"Sleep," the wizard who'd fallen in the snow said as he struggled to his feet. Koubatzes and the other two nodded.
The wizards carried honey cakes and wine in their saddlebags along with their sorcerous impedimenta. They knew the men who made magics of this sort would need quick reviving. Koubatzes and the other three crammed their mouths with the sweets and gulped the strong wine as if afraid it would be outlawed tomorrow.
Ingeros drew back from the top of the low rise before calling to the wizards, "Well done, by the good god! The shepherd rode off like he had demons on his tail. Come to that, the sheep ran away, too."
Methodios, who had worked a smaller sorcery than the others, kept more of his strength. And, since he had been the mage concerned with what the Khamorth had in the way of wards, perhaps his sorcerous senses were already attuned to the nomads. Not half a minute after Ingeros spoke, the young wizard's eyes widened again, now in disbelief and alarm. "Counterspell!" he gasped.
"You're mad," another wizard said. "They couldn't possib—" He broke off. His face bore the same expression as Methodios'. "Phaos!" he gasped. "They could."
"We have to hold them." Koubatzes could barely hold himself up. Determination rang in his voice even so. "I don't know how they're doing this, but we can stop it. We must stop it. We—"
He got no further. He staggered as if someone had struck him a heavy blow. That wasn't because of his weakness from the spell he'd just cast. It came from a spell aimed at him—aimed at all the Videssian wizards, the guards accompanying them . . . and Rhavas himself.
Fear filled him. He might have been a winecup for all he could do to hold it out. He shivered. His teeth chattered. Ice ran up his back. All of that went on and on. It did not end, as it would have had the fear sprung from any natural cause. Some small part of him knew the terror was artificial, was sorcerously induced. Knowing mattered not at all.
The wizards who were on horseback dug heels into their mounts' sides. The horses bucketed off in all directions—most toward Skopentzana, but not all. Some of the horses screamed in surprise and pain. Some of the wizards were screaming, too.
For all his weakened state, Koubatzes was better able to resist the Khamorth sorcery. Still staggering, he snatched up the amulet through which he'd launched the Videssian spell at the nomads. He clutched it as a drowning man might clutch a spar. But a spar would support a shipwreck victim. The amulet seemed to help Koubatzes not in the least.
"How are they doing this?" the sorcerer cried. "How, in the name of the good god?" His desperate eyes met Rhavas'. "In the name of the good god, very holy sir, make them stop!"
Rhavas thought it miracle enough that he hadn't fled with most of the mages and guards. Just staying where he was took every ounce of strength he had. He sent up another anguished prayer to Phos. It did no good that he could find. The fear the Khamorth shamans sent forth went right on lashing him.
With a low, terrified moan, Koubatzes jumped on his horse and fled. He was the last of the wizards to hold his place. The guards were gone, too. Ingeros had lasted a little longer than the others, but only a little. There sat Rhavas on the back of his horse, all alone.
Anger poured over him for a moment, anger almost hot enough to make him forget his sorcerously spawned panic. How dared the Khamorth strike back in defiance not just of the Empire of Videssos but also of the lord with the great and good mind? How dared they? It was an outrage!
That it was an outrage made it no less true. Rhavas' anger faded, as normal emotions will. The fear remained. If anything, it grew worse. Rhavas had no idea how the Khamorth were doing what they did. For that matter, even Koubatzes had had no idea how they were doing it, or how to stop them.
The prelate's courage—or rather, his resistance to the shamans' counterspell—at last collapsed. He booted his horse into motion. Had the animal chosen to run west, it would have carried him straight to the nomads, and that would have been the end of him. But it ran east, back toward Skopentzana, and so, though broken, he escaped the final disaster.
Koubatzes' horse had galloped east, too. Rhavas' caught up with the wizard after a while. "Why are we so afraid?" Rhavas asked through teeth that still chattered as if he'd been dumped naked in the snow.
"Because they have made us so." Koubatzes' face was a mask of terror. "I had not thought the wizard born who could put me in fear. I had not thought it, but I was wrong."
"How do we escape the sorcery?" Rhavas asked him.
"If I knew, I would tell you. No—if I knew, I would do it."
Little by little, as they bucketed on toward Skopentzana, the panic eased. Rhavas made what he could of that: "They cannot afflict us forever."
"No, but for long enough." Koubatzes reined in. As well he did; his horse would have foundered soon if he hadn't.
So would Rhavas'. The prelate let his mount blow out great gusts of steaming breath through distended, blood-red—almost fire-red—nostrils. "How?" Rhavas said in something close to physical torment. "How could the nomads, the barbarians, do this to us?"
"I do not know." Horror and rage filled Koubatzes' voice. They were aimed not at Rhavas but at himself. "Everything we did went as it should have gone. Their wards seemed nothing out of the ordinary. Our spell . . . Our spell, very holy sir, was a perfect specimen of its kind. We made no error in preparing the amulet. We made no error in the conjuration. I can tell you where we made the mistake."
"Where?" Rhavas asked.
"We thought the spell would be strong enough to rout the Khamorth, strong enough so they couldn't possibly reply. We seem to have been slightly in error there." The mage's laugh rode the high, ragged edge of hysteria. "Yes, just slightly, by the good god."
"But the good god should have watched over us, should have kept any such mischance from befalling us," Rhavas faltered.
Koubatzes laughed again, even more shakily than before. "What should have happened isn't what happened, very holy sir. Perhaps you noticed that. Aye, perhaps you did. If you would like to take that up with Phaos the next time you talk to him, I hope you'll be good enough to let me know what he has to say."
Such sarcasm stopped just short of blasphemy—if, indeed, it stopped short at all. Another day, Rhavas would have called Koubatzes on it. After the dolorous overthrow he'd just escaped, he barely noticed. He said, "I saw no sign the lord with the great and good mind rejected my prayers."
"No, eh?" The wizard raised an ironic eyebrow. "Our sorcery was routed. We were routed. If we hadn't got far away, I think I would have died of that fright. Might such things give you a hint?"
Even in Rhavas' present unhappy state, that was too much for him to stomach. "If you say Phos' power does not rule the world, sorcerous sir, you say Skotos' power does. Do you say that? I see no other choice."
"No, I do not say that." Koubatzes hastily backtracked. "Maybe the good god was punishing us for our sins. Whatever his reasons, though, he let the Khamorth triumph over us."
"Whatever his reasons . . ." Rhavas echoed. The civil war loomed large in his mind. Had the general with dreams of glory not risen against his cousin, none of this would have happened. The Empire of Videssos' armies would not have hurled themselves at one another. The frontier forts would not have been stripped of men to fling into the fight. The nomads never would have had the chance to swarm off the steppe.
"No help for it," Koubatzes said gloomily. "The cursed nomads can do as they please in these parts. Who can stop them? Who can even slow them down?"
"Despair is the one sin Phos will never forgive." Rhavas tried to use that to buck up his spirits as well as the wizard's. Had the Empire truly been sinful enough to deserve a barbarian invasion in this scale? Had the nomads been virtuous enough to deserve all the plunder and rapine they would take in Videssos? He had trouble believing it.