“Tomorrow,” Gaius Philippus said, fiddling with the cheekpiece of the legionary helmet he had borrowed. When it suited him, he turned his back to the fire by which he had been sitting and peered into the darkness, trying to see who had won the clash. There was no way to tell.

  He turned his attention to the imperial forces. After a while he sat again, a puzzled expression on his face. “Near as I can see, Gavras is doing everything right. Why don’t I like it?”

  “The sitting around, it is,” Viridovix said at once. Even more than Thorisin’s, his temper demanded action.

  “That wouldn’t matter, in a confident army,” Gorgidas half disagreed. “With this one, though …” He let his voice trail away.

  Marcus knew what he meant. Some units of the heterogeneous force were confident enough. The legionaries had always given the Yezda all they wanted, as had the Khatrishers who fought beside them. The Emperor’s Haloga bodyguards feared no man living. And to the Arshaum, the Yezda were so many more Khamorth, to be beaten with ease. Arigh’s men formed a big part of the army’s cavalry screen.

  But the Videssians who made up the bulk of Thorisin’s men were of variable quality. Some veteran units were as good as any of the professionals who served beside them. Others, though, were garrison troops from places like Serrhes, or militiamen facing real combat for the first time. How well they would do was anyone’s guess.

  And in the background, unmentioned but always there, lurked the question of what deviltry Avshar had waiting. It preyed on the minds and sapped the spirits of veterans and new soldiers alike.

  “Tomorrow,” Scaurus muttered, and wondered if it was prayer or curse.

  Cookfires flared with the dawn, giving the troops a hot meal before they took their places. Having chosen the field, the Emperor had settled his order of battle well in advance. He and the Halogai of the Imperial Guard anchored the center of his line. As the northerners marched forward, their axeheads gave back bloody reflections from the rising sun.

  The legionaries were on their right, drawn up maniple by maniple, each behind its own signum; the wreath-encircled hands topping the standards had been freshly gilded and made a brave show in the morning light. The points of the legionaries’ pila were like a moving forest as they advanced.

  Here and there a man clung to the weapons he was used to, instead of adopting Roman-style javelins and shortsword. Viridovix, of course, kept his Gallic blade. And Zeprin the Red, shouldering his axe, might have been one with his countrymen in the Emperor’s guard. But the Haloga still did not think himself worthy of serving in their ranks and tramped instead with the rest of the legionaries.

  To the left of the Imperial Guard were a couple of hundred Namdalener knights, men who still had Thorisin’s trust in spite of the strife between the Duchy and Videssos. They wore conical helms with bar nasals and mail shirts that reached to their knees, and carried long lances, slashing swords, and brightly painted kite-shaped shields. The stout horses they rode were also armored, with canvas and leather and metal.

  Rakio, in his own full caparison, rode over from the Roman camp to join them as the imperial force moved out. “No fear for me have,” he said to Gorgidas. “I will be best fighting with men who fight as I do.” He leaned down from the saddle to kiss the Greek good-bye.

  The legionaries howled. Rakio straightened. “Jealous, the lot of you,” he said, which raised a fresh chorus of whoops. They did not disturb the Yrmido at all; he was comfortable within his own people’s standards. He waved and trotted off.

  Gorgidas wished for his lover’s innocent openness. Back among the legionaries, he found himself automatically falling into the old pattern of concealment. But when he looked around, he saw the grinning Romans were not so malicious after all. Maybe Rakio’s nonchalance reached them, too. The Greek didn’t know, or care. He accepted it gratefully.

  “Pass me a whetstone, will you, someone?” he said, wanting to hone his gladius one last time.

  Two or three legionaries offered stones; one chuckled, “The horseman thinks your blade is sharp enough.” Gorgidas flinched, but it came out as camp banter, not the vicious mockery Quintus Glabrio had been forced to face a few years before. He gave back a rude gesture. The trooper laughed out loud.

  Laon Pakhymer made his pony rear as he led his Khatrishers out to flank the legionaries. Marcus doffed his helmet to return the salute. “They’re all right, that bunch, sloppy or no,” Gaius Philippus said, echoing his thoughts.

  Videssian troops, lighter-armed but more mobile than the men of Gavras’ center, took their stations to either side. Some were horse-archers, others bore javelins or sabers. One of their officers brought his mount up on its hind legs, too, for no reason Scaurus could see other than high spirits. The imperials did not usually act like that; few of them gloried in war. Then he recognized Provhos Mourtzouphlos. He scowled. He did not want to grant his enemy any virtues, even courage.

  Thorisin had stationed nomads at either wing of his army, outside his native soldiers. On the left were Khamorth, hired off the Pardrayan steppe. Marcus wondered if they were men who lived near the Astris, Videssos’ river-boundary with the plains, or if his friends’ friend Batbaian had sent them to the Empire’s aid by way of Prista.

  He had no such questions about the warriors on the other flank. Arigh was posted there. The Roman could hear the naccara-drum, at once deeper and sharper than the ones the Yezda used, through the horns and pipes that signaled the imperial force forward.

  Avshar’s army was moving, too, guided by the will of its chieftain. It looked to be all cavalry. The wizard-prince’s tokens were at the center, opposite Videssos’ gold sunburst on blue. Avshar had two huge banners. The smaller was Yezd’s flag, a springing panther on a field the color of drying blood. The other’s ground was of the same hue, but it took a while to recognize the device. When the imperials finally did, many of them sketched a quick circle over their hearts; it was Skotos’s twin lightning bolts.

  Around the wizard-prince came regiments of Makuraner lancers; their gear was between that of the Videssians and Namdaleni in weight and protective strength. A lot of them wore plumes atop their spiked helmets to make themselves seem taller.

  The greater part of Avshar’s power, though, resided in the Yezda proper. Scaurus had seen them in action too often to despise them for the poor order they kept trotting into battle; they combined barbarous spirit with the refined cruelty they had learned from their master. The emblems of many clans—here a green banner, there a wolf’s skull, or a man’s, on a pole—were held on high at irregular intervals up and down their line.

  Avshar had taught them something of obedience, too; they drew to a ragged halt when Skotos’ flag wagged back and forth three times. The armies were still several bowshots apart. Suspecting some sorcerous trap, Thorisin drew up his own forces. His mission was to hold, not to attack; let Avshar come to him.

  A horseman emerged from the ranks of the Yezda and rode slowly into the no man’s land between the two armies. Mutters ran up and down the imperial line as he grew close enough to be recognized; that terrible face could only belong to the wizard-prince himself.

  He used a sorcery then, a small one, to let all the Emperor’s troops hear his voice as if he stood beside them: “Curs! Swine! Last scrapings of outworn misbelief! Breathes there any among you whose blood flows hot enough to dare face me in single combat?”

  “I dare!” roared Zeprin the Red, his face dark with the flush that gave him his byname. His axe upraised and his heavy chain-mail shirt jingling about him, he pushed out of the Roman line and began a lumbering rush at the wizard-prince, the object of his supreme hatred since Maragha.

  “Stop him!” Marcus snapped, and several legionaries sprang after the Haloga. Alone and afoot, he stood small chance against Avshar in a fair fight, and the tribune did not think he would get one.

  Avshar ignored Zeprin in any case. A Videssian horseman spurred toward the wizard-prince, crying, “Phos with me!” He drew his bow to the ear and fired.

  Laughing his terrible laugh, Avshar made a quick, derisive pass. The arrow blazed for an instant, then vanished. “Summon your lying god again,” the wizard-prince said. “See how much he heeds you.” He gestured once more, this time in a complex series of motions. A beam of orange-red light shot from his skeletal fingers at the charging Videssian, who was now only yards away.

  The soldier and his mount jerked and twisted like moths in a flame. Their charred, blackened bodies crashed to the ground at the feet of Avshar’s stallion, which side-stepped daintily. The wind was thick with the smell of burned meat.

  “Are there more?” Avshar said into vast silence. By then the Romans had managed to wrestle Zeprin back into their ranks. The overlord of Yezd laughed again, a sound full of doom.

  Viridovix caught Scaurus’ eye. The tribune nodded. If Avshar would meet them, they would never have a better chance. And at its worst, the match would be more even than the one the wizard-prince had given the brave, rash Videssian.

  “Are there more?” Avshar said again. Plainly he expected no response. Scaurus filled his lungs to shout. Before he could, though, there was a stir in the very center of the Videssian army. The ranks of the Halogai divided to let a single rider through.

  The tribune’s throat clogged with dread. He had not thought Thorisin could be madman enough to dare his enemy’s challange. He was a fine soldier, but Avshar’s might was more than a man’s.

  But it was not the Avtokrator who advanced to face the wizard-prince, but an old man in a threadbare blue robe, riding a flop-eared mule. And from him Avshar recoiled as he would have from no living warrior. “Go back,” Balsamon said; the same minor magic that let Avshar’s voice ring wide was his as well. “The synod cast thee into the outer darkness of anathema an age ago. Get thee gone; Videssos has no room for thee and thy works.”

  Marcus stared in awe at the patriarch’s back. He had seen how Balsamon, so casual and merry in private, could instantly assume the dignity his priestly office demanded. This, though, surpassed the one as much as that outdid the other. Balsamon seemed strong and stern in judgment as the great mosaic image of Phos in the dome of the High Temple in Videssos the city.

  But Avshar quickly rallied. “Thou art a fool, thou dotard, to stand before me and prate of anathemas. Even aside from thy presumption here, in a year thou wouldst be dead, dead as all those purblind witlings who would not see the truth I brought them. Yet I faced them then and I face thee now. Who, then, cleaves to the more potent god?”

  “One day thy span will end. Soon or late, what does it matter? Thou’lt be called to account for thy deeds and spend eternity immured in Skotos’ ice with the rest of his creatures.”

  The wizard-prince’s grim eyes burned with scorn. “Thou showest thyself as deluded as thy forefathers. We are all of us Skotos’ creatures, thou, and I, and the headstrong bumpkin who sits the throne that is mine by right, and everyone else as well. Aye, in sooth man is Skotos’ finest work. Of all living beings, only he truly knows evil for what it is and works it of his own free will.”

  He spoke as though he and Balsamon were alone, and indeed in a way they were, both being products, no matter how different, of the rigors of the Videssian theological tradition. Balsamon replied in the same fashion, seeming to seek to bring an erring colleague back to sound doctrine rather than to confront the deadliest enemy of his faith and nation.

  He said, “As well argue all food is corrupt on account of a piece of bad fish. Or art thou so blind thou’dst forget there is great good as well as wickedness in the soul of every man?”

  The patriarch might have meant the question as rhetorical, but Marcus thought it reached the heart of the matter. The older a man gets, the more fully he becomes himself. Avshar had been no more evil than any other man, before he read in the Khamorth invasions and the collapse of Videssos the sign of Skotos’ triumph on earth and turned to the dark god. But through his magic he had gained centuries to live with his choice and grow into it, and now …

  Now he cursed Balsamon with a savagery worse than any his Yezda could aspire to, for the outcast always hates more fiercely than the mere enemy. His voice rose until he was screaming: “Die, then, and see what thy goodness gets thee!”

  His hands twisted through the same set of passes he had used against the Videssian cavalryman. As the fiery light stabbed at Balsamon, Marcus cried out and sprang forward, Viridovix at his side. The patriarch deserved better than to fall unavenged to Avshar’s sorcery.

  But Balsamon did not fall, though he slumped in the saddle as if suddenly bearing up under a heavy weight. “I deny thee and all thy works,” he said; his voice was strained but full of purpose. “While I live, thy foul sorceries shall hold no more sway on this field.”

  “So thou sayest.” Avshar loosed another enchantment against the patriarch. This one had no visible emanation, but Scaurus heard Balsamon groan. Then the prelate dropped as inessential the small magic that projected his voice over the plain.

  The wizard-prince rained spell after spell on him. Balsamon was not, could not be, the sorcerer to match his opponent. He lurched several times, almost toppled once. He did not try to strike back. But in defense, his will was indomitable. Like an outclassed warrior seeking only to hold his foe at bay as long as he could, he withstood or beat aside wizardry that would have devastated a stronger but less purposeful magician.

  Seeing him survive in the maelstrom of sorcery, the Videssian army took up his name as a war cry, shouting it again and again until the distant hills echoed with it: “Balsamon! Balsamon! Balsamon!” And, as Marcus had seen before, the patriarch drew strength from his admirers. He straightened on his mule, his arms wide-flung, his blunt hands darting now this way, now that, as he deflected every blow Avshar aimed at him or at the imperial army as a whole.

  “Och, a good fairy has hold of him,” Viridovix whispered beside Scaurus. Gorgidas, well away from them, murmured a Greek word to himself: “Enthousiasmós.” It meant exactly the same thing.

  Finally, screaming in thwarted fury, Avshar gave up the assault, wheeled his horse with a brutal jerk of the reins, and stormed back to his own lines. A chorus of jeers and insults rose from the imperials. Everyone cheered as a Haloga ran out to take the reins of Balsamon’s mule and lead him back to safety within the Videssian army. Exhausted but unbeaten, the patriarch waved to the soldiers around him. But Marcus could see his face. He looked like a man who had staved off defeat, not won a victory.

  There was a brief lull. All along both lines, officers harangued their men, trying to whip them to fever pitch. Marcus looked inside himself for inspiring words. He did not find many. Whatever illusions he had of the glory of the battlefield were long since dust, as were those of the legionaries.

  At last he raised his voice and said, “It’s very simple. If we lose this one, we’re ruined. There’s nothing left to fall back on any more. Hang together, do what your officers order you, and don’t let those bastards out there through. That’s all, I guess.”

  He heard a few voices translating what he said into throaty Vaspurakaner for those “princes” who had never picked up Latin. He got no great applause; the legionaries had given Balsamon the cheers they had in them. He did not care. His men seemed ready and unafraid. Past that, nothing mattered.

  Scaurus thought he heard thunder from a clear sky and wondered what new spellcraft Avshar was essaying. But it was not thunder. “Here we go,” Gaius Philippus said as the Yezda urged their horses at Thorisin Gavras’ line. The pounding of their hooves was the noise that filled the world.

  Laon Pakhymer bawled an order. The Khatrishers galloped out to screen the infantry on their flank, to keep the legionaries and Halogai from having to stand against a barrage of arrows to which they could not reply. Pakhymer’s troopers traded shots with the Yezda, slowing the momentum of their charge. Marcus watched horses and men fall on both sides.

  The Khatrishers were gallant but outnumbered. Having done as much as he could, Pakhymer waved his disreputable hat in the air. His men, those who survived, fell back into their place in the line.

  “Avshar! Avshar!” The shouts of the Yezda filled Scaurus’ ears. Arrows began falling on the Romans. Somewhere behind the tribune, there was a curse and a clatter of metal as a legionary went down. Another swore as he was hit.

  Thock! An arrow smacked against Marcus’ scutum. He staggered and was glad for the multiple thicknesses of wood and leather and metal. The shaft would have torn through the light target he had carried with the Arshaum.

  Pushed on by the mass behind them, the first ranks of Yezda were very close. “Pila at the ready!” the tribune shouted, gauging distances. He swung his sword arm high and caught the eyes of the buccinators, who raised their cornets to their lips. “Loose!” he cried; the horns blared out the command to the legionaries.

  Hundreds of heavy javelins flew as one. Wounded Yezda roared; their horses screamed. The cries of dismay went on as onrushing ponies stumbled over the fallen.

  Some riders blocked flung pila with their shields. That saved them for the moment, but when they tried to tear the spears out and throw them back, they found that the weapons’ soft iron shanks had bent at impact, fouling their shields and making the pila useless. With guttural oaths, they discarded their suddenly worthless protection.

  “Loose!” Another volley tore into the Yezda. Then the legionaries’ shortswords came rasping out. Whether the Yezda fought from fear of their master or raw blood lust, they did not shrink from combat. They crashed into the Romans.

  The dust their horses kicked up rolled over the legionaries in a choking cloud. Marcus sneezed and coughed. His eyes streaming, he hacked blindly at the rider in front of him. He felt the soft resistance that meant flesh. Warm wetness splashed him. He heard a groan. Whether it was man or beast he never knew.

  He swiped at his face with the back of his forearm to clear his vision and quickly looked about. Here and there the Yezda had driven deep wedges into the legionaries’ line, but he saw no breakthroughs. By squads and maniples, the Romans moved up to cover the points of greatest pressure. At close quarters they had the advantage, despite the horses of the Yezda. Their armor, shields, and disciplined flexibility counted for more than their foes’ added reach and ability to strike from above.