"The trick of the trade is getting what you want with as little fighting-especially the messy, expensive hand-to-hand you mean-as you can," the Videssian general said. He pointed over to the bank of dart-throwers going up on the northern flank. "Skotos hold my soul in the ice forever if those don't make any charging lancer ever born the most thoughtful man you know."
"May it be so," Sharbaraz said. "My men are eager for the attack. When will all this hammering and spiking be done?"
"We'll be through by evening," the elder Maniakes replied. "Smerdis' men could have given us a deal of grief if they'd come sneaking around trying to wreck the engines or burn 'em down, but they didn't. Maybe they didn't think of it, or maybe they just didn't think it'd work." He shook his head to show his opinion of that. "You always try. Every once in a while, you end up surprising yourself with what you can do."
"I agree," Sharbaraz said. "If I didn't, I never would have fled into Videssos last year."
If Roshnani hadn't thought of it, you'd never have fled into Videssos, Abivard thought. That brought a surge of pride in his wife. It also brought the realization that Denak had been right all along: women's counsel could be as valuable on campaign as back in the women's quarters of the stronghold.
Abivard wondered if Sharbaraz had figured that out yet.
He didn't get long to contemplate the notion. The elder Maniakes said, "True enough, your Majesty, but we're on the point of bringing you back home now."
Dawn brought the promise of a day to steam a man in armor. Abivard was sweating even before he donned the leather-lined shirt of mail and splints, the mail skirt, and the trousers of iron rings. By the time he had affixed his ring-mail veil and aventail and settled his helmet on his head, he felt ready to go into the oven and come forth as cooked meat.
Perhaps, in spite of everything, Smerdis still had spies in Sharbaraz's camp, or perhaps his officers were just good at piecing together what they saw from the works he had built in front of Mashiz. In any case, his soldiers came forth from their camps behind those works and filled the gaps between their walls and the nearly impassable badlands to either side. No, getting into Mashiz was not going to be the triumphal parade Abivard and Sharbaraz had imagined when they set out from Vek Rud stronghold.
The elder Maniakes took charge of proceedings at the outset. Collaring Abivard, he said, "I want you and your best men in front of the siege engines to protect them."
"What?" Abivard said indignantly. "You'd ask me and our best lancers to forgo the charge?"
If the Videssian general noticed his ire, he ignored it. "That's just what I'd ask, for the beginning of the fight, anyhow," he answered. "If we're to win this battle, that's what we need to do. You'll get enough fighting to satisfy the most picky honor later on, I promise you."
He spoke as if honor were something worth only a couple of coppers. You make war like a merchant, and your son is twice the man you'll ever be, Abivard thought. But he could not insult an ally by saying such things to his face. If he took the question to Sharbaraz… He shook his head. He couldn't do that. If he did, the elder Maniakes would lose prestige, or else he would lose some himself. Either way, the alliance would suffer.
That left him only one choice. "Very well, eminent sir," he said icily. "I shall rely on your promise."
The elder Maniakes paid no more attention to ice than he had to indignation.
"Good, good," he said, as if he had taken Abivard's compliance for granted.
"Now do get moving, if you'd be so kind. We can't put on our little show until you do."
Still fuming, Abivard rounded up Zal's regiment of lancers. Zal and many of his riders grumbled when Abivard told them they weren't going to sweep gloriously down on the enemy. He said, "You'll do real fighting later in the day. By the God I swear it." He had to hope he wasn't giving them a false oath.
Grumbling still, the lancers took their places in front of the siege engines the Videssians had built. Made with muddy timbers, the engines looked like frameworks for houses abandoned after a flood. The engineers loaded heavy stones into some and large, stoppered jars with greasy rags sticking out of the stoppers into others.
Abivard twisted in the saddle so he could watch the Videssians touch torches to those greasy rags. At the command of their captains, the engineers discharged the creations. The engines jumped and kicked, as if they were wild asses like those that had given Sharbaraz's followers such a fright the autumn before.
The stones and jars described graceful arcs through the air. As their captains cursed them to ever greater efforts, the Videssians turned windlasses to rewind the engines' ropes and ready them to shoot again. Abivard paid scant heed to that. He watched the stones smash into Smerdis' works. Some fell short, some crashed against the wall, some flew over it to land within. He wouldn't have wanted to be under one of those stones when it came down, any more than he would have cared to be a cockroach stepped on by a lancer's armored boot.
The jars trailed smoke as they flew. Even from a couple of furlongs, even through the shouts of Smerdis' soldiers inside their fortress, he heard pottery smashing. Columns of black, greasy smoke started rising from within the fortifications.
Abivard turned in the saddle again. "Any of you speak my language?" he asked the engineers behind him. When one of them nodded, he went on, "What's in that stuff you're flinging there?"
The Videssian grunted. "Rock oil, sir, and sulfur," he said in fair Makuraner, "and some other things I don't want to tell you what they is. Burns good, don't it?"
"Yes," Abivard said. One of the pillars of smoke was growing rapidly; he guessed the inflammable liquid had splattered over wood or canvas. The engines bucked again, this time in a more ragged salvo. Ragged or not, though, it sent another round of stones and jars flying against the fortress.
"By the God," Zal said, "I'd not like to have to go out in that kind of rain." His gaze sharpened. "And if that kind of rain keeps falling on the fortress for very long, the folk there won't be worth much. They'll be too squashed or toasted to do anything to speak of in the way of fighting."
"That's the idea," Abivard said, also suddenly figuring out why the elder Maniakes had said defending the engines would be a crucial role to play. Sooner or later, Smerdis' generals would realize they had to stop the Videssians from rendering their fort useless. They couldn't do it with archers; the engines were out of range of any bowman. They would have to charge down on them instead.
Sure enough, the charge came, but not from the warriors gathered directly in front of Mashiz. Instead, Smerdis' generals loosed a flanking force of the sort that had brought Sharbaraz such grief in his last attack on the capital. Shouting Smerdis' name, the horsemen thundered down out of the narrow way to the north, as they had the year before.
They got a different reception from the one they had had then, though. The engines on the army's right flank went into action. Some of them threw stones that smashed men and horses alike. No armor could stop the yard-long darts others shot. They pinned soldiers to their mounts and sent them crashing to the ground to foul the troops behind them.
Smerdis' men were brave enough. They kept coming in spite of the toll the engines took. Videssian horsemen rode out to keep them away from those engines and from the main body of Sharbaraz's force.
That was the sideshow, the distraction. The chief action remained at the front. The Videssian engines there kept on pounding the fortress Smerdis had erected. Its wall, which could have stood forever against mere lancers, began to look like a man with bad teeth as it got knocked to pieces. Behind the wall, flames leapt high. Smoke rose higher. It made Abivard cough, and must have been twenty, a hundred times worse for Smerdis' soldiers in the fort, those lucky enough not to have been cooked.
The Videssian captain of engineers shouted more orders in his own language.
His men swung the engines slightly off to one side. Then they started shooting again, this time at Smerdis' lancers gathered by the fortress.
Zal grinned a wicked, carnivorous grin. "What a nasty choice that leaves them," he said. "Withdraw out of range and open the way for us or come out and fight and open it anyhow if they lose."
Horns rang out in Smerdis' battered army. Lanceheads glittered in the sun as riders couched their weapons. "Here they come," Abivard said. Smerdis might have been a treacherous usurper, but the troops who had stuck by him had courage enough and to spare.
Abivard swung down his own lance till it pointed straight at the onrushing horsemen. "Sharbaraz!" he cried, and booted his horse in its armored sides to get it going. It sprang forward, seemingly glad to run. Zal echoed his war cry. So did the rest of the soldiers. They had waited far too long to suit them. Now they would have the straight-up fight they had craved.
Someone screeching "Smerdis!" spurred straight for Abivard. Above the fellow's chainmail veil, he caught a brief glimpse of hard, intent eyes. His foe was as glad to be fighting at last as he was. Smerdis' men hadn't just had to wait. They had also watched their comrades in the fortress bombarded and then taken a bombardment themselves.
By the way he sat his horse, the fellow boring in on Abivard knew exactly what he was doing. Instead of aiming for the larger target of Abivard's torso, at the last moment he flicked the point of his lance up at his face.
Fear turned the inside of Abivard's mouth dry and rough. He barely turned the stroke with his shield. His own went wide. He didn't care. He was just glad to be alive to fight someone else who wouldn't unfurl quite so many lethal tricks.
As cavalry battles have a way of doing once the initial impetus of the charge is lost, this one turned into a melee, with men milling about and cursing at the top of their lungs when they weren't shouting their chosen sovereign's name to keep their friends from trying to kill them. They thrust with lances and slashed with swords; their horses, many of them stallions, joined in the fight with bared teeth and flailing hooves that could dash the brains out of a man on the ground.
Somehow one of Smerdis' men had got turned around so he faced back toward the burning fortress. Abivard thought him an ally till he yelled the usurper's name. Then he speared the fellow in the back, thrusting with all his strength to force the lance point through the warrior's armor.
The fellow screamed and threw his arms wide; his sword went spinning through the air. The soldier screamed again. He crumpled, blood pouring from a hole somewhere between his left kidney and his spine. He hadn't known Abivard was there till the lance went into him. Abivard felt more like a murderer than a warrior until someone tried to blindside him. After that, he bore in mind that in battle there was precious little difference between the two.
Little by little, Sharbaraz's men forced their foes back toward the fortress. Videssian horsemen and light-armed Makuraner cavalry, more nimble than either side's lancers, tried to nip in behind Smerdis' horse and cut them off, clearing the way for Sharbaraz's lancers to burst through and storm for Mashiz.
A few archers up on the battered walls of the fortress shot at them. Hundreds would have been up there but for the pounding the siege engines had given the place. But many now were dead, many more hurt, and others fighting the fires the pots of oil had started.
"Onward!" That voice, some yards ahead of him, made Abivard jerk his head up. Sure enough, there was Sharbaraz, laying about him with his sword and spurring his horse on toward the gap that led to Mashiz.
Abivard couldn't imagine how the rightful King of Kings had pushed so far forward in the fighting, but Sharbaraz would have been a dangerous warrior no matter what his station. The only trouble was that, if he fell now, everyone else's exertions would be for nothing.
"Onward!" Abivard cried, and pointed to his sovereign. Now he did not call out Sharbaraz's name, for fear of drawing the enemy's notice to the rightful King of Kings. He pointed to him, though, and waved his arm to urge on his own followers. Not all of them understood his gestures, but enough did to give Sharbaraz a respectable force of protectors in a few minutes.
But Sharbaraz did not want protectors-he seemed to want to be the first man into Mashiz. He plunged into the press once more. His ferocity made those of Smerdis' men who were not in deadly earnest draw back from him. His own men pushed forward to fill the gap and to guard him from the foes who remained full of fight.
A tiny lull in the battle gave Abivard a moment to look around at more than sword's length from him. He realized with surprise and sudden and growing triumph that Smerdis' fortress was no longer in front of him and the rest of the leaders of Sharbaraz's forces-instead, it lay to their right. Sharbaraz had lost this fight the summer before, but he was winning it now.