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horsemen were no longer pursuers but pursued. They came galloping back toward
him, riding harder than they had after the fleeing Makuraner heavy cavalry.
Horses' barrels ran with blood from frantic spurring; animals' flanks showed
lines from the whip.
Close behind them, in no better order, coursed more Makuraner riders. These
were not boiler boys, but the light cavalry the King of Kings used to bulk up
his forces. They were armed with bows and swords, and armored for the most
part with nothing more than iron pots for their heads and heavy leather
jerkins. Maniakes knew their kind: wild and fierce when they had the
advantage, and as quick to panic if things went wrong or they were checked.
But how to check them? "Stand fast!" Maniakes cried; individually, his men
enjoyed the same advantage over the Makuraner light horsemen as the heavy
cavalry did over the Videssians. But the imperials would not stand fast, not
when they saw enemy horsemen sliding round their flanks.
In a fury, Maniakes spurred toward the Makuraners. They scattered before him;
they had no taste for hand-to-hand combat with a man both well protected and
bold. Tzikas stayed at his right hand, slashing with his sword. A few other
imperials rode with them, doing their best to stem the building rout.
Maniakes traded sword strokes with a Makuraner too hemmed in to evade him.
Whatever words the fellow shouted were lost in the general din of combat.
Sweat carved canyons through the pale dust covering the soldier's swarthy
skin. His face was long, rectangular, solemn, with large, dark, deep-set eyes
that could show soulful seriousness but now blazed with blood lust.
With a cunning stroke, Maniakes knocked the sword from his hand. It flew
spinning into the dirt. But, before the Avtokrator could finish him, another
Makuraner made straight for him. He had to twist awkwardly to meet the new
onslaught, and knew a moment's stark fear that he would not be able to twist
in time.
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Then Tzikas attacked the oncoming horseman, forcing him to sheer off before he
could strike at the Avtokrator. "My thanks," Maniakes said. He turned back
toward the Makuraner he had disarmed, but the fellow had taken advantage of
his moment of distraction to get away.
"I am privileged to serve your Majesty," Tzikas said. Maniakes had trouble
reading anything into his tone. Was that simple statement of fact,
submissiveness, or irony? The Avtokrator could not tell.
He got no time to worry about it, either. More Makuraner horns were winded. He
had a brief glimpse of more horsemen riding to the growing fight from out of
the west. Grimacing, he nodded toward Tzikas. "Seems you were right, eminent
sir," he said. "Now let's see how we can get ourselves out of this mess."
"Aye, your Majesty." Tzikas hesitated, then went on, "Do you know, neither
Likinios nor Genesios, so far as I remember, ever admitted he was wrong."
"Maybe I'm just new on the throne," Maniakes said, his voice dry. Tzikas sent
him a sharp look, then decided it was a joke and laughed. Maniakes continued,
"Admitting I made the mistake doesn't much help me put it to rights now."
"No, not this time," Tzikas agreed. "But that may not be so on some other
occasion provided we live to see other occasions."
"Yes, provided," Maniakes said. Given the number of Makuraners who swarmed
forward to shoot arrows at his men, that was by no means obvious. The tactical
solution presenting itself that was all too obvious, with headlong retreat the
only possible choice to escape catastrophe.
Though Videssian doctrine dealt matter-of-factly with retreat, Maniakes bared
his teeth in an anguished scowl. His own willingness to push forward to meet
Etzilios had led to disaster outside of Imbros. Now he had been impetuous
again, and was again paying the price for it.
"I wish I were a turtle," he said to no one in particular. "I'd go into my
shell and never come out."
"This can have its advantages," Tzikas said with a grave nod. "Thus Amorion
remained in our hands throughout Genesios' unhappy reign."
"And thus it was lost in mine," Maniakes answered. "A proud record, isn't it?
But you may be right more often than not you certainly are this time. I can't
help thinking, though, that sometimes the cure for too much boldness is more,
not less."
Tzikas' dark, mournful eyes did all the contradicting he couldn't speak aloud.
For now, though, boldness in attack was simply out of the question. Avtokrator
and general rode side by side, righting when they had to and doing their best
to hold the retreat in check.
"Rally! Rally!" someone cried in Videssian: Parsmanios. When he spied his
brother, he said, "Here's a fine mixed-up day, where the leader of the main
force gets ahead of the leader of the van."
"Here's a fine dreadful day," Maniakes said. Then he added his own voice to
Parsmanios', trying to persuade his cavalrymen and those who had originally
ridden with Tzikas to hold fast. Now and again, he thought he would succeed.
But then either more Makuraners would come up or the Videssians would begin to
melt away, and he would have to fall back and try again.
At last, not long before sunset, his forces succeeded not in halting the
Makuraners but in breaking free of them and being able to set up camp without
getting attacked while they were going about it. A miserable camp it was, too.
Wounded men groaned and cursed. Here and there, healer-priests labored to
bring forth their curative magic and restore to health some warriors who had
been grievously wounded.
As always, Maniakes watched the blue-robes with more than a little awe. When
one of them laid hands on a man, even someone as blind to magic as the
Avtokrator could sense the current of healing passing to the one who was hurt.
And, when the priest took his hands away, the healed wound would look as if it
had been suffered years before.
But the cost on the healer-priests was high. After each man they treated, they
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would emerge from their healing trance like men awakening from some killing
labor after not enough rest. They would gulp food and swill down wine, then
lurch on to the next desperate case. And, after they had healed two or perhaps
three men each, they would fall asleep so deeply that even kicking at them did
no more than make them stir and mutter.
Men whose hurts were not bad enough to require such drastic intervention made
do with surgeons who drew arrows and sewed up gashes and poured wine over
wounds to keep them from 'rotting. So the surgeons said, at any rate. Maniakes
often wondered if they helped as many men as they hurt.
He strode through the camp, doing his best to keep up the soldiers' spirits.
He found Bagdasares sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, as if [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]