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couple of more hits and he sagged to the ground once more and lay still.
Arrows came back toward the Videssians, too, but not many. Most of the nomads
who were on horseback or could get to their ponies rode away from the oncoming
imperial force as fast as they could. "Push them!" Maniakes called to his men.
"Don't let them think of anything but running."
Run the Kubratoi did. A lot of them outdistanced their pursuers, too, for the
boiled leather they wore was lighter than the Videssians' ironmongery. And
then, from straight ahead of them, more Videssian horn calls rang out. The
nomads cried out in dismay: in running from Maniakes' horsemen, they had run
right into the soldiers Symvatios commanded.
Trapped between the two Videssian forces, the Kubratoi fought as best they
could, but were quickly overwhelmed. Maniakes hoped they had perished to the
last man, but knew how unlikely that was. He had to assume a couple of them
had escaped to warn their fellows he was in the field.
As fights went, it wasn't much, and Maniakes knew it. The Videssian army,
though, had been without victories for so long that even a tiny one made the
soldiers feel as if they had just sacked Mashiz. They sat around the campfires
that evening, drinking rough wine from the supply wagons and talking in quick,
excited voices about what they had done even if a lot of them, in truth, had
done very little.
"Hammer and anvil," Symvatios said, lifting a clay mug to Maniakes in salute.
Maniakes drank with his uncle. Kameas had wanted to pack some fine vintages
for him. This time, he hadn't let the vestiarios get away with it. Wine that
snarled when it hit the palate was what you were supposed to drink when you
took the field. If nothing else, it made you mean.
"We have to do this three more times, I think," the Avtokrator said. "If we
manage that . . ." He let the sentence hang there. Fate had delivered too many
blows to Videssos for him to risk tempting it now. He drained his mug and
said, "You made a fine anvil, Uncle."
"Aye, well, my hard head suits me to the role," Symvatios replied, laughing.
He quickly grew more serious. "We won't be able to work it the same way in
every fight, you know. The ground will be different, the Kubratoi will be a
little more alert than they were today. . . ."
"It'll get harder; I know that," Maniakes said. "I'm glad we had an easy first
one, that's all. What we have to do is make sure that we don't do anything
stupid and give the Kubratoi an edge they shouldn't have."
"You've got enough scouts and sentries out, and you've posted them far enough
away from our camp," Symvatios said. "The only way Etzilios could surprise us
would be to fall out of the sky."
"Good." Maniakes cast a wary eye heavenward. Symvatios laughed again. The
Avtokrator didn't.
About noon the next day, the scouts came upon a good-sized band of Kubratoi.
This time they were seen and pursued. Some fought a rearguard action while
others brought the news to Maniakes. He listened to them, then turned to
Symvatios. "Move up with your detachment," he said. "Make as if you're at the
head of the whole army. While they're engaging you, I'll swing wide and try to
take them in flank."
His uncle saluted. "We'll see how it goes, your Majesty: a sideways hammer
blow, but I think a good one. My guess is, the nomads don't yet know how many
men we've put in the field."
"I think you're right," Maniakes said. "With luck, you'll fool them into
believing you're at the head of the whole force. Once they're well engaged
with you . . ."
Banners flapping and horns blaring, Symvatios led his detachment forward to
support the Videssian scouts. Maniakes hung back and swung off to the east,
using low, scrubbily wooded hills to screen his men from the notice of the
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nomads. Less than an hour passed before a rider galloped over to let him know
the Kubratoi were locked in combat with Symvatios' troopers. "There's enough
to give them a hard time, too, your Majesty," the fellow said.
Plenty of east-west tracks ran through the hills; this close to Videssos the
city, roads crisscrossed the land like spiderwebs. Maniakes divided his force
into three columns, to get all his men through as fast as he could. Again, he
sent scouting parties ahead to make sure the Kubratoi weren't lying in wait in
the woods. Even after the scouts went through safe, his head swiveled back and
forth, watching the oaks and elms and ashes for concealed nomads.
All three columns came through the hill country unmolested. There on the flat
farm country ahead, the Kubratoi were trading arrows and swordstrokes with
Symvatios' detachment. The nomads were trying to wheel around to Symvatios'
right; he was having trouble shifting enough men fast enough to defend against
them. As the messenger had said, the Kubratoi were there in considerable
force.
Their outflanking maneuver, though, left them between Symvatios' troopers and
Maniakes' emerging army. The Avtokrator heard the shouts of dismay that went
up from them when they realized as much. His own men shouted, too. Hearing his
name burst as a war cry from thousands of throats made excitement surge
through him, as if he had had too much of the rough camp wine.
The Kubratoi tried to break off their fight with Symvatios' men and flee, but
the soldiers from the detachment pressed them hard. And then Maniakes' men
were on them, shooting arrows, flinging javelins, and slashing with swords.
The Videssians fought more ferociously than they had since the days of
Likinios, now almost ten years gone. The Kubratoi scattered before them, madly
galloping in all different directions trying to escape.
Maniakes called a halt to the pursuit only when darkness began to render it
dangerous. "Like lions they fought," Symvatios exclaimed as they made camp.
"Like lions. I remembered they could, but I hadn't seen it in so long, I'd
started to have doubts."
"And I," Maniakes agreed. "Nothing like the sight of the enemy's back to make
you think you're a hero, is there?"
"Aye, that's a sovereign remedy," Symvatios said. Not far away, a wounded man
groaned and bit back a scream as a surgeon dug out an arrowhead. Symvatios'
jubilation ebbed. "Heroing doesn't come free, worse luck."
"What does?" Maniakes said, to which his uncle spread his hands. The
Avtokrator went on, "Etzilios will know we're out and after him: no way now he
can help but know it. He's used to beating us, too. We may not have two fights
ahead of us before we put our plan to the full test. We may have only one."
"Behooves us to win that one, too, so it does," Symvatios said.
"Now that you mention it, yes," Maniakes answered dryly. "If we lose, there's
not much point to the rest, is there?"
The Videssian army pressed north unchallenged for the next day and a half.
They overran a few small bands of Kubratoi, but most of the nomads seemed to
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