THORISIN’S SCOUTING REPORT WAS GOOD, MARCUS THOUGHT; by the campfires winking at the far edge of the plain, the Yezda had a bigger army than the one standing in their way. The westerly breeze carried their endless harsh chant to the tribune: “Avshar! Avshar! Avshar!” Deep-toned drums beat out an unceasing accompaniment, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.
It was a sound to raise the hackles of anyone who had fought at Maragha, bringing back memories of the terrible night when the Yezda had surrounded the imperial camp. Now, though, Gaius Philippus gave an ostentatious snort of contempt. “Let ’em pound,” he said. “They’ll ruin their own sleep long before mine.”
Scaurus nodded. “Gavras may not like the defensive, but he knows how to use it when he has to.” The Emperor had moved north and west from Amorion until he found the exact battlefield he wanted; the sloping plain whose high ground the Videssians held formed the only sizeable opening in a chain of rough hills. A few companies and a couple of light catapults plugged the smaller gaps.
Avshar had not even tried to force them. He made straight for the main imperial force. Unlike Thorisin, he sought battle.
Scouts were already skirmishing in the space between the two armies. The squeal of a wounded horse cut through the Yezda chant.
“Tomorrow,” Gaius Philippus said, fiddling with the cheekpiece of the legionary helmet he had borrowed. When it suited him, he turned his back to the fire by which he had been sitting and peered into the darkness, trying to see who had won the clash. There was no way to tell.
He turned his attention to the imperial forces. After a while he sat again, a puzzled expression on his face. “Near as I can see, Gavras is doing everything right. Why don’t I like it?”
“The sitting around, it is,” Viridovix said at once. Even more than Thorisin’s, his temper demanded action.
“That wouldn’t matter, in a confident army,” Gorgidas half disagreed. “With this one, though …” He let his voice trail away.
Marcus knew what he meant. Some units of the heterogeneous force were confident enough. The legionaries had always given the Yezda all they wanted, as had the Khatrishers who fought beside them. The Emperor’s Haloga bodyguards feared no man living. And to the Arshaum, the Yezda were so many more Khamorth, to be beaten with ease. Arigh’s men formed a big part of the army’s cavalry screen.
But the Videssians who made up the bulk of Thorisin’s men were of variable quality. Some veteran units were as good as any of the professionals who served beside them. Others, though, were garrison troops from places like Serrhes, or militiamen facing real combat for the first time. How well they would do was anyone’s guess.
And in the background, unmentioned but always there, lurked the question of what deviltry Avshar had waiting. It preyed on the minds and sapped the spirits of veterans and new soldiers alike.
“Tomorrow,” Scaurus muttered, and wondered if it was prayer or curse.
Cookfires flared with the dawn, giving the troops a hot meal before they took their places. Having chosen the field, the Emperor had settled his order of battle well in advance. He and the Halogai of the Imperial Guard anchored the center of his line. As the northerners marched forward, their axeheads gave back bloody reflections from the rising sun.
The legionaries were on their right, drawn up maniple by maniple, each behind its own signum; the wreath-encircled hands topping the standards had been freshly gilded and made a brave show in the morning light. The points of the legionaries’ pila were like a moving forest as they advanced.
Here and there a man clung to the weapons he was used to, instead of adopting Roman-style javelins and shortsword. Viridovix, of course, kept his Gallic blade. And Zeprin the Red, shouldering his axe, might have been one with his countrymen in the Emperor’s guard. But the Haloga still did not think himself worthy of serving in their ranks and tramped instead with the rest of the legionaries.
To the left of the Imperial Guard were a couple of hundred Namdalener knights, men who still had Thorisin’s trust in spite of the strife between the Duchy and Videssos. They wore conical helms with bar nasals and mail shirts that reached to their knees, and carried long lances, slashing swords, and brightly painted kite-shaped shields. The stout horses they rode were also armored, with canvas and leather and metal.
Rakio, in his own full caparison, rode over from the Roman camp to join them as the imperial force moved out. “No fear for me have,” he said to Gorgidas. “I will be best fighting with men who fight as I do.” He leaned down from the saddle to kiss the Greek good-bye.
The legionaries howled. Rakio straightened. “Jealous, the lot of you,” he said, which raised a fresh chorus of whoops. They did not disturb the Yrmido at all; he was comfortable within his own people’s standards. He waved and trotted off.
Gorgidas wished for his lover’s innocent openness. Back among the legionaries, he found himself automatically falling into the old pattern of concealment. But when he looked around, he saw the grinning Romans were not so malicious after all. Maybe Rakio’s nonchalance reached them, too. The Greek didn’t know, or care. He accepted it gratefully.
“Pass me a whetstone, will you, someone?” he said, wanting to hone his gladius one last time.
Two or three legionaries offered stones; one chuckled, “The horseman thinks your blade is sharp enough.” Gorgidas flinched, but it came out as camp banter, not the vicious mockery Quintus Glabrio had been forced to face a few years before. He gave back a rude gesture. The trooper laughed out loud.
Laon Pakhymer made his pony rear as he led his Khatrishers out to flank the legionaries. Marcus doffed his helmet to return the salute. “They’re all right, that bunch, sloppy or no,” Gaius Philippus said, echoing his thoughts.
Videssian troops, lighter-armed but more mobile than the men of Gavras’ center, took their stations to either side. Some were horse-archers, others bore javelins or sabers. One of their officers brought his mount up on its hind legs, too, for no reason Scaurus could see other than high spirits. The imperials did not usually act like that; few of them gloried in war. Then he recognized Provhos Mourtzouphlos. He scowled. He did not want to grant his enemy any virtues, even courage.
Thorisin had stationed nomads at either wing of his army, outside his native soldiers. On the left were Khamorth, hired off the Pardrayan steppe. Marcus wondered if they were men who lived near the Astris, Videssos’ river-boundary with the plains, or if his friends’ friend Batbaian had sent them to the Empire’s aid by way of Prista.
He had no such questions about the warriors on the other flank. Arigh was posted there. The Roman could hear the naccara-drum, at once deeper and sharper than the ones the Yezda used, through the horns and pipes that signaled the imperial force forward.
Avshar’s army was moving, too, guided by the will of its chieftain. It looked to be all cavalry. The wizard-prince’s tokens were at the center, opposite Videssos’ gold sunburst on blue. Avshar had two huge banners. The smaller was Yezd’s flag, a springing panther on a field the color of drying blood. The other’s ground was of the same hue, but it took a while to recognize the device. When the imperials finally did, many of them sketched a quick circle over their hearts; it was Skotos’s twin lightning bolts.
Around the wizard-prince came regiments of Makuraner lancers; their gear was between that of the Videssians and Namdaleni in weight and protective strength. A lot of them wore plumes atop their spiked helmets to make themselves seem taller.
The greater part of Avshar’s power, though, resided in the Yezda proper. Scaurus had seen them in action too often to despise them for the poor order they kept trotting into battle; they combined barbarous spirit with the refined cruelty they had learned from their master. The emblems of many clans—here a green banner, there a wolf’s skull, or a man’s, on a pole—were held on high at irregular intervals up and down their line.
Avshar had taught them something of obedience, too; they drew to a ragged halt when Skotos’ flag wagged back and forth three times. The armies were still several bowshots apart. Suspecting some sorcerous trap, Thorisin drew up his own forces. His mission was to hold, not to attack; let Avshar come to him.
A horseman emerged from the ranks of the Yezda and rode slowly into the no man’s land between the two armies. Mutters ran up and down the imperial line as he grew close enough to be recognized; that terrible face could only belong to the wizard-prince himself.
He used a sorcery then, a small one, to let all the Emperor’s troops hear his voice as if he stood beside them: “Curs! Swine! Last scrapings of outworn misbelief! Breathes there any among you whose blood flows hot enough to dare face me in single combat?”
“I dare!” roared Zeprin the Red, his face dark with the flush that gave him his byname. His axe upraised and his heavy chain-mail shirt jingling about him, he pushed out of the Roman line and began a lumbering rush at the wizard-prince, the object of his supreme hatred since Maragha.
“Stop him!” Marcus snapped, and several legionaires sprang after the Haloga. Alone and afoot, he stood small chance against Avshar in a fair fight, and the tribune did not think he would get one.
Avshar ignored Zeprin in any case. A Videssian horseman spurred toward the wizard-prince, crying, “Phos with me!” He drew his bow to the ear and fired.
Laughing his terrible laugh, Avshar made a quick, derisive pass. The arrow blazed for an instant, then vanished. “Summon your lying god again,” the wizard-prince said. “See how much he heeds you.” He gestured once more, this time in a complex series of motions. A beam of orange-red light shot from his skeletal fingers at the charging Videssian, who was now only yards away.
The soldier and his mount jerked and twisted like moths in a flame. Their charred, blackened bodies crashed to the ground at the feet of Avshar’s stallion, which side-stepped daintily. The wind was thick with the smell of burned meat.
“Are there more?” Avshar said into vast silence. By then the Romans had managed to wrestle Zeprin back into their ranks. The overlord of Yezd laughed again, a sound full of doom.
Viridovix caught Scaurus’ eye. The tribune nodded. If Avshar would meet them, they would never have a better chance. And at its worst, the match would be more even than the one the wizard-prince had given the brave, rash Videssian.
“Are there more?” Avshar said again. Plainly he expected no response. Scaurus filled his lungs to shout. Before he could, though, there was a stir in the very center of the Videssian army. The ranks of the Halogai divided to let a single rider through.
The tribune’s throat clogged with dread. He had not thought Thorisin could be madman enough to dare his enemy’s challange. He was a fine soldier, but Avshar’s might was more than a man’s.
But it was not the Avtokrator who advanced to face the wizard-prince, but an old man in a threadbare blue robe, riding a flop-eared mule. And from him Avshar recoiled as he would have from no living warrior. “Go back,” Balsamon said; the same minor magic that let Avshar’s voice ring wide was his as well. “The synod cast thee into the outer darkness of anathema an age ago. Get thee gone; Videssos has no room for thee and thy works.”
Marcus stared in awe at the patriarch’s back. He had seen how Balsamon, so casual and merry in private, could instantly assume the dignity his priestly office demanded. This, though, surpassed the one as much as that outdid the other. Balsamon seemed strong and stern in judgment as the great mosaic image of Phos in the dome of the High Temple in Videssos the city.
But Avshar quickly rallied. “Thou art a fool, thou dotard, to stand before me and prate of anathemas. Even aside from thy presumption here, in a year thou wouldst be dead, dead as all those purblind witlings who would not see the truth I brought them. Yet I faced them then and I face thee now. Who, then, cleaves to the more potent god?”
“One day thy span will end. Soon or late, what does it matter? Thou’lt be called to account for thy deeds and spend eternity immured in Skotos’ ice with the rest of his creatures.”
The wizard-prince’s grim eyes burned with scorn. “Thou showest thyself as deluded as thy forefathers. We are all of us Skotos’ creatures, thou, and I, and the headstrong bumpkin who sits the throne that is mine by right, and everyone else as well. Aye, in sooth man is Skotos’ finest work. Of all living beings, only he truly knows evil for what it is and works it of his own free will.”
He spoke as though he and Balsamon were alone, and indeed in a way they were, both being products, no matter how different, of the rigors of the Videssian theological tradition. Balsamon replied in the same fashion, seeming to seek to bring an erring colleague back to sound doctrine rather than to confront the deadliest enemy of his faith and nation.
He said, “As well argue all food is corrupt on account of a piece of bad fish. Or art thou so blind thou’dst forget there is great good as well as wickedness in the soul of every man?”
The patriarch might have meant the question as rhetorical, but Marcus thought it reached the heart of the matter. The older a man gets, the more fully he becomes himself. Avshar had been no more evil than any other man, before he read in the Khamorth invasions and the collapse of Videssos the sign of Skotos’ triumph on earth and turned to the dark god. But through his magic he had gained centuries to live with his choice and grow into it, and now …
Now he cursed Balsamon with a savagery worse than any his Yezda could aspire to, for the outcast always hates more fiercely than the mere enemy. His voice rose until he was screaming: “Die, then, and see what thy goodness gets thee!”
His hands twisted through the same set of passes he had used against the Videssian cavalryman. As the fiery light stabbed at Balsamon, Marcus cried out and sprang forward, Viridovix at his side. The patriarch deserved better than to fall unavenged to Avshar’s sorcery.
But Balsamon did not fall, though he slumped in the saddle as if suddenly bearing up under a heavy weight. “I deny thee and all thy works,” he said; his voice was strained but full of purpose. “While I live, thy foul sorceries shall hold no more sway on this field.”
“So thou sayest.” Avshar loosed another enchantment against the patriarch. This one had no visible emanation, but Scaurus heard Balsamon groan. Then the prelate dropped as inessential the small magic that projected his voice over the plain.
The wizard-prince rained spell after spell on him. Balsamon was not, could not be, the sorcerer to match his opponent. He lurched several times, almost toppled once. He did not try to strike back. But in defense, his will was indomitable. Like an outclassed warrior seeking only to hold his foe at bay as long as he could, he withstood or beat aside wizardry that would have devastated a stronger but less purposeful magician.
Seeing him survive in the maelstrom of sorcery, the Videssian army took up his name as a war cry, shouting it again and again until the distant hills echoed with it: “Balsamon! Balsamon! Balsamon!” And, as Marcus had seen before, the patriarch drew strength from his admirers. He straightened on his mule, his arms wide-flung, his blunt hands darting now this way, now that, as he deflected every blow Avshar aimed at him or at the imperial army as a whole.
“Och, a good fairy has hold of him,” Viridovix whispered beside Scaurus. Gorgidas, well away from them, murmured a Greek word to himself: “Enthousiasmós.” It meant exactly the same thing.
Finally, screaming in thwarted fury, Avshar gave up the assault, wheeled his horse with a brutal jerk of the reins, and stormed back to his own lines. A chorus of jeers and insults rose from the imperials. Everyone cheered as a Haloga ran out to take the reins of Balsamon’s mule and lead him back to safety within the Videssian army. Exhausted but unbeaten, the patriarch waved to the soldiers around him. But Marcus could see his face. He looked like a man who had staved off defeat, not won a victory.
There was a brief lull. All along both lines, officers harangued their men, trying to whip them to fever pitch. Marcus looked inside himself for inspiring words. He did not find many. Whatever illusions he had of the glory of the battlefield were long since dust, as were those of the legionaries.
At last he raised his voice and said, “It’s very simple. If we lose this one, we’re ruined. There’s nothing left to fall back on any more. Hang together, do what your officers order you, and don’t let those bastards out there through. That’s all, I guess.”
He heard a few voices translating what he said into throaty Vaspurakaner for those “princes” who had never picked up Latin. He got no great applause; the legionaries had given Balsamon the cheers they had in them. He did not care. His men seemed ready and unafraid. Past that, nothing mattered.
Scaurus thought he heard thunder from a clear sky and wondered what new spellcraft Avshar was essaying. But it was not thunder. “Here we go,” Gaius Philippus said as the Yezda urged their horses at Thorisin Gavras’ line. The pounding of their hooves was the noise that filled the world.
Laon Pakhymer bawled an order. The Khatrishers galloped out to screen the infantry on their flank, to keep the legionaries and Halogai from having to stand against a barrage of arrows to which they could not reply. Pakhymer’s troopers traded shots with the Yezda, slowing the momentum of their charge. Marcus watched horses and men fall on both sides.
The Khatrishers were gallant but outnumbered. Having done as much as he could, Pakhymer waved his disreputable hat in the air. His men, those who survived, fell back into their place in the line.
“Avshar! Avshar!” The shouts of the Yezda filled Scaurus’ ears. Arrows began falling on the Romans. Somewhere behind the tribune, there was a curse and a clatter of metal as a legionary went down. Another swore as he was hit.
Thock! An arrow smacked against Marcus’ scutum. He staggered and was glad for the multiple thicknesses of wood and leather and metal. The shaft would have torn through the light target he had carried with the Arshaum.
Pushed on by the mass behind them, the first ranks of Yezda were very close. “Pila at the ready!” the tribune shouted, gauging distances. He swung his sword arm high and caught the eyes of the buccinators, who raised their cornets to their lips. “Loose!” he cried; the horns blared out the command to the legionaries.
Hundreds of heavy javelins flew as one. Wounded Yezda roared; their horses screamed. The cries of dismay went on as onrushing ponies stumbled over the fallen.
Some riders blocked flung pila with their shields. That saved them for the moment, but when they tried to tear the spears out and throw them back, they found that the weapons’ soft iron shanks had bent at impact, fouling their shields and making the pila useless. With guttural oaths, they discarded their suddenly worthless protection.
“Loose!” Another volley tore into the Yezda. Then the legionaries’ shortswords came rasping out. Whether the Yezda fought from fear of their master or raw blood lust, they did not shrink from combat. They crashed into the Romans.
The dust their horses kicked up rolled over the legionaries in a choking cloud. Marcus sneezed and coughed. His eyes streaming, he hacked blindly at the rider in front of him. He felt the soft resistance that meant flesh. Warm wetness splashed him. He heard a groan. Whether it was man or beast he never knew.
He swiped at his face with the back of his forearm to clear his vision and quickly looked about. Here and there the Yezda had driven deep wedges into the legionaries’ line, but he saw no breakthroughs. By squads and maniples, the Romans moved up to cover the points of greatest pressure. At close quarters they had the advantage, despite the horses of the Yezda. Their armor, shields, and disciplined flexibility counted for more than their foes’ added reach and ability to strike from above.
Marcus saw Titus Pullo engage a Yezda, yelling and taunting and turning slash after slash with his scutum. While the underofficer’s furious enemy thought of nothing but slaying him, one of Pullo’s troopers ducked down unseen and plunged his sword into the belly of the Yezda’s pony. It foundered with a coughing squeal; Pullo killed the man who had ridden it.
“That’s right, get him when he’s down,” Lucius Vorenus laughed. He dueled with an unhorsed Yezda; his gladius flicked out in the short stabs the Roman fencing masters taught. Mere ferocity could not withstand such deadly science for long. The Yezda reeled away, clutching at himself; Scaurus smelled the latrine odor that meant a punctured gut.
Pullo was already battling another horseman. He and Vorenus might have buried their feud, but he was not about to let his comrade get ahead of him.
A Yezda thrust his lance at Zeprin the Red, who twisted aside with a supple ease that belied the thickness of his body. He sent his axe crashing down between the eyes of the barbarian’s pony. Brains spattered everyone nearby, and the horse collapsed as if it had rammed a stone wall. A second stroke dealt with its rider.
Axes rose and fell continuously on the legionaries’ left, where Thorisin’s Haloga guardsmen were taking a heavy toll of Avshar’s finest troops. But the Makuraner lancers who opposed them fought with dash and courage themselves, and fresh northerners had to keep pressing forward to take the places of those who had fallen.
“Tighten up there!” Marcus yelled. “Help them out!” He led a maniple leftward to make sure no gap opened between the Halogai and his own troops. In an army made up of units fighting nation by nation, that danger was always there. Drax’ Namdaleni had taught him that, to his cost, at the Sangarios.
Though under no man’s order, Viridovix moved with the tribune. He was glad to go to the aid of the Halogai. They were more somber by nature than his own Celtic folk, but came closer to reminding him of them than any other people of this world.
A Makuraner tried to hit him over the head with a broken spearshaft. He ducked and countered; the horseman’s damascened corselet kept the edge from his vitals. His mount kicked at the Gaul, who nimbly skipped away.
The two men looked at each other for a moment, both breathing hard. Under the Makuraner’s plumed helm, his swarthy face was greasy with sweat, though his mustaches, waxed stiff, still swept out fiercely like horns. Viridovix’ own whiskers were limp and sodden. Warily, his eye on the Gaul, the Makuraner swigged from a wineskin. He raised it in salute to Viridovix, then turned his horse in another direction.
“May you come through safe,” Viridovix called after him. He had no idea whether the Makuraner heard him, or understood Videssian if he did.
A fresh Yezda surge almost sent Marcus hurrying back with his maniple to relieve the pressure on the rest of the legionaries, but Gaius Philippus and Gagik Bagratouni battled the nomads to a standstill. Bagratouni’s Vaspurakaners, men driven from their homeland by the Yezda, fought the invaders now with a dour ferocity and a disregard for consequences that horrified Gaius Philippus.
The senior centurion had to wince, watching one of the “princes” and Yezda stab each other and fall together, locked in a death embrace. “Idiots!” he shouted, though Bagratouni’s men showed no sign of listening. “Don’t waste yourselves! One for one’s no bargain with these buggers!
“You!” he rasped, spotting a foot soldier who seemed not to know where his place was. The fellow turned his head. “Oh, you,” Gaius Philippus said in a different tone.
Gorgidas did not answer. Just then a Roman lurched by, clutching at a slash on the inside of his arm that was spurting bright blood. “Stop!” the physician shouted, and the legionary, trained to obedience, stood still. Gorgidas tore a long strip of cloth from the hem of the soldier’s tunic, pressed the edges of the wound together, and bound it tightly. “Go to the rear,” he said. “You can’t fight any more with that.”
When the legionary tried to protest, the Greek argued him down. “Do as I tell you; as you are now, you’re more trouble protecting than you’re worth. The Yezda won’t come pouring through because you’ve gone.” The soldier stumbled away. Gorgidas hoped the bandage would hold the bleeding; that arm had been cut to the bone.
He unsheathed his gladius, which he had put away to tend to the injured Roman. Then he jerked in alarm as someone twisted it out of his hand. “Steady, there,” Gaius Philippus said. “I think I want this back after all.”
“Fine time,” Gorgidas said indignantly. “What am I supposed to defend myself with?”
“Let us worry about that,” the veteran answered, grunting in satisfaction at the familiar heft of his old sword. “From what I’ve seen, you’re more use to us as a doctor than you’d ever be as a legionary. It’s not bad you know how and all, but stick to what you’re best at.”
The Greek considered, then dipped his head in agreement, saying, “Give me the blade you’ve been carrying, though. It’s better than nothing.”
Gaius Philippus had already turned away from him; the fight was picking up again. “Come on, Minucius!” he roared. “I need another two squads here!”
Even as he shouted, a couple of Yezda burst through the struggling line of soldiers. The centurion caught a saber slash on his scutum, then grappled with the nomad, tearing him from the saddle and hurling him to the ground. He sprang at the other warrior and drove his gladius into the small of the Yezda’s back before his victim knew he was there.
But the first Yezda had only been slightly stunned. He scrambled up and leaped at Gaius Philippus. Gorgidas tackled him from behind. He seized the nomad’s sword wrist in both hands and held his grip as they rolled on the ground. His wiry strength kept his foe from tearing free until Gaius Philippus, working carefully so as to miss him, thrust through the Yezda’s throat.
“Bravely done,” the senior centurion said, helping the Greek to his feet. “But why didn’t you stab him with your dagger?”
“I forgot I had it,” Gorgidas said in a small voice.
“Amateurs!” Gaius Philippus turned the word into a curse. “Try not to kill yourself with this, all right?” he said, handing Gorgidas the blade he had asked for. The Greek was spared further embarrassment when the veteran ordered the reinforcements from Minucius into the line to shore up the weak spot that had let the Yezda through.
The presence on the legionaries eased as deep-voiced horns brayed to the left of Thorisin Gavras’ center. His Namdaleni rumbled forward, shouting what might be the only battle cry they could share with the Videssians: “Phos with us!” At first the weight of their armor and of the big horses they rode gave their advance an all but irresistible impetus. Avshar’s Makuraners slowed but could not stop them; in tight fighting the Yezda, on ponies and lightly armed, went down like winnowed barley.
Had there been more Namdaleni, they might have torn the battle open. As it was, the Yezda swarmed round their flanks and poured arrows into them. Not even their mail coats or their horses’ protective trappings were wholly proof against that withering fire. Their progress slowed.
But in bringing the knights to a standstill, the Yezda thinned their own line. Seeing an opening in front of him, Provhos Moutzouphlos stormed through it with the headlong dash that had first made Thorisin notice him. Shooting and chopping, he led a company of Videssian horsemen as reckless as himself clean into the enemy’s rear.
Again, if the rest of the imperials had matched his troopers’ quality, they could have split the Yezda in two and rolled up their right wing. The Yezda knew it, too; their cries grew frantic. The legionaries cheered, not knowing what had happened but sure it meant no good for their foes.
Yet despite the cheers, despite Mourtzouphlos’ pleading and his oaths, the other Videssians hung back a few seconds too long. The Yezda repaired the breach, and then Mourtzouphlos was trapped, not they.
He turned his company straight for Avshar, but that way was blocked—too many Yezda and Makurani, all headed straight for him. His shout rose above the battlefield din: “Back to our own, lads!” Those who made it—maybe half the number who had plunged into the breach—burst out between the Namdaleni and Halogai, having hacked their way through a third of the Yezda army.
Along with the rest of Gavras’ forces, Marcus was yelling himself hoarse at the exploit—until he recognized Mourtzouphlos. “I will be damned,” he said to no one in particular. “Something to the popinjay after all.” As it had before, the thought grated.
In the heart of the Yezda battle array, Avshar seethed with frustration. He felt all his designs, all his long-nursed plans tottering. For the hundredth time he gave Balsamon his curses, hurling another spell at the patriarch of Videssos.
It hurt; he could sense Balsamon’s anguish. That was sweet, but not sweet enough. Eventually, he knew, he would shatter the patriarch like a dropped pot—but when? Ordinarily Balsamon could not have withstood the first blast of his sorcery, but this, worse luck, was no ordinary time. In his desperation he had somehow screwed himself up to such a pitch that he was still resisting. Even without Avshar’s assaults, the effort that took would kill him in a couple of days, but the wizard-prince could not wait so long.
Being unable to use his magic frightened Avshar as nothing else had. Without it he was just another warlord, dependent on his wit and his soldiers to gain his triumph—or to lose. The imperials showed no sign of giving way; if anything, they seemed steadier than his barbarous levies. The Yezda were bold enough when they scented victory, but quick as any nomads to melt away if checked.
The wizard-prince ground his teeth. Why, he had almost been in the hand-to-hand himself, when that Videssian maniac sliced his men like cheese. He wished Mourtzouphlos had reached him; even without his sorceries, he would have given the wretch a bitter death for his daring.
Suddenly Avshar threw back his head and laughed. Several horses around him shied; he paid no notice. “What a dolt I am!” he exclaimed. “If the bridge has fallen into the stream, I can swim across just the same.”
He stared over the grappling lines of soldiers, measuring what he had to do. Even for him it would not be easy, but it was within his power. Laughing again, he reached for a black-fletched arrow and set it to his bow.
The moan that went up from the Videssian center was so loud and deep that Marcus thought the Emperor had fallen. But Thorisin’s sunburst standard still flew, and the tribune saw him under it on his bay charger, urging his troops on. In his gilded parade armor, coronet, cape, and red boots, he was unmistakable.
The Halogai were holding well, and the left wing, if anything, was still advancing. Where was the trouble, then? Scaurus used his inches to peer about. There was some confusion a bit behind the Avtokrator, several imperials huddled around a riderless mule—
The tribune did not realize he had groaned aloud until Viridovix said, “Where is it you’re hit, man?”
“Not me,” Scaurus said impatiently. “Balsamon’s down.”
“Och, a pox!”
Marcus grabbed one of his Romans by the arm. “Find Gorgidas and get him over there,” he ordered, pointing. Almost certainly, Videssian healers were already tending to the patriarch, but he did not overlook the one-in-a-thousand chance that they were all dead or out of action. The legionary dashed away.
Gorgidas went to Balsamon’s aid at the dead run. He did not know the patriarch as Scaurus did and cared nothing for him as a religious leader; Gorgidas was no Phos-worshiper. But any man with the spiritual strength and will to bring Avshar’s sorcery to a standstill was too precious to lose to a chance-fired dart—for such the Greek assumed it was.
Scaurus had been right in thinking the healer-priests would be doing their best for the prelate. They stared suspiciously at Gorgidas as he came puffing up, then eased in manner as they recognized him for one who shared their skill, even if a foreigner. “The good god bless you for your concern,” one said, sketching Phos’ sun-circle over his heart, “but you are too late. You would have been too late the instant he was hit.”
“Let me see him,” the physician said. He pushed through the imperials; with their near-miraculous gift, they knew far less of simple medicine than he had learned. Perhaps the training he had scorned since coming to the Empire and finding the higher art would serve him now.
A glance at Balsamon, though, showed him the Videssian healer-priest was right. The patriarch lay awkwardly crumpled on his left side. His face wore an unsurprised expression, but his eyes were set and empty; a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and fouled his beard. His chest did not rise or fall. The shaft that had struck him down was buried almost to the feathers, a few digits to the left of his breastbone. Gorgidas knelt to take his wrist, but knew he would find no pulse.
The physician looked toward the battle line. He knew the power of nomad bows, but it would have taken a prodigious shot to reach this far. Then he stiffened. Viridovix had told tales of such archery—and of arrows feathered with black. Anyone who thought of Avshar as sorcerer alone made the fatal mistake of forgetting what a warrior he was.
The reverse also held … and now the imperials’ shield had been snatched away. Springing to his feet in alarm, Gorgidas cried to the men around him, “Are any of you wizards as well as healers?”
Several nodded. The Greek had time to say, “Then look to yourself, for Avshar is—” He never got “unleashed” out of his mouth. All but one of the healer-priests who were also sorcerers toppled as if bludgeoned. Some got out gasps or choked screams; others simply fell, horror on their faces, their mouths twisted in agony.
The last healer, stronger than his fellows, stood swaying a good two minutes, a fox cub facing a dragon. Tears streamed down his cheeks; after a moment they were tears of blood. He pounded his temples with his fists, as if to relieve unbearable pressure inside his head. Then his eyes rolled up, and he dropped beside Balsamon’s corpse.
Wizards went down one by one all along the Videssian line, broken under Avshar’s savage onslaught. A couple of the mightiest held onto life and sanity, but that was as much as they could do; they had no strength to ward the army.
Gorgidas felt the tide of battle turning. Suddenly the imperials were uncertain and afraid, the Yezda full of fresh courage. The Greek drew the shortsword Gaius Philippus had given him and ran for the front line. The veteran had been wrong; it looked like he was going to have some fighting to do after all.
Had Avshar been a cat, he would have purred. He rested his bow on his knee, watching consternation spread through the Videssian army like ink through clear water or black clouds across the sun. He ground another sorcerer between the millstones of his wizardry and felt the man’s spirit fade and die. It was easy, without Balsamon. He patted the bow affectionately.
“For thy gifts, Skotos, I give thee thanks,” he whispered. He thought for a moment, considering what to do next. Magic could only win so much more for him now. As long as he kept up the killing pressure against the sorcerers who still opposed him, he was limited to minor spells on the side. But if he let them go to work some greater cantation, they might somehow find a way to block it. Battle magic, even his battle magic, was tricky.
Let it be the smaller sorceries, then, he decided. They would be enough to panic the imperials, who would surely see them as the forerunners of worse. And that would give his soldiers the battle; already they were pushing forward, sensing their enemies’ discomfiture.
The wizard-prince put away his bow and drew his long, straight sword. He wanted no doubt about who was going to cut down Thorisin Gavras. With Emperor—two Emperors!—and patriarch fallen to his hand, Videssos would learn who its rightful master was. He briefly regretted not having Balsamon to sacrifice to his god on the altar of the High Temple in the capital, but no help for that.
His eyes gleamed. There would be plenty of victims.
Being at the forefront of the fighting, Marcus sensed the advantage slipping away from the imperials even before the shift became obvious to Gorgidas. The center held steady, and far off on the right wing Arigh was crumpling the Yezda facing him. But the Videssians themselves wavered as the news of Balsamon’s fall spread; it was as though some of their heart had gone with him.
The tribune wished Mourtzouphlos was back where he belonged. Thanks to his own vainglory, the noble was not cast down by the loss of the patriarch, and could have inspired regiments of wobblers by his example. His reckless dash through the Yezda line, though, left him in the middle of troops who needed no incentive.
As he had at Maragha, Scaurus marveled at the steadfastness of the Halogai. They bore a burden worse than the legionaries’, for the main force of Avshar’s Makuraner lancers concentrated on them and on the Emperor they protected. Yet they stood firm against the armored horsemen, their axes working methodically, as if they were hewing timber rather than men. Whenever one went down, another tramped forward to take his place.
They sang as they fought, a slow chant in their own tongue that reminded the tribune of waves breaking on a rocky, windswept beach. The music had to be strong to reach him so; he was half baked in his cuirass, his face a dusty mask runneled by sweat. And this flat, hot plain had never known the touch of the ocean and never would.
Thinking such thoughts, Marcus was almost cut down by a Yezda’s saber. He jerked his head away at the last possible instant. Viridovix clucked reproachfully. “There’s better times nor this for smelling the pretty flowers, Roman dear.”
“You’re right,” the tribune admitted. Then they both failed to give the battle their full attention; the druids’ stamps on their blades came to flaming life at the same time. “Avshar!” Marcus exclaimed. A couple of hundred yards to the rear, Gorgidas was yelling his futile warning.
Cries of fright rose from the imperials as the wizard-prince smashed their magicians like worms under his feet. Through the alarm and the din of battle, Scaurus heard Thorisin Gavras shouting, “Stand fast! Stand fast!” The Emperor did not sound panicked, or even much upset. From his voice, it might have been an order in a parade-ground drill.
His coolness helped bring the army back to itself. Seeing their leader unfazed, the soldiers borrowed courage from him and fought back. Again the Yezda were checked.
Viridovix glanced at his sword. The druids’ marks were still glowing, and getting brighter. He shook his head gloomily. “Let ’em be brave whilst they can, puir sods. There’s worse coming, sure and there is.”
At first Marcus thought the buzzing that filled his head was a product of his exhaustion. Then the Haloga next to him broke off his song to growl something foul and slap at himself. A moment later another did the same, and a legionary, and yet another Haloga.
The imperial guard wiped his hand on his tunic. He noticed Scaurus looking at him. “Damned flies,” he said with a sour grin. “Vorse t’an arrows, I t’ink sometimes.”
The tribune nodded; bugs were always one of the small torments of the field. He had not been bitten himself, but he could see the big black flies droning around as they darted from one victim to the next.
Their bites were almost impossible to ignore, as a Roman found to his misfortune. Stung unexpectedly in a tender spot, he could not stop the reflex that made him clap his hand to it. The Yezda he was facing, untroubled by the cloud of insects, sworded him down.
Since the flies did not harass Scaurus, he took some time to realize how rare his protection was. Hardly an imperial was not swatting frantically or trying with all his might not to because he was locked in a fight for his life. And all their opponents shared the immunity that one nomad had enjoyed.
When the tribune recognized that, he knew with grim clarity where the blame lay. Avshar had worked grander magics, he thought, but hardly a more devilish one. The flies were hard enough for Thorisin’s men to take; they robbed them of their concentration and gave their Yezda foes an edge. That first legionary was far from the only soldier to pay dearly for a second’s involuntary lapse.
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 needing 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 any more, 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.
But the Haloga, though he staggered, did not fall in flames. His battle-madness and thirst for vengeance proofed him against sorcery. He recovered; his axe rose and fell. Avshar met the blow with his sword, but could do no more than turn it slightly. Instead of splitting his skull, it fell square on his charger’s neck.
The beast was dead before its legs went out from under it. Seeing it go down, the imperials raised a mighty cheer. “Avshar is fallen!” a legionary bleeding from a slashed cheek screamed in Scaurus’ ear.
The tribune shouted too, hoarsely. The cry stuck in his throat when the wizard-prince kicked free of the stirrups, lit rolling, and gained his feet before Zeprin could finish him.
The Haloga rushed at him. Marcus scrambled to help, but they were already fighting before he could get close. Zeprin’s first wild stroke met only air. Full of insane strength, he sent his axe whistling in another deadly arc. Avshar parried, though the force of the cut nearly tore his blade from his hand.
Yet he was laughing, in spite of his fearful plight. “If thou’dst kill a man, wilting,” he mocked, “it should be done so—and so—and so!” Each slash went home almost faster than the eye could follow. Blood spurted after every one. Any of them would have dropped a normal warrior, especially the last, a frightful cut to the side of Zeprin’s neck.
In his berserker rage, the Haloga did not seem to feel them. He waded ahead once more, and this time Avshar bellowed in pain and fury as the axe lopped the little finger from his left hand as neatly as if it had been on the block. He bunched the hand into a fist to stanch the flow of blood.
After that he fought silently, but with no less ferocity. He dealt three blows for every slash of Zeprin’s, and most of his landed; the Haloga had forgotten defense. His arm drawn back for another chop at the wizard-prince, Zeprin paused in sudden confusion. A torrent of blood streamed from his mouth and nose. His madly staring eyes clouded; the axe slipped from his fingers. His armor clattering about him, he swayed and fell.
“Is there another?” Avshar cried, waving his sword on high and setting his booted foot on Zeprin’s neck in token of victory. He strode forward, confident no imperial would dare face him. Then he halted in his tracks, his fleshless face contorted in angry surprise. “Thou!” he hissed.
“Me.” Winded and afraid, Scaurus had breath but for the one word. He was so tired he could hardly hold up his shield. Unlike the time so long ago in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, Avshar had no buckler. This time the Roman cared nothing for chivalry. He hefted his sword. “No farther,” he said.
He thought with dread that Avshar would try to overwhelm him at the first onset, but the wizard-prince hung back, letting the tribune gather himself. Of course, Scaurus realized—he wonders where I’ve sprung from, for he didn’t sense my blade. He risked turning his head to look for Viridovix, but could not find the Gaul.
Avshar’s hesitation lasted no more than a handful of heartbeats. When he did advance on the Roman, he moved more warily then he had against Zeprin. Having crossed swords with Marcus before, he knew the tribune was no spitfire seeking only to attack—and he had a healthy respect for the Gallic longsword.
The first clash of arms showed Scaurus he was in over his head. He was close to exhaustion, while Avshar drew from a seemingly unending well of strength. The tribune took blow after blow on his scutum; Avshar’s keen blade bit into the bronze facing of the shield and chewed at the wood beneath. The wizard-prince easily evaded or beat aside the thrusts he managed in reply.
They dueled alone. No Makurani came to Avshar’s aid; had he been a different sort of commander, Marcus would not have lasted long. But the imperials as well as his own men feared the wizard-prince. None of them had the courage to join the Roman against him. As if the two sides were both reproaching themselves, they fought each other harder than ever.
To Gorgidas, who was directly in back of the tribune, Marcus seemed like Aias battling Hektor in the Iliad—outmatched, baffled, but too mulish to yield an inch except by dying. The Greek shoved Viridovix in the back. “By the gods, hurry! He can’t hold him off forever.”
“Ha’ care, tha sot!” Viridovix yelped, wriggling like a snake to evade a Makuraner’s slash. “Is it trying to get me killed y’are?” His backhand reply caught his foe in the right shoulder. The Makuraner dropped his saber and started to run. A Haloga guardsman cut him nearly in half from behind.
“Hurry!” Gorgidas insisted again. He stabbed at the lancer who loomed in front of him, pinked the rider’s horse. Its flailing hooves proved as dangerous as the Makuraner’s long spear. The Greek skipped back just in time.
Up ahead, Marcus was still on his feet, though he blearily wondered how. Avshar played with him as a kitten toys with a mouse, giving torment but holding off the blow that would end it. Every so often he would inflict another gash and smile his carnivore smile. “Escape me now, an thou canst!” he gloated in high good humor. He relished victory over the tribune almost as much as if it had been Gavras and was in no hurry to end his pleasure.
Not all the blood on his robes and cuirass came from his amputated finger; even a mouse can have fangs. But his injuries were of no importance, while Marcus bled in a score of places.
After some endless time the wizard-prince exclaimed, “Let the farce be done at last,” and leaped at Scaurus. His armored shoulder slammed against the Roman’s shield and bowled him over.
As he had been trained, Marcus kept the scutum between his enemy and himself. Avshar’s sword came smashing down. The tribune felt boards split under that crushing impact. The next stroke, he knew, would be aimed with cunning, not blind blood lust. He waited for the steel to enter his flesh.
Then he heard the wizard-prince cry out in wrath and turn from him to meet a new foe. At the same time, the druids’ stamps on the tribune’s sword flashed so brilliantly that he screwed his eyes shut, dazzled by the explosion of light. Above him, Viridovix’ blade was another brand of flame. The Gaul roared, “Here, you murthering omadhaun, use your sword on an upright man.”
He traded savage cuts with Avshar, driving the wizard-prince from Scaurus. That was not what the tribune had intended. “Wait!” he shouted, getting to one knee and then to his feet.
But Viridovix would not wait. With Avshar in front of him at last, his rage consumed him, just as Zeprin’s had. The plans he and Scaurus had made for this moment were swept away by a red torrent of fury. To wound, to maim, to kill … had Avshar been unarmed, Viridovix would have thrown his sword aside to rend him with his hands.
If Gaius Philippus had taught Marcus anything, it was to keep his wits about him in combat. He rushed after the Gaul, whose wild onslaught had forced Avshar back a dozen paces. At every step he took, his sword and Viridovix’ glowed brighter. The magic raging in his blade seemed to lend him fresh vigor, as if he was becoming a conduit through which some force larger than himself might flow.
The hammerstrokes Viridovix aimed at the wizard-prince bespoke the same sudden rush of strength. But Avshar, indomitable as a mountain, was yielding ground no more. His bodily power and swordsmanship matched the Gaul’s, and in force of will he was superior.
Nor did his spells falter as he fought. He maintained his hold over the wizards in the imperial army, and his plague of flies still tormented his foes and their horses. Thorisin Gavras’ beast, maddened by scores of bites, squealed and bucked and would advance no further in spite of the Emperor’s curses and his spurs.
At last Avshar’s men began to move to help him. One closed with Scaurus, a solidly built warrior who cut at the Roman’s legs. To Marcus he was an obstacle, no more. The tribune parried, countered in a similar low line. His point tore open the Makuraner’s thigh just below his mail shirt. The man gasped, stumbled, and fell, grabbing at his leg. Marcus raced past him.
Avshar’s deadly eyes flicked to the tribune. “Come ahead, then,” he said, shifting his stance slightly. “Both of you together do not suffice against me.”
Marcus stopped short. The wizard-prince’s withering laugh flayed him. The tribune’s sword darted forth. Avshar’s moved to beat it aside, but Scaurus had not thrust at him. Instead, quite gently, his blade touched Viridovix’.
The fabric of the world seemed to stretch very tight. The pounding of the tribune’s heart was louder than all the Yezda drums. Never since the Celtic blades brought the Romans to Videssos had he hazarded the ultimate magic in them. Viridovix’ sea-green eyes were wide and staring. He had agreed to Scaurus’ plan, but it daunted him now. Who could tell to what strange land the druids’ magic would sweep them next?
The same thought screamed in Scaurus’ mind, but if he took Avshar with him he did not care. His greatest fear was that the spells which had been woven to ward Gaul would not protect Videssos. Yet the Empire was now truly his homeland, and Viridovix’ long service for it argued that he, too, held it dear.
The wait between hope and dread could only have lasted for an instant. Avshar was still twisting to redirect his lunge when a torrent of golden flame leaped from his opponents’ swords. Feeling the power of the unleashed sorcery, he sprang backward, throwing his own blade aside to shape passes with both hands. His mouth worked soundlessly as he raced through a spell to defend himself against the druids’ charms.
Scaurus looked for the flame to form a great glowing dome, as it had in the blood-soaked Gallic clearing four years before—a dome to carry away Avshar, the flower of his army, and, all too likely, the tribune and Viridovix as well. But in Gaul no opposing magic had been operating. Here the power released from the two swords was hardly enough to contain the chiefest of Videssos’ enemies; their sorcerous fire surrounded him in light but went no further.
The wizard-prince gave a trapped wolf’s howl. Determined to the end, he hurled his strongest magics one after the other against the force that held him, striving to break free. The barrier heaved and billowed like a ship’s sail in contrary winds. Two or three times it faded almost to transparency, but when Avshar tried to step through it back into his own world he found he was still restrained.
Men from both armies cried out in terror at the sudden outburst of sorcery. Many averted their eyes, either from the fierce glare or out of awe and fear of the unknown.
That was not Gorgidas’ way. He wished he could take notes as he watched the flickering ring of light slowly tighten around Avshar. When the wizard-prince’s desperate spells left him visible, he seemed surrounded by a swirling gray mist. Then the light flared to an intolerable peak of brilliance and abruptly winked out. Peering through green-purple afterimages, the Greek saw it had taken Avshar with it.
“I wonder where he went,” he muttered to himself, and tossed his head in annoyance at another question he would never have answered.
He had been some yards away; Scaurus saw and heard much more, though he never spoke of it afterward, not even to Viridovix. That was no mist inside the barrier, it was snow, not falling but driven horizontally by a roaring gale whose sound was enough to freeze the heart. The wizard-prince’s feet skidded on ice, a flat, black, glistening sheet; somehow Marcus was sure it was miles thick.
Avshar’s voice rose to a frightened wail, as if he recognized where he was. And in the instant when the ring of light flashed brightest, Scaurus thought he heard another voice, slow, deep, and eternally hungry, begin to speak. He was forever glad he had not caught enough to be certain.
He wished the wizard-prince joy of the master he had chosen.