Hammer And Anvil by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: epub

Hammer And Anvil

“If I don’t fight the Makuraners somewheres else, looks like I’d have to fight ‘em on my own land,” the farmer told him. “Trouble is, most people, they can’t see far enough to worry that kind of way.”

“You don’t know how right you are,” Maniakes said feelingly. “What I ought to do is, I ought to send you back to Videssos the city and make you into a logothete. I have the feeling you’d be wasted as a common soldier. What’s your name?”

“I’m Himerios, your Majesty,” the peasant said, his eyes wide. “D’you really mean that? Have to tell you, in case you do, I can’t read nor write my name.”

“That would help, I admit,” Maniakes said. “You’d best stay in the army after all, Himerios. I will keep my eye on you, though. I just wish you—and all your comrades here—had brought your brothers and cousins with you when you decided to join us.”

“My cousin said good riddance, is what he said,” Himerios answered, spitting on the ground to show what he thought of that. “He’s got an eye on my plot of ground, he does. His’d be better if he took more time tending it, the fat, lazy son of a donkey.” He chuckled. “He’s on my mother’s side of the family, you gather.”

One of the men who evidently knew Himerios dug an elbow into his ribs and said, “Hey, if you could fight as good as you talk, the Makuraners, they’d be running back to their own country already.”

Amid general laughter, Himerios cursed his friend up and down, back and forth, inside and out. Maniakes laughed, too, but the mirth slipped from his face after he left the campfire around which the new recruits sat. Better than having Himerios fight like five men would have been his bringing five men with him. That hadn’t happened. Because it hadn’t, Maniakes would have an even harder time against the Makuraners than he had expected.

The Arandos flowed lazily through the coastal lowlands, its waters turbid with sediment and, downstream from villages, sometimes foul-smelling from the wastes dumped into it. Maniakes made it a point never to camp where the water did smell bad. He had seen armies melt away like snow in the early days of spring when a flux of the bowels ran through them. Some men died, some who didn’t got too sick to be worth anything as fighters, and some who got only a touch of the disease took off for home anyhow.

To Parsmanios, he said, “If men start coming down with the flux, we’re ruined, because it’ll spread faster than the healer-priests can hope to stop it.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, brother of mine—er, your Majesty,” Parsmanios answered. “The one good thing I can say about Vryetion, where I was stuck for so long, is that the water was always pure there. Now that I think on it, it’s likely one of the reasons we based ourselves there.”

“The one good thing you can say about the town?” Maniakes asked slyly.

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