His Conquering Sword (40 page)

“But—”

“There, Dina,” said Feodor in an undertone. “We’ll stay in camp. He’s half crazed with grief, can’t you see that?”

Nadine surveyed her husband with disgust. “I’m not staying in camp. I’m riding with him.”

“You can’t know that! And anyway, you’re married now. You can’t put yourself at risk.”

“He didn’t take away my command. Gods, Feodor, my jahar is still my jahar.”

“He left me in charge of the army here. I can order you to stay.”

“He didn’t leave you in charge of the army! I’m beginning to think you only married me as a ploy to advance your family. Now leave me alone!” She shouldered him aside and pushed through the crowd to stand beside her uncle. Bakhtiian glanced down at her, marking her attendance.

“I’ll want your jahar, too, Orzhekov. With Vershinin’s troops, my own, and Sakhalin’s two thousand, that will give us almost equal numbers, and enough armored to carry the center. Very well, we’ll leave as soon as—” But here he stopped suddenly, just broke off, and could not go on. The commanders attending him glanced each at the others, and as one, without further words, they retreated, leaving him alone.

“It’s ready,” said Aleksi, coming back from the flat field about fifty paces in front of the tent.

The prince came out of the tent, bearing the child. They had changed the shroud to one of fine damask linen, folded in an elaborately elegant pattern, so neatly tucked in to itself that it seemed more the work of an artist than anything. He handed the bundle to Bakhtiian. At once, Ilya walked away from the others, out to the pyre. Everyone shrank away from him, his expression was so grim. Farther, like a muted, gleaming shoreline, Anatoly Sakhalin’s guard stood watch.

Soerensen followed him out, bearing two torches. They flared in the darkness. Their fitful light illuminated the scene.

Ilya halted at the base of the pyre. He did not move for the longest time, as if he simply could not bear to let go of the child. At last he put one foot on the pyre. Then he took hold of a corner of the shroud, to unwrap it for one last look.

The prince stepped forward so quickly that the torch flames shuddered and danced. Ilya flung his head up, but whatever Soerensen said convinced him to leave the child undisturbed.

He climbed up onto the stack and laid the child down in the very center. Kneeling, he remained there for a long while. Whether he spoke, to the gods, to the baby, or stayed silent, Nadine could not tell from this distance. But his back seemed bowed under the weight of his grief.

At last he stood up and climbed back down. Soerensen handed him a torch. They stood, each at one end of the pyre, and Nadine felt, watching them, that between themselves this gesture had a meaning that the rest of those watching could not fathom. Josef Raevsky held one arm around Sonia, who wept. Kirill stood silent to one side, next to Aleksi. Niko Sibirin had come up from the hospital, and he wiped a tear from his eye and hugged his wife. The children—Mitya, Galina, Ivan, Katerina, and Kolia—all stared, but only Galina cried. Vasha Kireyevsky waited farther out, half hidden in the darkness, and Nadine could not see the expression on his face. Feodor loitered to one side, attention caught between the men at the pyre and Nadine.

They put the torches to the wood. Flame leapt up. The pyre burned.

They walked back together, the two men. For an instant, Nadine thought their expressions a perfect match. Then Bakhtiian caught sight of Mitya.

“Cousin, my armor,” he snapped. His armor was brought, and in the roaring light of the bonfire, he tied on his cuirass and slung his helmet over his shoulder. Konstans appeared, leading his horse, and Vladimir and one hundred of his jahar waited, lit by torches, in the half-light thrown off by his son’s funeral pyre. A thin thread of light limned the eastern horizon.

“Nadine?” he demanded. “You’ll attend me.”

She cast a glance back to see Feodor fuming, hands clenched, before she mounted on a horse brought by Anatoly Sakhalin himself.

“You will watch over my wife,” said Bakhtiian to Sakhalin.

“At your command,” said Sakhalin. His eyes glinted, reflecting off the firelight. Nadine wondered if he was disappointed to be left behind.

They rode. Dawn came, and they picked up the pace, switching mounts frequently. They rode steadily throughout that day. The clouds burned off and the sun glared down, unseasonably hot. When night came, Bakhtiian drove them on. Nadine dozed in her saddle. She woke on and off, once when scouts came in and rode alongside Bakhtiian, delivering a succinct appraisal of the ground between here and the Habakar army. At daybreak, they reached the vanguard of Yaroslav Sakhalin’s scouting net, and these scouts gave Bakhtiian a breakdown of the khaja forces and their disposition on the march. It had cooled overnight and they passed easily over several fields before the sun, rising in the sky, broke through the haze to bake down again.

They rode three abreast through a steep defile and over a range of rolling hills washed green by the rains. Two villages they passed, but nothing stirred there, either because the inhabitants had fled or because they had barred themselves within their houses. They traveled through the hills all day, passing twice through broad, flat valleys, changing mounts, driving on.

At dusk, more scouts joined up with them, and they rode south while Bakhtiian conferred with them. Twilight came, and then night, and finally, near midnight, one of Sakhalin’s young commanders rode in and greeted Bakhtiian. Vershinin and his men were sent left, to complete the encirclement. Out there in the darkness, not so far ahead of them, the Habakar army lay bivouacked. A line of scouts went out to watch the khaja army, and the rest hunkered down for what remained of the night. Most simply lay down on the cold ground and slept. The horses huddled in groups.

Nadine could not sleep. She rode out with her uncle and the young Sakhalin commander to the crest of a hill overlooking the broad field on which the Habakar army had camped. Fires burned in two rings around the encampment, one on the outside, one within the tent encampments.

“Every night,” said the young commander, “they stop before nightfall and dig a ditch around their encampment and a wall of dirt inside that, and they build fires on the earth wall.”

“So that horsemen can’t surprise them.” Bakhtiian surveyed the field beyond. The night sky was brilliant with stars.

“Their prince must be a wise commander,” said the Prince of Jeds’ soldier, Ursula.

“Wise, indeed,” said Bakhtiian. “We’ll pull back before his march in the morning until we reach the first of the valleys we passed, where we’ll form for battle.”

“Ah,” said the young commander, “my scouts know that ground. If we surround him there and leave him only one way to retreat, southward where the path is widest, we can pick off his men as they run.”

“If they run,” murmured Ursula. “Your men have ridden far, Bakhtiian. They and the horses must be exhausted. Two hundred kilometers in two days!”

“What’s a
kilometer?
” asked Nadine.

“My men and my horses will do what I ask of them,” said Ilya.

They retreated back to the lines. Before dawn, the army roused and began to pull back the way they’d come. Nadine, in the rearguard, could hear the rattle and pound of the Habakar army as it followed their tracks. Now and again she heard shouts and screams and the sing of arrows as the young commander’s men harried them, but as the jaran army struck up into the hills, most of her unit joined up with Bakhtiian, leaving only a line of scouts in the rear.

By midday they fell back into position in a wide field, the armored riders massed in the center, the light troops out on the wings and in the rear. Bakhtiian had brought four units of archers with him, many of them inexperienced girls not much older than Mitya mixed in with riders and those archers who had fought before.

Out of the hills, down into the valley, marched the Habakar army. The prince’s banner shone, white with a blue lion, under the noonday sun. At first, to Nadine’s sight, the khaja army flashed with a confusing profusion of colors. Men in imperial blue marched in neat ranks. Rank upon rank of chestnut horses caparisoned in gold followed them, and around the prince clustered men in silver and purple surcoats wearing plumed helmets and riding white horses. Their striped pennons drooped from their lances. Rows of shields glinted in the unit behind the prince, stretching out to each side, burnished armor shining in the sun. Spears bristled above the heads of these men, tipped with blades and hooks.

Ilya let the khaja army march down onto the field. Already Sakhalin’s young commander had drawn his troops back and to either side, far out of range and mostly out of sight, to cast around to eventually encircle the unit.

The Habakar army spread out to take positions, but before they could settle, Ilya lifted his lance up once, twice, a third time, and the center moved forward to meet the enemy. Archers rode up within their ranks and began firing. Arrows sang into the khaja, and then, just before impact, the archers turned tail back within the ranks. From behind, Vershinin’s lighter troops and two units of archers swung around to either flank. It was here that the attack concentrated.

Nadine sat next to her uncle. The noise and cries of soldiers and animals mixed with the sound of weapons clashing.

“Orzhekov. There, a gap to the right. I want you to drive through and reach the prince. Konstans—now, the charge.”

Nadine lifted her spear and her riders moved forward with her. To her left, she saw the bulk of her uncle’s personal guard riding forward parallel to her, gold banner flying, gold and red surcoats a bright glare in the sunlight. The sight of them gave her heart. She stood a little in the saddle, thrusting her legs forward, and tucked her spear under her right arm. An imperial blue infantry unit held its ground in front of her jahar, and behind it rode the blue lion, fluttering in the breeze.

They held to a steady pace, gaining ground, and then some fifty paces from the line she kicked her horse to a pounding gallop and her men howled, a deafening ululation, and they hit the khaja line.

She plowed over the first man, who vanished into the maelstrom, and lost her spear to a flailing hook and pull from a knot of infantry men who had held together under the weight of the charge. Yermolov and Yartseva rode on either side of her, and then a sword cut into Yartseva and a hook dragged him down from his horse. A face, a man thrusting at her horse’s head with his spear, appeared to her right. She cut at his arm as she passed but could not look back. As she recovered her saber, blood sprayed her armor—not her own blood but the blood of the soldier she must have hit.

A square of some nine men blocked the path in front of her, but at once four more riders, three still with their spears, joined her and Yermolov. Four of the nine khaja soldiers wavered and scattered, faced with the charge of horses. A spear thrust for her leg; she deflected it. Yermolov shuddered in the saddle, rocked back by a blow, and for an instant Nadine thought he would be toppled from his saddle. She parried; a man with his face screened by mail threw his spear at her. She knocked it away and then he was bowled over from the side by the hooves and spear of another rider. His dark eyes met hers for an instant, pain and anger and fear melded, and then he disappeared beneath the horses.

A moment later she came out into an empty zone. Ahead of her, the blue lion of the prince whirled away in a clot of fighting. Behind, the charge had disintegrated into confusion; unhorsed riders dueled: There was Yartseva, fending off a soldier in imperial blue, but then a line of horses obscured her sight of him, and when they passed, she could not see him.

Shrieks and moans; horses screamed and, to her left, a mare struggled up to its feet and collapsed again in a pool of blood.

“Orzhekov!” That was Yermolov, reining in beside her.

“Form up the men. We’ve got to reach the prince.”

A shower of arrows shaded the sun, arching over her head and falling with a sharp resounding clatter into the ranks of the Habakar prince. She saw, for one instant, Vershinin, far away topping a swell and then he rode down into—what?—she could not tell.

Behind her, bodies littered the field, most of them still moving or writhing, groaning in pain. Riderless horses reared and circled and stumbled over the dead and wounded.

The ranks of her jahar formed around her. Yermolov thrust a spear into her hand, and she sheathed her bloody saber.

They rode into the chaos surrounding the Habakar prince. A line of Habakar horsemen wheeled to meet their charge, but somehow the two units simply passed between each other. Nadine cast a glance back over her shoulder; she caught a glimpse of another wave of her jahar some fifty paces behind, narrowing the gap. The Habakar riders milled, turning this way and then that.

A rider shouted a warning. Nadine parried a blow with the haft of her spear and then thrust hard. The spear stuck in the man’s segmented armor and she flung herself back to let it ride past her, and drew her saber. Cut to her right as an unhorsed man attacked her. The Habakar soldiers were mobbed in groups, infantry and cavalry side by side, disorganized, and they began to give way before her troops.

Except there, some hundred paces in front, bobbed the green pennant of Vershinin’s jahar, and to her left she saw the gold banner that marked Bakhtiian’s own guards. The white horsehair plume of Konstans’ helmet trembled as he pressed forward through the ranks. Then he was hidden by a sheet of fighting. The arrow fire had stopped, at least into these ranks. She heard its sound from farther away, accompanying the louder crash of metal weapons.

They battled forward. Here, though disorganized, the Habakar resistance proved fierce. The clot around the prince’s blue lion shrank, and shrank, but each gain was hard won. Yermolov fell, and then a rider to her left. All at once, she came up beside Konstans. He grinned at her. Blood spattered his face and surcoat, and blood leaked from an arrow wound in his horse’s withers.

“The stubborn bastard won’t surrender!” he shouted. She could barely hear him. “Here!” he cried. “Pull your jahar back. We’re getting pressed too close together.”