A nomad cut at him. He turned the blow on his shield and gave one back. The Kubrati carried only a tiny leather target. He blocked that first stroke with it, but a second laid his shoulder open. Maniakes heard his cry of pain, but rode past and never knew how he fared after that.
All at once, the entire nomad host realized the snare into which they had rushed. Etzilios felt no shame at fleeing. The Kubratoi were remorselessly practical at war, and waged it for what they could get. If all they were getting was a drubbing, time enough to pull back and try again when chances looked better.
The usual Videssian practice was to let them go once the main engagement was won, the better to avoid sudden and unpleasant reversals. "Pursue!" Maniakes yelled now. "Dog them like hounds! Don't let them regroup, don't let them get away. Today we'll give them what they earned for invading us!"
The nomads' pursuit from Imbros down to Videssos the city had chewed his force to bits and swallowed most of the bits. That was what he wanted to emulate now. He soon saw it was too much to ask of his men. Because they were more heavily accoutered than the Kubratoi, they were also slower. And, unlike Etzilios' warriors, they were used to keeping to their formations rather than breaking up to fight as individuals: thus, the slower troopers held back those who might have been faster.
So they did not destroy the Kubrati host. They did hurt the invaders, running down wounded men, men on wounded horses, and those luckless enough to be riding nags that simply could not run fast. And, every so often, Etzilios' rearguard tried to gain some space between the rest of the Kubratoi and the Videssians. The imperial army rode over them like the tide rolling up the beach near Kastavala.
Maniakes hated to see the sun sink low in the west. "Shall we camp, your Majesty?" soldiers called, still seeking routine though they had broken it by beating the Kubratoi instead of shattering at the nomads' onslaught.
"We'll ride on a while after dark," the Avtokrator answered. "You can bet the Kubratoi won't be resting, not tonight, they won't. They'll want to get as far away from us as they can. And do you know what? We're not going to let them.
We won't let them ambush us in the blackness, either. We'll have plenty of scouts and we'll go slower, but we'll keep going."
And keep going they did, sometimes dozing in the saddle, sometimes waking to fight short, savage clashes with foes they could scarcely see. Maniakes was glad when his horse splashed into a stream; the cold water on his legs helped revive him.
When dawn touched the eastern sky with gray, Symvatios looked around and said, "We've outrun the supply wagons."
"We won't starve in the next day or two," Maniakes answered. "Anyone who doesn't have some bread or cheese or sausage or olives with him is a fool, anyhow." He glanced over at his uncle. The bandage made Symvatios look something like a veteran, something like a derelict. "How did you pick that up?"
"By the time we get back to Videssos the city, I'll have a fine, heroic scar," Symvatios answered. "Right now, I just feel like a twit. One of my troopers was hacking away at a Kubrati in front of him, and when he drew back his sword for another stroke-well, my fool head got in the way. Laid me open as neat as if a cursed nomad had done it."
"I won't tell if you don't," Maniakes promised. "You ought to be able to bribe the trooper into keeping his mouth shut, too." They both laughed. Laughing, Maniakes discovered, came easy when you were moving forward The pursuit went more slowly than it had the day before. Troopers had to go easy on their horses, for fear of foundering them. The Kubratoi gained ground on the imperials, for some of them, in nomad fashion, had remounts available. Etzilios kept on fleeing, though. Now he led the men who had been surprised and beaten and who wanted no more of their foes.
Then, toward late afternoon, a scout galloped back to Maniakes. The fellow urged on his mount as if it had left the stable not a quarter of an hour before. "Your Majesty!" he cried, and then again: "Your Majesty!" He delivered his news with a great shout: "The Kubratoi up ahead, they're fighting!"
"By the good god," Maniakes said softly. He glanced over to Symvatios. The bandage had slipped down so it almost covered one of his uncle's eyes, giving him a distinctly piratical air. Symvatios clenched his right hand into a fist and laid it over his heart in salute. Maniakes turned and spoke to the trumpeters: "Blow pursuit once more. Now we give all the effort we have in us. If we can get to the battlefield fast enough, the Kubratoi will take a blow they'll be a long time getting over."
Martial music rang out. Tired men spurred tired horses from walks up to trots. They checked their quivers. Few had many arrows left. The nomads would be in the same straits. Maniakes wished the supply wagons could have kept up with his host. If they had, he would have poured arrows into Etzilios' men till night made him stop.
To his initial startlement, a band of nomads charged straight back toward his forces. Symvatios figured out what that meant, shouting, "Etzilios knows he's in the smithy's shop. Are we going to let him keep the hammer from coming down on the anvil one last time?"
"No!" the Videssian soldiers roared. They were no more enthusiastic about exposing their bodies to wounds than any men of sense would have been, but, since they had chosen that trade, they did not want their risks to be to no purpose. They surged forward against the Kubratoi, who, badly outnumbered, were soon overwhelmed.
Up ahead, Maniakes saw the rest of the nomads battling a force under sunburst banners deployed directly across their line of retreat. "Hammer and anvil!" he cried, echoing his uncle. "Now we come down."
The wail of despair that rose when the Kubratoi spied his force was music to his ears. He spurred his horse into a shambling gallop. The first Kubrati he met cut at him once, missed, then set spur to his own pony and did his best to escape. A Videssian who still had arrows brought him down as if he were a fleeing fox.
"Maniakes!" shouted the Videssians who kept the Kubratoi from escaping to the north.
"Rhegorios!" Maniakes shouted back, and his troopers took up the call. Now that Maniakes' men had reached the field, his cousin, instead of merely holding the nomads at bay, pressed hard against them. Rhegorios' soldiers were fresh and rested and mounted on horses that hadn't been going hard for a day and a night and most of another day. Their quivers were full. They struck with a force out of proportion to their numbers.
All at once, the Kubratoi opposing them made the fatal transition from army to frightened mob, each man looking no farther than toward what might keep his uniquely precious self alive another few minutes. In that moment of dissolution, Maniakes looked round the field for the horsetail that marked Etzilios' position. He wanted to serve the khagan as he had nearly been served south of Imbros. If he could kill or capture the leader of the Kubratoi, the nomads might fight among themselves for years over the succession.
He saw nothing to show Etzilios' place. As he himself had while fleeing from the Kubrati ambush, the khagan had abandoned the symbol of his station to give himself a better chance of keeping it. "Five pounds of gold to the man who brings me Etzilios, alive or dead!" the Avtokrator cried.
Though the battle was won, and won crushingly, a good many Kubratoi managed to squeeze out from between Maniakes' force and Rhegorios'. Then the light began to fail, which allowed more escapes. No one led Etzilios in bonds before Maniakes or rode up carrying the khagan's dripping head. Maniakes wondered whether he lay anonymously dead on the field or had succeeded in getting away. Time would tell. At the moment, in the midst of triumph, his fate seemed a small thing.
Here came Rhegorios, his handsome face wearing a smile as bright as the sun now setting. "We did it!" he cried, and embraced Maniakes. "By Phos, we did it. Hammer and anvil, and crushed them between us."