Lord of Janissaries (102 page)

“The horse will be divided into two equal parts. One will advance on the left. The other will advance on the right. The foot will advance in the center. The honor of the gods will be avenged.”

“For the honor of the gods!” shouted the Defenders standing three deep around Phrados the Prophet.

“For the honor of the gods!” shouted all the captains sitting on their horses in a wider circle around the Defenders.

Highpriest Matthias shouted as loudly as any. It would not be within reason for the Defenders to drag him off his horse and cut his throat now, in the very presence of the enemy—but many things Phrados had ordered in these past few days were not within reason. Tyras now had plenty of company in whatever land a madman’s victims went to after death.

Even those who had grown used to capricious murders had been shaken by the slaughter of the women and children of Myreis. Over a thousand of them butchered in a single night after Phrados learned of their men’s surrender to the skyfolk.

Clearly Phrados had intended that his soldiers fear him and the Defenders more than the enemy and his magical weapons. Had the Prophet accomplished this? Matthias doubted it, but it was a measure of how much fear Phrados had sown that Matthias dared not speak to anyone about these doubts.

He also doubted that the fear would much outlast the Defenders. If they perished in the battle, whether it was won or lost, not one in ten of the host would thereafter blindly obey Phrados. From such a situation, a man prepared to counsel the captains, as nobleman, warrior, and priest, might draw much to the advantage of both himself and his masters.

But that was pricing the unborn calf. Matthias made a gesture of aversion with his armored gauntlet and gathered up the reins. He wanted to lead his men into position on the right, as soon as Phrados finished giving more precise orders for the battle.

Now the bearers of the Prophet’s litter were coming forward. Matthias realized with dismay that no more precise orders would be given. He wondered if the other captains were also dismayed, but those whose faces were visible under their helmets might as well have been wearing masks.

Prophet or no Prophet, it was tempting the gods to make such scanty plans for a battle on which so much depended. The skyfolk and their allies were outnumbered three to one, but even their foot was better than most of the Prophet’s. Two-thirds of their horse were the armored knights of Drantos and Tamaerthon or the still more formidable legions of Rome. With or without star weapons the Prophet faced a formidable foe—

And there would be star weapons. The tales of their work in the battles against the Rustengans and Lord Gengrich had lost nothing in the telling, but it seemed to Matthias that the star weapons were indeed formidable. Would they be less formidable if one did not gather one’s men in great masses and hurl them at the starmen?

No matter. Such a stratagem was not within the power of the Prophet’s host. It had too many captains, too many who did not know their work, and none Phrados would trust to fight except under his eye.

Also, even if a captain did move his men to find a place where the star weapons were weak, would he not be seen at once by the balloon? There it was, hanging in the sky over the hill at the rear of the starmen’s host. Smoke trailed from the basket under it. From this distance Matthias could not see the men in the basket, but he knew from the stories of last year’s battles that they would be there.

Was the balloon a living creature from Earth? There were no tales of such things in the time when men first came to Tran, but that was long ago. The art of taming balloons might not have been known then.

Or was it a creation of magic? Or—and these tales persisted, though they seemed altogether improbable to Matthias—was it a mere machine, like a wagon or a ship? Could anyone master the art of making balloons and thereafter gaze down upon his enemies with an all-seeing eye?

Perhaps they would find out today, if the gods smiled on the Prophet in spite of his folly. Meanwhile, there were ways to lessen that folly. If he could move his men to the left instead of the right, there would be captains willing to listen to him once out of the hearing of the Defenders. He could do something to make sure that the village on the High Road was held, that the High Road itself was held where it left the forest, and that no one advanced down the High Road into what would surely be ambushes.

Beyond that, he could offer even his best friends among the host of Phrados nothing but his prayers.

* * *

The vanguard of the knights of Drantos had beaten off their third attack by the enemy’s horse when the Roman tribune rode past Apelles. The priest looked to see that the bandage he’d just finished putting on a man-at-arms’ leg wasn’t too tight, then watched the tribune. He made a very fine sight in his molded and silvered armor, with his escort of twenty almost equally splendid soldiers of the Praetorian Guard.

The tribune rode up to the banner of Rudhrig, Eqeta of Harms, and saluted in the Roman manner.

“Hail, Lord Rudhrig. Publius Caesar hails your victory and the valor of your knights, and bids you withdraw your knights to the slope of the hill just above the edge of the forest and there await further orders.”

Even from where he stood, Apelles could see the Eqeta’s face change color. “The knights of Drantos do not give up ground they have held thrice over. We will await our orders here.”

“Publius Caesar commands—”

“Publius Caesar can command you to come and babble to us of dishonoring ourselves. He cannot command us, unless he comes himself.”

“An order brought by a tribune of Caesar is—”

“A fart in a wine cup, as far as it concerns me. Now, tribune, will you take that message to Publius Caesar or not? It matters little to me.”

What the tribune might have said in reply was lost in the blare of enemy horns signalling a new attack. Apelles saw the tribune’s face twist with conflicting desires—return to Caesar or stay and prove that he would not at least turn his back on a foe.

“They come!” one of the acolytes gibbered. “The enemy comes, and we will be abandoned!”

“Calm,” Apelles said, although he felt little enough calm himself. “Not all of them come. They are not clever enough to attack all at once. We defeated them before. We will again. The honor of the bheromen of Drantos protects us. They will not leave us.” Or at least they will not leave their dead and wounded. “Now. You neglect the cleansing. Let us wash our hands together, and say together the prayers of exorcism.”

When Apelles looked up again he saw that the Roman tribune had joined in the counter stroke. The swiftness of the enemy attack had left him small choice.

“I think they have no one captain in command,” Apelles said to a knight as he poured—
disinfectant
—into a deep thigh wound. The leg was broken and would have to be set.

The knight grunted in pain. “This captain seems clever enough. He has pressed home his attack—”

And that he has, Apelles thought.

The enemy horse archers swept around the Drantos left and reached the scrub on the fringes of the forest. For about as long as it would have taken Apelles to drink a cup of poor wine, the ground to the rear of the Drantos vanguard was beaten by enemy arrows. Some fell close to the wounded, and several mules and packhorses went down.

Then the Tamaerthan archers appeared at the edge of the forest. A trumpet sounded. They were too far for Apelles to hear their commander, but in his mind he heard the cry anyway. “Let the grey gulls fly!”

Three hundred arrows arched toward the Prophet’s men. Then three hundred more, and in a breath another flight. The horse archers went down. A brave few spurred toward the forest, but no more than a score came close enough to loose their own arrows. Then they too were shot out of their saddles.

The rest of the enemy withdrew. Before they could escape, horse archers and lancers alike were shattered by a Drantos charge. Eqeta and tribune rode boot to boot into the enemy’s ranks.

Once the road to the rear was open, the tribune and his surviving Praetorians took it. The Eqeta led his men back past Apelles, dropping off five more dead and fifteen more wounded on the way. Apelles ordered one of the acolytes to divide the wounded into the gravely and the lightly hurt, and a scribe to record the names of the dead.

It was a good thing that so far there were fewer than two hundred wounded, and many of those were tended by their squires or servants. Apelles could have used three times as many acolytes and twice as many scribes.

I am an
administrator,
not a healer, he thought. Neither Yanulf nor Polycarp disputed that, but still he was sent to take his turn in the field hospitals.
They say it is a lesson in humility. It is certainly that.
When he was in his office, surrounded by files and papers with a dozen clerks on call, he was a man of consequence. Here the knights were all too ready to forget that Yatar had made him a priest, and to remember that he had been born a swineherd.

Yet it does no harm to learn the arts of healing, and an
administrator
must know something of war.

Few of the wounded this time needed more than a cleaning of their wounds and a bandage. Apelles had time to gaze around him, and notice that the mass of foot in the enemy’s center had grown larger. It also had a vanguard of men in armor, or at least helmets and breastplates, and armed with shields and swords or spears.

It seemed to Apelles that there was wisdom in Publius Caesar’s orders. Certainly the eight hundred lances of the vanguard had done well, slaying or unhorsing half again their own numbers. Yet if the enemy chose to support their next attack with some of that mass of foot, would the knights find it as easy to clear their retreat? Apelles did not call himself a man of war, but he knew that heavy cavalry could not easily retreat through a forest and that eight hundred lances were far too many for Drantos to lose.

Not to mention the wounded and dead, whom he could not abandon to an enemy who took no prisoners.

Apelles was just beginning work on an arrow sunk three fingers into a knight’s left buttock when horns and hoofbeats made him rise and stare. For a moment he thought it was another attack, but these horns were the deep-toned Roman ones and the horsemen riding up were Roman Praetorians. Roman Praetorians, a whole cohort of them—and in the middle a familiar small figure in gilded armor, with a deep red cloak flowing back from his shoulders.

Publius Caesar had come to give his orders in person.

Apelles signaled to the apprentices to busy themselves in their work. It would not do for them to stare. He himself moved closer, so that he would miss nothing.
If healing is part of my training, so is this.

“After the Hooey River I thought you well-born witlings knew how to fight,” Publius roared. “Titus Frugi even doubted that you were barbarians. Now I know that he was wrong, and you remain barbarians who know nothing except how to die with honor.”

“Who is the barbarian?” replied the Eqeta. “Those who know how to die with honor, or those who have never heard of honor at all?”

The quarrel went on from there. No doubt it helped that five hundred Praetorians were enough to quell any ideas of laying hands on Publius but not enough to give Publius ideas of forcing the knights to move.

“You would not obey my order when I sent it to you,” Publius finished. “Now I
bring
it to you, at a time when I and my Praetorians could as well be fighting our common foe. You said you would obey me. Whether you live or die, you will not seem very honorable if you do otherwise. Now—I command you and the vanguard of Drantos to withdraw to a position I will choose for you.”

Lord Rudhrig’s hesitation lasted only a moment, although it seemed like half a glass to Apelles. Then he nodded, and with a wave of his hand sent messengers riding down the line to carry the order to retreat.

* * *

“Here.” Apelles indicated a ditch that would be the outermost boundary of his new field hospital at the rear of what everyone was calling the Great Redoubt. Acolytes came to erect the tent, with its solid roof for shade, and its thin netting that gave ventilation but prevented flies and borers from entering. More star lore, but it seemed to work.
Something
worked. Exclude the small devils that hid in dirt from entering the body, and more often then not wounds healed. And certainly flies and borers and carvers carried dirt on their feet. . . .

“I have never heard anyone speak so to an Eqeta.” Fnarg was senior acolyte. His father had been a silversmith and town councilor.

“Nor I,” Apelles said. “And if we are wise we will not remember that
we
ever heard such.”

Apelles knew that Publius Caesar was right, but his heart was with the knights of Drantos. Perhaps they had not chosen the wisest way of proving their honor, yet what honor was there in calling them “barbarians” to their very faces?

Moreover, was the Roman kind of obedience really what he wished to see in Drantos? Publius had ordered eight hundred lances of Drantos knights led by one of the five greatest nobles of the Realm as if they were spitboys or sweepers. Not even the bheroman of Apelles’ native village would have dared order his father about so—at least where it was a matter of knowledge of swine and where they had the right to feed.

As with Maev, Apelles found he was not quite sure if what he’d thought he wanted was in truth his real desire. He was no more sure when the knights finally rode past the Great Redoubt.

As they did, horns and drums signaled another enemy attack.

* * *

Rick watched helplessly as the cavalry rearguard, two cohorts of the Fourth Legion, dissolved under the massed enemy cavalry. If they’d had room to maneuver or arrows to shoot, they might have made a fight of it. Backed against the forest they couldn’t maneuver, and they’d emptied their quivers covering the retreat of the Drantos ironhats. The Tamaerthan archers in the forest and the star weapons in the Great Redoubt had plenty of ammo, but no clear targets.

A couple of centuries of the
cohortes equitates
came pelting down the hill, but all they could do was drag a few wounded out from the fringes of the battle. That was one legion that was going to have a blood debt to settle today. Rick only hoped they weren’t too weakened or shaken to take it when they had a chance.