Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (114 page)

But the effect on the Videssian army’s animals was ten times worse. There is no way to school a horse against a pain striking out of nowhere. Beast after beast squealed and reared or ran wild, leaving its rider, even if unstung himself, easy meat for a Yezda on a pony under control.

Thrown into sudden confusion, the imperials began to waver again. This time Thorisin had trouble steadying them. It was all he could do to keep his seat; his bay was bucking and plunging like any other fly-tormented beast.

He would not let himself be tossed. As he forced the stallion to yield to his will, he kept up the shouts of encouragement he had been giving all along: “Come on, you bastards, will you let a few bugs bugger you? Tomorrow you can scratch; today’s for fighting!”

His cheers and similar words from a score of stubborn officers here
and there along the line helped, but it was as if the Videssians were battling in the midst of a sandstorm blowing full in their faces. Each Yezda thrust was harder to contain, and those thrusts came ever more often.

Belong long, Scaurus thought as he cut at a nomad, the Yezda would find a gap or force one, and that would end everything.

But Avshar did not see anything that looked like victory. He had thought to sweep everything before him, and he was not succeeding in that aim. True, the imperials were giving ground on the wings, but not much, and their center remained unbudged. In that part of the field his plague of flies was failing. Gavras’ infantry had the resolve to fight on despite them, and the horses of the Namdaleni were so heavily caparisoned that the biting insects could hardly reach their hides.

The wizard-prince clenched his jagged teeth as he watched his foes hold yet another attack. He had labored more than half a century to forge this latest weapon; he would
not
let it turn in his hand. His war on Videssos had cost too many years, too many defeats, for him to bear another. If for once his magic was stretched too thin, raw force would have to serve.

He turned to the messenger beside him. “Fetch me Nogruz and Kaykaus.” The Makuraner generals came quickly. Nogruz, had things gone differently in his grandfather’s time, might have been King of Kings of Makuran, but he bowed his head to Avshar. He was proud, able, and ruthless, a better servant even than Varatesh, the wizard-prince thought, and Kaykaus almost his match.

Avshar pointed at the sunburst standard still proudly flying to mark Thorisin Gavras’ station. “Gather your men together—you see your target. We will shatter their best.” He drew his sword. “I shall head the charge myself.”

A slow smile lit Nogruz’s lean, aquiline features. “I will guard your side,” he said.

“And I.” That was Kaykaus, though ragged bandages wrapped his shoulder and thigh. The great nobles of Makuran had a tradition of enmity with the Empire older than Avshar’s vendetta. Any tool that came to hand, the wizard-prince thought, and made his preparations.

The Halogai roared in derision when the horsemen they had been fighting all day drew back, but they were too battle-wise to go lumbering in pursuit. Foot soldiers who chased cavalry asked to be cut off and slaughtered. Instead they leaned on their axes and rested, crushing flies, gulping wine or water from canteens, binding up wounds, and fanning at themselves to cool down before the battle began again.

Marcus stood with them, panting and wishing he could shed his mail shirt. As often happened in hard fighting, he had picked up several small wounds without knowing it: his cheek, his right forearm—cutting across an old scar—and on his right thigh just above his knee. When he noticed them, they began to hurt. He also realized that he stank.

Viridovix looked out at the enemy. “Bad cess for us, they’re not through at all, at all,” he sighed, wiping sweat from his face. Sunburn and exertion combined to make him as florid as Zeprin the Red.

He rubbed dirt in the palm of his hand, spat, rubbed again, then tested his sword grip. “Och, better.”

The Makurani formed themselves into a great wedge aimed straight at the heart of Thorisin’s army. There were more of them than Scaurus had thought. He mouthed an oath that was part prayer, part curse, when he saw the double lightning-bolt banner move to the point of the wedge.

The Emperor’s standard came forward, too, and Gavras with it. This fight he would lead from the front. “The last throw of the dice,” Marcus said to no one in particular.

A trumpet wailed in a minor key. The Makuraners shouted Avshar’s name. Those who still had unshattered lances swung them down. The rest brandished sabers or shook their fists.

The Halogai and legionaries tensed to receive the charge. Far to the right, Scaurus heard Gaius Philippus bellowing orders and had a moment to feel glad the veteran was still in action. Then that mournful trumpet cried again, and Avshar’s horsemen thundered toward the imperial army’s center.

Scaurus’ mouth went drier even than the day’s thirsty work called for. He had faced cavalry charges before, and never wanted to see another. The greatest and most frightening difference between the Roman
and Videssian arts of war was the stirrup and what it did for cavalry. Here the horse was the killing force, not the foot.

Brave as a terrier, Laon Pakhymer tried to lead his light-armed Khatrishers in a spoiling attack on the wedge, but the Yezda with whom they were already hotly engaged would not be shaken off. Pakhymer had to pull back quickly to keep his regiment from getting surrounded.

The Namdalener countercharge was something else again. The islanders’ commander, a big burly man named Hovsa whom Scaurus barely knew, had no intention of receiving Avshar’s assault with his own knights motionless; the momentum of their chargers was as important a weapon as their lanceheads. They slammed through the Yezda who darted out to bar their path and crashed into the right side of the Makuraner wedge close to its apex.

The noise of the collision was like an earthquake in an ironmonger’s shop. The Namdaleni drove deep into the ranks of their opponents, thrusting Makurani from the saddle, overbearing their horses, and hewing them down with great, sweeping swordstrokes.

Provhos Mourtzouphlos unhesitatingly threw the survivors of his daredevil band after the knights from the Duchy. He despised and distrusted them, but he was too good a soldier not to see what needed doing.

The islanders and Videssians staggered the wedge and shoved it leftward. But the Makurani, no matter the leader they served, were warriors in their own right. They fought back ferociously, using their greater numbers to contain the imperial horse while their attack went home near the join of the legionaries and Halogai.

The first few ranks of infantry tumbled like ninepins, spitted on lances or ridden down by the Makurani, a fate Marcus barely escaped. He was spun off his feet; an iron-shod hoof thudded into the ground an inch from his face, flinging dirt in his eyes. He stabbed blindly upward. His blade pierced flesh, though it was almost ripped from his fingers. The wounded horse squealed. Its rider cried out in alarm and then in pain as the beast fell on top of him.

The tribune gained his feet, slashing wildly in all directions. He was not the only one to have got a blow in; there were horses with empty saddles and unhorsed lancers trying to rise and to keep from being trampled by their own comrades.

A few feet from him, a legionary was using a hoarded
pilum
to fend off a Makuraner. With his last strength, a dying Haloga hamstrung the lancer’s horse. As it toppled, the Roman trooper drove his spear through the Makuraner’s neck.

It could not have been more than twenty paces back to where the imperial foot was fighting to hold a battered line, but it seemed as many miles. Scaurus and the legionary fought back to back as they worked their way through the press. A Makuraner raked the tribune with a spurred heel. He yelped and hit the man in the face with the crossguard of his blade, being too nearly crushed for anything else.

A stone, thrown or perhaps kicked up by a horse, rang off the side of his helmet. He lurched and almost went down again, but then hard hands were pulling him and his companion away from the enemy and inside the imperials’ shield-wall.

Though the Romans and Halogai were still being pushed back, they did not give way to panic. They knew they were done for if they broke.
Gladii
and
pila
thrust out between big
scuta
with drilled precision. The Halogai were not singing anymore, but they kept chopping away with axes and broadswords, overhand now to get the most benefit from their round wooden shields. Where the fighting was fiercest, they and the Romans were inextricably mixed—any man standing after the Makuraner charge helped his mates without looking to see if they were blond or swarthy.

They had blunted the point of Avshar’s wedge, but were no more able than the Namdaleni and Videssians to stop it. The wizard-prince cut down trooper after trooper. The sight of his eyes blazing in that ancient face chilled the blood of the boldest and left them easy meat, but he would have been deadly without the fear he created. His charger, a trained war-horse, shattered shields and bones with its hooves, while he swung his long heavy sword like a schoolmaster’s switch.

His men followed him from fear, not affection, but they followed. The distance between Skotos’ bloody banner and the imperial sunburst narrowed. Little by little, the wizard-prince forced his attack back in the direction from which it had been pushed. “First thy brother, Gavras, then thy priest—now thee, and Videssos with thee!” he cried.

The Emperor brandished his lance in defiance and urged his mount
toward Avshar, but the big bay could not get through the tight-packed, struggling foot soldiers ahead.

He was not the only one seeking the wizard-prince. Marcus sidled along the line, now managing one step, now two or three, now having to stand and fight. He bawled Avshar’s name over and over, but his voice was lost in the cries around him.

Viridovix was not far away, though the impact of the charge had swept him and the tribune apart. He had his own war cry. It meant nothing to the troopers by him, but he did not care. “Seirem!” he shouted. “For Seirem!”

A pair of Makurani who had lost their horses came at him. He parried one saber cut, then turned the next with his shield. The Makurani moved to take him from either side. His head swiveled as he desperately looked for a way to deal with one before the other could kill him.

Then one of them collapsed with a groan, hamstrung from behind. Viridovix sprang at the other. They slashed at each other, curved sword ringing against straight. The Gaul was stronger and quicker. He beat down the Makuraner’s guard and felled him with a stroke that half severed his head.

He whirled to make sure of the other Makuraner, but that one was down for good, the legionary who had dealt with him already fighting someone else. He was in trouble, too, for he had no shield. Viridovix rushed to his aid. Together they managed to force the enemy horseman back among his comrades.

“Indeed and I thank you,” the Gaul said. “ ’Twas a rare nasty spot, that.”

“Think nothing of it,” answered his rescuer, a spare man of about his own age with a beard going white. “Even Herakles can’t fight two, as the saying goes.”

“Och, tha daft kern of a Greek, what’re you doing here? Tend to your wounded.”

“Someone else would be tending your corpse if I had been,” Gorgidas retorted with a toss of his head.

Having no ready response, Viridovix ducked down to strip a fallen Makuraner of his shield, then handed it to Gorgidas. It was a horseman’s target, small, round, and faced with boiled leather—not much for a foot
soldier, but better than nothing. The Greek had a moment to grunt his thanks before the struggle picked up again.

Moving crab-fashion, Marcus had worked to within thirty feet or so of Avshar. In the crush, the wizard-prince gave no sign of knowing he was there; Wulghash’s glamour still veiled his sword. It was all hard fighting now. The lancers at the thin end of the Makuraner wedge were the pick of the army; getting past each one was a fresh challenge, with finesse as important as brute strength.

Or so the tribune thought. But then, quite suddenly, several horses went crashing down. Makurani on Avshar’s left, the opposite side from Scaurus, shouting in alarm. Above their cries he heard someone bellowing like a wild bull. Roaring in berserker fury, his axe hewing a swathe of death ahead of him, Zeprin the Red hurled himself toward Avshar.

Only one rider was left between him and the wizard-prince—a noble in silvered corselet and gilded helm. He cut at Zeprin. Marcus saw the blow land, but the Haloga took no notice of it. He swung his axe in a glittering arc. The noble stared in disbelieving horror at the spouting stump of his wrist. The next stroke caved in his cuirass and pitched him from his horse, dead.

“Kaykaus!” the Makurani cried; a name, the tribune thought.

Zeprin cared not at all. With another incoherent yell, he rushed on Avshar, his gore-splattered axe upraised.

It was too late for the wizard-prince to twist and meet him weapon to weapon, but Avshar was truly the greatest sorcerer of the age. Without letting go of any of his own spells, he flawlessly executed the complex magic that had slain the Videssian who met him in single combat. Fiery light stabbed again from his fingers.