Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (116 page)

“Out of my way!” Thorisin Gavras shouted impatiently, pushing his charger through the ranks of the Halogai. He nearly rode Gorgidas down when the Greek did not scramble out of his path quickly enough. Then he was face to face with Nogruz, his gilded armor and the Makuraner’s silvered corselet both battered and grimy. “I’d sooner have killed the wizard, but you’ll do,” he said.

Both master horsemen, they probed at each other with their lances. Thorisin closed first, ducking under a thrust and booting his big bay at Nogruz. He threw his lance aside and yanked out his saber, sent it whistling down in a vicious stroke. Nogruz dropped his own lance and took the cut on his mailed sleeve. His mouth twisted in pain beneath his waxed mustaches, but he bought the time he needed to draw his sword as he twisted away from the Emperor’s backhand pass.

Marcus only got glimpses of their single combat, as he was battling for life himself. He did see the brief sequence when a Makuraner came storming at Gavras from the flank. One of the Emperor’s Haloga guardsmen shattered his lance and cut him from his horse with two thunderous strokes of the axe. A moment later another of Nogruz’ followers killed the northerner, but did not interfere in the duel.

Nogruz’s desperate use of his sword arm to meet Thorisin’s attack left it numb and slow, and the noble found himself in constant danger.
The imperials roared and the Makurani groaned when his sword flew from his hand.

The Emperor’s next cut was meant to kill. Nogruz ducked away, not quite far enough. The blow laid his cheek open to the teeth. He reeled in the saddle. Then his men did rush up to protect him and bore him back into their ranks before Gavras could strike again.

“They
must
break now!” Thorisin cried, brandishing his red-smeared saber. He urged his foot soldiers to another push at their foes. The Makurani, though, were tough as steel. They had been fighting Videssos for fifty generations and did not need leadership to keep on; it was in their blood.

Marcus was listening to find out what was happening on either side of the deadlocked center, and misliking what he heard. The noise he had dismissed as unimportant in the aftermath of Avshar’s fall was vital again, and it showed a Yezda win in the making on the left. Even before Mourtzouphlos pulled out of line, that had been the weakest part of the imperial army; the Videssians there did not have enough plainsmen to screen them from the savage archery of the nomads who fought under Avshar’s banner.

From the direction of the shouts, the Videssian left was already sagging badly. If it broke, or even if its flank was dislodged from the hill country that anchored it, the Yezda would have a free road to the imperials’ rear. Scaurus’ guts knotted at the thought. That was how Maragha turned into a catastrophe.

The tribune looked around for Viridovix. Having risked the unthinkable once made it less so in a second crisis. Were all the Makurani to vanish as Avshar had, the tide of battle would surely turn.…

But the Gaul was nowhere to be seen; a thicket of Makuraners on horseback and tall Halogai had got between him and Marcus. The Roman set out toward where he thought Viridovix had to be, but the going was as slow and hard as it had been when he was inching his way toward Avshar.

A mounted man pounded him on the shoulder from the side. He whirled and thrust, thinking he was under attack. Thorisin Gavras knocked his point away. The Emperor wore a fierce, harried expression.
“I wish I’d put the damned Arshaum over there,” he said, pointing with his saber.

“Then you’d only have the same problem on the other wing.”

“Maybe so, but they’re grinding us on the left, and there’s nothing I can do about it—all the reserves are in.” Gavras was clutching his sword hilt tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He scowled. “Phos, I thought they’d scatter once you did in the wizard. And if I know you, you’ve had it planned for weeks, too.”

With what he hoped was a suitably modest shrug, the tribune answered, “It worked better than I expected. I was afraid I’d go with him.”

A messenger on a lathered, blowing horse forced his way up to Thorisin before he could reply. Marcus and a Haloga drove away an enemy lancer; the tribune wounded the Makuraner’s mount, but the fellow escaped anyhow. When the Roman turned back, Gavras’ face was as set as if it had been carved from marble.

“Bad news?” Marcus asked. Like Nogruz, he had to shout to be heard over the clash of weapons; the panting, oaths, and war cries of the fighting men; the pounding of horses’ hooves and the beasts’ squeals; and the moans and shrieks of the hurt.

“You might say so,” Gavras answered in a dead voice. He pointed over the Makuraner line. “The lookouts in the hills have spotted a dust cloud heading this way—cavalry, from the speed they’re making. They aren’t ours.” He glanced at the sun, which had slipped startlingly far into the west. “We might have hung on till dark saved us. Now …”

Marcus finished the sentence for himself. If the Makurani and Yezda had reinforcements coming, everything was over. Thorisin could not hold against them and could not retreat without turning his own flank.

“Make them earn it,” the tribune said.

“Aye. What else is there to do?” The Emperor’s eyes still held bleak courage, but a rising despair lay under it. “All for nothing,” he said, so softly Scaurus could hardly make out his words. “The Yezda gobble the westlands, fresh civil war over what’s left to us … even though you routed him, Roman, it seems Avshar wins at last.”

Still more quietly, he went on, “And Phos preserve Alania and my child, for no one else will.”

He spoke, Marcus thought, like Cincinnatus or one of the other heroes from the legendary days of the earliest Republic, putting the concerns of the state ahead of those of his family. But that spirit had not saved some of those heroes from disaster, and the tribune failed to see how it would here, either.

Hot fighting was an anodyne; he threw himself into it, to have no time to think of what was coming. He spied Viridovix for a moment and laughed bitterly—he was where the tribune had been not long before, probably searching for him as he had for the Celt. He struggled back in the direction he had come, but a knot of horsemen blocked his path.

“Skhēsómetha?”
someone asked at his elbow: “Will we hold?”

His answer, to his surprise, also came out in Greek: “
Ou tón
—On my oath, no.”

Gorgidas drew in a long, hissing breath of dismay. He was sadly draggled, his helmet jammed down over one ear; sweat, dust, and blood matted his beard; his cheeks were hollow with exhaustion. The target Viridovix had given him was all but hacked to flinders.

He nodded leftward and dropped into Latin to ask, “It’s there, isn’t it?” The noise from that part of the field was very bad. The Yezda had bent the imperials back a long way. They knew a building victory and whooped as if it were already won.

But Scaurus had to answer, “Worse than that.” A head taller than the Greek, he could see over the fighting and make out that fatal onrushing cloud of dust himself. He told Gorgidas what it meant.

Too weary to curse, Gorgidas felt his shoulders sag as though someone had loaded him down with a sack of wet sand. “Not much sense in any of this after all, is there?” he said. The thought saddened him. As physician and historian, he searched for patterns to give meaning to what went on around him. All the events of the last several years, each of no great importance by itself, had come together to produce Avshar’s downfall, unexpected but perfectly just. And now a relative handful of men from the west, thanks only to their untimely arrival, would rob that downfall of its significance and produce exactly the same result as if the wizard-prince still lived. Where was the right there? he wondered, and found no answer.

Yells of fear and dismay said that imperials up and down the line were spotting the approaching army. “Hold your ground!” Thorisin Gavras’ shout was urgent, but he did not show his troops the hopelessness he had revealed to Scaurus. “Running won’t help—you’ll be caught from behind! The best chance we have is to stand fast!” The sensible advice, the kind an underofficer might give his squad, kept the soldiers steadier than any showy exhortations.

Marcus could see the banners of Yezd through the roiling dust. He felt no worse; he had known who those warriors were. Some of their countrymen spied them, too, and were waving them forward.

Lanceheads swung down as the newcomers went into a gallop. Makurani, the tribune thought dully—they would tear through the imperial line like a rockslide smashing a plank fence.

The noise of their impact was like the end of the world: the thud of body against body, horse against horse; the racket of weapons clashing and snapping; screams of terror, and others of pain. But the enemy was crying out, not the imperials; the attack crashed into their unprotected rear.

Marcus simply stood, rigid with astonishment. Then the new battle cry echoing over the field reached his ears, and he started yelling like one possessed. The newcomers were shouting, “Wulghash!”

Grinning a crazy man’s grin, Gorgidas cried, “It fits! It fits!” He hugged Scaurus, danced three steps from an obscene dance, and leaped in the air in sheer high spirits. The tribune, bemused, drove off a dismounted warrior who made for the Greek while he was temporarily deranged.

If Gorgidas’ pattern was completed, that of the men who had followed Avshar shattered into ruin. Chaos ripped through their ranks at the sound of the khagan’s name. Some took up the cry themselves. Others, Yezda and Makurani both, had joined the wizard-prince in preference to Wulghash—or feared he would think so. They set upon men who had been their comrades until a moment before, hewing them down lest they be assailed in turn.

With fratricide loose among them, they could not hope to conquer the bewildered imperials, or even stand against them. Seeing the enemy’s disarray, Thorisin Gavras went over to the attack. The Videssians’ pipes
and trumpets relayed his commands: “Press ahead, strike hard! This time they break!”

And break they did, unstrung at last. As nomads will, the Yezda galloped off in all directions, like spattered quicksilver. Once they were seen to be running, the pursuit was not fierce; the imperials were at the end of their tether, and Thorisin only too aware of how readily the nomads could flock back together. He let them go.

Instead he swung his forces in against Nogruz’ Makurani. Less able to flee than the Yezda, they had no choices but fighting or surrender—and, having been beset from behind out of the blue, few would risk the latter. Battling with reckless desperation, they hurled the imperials back time after time.

But the troops who shouted Wulghash’s name fought with an anger that made them a match for the countrymen now their foes. The khagan headed them. Older than most of his men, he was still a formidable warrior, making up with experience the little he had lost in strength. Too, his own rage propelled him as he hammered through his opponents.

Nogruz met him in the center of his riven force. The Makuraner noble’s head was bandaged, but he had his wits back, and the full use of his right arm. They availed him nothing. Wulghash rained blows on him with a heavy, six-flanged mace, smashing his shield and shattering the sword in his hand. A final stroke crushed his skull.

When Nogruz went down, his followers saw at last that their game was over. They began shedding their proud, plumed helmets and giving up, though a few chose to fight to the end. More yielded to the imperials than to Wulghash’s followers. Accepting the surrender of a nobleman who kept his arrogance even in defeat, Marcus thought he, too, would sooner take his chances with an out-and-out enemy than with an overlord he had renounced.

The tribune did not see any mistreatment of the soldiers who had submitted to Wulghash. It was as if he had no time for them, for good or ill. He prowled through their disheartened ranks, his eyes darting this way and that.

He was so intent on his search that he reached the imperials’ line without noticing it, only drawing up in surprise when he saw he was face to face with foot soldiers. The Halogai and legionaries paid him no special
attention, except when one asked if he wanted to surrender. He angrily shook his head.

Scaurus called a greeting, his voice a dusty croak. Wulghash’s head whipped around. His broad nostrils flared in surprise. “You!” he said. “You turn up in the oddest places.”

“So, if your Highness will pardon me, do you.” Talking hurt; the tribune reached for his canteen. To his disgust, it was dry.

The khagan of Yezd grunted. “No trouble raising men against Avshar, or following his tracks, though we had to forage like so many dogs for the scraps his army—my army!—left.” Wulghash’s scowl was black. “And for what?” he said bitterly. “Aye, he’s beaten here, but what of it? He’s escaped me. One way or another, he’ll be back to start his bloodsucking all over again.”

“Not this time.” In as few words as he could, Marcus told Wulghash of the wizard-prince’s annihilation. He had to work to convince the khagan that Avshar had not simply gotten away through his own magic. When Wulghash finally believed him, he dismounted and embraced the tribune. His forearms were thick and muscled, like a wrestler’s.

Only scattered fighting was left; most of Nogruz’ men were either prisoners or down. Scaurus looked around to take stock. He spotted Viridovix not far away; even coated with dust, his fiery locks were hard to miss. The Gaul was relieving a captive of his gold-chased saber and knife. He waved in reply to the tribune’s hoarse shout.

“Where might you ha’ been?” he asked, prodding the dejected Makuraner along ahead of him as he ambled over. “Sure and I thought there we’d have to be swording it again, and you off doing a skulk.” The twinkle in his eye took any sting from his words.

He glanced curiously at Wulgash. “And who’s this stone-faced spalpeen?”

“We’ve met,” the khagan said coldly, looking him up and down. “I remember your loose tongue.”

The Gaul bristled and hefted his captive’s sword. Several of Wulghash’s men growled; one pointed a lance at Viridovix. Wulghash did not move, but shifted his weight to be ready for whatever happened.