Under his veil of iron, Abivard's teeth skinned back in a fierce grin of excitement-at any moment, he might find himself in action. He glanced over at Varaz. He couldn't see much of his brother's face, but Varaz's flashing eyes said he, too, was eager to get in there and fight.
Godarz, on the other hand, just kept riding along at an easy canter. For all the ferocity and passion he displayed, the nearest Khamorth might have been a thousand farsangs away. Abivard decided his father was an old man after all.
A couple of hours later, more plainsmen appeared off the left flank of the army and plied it with arrows. Makuraner horsemen thundered out against them, raising even more dust than the host normally kicked up. They drove the nomads away, then returned to their comrades once more. The whole army raised a cheer for them.
"By the God, I wish the left were our station," Abivard exclaimed. "They have the first glory of the campaign."
"Where?" Godarz asked. "In chasing after the Khamorth? I didn't see them kill any. Before long, the nomads will come back and prick at us some more. That's how warfare works out here on the steppe."
Before long, Godarz's foretelling was again fulfilled. Not only did the Khamorth return to shadow the army's flanks, they began showing themselves in greater numbers, both on the left and at the front. A couple of men were fetched back to the healers' wagons, one limp, the other writhing and shrieking.
Abivard shivered. "The last time I heard a noise like that was when the old cook-what was his name, Father? — spilled the great kettle of soup and scalded himself to death. I was still small; Denak told me she had nightmares about that for years."
"His name was Pishinah, and you're right, he cried most piteously." Godarz lifted his helm off his head to wipe away sweat with a kerchief. He looked worried. "More nomads dogging us than I'd have guessed."
"But that's what we want, isn't it: to make them fight?" Abivard said, puzzled.
"Oh, aye." His father laughed sheepishly. "I get suspicious when the plainsmen give us what we want, even if we are forcing it from them."
"You predicted this, though, just the other day," Abivard protested. "Why are you unhappy now that what you foretold has come true?"
"It's not coming true the way I thought it would," Godarz answered. "I expected we'd force the Khamorth to battle, that they'd be desperate and afraid. Their archers out there don't have the manner of desperate men; they're moving to a plan of their own." He shrugged; his chain mail rattled about him. "Or, of course, maybe I'm just seeing evil spirits behind every bush and under every flat stone."
Jahiz said, "Couldn't the scriers scent out what the nomads intend?"
Godarz spat on the ground. "That for what the scriers can do. If you've lost a ring back at the stronghold, lad, a scrier will help you find it. But when it has to do with fighting, no. For one thing, men's passions make magic unreliable-that's why love philtres work so seldom, by the bye-and war is a hot-blooded business. For another, the plainsmen's shamans are using magic of their own to try to blind us. And for a third, we have to be busy to make sure the demon worshipers don't spy out what we're about. War is for iron, son; iron, not magic."
"A good thing, too," Abivard said. "If war were a matter for sorcerers, no one else would have the chance to join in it."
"Is that a good thing?" Godarz said. "I wonder, I do wonder."
"Why did you join the King of Kings' host, then?" Abivard asked him.
"For duty's sake, and because Peroz King of Kings-may his years be many and his realm increase-so bade me," Godarz answered. "Would you have me cast aside my honor and that of our clan?"
"By the God, no," Abivard exclaimed. Though he let it drop there, he wished his father sounded more as if his heart were in the campaign Peroz had undertaken.
* * *
At the head of the King of Kings' force, horns screamed the call Abivard had awaited since the crossing of the Degird: the foe's army in sight. The Makuraners had been advancing in battle array since the plainsmen began to harass them, but a hum of excitement ran through them all the same. Soon now they would have the chance to punish the Khamorth for the pinpricks they had dared inflict on the King of Kings' men.
Abivard rode to the top of a low swell of ground. Sure enough, there were the nomads, perhaps half a farsang to the north. They had mustered in two groups, a relatively small one in front and a larger one some little distance farther away.
"I think I see their scheme," Godarz said. "They'll try to keep us in play with their advance party while the rest of them spread out and flank us. Won't work-we'll smash the little band before the big one can deploy." He sounded more cheerful than he had before.
"Shouldn't we be at them, Father?" Abivard demanded. Finally seeing the Khamorth there waiting to be assailed made him want to set spurs to his horse and charge on the instant.
But Godarz shook his head. "Too far, as yet. We'd meet them with our animals blown from going so far at the gallop. We'll close to not far out of bowshot and pound home from there."
As if to echo Godarz, Chishpish, who rode not far away, bellowed to the horsemen under his command. "Anyone who goes after the plainsmen before the horns signal shall answer to me personally."
Varaz chuckled. "That's no great threat. He'd never catch up with anyone who disobeyed." And indeed, Chishpish's horse was as heavyset as the marzban himself, as it had to be to bear his weight. But Chishpish's threat, as every warrior who heard it knew full well, had nothing to do with physical chastisement. With the influence the high noble wielded, he could drop a man's reputation and hope for the future straight into the Void.
Abivard took his lance from its rest and hefted it in his hand. All through the ranks of the Makuraners, those iron-tipped lengths of wood were quivering as if a great wind swept through a forest. Abivard kept the lance upright, to avoid fouling his comrades; he would couch it only at the command.
Closer and closer the King of Kings' host drew to the foe. Peroz's banner fluttered ahead of Abivard; by Makuraner custom, he commanded from the right wing. The harsh war cries of the Khamorth floated faintly to Abivard's ears. He heard them without understanding; though the steppe tongue was cousin to his own, the plainsmen's shouts were so commingled that no separate words emerged from the din.
A horn cried, high and thin. As if with one voice, thousands of Makuraners hurled a battle cry back at the Khamorth: "Peroz!" Abivard yelled his throat raw, the better to terrify the enemy.
When the Makuraners closed nearly to within the range Godarz had specified, the small lead group of plainsmen spurred forward to meet them, screeching like wild things and shooting arrows into the massed armored ranks. A couple of lucky shots emptied saddles; a few more wrung cries of pain from men and horses. Most, as is the way of such things, either missed or were turned by the Makuraners' mail and plate and shields.
Just when Abivard wondered if the Khamorth would be mad enough to rush to close quarters with Peroz's vastly superior army, the nomads wheeled their little steppe ponies in a pretty piece of horsemanship and, almost in single file, galloped back toward their more distant comrades.
"Cowards!" Abivard screamed along with half the Makuraner host. "White-livered wretches, come back and fight!"
Beside him, Godarz said, "What are they doing?"
No one answered, for at that moment the horns rang out again, a call for which the whole host had waited: the charge. "Lower-lances!" Chishpish roared. The iron points glittered in the sun as they swung down to the horizontal. Even louder than before, Chishpish cried, "Forward!"
Already the banner of the King of Kings stood straight out from its staff as Peroz and his guards thundered toward the Khamorth. Abivard booted his own horse in the sides with iron-shod heels. Because the gelding was armored itself, it needed such strong signals to grasp what he required of it.
The ground flew by beneath him, slowly at first and then faster, fast enough for the wind of his passage to whip water from his eyes, fast enough for it to seem as if one mo
re stride, one more bound, would propel him into the air in flight. The rumble of thousands, tens of thousands of hooves was like being caught in the middle of a thunderstorm. And thousands, tens of thousands of men charged with Abivard. He knew the great exaltation of being one small part of an enterprise vast and glorious. The God might have set a hand on his shoulder.
Then his horse stepped into a hole.
Maybe a rabbit had made it, maybe a badger. That didn't matter. What came of it did. Abivard felt the gelding stumble at the same instant he heard-amazingly distinct through the din around him-the bone break. Even as the horse screamed and fell, he kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself clear.
He hit the ground with a crash and thud that made him glad for his mail. Even with it, he knew he would be a mass of bruises. His comrades thundered by; one horse sprang clean over him as he lay on the ground. How no one trampled him, he never knew.
He didn't care, either. Tears of mingled pain and frustration rolled down his cheeks. Here was what should have been the great moment of his life, ruined. Unhorsed, how could he close with the enemy and show his mettle? The answer was simple: he couldn't. His father and siblings would have the triumph all to themselves, and what about him? He would be the butt of jokes forever-Abivard, late for the fight.
The last Makuraners rode by, crying the name of the King of Kings. Abivard's horse cried, too, in anguish. He forced himself to his feet, staggered over to the thrashing animal, and cut its throat.
That done, he turned and started walking north-maybe, just maybe, the battle wouldn't be over when he got to it. Perhaps he could take the mount of someone who had fallen, or even ride a Khamorth steppe pony for a while, though it would not be pleased at supporting the weight of him and his armor.
Through swirling dust, he watched the proud banners that marked the front ranks of the Makuraner host. For a moment, he refused to believe his eyes when almost all of them went down at once.
The screams and shrieks of injured men and horses rose to the deaf, unfeeling sky. The men and horses themselves tumbled into the trench the Khamorth had dug across the plain and then cunningly concealed with sticks and dirt and grass. Only at the very center, where the nomads' advance party had withdrawn to their main force, could the Makuraners follow, and then in small numbers. Their foes set on them savagely, wolves tearing at a bear.
Abivard's shout of horror was drowned in the cries that went up from the overthrown Makuraner host. The King of Kings' banner was down. He could not see it anywhere. He moaned, deep in his throat. Nor were the frontmost ranks the only ones to fall in ruin. The warriors behind could not check their mounts in time and crashed into the ditch on top of its first victims.
"Father!" Abivard cried. Godarz was up there, somewhere in the middle of that catastrophe. So were Abivard's brother and half brothers. Clumsily, heavily he began to run in armor designed for fighting from horseback.
Even the Makuraners not caught by the plainsmen's ditch had to halt as best they could, any semblance of order lost. The Khamorth chose that moment to storm round both ends of the trench and begin to surround their foes.
"Not a broad field." Abivard groaned. "A trap!" Too late, the meaning of Tanshar's first vision came clear.
A trap it was. The Makuraners, the momentum of their charge killed, their ranks thrown into confusion, were easy meat for the nomads. At short range, horn-reinforced bows could punch their shafts through mail. Two plainsmen could set on a single armored warrior, assail him from so many directions at once that sooner or later-most often sooner-he had to fall.
Abivard found himself outside the killing zone, one of a handful of Makuraners who were. At first his only thought was to keep on clumping ahead and die with his family and countrymen. Then he saw that riderless horses, mostly Makuraner stock but the occasional steppe pony as well, were getting out through the nomads' cordon.
They'll round them up later, he thought. For now they reckon the men more important. Had he been a nomad chieftain, he would have made the same choice.
Seeing the horses made him start to think again, not run blindly toward his doom like a moth flying into a torch flame. He could all but hear Godarz inside his head: Don't be foolish, boy, don't be foolish. Save what you can. A mounted demigod would have had a battle on his hands, smashing through the plainsmen to rescue the trapped warriors of Makuran. The chance of one horseless young man in his first fight managing it wasn't worth thinking about.
Abivard tried again to guess-no, to work out; Godarz didn't approve of guessing-what the Khamorth chiefs would do once their riders had finished slaughtering the Makuraners. The answer came back quick and clear: they would plunder the baggage train. Not till then would they start scouring the steppe for survivors.
"Which means I'd best get out of here while I can," he said aloud. A riderless horse, a steppe pony, had paused to graze less than a furlong from where he stood. He walked slowly toward it. It looked up, wary, as he approached, but then lowered its head and went back to cropping dry, yellow grass.
In a pouch on his belt he had some dried apricots, treats he had intended to give his gelding after the battle was won. Now the battle was lost, and the gelding, too. He dug out three or four apricots, put them in the palm of his hand, and walked up to the steppe pony.
"Here you are, boy," he said coaxingly; the pony was entire, with stones big for the size of the rest of it. It made a snuffling noise, half suspicion, half interest. Abivard held out his hand. The horse sniffed the apricots, delicately tasted one. It snuffled again, this time sounding pleased, and ate the rest of the fruit.
After that, it let Abivard come around alongside it and did no more than lay back its ears when he mounted it. At his urging, it trotted off toward the south. He found the ride uncomfortable; like a lot of nomads, the Khamorth who had owned it kept his stirrup leathers very short so he could rise in the saddle to use his bow. Bowless, Abivard perforce rode with his legs bent up.
Evidently he wasn't the first or only Makuraner to escape the disaster to the north; when he came up to it, the baggage train was boiling like a stomped anthill. He kept on riding. He had intended to give the alarm: he couldn't have faced himself had he simply fled. But he did not aim to be caught in the new catastrophe sure to come soon.
He could feel by the steppe pony's gait that carrying his armored self was more than it could easily handle. He knew he would have to shed the iron as soon as he could. If the pony foundered before he got back to the Degird, he was a dead man.
Perhaps half an hour later, he looked over his shoulder. A new column of smoke was rising into the sky. The men of Makuran hadn't set this one. The Khamorth were having their revenge.
The one good thing Abivard saw there was that it meant the plainsmen would be too occupied with their looting to comb the plain for fugitives for a while.
He wasn't the only Makuraner to have escaped from the overthrow of the King of Kings' host; scattered over the steppe in front, behind, and off to the sides were riders traveling singly or in small groups. Some would be men fleeing from the baggage train; others warriors like Abivard who met with mischance before the trap closed on them; others, perhaps, men who had broken out of the ring of death the nomads had cast around the Makuraners.
Abivard thought hard about joining one of those small groups of retreating men from Makuran. In the end, he decided to keep clear and go his own way. For one thing, even all the fugitives he saw banded together lacked the numbers to stand up to the swarm of Khamorth who would soon be following. For another, bands traveling together were limited to the speed of their slowest member. He wanted to get as far away from the disastrous field that was not a field as he could.
Shock still dazed him. He had lost his father and four siblings. Makuran had lost Peroz King of Kings and the flower of its manhood. The twin misfortunes echoed and reechoed inside his head, now one louder, now the other.
"What shall I do?" he moaned. "What will the kingdom do?"
Since he had no idea what the kingdom would do, he ended up concentrating on the first question. The first thing he had to do was get back over the bridge the King of Kings' engineers had thrown across the Degird. If he couldn't do that, he would be too dead to worry about anything thereafter.
If he did get back to the stronghold, he would be dihqan. He had known that would happen one day, but had thought one day lay years ahead. Now it was on top of him, a weight heavier on his shoulders than that of his armor on the steppe pony he rode.
"Speaking of which," he muttered, and reined in. He swung down off the horse, gave it a chance to graze and blow a little. He couldn't think just of the mad dash for escape, not when he was several days' ride north of the Degird. He had to keep the pony sound for the whole journey, even though every heartbeat he waited made him fidget as if taken by the flux.
He stopped again when he came to a small stream. He let the steppe pony drink, but not too much. It snapped at him when he pulled it away from the water.
"Stupid thing," he said, and cuffed it on the muzzle. Horses would drink themselves sick or dead if you let them. They would eat too much, too, but that wasn't going to be a problem, not now.
How best to escape pursuit? At length, Abivard rode southwest, still toward the Degird but not as directly-and out of the line of march by which the host of Peroz King of Kings had approached disaster. Sure as sure, the Khamorth would ride down that line, sweeping away the warriors who had not the wit to avoid it.
By the time evening neared, Abivard no longer saw any of his fellow fugitives. That he took for a good omen: the nomads would not be likely now to spot him while chasing someone else.
When he came to another stream, he decided to stop for the night and let the steppe pony rest till morning. He dismounted, rubbed down the animal with a clump of dry grass for lack of anything better, then tied its reins to the biggest bush-almost a sapling-he could find.
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