So it was with the Videssian army, for Ortaias Sphrantzes’ flight was the snowflake that congealed retreat into panic. And with a gaping hole torn in its ranks, and Yezda gushing through to take the army in flank and rear, terror was far from unwarranted.
“Well, that’s done it!” Gaius Philippus said, angry beyond profanity. “Form square!” he shouted, then explained to Marcus, “The better order we show, the less likely the sods are to come down on us. The gods know they’ll have easier pickings elsewhere.”
The tribune nodded in bitter agreement. The amputated left wing of the army was already breaking up in flight. Here and there knots of brave or stubborn men still struggled against the nomads who were enveloping them on all sides, but more and more rode east as fast as they could go, throwing away shields, helms, even swords to flee more quickly. Whooping gleefully, the Yezda pursued them like boys after rabbits.
But Avshar kept enough control over the unruly host he led to swing most of it back for the killing stroke against the Videssian center. Assailed simultaneously from front and rear, many units simply ceased to be. They lacked the Romans’ long-drilled flexibility and tore their ranks to pieces trying to redeploy. Even proud squadrons of Halogai splintered beyond repair. The Yezda surged into the gaps confusion created and spread slaughter with bow and saber. Survivors scattered all over the field.
Under the ferocious onslaught, the motley nature of the Videssian army became the curse Marcus had feared. Each contingent strove to save itself, with little thought for the army as a whole. “Rally to me!” Mavrikios’ pipers signaled desperately, but it was too late for that. In the chaos, many regiments never understood the order, and those that did could not obey because of the ever-present, ever-pressing hordes of Yezda.
Some units held firm. The Namdaleni beat back charge after charge, until the Yezda gave them up as a bad job. Fighting with a fury born of despair, Gagik Bagratouni’s Vaspurkaners also stopped the invaders cold. But neither group could counterattack.
As Gaius Philippus had predicted, the good order the Romans still kept let them push on relatively unscathed. Indeed, they attracted stragglers—sometimes by squads and platoons—to themselves, men seeking a safe island in a sea of disaster. Marcus welcomed them if they still showed fight. Every sword, every spear was an asset.
The additions came none too soon. One of the Yezda captains was wise enough to see that any organized force remained a potential danger. He shouted a word of command, wheeled his men toward the Romans.
Drumming hooves, felt through the soles as much as heard … “They come, aye, they come!” Viridovix yelled. Ruin all around him, he still reveled in fighting. He leaped out against the onrushing Yezda, ignoring arrows, evading swordstrokes that flashed by like striking snakes. The nomad captain cut at him. He jerked his head away, replied with a two-handed stroke of his own that sheared through boiled-leather cuirass and ribs alike, hurling his foe from his saddle to the dust below.
The Romans cheered his prowess, those not busy fighting for their own lives. Pila were few now, and the Yezda charge struck home almost unblunted. For all their discipline, the legionaries staggered under the blow. The front edge of the square sagged, began to crumple.
Marcus, at the fore, killed two Yezda in quick succession, only to have two more ride past on either side of him and hurl themselves against the battered line.
A mounted nomad struck him on the side of the head with a spearshaft swung club-fashion. It was a glancing blow, but his vision misted, and he slipped to one knee. Another Yezda, this one on foot, darted forward, saber upraised. The tribune lifted his shield to parry, sickly aware he would be too slow.
From the corner of his eye he saw a tall shape loom up beside him. an axe bit with a meaty chunnk; the Yezda was dead before his dying cry passed his lips. Skapti Modolf’s son put a booted foot on the corpse, braced, and pulled the weapon free.
“Where are your men?” Scaurus shouted.
The Haloga shrugged. “Dead or scattered. They gave the ravens more bones to pick than their own.” Skapti seemed more a wolf than ever, an old wolf, last survivor of his pack.
He opened his mouth to speak again, then suddenly stiffened. Marcus saw the nomad arrow sprout from his chest. His one good eye held the Roman. “This place is less pleasant than Imbros,” he said distinctly. His fierce blue stared dimmed as he slumped to the ground.
Scaurus recalled the fate the Haloga had half foretold when the Romans left his town. He had little time to marvel. Legionaries were falling faster than replacements could fill the holes in their ranks. Soon they would be an effective fighting force no more, but a broken mob of fugitives for the invaders’ sport.
The tribune saw Gaius Philippus’ head whipping from side to side, searching vainly for new men to throw into the fight. The centurion looked more harassed than beaten, annoyed over failing at something he should do with ease.
Then the Yezda shouted in surprise and alarm as they in turn were hit from behind. The killing pressure eased. The nomads streamed away in all directions, like a glob of quicksilver mashed by a falling fist.
Laon Pakhymer rode up to Marcus, a tired grin peeking through his tangled beard. “Horse and foot together do better than either by itself, don’t you think?” he said.
Scaurus reached up to clasp his hand. “Pakhymer, you could tell me I was a little blue lizard and I’d say you aye right now. Never was any face so welcome as yours.”
“There’s flattery indeed,” the Khatrisher said dryly, scratching a pockmarked cheek. He was quickly serious again. “Shall we stay together now? My riders can screen your troops, and you give us a base to fall back on at need.”
“Agreed,” Scaurus said at once. Even in the world he’d known, cavalry was the Romans’ weakest arm, always eked out with allies or mercenaries. Here the stirrup and the incredible horsemanship it allowed made such auxiliaries all the more important.
While the Romans struggled for survival on the left center, a larger drama was building on the Videssian right wing. Of all the army, the right had suffered least. Now Thorisin Gavras, shouting encouragement to his men and fighting in the first rank, tried to lead it back to rescue his brother and the beaten center. “We’re coming! We’re coming!” the Sevastokrator’s men cried. Those contingents still intact in the center yelled back with desperate intensity and tried to fight their way north.
It was not to be. The charge Thorisin led was doomed before it truly began. With Yezda on either side of them, the Sevastokrator’s warriors had to run the cruelest kind of gauntlet to return to their stricken comrades. Arrows tore at them like blinding sleet. Their foes struck again and again, ruthless blows from the flank that had to be parried at any cost—and the cost was the thrust of the attack.
Thorisin and Thorisin alone kept his men moving forward against all odds. Then his mount staggered and fell, shot from under him by one of the black shafts Avshar’s bow could send so far. The Sevastokrator was a fine horseman; he rolled free from the foundering beast and sprang to his feet, shouting for a new horse.
But once slowed, even for the moment he needed to remount, his men could advance no further. Against his will, one of his lieutenants literally dragging his mount’s bridle, the younger Gavras was compelled to fall back.
A great groan of despair rose from the Videssians as they realized the relieving attack had failed. All around them, the Yezda shouted in hoarse triumph. Mavrikios, seeing before him the ruin of all his hopes, saw also that the last service he could give his state would be to take the author of his defeat down with him.
He shouted orders to the surviving Halogai of the Imperial Guard. Over all the din of battle Marcus clearly heard their answering, “Aye!” Their axes gleamed crimson in the sunset as they lifted them high in a final salute. Spearheaded by the Emperor, they hurled themselves against the Yezda.
“Avshar!” Mavrikios cried. “Face to face now, proud filthy knave!” The wizard-prince spurred toward him, followed by a swa
rm of nomads. They closed round the Halogai and swallowed them up. All over the field men paused, panting, to watch the last duel.
The Imperial Guard, steady in the face of the doom they saw ahead, fought with the recklessness of men who knew they had nothing left to lose. One by one they fell; the Yezda were no cowards and they, too, fought under their overlord’s eyes. At last only a small knot of Halogai still stood, to the end protecting the Emperor with their bodies. The wizard-prince and his followers rode over them, swords chopping like cleavers, and there were only Yezda in that part of the field.
Whatever faint hopes the Videssian army had for survival died with Mavrikios. Men thought no further than saving themselves at any price and abandoned their fellows if it meant making good their own escape. Fragments of the right were still intact under Thorisin Gavras, but so mauled they could do nothing but withdraw to the north in some semblance of order. Over most of the battleground, terror—and the Yezda—ruled supreme.
More than anyone else, Gaius Philippus saved the Romans during that grinding retreat. The veteran had seen victory and defeat both in his long career and held the battered band together. “Come on!” he said. “Show your pride, damn you! Keep your ranks steady and your swords out! Look like you want some more of these bastards!”
“All I want is to get away from here alive!” a panicky soldier yelled. “I don’t care how fast I have to run!” Other voices took up the cry; the Roman ranks wavered, though the Yezda were not pressing them.
“Fools!” The centurion waved his arm to encompass the whole field, the sprawled corpses, the Yezda ranging far and wide to cut down fugitives. “Look around you—those poor devils thought they could run away too, and see what it got them. We’ve lost, aye, but we’re still men. Let the Yezda know we’re ready to fight and they’ll have to earn it to take us, and odds are they won’t. But if we throw away our shields and flap around like headless chickens, every man for himself, not a one of us will ever see home again.”
“You couldn’t be more right,” Gorgidas said. The Greek physician’s face was haggard with exhaustion and hurt. Too often he had watched men die from wounds beyond his skill to cure. He was in physical pain as well. His left arm was bandaged, and the bloodstains on his torn mantle showed where a Yezda saber had slid along a rib. Yet he still tried to give credit where it was due, to keep the heart in others when almost without it himself.
“Thanks,” Gaius Philippus muttered. He was studying his troops closely, wondering if he had steadied them or if stronger measures would be needed.
Gorgidas persisted, “This is the way men come off safe in a retreat, by showing the enemy how ready they are to defend themselves. Whether you know it or not, you’re following Socrates’ example at the battle of Delium, when he made his way back to Athens and brought his comrades out with him.”
Gaius Philippus threw his hands in the air. “Just what I need now, being told I’m like some smockfaced philosopher. Tend to your wounded, doctor, and let me mind the lads on their feet.” Ignoring Gorgidas’ injured look, he surveyed the Romans once more, shook his head in dissatisfaction.
“Pakhymer!” he shouted. The Khatrisher waved to show he’d heard. “Have your riders shoot the first man who bolts.” The officer’s eyes widened in surprise. Gaius Philippus said, “Better by far to lose a few at our hands than see a stampede that risks us all.”
Pakhymer considered, nodded, and threw the centurion the sharpest salute Marcus had seen from the easygoing Khatrishers. He gave his men the order. Talk of flight abruptly ceased.
“Pay Gaius Philippus no mind,” Quintus Glabrio told Gorgidas. “He means less than he says.”
“I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it, my friend,” the physician answered shortly, but there was gratitude in his voice.
“The soft-spoken lad has the right of it,” Viridovix said. “When he talks, that one—” He stabbed a thumb toward Gaius Philippus. “—is like a fellow who can’t keep his woman happy—things spurt out before he’s ready.”
The senior centurion snorted, saying, “I will be damned. This is the first time you’ve been on the same side of an argument as the Greek, I’ll wager.”
Viridovix tugged at his mustache as he thought. “Belike it is, at that,” he admitted.
“And so he should be,” Marcus said to Gaius Philippus. “You had no reason to turn on Gorgidas, especially since he was giving you the highest praise he could.”
“Enough, the lot of you!” Gaius Philippus exclaimed in exasperation. “Gorgidas, if you want my apology, you have it. The gods know you’re one of the few doctors I’ve seen worth the food you gobble. You jogged my elbow when I was in harness, and I kicked out at you without thinking.”
“It’s all right. You just paid me a finer compliment than the one I gave you,” Gorgidas said. Not far away, a legionary cursed as an arrow pierced his hand. The physician sighed and hurried off to clean and bandage the wound.
He had fewer injuries to treat now. With their battle won, the Yezda slipped beyond even Avshar’s control. Some still hunted Videssian stragglers, but more were looting the bodies of the dead or beginning to make camp among them; sunset was already past and darkness coming on. Sated, glutted with combat, the nomads were no longer eager to assail those few companies of their foes who still put up a bold front.
Somewhere in the twilight, a man screamed as the Yezda caught up with him at last. Scaurus shivered, thinking how close the Romans had come to suffering the same fate. He said to Gaius Philippus, “Gorgidas had the right of it. Without you we’d be running for cover one by one, like so many spooked cattle. You held us together when we needed it most.”
The veteran shrugged, more nervous over praise than he had been when the fighting was hottest. “I know how to run a retreat, that’s all. I bloody well ought to—I’ve been in enough of them over the years. You signed on with Caesar for the Gallic campaign, didn’t you?”
Marcus nodded, remembering how he’d planned a short stay in the army to further his political hopes. Those days seemed as dim as if they had happened to someone else.
“Thought as much,” Gaius Philippus said. “You’ve done pretty well yourself, you know, in Gaul and here as well. Most of the time I forget you didn’t intent to make a life of this—you handle yourself like a soldier.”
“I thank you,” Scaurus replied sincerely, knowing that was as fulsome a compliment from the centurion as talk of Socrates was from Gorgidas. “You’ve helped me more than I can say; if I am any kind of soldier, it’s because of what you’ve shown me.”
“Hmp. All I ever did was do my job,” Gaius Philippus said, more uncomfortable than ever. “Enough of this useless chitchat.” He peered out into the dusk. “I think we’ve put enough distance between us and the worst of it to camp for the night.”
“Good enough. The Khatrishers can hold off whatever raiders we draw while we’re digging in.” Scaurus spoke to the buccinators, who trumpeted out the order to halt.
“Of course,” Pakhymer said when the tribune asked him for a covering force. “You’ll need protection to throw up your fieldworks, and they will shelter all of us tonight.” He cocked his head at the Roman in a gesture that reminded Scaurus of Taso Vones, though the two Khatrishers looked nothing like each other. “One of the reasons I joined my men to yours was to take advantage of your camp, if we saw today end with breath still in us. We have no skill at fortcraft.”
“Maybe not, but you ride like devils loosed. Put me on a horse and I’d break my backside, or more likely my neck.” The feeble jest aside, Marcus looked approvingly at the Khatrisher. It had taken a cool head to see ahead till nightfall in the chaos of the afternoon.
It was as well the Yezda did not press an attack while the camp was building. The Romans, dazed with fatigue, moved like sleepwalkers. They dug and lifted with slow, dogged persistence, knowing sleep would claim them if they halted for an instant. The stragglers who had joined them helped as best they could, hampered not onl
y by exhaustion but also by inexperience at this sort of work.
Most of the non-Romans were merely faces to Scaurus as he walked through the camp, but some he knew. He was surprised to see Doukitzes busily fixing stakes atop the earthen breastwork the legionaries had thrown up. He would not have thought the skinny little Videssian whose hand he’d saved likely to last twenty minutes on the battlefield. Yet here he was, hale and whole, with countless tall strapping men no more than stiffening corpses … Tzimiskes, Adiatun, Mouzalon, how many more? Spying Marcus, Doukitzes waved shyly before returning to his task.
Zeprin the Red was here too. The burly Haloga was not working; he sat in the dust with his head in his hands, a picture of misery. Scaurus stooped beside him. Zeprin caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see who had come to disturb his wretchedness. “Ah, it’s you, Roman,” he said, his voice a dull parody of his usual bull roar. A great bruise purpled his left temple and cheekbone.
“Are you in much pain?” the tribune asked. “I’ll send our physician to see to you.”
The northerner shook his head. “I need no leech, unless he know the trick of cutting out a wounded recall. Mavrikios lies dead, and me not there to ward him.” He covered his face once more.
“Surely you cannot blame yourself for that, when it had to be the Emperor himself who sent you from him?”
“Sent me from him, aye,” Zeprin echoed bitterly. “Sent me to stiffen the left after Khoumnos fell, the gods save a spot by their hearthfire for him. But the fighting was good along the way, and I was ever fonder of handstrokes than the bloodless business of orders. Mavrikios used to twit me for it. And so I was slower than I should have been, and Ortaias the bold—” He made the name a curse. “—kept charge.”
Anger roughened his voice, an anger cold and black as the stormclouds of his wintry home. “I knew he was a dolt, but took him not for coward. When the horseturd fled, I wasn’t yet nearby to stem the rout before it passed all checking. Had I paid more heed to my duty and less to the feel of my axe in my hands, it might be the Yezda who were skulking fugitives this night.”
Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) Page 37