Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (47 page)

Avshar watched Ortaias Sphrantzes canter down the Videssian left wing toward the center. Behind the robes that masked him, he might have smiled.

“Dress your lines! Keep good order!” Sphrantzes called, waving energetically to his men. This business of war was as exciting as he’d thought it would be, if more difficult. Decisions had to come at once, and situations did not easily fit into the neat categories Mindes Kalokyres outlined. When they did, they changed so quickly that orders were often worthless as soon as they were given.

The noble knew he had been outmaneuvered several times and lost troops as a result. It pained him; these were not symbols drawn on parchment or pieces to be taken cleanly from a board, but men who fought and bled and died so he could learn his trade.

Still, on the whole he did not think he had done badly. There had been breakthroughs, yes, but never a serious one—he did not know he still held command because of one of those breakthroughs. His mere presence, he thought, went a long way toward heartening his men. He knew what a fine warlike picture he made with his gilded helmet and armor, his burnished rapier with its jeweled hilt, and his military cape floating behind him in the breeze.

True, there had been that terrible moment when Avshar’s sorcery reached out to slay Nephon Khoumnos. But even the white-shrouded villain was according him the respect he deserved,
always shadowing him as he rode up and down the line.

He had done everything, in short, that a general could reasonably be expected to do … except fight.

Horns blared in the enemy ranks. Sphrantzes’ lip curled at the discords they raised. Then the disdain vanished from his face, to be replaced by dread. A thousand Yezda were spurring straight at him, and at their head was Avshar.

“Ortaias!” the wizard-prince cried, voice spectrally clear through the thunder of hoofbeats. “I have a gift for thee, Ortaias!” He lifted a mailed fist. The blade therein was no bejeweled toy, but a great murdering broadsword, red-black with the dried blood of victims beyond number.

First among all the Videssians, Ortaias Sphrantzes in his mind’s eye penetrated Avshar’s swaddling veils to see his face, and the name of that face was fear. His bowels turned to water, his heart to ice.

“Phos have mercy on us! We are undone!” he squealed. He wheeled his horse, jabbed his heels into its flanks. Hunched low to ride the faster, he spurred his way back through his startled soldiers—just as Avshar, taking his measure, had foreseen. “All’s lost! All’s lost!” he wailed. Then he was past the last of his men, galloping east as fast as his high-bred mount would run.

A moment later the Videssian line behind him, stunned by its general’s defection, smashed into ruin under the wizard’s hammer-stroke.

Take a pitcher of water outside on a cold winter’s day. If the water is very pure and you do not disturb it; it may stay liquid long after you would expect it to freeze. But let a snowflake settle on the surface of this supercooled water, and it will be ice clear through in less time than it takes to tell.

So it was with the Videssian army, for Ortaias Sphrantzes’ flight was the snowflake that congealed retreat into panic. And with a gaping hole torn in its ranks, and Yezda gushing through to take the army in flank and rear, terror was far from unwarranted.

“Well, that’s done it!” Gaius Philippus said, angry beyond profanity. “Form square!” he shouted, then explained to Marcus, “The better order we show, the less likely the sods
are to come down on us. The gods know they’ll have easier pickings elsewhere.”

The tribune nodded in bitter agreement. The amputated left wing of the army was already breaking up in flight. Here and there knots of brave or stubborn men still struggled against the nomads who were enveloping them on all sides, but more and more rode east as fast as they could go, throwing away shields, helms, even swords to flee more quickly. Whooping gleefully, the Yezda pursued them like boys after rabbits.

But Avshar kept enough control over the unruly host he led to swing most of it back for the killing stroke against the Videssian center. Assailed simultaneously from front and rear, many units simply ceased to be. They lacked the Romans’ long-drilled flexibility and tore their ranks to pieces trying to redeploy. Even proud squadrons of Halogai splintered beyond repair. The Yezda surged into the gaps confusion created and spread slaughter with bow and saber. Survivors scattered all over the field.

Under the ferocious onslaught, the motley nature of the Videssian army became the curse Marcus had feared. Each contingent strove to save itself, with little thought for the army as a whole. “Rally to me!” Mavrikios’ pipers signaled desperately, but it was too late for that. In the chaos, many regiments never understood the order, and those that did could not obey because of the ever-present, ever-pressing hordes of Yezda.

Some units held firm. The Namdaleni beat back charge after charge, until the Yezda gave them up as a bad job. Fighting with a fury born of despair, Gagik Bagratouni’s Vaspurkaners also stopped the invaders cold. But neither group could counterattack.

As Gaius Philippus had predicted, the good order the Romans still kept let them push on relatively unscathed. Indeed, they attracted stragglers—sometimes by squads and platoons—to themselves, men seeking a safe island in a sea of disaster. Marcus welcomed them if they still showed fight. Every sword, every spear was an asset.

The additions came none too soon. One of the Yezda captains was wise enough to see that any organized force remained a potential danger. He shouted a word of command, wheeled his men toward the Romans.

Drumming hooves, felt through the soles as much as heard
… “They come, aye, they come!” Viridovix yelled. Ruin all around him, he still reveled in fighting. He leaped out against the onrushing Yezda, ignoring arrows, evading swordstrokes that flashed by like striking snakes. The nomad captain cut at him. He jerked his head away, replied with a two-handed stroke of his own that sheared through boiled-leather cuirass and ribs alike, hurling his foe from his saddle to the dust below.

The Romans cheered his prowess, those not busy fighting for their own lives.
Pila
were few now, and the Yezda charge struck home almost unblunted. For all their discipline, the legionaries staggered under the blow. The front edge of the square sagged, began to crumple.

Marcus, at the fore, killed two Yezda in quick succession, only to have two more ride past on either side of him and hurl themselves against the battered line.

A mounted nomad struck him on the side of the head with a spearshaft swung club-fashion. It was a glancing blow, but his vision misted, and he slipped to one knee. Another Yezda, this one on foot, darted forward, saber upraised. The tribune lifted his shield to parry, sickly aware he would be too slow.

From the corner of his eye he saw a tall shape loom up beside him. an axe bit with a meaty
chunnk;
the Yezda was dead before his dying cry passed his lips. Skapti Modolf’s son put a booted foot on the corpse, braced, and pulled the weapon free.

“Where are your men?” Scaurus shouted.

The Haloga shrugged. “Dead or scattered. They gave the ravens more bones to pick than their own.” Skapti seemed more a wolf than ever, an old wolf, last survivor of his pack.

He opened his mouth to speak again, then suddenly stiffened. Marcus saw the nomad arrow sprout from his chest. His one good eye held the Roman. “This place is less pleasant than Imbros,” he said distinctly. His fierce blue stared dimmed as he slumped to the ground.

Scaurus recalled the fate the Haloga had half foretold when the Romans left his town. He had little time to marvel. Legionaries were falling faster than replacements could fill the holes in their ranks. Soon they would be an effective fighting force no more, but a broken mob of fugitives for the invaders’ sport.

The tribune saw Gaius Philippus’ head whipping from side to side, searching vainly for new men to throw into the fight. The centurion looked more harassed than beaten, annoyed over failing at something he should do with ease.

Then the Yezda shouted in surprise and alarm as they in turn were hit from behind. The killing pressure eased. The nomads streamed away in all directions, like a glob of quicksilver mashed by a falling fist.

Laon Pakhymer rode up to Marcus, a tired grin peeking through his tangled beard. “Horse and foot together do better than either by itself, don’t you think?” he said.

Scaurus reached up to clasp his hand. “Pakhymer, you could tell me I was a little blue lizard and I’d say you aye right now. Never was any face so welcome as yours.”

“There’s flattery indeed,” the Khatrisher said dryly, scratching a pockmarked cheek. He was quickly serious again. “Shall we stay together now? My riders can screen your troops, and you give us a base to fall back on at need.”

“Agreed,” Scaurus said at once. Even in the world he’d known, cavalry was the Romans’ weakest arm, always eked out with allies or mercenaries. Here the stirrup and the incredible horsemanship it allowed made such auxiliaries all the more important.

While the Romans struggled for survival on the left center, a larger drama was building on the Videssian right wing. Of all the army, the right had suffered least. Now Thorisin Gavras, shouting encouragement to his men and fighting in the first rank, tried to lead it back to rescue his brother and the beaten center. “We’re coming! We’re coming!” the Sevastokrator’s men cried. Those contingents still intact in the center yelled back with desperate intensity and tried to fight their way north.

It was not to be. The charge Thorisin led was doomed before it truly began. With Yezda on either side of them, the Sevastokrator’s warriors had to run the cruelest kind of gauntlet to return to their stricken comrades. Arrows tore at them like blinding sleet. Their foes struck again and again, ruthless blows from the flank that had to be parried at any cost—and the cost was the thrust of the attack.

Thorisin and Thorisin alone kept his men moving forward
against all odds. Then his mount staggered and fell, shot from under him by one of the black shafts Avshar’s bow could send so far. The Sevastokrator was a fine horseman; he rolled free from the foundering beast and sprang to his feet, shouting for a new horse.

But once slowed, even for the moment he needed to remount, his men could advance no further. Against his will, one of his lieutenants literally dragging his mount’s bridle, the younger Gavras was compelled to fall back.

A great groan of despair rose from the Videssians as they realized the relieving attack had failed. All around them, the Yezda shouted in hoarse triumph. Mavrikios, seeing before him the ruin of all his hopes, saw also that the last service he could give his state would be to take the author of his defeat down with him.

He shouted orders to the surviving Halogai of the Imperial Guard. Over all the din of battle Marcus clearly heard their answering, “Aye!” Their axes gleamed crimson in the sunset as they lifted them high in a final salute. Spearheaded by the Emperor, they hurled themselves against the Yezda.

“Avshar!” Mavrikios cried. “Face to face now, proud filthy knave!” The wizard-prince spurred toward him, followed by a swarm of nomads. They closed round the Halogai and swallowed them up. All over the field men paused, panting, to watch the last duel.

The Imperial Guard, steady in the face of the doom they saw ahead, fought with the recklessness of men who knew they had nothing left to lose. One by one they fell; the Yezda were no cowards and they, too, fought under their overlord’s eyes. At last only a small knot of Halogai still stood, to the end protecting the Emperor with their bodies. The wizard-prince and his followers rode over them, swords chopping like cleavers, and there were only Yezda in that part of the field.

Whatever faint hopes the Videssian army had for survival died with Mavrikios. Men thought no further than saving themselves at any price and abandoned their fellows if it meant making good their own escape. Fragments of the right were still intact under Thorisin Gavras, but so mauled they could do nothing but withdraw to the north in some semblance
of order. Over most of the battleground, terror—and the Yezda—ruled supreme.

More than anyone else, Gaius Philippus saved the Romans during that grinding retreat. The veteran had seen victory and defeat both in his long career and held the battered band together. “Come on!” he said. “Show your pride, damn you! Keep your ranks steady and your swords out! Look like you want some more of these bastards!”

“All I want is to get away from here alive!” a panicky soldier yelled. “I don’t care how fast I have to run!” Other voices took up the cry; the Roman ranks wavered, though the Yezda were not pressing them.

“Fools!” The centurion waved his arm to encompass the whole field, the sprawled corpses, the Yezda ranging far and wide to cut down fugitives. “Look around you—those poor devils thought they could run away too, and see what it got
them
. We’ve lost, aye, but we’re still men. Let the Yezda know we’re ready to fight and they’ll have to earn it to take us, and odds are they won’t. But if we throw away our shields and flap around like headless chickens, every man for himself, not a one of us will ever see home again.”

“You couldn’t be more right,” Gorgidas said. The Greek physician’s face was haggard with exhaustion and hurt. Too often he had watched men die from wounds beyond his skill to cure. He was in physical pain as well. His left arm was bandaged, and the bloodstains on his torn mantle showed where a Yezda saber had slid along a rib. Yet he still tried to give credit where it was due, to keep the heart in others when almost without it himself.

“Thanks,” Gaius Philippus muttered. He was studying his troops closely, wondering if he had steadied them or if stronger measures would be needed.

Gorgidas persisted, “This is the way men come off safe in a retreat, by showing the enemy how ready they are to defend themselves. Whether you know it or not, you’re following Socrates’ example at the battle of Delium, when he made his way back to Athens and brought his comrades out with him.”