"I suppose it would." Pterocles plainly didn't see how.
Patient as a father teaching his son to swim, Hirundo said, "You want to have the ground with you if you can. Either mounted or on foot, a charge uphill is harder than the other kind. Arrows don't go as far when you're shooting them up a slope, either."
"Oh." Pterocles nodded, perhaps in wisdom. "All right."
Grus, who agreed with his general, set a hand on the wizard's shoulder. "Every trade has its tricks and its secrets. Hirundo and I wouldn't have any idea what to do if we needed to cast a spell, but we've tried to learn a thing or two about soldiering."
"All right," Pterocles said again. "I'll take your word for it, then, and I'll stick to things I know a little something about myself." He took from his belt pouch an amulet made from a brown, shiny stone pierced and penetrated by a duller, darker one. "Chalcedony and emery," the wizard explained. "Together, they are proof against all manner of fantastical illusions."
"Good," Grus said. "But don't use them yet." Pterocles, who had clutched the amulet and was about to start a spell, stopped in surprise. The king went on, "If you find there are trees there and the Menteshe are lurking in among them, or something like that, you ought to be able to make them sorry they ever decided to try to attack us."
"I can try," Pterocles said doubtfully.
Hirundo snapped his fingers. "What about that spell you used against the Chernagor ships that were trying to bring grain into Nishevatz? You know – the one where you set them on fire when they were still out on the ocean. If they're hiding in a forest or an olive grove, say, you could roast 'em easy as you please."
"If roasting them were as easy as you make it sound, I wouldn't have any trouble – that's true enough." Now Pterocles' voice was tart. He rummaged some more in his belt pouch, and finally pulled out a clear disk of rock crystal thicker at the center than the edges. "I can try that spell, anyhow," he said. "One thing's sure – the sun is stronger here than it was up in the Chernagor country. I'll need some greenery – with luck, some twigs torn from trees – to work the spell if I turn out to need it."
Grus sent some of his guardsmen off. They came back with olive branches, twigs from almond trees, and fragrant orange and lemon boughs. No doubt the thralls who watched them would be puzzled – if puzzlement could soak into the sorry wits of thralls. When Pterocles had the greenery piled in front of his feet, Grus said, "Now, if you please."
"Certainly, Your Majesty." The wizard had a knack for being most exasperating when he was most polite. He gave a bow that struck Grus as more sardonic than sincere, then clutched the amulet in his left hand and looked east and south. He pointed in that direction with his right forefinger. Grus wished he hadn't; any watching Menteshe would get a good idea of what he was doing. But maybe there was no help for it. The king kept quiet.
Pterocles began a chant that started softly but grew louder and more insistent as it went on. Grus peered in the direction of the wizard's outthrust forefinger. He waited to see if the landscape would change. If it did, he would deal with whatever the nomads were hiding. If it didn't… well, better safe than sorry.
He and Hirundo and Pterocles all exclaimed at the same time. The sere, dun, dry landscape on the far side of the river wavered and rippled, as though it were being seen through running water. And then, quite suddenly, an almond grove that hadn't been there – or hadn't seemed to be there – appeared out of nowhere. Menteshe horsemen – Grus couldn't see how many – waited in the shade of the trees. There were plenty to cause his army trouble; he was sure of that.
He got only a brief glimpse of the grove before it vanished again. A woman whose skirt was flipped up by the wind might have yanked it down again that fast, leaving him with only a memory of her legs. Sometimes a memory would do, though. "Use your spell now," the king told Pterocles. "They know you've gotten through theirs."
"I'm already doing it," the wizard said. And, sure enough, he was separating almond twigs out of the greenery the guardsmen had set at his feet. "I hope the Menteshe don't have a counterspell handy. The Chernagors never did figure out what to do about this one, but the nomads have more worry about fire than the northerners did, because they live in a hot, dry country. Well, we'll see before long."
He held the crystal disk perhaps a palm's breadth above the bits from the almond branches. A bright spot of sunlight – it almost seemed a miniature sun – sprang into being on a twig. Grus wondered what magic lay in the crystal to make it do such a thing. Whatever the cause, that bright spot of sunlight seemed hot as a miniature sun, too. Smoke rose from the twig. A moment later, it burst into flame.
Pterocles chanted and pointed, sending his fire where he wanted it to go. For some little while, nothing – or nothing visible – happened. Then the illusion on the far side of the river wavered again, wavered and winked out. Pterocles wasn't attacking it now, not directly. But the Menteshe sorcerers abandoned it because they had other things that needed their power more.
Smoke streamed up into the sky. The leafy tops of the almond trees were on fire. Even from that distance, Grus could hear the nomads' horses screaming in terror and panic. The Menteshe had no chance to keep their mounts under control, not with flames above their heads and burning leaves and branches falling down on them. The horses galloped off in all directions, carrying their riders with them.
Grus nudged Hirundo. "Get our men across the river now, before the nomads can pull themselves together."
"Right." The general started shouting orders.
Pterocles looked as happy as a six-year-old with a brand-new wooden sword. "They haven't got a counterspell for that one, either," he said, grinning widely. "I always did think it was a pretty piece of magic, and it's done some good things for us."
"I should say so." Grus remembered tall-masted Chemagor ships catching fire out in the Northern Sea, where he could have reached them in no other way than through magic. He looked at the burning trees. Now he had another memory to go with that one. He slapped Pterocles on the back. "Nicely done."
"I'll have to thank Hirundo when he's done yelling his head off," Pterocles said. "That might not have occurred to me if he hadn't suggested it."
"It seems to be working pretty well," Grus said. "Hard on the almonds, but nothing we can do about that."
Avornan soldiers formed a perimeter on the far bank of the river. A few Menteshe rode toward them, but only a few – not nearly enough to keep them from making the crossing. And, at Hirundo's orders, the Avornans had brought some stone- and dart-throwers over the river with them. The missiles they flung discouraged the nomads from getting too close. Before long, even the handful of Menteshe who'd tried to oppose Grus' army wheeled their horses and trotted away.
"We took care of that," Pterocles said.
"They aren't gone for good," Grus said. "They'll try to give us trouble somewhere else. But they won't give us trouble here, and that's what I was worried about." He grinned at the wizard. "Thank you."
"My pleasure, Your Majesty, and I mean every word of that," Pterocles answered. "Every time we set another thrall village free, I'm getting some of my own back against…" He did not say the name, but looked south. Grus nodded, understanding whom he meant. Pterocles went on, "Every time I do something like this, I'm getting some back, too."
"All of Avornis owes… him a lot," Grus said. "If this campaign goes the way we hope, we'll get to pay a lot of it back. We'll have. .. something he's kept for a long time."