with or perhaps die from the consequences.
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He said, "Our wizards are working on that," which had the twin virtues of
being true and of satisfying Thrax. Also true was that the wizards had not had
any luck whatever, but Maniakes did not tell the drungarios that.
The wizards' failure ate at the Avtokrator. So did the feeling they shouldn't
have failed, or rather that their failure shouldn't have mattered. But matter
it did. The
Kubratoi, curse them, were not fools. Their wizards knew he'd been
eavesdropping on
Etzilios and Abivard. They knew he knew they intended to signal Abivard before
their one-trunk boats dashed over the Cattle Crossing to ferry the Makuraners
back to the eastern side of the strait to attack the walls of Videssos the
city.
They also knew, or perhaps hoped, Maniakes did not know what the signal was
supposed to be. And so they gave him every kind of signal under the sun. Fires
sent columns of dense black smoke into the air by day. Fires crackled on the
beach near the city by night. Kubratoi on horseback carried enormous banners
of different colors back and forth. In among that welter of decoys the nomads
might almost have hung out a sign here we come, say, in letters fifty feet
high and had it pass with no special notice.
For the Videssians, in the frustrating absence of any sure knowledge of what
the true signal would be, had to react to each and every one of them as if it
was the real thing. Time after time, dromons would charge out into the Cattle
Crossing, oars whipping the waves to foam, only to find no sign of the
monoxyla they'd hoped to trap.
Inevitably, the false alarms began corroding the fleet's readiness. Maniakes
had expected that to be a worse problem than it was. After a while, he
realized why it wasn't so bad. He'd told Thrax he wanted the dromons ready to
move at a moment's notice, no matter what.
No matter what turned out to be more complicated and difficult than he'd
expected. But he'd given Thrax an order, and the drungarios of the fleet was
going to make sure that order got obeyed period. Every once in a while, dogged
mediocrity had its advantages.
Had Rhegorios suggested a sally now, Maniakes might have been more inclined to
listen to him. The notion did not tempt him enough to order one on his own. He
had more patience than his cousin or so he kept telling himself, at any rate,
though his record of moving too soon made it a dubious proposition.
The Kubratoi kept Videssos the city under blockade by land, and, away from it,
their monoxyla picked off some of the merchantmen bringing supplies to the
defenders. Grain did not grow scarce, but looked as if it would soon, which
drove up the price in the markets.
Maniakes summoned a couple of the leading grain merchants. One of them,
Boraides, was short and plump and smiled all the time. The other, Provhos, was
tall
and thin and doleful. Their looks and temperaments might have been different,
but they thought alike.
Boraides said, "Not right to keep a man from turning an honest profit, heh
heh."
"We are in a risky business, your Majesty," Provhos agreed. He cracked his
knuckles with careful attention, one after another, his two thumbs last of
all. The popping noises were startlingly loud in the small audience chamber of
the imperial residence.
"I called you here to ask you to keep your prices down of your own free will,"
Maniakes said, "and to ask you to ask your colleagues to do likewise."
Boraides' eyes flicked left to Provhos, whose eyes were flicking right to him.
Both men coughed at the same time. "Can't be done, your Majesty," Provhos
said.
"Wish it could, but it can't," Boraides agreed. "Us grain sellers, we don't
trust anybody. Why, I don't trust myself half the time, heh heh. I tell the
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other boys what you've just told me, they're liable to bump up prices on
account of what you said, no better reason than that."
"They would be well advised not to do anything so foolish, Maniakes said.
Boraides started another breezy story. Provhos held up a hand. His fingers
were long and, except at the joints, thin. Maniakes wondered whether that was
because he cracked his knuckles. The lean grain merchant asked, "Why is that,
your Majesty?"
"Because if they try to make an unfair profit off the people during this time
of trouble which is something the two of you would never even think of doing,
of course I would decide I had no choice but to open the imperial granaries to
bring prices down again."
"You wouldn't do such a thing, your Majesty," Boraides said. "Why, it'd cost
the grain merchants' goodwill for years to come." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]