Nadine sat next to her uncle. The noise and cries of soldiers and animals mixed with the sound of weapons clashing. "Orzhekov. There, a gap to the right. I want you to drive through and reach the prince. Konstans-now, the charge."
Nadine lifted her spear and her riders moved forward with her. To her left, she saw the bulk of her uncle's personal guard riding forward parallel to her, gold banner flying, gold and red surcoats a bright glare in the sunlight. The sight of them gave her heart. She stood a little in the saddle, thrusting her legs forward, and tucked her spear under her right arm. An imperial blue infantry unit held its ground in front of her jahar, and behind it rode the blue lion, fluttering in the breeze.
They held to a steady pace, gaining ground, and then some fifty paces from the line she kicked her horse to a pounding gallop and her men howled, a deafening ululation, and they hit the khaja line.
She plowed over the first man, who vanished into the maelstrom, and lost her spear to a flailing hook and pull from a knot of infantry men who had held together under the weight of the charge. Yermolov and Yartseva rode on either side of her, and then a sword cut into Yartseva and a hook dragged him down from his horse. A face, a man thrusting at her horse's head with his spear, appeared to her right. She cut at his arm as she passed but could not look back. As she recovered her saber, blood sprayed her armor-not her own blood but the blood of the soldier she must have hit.
A square of some nine men blocked the path in front of her, but at once four more riders, three still with their spears, joined her and Yermolov. Four of the nine khaja soldiers wavered and scattered, faced with the charge of horses. A spear thrust for her leg; she deflected it. Yermolov shuddered in the saddle, rocked back by a blow, and for an instant Nadine thought he would be toppled from his saddle. She parried; a man with his face screened by mail threw his spear at her. She knocked it away and then he was bowled over from the side by the hooves and spear of another rider. His dark eyes met hers for an instant, pain and anger and fear melded, and then he disappeared beneath the horses.
A moment later she came out into an empty zone. Ahead of her, the blue lion of the prince whirled away in a clot of fighting. Behind, the charge had disintegrated into confusion; unhorsed riders dueled: There was Yartseva, fending off a soldier in imperial blue, but then a line of horses obscured her sight of him, and when they passed, she could not see him.
Shrieks and moans; horses screamed and, to her left, a mare struggled up to its feet and collapsed again in a pool of blood.
"Orzhekov!" That was Yermolov, reining in beside her.
"Form up the men. We've got to reach the prince."
A shower of arrows shaded the sun, arching over her head and falling with a sharp resounding clatter into the ranks of the Habakar prince. She saw, for one instant, Vershinin, far away topping a swell and then he rode down into-what? — she could not tell.
Behind her, bodies littered the field, most of them still moving or writhing, groaning in pain. Riderless horses reared and circled and stumbled over the dead and wounded.
The ranks of her jahar formed around her. Yermolov thrust a spear into her hand, and she sheathed her bloody saber.
They rode into the chaos surrounding the Habakar prince. A line of Habakar horsemen wheeled to meet their charge, but somehow the two units simply passed between each other. Nadine cast a glance back over her shoulder; she caught a glimpse of another wave of her jahar some fifty paces behind, narrowing the gap. The Habakar riders milled, turning this way and then that.
A rider shouted a warning. Nadine parried a blow with the haft of her spear and then thrust hard. The spear stuck in the man's segmented armor and she flung herself back to let it ride past her, and drew her saber. Cut to her right as an unhorsed man attacked her. The Habakar soldiers were mobbed in groups, infantry and cavalry side by side, disorganized, and they began to give way before her troops.
Except there, some hundred paces in front, bobbed the green pennant of Vershinin's jahar, and to her left she saw the gold banner that marked Bakhtiian's own guards. The white horsehair plume of Konstans" helmet trembled as he pressed forward through the ranks. Then he was hidden by a sheet of fighting. The arrow fire had stopped, at least into these ranks. She heard its sound from farther away, accompanying the louder crash of metal weapons.
They battled forward. Here, though disorganized, the Habakar resistance proved fierce. The clot around the prince's blue lion shrank, and shrank, but each gain was hard won. Yermolov fell, and then a rider to her left. All at once, she came up beside Konstans. He grinned at her. Blood spattered his face and surcoat, and blood leaked from an arrow wound in his horse's withers.
"The stubborn bastard won't surrender!" he shouted. She could barely hear him. "Here!" he cried. "Pull your jahar back. We're getting pressed too close together."
Obediently, she shouted aloud and found a flag to signal the withdrawal. Bit by bit, she pulled her jahar back and at last, coming out into the open, they formed back into ranks. What was left of them. She judged she had lost a third of her men.
The field lay open under the sky, churned into mud. Wounded and dead lay everywhere, in some places heaped in piles where they'd fallen over each other; in others, a single form lay tumbled alone on a sodden stretch of ground. From here, Nadine could see off to the north the line of riders and the gold banner that marked Bakhtiian's position. To the south she could not see, but she heard cries and the clamor of battle retreating away up into the hills. The clot around the Habakar prince shrank, and shrank, under the deadly press of two jahars. Abruptly, by a signal Nadine did not see, the jaran riders pulled away and a unit of archers rode up and began firing at will into the last knot of defenders.
"We'll ride south," said Nadine, surveying her men. They rode, and for a while they hunted, cutting down the fleeing Habakar soldiers, those who had gotten that far.
But as afternoon lowered toward evening, Nadine turned them back and returned to the field to hunt for their own wounded and to round up those horses that could be saved. Already many of the light troops wandered the field, killing the Habakar wounded and stripping and marking the dead. A steady line of casualties walked or rode toward Bakhtiian's position, but Nadine noted that his gold banner had moved.
She found him by the corpse of the Habakar prince.
He glanced up, seeing her. He looked tired. "He fought bravely enough," he said, although Nadine was not sure he was really speaking to her, to his niece, at all. She had a strange feeling that he was speaking to less, almost as if he was defending himself to her. "But he refused to surrender. Had he led the army on the field outside Qurat, the victory might not have gone our way so easily."
Vershinin's nephew was stripping the body, and Nadine examined the dead Habakar prince with some interest- with his chest-length black beard, dark hair looped in double braids, and his throat red with his own blood. Not particularly handsome, but so few of the khaja were; still, he looked strong, and the wounds his body had suffered-some fresh, some old scars-proved his courage in battle. Evidently he had cut his own throat rather than surrender to the jaran. Or the arrow in his eye might have killed him. Of his guard, none lived.
"Vershinin," Bakhtiian continued, "I'll leave you to follow after, but I'm returning to Karkand with my guard now. I'll leave you three healers who've been trained by Dr. Hierakis. They'll judge those who can survive the journey back to the hospital, and those it would be more merciful to kill now."
Nadine got leave for a few minutes to find her men among the wounded. She marked them, and was relieved to find over half those who had been missing, although at least one she judged would not make it back to camp. She found Yermolov; a chance cut by a khaja axman had severed the straps of his thigh armor, and a better aimed one had cut his exposed leg down to the bone, but already a healer cleaned mud and cloth out of it, muttering about something called sepsis.