He almost died before dawn, with no chance to worry about Alauda or Alca or, for that matter, Estrilda. The Menteshe often shied away from stand-up fights, yes. But a night attack, an assault that caught their enemies by surprise, was a different story.
Their wizards must have found some way to fuddle the sentries, for the Avornans knew nothing of their onslaught until moments before it broke upon them. They would have been caught altogether unaware if Pterocles hadn’t started up from his pallet, shouting, “Danger! Danger!” By the confused shock in his voice, he didn’t even know what sort of danger it was, only that it was real and it was close.
His cry woke Grus. The king’s dreams had been of anything but danger. When he woke, one of Alauda’s breasts filled his hand. He’d known that even in his sleep, and it had colored and heated his imaginings.
Now… now, along with the wizard’s shouts of alarm, he heard the oncoming thunder of hoofbeats and harsh war cries in a language not Avornan. Cursing, he realized at least some of what must have happened. He threw on drawers, jammed a helmet down on his head, seized sword and shield, and ran, otherwise naked, from the tent.
“Out!” Grus shouted at the top of his lungs. “Out and fight! Quick, before they kill you all!”
Soldiers started spilling from their tents. In the crimson light of the dying campfires, they might have been dipped in blood. Many of them were as erratically armed and armored as the king himself—this one had a sword, that one a mailshirt, the other a shield, another a bow.
They were a poor lot to try to stop the rampaging Menteshe. And yet the nomads seemed to have looked for no opposition whatever. They cried out in surprise and alarm when Avornans rushed forward to slash at them, to pull them from their horses, and to shoot arrows at them. They’d been looking to murder Grus’ soldiers in their tents, to take them altogether unawares. Whatever happened, that wouldn’t. More and more Avornans streamed into the fight, these more fully armed than the first few.
One of Prince Ulash’s men reined in right in front of Grus. The nomad stared around, looking for foes on horseback. He found none—? and had no idea Grus was there until the king yanked him out of the saddle. He had time for one startled squawk before landing in a camp-fire. He didn’t squawk after that. He shrieked. The fire was dying, but not yet dead. And the coals flared to new life when he crashed down on them.
As for Grus, he sprang into the saddle without even thinking about how little he cared for horses and horsemanship. The pony under him bucked at the sudden change of riders. He cuffed it into submission, yelling, “Avornis! Avornis! To me, men! We can beat these cursed raiders!”
“King Grus!” shouted a soldier who recognized his voice. An instant later, a hundred, a thousand throats had taken up the cry. “King Grus! Hurrah for King Grus!”
That proved a mixed blessing. His own men did rally to him. But the Menteshe cried out, too, and pressed him as hard as they could in the crimson-shot darkness. Arrow after arrow hissed past his head. If the archers had been able to see clearly what they were shooting at, he doubted he could have lasted long. At night, though, they kept missing. Even as he slashed with his sword, he breathed prayers of thanks to the gods.
In the screaming, cursing chaos, he took longer to realize something than he should have. When he did, he bawled it out as loud as he could. “There aren’t very many of them. Hit them hard! We can beat them!”
Maybe the magic—Grus presumed it was magic—that had let the Menteshe slip past his sentries couldn’t have hidden more of them; Pterocles had also had trouble masking too many men. Whatever the reason, this wasn’t an assault by their whole army, as he’d feared when Pterocles’ cry of alarm first woke him. It was a raid. It could have been a costly raid, but now it wouldn’t be.
Prince Ulash’s men didn’t need much more time to figure that out for themselves. When they did, they weren’t ashamed to flee. The Avornans spent some small, panicky stretch of time striking at one another before they realized the enemy had gone.
More fuel went on the fires. As they flared up, Hirundo waved to Grus. “Well, that’s one way to settle your supper,” the general said cheerfully.
Grus noticed three or four cuts, luckily all small, that he’d ignored in the heat of battle. “For a little while there, I wondered if we’d get settled along with supper,” he remarked. Hirundo laughed, as though the Menteshe had done no more than play a clever joke on the Avornan army. Grus was in no mood for laughter. He raised his voice, shouting, “Pterocles!”
He had to call the wizard’s name several times before he got an answer. He’d begun to fear the nomads had slain Pterocles. No sorcerer was immune to an arrow through the throat or a sword cut that tore out his vitals. But, at length, Pterocles limped into the firelight. He had an arrow through him, all right, but through one calf. He’d wrapped a rag around the wound. Not even the ruddy light of the flames could make his face anything but pallid.
“Are you all right?” Grus exclaimed.
“That depends, Your Majesty,” the wizard said, biting his lip against the pain. “Is the wound likely to kill me? No. Do I wish I didn’t have it? Yes.”
Hirundo said, “I’ve never known a wound I was glad I had.”
“Nor I,” Grus agreed. “Have a healer draw the shaft and give you opium for the pain. You’re lucky the arrowhead went through—the healer won’t have to cut it out of you.”
“Lucky.” Pterocles savored the word. After a moment, he shook his head. “If I were lucky, it would have missed me.”
Grus nodded, yielding the point. He said, “We’re all lucky you sensed the nomads coming. What sort of spell did they use to get past the sentries, and can we make sure it won’t work if they try it again?”
“A masking spell on the sentries,” Pterocles answered. “A masking spell on them, and a sleep spell on me—maybe on this whole camp, but I think just on me—so we wouldn’t know the Menteshe were here until too late. It might have done everything the nomads wanted if I hadn’t had an extra cup of wine last night.”
“What’s that?” Hirundo said. “Wine makes me sleepy.”
The wizard managed a bloodless smile, though blood was darkening the cloth he’d put around his wounded leg. He said, “Wine makes me sleepy, too. But it also makes me wake up in the middle of the night— which I did, for I had to piss or burst. And when I woke…”
Hirundo clapped his hands. Grus was sure that was the first time he’d ever heard anyone’s bladder applauded. “Stay where you are. Don’t move on it anymore,” the king told Pterocles, and turned to a soldier standing not far away. “Fetch a healer to treat the wizard’s wound.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The man hurried off.
“You didn’t answer the second half of my question,” Grus said to Pterocles. “Can we make sure Ulash’s men don’t get away with this again?”
Pterocles said, “The sleep spell isn’t easy. It caught me by surprise this time. It won’t the next.”
“What about other wizards?” Grus asked.
“I can let them know what to be wary of,” Pterocles told him. “That will give them a good chance to steer clear of the spell, anyhow.”
“Better than nothing,” Grus said. It wasn’t enough to suit him, but he judged it would have to do. His army had come through here. And tomorrow… Tomorrow, Pelagonia, he thought.