The longer the fight went on, the more he doubted that. Over here, on the left, his force and the Videssians facing them were locked together as tightly as two lovers in an embrace that went on and on and on. In the center Turan's foot soldiers, keeping their ranks tight, were doing a good job of holding and harassing their mounted foes. And over on the right—
«Something had better happen over on the right,» Abivard said, «or the Videssians will beat us over here before we can beat them over there.»
Nobody paid the least bit of attention to him. Most likely nobody heard him, not with the clangor of combat all around and the iron veil he wore over his mouth muffling his words. He didn't care. He was doing his best to make patterns, too, even if they weren't the ones he would have preferred to see.
«Come on, Romezan,» he said. Nobody heard that, either. What he feared was that Romezan was among the multitude who didn't hear.
Then, when he'd all but given up hope for the attack from the noble of the Seven Clans, the Videssian horns that ordered the movements of imperial troops abruptly blared out a complicated series of new, urgent commands. The pressure against Abivard and his comrades eased. Even above the din of the field shouts of alarm and triumphant cries rang out on the right.
A great weight suddenly seemed to drop from Abivard. For one brief moment battle seemed as splendid, as glorious, as exciting as he'd imagined before he went to war. He wasn't tired, he forgot he was bathed in sweat, he no longer needed to climb down from his horse and empty his bladder. He'd made Maniakes bar the front door—and then had kicked the back door down.
«Come on!» he shouted to the men around him, who were suddenly moving forward again now that Maniakes had thinned his line to rush troops back to the other side to stem Romezan's advance. «If we drive them, they all perish!»
That was how it looked, anyhow. If the Makuraners kept up the pressure from both wings and the center at the same time, how could the Videssian invaders hope to withstand them?
Over the next couple of hours Abivard found out how. He began to mink Maniakes should have been not the Avtokrator but a juggler. No traveling mountebank could have done a neater job of keeping so many sets of soldiers flying this way and that to prevent the Makuraners from turning an advantage into a rout.
Oh, the Videssians yielded ground, especially where Romezan had crumpled them on the right. But they didn't break and flee as they had in so many rights over the years, and they didn't quite let either Romezan's men or Abivard's find a hole in their line, tear through, and cut off part of their army. Whenever that looked like it would happen, Maniakes would find some reserves—or soldiers in a different part of the fight who weren't so heavily pressed—to throw into the opening and delay the Makuraners just long enough to let the Videssians contract and re-form their line.
Abivard tried to send men from his own force around to his left to see if he could get into the Videssians' rear by outflanking them if he couldn't bull his way through. That didn't work, either. For once, the lighter armor the Videssians wore worked to their advantage. Carrying less weight, their horses moved faster than those of Abivard's men, and, even starting later, they were able to block and forestall his force.
«All right, then,» he cried, gathering the men together once more. «A last good push and we'll have them!»
He didn't know whether that was true; under Maniakes the Videssians fought as they hadn't since the days of Likinios Avtokrator. He did know that one more push was all his army had time to make. The sun was going down; darkness would be coming soon. He booted his horse forward. «This time, by the God, we take them!» he shouted.
And for a while he thought his army would take them. Back went the Videssians, back and back again, their ranks thinning, thinning, and no more reserves behind them to plug the gap. And then, with victory in Abivard's grasp, close enough for him to reach out and touch it, a hard-riding regiment of imperials came up and hurled themselves at his men, not only halting them but throwing them back. «Maniakes!» the last-minute rescuers and their commander cried. «Phos and Maniakes!»
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.