The Dark Lord (23 page)

The lancers swept diagonally across the front of the milling Slavic infantry. There was a great angry shout and the mass of spearmen lunged forward, breaking ranks. The Khazar riders loosed at the gallop, bows singing and arrows flashed down into the ranks of the enemy. Another, angrier, roar smote the air. The lancers nipped in, stabbing overhand, and men toppled backwards along the frontage, faces and chests smeared with blood. Jusuf grinned in delight, letting the mare course across the ground. The Khazars wheeled away, throwing clods and dust into the faces of the Slavs. The Avar infantry ran forward, disintegrating into a mob, screaming and shouting. Even the Avar beki jegun were charging, swords whipping around their heads.

Jusuf turned, letting the dust drift past, then his hand shot up and the flagmen tensed. The Slavic roar was building, growing louder and louder. Out of the corner of his eye, Jusuf saw his lancers swing back and regroup, forming around their
umen
banners, checking their armor, binding wounds and drawing new weapons to replace those they had lost.

"Again!" Jusuf shouted and his bannermen dipped their flags. The trumpeters winded, sending up a hair-raising noise. The lancers began to trot forward. Dust settled out of the air, and Jusuf felt an almost physical shock. The Slavic infantry was still screaming and shouting, raising a huge noise, banging spears on shields and yelping like a vast pack of demented wolves. But they had not continued their pell-mell, mindless charge. Instead the beki jegun checked their wild rush and the entire mass of the enemy split open like a melon.

A solid mass of horsemen—armor gleaming, twin queues bouncing on armored shoulders, lances glittering like stars, their tube banners stiff in the air—was advancing at a quickening trot, straight for Jusuf and his couriers.

The Khazar's heart stuttered and his mouth went dry. The Avar heavy horse—two, maybe three thousand men in full armor of iron scales sewn to leather and backed with felt, mounts likewise protected on head, neck and forequarters, helms flared and throats protected by an iron gorget—thundered towards him. They were perhaps a hundred yards away, erupting from the mass of infantry with frightening speed.

Dahvos,
he gibbered to himself,
will only need a moment, just a grain of time...

"Charge!" Jusuf howled, spurring his mare forward. All thought of keeping himself safe fled, and the couriers and bannermen leapt forward with him. In an instant, in a cloud of dust filled with the war cries of a thousand men, the Khazar lancers sprinted forward, spears leveled. Jusuf cursed leaving his lance behind and spared a half-grain to wrap a strap around his wrist and through the hilts of his sword. He shrugged his left arm, feeling the shield strapped there. Wind keened in his helmet and everything became terribly clear.

The Avars spurred forward as well, voices raised in a single huge shout, and the tiny distance between the two lines of men vanished in the blink of an eye.

Jusuf staggered, feeling a wrenching blow on his left arm, and his mare jinked to the side. An Avar lance sheared across the shield, ripping through the first layer of wood and tearing away the iron boss. The Khazar turned hard in the saddle, hacking down with his sword. The lance flicked away as the Avar knight flipped his weapon out of harm's way. Jusuf reversed his blow and blocked desperately with the shield. The lance stabbed past his head, missing his left eye by inches. Shouting, Jusuf slammed his shield out, knocking the long spear away. The Avar's horse, a nimble black creature, snapped at the mare's head and she shied, dancing back. Jusuf cursed again. He needed a lance of his own.

Arrows whistled overhead. A great din stormed at his ears, deafening him with the roars and shouts of men, the whinnying of horses, the clang of metal on metal and on wood. Jusuf spurred, and the mare responded, leaping forward. The Avar knight was already trading blows with another Khazar and Jusuf rushed past, stabbing across his body. The triangular tip of his sword plunged into the man's armpit and came back slick with blood.

There was no time to see if the wound was mortal. More arrows sleeted out of the sky. A Khazar within Jusuf's field of vision jerked and then slid from his saddle, leaving a wide smear of red across mottled gray horsehide. Three arrows jutted from his chest. Jusuf tried to turn, trying to see what was happening, then furiously parried an Avar mace. The blow rocked him against the rear saddle plate, but he wrenched the mare's head around, turning the whole horse and the mace slithered away along his blade. Without thinking, Jusuf punched the Avar knight in the face, his metal-studded glove sparking on a bronzed metal face mask. Pain jolted up to his elbow. The Avar clawed at his mask, trying to adjust his helmet.

Jusuf whipped his sword sideways, cutting into the man's hand and then, as tendons popped and finger bones split under the blow, into his throat. The sword belled, ringing back from an iron gorget around the Avar's neck. The Khazar cursed, laying in another heavy blow. This time the man jerked back, still blind, and the sword blade wedged between chest plate and helm. Another arrow smashed into the shield on Jusuf's left arm, punching through the laminated wood.

The Khazar cursed, blood turning cold, and tried to wrench his sword free. The blade was stuck. He pulled with both hands. The Avar got one eye lined up with an eyehole and it went wide. The man scrambled to draw a sword from a sheath at the side of his saddle. Jusuf abandoned his stuck blade and smashed the Avar full in the face with his shield. As he did, he leaned far over, falling almost off his horse, and across the neck of the Avar stallion.

A gray-fletched arrow flashed above him and cracked through the armor of one of the Khazar bannermen fighting through the press to aid his commander. The boy's eyes went wide, he spat blood and toppled backwards. Jusuf caught the death from the corner of his eye and scrambled back up into his own saddle, the Avar's sword in his left hand. The enemy knight fell out of his saddle and hung upside down, shouting for help.

Jusuf wrenched his horse around, the mare snorting in anger at such rough handling. Another arrow blurred past and another of the Khazar bannermen jerked violently in the saddle. Jusuf blinked, staring across the riot of the battlefield. He was only peripherally aware of the Avar charge smashing through the lancers, scattering them, then swinging with full force into the oncoming ranks of Dahvos'
umens
.

A hundred feet away, khagan Bayan was sitting easily on horseback, face serene and untroubled. Jusuf blinked and saw the Avar prince raise his bow—a gorgeous black horn-bow nearly five feet high, gleaming in the sunlight—draw, sight and loose in one fluid, powerful motion. The Khazar's eye could barely follow the flight of the arrow, though his head snapped around instantly, and he saw one of the
umen
commanders in Dahvos' ranks stagger, pierced through by the shot. Jusuf looked back, aghast, and felt a terrible chill.

His arm was ruined!
Jusuf's mind struggled to reconcile present sight and past memory.
I saw it, all withered and weak! This is impossible.

Bayan plucked another arrow from a quiver slung at his knee and fitted it to the string. The movement was very clear to Jusuf and he could see the powerful fingers of that right arm curling around the grip on the bowstave.

A wave of pigtailed horsemen charged past, long banners fluttering, and Jusuf lost sight of the khagan. Seconds later, he was furiously engaged, trading blows with two Avar knights coming at him from either side. His broken shield took another hammer-blow and shattered, shedding splinters and fragments of wood. Jusuf threw the remains at the man on his left side, then barely blocked a thrust at his leg from the right. The tide of battle swept around him, pushing him away from the khagan.

Another gray arrow flashed through the melee, and another Khazar died.

Chlothar Shortbeard, Alexandros' commander of the phalanx, cursed, pulling off his helmet. The heavy iron bucket spilled sweat and the Frank gasped in relief to be able to breathe. Without thinking, he flipped the leather strap around his saddle horn, letting the
spangenhelm
bounce against his thigh. It was dangerous to go bareheaded, but he needed to be able to see. The day was getting hotter and he felt he was swimming in this dreadfully hot, wet air. In the last thirty minutes, the center of the slowly expanding battle had congealed. Chlothar snarled for his standard-bearer to come up, and the man did, urging his own horse forward, wither-to-wither with the Frankish captain's.

The main body of the phalanx continued to advance up the road at a steady walk, but they were running out of open ground. Now they were on the verge of the Avar's overnight encampment—a scattering of farmhouses—thatch-roofed, plastered walls over withes or a timber framework—and scattered high-sided Avar wagons. Thankfully, the Slavic infantry had disintegrated and the barbarians were fleeing in a mob through the leather tents and bundles of sleeping hides. A scattering of bodies lay on the road and the embankment.

"Sound halt and re-form!" Chlothar rubbed his chin in disgust, feeling short prickly hairs under his fingers. Beside him, the bucinators immediately began blatting out a stentorian wail. The ranks of the phalanx began to halt, their file leaders howling commands and using rattan canes freely on any man failing to follow the halting drill. The rear ranks stopped first, squaring themselves and shifting their pikes back, out of fouling distance of those ahead. Within a minute the entire mass slid to a halt. Chlothar didn't watch, knowing someone would foul up.

There was a mighty rattle of wood on wood, and then yelps as unfortunate
hoplites
caught it from their file leaders. Chlothar turned his horse away and trotted along the rear ranks. The Frank stared through the spears, hand shading his eyes against the brilliant sun. The Avars were regrouping among the farmhouses and behind scattered wagons. Some of the Slavs stopped running and Chlothar cursed again, seeing a solid line of shorter men, in darker, heavier armor, appear among the buildings. Brightly colored square banners flapped in the air above them. The Slavs stopped, then turned, shouting defiantly at the Romans.

"Peltasts forward on either side of the road," Chlothar bellowed. "Keep them from forming up!"

Couriers dashed off from the cluster of men around the Frank. Chlothar rose up in his stirrups, straining to see the left and right wings of the army. To the left, there was only a huge, confused, swirling mass of men on horses. Banners jutted up from the field in every direction and the swirl and surge of cavalry in battle was raising a huge cloud of dust. What he could see, however, indicated the Eastern infantry on his flanks holding steady. A distance of at least fifty feet separated them from the Avars, and the opposing lines were staring at each other, waiting for someone to break ranks and attack. The Roman line matched the left edge of the phalanx. Just as it should.

Impressive,
the Frank allowed, grudgingly and only in the privacy of his thoughts. The Eastern Legions—the infantry at least—seemed to be every bit as professional as the Western armies. Personally, he was praying desperately to keep from making some irretrievable mistake—Chlothar had only risen to command the
hoplites
when Prince Ermanerich had been forced to remain in Magna Gothica. He'd felt sick all day.

To the right, however, both armies had collided, with the Eastern foot soldiers engaged in a sparking brawl with the Slavic spear- and axe-men. There the barbarians were stiffened by many Avar knights fighting on foot with longswords or heavy spears. Beyond the melee, where the
comes
Alexandros and the Companion cavalry were supposed to be in action, Chlothar could see nothing but treetops. Grunting, he turned back to observe the Avars on the road. Given a moment's respite, they were busily dragging wagons across the paved surface of the highway and making an impromptu barricade. Men behind the wagons exchanged bow shots with the Peltasts as they ran forward.

About half of the Peltasts had unslung their oval shields and stood armed with sword, mace or axe. The rest continued to wield the big recurved bow and were shooting at any target of opportunity. Most of the buildings were on fire and smoke billowed up in white clouds from the damp thatch. The Frank shook his head in dismay.
Soldiers and fire! Those buildings must be empty by now.

Figuring he had seen enough, Chlothar raised his hand. The runners and signal flagmen tensed. Avar arrows hissed down out of the sky as more of the nomads crowded up to the barricade. Now they were shooting high, trying to hit the men in the phalanx or behind. Their own horse bows could easily make the range.

Chlothar raised his own shield, not a moment too soon. Arrows shattered on the road around him and one of his lieutenants took one in the throat. The Goth choked to death as his companions tried to pull him from the horse and cut it out of his neck. Men died in the phalanx too, but the rest held their ground. Behind the wagon laager, the Avars jeered the approaching Romans. Chlothar ignored them, watching the Peltasts dodge forward through the buildings. In moments the sword and shieldmen would be at the wagon barricade. Arrows continued to flick down out of the smoke. Two of the Frank's big bodyguards moved forward, screening him with long, oval shields.

"Sound advance!" Chlothar barked at the
bucina
-men and the runners. "Attack!"

Horns bellowed and the file leaders began a marching chant. The phalanx rippled, pikes lowering from rest position and the men began to walk forward. Chlothar watched them uneasily, a sick feeling percolating in his stomach. The
comes
had once mentioned, in an offhand way, he hoped the
hoplites
would be able to move at a jog soon, but Chlothar couldn't see them getting up to much more than a fast walk. Not today, anyway. The pikes lowered again in a rippling, rustling motion, which reminded the Frank of trees bending in a high wind.

The phalanx ground forward, flowing inexorably down the road. More arrows flicked out of the smoke. The Avar archers could see them moving, even through the smoke.