Hammer And Anvil

The wail of despair that rose when the Kubratoi spied his force was music to his ears. He spurred his horse into a shambling gallop. The first Kubrati he met cut at him once, missed, then set spur to his own pony and did his best to escape. A Videssian who still had arrows brought him down as if he were a fleeing fox.

"Maniakes!" shouted the Videssians who kept the Kubratoi from escaping to the north.

"Rhegorios!" Maniakes shouted back, and his troopers took up the call. Now that Maniakes' men had reached the field, his cousin, instead of merely holding the nomads at bay, pressed hard against them. Rhegorios' soldiers were fresh and rested and mounted on horses that hadn't been going hard for a day and a night and most of another day. Their quivers were full. They struck with a force out of proportion to their numbers.

All at once, the Kubratoi opposing them made the fatal transition from army to frightened mob, each man looking no farther than toward what might keep his uniquely precious self alive another few minutes. In that moment of dissolution, Maniakes looked round the field for the horsetail that marked Etzilios' position. He wanted to serve the khagan as he had nearly been served south of Imbros. If he could kill or capture the leader of the Kubratoi, the nomads might fight among themselves for years over the succession.

He saw nothing to show Etzilios' place. As he himself had while fleeing from the Kubrati ambush, the khagan had abandoned the symbol of his station to give himself a better chance of keeping it. "Five pounds of gold to the man who brings me Etzilios, alive or dead!" the Avtokrator cried.

Though the battle was won, and won crushingly, a good many Kubratoi managed to squeeze out from between Maniakes' force and Rhegorios'. Then the light began to fail, which allowed more escapes. No one led Etzilios in bonds before Maniakes or rode up carrying the khagan's dripping head. Maniakes wondered whether he lay anonymously dead on the field or had succeeded in getting away. Time would tell. At the moment, in the midst of triumph, his fate seemed a small thing.

Here came Rhegorios, his handsome face wearing a smile as bright as the sun now setting. "We did it!" he cried, and embraced Maniakes. "By Phos, we did it. Hammer and anvil, and crushed them between us."

"I have two anvils-father and son." Maniakes waved to Symvatios, who sat his horse close by. "So much hope going into this campaign. I had to hope we'd win down south of here, win hard enough and often enough to make the nomads decide pulling back would be a good idea. And then I had to hope you'd put your men in the right spot after Thrax and the fleet carried you up the coast to Varna."

"I almost didn't," Rhegorios said. "The scouts I had out farthest ran up against the Kubratoi fleeing first and fastest. I had to hustle the lads along to get 'em where they'd do the most good in time for them to do it. But we managed." He waved to show the victory Videssian arms had won.

Like most triumphs, this one was better contemplated in song and chronicle than in person. Twilight started to veil the aftermath of battle, but did not completely cover it, not yet. Men and horses lay still and silent in death or twisting in the agony of wounds and screaming their pain to the unhearing sky. The stink of blood and sweat and shit filled Maniakes' nostrils. Hopeful crows hopped not far away, waiting to feast on the banquet of carrion spread before them.

Healer-priests and ordinary physicians and horseleeches strode across the battlefield, doing what they could for injured Videssians and animals. Other men, these still in armor, traveled the field, too, making sure all the Kubratoi on it would never rise from it again. Maniakes wondered if the scavengers could tell the difference between the men who gave them less to eat and those who gave them more.

"May I share your tent tonight?" he asked Rhegorios. "Mine is-back there somewhere," He waved vaguely southward, toward the outrun baggage train.

Rhegorios gri

"Can you spare some space in that crowd of people for your poor feeble father, as well?" Symvatios said. Despite the bandage, he didn't look feeble. He wasn't quite the cool calculator the elder Maniakes was, but he had led his troops bravely and done everything the Avtokrator asked of him. A lot of officers half his age couldn't approach his standard.

Rhegorios' cooks got fires going and stewpots bubbling above them. Hot stew went down wonderfully well after the two hard days just ended. Maniakes sat on the ground inside Rhegorios' tent-after some argument, he and Rhegorios had persuaded Symvatios to take the cot in there-and sipped at a mug of wine. He hoped it wouldn't put him to sleep, or at least not yet. Having won his victory, he wanted to hash it over, too.

"Most important is that the men stood and fought," Rhegorios said. "We couldn't know whether they would till we took 'em out and tried 'em. They didn't waste all that time on the practice field."

"That's so," Maniakes said, nodding. From the cot, Symvatios let out a snore. He hadn't wanted to fall asleep, any more than he had wanted to accept the cot, but however willing his spirit, his flesh was far from young. Maniakes glanced over at him affectionately, then went on, "The other important thing we did was land your men behind the Kubratoi. That turned what would have been a victory into a rout. I wonder if we got Etzilios."

"It was a fine idea," Rhegorios answered. "The nomads are nothing to speak of on the sea. I wish we had run up against some of those little pirate boats of theirs, those monoxyla. Thrax's dromons would have smashed 'em to kindling, and we wouldn't have landed an hour late."

Maniakes plucked at his beard. "The Makuraners haven't much in the way of ships, either," he remarked, and then paused to listen to what he had just said. Thoughtfully he went on, "We've taken advantage of that in small ways already, landing raiders in the westlands and so forth. But we could move along the coasts by sea faster than Abivard could shift his forces by land trying to keep up with us. We could…"

"Provided we have troops who won't piss their drawers the first time the boiler boys come thundering down on them," Rhegorios said. Then he too looked thoughtful. "We're on our way to getting troops like that, aren't we?"

"Either we're on our way or else we have them now," Maniakes said. "Going over the Cattle Crossing and ramming headlong into the Makuraners always struck me as the wrong way to go about clearing them from the westlands, and a good recipe for getting beat, to boot. Now maybe we have another choice."

"No guarantees," Rhegorios said.

Maniakes' laugh held a bitter edge. "What in life has any guarantees?" He remembered Niphone's face, pale and still, as she lay in her sarcophagus. "You do as well as you can for as long as you can. If we're not going to let the Makuraners keep the westlands, we'll have to drive them out. Making them move to respond to us would be a pleasant change, don't you think?"

"You get no arguments from me there," Rhegorios answered. "I'd love to see them scurrying about instead of us. Can we do it this summer, do you think?"

"I don't know," Maniakes said. "We'll have to go back to Videssos the city and see how long we'll need to refit, how many men we can pull together, how many ships we have. We'd have a surer chance of doing it if Etzilios hadn't jumped on us, curse him."

"You may end up thanking him one of these days," Rhegorios said. "You might never have come up with this idea if he hadn't invaded."