The broad, muddy Degird separated the farms and strongholds and towns of Makuran from the barbarians who lived on the far bank. No permanent bridges spanned the stream; any King of Kings who proposed erecting one would have had every dihqan in the northwestern part of the realm rise in revolt against him. The Khamorth managed to slip across the Degird too often as things were—no point in giving them a highway.
But the grand army of Peroz King of Kings could not go over the river by dribs and drabs. Nor could they wait for it to freeze solid, as the nomads often did. With the barrier of the Degird stretched out ahead of him, Abivard wondered how Peroz proposed to solve the problem.
Though he had yet to put his knowledge to much use, Abivard knew how to fight. He had some idea how to go about besieging a bandit's lair or other stronghold. Past that, his military knowledge stopped.
Over the next few days, it advanced several paces. The baggage train the army carried with it seemed preposterously large to him—until the engineers who had made the journey from Mashiz started driving two parallel rows of piles, about forty feet apart, into the bed of the Degird toward the northern bank.
The upstream piles tilted in the direction of the current; the downstream ones leaned against it. The engineers linked each upstream-downstream pair with a crossbeam whose fit the force of the current only improved as time went by.
Then the engineers ran trestles along each row of piles, from the south side of the Degird to the north. Across the trestles went planks, and over the planks poles and bundles of sticks. The army advanced from Makuran onto the plains of Pardraya less than a week after it reached the Begird.
It did not cross the river unobserved. Abivard had watched the Khamorth, tiny as horseflies on the far shore, watching the bridge march toward them. When the engineers got close enough, the plainsmen shot at them. Soldiers advanced down the growing bridge to shoot back and keep the nomads at a distance. The engineers took to carrying big wicker shields. Arrows pierced a few men anyhow, but the bridge and the army advanced regardless.
The hooves of Abivard's horse drummed over the bridge when his turn came to cross. The horse didn't care for that, or for the vibration of the timbers that came up through its feet from the motion of other animals and wagons on the bridge. The beast laid back its ears and tried to rear; Abivard fought it back down.
"So this is Pardraya," he said when he was back on solid ground. "It doesn't look much different from the land by the stronghold."
"No qanats," Varaz said beside him. "No cropland at all, come to that."
His younger brother was right. Grass and bushes, yellow-brown from summer heat, stretched ahead as far as the eye could see: that sereness was what had reminded Abivard of home. But he had always thought of the Pardrayan plain as being flat as a griddle. That wasn't so: it had rises and dips just like any other land.
The undulations reminded him of the waves of the sea. That, in turn, reminded him of the prophecy Tanshar had given. But no one could call this sea narrow.
Peroz King of Kings left behind a good-size garrison to protect the bridge, the army's lifeline back to Makuran. As he watched the chosen warriors begin to set up their encampment, Abivard spared them a moment's pity. Poor fellows, they had come all this way only to be denied the chance to help crush the Khamorth.
The main body of the army moved north across the plains. When Abivard turned around for another look at the bridge guards, he found they had disappeared in the great cloud of dust kicked up by thousands of horses and hundreds of wagons. The dust made his eyes water and gritted in every fold of skin he had. When he spat, he spat brown.
He looked up into the sky. The sun, at least, was still visible; the only clouds were the ones the army made. All the same, he said, "I wish it would rain."
Godarz' hand twisted in a gesture of aversion. "You don't know what you're saying, boy," he exclaimed. "A good downpour and all this turns to porridge, same as it does down by the stronghold. With one rider, it's a bloody nuisance. You try and get an army through it and you'll be weeks on a journey that should take days. Simple rule: dust is bad, mud is worse."
Abashed, Abivard said little after that till the army halted for the evening. He also realized that, if it rained, Peroz's plan to fire the plain would come to naught. Since he couldn't make himself be happy with the weather as it was but knew a change would be worse, he passed a discontented night.
Breakfast was hard rolls, dates preserved in honey, lamb sausage so salty and smoky it made Abivard's tongue want to shrivel up, and bad wine. After Varaz choked down his length of sausage, he made a dreadful face and said to Godarz, "You'd flog the cooks if they fed us like this back at the stronghold."
"I just might," Godarz said. "Aye, I just might." He finished his own sausage, then took a long swig of wine to wash away the taste. "But if we were going on a long journey, I'd flog them if they didn't pack us food like this. All of it will keep almost forever."
"The vermin can't stomach it, either," Abivard said. He meant it for a joke, and his siblings smiled, but Godarz nodded seriously, spoiling his fun.
The dihqan and his sons knocked down the tent they had shared, tied its wool panels and poles and their bedding aboard a packhorse, then armed themselves—each helping the others with clumsy catches—and rode north. One long, slow farsang followed another. Abivard's heart leapt once, when he spied a couple of bow-carrying men wearing only leather and mounted on unarmored horses, but they proved to be scouts riding in to report to their commanders.
"We can't all go rattling around in mail, or the Khamorth would ride rings around us and we'd never even know they were there," Godarz said. Abivard chewed on that and decided it made sense. The business of soldiering got more complicated every time he turned around.
The wind, what there was of it, came from the west. A little past noon, smoke and flames sprang up from the steppe, about half a farsang east of the army's line of travel. That was far enough to keep embers and smoke from spooking the warriors' horses, which moved on unconcerned. Trot, canter, walk, trot, canter, walk . . . the slowly changing rhythm filled Abivard's body.
As the armament of Peroz King of Kings moved north over the Pardrayan plain, his men set more fires, or rather extended the length of the first one. Every sudden gust gladdened Abivard, for it meant the flames were spreading over more of the nomads' pasturage.
He pointed east. "They can't let us do that for long, or they'll soon start to starve."
"That's the idea," Jahiz said. His handsome face—his mother was famous for her beauty—creased in a leer of anticipation. He reached for his upthrust lance. "Then they have to come to us."
For the rest of that day, though, and most of the following one, the advancing warriors saw no sign of the Khamorth through whose territory they rode. But for the fire that burned alongside them, they might have been alone on the steppe.
Late the next afternoon, the scouts brought in sheep and cattle they had captured north of the main body of the King of Kings' force. Abivard cheered as loud as anyone when he saw the animals. "We won't have to eat that beastly sausage tonight," he said.
"So we won't, so we won't," Godarz said. "But that's not all these captures tell me. They say we're getting very close, very close, I tell you, to the nomads themselves. Their herds are their lives; if we come across the beasts, the men who follow them across the plains must be close by."
Abivard looked this way and that. He saw his relatives, his comrades, the steppe, the fires the men from Makuran had set. Of the nomads there was no sign. Yet they were out there somewhere—probably not far. His father was bound to be right about that. The idea made Abivard uneasy, as if someone were peeking at him through a crack in his door back at the stronghold.
He looked around again, this time concentrating on the thousands of armored men who had come north with him from Makuran, their equally well protected mounts, the clever engineers who had bridged the Degird, and all the other appurtenances of a great and civilized host. Against such might, how could the plainsmen prevail?
When he said that aloud, Godarz let out a wry chuckle. "That's why we come here, son—to find out." Abivard must have looked stricken, for the dihqan continued, "Don't take it like that, for that's not how I meant it. I've seen a few armies in my day, aye, just a few, and this one's stronger than all the rest. I don't know how we can lose once the Khamorth decide they have to face us."
That eased Abivard's mind. If his father couldn't see any way for the plainsmen to win, he was willing to believe no such way existed. He said, "The King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase, strikes me as a man who will deal a hard blow when the time comes."
"He strikes me the same way," Godarz said. "If the lion banner isn't at the fore when at last we clash with the Khamorth, I'll be greatly surprised. Although I know of him only by repute, I've heard his son Sharbaraz is another of the same sort. He'd be your age, more or less."
"I've not seen his banner here," Abivard said.
"Nor will you," Godarz answered. "Peroz, may his years be long, left him back in Mashiz, as I left Frada back at the stronghold. Our reasons were different, though. I just didn't think Frada quite ready, not quite. Sharbaraz is a man grown, and I expect the King of Kings wants him to keep the eunuchs and nobles in line while Peroz goes off on campaign."
"Surely they'd not take advantage when the King of Kings was away . . ." Abivard faltered, very much aware of Godarz' cynical eye on him. He felt himself flush. "All right, maybe they would."
"No maybe to it, son, no maybe at all," Godarz said. "I just thank the God that's not something I have to worry about. I may be master of only a domain, not a realm, but I can rely on the people around me when my back is turned. In more ways than a few, I have the better half of that bargain."
"I think you do, too." Abivard could not imagine his father's servitors going against the dihqan's wishes. He had heard tales of corruption emanating from Mashiz but hadn't believed them. To learn they had some substance was a jolt. He said, "It must be that they're too close to the Videssian border, Father."
"Aye, that may have somewhat to do with it," Godarz allowed. "I suspect they're too close to too much silver, as well. Having the coin you need to do what you must and a bit of what you like is pleasant, as wine can be. But a man who gets a rage for silver is as bad as one with a rage for wine, maybe worse. Aye, maybe worse."
Abivard chewed on that. He decided his father probably had a point, and admitted as much by nodding before he asked, "When do you think the plainsmen will stand at bay?"
Godarz scratched at his scar while he thought it over. "They won't wait more than another couple of days," he said at last. "They can't, else we'll have burned too much of the plain. Their herds need broad fields on which to graze."
That phrase again! Abivard had heard it twice now since Tanshar gave him his strange prophecy. What it meant, though, he still could not say. He wondered when he would find out.
When two days had passed, Abivard was ready to reckon his father a better fortune-teller than Tanshar. The first Khamorth fighters appeared in front of the Makuraner host the morning after the two of them had spoken. They shot a few arrows that did nothing in particular, then galloped away faster than their armored foes could pursue.
Such archers as the Makuraners had rode out in front of the main force to protect it from the plainsmen's hit-and-run raids. The rest of the warriors shook themselves out into real battle lines rather than the loose order in which they had been traveling before.
Under his veil of iron, Abivard's teeth skinned back in a fierce grin of excitement—at any moment, he might find himself in action. He glanced over at Varaz. He couldn't see much of his brother's face, but Varaz's flashing eyes said he, too, was eager to get in there and fight.
Godarz, on the other hand, just kept riding along at an easy canter. For all the ferocity and passion he displayed, the nearest Khamorth might have been a thousand farsangs away. Abivard decided his father was an old man after all.
A couple of hours later, more plainsmen appeared off the left flank of the army and plied it with arrows. Makuraner horsemen thundered out against them, raising even more dust than the host normally kicked up. They drove the nomads away, then returned to their comrades once more. The whole army raised a cheer for them.
"By the God, I wish the left were our station," Abivard exclaimed. "They have the first glory of the campaign."
"Where?" Godarz asked. "In chasing after the Khamorth? I didn't see them kill any. Before long, the nomads will come back and prick at us some more. That's how warfare works out here on the steppe."
Before long, Godarz's foretelling was again fulfilled. Not only did the Khamorth return to shadow the army's flanks, they began showing themselves in greater numbers, both on the left and at the front. A couple of men were fetched back to the healers' wagons, one limp, the other writhing and shrieking.
Abivard shivered. "The last time I heard a noise like that was when the old cook—what was his name, Father?—spilled the great kettle of soup and scalded himself to death. I was still small; Denak told me she had nightmares about that for years."
"His name was Pishinah, and you're right, he cried most piteously." Godarz lifted his helm off his head to wipe away sweat with a kerchief. He looked worried. "More nomads dogging us than I'd have guessed."
"But that's what we want, isn't it: to make them fight?" Abivard said, puzzled.
"Oh, aye." His father laughed sheepishly. "I get suspicious when the plainsmen give us what we want, even if we are forcing it from them."
"You predicted this, though, just the other day," Abivard protested. "Why are you unhappy now that what you foretold has come true?"
"It's not coming true the way I thought it would," Godarz answered. "I expected we'd force the Khamorth to battle, that they'd be desperate and afraid. Their archers out there don't have the manner of desperate men; they're moving to a plan of their own." He shrugged; his chain mail rattled about him. "Or, of course, maybe I'm just seeing evil spirits behind every bush and under every flat stone."
Jahiz said, "Couldn't the scriers scent out what the nomads intend?"
Godarz spat on the ground. "That for what the scriers can do. If you've lost a ring back at the stronghold, lad, a scrier will help you find it. But when it has to do with fighting, no. For one thing, men's passions make magic unreliable—that's why love philtres work so seldom, by the bye—and war is a hot-blooded business. For another, the plainsmen's shamans are using magic of their own to try to blind us. And for a third, we have to be busy to make sure the demon worshipers don't spy out what we're about. War is for iron, son; iron, not magic."
"A good thing, too," Abivard said. "If war were a matter for sorcerers, no one else would have the chance to join in it."
"Is that a good thing?" Godarz said. "I wonder, I do wonder."
"Why did you join the King of Kings' host, then?" Abivard asked him.
"For duty's sake, and because Peroz King of Kings—may his years be many and his realm increase—so bade me," Godarz answered. "Would you have me cast aside my honor and that of our clan?"
"By the God, no," Abivard exclaimed. Though he let it drop there, he wished his father sounded more as if his heart were in the campaign Peroz had undertaken.
At the head of the King of Kings' force, horns screamed the call Abivard had awaited since the crossing of the Degird: the foe's army in sight. The Makuraners had been advancing in battle array since the plainsmen began to harass them, but a hum of excitement ran through them all the same. Soon now they would have the chance to punish the Khamorth for the pinpricks they had dared inflict on the King of Kings' men.
Abivard rode to the top of a low swell of ground. Sure enough, there were the nomads, perhaps half a farsang to the north. They had mustered in two groups, a relatively small one in front and a larger one some little distance farther away.
"I think I see their scheme," Godarz said. "They'll try to keep us in play with their advance party while the rest of them spread out and flank us. Won't work—we'll smash the little band before the big one can deploy." He sounded more cheerful than he had before.
"Shouldn't we be at them, Father?" Abivard demanded. Finally seeing the Khamorth there waiting to be assailed made him want to set spurs to his horse and charge on the instant.
But Godarz shook his head. "Too far, as yet. We'd meet them with our animals blown from going so far at the gallop. We'll close to not far out of bowshot and pound home from there."
As if to echo Godarz, Chishpish, who rode not far away, bellowed to the horsemen under his command. "Anyone who goes after the plainsmen before the horns signal shall answer to me personally."
Varaz chuckled. "That's no great threat. He'd never catch up with anyone who disobeyed." And indeed, Chishpish's horse was as heavyset as the marzban himself, as it had to be to bear his weight. But Chispish's threat, as every warrior who heard it knew full well, had nothing to do with physical chastisement. With the influence the high noble wielded, he could drop a man's reputation and hope for the future straight into the Void.
Abivard took his lance from its rest and hefted it in his hand. All through the ranks of the Makuraners, those iron-tipped lengths of wood were quivering as if a great wind swept through a forest. Abivard kept the lance upright, to avoid fouling his comrades; he would couch it only at the command.
Closer and closer the King of Kings' host drew to the foe. Peroz's banner fluttered ahead of Abivard; by Makuraner custom, he commanded from the right wing. The harsh war cries of the Khamorth floated faintly to Abivard's ears. He heard them without understanding; though the steppe tongue was cousin to his own, the plainsmen's shouts were so commingled that no separate words emerged from the din.
A horn cried, high and thin. As if with one voice, thousands of Makuraners hurled a battle cry back at the Khamorth: "Peroz!" Abivard yelled his throat raw, the better to terrify the enemy.
When the Makuraners closed nearly to within the range Godarz had specified, the small lead group of plainsmen spurred forward to meet them, screeching like wild things and shooting arrows into the massed armored ranks. A couple of lucky shots emptied saddles; a few more wrung cries of pain from men and horses. Most, as is the way of such things, either missed or were turned by the Makuraners' mail and plate and shields.
Just when Abivard wondered if the Khamorth would be mad enough to rush to close quarters with Peroz' vastly superior army, the nomads wheeled their little steppe ponies in a pretty piece of horsemanship and, almost in single file, galloped back toward their more distant comrades.
"Cowards!" Abivard screamed along with half the Makuraner host. "White-livered wretches, come back and fight!"
Beside him, Godarz said, "What are they doing?"
No one answered, for at that moment the horns rang out again, a call for which the whole host had waited: the charge. "Lower—lances!" Chishpish roared. The iron points glittered in the sun as they swung down to the horizontal. Even louder than before, Chishpish cried, "Forward!"
Already the banner of the King of Kings stood straight out from its staff as Peroz and his guards thundered toward the Khamorth. Abivard booted his own horse in the sides with iron-shod heels. Because the gelding was armored itself, it needed such strong signals to grasp what he required of it.
The ground flew by beneath him, slowly at first and then faster, fast enough for the wind of his passage to whip water from his eyes, fast enough for it to seem as if one more stride, one more bound, would propel him into the air in flight. The rumble of thousands, tens of thousands of hooves was like being caught in the middle of a thunderstorm. And thousands, tens of thousands of men charged with Abivard. He knew the great exaltation of being one small part of an enterprise vast and glorious. The God might have set a hand on his shoulder.
Then his horse stepped into a hole.
Maybe a rabbit had made it, maybe a badger. That didn't matter. What came of it did. Abivard felt the gelding stumble at the same instant he heard—amazingly distinct through the din around him—the bone break. Even as the horse screamed and fell, he kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself clear.
He hit the ground with a crash and thud that made him glad for his mail. Even with it, he knew he would be a mass of bruises. His comrades thundered by; one horse sprang clean over him as he lay on the ground. How no one trampled him, he never knew.
He didn't care, either. Tears of mingled pain and frustration rolled down his cheeks. Here was what should have been the great moment of his life, ruined. Unhorsed, how could he close with the enemy and show his mettle? The answer was simple: he couldn't. His father and siblings would have the triumph all to themselves, and what about him? He would be the butt of jokes forever—Abivard, late for the fight.
The last Makuraners rode by, crying the name of the King of Kings. Abivard's horse cried, too, in anguish. He forced himself to his feet, staggered over to the thrashing animal, and cut its throat.
That done, he turned and started walking north—maybe, just maybe, the battle wouldn't be over when he got to it. Perhaps he could take the mount of someone who had fallen, or even ride a Khamorth steppe pony for a while, though it would not be pleased at supporting the weight of him and his armor.
Through swirling dust, he watched the proud banners that marked the front ranks of the Makuraner host. For a moment, he refused to believe his eyes when almost all of them went down at once.
The screams and shrieks of injured men and horses rose to the deaf, unfeeling sky. The men and horses themselves tumbled into the trench the Khamorth had dug across the plain and then cunningly concealed with sticks and dirt and grass. Only at the very center, where the nomads' advance party had withdrawn to their main force, could the Makuraners follow, and then in small numbers. Their foes set on them savagely, wolves tearing at a bear.
Abivard's shout of horror was drowned in the cries that went up from the overthrown Makuraner host. The King of Kings' banner was down. He could not see it anywhere. He moaned, deep in his throat. Nor were the frontmost ranks the only ones to fall in ruin. The warriors behind could not check their mounts in time and crashed into the ditch on top of its first victims.
"Father!" Abivard cried. Godarz was up there, somewhere in the middle of that catastrophe. So were Abivard's brother and half brothers. Clumsily, heavily he began to run in armor designed for fighting from horseback.
Even the Makuraners not caught by the plainsmen's ditch had to halt as best they could, any semblance of order lost. The Khamorth chose that moment to storm round both ends of the trench and begin to surround their foes.
"Not a broad field." Abivard groaned. "A trap!" Too late, the meaning of Tanshar's first vision came clear.
A trap it was. The Makuraners, the momentum of their charge killed, their ranks thrown into confusion, were easy meat for the nomads. At short range, horn-reinforced bows could punch their shafts through mail. Two plainsmen could set on a single armored warrior, assail him from so many directions at once that sooner or later—most often sooner—he had to fall.
Abivard found himself outside the killing zone, one of a handful of Makuraners who were. At first his only thought was to keep on clumping ahead and die with his family and countrymen. Then he saw that riderless horses, mostly Makuraner stock but the occasional steppe pony as well, were getting out through the nomads' cordon.
They'll round them up later, he thought. For now they reckon the men more important. Had he been a nomad chieftain, he would have made the same choice.
Seeing the horses made him start to think again, not run blindly toward his doom like a moth flying into a torch flame. He could all but hear Godarz inside his head: Don't be foolish, boy, don't be foolish. Save what you can. A mounted demigod would have had a battle on his hands, smashing through the plainsmen to rescue the trapped warriors of Makuran. The chance of one horseless young man in his first fight managing it wasn't worth thinking about.
Abivard tried again to guess—no, to work out; Godarz didn't approve of guessing—what the Khamorth chiefs would do once their riders had finished slaughtering the Makuraners. The answer came back quick and clear: they would plunder the baggage train. Not till then would they start scouring the steppe for survivors.
"Which means I'd best get out of here while I can," he said aloud. A riderless horse, a steppe pony, had paused to graze less than a furlong from where he stood. He walked slowly toward it. It looked up, wary, as he approached, but then lowered its head and went back to cropping dry, yellow grass.
In a pouch on his belt he had some dried apricots, treats he had intended to give his gelding after the battle was won. Now the battle was lost, and the gelding, too. He dug out three or four apricots, put them in the palm of his hand, and walked up to the steppe pony.
"Here you are, boy," he said coaxingly; the pony was entire, with stones big for the size of the rest of it. It made a snuffling noise, half suspicion, half interest. Abivard held out his hand. The horse sniffed the apricots, delicately tasted one. It snuffled again, this time sounding pleased, and ate the rest of the fruit.
After that, it let Abivard come around alongside it and did no more than lay back its ears when he mounted it. At his urging, it trotted off toward the south. He found the ride uncomfortable; like a lot of nomads, the Khamorth who had owned it kept his stirrup leathers very short so he could rise in the saddle to use his bow. Bowless, Abivard perforce rode with his legs bent up.
Evidently he wasn't the first or only Makuraner to escape the disaster to the north; when he came up to it, the baggage train was boiling like a stomped anthill. He kept on riding. He had intended to give the alarm: he couldn't have faced himself had he simply fled. But he did not aim to be caught in the new catastrophe sure to come soon.
He could feel by the steppe pony's gait that carrying his armored self was more than it could easily handle. He knew he would have to shed the iron as soon as he could. If the pony foundered before he got back to the Degird, he was a dead man.
Perhaps half an hour later, he looked over his shoulder. A new column of smoke was rising into the sky. The men of Makuran hadn't set this one. The Khamorth were having their revenge.
The one good thing Abivard saw there was that it meant the plainsmen would be too occupied with their looting to comb the plain for fugitives for a while. He wasn't the only Makuraner to have escaped from the overthrow of the King of Kings' host; scattered over the steppe in front, behind, and off to the sides were riders traveling singly or in small groups. Some would be men fleeing from the baggage train; others warriors like Abivard who met with mischance before the trap closed on them; others, perhaps, men who had broken out of the ring of death the nomads had cast around the Makuraners.
Abivard thought hard about joining one of those small groups of retreating men from Makuran. In the end, he decided to keep clear and go his own way. For one thing, even all the fugitives he saw banded together lacked the numbers to stand up to the swarm of Khamorth who would soon be following. For another, bands traveling together were limited to the speed of their slowest member. He wanted to get as far away from the disastrous field that was not a field as he could.
Shock still dazed him. He had lost his father and four siblings. Makuran had lost Peroz King of Kings and the flower of its manhood. The twin misfortunes echoed and reechoed inside his head, now one louder, now the other.
"What shall I do?" he moaned. "What will the kingdom do?"
Since he had no idea what the kingdom would do, he ended up concentrating on the first question. The first thing he had to do was get back over the bridge the King of Kings' engineers had thrown across the Degird. If he couldn't do that, he would be too dead to worry about anything thereafter.
If he did get back to the stronghold, he would be dihqan. He had known that would happen one day, but had thought one day lay years ahead. Now it was on top of him, a weight heavier on his shoulders than that of his armor on the steppe pony he rode.
"Speaking of which," he muttered, and reined in. He swung down off the horse, gave it a chance to graze and blow a little. He couldn't think just of the mad dash for escape, not when he was several days' ride north of the Degird. He had to keep the pony sound for the whole journey, even though every heartbeat he waited made him fidget as if taken by the flux.
He stopped again when he came to a small stream. He let the steppe pony drink, but not too much. It snapped at him when he pulled it away from the water. "Stupid thing," he said, and cuffed it on the muzzle. Horses would drink themselves sick or dead if you let them. They would eat too much, too, but that wasn't going to be a problem, not now.
How best to escape pursuit? At length, Abivard rode southwest, still toward the Degird but not as directly—and out of the line of march by which the host of Peroz King of Kings had approached disaster. Sure as sure, the Khamorth would ride down that line, sweeping away the warriors who had not the wit to avoid it.
By the time evening neared, Abivard no longer saw any of his fellow fugitives. That he took for a good omen: the nomads would not be likely now to spot him while chasing someone else.
When he came to another stream, he decided to stop for the night and let the steppe pony rest till morning. He dismounted, rubbed down the animal with a clump of dry grass for lack of anything better, then tied its reins to the biggest bush—almost a sapling—he could find.
After that, time came to shed his armor. He undid the catches at the side of his coat of mail and splints, and got out of it after unhooking the mail skirt that depended from it. He took off his iron-faced boots, then peeled down his iron-and-leather breeches.
The cuirass, the mail shirt, and the armored trousers he flung into the stream: no point in leaving them on dry land for some plainsman to take back to his tent as spoils. He stripped off the veil and hood from his helmet and threw them away, too. The helmet he kept, and the boots. They were heavy, but he feared he would hurt his feet if he did without them.
"You can stand that much weight, can't you, boy?" he said to the steppe pony. Its ears twitched to show it had heard, but of course it could not understand.
Wanting to keep the animal happy with him, he fed it another apricot from his dwindling supply. He ate one himself; he had had nothing but water since early that morning. Had a lizard skittered by, he would cheerfully have sliced it in two with his sword and eaten both pieces raw. But no lizard came.
Then he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand and cursed his own foolishness. The steppe pony's saddle had saddlebags hanging from it. In them might be . . . anything. He felt like shouting when he found strips of dried mutton. They were just about as hard as his own teeth and not much tastier, but they would keep him from starving for a while.
All he had on were thin linen drawers. He wished for his surcoat, then laughed. "Might as well wish for the army back while I'm at it," he said. With all that passion that was in him, he did wish for the army back, but he was too much Godarz's son not to know what such wishes were worth.
He passed a chilly, miserable night curled up on the ground like an animal, sword at his side so he could grab it in a hurry. He lost track of how many times he woke up to some tiny noise or a shift in the breeze or for no reason at all. Renewed sleep came harder and harder. At last, between dawn and sunrise, it stayed away for good. He gnawed more dried mutton and began to ride.
That day after the battle, he caught himself weeping again and again. Sometimes he mourned for his family, sometimes for his overthrown monarch and for Makuran at large, sometimes for himself: he felt guilty for living on when all he held dearest had perished.
That's nonsense, son. You have to go on, to set things right as best you can. So vividly did he seem to hear his father's voice that his head whipped around in sudden wild hope that the dihqan had somehow survived. But the steppe was empty as far as the eye could see, save for a crow that cawed harshly as it hopped into the air.
"Stupid bird, what are you doing here?" Abivard pointed over his shoulder. "The rich pickings are back that way."
Every so often, he saw rabbits lolloping across the plain. Just looking at them made him hungry, but hunting rabbits with a sword was like trying to knock flies out of the air with a switch, and he had no time to set a snare and linger. Once he spied a fox on a rabbit's heels. He wished the beast more luck than he had had himself.
Though he ate sparingly, he ran out of dried meat halfway through the third day. After that, his belly gnawed at him along with worry. He caught a couple of frogs by the side of a stream, gutted them with his dagger, and ate them raw. His only regret after he finished them was that he had thrown the offal into the water.
He looked for more frogs, or maybe a turtle or an incautious minnow the next time he stopped to water the steppe pony, but caught nothing.
Toward evening on the fourth day after the battle, he reached the Degird. He wanted to strip off his drawers, dive in, and swim across, but knew that, weak and worn as he was, he would probably drown before he reached the southern bank. Nor could he let the horse swim the stream and tow him with it, for it was in no finer fettle than he.
"Have to be the bridge, then," he said; he had talked to himself a lot lately, for lack of any other company. And if the bridge was down, or the Khamorth already across it . . . he tried not to think about such things.
Before night descended, he rode about half a farsang away from the river. Khamorth searching for fugitives still at large in their country were most likely to ride along the northern bank of the Begird, he reasoned. No point in making things easy for them. If they were already searching along the riverbank, the bridge was sure to be down, too, or in their hands, but he made himself not think about that, either.
Hunger woke him before the sun rose. He mounted the steppe pony, marveling at its stamina. A Makuraner horse could carry more weight, yes, and gallop faster for a little ways, but probably would have broken down on the long, grueling ride south. He had done his best to keep the pony rested but knew his best hadn't been good enough.
He rode into the morning sun, keeping the Degird in sight but not actually riding up to it unless he needed to water his horse or himself. He didn't know how far east he would have to ride to come on the bridge. "Only one way to learn," he said, and booted the pony up into a trot.
The sun climbed higher, burned off the early-morning chill, and grew hot. Abivard started to sweat, but he wasn't as uncomfortable as he might have been. A couple of weeks earlier, he had fared north in like weather armored from head to toe. He still had helm and iron-covered boots, but the drawers in between were far easier on his hide than mail and padding.
Was that the bridge up ahead? He thought he had seen it a couple of times already, only to find himself deceived by mud-banks in the river.
But no, not this time—that was the bridge, with riders in unmistakable Makuraner armor still in place on the Pardrayan plain: a gateway to a murdered dream of conquest. But even if the dream was dead, the bridge might keep Makuraner warriors—"Or at least one," Abivard told himself—alive.
He wrung the best pace he could from the tired steppe pony and waved like a man possessed to the garrison still loyally holding open the way back to freedom. A couple of the Makuraners broke away from their main body and came toward him at the trot, their lances couched and pointing at a spot about a hand's span above his navel. With a shock of fear, he realized they were ready to skewer him. He was, after all, riding a Khamorth horse.
"By the God, no!" he screamed hoarsely. Getting slaughtered by his own countrymen after escaping the nomads seemed a fate too bitterly ironic to bear.
The lances wavered when the riders heard him cry out in their own language. "Who are you, then?" one of them called, his face invisible and so all the more menacing behind his veil of mail.
"Abivard son of Godarz, dihqan of Vek Rud domain," Abivard answered, doing his best to sound like the real Makuraner he was rather than a plainsman trying to get across the Degird in disguise.
The two warriors looked at each other. The one who had spoken before asked, "D'you mean he's the dihqan, or are you?"
"He is," Abivard said automatically, and then had to correct himself: "He was. He's dead, along with my brother and three half brothers. That leaves me."
"So it does, and on a steppe pony, too," the lancer said, suspicious still. "How'd you stay alive through the fight if all your family perished?" What sort of coward are you? lurked under the words.
"My horse stepped in a hole and broke a leg as the charge was beginning," Abivard answered. "So I didn't go into the trench and I didn't get trapped when the cursed nomads sallied forth. I managed to get hold of this horse when it came out of the press, and I've ridden it ever since."
The Makuraners looked at each other again. The one who had been quiet till now said, "It could happen."
"Aye, it could," the other agreed. He turned back to Abivard. "Pass on, then. Makuran will need every man it can lay hands on, and we'd about given up on having any more get here—we were going to burn the bridge to make sure the nomads couldn't use it to swarm over the river."
"I'm surprised you haven't seen them yet," Abivard said.
"Why?" the talkier lancer asked. "When they wrecked the army, they ate the whole leg of mutton, and it filled 'em too full to bother with pan scraps like you."
The homely comparison made sense to Abivard. He nodded and rode on toward the bridge. The other warrior called after him, "Make your horse take it slow and easy as you cross. We've already doused it with rock oil, so it'll be slick as a melon rind. We'll torch it once we've all crossed."
Abivard nodded and waved to show he'd heard. The steppe pony's nostrils flared when it caught the stink of the rock oil; it snorted and shook its head. Abivard urged it on regardless. It stepped carefully through the black, smelly stuff poured onto the northern part of the bridge. In some parts of Makuran, they used rock oil in their lamps instead of butter or tallow. Abivard wondered how they put up with the smell.
About half a furlong in the center of the bridge was bare of the disgusting coating. The southern end, though, the part that touched the blessed soil of Makuran, also had rock oil poured over it.
Abivard halted his mount a few steps into Makuran. He turned around to watch the last of the garrison that had held the bridge come back over it. One final horseman remained on the planks. He carried a flickering torch. After pausing for a moment at the northern edge of the stretch that had no rock oil, the warrior tossed the torch into the stuff. Yellow-red flames and thick black smoke rose from a rapidly spreading fire. The Makuraner wheeled his horse and hurried across the bare patch and then through the oil that coated the southern end of the bridge.
"That was cleverly done," Abivard said. "The parts with the rock oil will burn quickly once flame reaches them, and the stretch in the middle without any made sure the fire wouldn't spread too fast and catch you still on the bridge."
"Just so," the fellow who had thrown the torch answered. "Have you worked with rock oil, then, to see this so quickly?"
Abivard shook his head. "No, never yet, though I thank you for the courteous words." Then his belly overrode everything else. "Sir, might a hungry man beg of you a bit of bread?"
"We haven't much ourself, for we've been feeding hungry men for a couple of days now, and our supply wagons left yesterday afternoon. But still—" He opened a saddle bag, drew out a chunk of flatbread wrapped around cracked bulgur wheat, and handed it to Abivard.
The food was stale, but Abivard didn't care. Only the memory of his father kept him from gulping it down like a starving wolf. He made himself eat slowly, deliberately, as a dihqan should, then bowed in the saddle to his benefactor. "I am in your debt, generous sir. If ever you have need, come to the domain of the Vek Rud and it shall be met."
"The God keep you and your domain safe," the warrior answered. The wind shifted and blew acrid, stinking smoke into his face and Abivard's. He coughed and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. Then, glancing back toward the burning bridge and the Degird River, he added, "The God keep all Makuran safe, for if the nomads come in force, I don't know if we have the men left to save ourselves."
Abivard wanted to argue with him but could not.
The bridge across the Vek Rud remained intact. When Abivard rode over it, he had food in his belly and a caftan over his dirty, ragged drawers, thanks to the kindness of folk he had met on the road. There ahead, crowning the hillock on which it stood, was the stronghold in which he had grown to manhood . . . his stronghold now.
The steppe pony snorted nervously as it picked its way through the village's winding streets; it wasn't used to buildings crowding so close on either side. But it kept going. Abivard, by now, figured it might keep going forever. He had never known a horse with such stamina.
A few people in the village recognized him and called his name. Others asked after his father in a way that said word of the full magnitude of the disaster on the steppe hadn't yet got here. He pretended not to hear those questions. People other than the villagers needed to hear their answers first.
The gates to the stronghold were closed. Someone knew—or feared—something, then. The sentry on the wall above let out a glad cry when he saw Abivard. The gates swung open. He rode in.
Frada stood waiting for him, panting a little—he must have come to the gateway at a dead run. Also panting was a black and tan dog at the heel of Abivard's younger brother. Frada's hands were greasy; maybe he had been feeding the dog scraps when the sentry's cry rang out.
"What became of your armor?" he asked Abivard. "For that matter, what became of your horse? Is the campaign ended so soon? Where are Father and our sibs? Will they come soon? All we have here is fourthhand tales, and I know how Father says they always grow in the telling."
"Not this time," Abivard answered. "All you've heard is true, I daresay, and worse besides. Peroz King of Kings is dead, slain, and most of the army with him—"
He had meant to plow straight ahead, but he couldn't. A low moan went up from the gathering crowd at that first grim sentence. Frada took a step backward, as if he had been slapped in the face. He was young enough to find disaster unimaginable. Whether he had imagined it or not, though, it was here. He did his best to rally, at least enough to ask the next question that had to be asked. "And Father, and Varaz, and Jahiz—"
Abivard cut him off before he named them all. "They charged bravely with the host. The God grant they took some plainsmen into the Void before they died. Had I charged with them, I would have perished, too." He told again what had happened to his horse, and how the accident kept him from falling into the Khamorth trap with the rest of the Makuraner army. He had told the story several times now, often enough to make it feel almost as if he were talking about something that had happened to someone else.
"Then you are dihqan of this domain," Frada said slowly. He bowed low to Abivard. He had never done that before, save to Godarz. The salute reminded Abivard of how much had changed in bare days' time.
"Aye, I am the dihqan," he said, weariness tugging at him like an insistent child. "Whatever is piled up on the platter while I've been away will have to wait another day or two before I'm ready to look at it, though."
"What's the name of the new King of Kings?" someone called from the middle of the crowd.
"Sharbaraz," Abivard answered. "Peroz King of Kings left him behind in Mashiz to look after affairs while he himself fared forth against the plainsmen. Father said he was reckoned a likely young man."
"The God bless Sharbaraz King of Kings." That phrase rose to the sky too raggedly to be a chorus, but in the space of a few seconds everyone in the courtyard repeated it.
Frada said, "You'll have to tell Mother and the rest of Godarz's wives."
"I know," Abivard said heavily. He had thought about that more than once on the long ride south. Telling Burzoe and the other women would be only the barest beginning of his complications there. Along with the domain, the dihqan's wives passed under his control. They were his wives now, save only Burzoe who had borne him.
His thoughts had not been of sensual delights. For one thing, he had been afraid and half starved, a state anything but conducive to lickerish imaginings. For another, he had serious doubts about how well he would manage the women's quarters. Godarz had done pretty well, but Godarz had been older and added his women one at a time instead of inheriting them all at once.
He would worry about such things later. For now, he stuck to small, practical details. "The first thing I'll need to do is find a way into the quarters. Father certainly took the key and—" He stopped in confusion. "No, I'm a ninny. There must be a way in through the kitchens, not so?" So much for practicality.
"Aye, there is," one of the cooks said. "A serving girl can show you. We don't speak of it much, though." Makuraner formality dictated that noble women be separated from the world. Common sense dictated that the world needed to get to them. Common sense prevailed, but formality tried to pretend it didn't.
Abivard scanned the crowd for one of the women who served his mother and Godarz's other wives—no, Godarz's other widows. He pointed to the first one he spied. "Yasna, do you know this way?"
"Yes, lord," Yasna answered. Abivard shook his head like a man bedeviled by gnats. The title was his father's, or rather had been. Now he would have to get used to wearing it.
He followed her into the living quarters, through the kitchens, and into the larder. He had seen the plain door there a hundred times, and always assumed it led into another storage chamber. It didn't. It opened onto a long, narrow, dark hall. At the far end was another door, without a latch on this side but with a grillwork opening so those on the other side could see who came.
Yasna rapped on the door. She stood close by the grille, with Abivard behind her. After a moment, she rapped again. A woman's head obscured the light that came through the opening. "Ah, Yasna," the woman said. "Who is with you?"
"I bring the dihqan, lady Ardini," Yasna answered.
Ardini was one of Godarz' most junior wives, younger than Abivard. She let out a squeak, then cried, "The dihqan returns? Oh, the God be praised for bringing him home safe!" She unbarred the door and opened it wide.
As the door swung open, Abivard wondered if a man ever came this way and sneaked into the women's quarters. Some nobles kept eunuchs in the quarters to guard against such mishaps. Godarz had never bothered, saying "If you can't trust a woman, a guard will only make her sneaky, not honest."
At Ardini's cry, women came running up the hall. They were crying out, too. But when they recognized Abivard, they gave back in confusion. One of his half sisters said to Ardini, "You said the dihqan was here, not his son."
"That's what Yasna told me," Ardini answered sulkily. "Is it a crime that I believed her?"
"She told the truth," Abivard said, "though by the God I wish she'd lied. I am dihqan of this domain."
Some of the women stared at him, not understanding what he meant. Others, quicker, gasped and then began to shriek. The wails spread quickly as the rest realized their loss. Abivard wished he could cover his ears, but would not insult their grief so.
Even as they cried out, some of them eyed him with frank speculation. He could guess what was in their minds: If I can but intoxicate him with my body, he may make me principal wife. That meant riches, influence, and the chance to bear a son who would one day command the stronghold and rule Vek Rud domain.
He knew he would have to think of such things . . . but not now. Godarz had often gone to Burzoe for advice. That, from the wily dihqan, was recommendation enough for Abivard. He saw Burzoe at the back of the group of women, Denak beside her, and said, "I would have speech with my mother and sister first of all." If Godarz had trusted his principal wife's wits, Abivard respected those of his own sister.
Burzoe said, "Wait. Before you speak with us two, everyone who dwells in the women's quarters needs to hear what passed of our husband and sons who went off to war and who—who returned not." Her voice almost broke at the end; not only had she lost Godarz, but Varaz as well.
Abivard realized she was right. As quickly as he could, he went over the doomed campaign yet another time, taking it a further step from memory into tale. Spako and Mirud, mothers to Jahiz and Uzav, burst into fresh lamentation; Arshak's mother, a woman named Sarduri, was dead.
"And so I, and a few others, had the good fortune to escape the ambush, though I thought my fortune anything but good at the time," Abivard finished. "But the flower of the army fell, and times will be hard henceforward."
"Thank you, son . . . or should I say rather, thank you, lord," Burzoe said when he was done. She bowed deeply to him, as Frada had out in the heat of the courtyard. Holding her voice steady by what had to be force of will alone, she went on, "And now, if it is your pleasure to take counsel with Denak and me, follow and I shall lead you to a suitable chamber."
Godarz's widows and those of his daughters who had come into womanhood stepped back to make room for Abivard as he strode through their ranks. Some of the old dihqan's wives contrived not to step back quite far enough, so that he brushed against them walking by. He noted that without being stirred by it; grief and weariness smothered desire in him.
He looked curiously this way and that as Burzoe and Denak took him to the room they had in mind: he had not been in the women's quarters since he was little more than a babe. They struck him as lighter and airier than most of the living area in the stronghold, with splendid carpets underfoot and tapestries covering the bare stone of the walls, all products of the patient labor of generations of women who had made their homes here since the stronghold rose in the unremembered past.
"It's—pleasant here," he said.
"You needn't sound so surprised," Burzoe answered with quiet pride. "We are not mewed up here because we are guilty of some crime, but for our honor's sake. Should we live as if this were a prison?"
"Sometimes it has the feel of one," Denak said.
"Only if you let it," Burzoe said; Abivard got the feeling this was a running argument between mother and daughter. Burzoe went on, "No matter where your body stays, your mind can roam the whole domain—wider, if you let it."
"If you are a principal wife, if your husband deigns to listen to you, if you have learned—have been allowed to learn—your letters, then yes, perhaps," Denak said. "Otherwise you sit and gossip and ply your needle and work the loom."
"One thing you do not do, if you are wise, is air petty troubles before the dihqan," Burzoe said pointedly. She paused, waving Abivard into a sitting room spread with carpets and strewn with embroidered cushions. "Here we may speak without fear of disturbance."
"No one in Makuran can do anything without fear of disturbance, not today, not for months, maybe not for years," Abivard said. Nevertheless, he went in and folded himself into the tailor's seat on a carpet in the style of the steppes: it showed a great cat springing onto the back of a fleeing stag.
Burzoe and Denak also made themselves comfortable, reclining against big pillows. After a moment, the serving girl Yasna came in with a tray of wine and pistachios, which she set on a low table in front of Abivard. He poured for his mother and sister, offered them the bowl of nuts.
"We should serve you," Burzoe said. "You are the dihqan."
"If I am, then let me use my power by doing as I please here," Abivard said.
In spite of the dreadful news he had brought, that made Burzoe smile for a moment. She said, "You are very like your father, do you know that? He could always talk his way around anything he pleased."
"Not anything, not at the end," Abivard said, remembering horses crashing down into the trench the Khamorth had dug and others tumbling over one another as their riders tried desperately to bring them to a halt.
"No, not anything." The smile had already left Burzoe's face. "For the kingdom—is it as bad as that, truly?"
"Truly, Mother," Abivard said. "Only the river stands between us and the plainsmen; we have lost so many that if they do cross, we will be hard-pressed to throw them back to their proper side once more."
"I have to remind myself to think in wider terms than this domain alone," Burzoe said with a shaky laugh. "We have lost so many, I find it hard to take in that the realm at large has suffered equally."
"Believe it," Abivard said. "It is true."
"So." His mother stretched the word into a long hiss. Her eyes were bright with tears, but they remained unshed. "For the sake of the domain, then, I can tell you two things that must be done."
Abivard leaned forward: this was what he had hoped to hear. "They are?"
"First," Burzoe said, "you must send to Papak's domain and ask that your wedding with Roshnani be celebrated as soon as is possible."
"What? Why?" Advice on making a marriage he had not expected.
"Two reasons," his mother said. "Do you know if Papak or any of those who fared forth with him survived the battle on the steppe?"
"I don't know. I would doubt it; few came forth alive. But I know nothing for a fact."
"If the dihqan and all his likeliest heirs fell fighting, those who find themselves in charge of the domain will be weak and will be looking round for any props they can find to bolster their hold on it. A strong brother-in-law is not the least of assets. And you will also have a claim on them if Vek Rud domain needs aid against the nomads. Do you see?"
"Mother, I do." Abivard inclined his head to Burzoe. He could admire such subtlety, but knew he was not yet capable of it himself. He said, "That's one reason. What's your other?"
"One that will benefit you more than the domain: when you bring Roshnani here, you can establish her as your principal wife with far less jealousy and hatred than if you were to choose one of Godarz's widows. The women here will understand why, for the sake of the domain, you have chosen someone not of their number. Were you to pick one of them, though, all but that one will think you have made a dreadful blunder and torment you and the lucky one without cease. Believe me, you do not want that. No dihqan can hope to accomplish anything with the women's quarters in turmoil."
"If Roshnani seems able to bear the burden, I shall do as you say," Abivard answered.
"She will bear the burden, because she must," Burzoe said.
Abivard let that go; his mother, he suspected, assumed all other women had her own strength of will. He said, "You've given me one thing I must do, then. What's the other?"
"What you would expect," Burzoe said. Abivard didn't know what he should expect but did his best not to let his face show that. Maybe it did and maybe it didn't; he couldn't tell. Burzoe went on, "It involves Denak, of course."
"Ah?" Now Abivard couldn't disguise that he was lost.
Burzoe sniffed in exasperation. Denak grinned; she knew what her mother was talking about. "You're not the only one in the family who was betrothed, you know."
"No, I didn't know," Abivard said, though on reflection he should have: a dihqan's eldest daughter by his principal wife was a valuable piece in the game of shifting power the nobles of Makuran played among themselves. He plucked at his beard. "To whom?" Now that he was dihqan, he would have to keep track of such things for all of Godarz's daughters.
"To Pradtak, eldest son of Urashtu," Denak answered.
"Ah," Abivard said. "Father made a fine match for you, then." Urashtu's domain lay southeast of the one Abivard unexpectedly found himself holding. Not only did it have good grazing land and hot springs that drew the wealthy infirm from all over Makuran, its stronghold perched on Nalgis Crag, an eminence so imposing that it made Vek Rud's castle seem to lie on flatlands by comparison.
Burzoe said, "As much as your match with Roshnani, we should pursue Denak's with Pradtak. If he survived the battle on the steppe, he will be eager to bring it to accomplishment for the same reasons we are; the God grant it be so. But if not, we can begin discussion with whoever now holds that domain."
Abivard looked over at Denak. Marriages were always chancy; family considerations counted for far more than passion. But at least in Pradtak Denak had the hope of a husband about her own age. If he had died in the Khamorth trap, she might find herself pledged to some wizened uncle who now held Nalgis Crag domain only because he had been too old to go out and fight. That seemed a dreadful fate to inflict on his sister.
Denak smiled back at him, but in a way that said, she, too, was worried about such things. She said, "No less than you, I will do what's best for the domain."
"Of course you will, child," Burzoe said; with her, there was no room for doubt. "Now we need solid allies, and marriage is the best way to come by them. It will be well enough. Have I not prospered here, though I never set eyes on Godarz till the day my hands were set in his?"
Prospered, Abivard noted. His mother had said nothing about being happy. If the idea entered her mind at all, it was less important to her than the other.
She went on in similar vein. "This domain shall prosper, too. You have your father's wits, Abivard; I know the God will help you use them as he did, for she loves the folk of Makuran more than those of any other land."
"As you say, Mother," Abivard answered. Not a word had Burzoe said of her outlining the course he was to follow. She had been the ideal dihqan's wife, always ready with ideas but content to let her husband, the public part of the pairing, take credit for them. Now she was doing the same for Abivard.
Maybe she thought to rule the domain as well as advise. With someone other than Godarz her husband, she might already have been doing that for years. Abivard was uncomfortably aware that, for the moment, she had more and better ideas than he did. If Vek Rud domain was to be his in fact as well as name, he would have to acquire wisdom and experience in a hurry.
A corner of his mouth quirked upward. Given the straits in which Makuran found itself, he would have plenty of chances.