"What do I say about that?" the elder Maniakes wondered aloud. "Only that if you've seen through the act, it isn't as good as it should be, and I'll have to put more work into it." He sounded genuinely chagrined.
The next morning dawned clear and hot, as did almost every morning in late spring, summer, and early fall in the land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssian engineers had enough pontoons and chains and planks to bridge the Tib and Tutub-plenty to bridge an irrigation canal many times over. As soon as it was light, they started throwing a good many bridges across the canal that held them apart from Smerdis' men.
To Abivard's dismay, scouts from Smerdis' army were alert. No sooner had the bridges started to snake across the oily-looking water than the unmounted archers came rushing up from their camp and began shooting at the engineers. As at the crossing of the Tutub, some of the Videssians held big shields to protect the rest from the rain of arrows. As the bridges moved forward, Videssian horse archers rode out onto them and started shooting back at Smerdis' men.
They were badly outnumbered, but did damage to the foe all the same: few of Smerdis' bowmen wore any sort of armor. The heavy cavalry with the foot soldiers gathered in knots in front of the growing bridges to fight off any of Sharbaraz's men who managed to cross.
Sharbaraz's own armored lancers assembled near their end of a bridge that grew ever nearer the west bank of the canal. Abivard sat his horse at their head, wondering how, if the men he led charged over the bridge in one direction while Smerdis' followers charged in the other, the Videssian engineers would keep from getting squashed between them.
He found out: as soon as the engineers got the last planks in place, they dove into the canal and started swimming through the turbid water back toward the eastern bank. No sooner had they splashed down into the water than Abivard cried, "Sharbaraz!" and booted his horse forward.
The bridge swayed, as if in an earthquake, under the galloping hooves of dozens of horses. Abivard met his first foe not quite two thirds of the way toward the west bank of the canal-he might have started a heartbeat sooner than Smerdis' man, and perhaps he was better mounted, too.
He twisted his body away from the questing point of the foe's lance. At the same time, he struck with his own. The blow caught Smerdis' soldier in the chest and pitched him off over his horse's tail. Abivard's mount, a trained warhorse, lashed out at the fallen lancer with iron-shod hooves. Abivard spurred the horse ahead toward the next enemy.
The bridge was not wide. More splashes, some of them big ones, marked men and horses falling or getting pushed into the canal. In their heavy iron armor, most of them did not come up again.
"Sharbaraz!" Abivard cried again. He and the backers of the rightful King of Kings slowly pushed Smerdis' men toward their own end of the bridge. Not one of Sharbaraz's followers, though, had yet set foot on the muddy western bank of the canal. Smerdis' troopers yelled the name of their candidate for the throne as loudly as Sharbaraz's warriors extolled him.
Then, from the north, a new cry rang out along the canal's western bank: "Sarbaraz!" Abivard whooped gleefully. Even if the Videssians couldn't pronounce the sh sound, they were not only good soldiers but subtle planners. The elder Maniakes had predicted Smerdis' soldiers would be so busy fighting the warriors they saw that they would pay no attention to anything else. Some of his engineers had taken advantage of the cover offered by the hillock the Videssian general had mentioned to run one more floating bridge across the canal. A large force of Videssian mounted archers proceeded to cross with no opposition whatever.
They shot up Smerdis' unarmored foot soldiers, then, crying "Sarbaraz!" once more, they charged them, swinging sabers and thrusting with light spears. They weren't quite so deadly as Makuraner lancers would have been, but they were more than enough to rout the dismounted archers, who were useful when they could ply a foe with arrows without being directly assailed in return, but whose clubs and knives offered next to no defense in close quarters.
Smerdis' heavy cavalry had to break off the fight at the bridgeheads to swing back against the Videssians and keep themselves from being surrounded and altogether destroyed. But that let Abivard and his men reach the west bank of the canal, just as the flight of the bowmen let the Videssian engineers finish more bridges so more of Sharbaraz's lancers could cross.
The officer who led the Videssian flanking force had a nice sense of what was essential. He let the archers run and concentrated on Smerdis' horsemen. His own troopers were more heavily armed than nonnoble Makuraner warriors, though they didn't wear iron from head to toe and their horses bore only quilted cloth protection. They could hurt Smerdis' men if those men didn't assail them with everything they had, and could stand up well enough against an all-out charge to ensure that Smerdis' lancers couldn't smash through them and escape from Sharbaraz's men.
Smerdis' lancers were quick to realize that. They began throwing down their long spears and swords. Some cried, "Mercy!" Others shouted Sharbaraz's name. Some fought on. Most of those went down, but a few managed to break away and run.
The Videssian commander-it was the younger Maniakes, Abivard remembered-was not content with victory, but sent his own horsemen after Smerdis' fleeing lancers. They brought down quite a few more before returning to their comrades.
"A cheer for the Maniakai, father and son," Abivard shouted. "The one planned the victory, the other made it real." The Makuraners he had led yelled themselves hoarse. Any of them who happened to be near Videssians pounded their allies on the back, bawled in their ears, and offered them wine from the skins they wore on their belts. For that moment, at least, the ancient enemies could not have been closer friends.
Abivard rode toward the younger Maniakes. "Well done," he said. "You're younger than I am; I envy you your cool head."
The younger man smiled. He had a small cut on his left cheek and a dent and a sparkling line on the bar nasal of his helmet; without the nasal, he would have taken a bad wound. He said, "You did well yourself, eminent sir; if you hadn't pressed them so hard, they might have punched through us and got away in a body."
"That's what I was trying to stop, all right," Abivard said, nodding.
"There'll be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in Mashiz when word of this fight gets back to Smerdis Pimp of Pimps."
"Good," the younger Maniakes said, grinning. "That was the idea, after all. And there'll be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the land of the Thousand Cities, too. We used those unmounted archers hard, and anyone with an eye in his head to see with can figure out that we would have used them harder if we hadn't had more important things to do. The folk hereabouts may want to think twice before they back Smerdis over Sar-Sharbaraz." He pumped his fist in the air in triumph at correctly pronouncing the Makuraner sound.
"We beat those archers once and fought them again, but it didn't make the Thousand Cities change their mind," Abivard said. "Maybe this time it will, though. I hope so."
"This fight happened in the middle of the Land of the Thousand Cities, not off in the southern desert," the younger Maniakes said. "And Smerdis' army looks to have broken up, to boot. Every man who gets away alive will go home, and every man who gets home will spread the tale of how we smashed Smerdis' general. That can't do Smerdis' cause any good."
"So it can't." Abivard eyed the Videssian commander's son with new respect.