On the third day after their departure, his cavalry exited the Jkarian Pass, and with a dismal sigh of relief, turned south. The grasslands provided the horses with a chance to assuage their hunger.
Jedidia’s soldiers had much less luck finding food. For the sake of his men, Jedidia knew he should have left the accursed Pass days sooner. But he dared not face King Shirudukh without proclaiming to have done his utmost. If that meant a few hundred of his men died from hunger or injury, so be it.
A day after they left the mouth of the Jkarian Pass, the last of the rations was gone. Soon real hunger would sweep over his men. Only a few cattle and chickens stolen from the occasional farmstead kept starvation at bay. Fortunately, Jedidia’s cavalry would reach Zanbil in less than two days, so his fighters would be spared the necessity to eat some horses.
A shout broke into Jedidia’s unhappy thoughts. He glanced up to see one of his forward scouts galloping toward his commanders. Jedidia, riding beside Zathras, his second in command, didn’t bother to halt the weary column. The scout reached Jedidia with a rush, and let his horse fall in place beside his leaders.
“General Jedidia, we found tracks about two miles ahead. Hundreds of horses crossed our trail. We followed the tracks for almost half a mile, until they rode closer to the foothills.”
“You must be blind.” Zathras glared at the scout. “There aren’t a hundred horses left in these lands.”
General Jedidia agreed. Every horse that could bear a rider had been pressed into King Shirudukh’s service months ago.
The scout shook head. “My Lord, I know what I saw. The tracks came down from the foothills. The upper trail there is blocked for a half mile or so. But as soon as the riders got past that obstacle, they returned to the upper trail.”
When Jedidia’s men exited the Pass, they had faced a choice of routes. They could follow what the scout called the upper trail, which hugged the foothills most of the way south. Or they could continue down to the lower plains, where the grass grew more plentiful, and the landscape made for an easier ride.
Short of food and grass, he and Zathras agreed that the lower trail was their best route. But the upper trail, if one had a good horse and were in a hurry, was the shorter path.
“You’re sure there were tracks from a hundred horses?”
The scout shook his head. “General, the earth was churned to mud in some places. That takes hundreds of horses, many hundreds. The tracks are fresh, only a few days old.”
Zathras refused to believe his ears. “Only Lord Modran has any sizeable cavalry in these lands, and he took them all with him into the Dellen Pass. Why would he ride this far north before turning around?”
“How far ahead is this place?” Jedidia didn’t like what he was hearing, but one way or another, he’d find out soon enough.
“About two miles, General,” the scout said. “You can’t miss the signs.”
Jedidia turned to Zathras. “Have our men pick up the pace. I want to see this for myself.”
With Zathras at his side, Jedidia moved to the head of the column. He wanted to examine the ground himself, before his men trampled all over it.
When they reached the spot, Jedidia halted his horse and stared at the earth. The scout hadn’t lied. Jedidia found himself agreeing with the man — not long ago, several hundred horses had trodden the soft grass into a green and brown mush. He saw where the tracks came down from the upper trail. A rockslide had obliterated a quarter mile stretch of the upper trail. Any riders using that trail would have had to descend here.
Looking south and about three or four hundred paces ahead, Jedidia observed where the trampled ground slanted back toward the upper trail. So the unknown horsemen had returned to the upper trail as soon as they bypassed the obstruction. That meant the riders were traveling fast and not worried about the stamina of their horses.
The more Jedidia studied the ground, the more worried he became. Every cavalry force in the Elamite Empire, whether friend or foe, rode in columns of twos or fours. Even the cursed Akkadians followed the same procedure. The only people who rode in an untidy mass, in as broad a front as they could manage, were the barbarians of the steppes.
But where had they come from? Jedidia knew the Alur Meriki had departed Elam’s lands more than two years ago, unable or unwilling to face a confrontation with Modran’s cavalry. By now the barbarian clan should be far away, beyond even the Land Between the Rivers. Why would a few hundred return to Elam’s territory and risk another confrontation?
More important, these riders hadn’t come through the Jkarian Pass, which meant they must have traveled through the foothills far to the north. Nor had they turned east, to raid the closest farms and small villages that dotted the landscape of Elam’s northern lands. Instead they had hugged the foothills, and if they kept moving south, the first large village in their path was Zanbil.
Jedidia swore an oath that startled his horse, as well as Zathras. “It’s the Alur Meriki. They’ve come down from the north, and they’re riding toward Zanbil and the Dellen Pass.”
Zathras mouth gaped. “Why would they go there? It’s a long ride to Zanbil.”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll wager that Eskkar of Akkad has something to do with it. He must have paid them to raid our lands, disrupt our supply lines. .”
But Jedidia had never planned on being resupplied. The only force with a supply line was Modran’s. If Modran failed to make his way through the Dellen Pass, and his supply depot was destroyed, he, too, might have to turn back.
The more Jedidia considered the possibility, the more he believed it. After all, Eskkar had somehow closed the Jkarian Pass, so why not the Dellen Pass as well? Where else would the barbarians go?
“Zathras, halt the column and summon the commanders. We need to make sure they’re ready for a fight. Then we’re going to ride as hard as we can for Zanbil, even if we have to kill every horse to get there!”
Just after midmorning two days later, General Jedidia sat on his horse atop the same small hill where the Alur Meriki had halted. He had the same good view of Zanbil, just over a mile away. The Alur Meriki warriors had seen him coming, of course. Their scouts had tracked his progress for over a day, and yesterday had even ambushed one of Jedidia’s scouting parties, killing fourteen of the twenty men.
Jedidia brushed off the deaths without a thought. By his rough count, the Alur Meriki had about twelve or fourteen hundred men, perhaps less, certainly no match for his much larger force. All the same, the Alur Meriki seemed indifferent to his approach. They showed no signs of either retreating or attacking.
The barbarians had abandoned Zanbil when Jedidia’s force drew near. They moved their fighters closer to the mouth of the Dellen Pass and about half a mile north of the opening. A good sized hill that backed onto the upper trail gave them a commanding position, as well as an excellent view of the surroundings. If Jedidia decided to attack, his fighters would be charging up the slope and into the teeth of a barbarian arrow storm.
“If we have to climb that hill,” Zathras said, studying the ground, “we’ll lose half the men. It will have to be an all-out charge, one single attack, and no turning back until they’re overwhelmed.”
Jedidia considered his options. He could keep confronting the barbarians with most of his force, while smaller contingents of his men went one by one to the stream at Zanbil for water. So water would not be a factor.
His main problem was food. Jedidia’s men hadn’t eaten much in the last four days, and they’d ridden hard. The lack of food manifested itself in the slack jaws and empty gazes of his men. If he were going to challenge the barbarians, it would have to be now, before his men lost more of their strength and the will to fight what was sure to be a desperate battle.