Most of the foot soldiers in the enemy army were not, strictly speaking, Makuraners, but rather men from the Thousand Cities. They were shorter and stockier and a little swarthier than the boiler boys from the high plateau to the west, with hair so black it shone with blue highlights, often worn in a neat bun resting on the nape of the neck. Their chief weapon was the bow; they carried knives and clubs for fighting at close quarters. Some of them wore helmets: businesslike iron pots, or sometimes leather caps strengthened with iron bands. Past that, the only armor they bore was their wicker shields.
They could fight. Maniakes had seen that. They hadn't done much fighting in the years before the Videssians had plunged into the Land of the Thousand Cities, but, as he'd thought a little while before, they'd learned their trade since. That was partly Abivard's fault—or to his credit, if you looked at things from the Makuraner point of view. It was also partly Maniakes' fault. By fighting a series of battles against the local infantry, he'd given them a course in how to go about fighting Videssians. Some of them had learned better than he would have wished.
He nodded to Rhegorios, who sat his horse beside Maniakes and Antelope, and pointed out toward the enemy infantry. «See– they're laying down some sort of barricade to keep us from charging home against them. Thornbushes, maybe, or something like that»
«We aren't planning on charging in among them right away anyhow, though,» his cousin answered. «That kind of barrier would do more against Makuraner heavy cavalry, the kind that closes on you with the lance, than it does against our horse-archers.»
«It'll be a nuisance for our men, too,» Maniakes said, «and they're liable to pull the barricade away if they see a good place to come charging right out at us. In the fights last fall, as we were pulling back toward Lyssaion, their infantry was as aggressive as any general could want.»
«Of course, they were working alongside cavalry of their own then,» Rhegorios said. «They won't be so tough without the boiler boys here.»
Mention of the Makuraner heavy cavalry was plenty to make Maniakes look north and then south, wondering still where Abivard was and how and when he might appear. When the Videssian army was locked in combat with the local infantry seemed a good bet.
«You'll get the right wing,» Maniakes told his cousin when Abivard once more failed to materialize. «I won't give you any detailed orders about what to do with it, but you can move faster than foot soldiers. If you can flank them out of their position, that would be a good thing to do.»
«Easier if they weren't cutting more canals,» Rhegorios observed. «But I will try—you know that.»
«Everything would be easier if they didn't make it harder,» Maniakes said, which drew a nod and a laugh from his cousin. He went on, «Keep scouts out wide on your flank, too. Abivard's lurking out there somewhere.»
«Maybe he's fallen into that Void where the Makuraners are always consigning people they don't like,» Rhegorios said. «But that would be too much to hope for, wouldn't it? Aye, I'll watch for him. And you, cousin, you keep a good watch on your other flank, too.»
«I'll watch as carefully as a Makuraner noble checking his women's quarters to make sure nobody sneaks in.» The Avtokrator slapped Rhegorios on his mailed back. «Now, let's see what kind of dance we'll have with all these lovely people, shall we?»
«They've come a long way. We wouldn't want to disappoint them.» Rhegorios looked thoughtful. «We've come a long way, too.»
«So we have,» Maniakes said. «We wouldn't want to disappoint us, either.»
Rhegorios rode off to take charge of his wing of the army. The Makuraners were leaving the choice of when and how to begin the battle to the imperials. Under most circumstances, Maniakes would also have had the option of whether to begin the battle at all, as his horsemen were more mobile than the infantry opposing them. But, having almost completed his preparations for fording the Tib, he could not abandon the timber and boats without losing them and abandoning his plans as well. Unwilling to do that, Maniakes knew he had to fight here.
He watched Rhegorios and his division ride out for the flanking maneuver they might or might not prove able to bring off. Wanting to keep his center strong, he sent a smaller force off to the left. He warned Immodios, who was commanding it, to keep an eye out for Abivard.
«I'll do that, your Majesty,» the officer answered. «If he does show up, we'll stop him cold, I promise you.»
«Good man,» Maniakes said. If Abivard showed up with a good-sized force of boiler boys, Immodios wasn't going to stop him. The Avtokrator knew that. He hoped Immodios did, too. With luck, though, the horsemen on the left would slow down a cavalry attack from the flank enough to give the center some hope of dealing with it.
Horns brayed out orders for the advance. As the Videssians drew near, their opponents shouted curses at them in the Makuraner tongue and in the harsher, more guttural language of the Thousand Cities. «Ignore those vicious calumnies, whatever they may mean,» a blue-robed priest of Phos declared. «Go forth to victory and glory, defending the true and holy faith of Phos with all the weapons of war. Go forth, and may the lord with the great and good mind shine down upon you and light your way forward.»
A few men cheered. More—those who had already heard a lot of priests' homilies and seen a lot of battles won or lost or drawn– savored the rhetoric without letting it carry them away. Phos would do as he pleased, they would do as they pleased, and eventually the fight would have a winner.
The first arrows began flying soon thereafter. Whoever commanded the Makuraner army had a fine grasp of logistics, because the foot soldiers from the Land of the Thousand Cities shot and shot and shot, showing not the slightest sign that they were likely to run out of the shafts anytime soon. Such a barrage bespoke endless slow-trundling wagons filled with endless bundles of arrows. Seeing their flight was like watching a great swarm of locusts taking off from one field to descend in another.
The Videssians shot back. They were less well supplied with missiles than their foes. On the other hand, when one of their shafts struck a soldier from the Makuraner army, it usually wounded. The reverse was not true, their chain mail holding many arrows at bay. «Get in among them and they're ours!» Maniakes shouted, urging his men forward despite the swarm of enemy arrows.
But getting in among the soldiers from the Makuraner army Was anything but easy. The soldiers they had stationed immediately behind their thornbush barricades sent arrows flying out as far as they could. The second line of men from the Thousand Cities lobbed shafts high over the heads of the first line, so that those arrows came down on anyone who had reached the barricade and was trying to tear it away. All in all, it was like going forward in a rain of iron-tipped wood.
Seeing the difficulties his men were having in closing with the Makuraner force, Maniakes summoned Ypsilantes. Engineers were made for situations ordinary soldiers found impossible. Over the cries of men, the shrieks of wounded horses, through the constant whistling hiss of arrows, Maniakes pointed to the barricade and said, «What can we do about that, excellent sir?»
They're not fools, worse luck, your Majesty,» Ypsilantes answered. «They soaked the bushes well, so they won't be easy to set afire.» Only after Maniakes had nodded did he think to be surprised the chief engineer had already checked about such a tiny detail—but then, that sort of attention to detail was what made Ypsilantes chief engineer. He went on, «When you look at it, it's almost like storming a city wall. Some of the same tools should answer.»