‘My cousin’s brother-in-law, over there pretending to be a great khan. It is a grass matter, not a stone house matter.’ The smaller man smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘Then we go back to the city and maybe I sell you a horse. Not a crap horse. Yes?’
‘Sure,’ said the Captain.
The Vardariotes moved like a flock of birds who rise all together from a tree at the approach of a predator. But they were the pack of lions, and not the prey.
Duke Andronicus watched the Vardariotes leap from a stand to a gallop in a dozen strides – flow like water along the back of the enemy box formation, and then fly like an arrow from a particularly powerful bow at his son’s Easterners. The more lightly mounted Easterners turned like a school of fish and fled, hotly pursued by the scarlet-clad Vardariotes.
‘Son of a fucking whore,’ he spat. ‘Marcos! Christos! On me. Kronmir! Take your useless trick-riders and find me a path north and east.’ He backed his horse.
The aurochs horns roared out.
Kronmir turned his horse, so his mount and the Duke’s were nose to tail. ‘You can still beat him,’ he said. ‘If we march away from the city now, we will lose most of our support inside the walls. And we leave-’ He looked both ways. ‘She will benefit at our expense.’
Duke Andronicus shrugged. ‘If I retreat today and I am wrong, I lose nothing. If I fight today and I am wrong, I lose everything. Aeskepiles says this foreigner has powerful sorcery. He’s already beaten Tzoukes. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.’ He looked at the other man. ‘As for that bitch, let her rot. She wanted to stab us in the back? Leave her to it.’
Kronmir fingered his beard. ‘I fear she may have planned it this way.’ He shrugged. ‘We did try to kill her,’ he said quietly. When the Duke had no answer, Kronmir saluted with his whip and led his scouts north, away from the battle lines.
Before the sun settled another finger, Demetrius rode up in a roil of sun-reddened dust and gold hair and gilt armour.
‘We’re retreating?’ he cried.
Duke Andronicus shrugged, suddenly very tired. ‘Look for yourself,’ he said.
His son’s face worked. His skin grew mottled, red and white, and his jaw jutted out like that of a very small boy whose wooden sword has just been taken away by an angry parent.
But he mastered himself with an effort. ‘On your head be it,’ he said.
‘That’s right, boy. When you are Duke – or Emperor – you can make these decisions. But today, I make them. And I say, let’s take ourselves out of here.’ He turned in the saddle. ‘Aeskepiles! Wake up, old man.’
The magister was grey, his ascetic eyes heavily lidded as if he was near sleep.
‘They have blocked my every casting,’ he muttered.
The Duke shook his head. ‘Don’t give me that crap, Aeskepiles. I need a little help. How about a fog?’
Aeskepiles sighed. ‘Not crap, my lord. I’ve made three efforts and failed on each.’
The Despot shook his blond head. ‘Why can we never see these great efforts?’ he asked.
Aeskepiles pursed his lips. ‘Fog,’ he said.
‘Saint Basil and all the phalanx of saints,’ said Lykos Dukas, the Duke’s standard bearer and a veteran of fifty fights. He pointed with his sword.
The Vardariotes were mounted on magnificent blood horses and the Despot’s Easterners had steppe ponies. The better mounted men were, even as Dukas pointed, riding down their enemy, closing on them, catching them.
There was a moment where the two forces met – a swirl of dust, and all of the horses seemed to stop altogether.
Then dust rose, obscuring the whole fight.
Duke Andronicus spat. ‘We have fifteen minutes until they are around our flank and cutting us off from home,’ he said. ‘Lykos, get the wagons moving. Anything that can be saved. Damn it, Aeskepiles, raise me some fog! Conjure the sun from the sky! Make it dark!’
Despot Demetrius put an elbow against his waist and turned in the saddle. He was a magnificent horseman, and his body and his horse’s seemed to flow together, as if they were one creature. ‘This flight is unseemly. Let us fight.’
Ser Lykos ignored him and rode for the baggage wagons.
Aeskepiles entered into the cool darkness of his basilica of power and prepared a complex working, moving from pillar to column, aligning the distant stars in his carefully ordered sky. A cooling; a force of attraction, an enhancement of moisture; binding, losing, and empowering.
It was very complex, and Aeskepiles enjoyed building the edifice that would support it, even as another part of his working mind gathered power from his staff and his ring of lapis. He still hoarded his own reserve of power.
He’s about to cast again, Harmodius said in the aether. I could use some help, here.
Instead of responding immediately, the Captain touched his horse’s sides with his spurs and cantered up the last low, round hill – so round that it appeared artificial – at the edge of the Field of Ares. Ser Jehan and Ser Milus followed him, while just ahead of him, the sides of his shallow box formations broke open and wheeled into line, extending his front by another three hundred paces. The tangle of wagons was left behind to the right and left.
From the top of his little hill, he could see from the city wall at his right, all the way across the Field of Ares to his left, some four leagues. He spared a moment for his own awe. He was on the Field of Ares, and the Empire had once been powerful enough to fill this field with soldiers.
Closer to hand, the Duke’s army was half again the size of his own, and it stretched off to the left, so that the enemy left far overreached his own right – except that out beyond the furthest fringes of the enemy line, the Vardariotes and the Despot’s Easterners had merged in a single dust cloud.
He’s raising a fog, Harmodius said.
Stop him.
I could use any small reserves you can spare.
Bad Tom had rallied the wedge and returned to the company’s line – now he cantered up like the embodiment of war itself, his huge black horse snorting foam. He raised his bloody axe and saluted. Then he pointed at the Moreans.
‘There is drill for ye and a’! Look at ’em!’ Tom’s waving axe sprayed droplets of brown red, but the awe in his voice spoke for them all. The Duke’s cavalry was wheeling by sections and retreating. It was a beautiful manoeuvre. The still afternoon air brought the sound of trumpets.
The Red Knight slipped into his palace and opened the door, so that a warm green breeze blew over the black and white marble floor to mix with the golden rays that soaked in through the distant clerestory windows to make a haze of power.
That’s better, said Harmodius. He made no use of the Red Knight’s palace – he was doubtless deep within his own working place.
Is he more puissant than you?
No, muttered Harmodius. But he’s cautious, careful, and capable. And we spent potentia like a sailor spends gold this morning on concealment, the river crossing and a dozen other extravagances-
Spare me.
‘They’re going to run,’ said Tom.
‘Let them!’ Ser Jehan managed a rare smile. ‘Jesus Saviour, we almost lost the whole line. Letting them march away would be good for everyone, wouldn’t it, Captain?’
‘Let’s see if we can fix them in place,’ said the Captain. ‘Double time. Trot!’ he shouted. His new trumpeter managed to get the call out, but the corporals had heard his shout and the company, already remounted, surged forward.
Behind the Red Knight, his new page, Nell, swung up onto her tall pony and swore. ‘On and off! On and off!’ she spat in fourteen-year-old disapproval.
Across the grass, five hundred paces away, the Duke’s army was wheeling into columns of march. The manoeuvre was complicated, and well executed, and despite that it was slow. Men began to look over their shoulders at the advancing wave of scarlet and steel.