THE STANDARD FLYING FROM THE UPTHRUST LANCE WAS black as soot, an outlaws’ standard once, but now one to make all Pardraya tremble. More than bandits rode in Varatesh’s fighting tail now; even the most birth-proud khagans acknowledged him as head of the newly risen Royal Clan and sent their contingents to war at his side. Worse would befall them if they said him nay, and they knew it.
Scowling, Varatesh dug spurs into his pony’s flanks. The shaggy little horse squealed and sprang ahead. The great black stallion at its side paced it without effort. Varatesh’s frown grew deeper as his glance flicked to the white-robed rider atop the huge horse. Head of the Royal Clan—Royal Khagan—master of the steppe! So everyone proclaimed him, Avshar loud among them, but he and the wizard-prince knew the lie for what it was.
Puppet! The word rang inside his head, sour as milk gone bad. Without Avshar, he would still be a chieflet of renegades, a skulker, a raider—a flea, biting and hopping away before a hand came down to crush him. There were times he wished it were so. He was a killer many times over before Avshar found him, but he had not had any idea of what evil was.
He knew now. These days he never slept without seeing irons heating in the fires, without smelling burned flesh, without hearing men shriek as their eyes were seared away. And he had consented to it, had wielded an iron himself—his skin crept when he thought of it. But through that horror he had become Royal Khagan, had made his name one with fear.
Avshar chuckled beside him, a sound that reminded him of ice crackling on a winter stream. The wizard-prince’s mantlings streamed out behind him as his horse trotted southwest. He swaddled himself from head to foot.
“We shall shatter them,” the sorcerer said, and chuckled again at the prospect. He spoke the Khamorth tongue with no trace of accent, though not a plainsman. As for what he was—alone on all the steppe, Varatesh had seen beneath his robes, and wished he had not.
“Shatter them,” Avshar repeated. “They will rue the insult they gave to Rodak and thus to you as well, my lord.” The wizard’s terrible voice held no sardonic overtone as he granted Varatesh the title, but the nomad was undeceived. Avshar went on, “Your brave warriors—and a sorcery I have devised for the occasion—shall break the fable of Arshaum invincibility once for all.”
Varatesh shivered at the cruel greediness in the wizard-prince’s manner, but could find no fault with what he said. The Arshaum were traversing Pardraya without his let—was he a lamb or a kid, for them to ignore as they pleased? “Do the omens promise success?” he asked.
Avshar turned his dreadful unseen stare on the plainsman. Varatesh flinched under it. With a freezing laugh, the wizard-prince replied, “What care I for omens? I am no enaree, Varatesh, no puling, effeminate tribesman peering timidly into the future. The future shall be as I make it.”
“Do the omens promise success?” Gorgidas asked Tolui. A longtime skeptic, he had scant belief in foretelling, but in this world he was coming to doubt his doubts.
“We will know soon,” the shaman said, his voice echoing and unearthly behind the madman’s smile of his devil-mask. He reached out for a thin wand of willow-wood; the welter of fringes on the arm of his robe dragged through the dust.
The Arshaum leaders leaned forward in their circle round him. He drew a dagger from his belt and sliced the wand in half lengthwise. “Give me your hand,” he said to Arghun. The khagan obeyed without question, and did not draw back when the shaman cut his forefinger. Tolui smeared Arghun’s blood on one half of the split willow wand, saying, “This will stand for our army.” He stabbed the other half into the soil of Pardraya, so that it came up black with mud. “This serves for the Khamorth.”
“I would have my blood you given,” Batbaian said.
Even amusement sounded eerie through the mask’s unmoving lips. “The Khamorth who are our enemies, I should have said,” Tolui explained. Batbaian flushed. Tolui went on: “Enough now. Let us see what knowledge the spirits will grant, if they see fit to answer me.”
The shaman picked up a drum with an oval head; its sides were as heavily fringed as his robe. He rose, tapping the drum softly. Its tone was deep and hollow, a fitting accompaniment to the wordless, crooning chant he began. He danced round the two wands, his steps at first slow and mincing, then higher, faster, more abandoned as he darted now this way, now that, paying no heed to the officers and princes who scattered before him.
A hoarse voice cried out in a nameless tongue ten feet above his head. Another answered, high and girlish. Gorgidas jumped; Lankinos Skylitzes, pale round the mouth, drew Phos’ sun-circle on his breast. Gorgidas thought of ventriloquism, but then both voices shouted at once—no trickster could have worked that.
Tolui was dancing furiously. “Show me!” he cried. Drumbeats boomed like thunder. “Show me!” He shouted again and again. The second voice shouted with him, pleading, demanding. The first voice answered, but roughly, in rejection.
“Show me! Show me!” Now a whole chorus of voices joined the shaman’s. “Show me!” Then came an angry bellow that all but deafened Gorgidas, and sudden silence after.
“Ah!” said Irnek, and at the same time, Viridovix: “Will you look at that, now!”
The two wands, one red with Arghun’s blood, the other dark and dirty, were stirring on the ground like live things. They rose slowly into the air until they reached waist height. All the Arshaum watched them tensely. Viridovix gaped in awe.
Like a striking snake, the muddy wand darted at the one that symbolized Arghun and his men. That one attacked in turn; they both hovered as if uncertain. Then they slowly sank together, still making small lunges at each other. The bloodstained one came to rest atop the other. The Arshaum shouted in triumph, then abruptly checked themselves as it rolled off.
They cried out again, this time in confusion and dismay, as the blood suddenly vanished from the red-smeared wand, which split into three pieces. Their eyes were wide and staring; Gorgidas guessed this was no ordinary divination. Then the wand representing the Khamorth broke into a dozen fragments. Several of those burst into flame; after perhaps half a minute, the largest disappeared.
Tolui pitched forward in a faint.
Gorgidas dashed to his side, catching him before he hit the ground. He pulled the mask from the shaman’s head and gently slapped his cheeks. Tolui moaned and stirred. Arigh stooped beside the two of them. He thrust a skin of kavass into Tolui’s mouth. The shaman choked as the fermented mare’s milk went down his throat, spraying it over Gorgidas and Arigh. His eyes came open. “More,” he wheezed. This time he kept it down.
“Well?” Irnek said. “You gave us a foretelling the likes of which we’ve never seen, but what does it mean?”
Tolui passed a hand over his face, wiped sweat away. He was pale beneath his swarthiness. He tried to sit, and did at the second try. “You must interpret it for yourself,” he said, shaken to the core. “Beyond what you saw, I offer no meanings. More magic than mine, and stronger, is being brewed; it clouds my vision and all but struck me sightless. I feel like a ferret who set out after mice and didn’t notice a bear till he stumbled over its foot.”
“Avshar!” Gorgidas said it first, but he was only half the name ahead of Viridovix and Batbaian.
“I do not know. I do not think the magician sensed me; if he had, you would be propping up a corpse. It was like no wizardry I have touched before, like black, icy fog, cold and dank and full of death.” Tolui shuddered. He wiped his face again, as if to rub off the memory of that touch.
Then Skylitzes cried out a name. “Skotos!” he exclaimed, and made the sun-sign again. Goudeles, not normally one to call on his god at every turn, joined him. Gorgidas frowned. He did not follow the Videssian faith, but there was no denying that Tolui’s description bore an uncanny resemblance to the attributes the imperials gave Phos’ evil opponent.
“What if it is?” said Arghun, to whom Skotos and Phos were mere names. “What business does a spirit you Videssians worship have on the steppe? Let him look out for himself here. This is not his home.”
“We do not worship Skotos,” Skylitzes said stiffly, and began explaining the idea of a universal deity.
Gorgidas cut him off. “Avshar is no god, nor spirit, either,” he said. “When Scaurus fought him in Videssos, he cut him and made him bleed. And beat him, too, in the end.”
“That’s so,” Arigh said. “I was there—that was when I met you, remember, V’rid’rish? Two big men, both good with their swords.”
“I didna stay for the shindy, bad cess for me,” the Gaul said. “I went off wi’ a wench instead, and not one to waste such a braw fight over, either, the clumsy quean.” The memory still rankled.
Irnek scratched his head. “I do not like going ahead blind.”
“Finding meaning in foretellings that have to do with battles is always chancy,” Tolui said, “though it is worth trying. Men’s passions cloud even the spirits’ vision, and dark spells surround this struggle and veil it more thickly in shadows. Soon we will not need to wonder. We will know.”
Arghun’s far-flung scouts picked up the approaching army while it was still more than a day’s ride northeast of the Arshaum. Against most foes they would have gained an advantage from such advanced warning, but with Avshar’s sorcery they were themselves not hidden.
The Arshaum turned to meet Varatesh’s horsemen, shaking out into battle order as they rode. They were, Viridovix saw, more orderly in their warfare than the Khamorth. The latter fought by clan and by band or family grouping within the clan, with each family patriarch or band leader a general in small. Though the Arshaum also mustered under their khagans, each clan was divided into squads of ten, companies of a hundred, and, in the large clans, regiments of a thousand. Every unit had its appropriate officer, so that commands passed quickly through the ranks and were executed with a precision that astonished the Gaul.
“They might as well be legionaries,” he said to Gorgidas, half complaining, as a company of Arghun’s plainsmen thundered by, broke into squads, and then re-formed. They carried out the evolution in perfect silence, taking their cues from black and white signal flags their captain carried.
The Greek grunted something in reply. He had been in more battles than he cared to remember, but always as a physician, fighting only in self-defense, relying on the legionaries for protection. The Arshaum, however well organized they were by nomad standards, had no place for such noncombatants. Even Tolui and his fellow shamans would take up bows and fight like any of their poeple once their magicking was done.
Thorough as usual, Gorgidas checked his equipment with great care, making sure his gladius was sharp, that his boiled-leather cuirass and small round shield had no weak spots, that all the straps on his horse’s tackle were sound and tight. “You’ll make a warrior yet,” Viridovix said approvingly. He was careless in many ways, but went over his gear as exactingly as the Greek had.
“The gods forbid,” Gorgidas said. “But there’s no one to blame but me, should anything fail.” He felt a curious tightness in his belly, half apprehension, half eagerness to have it over, one way or another—a very different feeling from the one he had known as a legionary physician. Then his chief reaction to battle had been disgust at the carnage. This twinge of anticipation made him ashamed.
When he tried to exorcise it by speaking of it aloud, Viridovix nodded knowingly. “Och, indeed and I’ve felt it, the blood lust, many’s the time. Hotter than fever, stronger than wine, sweeter than the cleft between a woman’s thighs—” He broke off, his smile going grim as he remembered Seirem and how she died. After a few seconds he went on, “And if your healing could find a cure for it, now, that’d be a finer thing nor any other I could name.”
“Would it?” Gorgidas tossed his head. “Then how would those cured ever resist the outrages of wicked men?”
The Celt tugged at his mustaches. “To the crows with you, you carper! Here we’ve gone and chased ourselves right round the tree, so you’re after saying there’s need for warring, and it’s me who’d fain see the end of it. Gaius Philippus, the sour auld kern, would laugh himself sick to hear us.”
“You’re probably right, but he’d think the argument was over the shadow of an ass. He’s not much for rights or wrongs; he takes what he finds and does what he can with it. Romans are like that. I’ve often wondered if it’s their greatest wisdom or greatest curse.”
A couple of companies of Arshaum trotted ahead of the main body, to skirmish with the Khamorth and test their quality. Some of the plainsmen bet that the sight of them alone would be enough to scatter Varatesh’s followers. Batbaian glowered, unsure whether to hope they were right or be angry at hearing his people maligned.
The skirmishers returned a little before nightfall; a few led horses with empty saddles, while several more men were wounded. Their comrades shot questions at them as the Arshaum set up camp. “It was strange,” one said not far from Gorgidas. “We ran into two bands of Hairies, outriders like us, I suppose. The first bunch fired a few shots and then turned tail. The others, though, fought like crazy men.” He scratched his head. “So who knows what to expect?”
“And a fat lot o’ good all that did,” Viridovix grumbled. “The omadhaun might as well be Tolui—or Gavras back in Videssos, come to that—for all the news we get from him.”
In the light of the campfires, the dozen naked men were spread-eagled on the ground, as if staked out; though no ropes held them, they could not move. Some fearfully, others smiling like so many wolves, the Khamorth watched them as they lay. “See the rewards cowardice wins,” Avshar said, his voice filling Varatesh’s camp. He made a swift two-handed pass; his robes flapped like vulture’s wings.
There was a rending sound. One of the helpless men shrieked as first one shoulder dislocated, then another; a louder cry came from another man as a thighbone ripped free from its hip-socket. Varatesh bit his lip as the screams went on. He was no stranger to using cruelty as a weapon, but not with the self-satisfied relish Avshar put into it.
The cries bubbled down to moans, but then, one by one, screams rang out again when limbs began to tear away from bodies. Blood spouted. The shrieks faded, this time for good.
“Bury this carrion,” Avshar said into vast silence. “The lesson is over.”
Varatesh gathered his courage to protest to the wizard-prince. “That was too much. You will only bring down hatred on us both.”
Perhaps sated by the torment, Avshar chuckled, a sound that made Varatesh want to hide. “It will encourage them,” he said carelessly. “What do I care if they hate me, so long as they fear me?” He chuckled again, in gloating anticipation. “Come tomorrow, the Arshaum will envy those wretches. The sorcery is cumbersome, but very sure.”
The scout was bleeding from a cut over his eye, but did not seem to notice. He rode his lathered pony up to Arghun and sketched a salute. “If they hold their pace, the main body of them should hit us in an hour or so.”
The khagan nodded. “My thanks.” The scout saluted again and hurried off to rejoin his company. Arghun turned to his sons and councilors. “It’s of a piece with the rest of the reports we’ve had.”
“So it is,” Irnek said. “About time for me to get back to my clan. Good hunting, all.” Several lesser khagans also rode away from the gathering under the standard of Bogoraz’s coat.
“And you, Tolui,” Arghun said. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I was when you asked me before.” The shaman smiled. He still carried his devil-mask under one arm; the day was warm and sunny, and he would have sweltered, putting it on too soon. “I can cast the spell, that I know. Whether it will do as we hope …” He shrugged.
Dizabul said, “I hope it fails.” He mimed shooting a bow and made cut-and-thrust motions. “The slaughter will be greater if we overcome them hand-to-hand.” His eyes glowed at the prospect.
“The slaughter among us, too, witling!” Arigh snapped. “Think of your own men first.”
Dizabul bridled, but before the quarrel between the two brothers could flare again Arghun turned to the Videssian party and said quickly, “Well, my allies, does it suit you to fight this day?”
Skylitzes’ nod was stolid, Pikridios Goudeles’ glum: the chubby bureaucrat was no soldier and made no secret of it. Agathias Psoes reached over his shoulder, drew an arrow from his quiver, and set it in his bow.
Batbaian already carried a shaft nocked. “Here I hold with Dizabul,” he said. His one-eyed grin was a hunting beast’s snarl.
“And I as well, begging your pardon, Arigh dear,” Viridovix said. Shading his eyes with his hand, he stared out over the plain, grimly eager for the first sight of a Khamorth. “Plenty of vengeance to be taken today—aye, and heads, too.”
“A victory will do, whatever the means,” Gorgidas said. “If we are to assail Yezd, I’d sooner see an easy one, to keep our army strong.” He had to work to hold his voice steady. He could feel his pulse hammering; the lump in his throat was like some horrid tumor. He had heard many soldiers say there was no time for such pangs when the fighting started. He waited, hoping they were right.
Trumpets blared on the left; signal flags wigwagged. “They’ve spotted them!” Arigh exclaimed. He peered at the flags and what they showed of troop movements. “Irnek’s falling back. They must have him flanked.”
“Then their wing is exposed for us to nip off,” his father replied. The khagan gestured to his standard-bearer, who flourished Bogoraz’s caftan high overhead on its long lance. Signalmen displayed banners to swing the army west. The naccara, the deep-toned Arshaum war drum, thuttered out its commands. The drummer, in his constantly exposed position at the van, was one of the few nomads who protected himself with chain mail.
“Forward!” Arghun called, exhilarated by the prospect of action at last. Gorgidas flicked his horse’s reins. It trotted ahead with the rest. Only Tolui and his fellow shamans held their place, making last preparations and awaiting the order to begin.
Viridovix pulled close to the Greek. “Fair useless you’ll feel for a longish while,” he warned. “There’s a deal of shooting to be done or ever it comes to sword work.” Gorgidas dipped his head impatiently. He had seen the nomads practicing with their composite bows and thought he knew what they could do.
Those moving dots—friends or foes? The Arshaum had no doubts. In one smooth motion they drew their bows to their ears, let fly, and were slammed back into their saddles, whose high cantles absorbed the force of the recoil. Riders and horses ahead crashed to the ground, dead at the hands of men whose faces they never saw.
Gorgidas’ eyes went wide. Shooting at a mark was one thing, hitting moving targets from horseback at such a range something else again.
Not all the Khamorth went down; far from it. An arrow zipped past the Greek with a malignant whine, then several more. One of Psoes’ troopers yelped and clutched his leg. An Arshaum tumbled from his horse. A nomad to his rear trampled him, but with a shaft through his throat he did not know it. Gorgidas abruptly understood what Viridovix had meant. He brandished his sword and shouted curses at Varatesh’s men, those being his only weapons that could reach them.
The missile duel went on, both sides emptying their quivers as fast as they could. Now and again a band would gallop close to the enemy line, fire a quick volley of heavy, broad-headed arrows at their foes, and then dart away. For longer-range work they used lighter shafts with smaller, needle-sharp points, but those lacked the penetrating power of the stouter arrows.
Steppe war was fluid, nothing like the set-piece infantry battles the Romans fought. Retreat held no disgrace, but was often a ploy to lure foes to destruction. With their tighter command structure, the Arshaum had the better of the game of trap and countertrap. Time and again they would pretend to flee, only to signal flying columns to dash in behind the overbold Khamorth and cut them off.
Then the fighting turned savage, with the surrounded nomads making charge after desperate charge, trying to hack their way back to their comrades. Though it was on horseback, that was the sort of warfare Viridovix understood. He spurred toward the thickest action, and found himself facing a Khamorth bleeding from cuts on cheek and shoulder and with an arrow sunk to the fletching in his thigh.
The plainsman might have been wounded, but nothing was wrong with his sword arm. His face a snarling mask of pain, he cut at the Celt backhanded, then came back with a roundhouse slash Viridovix barely managed to beat aside.
They traded sword strokes. Viridovix’ reach and long straight blade gave him an edge, but the nomad’s superior horsemanship canceled it. He needed no conscious thought to twist his mount now this way, now that, by pressure of his knees, or to urge it in close when one of Viridovix’ cuts left him off balance. Only the Gaul’s strong arm let him recover in time to parry. The Khamorth’s saber cut his trousers; he felt the flat kiss his leg.
But the plainsman’s horse betrayed him in the end. An arrow sprouted in its hock with a meaty thunk. It screamed and reared, and for a moment its rider had to give all his attention to holding his seat. Before he could recover, Viridovix’ sword tore out his throat. He toppled, horrified surprise the last expression his face would wear.
The Gaul felt none of the fierce elation he had expected, only a sense of doing a good job at something he no longer relished. “Och, well, it needs the doing, for a’ that,” he said. Then he stopped in dismay at his own words. “The gods beshrew me, I’m fair turned into a Roman!”
Not far away, Goudeles was fighting a Khamorth even fatter than he was. The nomad, though, knew what he was about and had the pen-pusher in trouble. He easily turned the Videssian’s tentative cuts and had pinked Goudeles half a dozen times; luck was all that had kept him from dealing a disabling wound.
“Don’t kiss him, Pikridios, for Phos’ sake!” Lankinos Skylitzes roared. “Hack at him!” But the dour Videssian officer was hotly engaged himself, with no chance to come to Goudeles’ rescue. The bureaucrat gritted his teeth as another slash got home.
Gorgidas raked his pony’s flanks with his spurs and galloped past cursing horsemen toward Goudeles and his foe. He shouted to draw the Khamorth’s attention from Goudeles. The plainsman glanced his way, but only for a moment; seeing a bearded face, he took the Greek for one of Varatesh’s followers, come to help finish off his enemy.
He realized his mistake barely in time to counter Gorgidas’ thrust. “Who are you, you flyblown sheepturd?” he bellowed in outrage, cutting at the physician’s head. He was a powerful man, but Gorgidas was used to fencing with Viridovix and knocked the blow aside. Then it was easy to thrust again, arm at full extension, all the weight of his body behind it. The Khamorth fought with the edge, not the point; battle reflex had saved him the first time. His eyes went wide as Gorgidas’ gladius punched through his boiled-leather jerkin and slid between ribs.
A rugged warrior, he cut at the Greek again, but his stroke had no strength behind it. Bright blood bubbled from his nose. A stream of it poured out of his mouth as he tried to gulp air. His curved shamshir dropped from his hand. His eyes rolled up in his head; he slumped over his horse’s neck.
“Bravely done, oh, bravely!” Goudeles was shouting, all but cutting off Gorgidas’ ear as he waved his saber about. The physician stared at the scarlet smear on his own sword point. The legionaries were right, it seemed: there was no time for fear, or even thought. The body simply reacted—and a man was dead.
He leaned to one side and vomited onto the blood-spattered grass.
The sour stuff was still stinging his nose when another plainsman, grimly intent on battling out of the Arshaum trap, stormed at him, scimitar smashing down in an arc of death. Though the nausea had filled his eyes with tears, the Greek brought up his shield to ward off the blow. He felt the light wood framework splinter and hurled the ruined target away. The second Khamorth had no more idea how to defend himself against the stabbing stroke than had the other, but Gorgidas’ thrust was not as true. The nomad reeled away, clutching a shoulder wound.
The second time, the Greek discovered, he felt only anger that his opponent had escaped. That disturbed him worse than his earlier revulsion.
Close combat ran all along the battle line as arrows were exhausted. The fight, which had begun with the two sides facing north and south, wheeled to east and west as the right wing of each overlapped the other’s left and made it give ground. If the Arshaum had gained any advantage, it was tenuous. Varatesh’s outlaws, though they were rulers now, still fought with the renegade fury of men who had nothing to lose. The clans forced into alliance with them were less ferocious, but the sight of the white-robed figure on his charger behind them reminded them that retreat held more terrors than standing fast.
Viridovix cut another swordsman from the saddle, then found himself facing a Khamorth who carried a light lance in place of shamshir or bow. It was his turn to be out-reached; he did not care for it. Luckily the press was heavy; the lancer had no chance to charge and build momentum. He jabbed at Viridovix’ face. The Gaul ducked, seized the shaft below the head, and dragged the Khamorth toward him.
His first stroke with his potent Gallic sword hewed through the lance. Its owner, who was tugging against him with all his strength, almost flew over his horse’s tail when the shaft broke and the opposing pressure disappeared. His arms flailed wildly for balance. Viridovix slashed again. The Khamorth screamed briefly, half his face sheared away.
Batbaian was wreaking a revenge to dwarf the Celt’s. He had slewed his fur cap around so one earflap hid his empty socket and he looked no different from any other Khamorth. He would strike, snakelike, and be gone before a victim knew to whom he had fallen. When three Arshaum assailed him, not recognizing him either, he lifted the cap for a moment. They drew back, knowing what that dreadful scar meant.
Arigh’s chest was splashed with blood—not his own. “Ha, we begin to drive them!” he shouted excitedly. Varatesh’s left was falling back, a retreat that was no feint. Here and there Khamorth pulled out of line and rode north for their lives. Others stubbornly battled on, but could not hold against the greater flexibility of their foes and the fury of the band that fought beneath the standard of Bogoraz’ coat.
Then an Arshaum pitched forward with a black-feathered shaft driven clean through him. Another fell, and another; a horse crashed to the ground, an arrow in its right leg. Two more animals tumbled over it, spilling their riders. One nomad rolled free; the other was crushed beneath his pony’s barrel.
Far behind the Khamorth line, Avshar plied his bow with deadly virtuosity. He had kept his quiver filled against the chance of disaster, and when it threatened he turned it back. He outranged even the nomads; his accuracy was fearsome. As its leaders died, the Arshaum advance staggered and began to ebb, like a wave running down a beach.
“That is the wizard?” Arghun said. The khagan’s legs were weak, but there was nothing wrong with his arm; more than one Khamorth had fallen to his sword. As he spoke, another Arshaum lurched in the saddle, clutching at an arrow in his belly. His scrabbling hands went limp; he slid to the ground.
“That is Avshar,” Gorgidas said. With a mixture of dread, hate, and an awe he loathed himself for feeling; he looked across the lines at the wizard-prince who had chosen himself as Videssos’ nemesis. The tall, white-robed figure did not deign to notice him. One by one his deadly shafts went out, as if fired by some murderous machine.
“Whatever sort of sorcerer he is, he is no mean man of his hands,” Arghun said with a face like iron, watching another of his men cough blood and die. “He will break us if he holds to it much longer; we cannot stand up under such archery.”
For Viridovix and Batbaian, no awe mingled with their hate at the sight of Avshar; it burned hot and clean. With one accord, they spurred their ponies forward, ready to cut their way through all the Khamorth who stood between them and the sorcerer. But the Arshaum did not press the charge with them, and Varatesh’s men took fresh courage from the mighty power at their back. Gaul and plainsman killed and killed again, but could not force a breakthrough by themselves.
Them Avshar seemed to recognize, for he bowed contemptuously in the saddle and gave a mocking wave as he slung his bow over an armored shoulder and rode from that part of the field.
Far away on his army’s right wing, Varatesh shook his head for the hundredth time, trying to keep the blood welling from the cut on his forehead from running into his eyes. He was exhausted, snatching panting breaths on his pony, which was wounded, too. His hand trembled from his weariness; the shamshir he grasped felt heavy as lead.
And this Irnek in front of him was a very devil. Beaten at the outset when his men were outflanked, he had somehow regrouped, steadied his line, and fought back with a savagery that chilled even the longtime outlaw. One lesson Varatesh had learned: never to trust an Arshaum retreat, no matter how panic-stricken it seemed. That mistake had cost him the slash over his eye and nearly his life with it.
But it was past noon, and Irnek was not retreating any more. His riders pressed foward, probing for weaknesses and making the most of whatever they found. Lacking their enemies’ discipline, the Khamorth in retreat only opened themselves to greater danger. They wavered; a few more pushes would crack them.
Varatesh bawled for a messenger, despising himself as he did so. He had thought to win this battle without help from Avshar, to free himself once and for all from the wizard’s domination. Now he was on the point of losing. Having had a taste of life as Royal Khagan, he would not go back to outlawry, the best fate he could expect from failure.
The words gagged him, but he brought them out: “Ride to Avshar and tell him to let it begin.”
Arghun shouted for a courier. A young Arshaum appeared at his side, face gray-brown with dust save for streaks washed clean by sweat. The khagan said, “We stand at the balance. Ride back to Tolui and tell him to let it begin.”
The nomad hurried away.
“Get yourself gone, you lumpish clot,” Avshar snarled. “If I waited for Varatesh’s leave for my sorceries, his cause would have foundered long before this. Go on, begone, I say.” The quailing Khamorth wheeled his pony and fled.
The wizard-prince forgot him before he was out of sight. The conjuration over which he labored sucked up his attention like a sponge. If the barbarian had broken into his spell-casting half an hour from now, his life would not have been enough to answer for the interruption.
Avshar drew a fat viper from a saddlebag. The snake thrashed wildly, trying to strike, but his grip behind its head was sure and inescapable. His mailed fingers tightened; bone crunched dully. He threw the broken-backed serpent, still alive, onto the small fire that smoked in front of him. The flames leaped up to engulf it.
He began a preliminary incantation, chanting in an archaic tongue and moving his hands through precise passes. Even so early in the spell, a mistake could mean disaster. He intended no mistakes.
Clouds passed across the sun. With the edges of his perception, he felt another power—a tiny one, next to his—making magic. When his chant was done, he allowed himself the luxury of laughter. A rain summons, was it? If his foes thought him so lacking in imagination as to repeat the walls of fire he had loosed against Targitaus’ riders, all the better. He had nothing so trivial in mind.
As a temple went up brick by brick, so with one spell upon another was his sorcery built. He laughed again, liking the comparison. But despite his grim amusement, he did not let himself be tempted out of methodical precision for the sake of speed. Even for a wizard of his might, summoning demons was not undertaken lightly. Calling and then controlling them taxed him to the utmost; if his will slipped once, they would turn and rend him in an eyeblink of time.
He could count on the fingers of both hands the invocations he had performed in all the centuries since he first recognized the dominance of Skotos in the world. There had been the dagger-imprisoned spirit which should have drunk the accursed Scaurus’ soul, but somehow failed; and a few decades before that a conjuring which did not fail at all—the fiend that slew Varahran, the last King of Kings of Makuran, in his bed and opened his land to the Yezda. Before that, it had been more than a hundred years.
His reverie vanished as the gathered power of the demon swarm he was raising heaved against his control. He restrained them harshly, sent them torment for daring to set themselves against him. Their howls of anguish rang in his mind. When he had punished them enough, he resumed the slow, careful business of preparing them for release—on his terms.
This time his laughter was full of expectant waiting. As demons went, each member of the swarm was small and weak. So is a single bee or wasp. Several hundred, all enraged together, are something else again. The Arshaum would go down as if scythed.
Avshar would have rubbed his hands together at the prospect, had they not been full of a certain powder. He cast it into the fire. The flames flared in blue, malignant violence. Fell voices cried out from the heart of the blaze, roaring, demanding. He quieted them, soothed them. “Soon,” he said. “Soon.”
A faint, halfhearted squib of thunder rumbled overhead—like a windy man with too many beans in him, the wizard-prince thought scornfully. Rain pattered down, a few drops here and there. The pulsing fire ignored them. It was no longer consuming wood and brush, but the force of the wizard’s spirit. He felt strength drain from him, but what he had left would suffice.
He raised his hands above his head in a sinuous pass and began the hypnotically rhythmic canticle that would guide the first of the swarm to do his bidding. A shape began to flicker, deep within the leaping blue flames. It turned this way and that, blindly, until it chanced to face him. It bowed low then, recognizing its master.
Avshar dipped his head in acknowledgment, but warned in a voice like rime-covered stone, “See to it thou remembrest, aye, and thy brethren with thee.”
The demon cringed.
Varatesh hardly heard the mutter of thunder in the distance; he was beating down an Arshaum’s stubborn guard and finally cutting the man from the saddle. Nor had he thought much about the dark scudding clouds suddenly filling the sky—doubtless some side-effect of Avshar’s wizardry. He had not made any deep inquiries into that. He did not want to know.
A raindrop splashed on his cheek, another on the palm of his left hand. The thunder came again, louder. He felt a light touch on the back of his neck and brushed at it automatically. His hand closed around something small and soft. It wriggled against his fingers.
He opened his hand. A tiny tree frog, green mottled with brown, sat frozen on his palm, its golden eyes wide with fear, the sac under its throat swelling and deflating at each quick breath.
Varatesh shouted in horrified disgust and threw the little creature as far as he could, then wiped his hands frantically on his buckskin trousers. With their cold slimy skins and thin, peeping voices, frogs housed the spirits of the dead, according to Khamorth legend. Even hearing them was bad luck; to touch one was infinitely worse, a sign he would soon die himself.
Shaken, he tried to put the evil omen out of his thoughts and concentrate on the fighting again. Then another froglet dropped from the sky, to tangle itself in the long hair of his pony’s mane. Its pale legs thrashed and kicked. Yet another landed on Varatesh’s knee. It hopped away before he could bring down his fist and smash it. There was another phantom touch at the side of his neck; a little frog with clinging toepads skittered wildly across his face, too fast for him to kill it. He spat and blinked, over and over. His stomach churned.
Varatesh was almost thrown from his horse when the rider on his right, who was swatting at himself like a madman, lost control of his mount and sideswiped him. “Careful, you slubberer!” he cried. The other did not seem to hear him. Still smashing away at frogs, he rode ahead with no thought for his own safety and quickly fell, easy meat for a grinning Arshaum’s saber.
Too late, Varatesh understood the clouds above the field were no part of Avshar’s sorcery. Frogs fell from them in streams, in torrents, in a deluge, and as they fell, chaos spread through the Khamorth ranks. Some men fled, screaming in terror. Others, like the luckless fellow who had collided with the outlaw chief, were too unstrung by the frogs’ dreadful prophecy to think of their own safety—and thus helped fulfill it. And the hard cases who put aside panic and omens alike were too few to hold back the Arshaum, who stormed forward as they saw their foes in confusion.
Fury banished fright from Varatesh. He roared foul oaths, trying to rally his unmanned followers. “Stand!” he shouted. “Stand, you stoneless spunkless sheep-hearted cravens!” But they would not stand. Neither his words nor his savage sword work stemmed the growing rout. By ones and twos, by groups, by whole bands, his army streamed away north, back toward their familiar pastures, and he with them.
Viridovix howled his glee as the frogs rained down and the nomads began to waver. “Look at the little puddocks, will you now, falling from the skies!” he chortled. Several fell on him. He felt very kindly toward them and let them stay; they were safer than they would be under the horses’ pounding hooves.
He rode close to Gorgidas and slapped the Greek on the back so hard that he whirled round, sword in hand, thinking himself attacked. “Sure and you’re a genius, you and your puddocks!” the Gaul cried. “D’you see the whoresons flapping about like hens wi’ the heads off ’em, not knowing whether to shit or go blind? They’re addled for fair!”
“So it would seem,” Gorgidas agreed, watching two Khamorth gallop full tilt into each other. He picked a frog off his cheek. It sprang away as he was trying to set it on top of his fur cap. “Tolui and the rest of the shamans are doing splendidly, aren’t they?”
Viridovix clapped a hand to his forehead. “Is that all you’ll say?” he said disgustedly. “You might as well be a dead corp, for all the relish you take from life. Where’s the brag? Where’s the boast? Where would Tolui and the whole lot o’ he-witches be, outen your scheme to play with?”
“Oh, go howl!” Gorgidas said, but a grin stretched itself across his spare features as he watched the Khamorth lines dissolve under the froggy cloudburst like men of salt caught in the rain. “Brekekekex!” he shouted in delight. “Brekekekex! Koax! Koax!”
Viridovix looked at him strangely. “Is that what a frog’s after saying in your Greek? Gi’ me a good Celtic puddock any day, who’ll croak his croak and ha’ done.”
The physician had no chance to come up with a sharp answer. Three Khamorth were riding at him and the Gaul, stout-spirited warriors sacrificing themselves to buy time for their comrades’ escape. He recognized Rodak son of Papak. The onetime envoy spurred toward him, still shouting, “Varatesh!” Gorgidas had no chance to use his thrusting attack. It was all he could do to save himself from Rodak’s whirlwind assault. He yelped as the Khamorth’s saber scored a bleeding line down his arm.
Then Rodak’s head leaped from his shoulders. As every muscle in the spouting corpse convulsed, Batbaian pushed on to the next outlaw and hewed away half his hand. With a shriek, the Khamorth jammed it under his other arm to try to stem the bleeding. He spun his horse round and rode for his life. Batbaian galloped to Viridovix’ aid against the third. After his mutilation and the slaughter of his clan, mere frogs held no terror for him.
Viridovix killed his man before Batbaian reached him. The young Khamorth stared at the standards in Varatesh’s army. They were in disarray, some moving in one direction, some in another, others shaking as if their bearers were taken by an ague.
“I know those clans,” he said. “They cannot all be corrupt—the Lynxes, the Four Rivers clan, the Spotted Goats, the Kestrels.…” He spurred forward toward the Khamorth, crying, “To me! To me! Rise now against Varatesh and his filthy bandits! The Wolves!” he shouted, and followed it with the howling war cry of his clan.
A chill ran up Viridovix’ spine. Only Batbaian could raise that shout now. No, there was another—had not Targitaus and he shared blood in brotherhood? He threw back his own head and howled, took up the cry himself. “The Wolves! Are you hearing me, you dung-eating mudsouls? The Wolves!” He pounded after Batbaian. Even in their confusion, heads whipped round among the Khamorth to listen.
A flood of fleeing Khamorth came up from the south, Arshaum riding in pursuit. “Irnek’s turned them!” Arigh said. “He’s rolling them up!”
“Aye!” said his father. “If we strike now, we can bag the lot of them.” Arghun seized the lance that carried Bogoraz’ coat from the standard bearer. He leveled it at the milling Khamorth, who were losing any semblance of order as the new wave of fugitives crashed through bands still fighting. “At them!” he cried. Hard on the heels of Batbaian and Viridovix, the Gray Horse Arshaum charged.
When the first frog dropped from the sky, Avshar thought it a freak of nature and crushed it under his boot. Then another one fell, and then a handful of them. A few hundred yards ahead, the sound of battle changed. The wizard-prince lifted his head, wary as an old wolf at a shift of wind.
Sensing his distraction, the demon cowering in the sorcerous fire lashed out with all its might, trying to break free from his control. Avshar staggered. “Test me, wilt thou?” he roared, gathering all his powers to hurl against the rebellious fiend. It resisted, but could not draw on the full power of its swarm; its mates were not yet entirely on the plane where it battled. He beat it back and lashed it with agony it had never imagined. With a final gesture of sublime hatred, the wizard-prince severed the connection between the swarm leader and its comrades.
Aghast, solitary in a way it had never known, the demon wailed and yammered. “Less than thou deservest, traitorous maggot!” Avshar hissed.
He readied the cantrip that would reunite the swarm with its leader and bring them through to do his bidding, but had no time to cast it. While he and the demon had fought, the battle ahead was collapsing. Khamorth galloped by, too unstrung by frogs and Arshaum to fear the wizard any more. And the Arshaum themselves could only be seconds behind, hot for revenge against his archery.
His fists balled in fury. It all but choked him—outdone by a two-copper bit of conjuring! But he had survived too long to yield to rage’s sweet temptation. He bounded atop his great black charger—no time for a spell of apportation, even if he were not spent by his earlier magics. His long-sword rasped out. Cold iron, then, and nothing else.
No, not quite. As the wizard touched spurs to the stallion’s flanks, he swung his sword arm in a quick, intricate pattern. The blue flames of his balefire died; the demon within sprang free.
Avshar pointed east. “Slay me the leader of that accursed rabble, and then I give thee leave to get hence and join thy fellows once more.”
The demon’s claws clutched hungrily. Its slanted eyes were still filled with horror at aloneness. It mounted to the air on black, leathery batwings and circled above the field to seek its commanded quarry.
The wizard-prince did not watch it go. He was already galloping south, away from the fleeing Khamorth. They were a broken tool, but he had others.
Viridovix paid no attention when the druids’ stamps on his sword flared to golden life. They had been gleaming gently for some time from Tolui’s sorcery, and he was deep in the press, laying about him for all he was worth. He kept shouting the Wolves’ war cry, though his throat was raw and his voice hoarse. Several times he had heard answering shouts that did not come from Batbaian and once saw a pair of Khamorth chopping at each other with axes. Varatesh’s jerry-built power was cracking at the first defeat.
As if the name was enough to conjure the man, he spied the outlaw chief not fifty feet away, using the strength of his fine horse to force his way through the crush. Varatesh’s eyes locked with his. Viridovix raised his sword in challenge. Varatesh nodded, once, and turned his mount’s head. He struck one of his own men across the shoulders with the flat of his shamshir. “Make way, there! This is between the pair of us!”
They moved cautiously toward one another, each aware of his opponent’s strengths. At swords afoot Viridovix would have been confident; he was a better man with the blade than Varatesh ever would be. But the nomad’s lifelong rapport with his horse canceled the Gaul’s advantage.
Confident in his horsemanship, Varatesh struck first, a cut at the Celt’s head that Viridovix easily beat aside. The outlaw chief swung up his blade in salute. “A pity it must end this way. Had the spirits made the world but a little different, we might have been friends, you and I.”
“Friends, is it?” Viridovix wheeled his horse, slashed; with liquid grace, Varatesh ducked under the stroke. Memories swam behind the Gaul’s eyes until a red mist all but robbed him of vision: Varatesh kicking him in the point of the elbow to warn against escape when he was the renegade’s captive; a butchered camp—oh, and one body in particular—the remembrance of Seirem smote him like a blow; a thousand blinded men stumbling along with weeping red empty sockets, tied to half a hundred left one-eyed to guide them. “Friends wi’ the likes o’ you, you murthering sod? The Empire’s Skotos’d spit on you.” He cut again, anger lending his arm fresh force. Varatesh grunted as he turned the slash. The next one got home.
Pain twisted the Khamorth’s mouth, but from Viridovix’ words, not the wound. “I know what you think,” he said, and the Celt could not help but believe him. “Those outrages I was forced to, and the ones before as well. I loathe myself for every one. It was do as I did or die, after I was wrongly outlawed.” His voice was full of desperate pleading, as though he was trying to convince himself and Viridovix both that he spoke truly.
For a moment the Gaul felt sympathy, but then his eyes grew hard and his hand tightened once more on his sword hilt. “A man flung into a dungheap can climb out and wash himself, or he can wade deeper. Think on the choice you made.”
The explosive rage that made Varatesh dangerous to friend and foe alike turned his handsome features into a mask more frightening than the one Tolui wore. He showered blows on Viridovix, using his lighter, quicker blade to strike and then strike again, never giving the Celt a chance to reply. Viridovix dodged in the saddle, parrying as best he could. He felt steel cut him, but battle fever ran too high to let him know the hurt yet.
Not so his horse; it squealed and bucked when Varatesh laid open its shoulder. Viridovix flew over its head. He landed heavily on his side. As Varatesh wheeled his own beast to come round and finish the job, the Gaul scrambled to his feet. He grabbed at his pony’s reins, hoping he could mount before the Khamorth was upon him. He missed. The pony, wild with pain, ran off still leaping and kicking.
Varatesh’s gore-smeared grin was a ghastly thing to see. Viridovix hefted his sword and planted his feet firmly, though facing a horseman afoot was a fight with only one likely ending.
Just as Varatesh urged his horse at the Gaul, another rider hurtled toward him out of the crowd of fighters watching the single combat. The outlaw chief whirled to face the unexpected attack, but too late. Batbaian’s scimitar rose and fell. “For my father!” he cried. Blood spurted. He slashed again. “My mother!” Varatesh reeled. “Seirem!” Two cuts, forehand and back, delivered with savage force. “And for me!” Varatesh gave a bubbling scream as the sword hacked across his face, giving Batbaian exact retribution for his own disfigurement.
The renegade toppled to the ground, lay still. “Take his horse,” Batbaian called to Viridovix. He hurried forward. Varatesh groaned and rolled over onto his back. Viridovix swung up his sword to finish him, but the outlaw’s one-eyed dying stare transfixed him.
Varatesh’s mouth worked. “Outlawed wrongly … not … my fault,” he choked out. “Swear … Kodoman drew knife … first.” He coughed blood and died, the dreadful insistence still set on his face.
The pony did a nervous dance step as Viridovix’ unfamiliar weight swung into the saddle, but it bore him. The Celt glanced at Varatesh’s corpse. “D’you suppose he was telling the truth, there at the end?”
Batbaian frowned. “I don’t care. He earned what he got.” He hesitated, looked for a moment as young as his years. “I’m sorry I broke into the duel.”
“I’m not, lad,” Viridovix said sincerely. He was starting to feel his wounds. “For all he was a cullion, the kern was as bonny a fighter as ever I faced; belike he had me there. And,” he added quietly, “you gave him your reasons for it.” Satisfied, Batbaian nodded.
Their chief’s fall spurred on the rout of the Khamorth. They fled north, pressed hard by Arghun’s forces. The khagan waved the standard over his head, urging his riders on. Flanked by his two sons, he caught up with Viridovix and Batbaian at the spearhead of the attack. “You know him, the one you brought down?” he said.
“Aye,” said Batbaian; Viridovix, almost as brief, amplified: “Varatesh, it was.”
Arghun’s face lit with the smile of a general who sees victory assured, the smile of a man for whom war still holds joy. “No wonder they break, then! Well fought, both of you.”
Viridovix grunted; Batbaian said nothing. Dizabul and even Arigh scowled at their churlishness, but the Gaul did not care. Some triumphs were too dearly won for rejoicing.
Someone was plucking at his sleeve. He turned to find Gorgidas by his side; it was like meeting someone from another world. “Still alive, are you?” he said vaguely.
The Greek’s answering grin was haggard. “Through no fault of my own, I think. Wherever I get the chance hereafter, I’ll stick to writing up battles instead of fighting in them—safer and less confusing, both.” He grew businesslike, drawing a long strip of wool from his saddlebag. “Let me tie up your arm. That slash that got through your cuirass will have to wait until we have time to get it off you.”
For the first time, Viridovix realized that the dull ache in his chest was not just exhaustion; he felt warm wetness trickling down his ribs and saw the rent in his boiled-leather armor. A flesh wound, he decided, since he had none of the shortness of breath that went with a punctured lung.
He held out his arm to Gorgidas for bandaging, then jerked it away. The druids’ marks were yellow fire down the length of his sword. But the rain of frogs, having served its purpose, was slackening. “Avshar!” the Gaul shouted, looking wildly in every direction for the wizard-prince.
But when the danger came, it dropped from the skies like Tolui’s frogs, hurtling down like a stooping hawk. Arghun suddenly groaned. The standard went flying from his hands and fell to the ground as he pitched forward on his horse, clawing at the crow-sized horror that clung to the back of his neck.
It was clawing too, its talons ripping through sinew and softer flesh. Its razor-sharp beak tore deeply into him; everyone close by heard bone break. Batwings overlay the khagan’s shoulders like the shadow of death. His struggles lessened.
Arigh and Dizabul cried out together; no one could have said which of their swords first descended on the demon’s back. But its armored integument turned their blades. It glared hatred at them through slit-pupiled eyes red as the westering sun and did not loose its hold.
Then Viridovix slashed at the creature. The druids’ stamps flashed like lightning as his sword cleaved the unearthly flesh; he blinked and shook his head, half dazzled by the explosion of light. The demon shrieked, a high, thin squall of anguish. Foul-smelling ichor sprayed from it, spattering the Gaul’s sword hand. He jerked it away; the stuff burned like vitriol.
Still screaming, the demon dropped off Arghun and thrashed in its death throes. In a rage born of disgust and dread, Virdovix hacked it clean in two. The wailing stopped, but each half quivered on with unnatural vitality. Then, when it was truly dead, its flesh crumbled to fine gray ash and blew away on the breeze.
“Out of my way, curse you!” Gorgidas said, pushing past the Celt and Arigh to reach Arghun’s side. The khagan was slumped over his horse’s back; Gorgidas sucked in a sharp, dismayed breath when he saw the gaping wound Arghun had taken. The khagan’s face was gray, his eyes rolled back in his head. Gorgidas stanched the flow of blood as well as he could and groped for a pulse. He felt none.
Near panic, the physician reached into himself for the healer’s trance. He felt his awareness of his surroundings, of everything but Arghun’s dreadful injuries, slip away. Laying his hands on them, he sent out the healing power with all the force at his command. But there was nothing to receive it, no spark of life for it to jump to. He had felt that awful emptiness before, trying to save Quintus Glabrio when his lover was far past saving.
Slowly Gorgidas returned to himself. He looked from Arigh to Dizabul and spread his hands, wet with their father’s blood. “He is gone,” he told them. His voice broke and he could not go on; Arghun had treated him like a son these last few months, in gratitude for his life. This time it was a gift Gorgidas could not give him.
Dizabul and Arigh shed no tears; that was not the Arshaum way. Instead they drew their daggers and gashed their own cheeks, mourning with blood rather than water. Then, knives still in their hands, they stared at each other with sudden hard suspicion. One of them would be khagan, and Arghun had named no successor.
When Arghun’s standard fell, the pursuit of the fleeing Khamorth broke down in confusion as the Arshaum reined in to find out what had happened. As they did, they followed his sons in marking his passage with their own blood. Lankinos Skylitzes unhesitatingly imitated the nomads; the rest of the Videssian embassy party mourned in their own way.
“Where did the wizard run?” Arigh called to the growing crowd of men around him. He jerked his chin northwards at the cloud of dust that marked the flight of the broken Khamorth. “If he’s with that rabble, I’ll chase them till I fall off the edge of the world.”
Several of Irnek’s men spoke to their own chieftain, who rode forward and bowed in the saddle to Arigh and Dizabul both, with nicely calculated impartiality. They eyed each other again. Irnek smiled, quickly erased it. He’s setting them against each other while they’re groggy with grief, Gorgidas realized, to weaken the Gray Horses and advance his own Black Sheep clan. He had thought that tall, cool Arshaum had a ready wit—the fellow maneuvered like a Videssian.
Irnek’s words, though, could not have been rehearsed, not when he had just learned of Arghun’s death. He said, “A giant in white mantlings on a great horse cut his way through my riders and headed south.” His warriors shouted confirmation; one had been disarmed by a stroke of Avshar’s broad-sword, and counted himself lucky not to have lost his head as well.
“Anthrax take the Hairies, then! Let them run,” Arigh said. His wave encompassed a score of his clansmen. “Get fresh horses from camp and be after the wizard. I don’t care how fast that big black stallion is—aye, I’ve seen it. He has no remounts, and we’ll run him down, soon or late.” He grinned wolfishly at the prospect.
As the riders hurried away, Dizabul rounded on his brother, angrily demanding, “Who are you, to give orders so?” One of Irnek’s eyebrows might have twitched, but his features were too well schooled to give away much of what he was thinking.
“And who are you, to say I may not?” Arigh’s voice was silky with danger. The Gray Horse Arshaum surreptitiously jockeyed for position, some lining up behind one brother, some behind the other. Gorgidas was dismayed to see how much support Dizabul enjoyed. He had largely recovered from the ignominy of backing Bogoraz, and many of his clanmates were more comfortable with him than with Arigh after Arghun’s elder son had spent so much time in Videssos, away from the steppe.
Irnek sat quiet on his horse, weighing the balance of forces.
“A moment, gentlemen!” Pikridios Goudeles forced his way through the crowd to Arigh and Dizabul. The dapper envoy was sadly draggled, covered with blood, dust, and sweat. His voice had nothing wrong with it, though, rolling out rich and deep in the trained phrasing of the rhetorician. “The command is sensible, no matter who gives it.”
He could not be as grandiloquent in the Arshaum tongue as in his own Videssian, but by now he spoke it fairly well. Agrhun’s sons turned their heads to listen. He continued, “Consider who gains from your disunity at the moment of victory—only Avshar. Suppressing him is your chiefest goal; all else comes afterward. Is it not so?”
“Truth,” Arigh said soberly. Dizabul still glowered, but nodded in reluctant agreement. The Gray Horse clansmen visibly relaxed. Irnek’s mouth was a little tight, but he bobbed his head Goudeles’ way, respecting the diplomat for his skill.
But then Batbaian spoke out: “It is not so!” Heads swung his way in surprise. He said, “With Varatesh dead—may the ghosts of hungry wolves gnaw his spirit’s privates forever—and Avshar routed, what needs doing is setting Pardraya right once more, so their wickedness can never flourish here again.” He trotted his pony a few paces north, toward the vanished Khamorth. “Are you with me, V’rid’rish?”
The Gaul started; he had not expected the question. The naked appeal on Batbaian’s face tore at him, and life with Targitaus’ clan, though very different from the one he had known in Gaul, had had some of the same easygoing freedom to it. Two summers before, he had been ready to desert Videssos for Namdalen, but now when he probed his feelings he found only a small temptation and a regret that it was not greater.
He shook his head sadly. “I canna, lad. Avshar’s the pit o’ the peach, I’m thinking, and my foeman or ever I came to the plains. I willna turn away from him the now.”
Batbaian slumped like a man taking a wound. “I’ll go alone, then. I have my duty, just as you think you have yours.” Viridovix flinched at his choice of words. The Khamorth said, very low, “There will always be a place for you in my tents.” He wheeled his horse and started to ride away.
“Wait!” Irnek called. Batbaian reined in. The Arshaum chieftain said, “Would you ride with my men at your back? With your Hai—” He choked the word off. “—ah, people in disarray, we can make you master as far east as the plains run.”
Here, thought Gorgidas, was truly one with an eye toward the main chance. Batbaian might have been reading his mind, for he barked out two syllables of a laugh. “If I said yes to that, Arshaum, your men would be riding on my back, not at it. I’ll not be your bellwether for you, with my ballocks cut off and a chime round my neck to lead my folk to your herding. We remember how you drove the last of us east over the Shaum a lifetime ago. You hunger for Pardraya, too, now, do you? Thank you all the same, but I’ll win or fall on my own.”
“Will you?” Irnek said. He was still smiling, but with his mouth only; his eyes had gone flinty. His men stirred, looking to him for orders. Batbaian hesitated, then reached for his shamshir.
But Arigh rapped out, “By the wind spirits, he does as he pleases. He’s paid the price for the right.” This once, Dizabul backed his brother. A mutter of agreement rose from the riders of the Gray Horse Arshaum, who knew and admired Batbaian’s quality. They stared in challenge at Irnek’s Black Sheep.
Irnek refused to be drawn. His laugh came, easy and natural-sounding. “A dismal state of affairs, when Arshaum are reduced to arguing over the fate of a Hairy.” He no longer wasted politeness on Batbaian, but waved him away. “Go, then, if it suits you.” Batbaian gave Arigh a sketched salute, Viridovix another. He trotted north. The twilight gloom swallowed him.
“Tis Royal Khagan he’ll be one day, I’m thinking,” Viridovix whispered to Gorgidas.
“I’d say you’re right, if he lives,” the Greek replied. He was remembering the wand Tolui had used to symbolize the Khamorth, and how its pieces had begun to burn. With Varatesh dead and his power shattered, civil war would run through the clans of Pardraya, one-time collaborators against their vengeful foes. Batbaian, he was sure, knew the danger he was riding into.
As darkness fell, the Arshaum ranged over the field, stripping corpses and slitting the throats of those Khamorth who still moved—and those of Arshaum who knew themselves mortally wounded and sought release from pain. The shamans, Gorgidas with them, did what they could for those less seriously hurt. The physician used the healing art on two badly injured warriors with good results, then tottered and almost fell; combined with the day’s exertions, the fatigue the healer’s trance brought with it left him shambling about in a weary daze.
Most corpses remained above ground, to await the services of carrion birds and the scavengers of the plains. Only Arghun and a couple of fallen subchiefs from other clans received burial. The Gray Horse Arshaum worked by firelight to dig a grave large and deep enough to hold him and his pony. Tolui cut the beast’s throat at the edge of the pit, in accordance with the nomads’ custom. Either Arigh or Dizabul might have done so, but neither would yield the other the privilege.
Gorgidas got back to camp as that quarrel was winding down. He collapsed by a fire with the rest of the embassy party and gnawed mechanically at a chunk of smoked meat. It must have been past midnight; the crescent moon was long set.
Arghun’s sons flared at each other again, shouting furiously. “You spoiled, stupid puppy, why should you deserve the rule?”
“A fine one to talk you are, coming back after years to try and rob me—”
“Not long will they be going on like that,” Viridovix said with glum certainty; he had been in faction fights of his own. “A word too many and it’s out swords and at ’em!”
The Greek feared he was right. The insults were getting louder and more personal. “You’d futter a mangy sheep!” Dizabul hissed.
“No. I wouldn’t risk taking your pox from it.”
“And here’s more trouble,” Viridovix said as Irnek came striding briskly between campfires. “What’s he after?”
“His own advantage,” Gorgidas said.
Arghun’s sons fell silent under Irnek’s sardonic eye. He was older and more experienced than either of them; his simple presence was a weapon. “I trust I’m not interrupting,” he said, earning a glare from Dizabul and a hard frown from Arigh.
“What is it?” Arigh snapped, with hauteur enough to make the leader of the Black Sheep pause.
Irnek, as was his way, recovered well. “I have something to tell the Gray Horse khagan,” he said, “whichever of you that may be.” He did not stop to savor their sputters, but went on, “As your—friend? client?—Batbaian made it clear my clan was not welcome east of the Shaum, I have decided the only proper thing for us to do is return to our lands and herds in Shaumkhiil. We’ve been too long away, anyhow. We leave tomorrow.”
Both brothers exclaimed in dismay. Dizabul burst out, “What of your fancy promises of help?” He had reason to be disconcerted; Irnek led a good quarter of the Arshaum forces.
“What do you call this past day’s work?” Irnek retorted, with some justice. “I lost nearly a hundred men killed, and twice as many wounded—help enough, I’d say, for a fight that wasn’t my own in the first place.” He turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Dizabul still expostulating behind him.
“You must be a farmer, to find your land so dear,” the young prince jeered. Irnek’s back stiffened, but he kept walking.
“Good shot!” Arigh said, slapping his brother on the shoulder. His anger at the Black Sheep leader put the damper on the quarrel with Dizabul, at least for the moment. He shouted to Irnek, “We’ll go on without you, then!” Irnek shrugged without breaking stride.
Gorgidas’ head and Goudeles’ came up at the same instant; their eyes met in consternation. “They don’t see their danger. How do we fix it?” Gorgidas demanded.
“Do we?” Goudeles said. “Better for the Empire if we leave it alone.”
Viridovix and Lankinos Skylitzes looked at them as if they had started speaking an unknown tongue. But Gorgidas said angrily, “We do! There’s no justice in loading all the risk on them and having them ruined on their pastures as well. Besides, I like them.”
“Amateurs,” Goudeles sighed. “What do likes matter, or justice?” Even so, he gave a few sentences of pithy advice, very much what Gorgidas had also been thinking. Their friends’ eyebrows rose in sudden understanding. The pen-pusher finished, “Do you want to put it to them, or shall I?”
“I will,” Gorgidas said, his knees creaking as he rose. He started to walk over to the Arshaum, then turned back to Goudeles. “Tell me, Pikridios, if justice does not matter, how are you different from Avshar?” He did not wait for an answer.
Arghun’s sons were running up their light felt tents when the Greek approached. Arigh nodded in a friendly enough way, Dizabul curtly. The physician still wondered whether he had been glad or sorry to see his father saved from Bogoraz’ hemlock. He would probably never know.
In time-honored Hellenic tradition, he put his business in the form of a question. “What do the two of you think Irnek will do in Shaumkhiil while we chase after Avshar?”
“Why, go back to his herds,” Dizabul said before he realized the question was out of the ordinary. Arigh saw it quicker. He had been using the heavy pommel on the hilt of his dagger to hammer tent pegs; he threw the weapon down with an oath.
“The answer is, anything he pleases,” he ground out. “Who’d be there to stop him?”
“We can’t let him get away with that,” Dizabul said fiercely. Where the fortunes of the Gray Horses were touched, they stood in perfect accord; what use to be khagan of a ruined clan?
“Would you forget why we’re here, then, and what we owe Yezd? All the more, now.” Arigh eyed his younger brother with comtempt. Not far away, nomads were still filling in Arghun’s grave.
“N-no, but what can we do?” Dizabul said, troubled. Arigh chewed his lip.
“May I suggest something?” Gorgidas asked. Again, Arigh nodded first, Dizabul following warily. When he saw he had their consent, he went on: “This could be one time when having both of you as leaders will work for you, not against. One could go ahead and move on Yezd, while the other took part of your force back across the Shaum to your stretch of the steppe. It need not be nearly as big as Irnek’s band, only enough to make him think twice about starting trouble.”
The Greek watched them calculate. Whichever one held to the pursuit of Avshar would keep the greater part of the army, but the other would have the chance to solidify his position on his native ground with the rest of the clan. If they bought the scheme, he thought he knew who would pick which role—Goudeles had set it up to make each half attractive to one of them.
They came out of their study at the same time. “I’ll go back,” Dizabul said, while Arigh was declaring, “Come what may, I push on.” They looked at each other in surprise; Gorgidas kept his face straight. The imperials knew tricks Irnek had never thought of.
After that, the haggle was over how many riders would go on, how many back to Shaumkhiil. Not all the nomads accompanying Dizabul would be Gray Horse clansmen; some of the clans that had sent out smaller contingents were also nervous about Irnek’s intentions.
“I mislike giving away so many men,” Arigh said to Gorgidas when agreement was finally reached, “but what choice have I?”
The physician was so tired he hardly cared what he said; it was almost like being drunk. “None, but I don’t think numbers matter much. By himself Avshar outnumbers all of us.” Arigh rubbed his slashed cheek, nodded somberly.