Abivard's head came up when he heard that commander shout.
He had to keep fighting for all he was worth to ensure that the Videssians didn't gain too great an advantage in their turn. But he looked this way and that… surely he'd recognized that voice.
Yes! There! «Tzikas!» he cried.
The renegade stared at him. «Abivard!» he said, and then, scornfully, «Eminent sir!»
«Traitor!» they roared together, and rode toward each other.
XI
Abivard slashed at Tzikas with more fury than science. The Videssian renegade-or possibly by now rerenegade- parried the blow with his own sword. Sparks flew as the iron blades belled off each other. Tzikas gave back a cut that Abivard blocked. They struck more sparks.
«You sent me to my death!» Tzikas screamed.
«You slandered me to the King of Kings,» Abivard retorted. «You told nothing but lies about me and everything I did. I gave you what you deserved, and I waited too long to do it.»
«You never gave me the credit I deserve,» Tzikas said.
«You never give anyone around you anything but a kick in the balls, whether he deserves it or not,» Abivard said.
As they spoke, they kept cutting at each other. Neither could get through the other's defense. Abivard looked around the field. To his dismay, to his disgust, the same held true of the Makuraners and the Videssians. Tzikas' ferocious counterattack had blunted his last chance for a breakthrough.
«You just saved the fight for a man you tried to murder by magic,» Abivard said. If he couldn't slay Tzikas with his sword, he might at least wound him with words.
The renegade's face contorted. «Life doesn't always turn out to be what we think it will, by the God,» he said, but at the same time he named the God he also sketched Phos' sun-circle above his heart. Abivard got the idea that Tzikas had no idea which side he belonged on, save only-and always-his own.
A couple of other Videssians rode toward Abivard. He drew back. Wary of a trap, Tzikas did not press him. For once Abivard had no trap waiting. But were he Tzikas, he would have been wary, too. He heartily thanked the God he was not Tzikas, and he did not make Phos' sun-sign as he did so.
He looked over the field again in the fading light to see if he had any hope left of turning victory into rout. Try as he would, he saw none. Here were his banners, and there were those of the Videssians. Horsemen and foot soldiers still hewed at one another, but he did not think anything they did would change the outcome now. Instead of a battlefield, the fight looked more like a picture of a battle on a tapestry or wall painting.
Abivard frowned. That was an odd thought He stiffened. No, not a picture of a battle-an image of a battle, an image he had seen before. This was the fight Panteles had shown him. He hadn't known, when he had seen it, whether he was looking on past or future. Now, too late to do him any good-as was often true of prophecy-he had the answer.
The Videssians withdrew toward their camp. They kept good order and plainly had plenty of fight left in them. After a last couple of attacks, as twilight began to fall, Abivard let them go.
From his right someone rode up calling his name. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. After a clash with Tzikas, he suspected everyone. The approaching horseman wore the full armor of the Makuraner heavy cavalry and rode an armored horse as well. Abivard remained cautious. Armor could be captured, and horses, too. And the chain mail veil the rider wore would disguise a Videssian in Makuraner clothing.
That veil also had the effect of disguising the voice. Not until the rider drew very close did Abivard recognize Romezan. «By the God,» he exclaimed, «I wouldn't have known you from your gear. You look as if you've had a smith pounding on you.»
If anything, that was an understatement. A sword stroke had sheared the bright, tufted crest from atop Romezan's helm. His surcoat had been cut to ribbons. Somewhere in the fighting he'd
lost not only his lance but also his shield. Through the rents in his surcoat Abivard could see the dents in his armor. He had an arrow sticking out of his left shoulder, but by the way he moved his arm, it must have lodged in the padding he wore beneath his lamellar armor, not in his flesh.
«I feel as if a smith's been pounding on me,» he said. «I've got bruises all over; three days from now I'll look like a sunset the court poets would sing about for years.» He hung his head. «Lord, I fear I held off on the charge till too late. If I'd loosed my men at the Videssians sooner, we'd have had so much more time in which to finish the job of beating them.»
«It's done,» Abivard said; he was also battered and bruised and, as usual after a battle, deathly tired. He thought Romezan had held off till too late, too, but what good would screaming about it do now? «We hold the field where we fought; we can claim the victory.»
«It's not enough,» Romezan insisted, as hard on himself as he was on the foe. «You wanted to smash them, not just push them back. We could have done it, too, if I'd moved faster. I have to say, though, I didn't think Videssians could fight that well.»
«If it makes you feel any better, neither did I,» Abivard said. «For as long as I've been warring against them, when we send in the heavy cavalry, they give way. But not today.»
«No, not today.» Romezan twisted in the saddle, trying to find a way to make the armor fit more comfortably on his sore carcass. «You were right, lord, and I own it. They can be very dangerous to us.»
«Right at the end I thought we would break through here on the left,» Abivard said. «They threw the last of their reserves in to stop us, and they did. You'll never guess who was leading those reserves.»
«No, eh?» All Abivard could see of Romezan was his eyes, They widened. «Not Tzikas?»
«The very same. Somehow Maniakes has found a way to keep him alive and keep him tame, at least for now, because he fought like a demon.»
For the next considerable while Romezan spoke with pungent ingenuity. The gist of what he said boiled down to how very unfortunate, but he put it rather more vividly than that. When he'd calmed down to the point where he no longer seemed to be imitating a kettle boiling over, he said, «We may be sorry, but Maniakes also will be. Tzikas is more dangerous to the side he's on than to the one he isn't on, because you never know when he's going to go over to the other one.»
«I've had the same notion,» Abivard said. «But while he's being good for Maniakes, he knows he has to be very good indeed or the Avtokrator will stake him out for the crows and buzzards.»
«If it were me, I'd do it whether he was being very good indeed or not,» Romezan said.
«So would I,» Abivard agreed. «And next time I get the chance-and there's likely to be a next time-I will… unless I don't»
«Do we pick up the fight tomorrow, lord?» Romezan asked. «If it were up to me, I would, but it isn't up to me.»
«I won't say yes or no till morning,» Abivard answered. «We'll see what sort of shape the army is in then and see what the Videssians are doing, too.» He yawned. «I'm so tired now, I might as well be drunk. My head will be clearer come morning, too.»
«Ha!» Romezan said in a voice so full of doubt, a Videssian would have been proud to claim it. «I know you better than that, lord. You'll have scouts wake you half a dozen times in the night to tell you what they can see of the Videssian camp.»
«After most fights I'd do just that,» Abivard said. «Not tonight.»«Ha!» Romezan said again. Abivard maintained a dignified silence.
As things worked out, scouts woke Abivard only four times during the night. He couldn't decide whether that demolished Romezan's point or proved it.
The news the scouts brought back was so utterly predictable, so utterly normal, that Abivard could have neglected to send them out and still have had almost as good a notion of what the