Back in Daras, you had some trick of Ahriman—”
Argyros would have said “Satan’s trick,” but he understood her well enough. He might have known she would make the connection. His respect for her wits, already high, rose another notch. He said, “Well, without that army behind us, we do have to modify things a bit.”
“The good god Ormazd knows that’s true.” Suddenly, startlingly, she grinned at the magistrianos. “You won’t need to worry about my running off any longer, dear Basil. I wouldn’t miss seeing this for worlds.”
So I can bring news of it back to the King of Kings, Argyros added silently. He said, “Let’s hope there’s something interesting for you to see.” He knew she was clever enough to add her own unspoken commentary: if not, nothing else matters, because we’ll be dead. He told off the half-dozen men who had done the digging, sent them back to the holes they had made. He detailed two more to keep Mirrane under guard. Regardless of what she said, he took no chances where she was concerned. Eustathios Rhangabe, of course, stayed with his wagon. That left—Argyros counted on his fingers—fifteen men. He wished for four times as many. Wishing failed to produce them. “Double quivers,” the magistrianos told the men he did have. Each of them carried, then, eighty arrows. If every shaft killed, they could hardly slay one of five Kirghiz. How long would the nomads take to get thoroughly drunk? Certainly not as long as any of them expected. Argyros gauged the sun in the sky. He could not afford to wait for nightfall. He did not think he would have to.
Corippus had spent even more time in the imperial army than Argyros. Their eyes met; they both judged the moment ripe. Argyros raised his right hand. His comrades clucked to their horses, trotted north once more behind him.
They rode in silence, alert for Kirghiz scouts. Argyros used the far-seer from horseback, though it made him vaguely seasick to do so. He saw no one. His confidence rose, a little. If the nomads were too busy soaking up their unexpected loot to bother with scouts, so much the better. The horsemen topped a low rise. Corippus barked sudden harsh laughter. “Look at them!” he exclaimed, pointing. “They’re like a swarm of bees round a honeypot.”
The comparison was apt. The Kirghiz were milling in a great disorderly knot around the abandoned wagons and pack-horses. Pulling out the far-seer again, Argyros saw jars going from hand to hand. He watched one nomad, wearing a foolish expression, slide off his horse. Another reached down to snatch away the jug the fellow was holding.
“They’re as ripe as ever they will be,” the magistrianos said. “Let’s go kick the honeypot over—and hope we don’t get stung.”
Some of the Kirghiz must have seen Argyros and his followers approach, yet they took no alarm. Argyros could hardly blame their leaders for that. No sane attackers would approach a foe so grotesquely outnumbering them, any more than a mouse would blithely leap into the fox’s jaws. The magistrianos drew up his tiny battle line not far inside archery range. He raised his arm, then dropped it. Along with his men, he snatched up an arrow, drew his bow back to his ear and released it, grabbed for the next shaft.
They had all shot three or four times before the racket from the Kirghiz began to change timbre. Some of the nomads cried out in pain; others pointed and yelled at the suicidal maniacs harassing them, just as a man will point and shout at the mosquito that has just bitten his leg and buzzed off. A few nomads began to shoot back, those who happened to be facing the right way, who were not too tightly pressed by their fellows, and who were sober enough to remember how to use their bows. Argyros and his comrades methodically emptied their quivers into the tight-packed mass. Those who knew fragments of the Kirghiz speech shouted insults at the nomads. They were not out to strike and skulk away; they wanted to be noticed.
When the outer ranks of nomads moved away from the wagons, the magistrianos’s little force retreated a corresponding distance, but kept plying the Kirghiz with arrows. More and more nomads came after them.
Argyros yelled the most bloodcurdling curses he knew, then turned his horse and roweled it with his spurs. This flight was not like the one when he had abandoned the yperoinos wagons; the nomads were pursuing in earnest now.
One of his men shrieked as an arrow sprouted from his shoulder. The magistrianos knew others would also perish, either because some arrows had to hit with so many in the air or because some nomads had faster horses than some of his men. With the thunder of thousands of hooves behind him, he hoped some of his men had faster horses than the Kirghiz. Were the chase longer than the mile and a half or so that lay between Argyros’s men and Eustathios Rhangabe’s wagon, he knew none of his people would be likely to survive.
He glanced ahead and to the right. Yes, there behind a bush was one of the men who had come from Constantinople. Unless one knew where to look for him, he was almost invisible. Only the stragglers of the Kirghiz, who were pursuing with scant regard for order, would come near the fellow. Argyros had to keep his attention on more immediate concerns. He did not see his countryman thrust a lighted candle at an oil-soaked rag, and noticed only peripherally when the fellow leaped up and dashed for another hole not far away.
What happened moments after that was difficult to ignore, even for one as single-mindedly focused on flight as the magistrianos. The hellpowder in the buried jars ignited, and, with a roar louder and deeper than thunder, the ground heaved itself up. Earth, stones, and shrubs vomited from the newly dug crater. Argyros’s horse tried to rear. He roughly fought it down. He and the rest of the men from the Roman Empire had encountered hellpowder before and knew what the frightful noise was. Even as the thought raced through Argyros’s mind, another charge of the stuff went off, far over on the Kirghiz left. It should have been simultaneous with the one on the right, and was in fact close enough for Argyros to let out a pleased grunt.
The nomads, taken by surprise as much as their mounts, naturally shied away from the blasts. That bunched them more closely together and made it harder for them to keep up their headlong pursuit. Still, they were bold men, not easily cowed by the unknown. They kept after their quarry. Another pair of blasts crashed forth, almost at the same instant, as the Romans dashed past the second prepared set of charges. These were nearer each other and nearer the path than the first ones had been. Argyros felt the booming reports with his whole body, not merely through his ears. Again he had to force his mount to obey his will.
He swung around in the saddle to look back at the Kirghiz. They were packed still more tightly now, wanted nothing to do with the eruptions to either side. He saw two horses collide. Both went down with their riders, and others, unable to stop, tumbled over them. Now the magistrianos’s men were lengthening their lead over the nomads, except for the frontrunners out ahead of the pack. He grabbed an arrow, tried a Parthian shot at one of those. He missed, swore, and concentrated again on riding. The Romans manning the third set of charges had their timing down to a science. They waited until their countrymen were past before touching off their stores of hellpowder. This last pair was so close to the path that dirt showered down on Argyros. His mount bolted forward as if he had spurred it. The nomads’ ponies, on the other hand, balked at the sudden cataclysmic noise in front of them. The last wagon appeared ahead. Eustathios Rhangabe dove out of it, then sprinted for the shelter of the rocky outcrop where, Argyros presumed, the last two Romans were holding Mirrane. The magistrianos hoped Rhangabe had accurately gauged the length of candle he had left burning atop one of the jars in the wagon. On second thought, hope did not seen enough. Jolts from Argyros’s galloping horse made his prayer breathless, but it was no less sincere for that.