Avshar’s hesitation lasted no more than a handful of heartbeats. When he did advance on the Roman, he moved more warily then he had against Zeprin. Having crossed swords with Marcus before, he knew the tribune was no spitfire seeking only to attack—and he had a healthy respect for the Gallic longsword.

  The first clash of arms showed Scaurus he was in over his head. He was close to exhaustion, while Avshar drew from a seemingly unending well of strength. The tribune took blow after blow on his scutum; Avshar’s keen blade bit into the bronze facing of the shield and chewed at the wood beneath. The wizard-prince easily evaded or beat aside the thrusts he managed in reply.

  They dueled alone. No Makurani came to Avshar’s aid; had he been a different sort of commander, Marcus would not have lasted long. But the imperials as well as his own men feared the wizard-prince. None of them had the courage to join the Roman against him. As if the two sides were both reproaching themselves, they fought each other harder than ever.

  To Gorgidas, who was directly in back of the tribune, Marcus seemed like Aias battling Hektor in the Iliad—outmatched, baffled, but too mulish to yield an inch except by dying. The Greek shoved Viridovix in the back. “By the gods, hurry! He can’t hold him off forever.”

  “Ha’ care, tha sot!” Viridovix yelped, wriggling like a snake to evade a Makuraner’s slash. “Is it trying to get me killed y’are?” His backhand reply caught his foe in the right shoulder. The Makuraner dropped his saber and started to run. A Haloga guardsman cut him nearly in half from behind.

  “Hurry!” Gorgidas insisted again. He stabbed at the lancer who loomed in front of him, pinked the rider’s horse. Its flailing hooves proved as dangerous as the Makuraner’s long spear. The Greek skipped back just in time.

  Up ahead, Marcus was still on his feet, though he blearily wondered how. Avshar played with him as a kitten toys with a mouse, giving torment but holding off the blow that would end it. Every so often he would inflict another gash and smile his carnivore smile. “Escape me now, an thou canst!” he gloated in high good humor. He relished victory over the tribune almost as much as if it had been Gavras and was in no hurry to end his pleasure.

  Not all the blood on his robes and cuirass came from his amputated finger; even a mouse can have fangs. But his injuries were of no importance, while Marcus bled in a score of places.

  After some endless time the wizard-prince exclaimed, “Let the farce be done at last,” and leaped at Scaurus. His armored shoulder slammed against the Roman’s shield and bowled him over.

  As he had been trained, Marcus kept the scutum between his enemy and himself. Avshar’s sword came smashing down. The tribune felt boards split under that crushing impact. The next stroke, he knew, would be aimed with cunning, not blind blood lust. He waited for the steel to enter his flesh.

  Then he heard the wizard-prince cry out in wrath and turn from him to meet a new foe. At the same time, the druids’ stamps on the tribune’s sword flashed so brilliantly that he screwed his eyes shut, dazzled by the explosion of light. Above him, Viridovix’ blade was another brand of flame. The Gaul roared, “Here, you murthering omadhaun, use your sword on an upright man.”

  He traded savage cuts with Avshar, driving the wizard-prince from Scaurus. That was not what the tribune had intended. “Wait!” he shouted, getting to one knee and then to his feet.

  But Viridovix would not wait. With Avshar in front of him at last, his rage consumed him, just as Zeprin’s had. The plans he and Scaurus had made for this moment were swept away by a red torrent of fury. To wound, to maim, to kill … had Avshar been unarmed, Viridovix would have thrown his sword aside to rend him with his hands.

  If Gaius Philippus had taught Marcus anything, it was to keep his wits about him in combat. He rushed after the Gaul, whose wild onslaught had forced Avshar back a dozen paces. At every step he took, his sword and Viridovix’ glowed brighter. The magic raging in his blade seemed to lend him fresh vigor, as if he was becoming a conduit through which some force larger than himself might flow.

  The hammerstrokes Viridovix aimed at the wizard-prince bespoke the same sudden rush of strength. But Avshar, indomitable as a mountain, was yielding ground no more. His bodily power and swordsmanship matched the Gaul’s, and in force of will he was superior.

  Nor did his spells falter as he fought. He maintained his hold over the wizards in the imperial army, and his plague of flies still tormented his foes and their horses. Thorisin Gavras’ beast, maddened by scores of bites, squealed and bucked and would advance no further in spite of the Emperor’s curses and his spurs.

  At last Avshar’s men began to move to help him. One closed with Scaurus, a solidly built warrior who cut at the Roman’s legs. To Marcus he was an obstacle, no more. The tribune parried, countered in a similar low line. His point tore open the Makuraner’s thigh just below his mail shirt. The man gasped, stumbled, and fell, grabbing at his leg. Marcus raced past him.

  Avshar’s deadly eyes flicked to the tribune. “Come ahead, then,” he said, shifting his stance slightly. “Both of you together do not suffice against me.”

  Marcus stopped short. The wizard-prince’s withering laugh flayed him. The tribune’s sword darted forth. Avshar’s moved to beat it aside, but Scaurus had not thrust at him. Instead, quite gently, his blade touched Viridovix’.

  The fabric of the world seemed to stretch very tight. The pounding of the tribune’s heart was louder than all the Yezda drums. Never since the Celtic blades brought the Romans to Videssos had he hazarded the ultimate magic in them. Viridovix’ sea-green eyes were wide and staring. He had agreed to Scaurus’ plan, but it daunted him now. Who could tell to what strange land the druids’ magic would sweep them next?

  The same thought screamed in Scaurus’ mind, but if he took Avshar with him he did not care. His greatest fear was that the spells which had been woven to ward Gaul would not protect Videssos. Yet the Empire was now truly his homeland, and Viridovix’ long service for it argued that he, too, held it dear.

  The wait between hope and dread could only have lasted for an instant. Avshar was still twisting to redirect his lunge when a torrent of golden flame leaped from his opponents’ swords. Feeling the power of the unleashed sorcery, he sprang backward, throwing his own blade aside to shape passes with both hands. His mouth worked soundlessly as he raced through a spell to defend himself against the druids’ charms.

  Scaurus looked for the flame to form a great glowing dome, as it had in the blood-soaked Gallic clearing four years before—a dome to carry away Avshar, the flower of his army, and, all too likely, the tribune and Viridovix as well. But in Gaul no opposing magic had been operating. Here the power released from the two swords was hardly enough to contain the chiefest of Videssos’ enemies; their sorcerous fire surrounded him in light but went no further.

  The wizard-prince gave a trapped wolf’s howl. Determined to the end, he hurled his strongest magics one after the other against the force that held him, striving to break free. The barrier heaved and billowed like a ship’s sail in contrary winds. Two or three times it faded almost to transparency, but when Avshar tried to step through it back into his own world he found he was still restrained.

  Men from both armies cried out in terror at the sudden outburst of sorcery. Many averted their eyes, either from the fierce glare or out of awe and fear of the unknown.

  That was not Gorgidas’ way. He wished he could take notes as he watched the flickering ring of light slowly tighten around Avshar. When the wizard-prince’s desperate spells left him visible, he seemed surrounded by a swirling gray mist. Then the light flared to an intolerable peak of brilliance and abruptly winked out. Peering through green-purple afterimages, the Greek saw it had taken Avshar with it.

  “I wonder where he went,” he muttered to himself, and tossed his head in annoyance at another question he would never have answered.

  He had been some yards away; Scaurus saw and heard much more, though he never spoke of it afterward, not even to Viridovix. That was no mist inside the barrier, it was snow, not falling but driven horizontally by a roaring gale whose sound was enough to freeze the heart. The wizard-prince’s feet skidded on ice, a flat, black, glistening sheet; somehow Marcus was sure it was miles thick.

  Avshar’s voice rose to a frightened wail, as if he recognized where he was. And in the instant when the ring of light flashed brightest, Scaurus thought he heard another voice, slow, deep, and eternally hungry, begin to speak. He was forever glad he had not caught enough to be certain.

  He wished the wizard-prince joy of the master he had chosen.

  XIII

  A GREAT SILENCE HELD THE CENTER OF THE FIELD. MEN ON BOTH sides stood with lowered weapons, stunned at what they had seen. The din of combat on either flank seemed irrelevant. Marcus and Viridovix looked at each other, dazed by the force they had called up and finding it hard to believe they had not been swept away with Avshar.

  Then one of the wizard-prince’s flies bit Scaurus on the back of the neck. Now that they were no longer under sorcerous control, his sword did not protect against them. The sudden pain and his automatic slap made victory real to him.

  Across the line, the Makuraners began swatting at themselves, too. One of them caught the tribune’s eye: a lanky, blade-nosed warrior who sat his horse with the inborn arrogance of a great noble. He smiled and nodded, as if to a friend. “We are all well rid of that one,” he said, only a faint guttural rasp flavoring his Videssian.

  Trumpets blared behind Scaurus. He heard Thorisin Gavras cry, “Drive them now, drive them! They’ll be quaking in their corselets without the stinking he-witch to do their dirty work for ’em!”

  The tribune’s hand tightened on his sword. A last push against a demoralized enemy …

  The Makuraner’s smile grew wider and less pleasant, and Marcus felt a chill of foreboding. “Do you think we will run off?” the fellow said. “We are taking this fight; now it will be for ourselves instead of for a master who ruled us only because of his might.”

  He called to his lancers in their own language. They yelled back eagerly, clapping their hands and clashing swords and shields together. Their cry became a swelling chorus: “Nogruz! Nogruz!”

  “Och, it’s another round for the shindy, I’m thinking,” Viridovix said softly.

  “Come over to us,” the Makuraner noble urged. “Neither of you is an imperial by blood. Would you not sooner serve the winners?”

  Marcus could see the ambition blazing from him like fire. No wonder this Nogruz had followed Avshar—he would not shrink from anything that looked to be to his advantage. The tribune shook his head; Viridovix answered with a contemptuous snort.

  “A pity,” Nogruz said, shouting to make himself heard over the yells of his men. “Then I will kill you if I can.”

  He spurred his horse forward. He was too close to the Roman and Gaul to build up the full, terrifying momentum on which heavy cavalry depended, but so clever with his lance that he almost skewered Marcus as the tribune sprang away. Viridovix slashed from the other side, but Nogruz was as good with his shields as he was with his spear and turned the blow. More Makurani rumbled after him, and the battle began again.

  “Out of my way!” Thorisin Gavras shouted impatiently, pushing his charger through the ranks of the Halogai. He nearly rode Gorgidas down when the Greek did not scramble out of his path quickly enough. Then he was face to face with Nogruz, his gilded armor and the Makuraner’s silvered corselet both battered and grimy. “I’d sooner have killed the wizard, but you’ll do,” he said.

  Both master horsemen, they probed at each other with their lances. Thorisin closed first, ducking under a thrust and booting his big bay at Nogruz. He threw his lance aside and yanked out his saber, sent it whistling down in a vicious stroke. Nogruz dropped his own lance and took the cut on his mailed sleeve. His mouth twisted in pain beneath his waxed mustaches, but he bought the time he needed to draw his sword as he twisted away from the Emperor’s backhand pass.

  Marcus only got glimpses of their single combat, as he was battling for life himself. He did see the brief sequence when a Makuraner came storming at Gavras from the flank. One of the Emperor’s Haloga guardsmen shattered his lance and cut him from his horse with two thunderous strokes of the axe. A moment later another of Nogruz’ followers killed the northerner, but did not interfere in the duel.

  Nogruz’s desperate use of his sword arm to meet Thorisin’s attack left it numb and slow, and the noble found himself in constant danger. The imperials roared and the Makurani groaned when his sword flew from his hand.

  The Emperor’s next cut was meant to kill. Nogruz ducked away, not quite far enough. The blow laid his cheek open to the teeth. He reeled in the saddle. Then his men did rush up to protect him and bore him back into their ranks before Gavras could strike again.

  “They must break now!” Thorisin cried, brandishing his red-smeared saber. He urged his foot soldiers to another push at their foes. The Makurani, though, were tough as steel. They had been fighting Videssos for fifty generations and did not need leadership to keep on; it was in their blood.

  Marcus was listening to find out what was happening on either side of the deadlocked center, and misliking what he heard. The noise he had dismissed as unimportant in the aftermath of Avshar’s fall was vital again, and it showed a Yezda win in the making on the left. Even before Mourtzouphlos pulled out of line, that had been the weakest part of the imperial army; the Videssians there did not have enough plainsmen to screen them from the savage archery of the nomads who fought under Avshar’s banner.

  From the direction of the shouts, the Videssian left was already sagging badly. If it broke, or even if its flank was dislodged from the hill country that anchored it, the Yezda would have a free road to the imperials’ rear. Scaurus’ guts knotted at the thought. That was how Maragha turned into a catastrophe.

  The tribune looked around for Viridovix. Having risked the unthinkable once made it less so in a second crisis. Were all the Makurani to vanish as Avshar had, the tide of battle would surely turn.…

  But the Gaul was nowhere to be seen; a thicket of Makuraners on horseback and tall Halogai had got between him and Marcus. The Roman set out toward where he thought Viridovix had to be, but the going was as slow and hard as it had been when he was inching his way toward Avshar.

  A mounted man pounded him on the shoulder from the side. He whirled and thrust, thinking he was under attack. Thorisin Gavras knocked his point away. The Emperor wore a fierce, harried expression. “I wish I’d put the damned Arshaum over there,” he said, pointing with his saber.

  “Then you’d only have the same problem on the other wing.”

  “Maybe so, but they’re grinding us on the left, and there’s nothing I can do about it—all the reserves are in.” Gavras was clutching his sword hilt tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He scowled. “Phos, I thought they’d scatter once you did in the wizard. And if I know you, you’ve had it planned for weeks, too.”

  With what he hoped was a suitably modest shrug, the tribune answered, “It worked better than I expected. I was afraid I’d go with him.”

  A messenger on a lathered, blowing horse forced his way up to Thorisin before he could reply. Marcus and a Haloga drove away an enemy lancer; the tribune wounded the Makuraner’s mount, but the fellow escaped anyhow. When the Roman turned back, Gavras’ face was as set as if it had been carved from marble.

  “Bad news?” Marcus asked. Like Nogruz, he had to shout to be heard over the clash of weapons; the panting, oaths, and war cries of the fighting men; the pounding of horses’ hooves and the beasts’ squeals; and the moans and shrieks of the hurt.

  “You might say so,” Gavras answered in a dead voice. He pointed over the Makuraner line. “The lookouts in the hills have spotted a dust cloud heading this way—cavalry, from the speed they’re making. They aren’t ours.” He glanced at the sun, which had slipped startlingly far into the west. “We might have hung on till dark saved us. Now …”

  Marcus finished the sentence for himself. If the Makurani and Yezda had reinforcements coming, everything was over. Thorisin could not hold against them and could not retreat without turning his own flank.

  “Make them earn it,” the tribune said.

  “Aye. What else is there to do?” The Emperor’s eyes still held bleak courage, but a rising despair lay under it. “All for nothing,” he said, so softly Scaurus could hardly make out his words. “The Yezda gobble the westlands, fresh civil war over what’s left to us … even though you routed him, Roman, it seems Avshar wins at last.”

  Still more quietly, he went on, “And Phos preserve Alania and my child, for no one else will.”

  He spoke, Marcus thought, like Cincinnatus or one of the other heroes from the legendary days of the earliest Republic, putting the concerns of the state ahead of those of his family. But that spirit had not saved some of those heroes from disaster, and the tribune failed to see how it would here, either.

  Hot fighting was an anodyne; he threw himself into it, to have no time to think of what was coming. He spied Viridovix for a moment and laughed bitterly—he was where the tribune had been not long before, probably searching for him as he had for the Celt. He struggled back in the direction he had come, but a knot of horsemen blocked his path.

  “Skhēsómetha?” someone asked at his elbow: “Will we hold?”

  His answer, to his surprise, also came out in Greek: “Ou tón—On my oath, no.”

  Gorgidas drew in a long, hissing breath of dismay. He was sadly draggled, his helmet jammed down over one ear; sweat, dust, and blood matted his beard; his cheeks were hollow with exhaustion. The target Viridovix had given him was all but hacked to flinders.

  He nodded leftward and dropped into Latin to ask, “It’s there, isn’t it?” The noise from that part of the field was very bad. The Yezda had bent the imperials back a long way. They knew a building victory and whooped as if it were already won.