"Behooves us to win that one, too, so it does," Symvatios said.
"Now that you mention it, yes," Maniakes answered dryly. "If we lose, there's not much point to the rest, is there?"
The Videssian army pressed north unchallenged for the next day and a half. They overran a few small bands of Kubratoi, but most of the nomads seemed to have already fled before them. The relative tranquility did not ease Maniakes' mind. Somewhere ahead or off to one flank, Etzilios waited.
When the army moved, a cloud of scouts surrounded it to the front and rear and either side. If Etzilios wanted to strike, he could. He would not take Maniakes by surprise doing it. Whenever the army approached woods, the Avtokrator sent whole companies of troopers probing into them. He was beginning to believe his men would keep on fighting well, but he wanted them to do it on his terms, not those of the khagan of Kubrat.
A scout came riding back toward him. Alongside the cavalryman was a fellow in peasant homespun riding a donkey that had seen better days. The scout nudged the farmer, who said, "Your Majesty, uh-" and then couldn't go on, made modest or awestruck or perhaps just frightened at the prospect of addressing his sovereign.
The scout spoke for him: "Your Majesty, he's fleeing from the northwest. He told me all the Kubratoi in the world-that's what he said-were gathering close by his plot of land, and he didn't care to stay around to find out what they would do." The trooper chuckled. "Can't say as I blame him, either."
"Nor I." Maniakes turned to the peasant. "Where is your plot? How far had you come before the soldier found you?"
When the farmer still proved incapable of speech, the trooper once more answered for him: "He's well south of Varna, your Majesty. We can't be more than half a day's ride from the nomads."
"We'll halt here, then," Maniakes declared. Hearing his words, the trumpeters who rode close by him blared out the order to stop. Maniakes told the peasant, "A pound of gold for your news."
"Thank you, your Majesty," the fellow cried, money loosening his tongue where everything else had failed.
Maniakes and Symvatios huddled together. "Do you think your men can feign a retreat from the Kubratoi and then turn around and fight when the time comes?" the Avtokrator asked.
"I… think so," his uncle answered. "You want to make the fight here, do you? The ground is good-open enough so they can't try much in the way of trickery. And if things go wrong, we'll have a real line of retreat open."
"Aye, though I don't want to think about things going wrong," Maniakes said.
"My notion was that, if I pick the ground here, I'll be able to set up the toys the engineers have along in their wagons. No chance for that if Etzilios is the one paying the flute player."
"There you're right," Symvatios said. "So what will you want me to do tomorrow? Ride ahead, find the Kubratoi, and then flee back to you as if I'd fouled my breeches like a mime-show actor?"
"That's the idea," Maniakes agreed. "My hope is, Etzilios will figure us for cowards at heart. My other hope is that he's wrong."
"Would be nice, wouldn't it?" Symvatios said. "If your boys see mine running and take off with them, the Kubratoi will chase us all back to Videssos the city, laughing their heads off and shooting arrows into us every mile of the way. It's happened before."
"Don't remind me," Maniakes said, remembering his own flight from Etzilios.
"Tomorrow, though, the good god willing, they'll be the ones who run."
As he had every night since setting out from the capital, he strung sentries out all around the camp. He wouldn't have put a night attack past the Kubrati khagan. Come to that, he wouldn't have put anything past him.
Dew was still on the grass and the air was crisp and cool when Symvatios and his detachment rode north, as proudly and ostentatiously as if they were the whole of the Videssian army. Maniakes arranged the rest of the force in line of battle, with a gap in the center for Symvatios' men to fill. He had plenty of time to brief the troopers and explain what he thought would happen when Symvatios' men came back. While he spoke, engineers unloaded their wagons and assembled their machines with tackle they had brought up from the city. When they asked it of him, Maniakes detailed a cavalry company to help them.
Then there was nothing to do but wait, eat whatever iron rations they had stowed in their saddlebags, and drink bad wine from canteen or skin. The day turned hot and muggy, as Maniakes had known it would. Sweat ran into his eyes, burning like blood. Under his surcoat, under his gilded mailshirt, under the quilted padding he wore beneath it, he felt as if he had just gone into the hot room of the baths.
Scouts rode out of the forest ahead, spurring their horses toward him. Their shouts rang thin over the open ground: "They're coming!" Maniakes waved to the trumpeters, who blew alert. Up and down the line, men reached for their weapons. Maniakes drew his sword. Sunlight sparkled off the blade.
Here came Symvatios and his men. Maniakes' heart leapt into his throat when he spied his uncle, who had a bloodstained rag tied round his head. But Symvatios waved at him to show the wound was not serious. He shouldn't have been fighting at all, but Maniakes breathed easier.
Symvatios' rearguard turned in the saddle to shoot arrows at the Kubratoi behind them. The nomads seemed taken aback to discover more Videssians athwart their path, but kept on galloping after Symvatios' men. Their harsh, guttural shouts put Maniakes in mind of so many wild beasts, but they were more clever and deadly than any mere animals.
Maniakes waited till he spied Etzilios' standard and assured himself the khagan was not hanging back. Then he shouted "Videssos!" and waved his troopers into the fight. At the same instant, Symvatios and his hornplayers ordered a rally from his fleeing detachments.
For a dreadful moment, Maniakes feared they would not find it. Videssian armies had done so much real retreating, all through his reign and Genesios' before it-could the detachment, once heading away from the foe, remember its duty, or would it be doomed to repeat the disasters of the past?
He shouted with joy as, behind the screen of the rearguard, Symvatios' troopers reined in, turned their horses, and faced the Kubratoi once more. Fresh flights of arrows arced toward the nomads. Off on either wing, the catapults the engineers had assembled hurled great stones at the onrushing barbarians. One of them squashed a horse like a man kicking a rat with his boot. Another took the head from a Kubrati as neatly as an executioner's sword might have done. Still clutching his bow, he rode on for several strides of his horse before falling from the saddle.
Of themselves, the blows the stone-throwers struck were pinpricks, and only a few pinpricks at that. But the Kubratoi were used to facing death from javelins or swords: not so from flying boulders. Maniakes saw them waver, and also saw their discomfiture at Symvatios' rally.
"Videssos!" he shouted again, and then, "Charge!" The horns screamed out that command. His men shouted, too, as they spurred their horses toward the Kubratoi. Some, like Maniakes, shouted the name of their Empire. More, though, shouted his name. When he heard that, the sword in his hand quivered like a live thing.
The nomads' special skill was shifting from attack to retreat-or the other way round-at a moment's notice. But the Kubratoi at the rear were still pressing forward while the ones at the fore tried to wheel and go back. The Videssians, mounted on bigger, heavier horses and wearing stronger armor, got in among them and thrashed them as they had not been thrashed in years.
"See how it feels, Etzilios?" Maniakes shouted, slashing his way toward the khagan's horsetail standard. "See how it feels to be fooled and trapped and beaten?" He all but howled the last word.