They rode three abreast through a steep defile and over t a range of rolling hills washed green by the rains. Two villages they passed, but nothing stirred there, either because the inhabitants had fled or because they had barred.y themselves within their houses. They traveled through the hills all day, passing twice through broad, flat valleys, changing mounts, driving on.
At dusk, more scouts joined up with them, and they rode south while Bakhtiian conferred with them. Twilight came, and then night, and finally, near midnight, one of V Sakhalin's young commanders rode in and greeted Bakhtiian. Vershinin and his men were sent left, to complete the encirclement. Out there in the darkness, not so far ahead of them, the Habakar army lay bivouacked. A line of scouts went out to watch the khaja army, and the rest hunkered down for what remained of the night. Most simply lay down on the cold ground and slept. The horses huddled in groups.
Nadine could not sleep. She rode out with her uncle and the young Sakhalin commander to the crest of a hill overlooking the broad field on which the Habakar army had camped. Fires burned in two rings around the encampment, one on the outside, one within the tent encampments.
'Every night,' said the young commander, 'they stop before nightfall and dig a ditch around their encampment and a wall of dirt inside that, and they build fires on the earth wall.'
'So that horsemen can't surprise them.' Bakhtiian surveyed the field beyond. The night sky was brilliant with stars.
'Their prince must be a wise commander,' said the Prince of Jeds' soldier, Ursula.
'Wise, indeed,' said Bakhtiian. 'We'll pull back before his march in the morning until we reach the first of the valleys we passed, where we'll form for battle.'
'Ah,' said the young commander, 'my scouts know that ground. If we surround him there and leave him only one way to retreat, southward where the path is widest, we can pick off his men as they run.'
'If they run,' murmured Ursula. 'Your men have ridden far, Bakhtiian. They and the horses must be exhausted. Two hundred kilometers in two days!'
'What's a kilometer?' asked Nadine.
'My men and my horsey will do what I ask of them,' said llya.
They retreated back to the lines. Before dawn, the army roused and began to pull back the way they'd come. Nadine, in the rearguard, could hear the rattle and pound of the Habakar army as it followed their tracks. Now and again she heard shouts and screams and the sing of arrows as the young commander's men harried them, but as the jaran army struck up into the hills, most of her unit joined up with Bakhtiian, leaving only a line of scouts in the rear.
By midday they fell back into position in a wide field, the armored riders massed in the center, the light troops out on the wings and in the rear. Bakhtiian had brought four units of archers with him, many of them inexperienced girls not much older than Mitya mixed in with riders and those archers who had fought before.
Out of the hills, down into the valley, marched the Habakar army. The prince's banner shone, white with a blue lion, under the noonday sun. At first, to Nadine's sight, the khaja army flashed with a confusing profusion of colors. Men in imperial blue marched in neat ranks. Rank upon rank of chestnut horses caparisoned in gold followed them, and around the prince clustered men in silver and purple surcoats wearing plumed helmets and riding white horses. Their striped pennons drooped from their lances. Rows of shields glinted in the unit behind the prince, stretching out to each side, burnished armor shining in the sun. Spears bristled above the heads of these men, tipped with blades and hooks.
Hya let the khaja army march down onto the field. Already Sakhalin's young commander had drawn his troops back and to either side, far out of range and mostly out of sight, to cast around to eventually encircle the unit.
The Habakar army spread out to take positions, but before they could settle, llya lifted his lance up once, twice, a third time, and the center moved forward to meet the enemy. Archers rode up within their ranks and began firing. Arrows sang into the khaja, and then, just before impact, the archers turned tail back within the ranks. From behind, Vershinin's lighter troops and two units of archers swung around to either flank. It was here that the attack concentrated.
Nadine sat next to her uncle. The noise and cries of soldiers and animals mixed with the sound of weapons clashing. 'Orzhekov. There, a gap to the right. I want you to drive through and reach the prince. Konstans-now, the charge.'
Nadine lifted her spear and her riders moved forward with her. To her left, she saw the bulk of her uncle's personal guard riding forward parallel to her, gold banner flying, gold and red surcoats a bright glare in the sunlight. The sight of them gave her heart. She stood a little in the saddle, thrusting her legs forward, and tucked her spear under her right arm. An imperial blue infantry unit held its ground in front of her jahar, and behind it rode the blue lion, fluttering in the breeze.
They held to a steady pace, gaining ground, and then some fifty paces from the line she kicked her horse to a pounding gallop and her men howled, a deafening ululation, and they hit the khaja line.
She plowed over the first man, who vanished into the maelstrom, and lost her spear to a flailing hook and pull from a knot of infantry men who had held together under the weight of the charge. Yermolov and Yartseva rode on either side of her, and then a sword cut into Yartseva and a hook dragged him down from his horse. A face, a man thrusting at her horse's head with his spear, appeared to her right. She cut at his arm as she passed but could not look back. As she recovered her saber, blood sprayed her armor-not her own blood but the blood of the soldier she must have hit.
A square of some nine men blocked the path in front of her, but at once four more riders, three still with their spears, joined her and Yermolov. Four of the nine khaja soldiers wavered and scattered, faced with the charge of horses. A spear thrust for her leg; she deflected it. Yermolov shuddered in the saddle, rocked back by a blow, and for an instant Nadine thought he would be toppled from his saddle. She parried; a man with his face screened by mail threw his spear at her. She knocked it away and then he was bowled over from the side by the hooves and spear of another rider. His dark eyes met hers for an instant, pain and anger and fear melded, and then he disappeared beneath the horses.
A moment later she came out into an empty zone. Ahead of her, the blue lion of the prince whirled away in a clot of fighting. Behind, the charge had disintegrated into confusion; unhorsed riders dueled: There was Yartseva, fending off a soldier in imperial blue, but then a line of horses obscured her sight of him, and when they passed, she could not see him.
Shrieks and moans; horses screamed and, to her left, a mare struggled up to its feet and collapsed again in a pool of blood.
'Orzhekov!' That was Yermolov, reining in beside her.
'Form up the men. We've got to reach the prince.'
A shower of arrows shaded the sun, arching over her head and falling with a sharp resounding clatter into the ranks of the Habakar prince. She saw, for one instant, Vershinin, far away topping a swell and then he rode down into-what? — she could not tell.
Behind her, bodies littered the field, most of them still moving or writhing, groaning in pain. Riderless horses reared and circled and stumbled over the dead and wounded.
The ranks of her jahar formed around her. Yermolov thrust a spear into her hand, and she sheathed her bloody saber.
They rode into the chaos surrounding the Habakar prince. A line of Habakar horsemen wheeled to meet their charge, but somehow the two units simply passed between each other. Nadine cast a glance back over her shoulder; she caught a glimpse of another wave of her jahar some fifty paces behind, narrowing the gap. The Habakar riders milled, turning this way and then that.
A rider shouted a warning. Nadine parried a blow with the haft of her spear and then thrust hard. The spear stuck in the man's segmented armor and she flung herself back to let it ride past her, and drew her saber. Cut to her right as an unhorsed man attacked her. The Habakar soldiers were mobbed in groups, infantry and cavalry side by side, disorganized, and they began to give way before her troops.
Except there, some hundred paces in front, bobbed the green pennant of Vershinin's jahar, and to her left she saw the gold banner that marked Bakhtiian's own guards. The white horsehair plume of Konstans' helmet trembled as he pressed forward through the ranks. Then he was hidden by a sheet of fighting. The arrow fire had stopped, at least into these ranks. She heard its sound from farther away, accompanying the louder crash of metal weapons.
