And the Menteshe had plans of their own. Grus listened to drums talking back and forth through the night. He’d done that before, but now he understood some of what the drums were saying. If he understood them rightly, the nomads intended to smash his army between two of theirs.
When he said as much to Hirundo, the general nodded. “We’re trying to do the same to them, Your Majesty,” he said. “All depends on who manages to bring it off.”
“I know,” Grus said. “Let’s see if we can’t give them a little surprise, though, shall we? I don’t think they know yet that we can follow what the drums say.”
“We’d better make this win important, then,” Hirundo said. “Otherwise, we’ll have given away a secret without getting a good price for it.”
Grus hadn’t thought of that. He slowly nodded. Hirundo, as usual, made good sense. The king and the general put their heads together, trying to figure out how to turn what they knew into a real triumph. Grus liked the plan they hammered out.
Even so, it almost came to pieces at first light the next morning, because the Menteshe attacked sooner than Grus had thought they would. Arrows started arcing toward the Avornan army from east and west even before the sun cleared the eastern horizon. If the Avornans hadn’t pieced together what the drums were saying, his soldiers might have been caught still in their tents. As things were, not all of them had reached the positions he wanted by the time the fighting started.
But they’d done enough, especially in the east, where he wanted to hold the Menteshe. He had to delay his attack in the west until he had some confidence the east would hold. That meant the nomads peppered his men with arrows for an extra hour or so. But they didn’t push their attack as hard as they might have. Their main assault was supposed to be in the east. So the drums had said, and so it proved.
“Forward!” Grus shouted when everything was at least close to his liking. The Avornans’ horns wailed. The Menteshe probably understood horn calls the same way he understood their drum signals, but it didn’t matter here. The Avornans rode bigger horses and wore sturdier armor than the Menteshe. At close quarters, they had the edge on the nomads. And, because Prince Ulash’s men were so intent on their own plan, they’d come to close quarters.
They shouted in dismay when the iron-armored wedge of the Avornan army thundered at them, smashed their line, and hurled it aside. Grus struck out to right and left with his sword. A couple of times, it bit into flesh. More often, it kept one Menteshe or another from getting a good swipe at him.
When things went wrong, the nomads thought nothing of running away to try again some other time. Grus had expected that. This time, he tried to use it to his own purposes. He’d deployed outriders who shot at the nomads trying to escape to the north. The Menteshe, still surprised at the vigor of his response, recoiled from that direction and galloped south instead.
That was where he wanted them to go. Only when they drew close to the Anapus did they realize as much. They cried out in dismay again, for the river galleys waited there. Not only that, but the ships also landed marines who shot volley after volley of arrows into the Menteshe. And the catapults on the galleys kept the nomads from closing with the marines and riding them down. After darts from those catapults pinned two or three Menteshe to their horses and knocked several more off their mounts, Ulash’s riders didn’t want to go anywhere near the river.
Their other choice was charging at Grus and the men he led. That wasn’t the sort of fight they wanted, but desperation served where nothing else would. Shouting fiercely in their own language, the nomads swarmed toward the Avornan army.
A volley from the Menteshe made several Avornan horsemen pitch from the saddle and crumple to the ground. Wounded horses squealed and screamed. But soon the attacking Menteshe got close enough for Grus’ men to shoot back. And they did, with well-disciplined flights of arrows that tore into the invaders’ front ranks. “Grus! Grus! King Grus!” the Avornans cried.
Then it wasn’t just arrows anymore. It was swords and javelins and lances. It was men shouting and cursing and shrieking at the top of their lungs. It was iron belling off iron, iron striking sparks from iron, the hot iron stink of blood in the air. It was cut and hack and slash and thrust—and, for Grus, it was hoping he could stay alive.
He cut at a Menteshe. Along with a shirt of boiled leather that turned arrows almost as well as a mailcoat, the fellow wore a close-fitting iron cap. Grus’ blow jammed it down onto his forehead; the cut from the rim made blood run down into his eyes. He yammered in pain and yanked the iron cap back up with his left hand. But Grus struck again a heartbeat later. His sword crunched into the nomad’s cheek. He felt the blow all the way up into his shoulder. Face a gory mask, the Menteshe slid off over his horse’s tail.
Another nomad hacked at Grus. He managed to block the blow with his shield. He felt that one all the way to the shoulder, too, and knew his shield arm would be bruised and sore come morning. But if he hadn’t turned the blade aside, it would have bitten into his ribs. He hoped his mailshirt and the padding beneath would have kept it out of his vitals, but that wasn’t the sort of thing anybody wanted to find out the hard way.
An Avornan to Grus’ left engaged the Menteshe before he could slash at the king again. An arrow hissed past Grus’ head, the sound of its passage as malignant as a wasp’s buzz—and its sting, if it had struck home, far more deadly.
For a little while, he worried that the nomads’ fear and desperation would fire them to break through his battle line. But the Avornans held, and then began pushing Ulash’s riders back toward the Anapus regardless of whether they wanted to go that way. When the marines from the river galleys and the catapults on the ships began galling them again, they broke, riding off wildly in all directions.
“After them!” Grus croaked. He took a swig from his water bottle to lay the dust in his throat, then shouted out the command. Still crying out his name, the Avornans thundered after their foes. Some of the Menteshe got away, but many fell.
Hirundo was bleeding from a cut on the back of his sword hand. He didn’t even seem to know he had the wound. “Not bad, Your Majesty,” he said. “Not bad at all, by the gods. We hurt ’em bad this time.”
“Yes,” Grus said. “It’s only fair—they’ve done the same to us.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
King Lanius sat on the Diamond Throne. The weight of the royal crown was heavy on his head. His most splendid royal robes, shot through with gold threads and encrusted with jewels and pearls, were as heavy as a mailshirt. Down below his high seat, royal bodyguards clutched swords and spears. The men were as nervous as big, tough farm dogs when wolves came near. And Lanius was nervous, too. He hadn’t expected an embassy from the Chernagor city-state of Durdevatz. Men from Durdevatz had brought him his monkeys. In those days, though, peace had reigned between the Chernagors and Avornis. Things were different now.
But how different were they? Lanius himself didn’t know. From what he did know, Durdevatz wasn’t one of the city-states that had helped resupply Nishevatz when Grus besieged it. Who could say for certain what had happened since then, though? No one could—which explained why the guards clung so tightly to their weapons.
And along with the guards stood a pair of wizards tricked out in helmets and mailshirts, shields and swords. They wouldn’t be worth much in a fight, but the disguise might help them cast their spells if any of the Chernagors in the embassy tried to loose magic against the king.
Would the men from Durdevatz do such a thing? Lanius didn’t know that, either. All he knew was, he didn’t want to find out the hard way that he should have had sorcerers there.