Tzikas shook his head. He was a solidly made middle-aged man with a thick head of graying hair and a neatly trimmed gray beard. He seemed quite ordinary till one looked at his eyes. When one did, one discovered they had already looked through one, weighed one's soul, measured it, and assigned one to one's proper pigeonhole in the document file of his mind. The turncoat Videssian was, Abivard had reluctantly been forced to conclude, nearly as clever as he thought he was-no mean assessment.

«Too bad,» Abivard said. «Anything I can find out about what Maniakes is planning for this summer will help. I've seen him in action. If he has steady troops behind him, he'll be difficult»

«That pup?» Tzikas made a dismissive gesture that irritated Abivard, who was not far from Maniakes' age. «He has a habit of striking too soon and of thinking he's stronger than he really is.» His face clouded. «It cost us dear in the Arandos valley not long after he took the crown.»

Abivard nodded, though Tzikas was rewriting things in his memory. For years the garrison Tzikas commanded at Amorion, at the west end of the valley, had held off Abivard's force: Abivard had developed a healthy respect for the Videssian general's skill. But at last Amorion had fallen-before Maniakes' army, pushing west up the line of the Arandos, could reinforce it Abivard's men had beaten Maniakes after that, but it had not been the Avtokrator's fault that Amorion had at last been taken.

What Abivard said was, «If he's as hasty and headstrong as you say, eminent sir, how did he smash the Kubratoi as he did?»

«Easy enough to win a fine name for yourself fighting savages,» Tzikas answered. «What you get from it, though, won't help you much when you come up against soldiers with discipline and generals who can see farther than the ends of their noses.»