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Thrax cupped his hands into a trumpet: "Ready all for battle!" Horns blared
the word to ships behind the leaders. Through their brazen cries, Maniakes
heard other captains relay orders and other lookouts report sighting the
oncoming vessels.
Then he saw them for himself. No, they were not fishing boats. They were
warships like his own, spread across a good stretch of sea ahead. He looked
from them to Thrax to his own fleet, trying to gauge numbers. He couldn't, not
with any confidence. He keenly felt how much he was a landlubber afloat. At
last, he turned and asked Thrax how the opposing forces matched up.
The captain ran a hand through his silvery hair. "Unless there's a whole lot
of sail still under the horizon, that's not the whole of the fleet from the
Key, nor even any great part of it. We can take 'em, your Majesty, likely
without hurting ourselves too bad in the doing." He yelled orders to his
trumpeter. "Pass word to widen the line! We'll sweep out beyond 'em to right
and left."
Maniakes watched the ships obey the order. He could see they were not as
smooth as they might have been. That did not much matter now. In some
close-fought engagement, though, it might make the difference between victory
and defeat.
"Their lead ship is showing shield of truce!" the lookout bawled.
Thrax peered ahead. So did Maniakes. They both wanted to make sure the lookout
was right before doing anything else. When they had satisfied themselves of
that, Thrax turned to Maniakes, a question in his eyes. Maniakes said, "We'll
show shield of truce ourselves but have our ships go on with their maneuver."
"Aye, your Majesty." Thrax's voice throbbed with approval and relief. At his
command, a sailor ran forward with a white-painted shield hung on a
spearshaft.
Maniakes looked east and west. On both wings now, his fleet overlapped that
from the Key. "We won't start a fight," he said, "but if they start one, we'll
finish it, by Phos."
"Well said, your Majesty." Again, Thrax appeared imperfectly trusting of any
captains who chose to serve under Genesios.
The fleets continued to approach each other. That from the Key did nothing to
keep itself from being flanked, which worried Maniakes. In land combat,
passions among soldiers ran so high as to make battle magic chancy at best and
more often than not futile. He wasn't sure the same obtained in naval warfare:
It seemed a more precise, more artisanly way of fighting than the melees into
which land battles generally developed. Ships reminded him more of pieces in
the Videssian board game.
He smiled when that thought crossed his mind. With luck, he would capture
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these ships and put them back on the board as part of his own force.
But would he have luck? No way to tell, not yet. As the fleets drew within
hailing distance of each other, a leather-lunged sailor aboard the nearest
ship from the Key bellowed across the green-blue water: "Why do you continue
to move against us while still showing sign of truce?"
"Because we don't trust you," Maniakes answered bluntly, and his own herald
shouted back at the oncoming dromon. He went on, "Genesios the usurper has
tried to slay me once, so I have no good reason to trust him or his. But so
long as you do not strike at us, we shall not strike at you."
The next question amused him. "Which Maniakes are you?"
"The younger, as I hope you'd see," he answered. Genesios hadn't even known at
whom he was striking, then: opponent was label enough. Maniakes asked a
question of his own. "Who seeks to know?"
After a moment, the reply came back. "You speak with Tiverhios, ypodrungarios
of the fleet of the Key. Permission to come alongside to parley?"
"Wait," Maniakes told him. He turned to Kourikos and Triphylles. "Does either
of you know this man?"
Triphylles was practically hopping up and down on the deck in excitement. "His
brother is married to a cousin of mine, your Majesty. I was a groomsman at the
wedding."
Kourikos also had a connection with Tiverhios, in a way perhaps even more
intimate than that of Triphylles: "Your Majesty, he owes me seven hundred
goldpieces, as well as a year's interest on them."
"Mm." Maniakes was not sure what to make of that. "Would he be more
interested forgive me, I did that by accident in repaying you, in having you
forgive his debt, or in slaughtering you so the matter becomes moot?"
"Oh, the indebtedness would not become moot were I to die suddenly," Kourikos
assured him. "It is quite well documented, let me tell you, and would pass
down to my heirs and assigns, Niphone receiving her fair portion from any
eventual collection."
"You really mean that," Maniakes said in tones of wonder. Even after the six
bloody, anarchic years of Genesios' reign, Kourikos remained confident the law
would in the end exact payment from a recalcitrant debtor. Indeed, remained
confident was an understatement; to the logothete of the treasury, no other
result seemed conceivable. Maniakes wondered if he should enlighten his
prospective father-in-law about the persuasive power of sharpened iron. A
moment later, he wondered if Kourikos wasn't trying to enlighten him. He tried
a different course. "For the sake of bringing him to our side, would you be
willing to forgive his debt?"
"I suppose so," Kourikos said, sounding vaguely surprised. "It is one way of
conveying advantage, after all."
"Well enough, then." To his own herald, Maniakes said, "Tell him he may come
alongside." His calculation was not based solely upon the likelihood of
Tiverhios' switching sides: he had taken the measure of the dromon in which
the ypodrungarios of the fleet from the Key sailed and concluded the Renewal
should have no trouble sinking it or winning any sort of boarding battle. That
was reckoning as cold-blooded as any Kourikos made over whether to grant a
loan, but made with lives rather than goldpieces.
Tiverhios' ship drew near. It had eyes painted on either side of the bow, to
help it see over the waves. Some fishing boats followed that custom, as did
some of the dromons in Maniakes' fleet. He wondered if it was magic or merely
superstition then he wondered if those two differed in any meaningful way. If
he ever found some leisure, which looked unlikely, he would have to put both
questions to Bagdasares.
Like every longtime seaman whose acquaintance Maniakes had made, Tiverhios was
baked brown as an overdone loaf by the sun. His fancy robe and his arrogant
stance made him easy to spy. As if they were not enough, he also shaved his
cheeks and chin bare but wore a bushy mustache to prove his masculinity, an
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eccentric style by Videssian standards.
"Greetings, Maniakes, in the name of the lord with the great and good mind,"
he said, his voice all at once oddly formal.
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