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
Videssians were doing. The foe kept a great many fires going through the first watch of the night, fewer in the second, and only those near their guard positions for the third. Maniakes' men would have done the same had they not just fought a great murdering battle. They gave the Makuraners no clue to their intentions.
But when morning came, all that lay on the Videssian campsite were the remains of the fires and a few tents, enough to create the impression in dim light that many more were there. Maniakes and his men had decamped at some unknown hour of the night.
Following them was anything but hard. An army of some thousands of men could hardly slip without a trace through the grass like an archer gliding ever closer to a deer. Thousands of men rode thousands of horses, which left tracks and other reminders of their presence.
And in retreat an army often discarded things its men would keep if they were advancing. The more things soldiers threw away, the likelier their retreat was to be a desperate one.
By that standard the Videssians did not strike Abivard as desperate. Yes, they were running away from Abivard and his men. But they were a long way from jettisoning everything that kept them from running faster.
Abivard did some jettisoning of his own: not without regret he let Turan's foot soldiers fall behind. «The Videssians are all counted,» he told his lieutenant. «If you stay with us, we can't move fast enough to catch up with them. You follow behind. If it looks as if Maniakes is turning to offer battle again, we'll wait till you catch up to start fighting if we can.»
«Meanwhile, we eat your dust,» Turan said. A couple of years campaigning as an infantry officer seemed to have made him forget he'd served for years as a horseman before. But, however reluctantly, he nodded. «I see the need, lord, no matter how little I like it. I aim to surprise you, though, with how fast we can march.»
«I hope you do,» Abivard said. Then he summoned Sanatruq, having a use for an intrepid, aggressive young officer. «I am going to put the lightly armed cavalry in your hands. I want you to course ahead of the heavy horse, the way the hounds course ahead of the hunters when we're after antelope. Bring the Videssians to bay for me. Harass them every way you can think of.»
Sanatruq's eyes glowed. «Just as you say, lord. And if Tzikas is still heading up Maniakes' rear guard, I have a small matter or two to discuss with him as well.»
«We all have a small matter or two to discuss with Tzikas,» Abivard said. He drew his sword. «I've been honing my arguments, you might say.» Sanatruq grinned and nodded. He rode off, shouting to the Makuraner horse archers to stop whatever they were doing and get busy doing what he told them.
Be careful, Abivard thought as the light cavalry went trotting out ahead of the more heavily armored riders. Tzikas was liable to be trouble no matter how careful you were; that was why so many people had so much to discuss with him.
Almost as an afterthought, Abivard dashed off a quick letter to Sharbaraz, detailing not only the victory he had won over the imperials but also Tzikas' role in making that victory less than it should have been. Let's see the cursed renegade try to get back into the good graces of the King of Kings after that, he thought with considerable satisfaction.
The farther south Maniakes rode, the closer to the source of the Tutub he drew. The land rose. In administrative terms it was still part of the land of the Thousand Cities, but it was unlike the floodplain on which those cities perched. For one thing, the hills here were natural, not the end product of countless years of rubble and garbage. For another, none of the Thousand Cities was anywhere close by. A few fanners lived by the narrow stream of the Tutub and the even narrower tributaries feeding it. A few hunters roamed the wooded hills. For the most part, though, the land seemed empty, deserted.