Hurrus shrugged his shoulders. "It is only to give them courage," he said humbly, amid a chorus of laughing derision.
"Perhaps they use them to brush their pretty golden curls," said one of Temet's smooth-headed minions to more raucous laughter.
"Show us where to line up," Temet said. "But remember, we don't hold back. If any of your boys get hurt, it shall not be on our heads."
"We may frighten them to death," one of the gang shouted amid the laughter.
Hurrus left them and rode slowly before the arrayed phalanx. Deon and Xandros had informed the men what was in store for them today and they gazed anxiously at Temet's horsemen as they lined up one hundred yards across the field. Beyond them, the rest of the corps continued to train, oblivious to the contest between the horse and foot. The sound of clashing steel filled the air, interspersed with the cries of officers and the tramping of feet and galloping hooves. Hurrus gazed down at the men. Though their faces were masked in bronze, he could see the fear in their eyes. But he also saw determination. He picked out Aryk of Irrylia and fixed him with a fierce eye. Aryk's return gaze did not falter, as Hurrus knew it would not.
"Today is a new day," he told the men in a loud voice so all could hear. "Yesterday, you shrank from the galloping charge. That is only natural for new men. Yesterday, you were new men, easily shaken. But what was natural yesterday is unthinkable today, for today you are the First Men of the First Talon of Foot, my vanguard, my point. You are the crux of every attack. You are the Silver Shields!" There was a shudder through the ranks. As Hurrus' eye lingered on one face after another, he noticed the familiar figures of his companion body, interspersed among them. Xandros nodded slowly when Hurrus caught his eye. Deon bowed his helmeted head. There was not a recruit who could falter with such men beside them. Hurrus went on, "You bear the image of the Eagle on your shields. Look about you. If you could see you as I do, and know what I have in store for you… By Zarcen, god of the Morning Star, you would swell with pride. There is not man or horse that can break your line. Yesterday, you shrank. But as of this day, when your enemies see the Silver Shields march over a rise, their blood will run cold. Your comrades will take heart, and all will say 'The Silver Shields have arrived!' From this day on, I say let our enemies come. The Silver Shields say 'Let them come!'"
A cry arose among the young foot soldiers. They pumped their pikes in the air, cheering, while others held their shields high. The polished surfaces caught the sun and shot rays of light in every direction. Hurrus saw Deon raise his arms, while Xandros began banging the shaft of his pike on his shield. The rest of the phalanx followed his lead and soon the entire training ground reverberated with a deep rhythmic pounding as from the drums of a mighty host. Hurrus looked across the field and saw Temet's horsemen, sitting dumbly, watching. They had not lost their smirking expressions. Let them come, Hurrus thought. The rest of the training field had grown still, watching.
Hurrus accompanied Tepes to the hillside where they could watch from a safe distance. An eerie quiet had fallen over the field, broken only by the commencement of a drumbeat emanating from the rear of the phalanx. The unit had to turn to face the horsemen, a maneuver fraught with peril.
"Surely you're not going to allow the spilling of blood, my prince," Tepes said with a sly look.
An officer's voice rose above the drum as the phalanx began to turn in place. Hurrus noticed a shuddering among the vertical pikes. He had not expected the move to be neat and easy, but…He felt a clammy sweat break out on his forehead.
"I do not encourage my men to kill one another, if that's what you mean," Hurrus said, his eyes locked on the turning phalanx. The horsemen began walking forward, then cantering. Hurrus gripped his horse's reins in an iron fist. "I understand accidents happen, however."
"I see one about to happen now," Tepes said.
Hurrus hoped his footmen would remember. They were Silver Shields now and not just an untrained mass of green boys. The horsemen broke into a trot, swords at their sides. The drum pounded and the soldiers marched, struggling to stay in formation as they turned. He could hear vertical pikes begin to clatter together as the men, especially those on the outside of the turn, began to falter. The unit was breaking apart. A wide gap yawned in the center of the line. If the horsemen struck now, they would slam right into the flanks of the front rank of pikemen. They would never turn and level their pikes in time. Never. He could see Xandros manfully holding his men together. Perhaps it was too much. Perhaps he had been expecting too much. "Faster, faster, faster…" Hurrus urged under his breath.
"What is that you say, Prince?" Tepes asked.
Hurrus pursed his lips and made no reply. The horsemen broke into a gallop. They raised their swords high. The sound of the drum and the marching feet was swallowed by their unearthly war cry.
"Oh, they are fine-looking men!" Tepes cried as the cavalry thundered toward the widening gap. "Don't you think so, Prince?"
The footmen looked up in terror at the charging horse. They tensed and Hurrus could see that they wanted to bolt. The companions would not allow it. Xandros used his great strength to fling men into position, while Deon and the others barked orders at the tops of their lungs. Distinctly, he heard one of the companions cry, "Remember who you are!" Finally, through force of will alone, they got the unit turned to face the charge head-on.
"NOW!" the companions cried. With a deep-throated roar that Hurrus could feel reverberate in his chest, the men braced themselves and thrust their pikes forward until the entire front of the phalanx bristled in an unbroken mass of deadly spear points.
Hurrus clenched his fist in the air. "They did it," he cried.
Now it was the cavalry's turn to break in terror. Confronted by the masses of spears, the horses wheeled frantically, eyes rolling, throwing their riders. Slamming into the ground with bone-crunching force, the men of the First Horse rolled in the dust. Horses in the center of the attacking wedge skidded and reared in panic, throwing men, Temet among them, headlong into the phalanx. They flew over the tops of the spears and crashed against a row of interlocked silver shields. Their horses fled riderless into a maelstrom of swirling dust.
The phalanx had held.
Once again, a great cry rose from the infantrymen, this time a cry of triumph. The men held their pikes high. A single voice rose above the others. "Let them come!" the voice cried in jubilation. Soon others joined in until the entire body of the Silver Shields cried as one. "Let them come! Let them come!"
Though Tepes' ear was mere feet from his lips, Hurrus had to shout to make himself heard. "What you saw there was no accident, Tepes."
"That was no true test, Prince. The First Talon of Horse is not designed for charging armored spearmen," Tepes said.
"It is designed for chasing down camp whores, I believe," Hurrus replied, remembering Xandros' words. "Make sure you take them with you when you leave here. I will not have them sully my army."
Hurrus started slowly down the hill. Seeing him, the Silver Shields began cheering wildly. Spontaneously there arose from them shouts of "Hail, Eagle Man! Hail, Eagle Man!" and Hurrus' heart leapt when he saw that this time they cried out for him.
Several of Temet's men lay unconscious where they had fallen at the feet of the phalanx. Others lay nearby grimly nursing bruised bones. Temet himself lay sprawled atop two men of the Shields, one of them none other than Aryk of Irrylia.
"I see leopards lie among the eagles today," Hurrus quipped to peals of outrageous laughter.
Aryk angrily shoved Temet's limp form from off of him and his fallen companion. Covered in dust, both men rose to their feet. With a grin, Hurrus saw that while one was Aryk, the other was Deon, angry as a hornet but no worse for having had a man fall on top of him. He gave Temet a good solid kick in the ribs, though the First Horse leader was in no condition to appreciate it.
"I didn't expect them to fly at us through the air," he groused, brushing himself off. "But we held, Prince," he added, looking up. "
By the gods, we held firm."
"And what of you, Aryk?" Hurrus peered down at the lad. "Did you stand fast?"
Aryk of Irrylia met Hurrus' gaze with a look of abiding pride and strength. "The Silver Shields always stand their ground, my lord. There is no other way."
"Stand or die, is that it?" Hurrus asked.
"Let them come," Aryk said, and a smile fit for a giant spread across his young face.
Chapter 15
The dead were gone when they arrived at the village. Even the living had vanished.
Ten man-high sharpened stakes jutting out of the ground marked the place of the dead, and ten freshly covered graves made it obvious where they had gone. Where the living had got to was anyone's guess.
Coronea knew at once what it meant. "Shadow Riders have been here," she said.
Shadow Riders. The name sent a shudder through Xanthippus. An imperceptible shudder, he hoped. As far as the Epirians knew, he and Nydeon were slaves in the service of the Irrylians. What could Shadow Riders mean to them?
If they made Xanthippus uneasy, however, the mere mention of the name made the Epirian outlaws furious.
Their leader, a gaunt man in a woolen cloak named Gorgeo, rode forward and examined the stakes. They had been cut from trees thick as a man's arm, stripped of bark and freshly planted, their points blackened by smears of blood.
The outlaw band had stopped in this village on their way north. "We had merely watered our horses here and drunk from their well," Gorgeo said.
Nearby stood a smoldering farmhouse. There was nothing left of it but a stone foundation and a jumble of charred timbers. Two of the Epirians had leapt down from their horses and chased a squealing pig that was still penned in its yard. Other structures of mud brick bore black fingers of soot on their lintels where flames had shot from the windows. Now, lazy tendrils of smoke twisted through them from their gutted interiors.
Gorgeo dismounted and thrust his spear into the ground where it projected from the earth like another of the stakes that surrounded him. He went down to one knee and bowed his head. The other rebels -- there were thirty of them altogether -- lowered their faces out of respect, whether for the dead or for their leader, Xanthippus could not tell.
Gorgeo stood and yanked his spear from the earth. "We will rest here," he said.
The man looked like he needed rest. Gorgeo was smaller than Xanthippus remembered from the attack, as all men appear smaller when they're not pointing a weapon at your chest, but now he saw that he was thin as a rail with sunken eyes and a good four days' growth of stubbly beard covering his sharp jaw. The band had been operating on Irrylian soil for the past week and from what Xanthippus had gleaned from their conversation there had not been much sleeping in the enemy's territory.
But it was all enemy territory, as far as the rebel band was concerned. To them, the enemy was wherever Demetrius claimed his dominion. They might have been back in Epiria now where they could find friends among the towns and villages, but they were no less hunted. Still, here, at least, they felt comfortable enough to rest, even if it was in the shadow of their pursuers' handiwork.
Over the past three days of their ride out of the pine wood where he had been captured, Xanthippus had gotten to know some of the rebels. He had come to see Gorgeo as a serious and determined man, if a little too easily vexed for his taste. Coronea, although no less resolute, he found to be far more enjoyable company. He saw that she laughed easily and that the men of the group, while gravely seeking her counsel on all matters important to the survival of the band, found their eyes drawn to her smooth thighs as they appeared from out of her short tunic. She was a natural beauty and he supposed the men's attentions were only to be expected.
Xanthippus himself found his thoughts turning to Menleco's captive bride, the lady Lyssa, who possessed all of the girl's beauty, but none of her happiness. As the days wore on, the idea of freeing her - as Coronea was free - began to be a more pleasurable thought to him than even exacting his revenge on the man who held her captive. More than her beauty, it was Coronea's freedom that sometimes caused him to see the gentle lady where the fierce girl stood.
Coronea, however, was anything but gentle. He had to remind himself that the bowstring that creased the fabric between her breasts was the same upon which she had aimed an arrow at his heart back in the pine wood. There had been no doubt in his mind that she would have loosed it. Happily, had he given her cause.
The point of the arrow had filled his vision, but the face that squinted along its shaft seemed to him to be that of a goddess. Hair the color of honey spilled over her shoulders. She might have been the divine Prathian huntress of Gyriecian legend made flesh.
"I never thought to find myself taken captive by Vironysia," he had said.
Coronea's eye did not waver, not for a second. "Let me assure you, slave, that this is not a bow of golden light, but of wood and bone. And, believe me, the shaft I loose will not fill your heart with love."
"It might," Xanthippus said.
The remark had won him a savage kick in the stomach. It might have won him more had not Coronea put a stop to it.
Later, he realized that the Epirians considered it a triumph to free a couple of the Irrylian's slaves and thought it natural that they would join their cause. They were less solicitous of Asander and Thalen.
"We should not give this one quarter," one of the men said of Thalen. "When have they ever given our people quarter?"
"He wears the cloak of the guard," another observed. "Which makes him a butcher and torturer."
Thalen stood in the center of the quivering arrows with his hands up, looking from one face to another as the rebels debated his fate. Xanthippus thought they would make a pin cushion of him before his eyes. The archers' rage increased the more they discussed the matter. Xanthippus saw their arrow hands tense.
"I have never known him to harm one of your people," he said quickly. He decided that he might use his mistaken identity to save the boy, but feared that it had occurred to him too late.
"He has always treated us kindly," Nydeon put in.
The rebels relaxed their bows. "He is no danger to us now," Coronea said. Despite her youth, her words carried weight with the band. "We will let Clautias question him. Then we will find out what crimes he has committed."
Asander had an easier time of it, for there was never any doubt of his fate.
"Do you have any idea who I am?" Asander had asked, once he discovered that he was not going to be killed at once.
"A dandy in a carriage," one of the men said. "A ten-a-copper dandy, by the looks of him."
A spear-armed old man with a long white beard rode into the crescent of horsemen surrounding the blue-robed diplomat. The ages of the rebel band ranged from boys in their teens to this old man in his sixties. He wore a brimless leather cap. Long white hair spilled out from under it. He was slender, his arms sinewy and crisscrossed with bulging blue veins.
"Don't let his robes fool you," he said. "Asander is no dandy. Are you, my lord? He is dripping with blood up to his elbows, this one. He is a former captain of Demetrius' guards. Oh, yes, I have been to the Irrylian court, my friend."
Asander squinted at the old man and a look of recognition dawned in his eyes.
But he had no time to respond, for no sooner had the old man spit out his accusation than Gorgeo began ushering them all off the road for fear of Irrylian patrols. The band was constantly on the move. Gorgeo would not allow them to tarry long in any one spot. Later, Asander brought up the possibility of his ransom.
"Ransom?" Gorgeo had sputtered. "Do you suppose that we are just some band of brigands, that we risk our lives merely to rifle through your baggage for bits of silver? We had men watching your ship from the coast ever since it entered Epirian waters. You think highwaymen on the Cumyra Road have just chanced upon Demetrius' Foreign Minister fresh from his mission to Tygetia? How bad you must suppose your luck to be!"
Now, the band began to dismount. By
this time, the men had captured the pig and it squealed its last when one of them drew a blade across its throat.
Coronea was not satisfied. She remained mounted and said in a loud voice, "Surely, we're not going to rest here in this field of murder."
The pig men's hunger overrode whatever revulsion they might have felt at the bloody stakes. Xanthippus had to side with Coronea on this one. He was glad the bodies had been taken down and buried, at least.
"Why, Coronea," one of the dismounting men said, "I believe you have suddenly become afraid of ghosts!"
"Not of ghosts," Coronea exclaimed over the hoots of the man's laughing companions, "but of ill omens. This place is an outrage, an affront to the gods."
Her remark quieted the men, for this was indeed to all of them a serious point they had not considered.
"Perhaps an affront to our gods," one of them said at last, "but not to those of Demetrius. It is Demetrian gods who hold sway here and they grow fat with the blood of our people."
"That is the evil I feel in my bones," Coronea insisted. "You may want to cool yourselves in the shade of this abominable garden, but--"
Gorgeo cut her off. "We rest here," he said in a commanding tone. He was already carrying an armload of firewood he had collected from a nearby house. He dropped it in a heap not far from one of the bulging graves. "You said it yourself, Coronea. There is more here of Shadow Riders than of ghosts, omens and gods. Every morning the sun arises is an ill omen for us. If we waited for good fortune to light our path, we would never climb out of our beds. Omens or no, we act. Omens or no, we rest."
Gorgeo was an angry man, his tongue sharp, his every movement a threat of violence. Without ever having spoken a word to him, Xanthippus felt he knew the man well. Like the rebel leader, he knew what it was to curse the dawn.
"Still, the feeling of evil in this place is strong." Coronea was obviously not one to be put off. Xanthippus had already drawn conclusions about her. There was no more passionate warrior in the band than Coronea. It was the source of her authority. "Perhaps not of gods and omens, perhaps only of Shadow Riders. The pall I feel over this ground might be theirs, and this place a trap." She unstrung her bow from her shoulders and held it across her lap.
The Blood Gate Page 21