To hear him talk about it, it almost did. Grus said, "I'd sooner they'd run away, if you want to know the truth. Anything that makes this whole business easier is fine with me."
"I don't think they're going to run away, worse luck," Hirundo said.
"I don't, either." Grus' gaze sharpened. "In that case, why don't we run away instead?" Hirundo stared at him. He spent some little while explaining. When he was done, he asked, "Do you think we can bring that off?"
"We'll have to hurry if we want to try." Hirundo started to laugh. "Things will get lively if we do – I'll tell you that." Grus nodded. Hirundo asked. "Do you want me to give the orders?"
"If you'd be so kind," Grus said. Hirundo started yelling.
Horns started blaring. Avornans started riding and marching in what seemed like every direction at once. Such apparent chaos usually had order behind it. Grus hoped it did here.
He assumed it did, and called for Pterocles. Getting the wizard's attention in the midst of the commotion Hirundo was stirring up took some doing, but the king managed. He said, "I want you to block any unmasking spells the Menteshe throw this way."
"I'll do my best, Your Majesty, but we haven't set out any masking spells," Pterocles said, puzzlement in his voice.
"You know that, and I know that, but I don't want the nomads finding out," Grus said. "Send back whatever they aim at us. That will give them something to think about, eh?"
"I'll do my best, but this business doesn't come with a guarantee," Pterocles said. "Some of their wizards know what they're doing. That little affair by the river not long ago could have been much worse than it was."
"If they realize you're blocking them, they'll concentrate on beating down what you're doing, won't they?" Grus asked.
"That's what I'd do, anyhow," Pterocles replied.
"So would I. Let's hope they do, too," Grus said. Pterocles scratched his head. If his own wizard was confused, the king could hope the shamans serving Bori-Bars or whoever was in charge of the Menteshe would be, too.
Along with Hirundo and some of the royal guardsmen, he rode forward in the center of the Avornan battle line. Avornan outriders returned to the main body, driven back by the nomads. Roiling dust ahead hid the main force of the Menteshe. Before long, Grus could make out horsemen through the dust they stirred up. "They haven't lost their spirit – that's plain enough," he said.
"They wouldn't be so much trouble if they didn't have nerve," Hirundo said. "But we've already given them two good beatings this summer. If we can manage one more.."
"We'll know pretty soon," Grus said.
Before long, arrows began to fly. The Menteshe shouted their ferocious war cries. The Avornans yelled back, roaring out their kingdom's name and King Grus'. Grus didn't know if that raised their spirits, but it never failed to lift his.
A Menteshe arrow hissed past his ear. Behind him, somebody groaned. That could have been me, he thought, and shuddered. Even in the best-planned battles, so many things could go wrong. Do I care if we win if I'm not there to see it? Well, I hope we do, but I'm afraid this campaign will fall to pieces without me.
He didn't have time to wonder whether that was his vanity talking. The Menteshe seemed to have forgotten the Avornans had trounced them twice in recent weeks. By the way they pressed forward, they might have been the ones who'd done all the winning lately.
And the Avornans, who seemed taken aback by the nomads' aggressiveness, began to drift toward the rear. After shouting and cursing at them, Hirundo turned to Grus and said, "Your Majesty, looks like it's time to retreat."
"It does, doesn't it?" Grus said. "Falling back from the Menteshe .. They're going to push us hard. They'll want to see if they can break us."
"They'd better not," Hirundo said. "That would be downright embarrassing." It would be worse than embarrassing, but Hirundo always looked on the bright side of things.
Grus guided his gelding back to the north. More and more Avornans were riding in that direction. The Menteshe shouted louder and more ferociously than ever. They pressed the Avornans harder – and Grus' men retreated faster. That encouraged the nomads to press them harder still.
Retreat turned into something that looked a lot like rout. Only a stubborn rear guard kept the Menteshe from smashing the Avornan army to pieces. Even the men in the rear guard kept on retreating for all they were worth. The Menteshe, having lost their earlier fights with the Avornans, pushed hard now, intent on doing the hated foes in front of them as much harm as they could. Any soldiers worthy of their weapons would have done the same.
It mined them.
Because they had an enemy in front of them, they paid no attention to what lay off to the side – until the stone-throwers and dart-throwers sitting in the shadows cast by a grove of olive trees all opened up at once, throwing them into confusion.
Before the Menteshe had a chance to recover, most of the heavily armored royal guardsmen – who'd waited patiently in the olive grove – set spurs to their horses and thundered forward.
Horn calls rang out through what had been the retreating Avornan army, and the Avornans retreated no more, but went over to the attack. When they did, Grus and Hirundo, who were riding side by side, reached out at the same time and clasped hands with each other. A deliberate retreat was one of the hardest things in war to bring off. When an army pretended to fall back, it all too often started falling back in earnest. But the Avornans turned around and struck as fiercely as Grus could have hoped.
The Menteshe broke. Caught with a blow at their flank and suddenly and unexpectedly assailed from the front as well, they fled in all directions. Escape was the only thing that seemed to matter to them. If they could get away..
A lot of them couldn't. A lot of them went down to the guardsmen's lances or were hacked out of the saddle by their swords. At close quarters, Avornan archers could hold their own with the Menteshe, too, and they filled the air with shafts, shooting as fast as they could.
Nomads threw down their weapons and did their best to surrender. As on any battlefield, giving up was a risky business. With their fighting blood up, not all Avornans felt like taking prisoners. And a few Menteshe pretended to surrender and then started fighting again, which did neither them nor their comrades any good.
"Bori-Bars!" The shout went up not too far from Grus. "We have Bori-Bars!"
Grinning, the king clasped hands with Hirundo again. That was one of the things he'd most hoped for. Capturing the able general weakened the nomads. And now the Avornans would be able to question him. Who was his commander? Korkut? Sanjar? The Banished One?
Pterocles pointed at Grus. "I know what you were doing."
"Do you?" Grus said. "I often wonder myself."
"You can't get away with being coy, not this time," the wizard said. "You wanted me to fight the Menteshe so they'd do everything they could to break through my spells – and so they wouldn't do anything else." "Who, me?" Grus said.
"Yes, you." Pterocles did his best to look severe. "And they were pounding on me, and I was doing everything I could to fend them off, and that only made them pound harder. But we weren't really masking anything after all."
"They never found that out, did they?" Grus asked. Pterocles shook his head. The king grinned again. "That was what I had in mind."
"You know how to get what you want, don't you?"
"I'm not sure yet," Grus answered, the grin slipping as fast as it appeared. "We'll know better as this campaign wears along, won't we?"
Before Pterocles could say anything, a soldier called, "Your Majesty, here's Bori-Bars!" The Menteshe general was still mounted on his rough-coated little horse. His hands were tied in front of him, his feet tied together under the horse's belly. He had a cut over one eye that splashed his swarthy face with blood and an expression that said he wished he were dead.