you mercy on the grounds that you rebelled against his appointed marzban only because of the outrages he committed against your women. Then perhaps you will have peace. If you continue in arms against Sharbaraz King of Kings, know that we his soldiers shall grind you as the millstones grind wheat into flour, and the wind will blow you away like chaff.»
«We have war now,» Gazrik said. «We shall have more. You will pay in blood for every foot you advance into the princes' land.» He bowed in the saddle to Romezan. «When the time comes, we shall see who speaks of insolence and of dogs. Skotos hollows a place in the eternal ice for you even now.»
«May the Void swallow you—and so it shall,» Romezan shouted back. Gazrik wheeled his horse and rode away without another word.
Soli, on the eastern bank of the Rhamnos River, was the last town in Videssian territory through which Abivard's army passed before formally entering Vaspurakan. The stone bridge over the river had been destroyed in one of the campaigns in the war between Makuran and Videssos, or perhaps in a round of Videssian civil war. But the Makuraner garrison commander, an energetic officer named Hushang, had spanned the ruined arch with timbers. Horses snorted nervously as their hooves drummed on the planks, but they and the heavily laden supply wagons crossed without difficulty.
Abivard did not feel he was entering a new world when he reached the west bank of the Rhamnos. The mountains grew a little higher and the sides of the valleys seemed a little steeper than they had on the Videssian side of the river, but the difference as yet was small. As for the people, folk of Vaspurakaner blood were far from rare east of the Rhamnos. The marketplace at Soli had been full of dark, stocky men, many of them in the three- peaked cap with multicolored streamers that was the national headdress of Vaspurakan.
«That's an ugly hat, isn't it, Father?» Varaz said one evening as a Vaspurakaner rode away after selling some sheep to the Makuraner army. «If you're not going to wear a helmet, you should wear a pilos the way we do.» His hand went to the felt cap shaped like a truncated cone that sat on his own head.
«Well, I don't much fancy the caps the Vaspurakaners wear, I admit,» Abivard told him, «but it's the same as it is with horses and women: not everybody thinks the same ones are beautiful. The other day I found out what the Vaspurakaners call the pilos.» Varaz waited expectantly. Abivard told him: «A chamber pot that goes on the head.»
He'd expected his son to be disgusted. Instead Varaz giggled. For boys of a certain age the line between disgusting and hilarious was a fine one. «Do they really call it that, Father?» Varaz demanded. Regretting he'd mentioned it, Abivard nodded. Varaz giggled even louder. «Wait till I tell Shahin.»
Abivard decided not to put on a pilos for the next several weeks without upending it first.
He and the army pressed on toward the valley of Poskh. At first, in spite of what Gazrik had threatened, no one opposed them. The Vaspurakaner nakharars—nobles whose status was much like that of the dihqans of Makuran—stayed shut up in their gray stone fortresses and watched the Makuraners pass. To show them that he rewarded restraint with restraint, he kept the plundering by his men to a minimum.
That wasn't easy; the valleys of Vaspurakan were full of groves with apricots and plums and peaches just coming to juicy ripeness, full of sleek cattle and strong if not particularly handsome horses, full of all sorts of growing things.
Most of the valleys ran from east to west. Abivard chuckled as he passed from one into the next A great many Makuraner armies had gone into battle heading east, roaring through Vaspurakan into the Videssian westlands. But never before in all the days of the world had the minstrels had the chance to sing of a Makuraner army moving into battle from the east: out of Videssos and into Vaspurakan.
His riders were entering the valley that held the town and fortress of Khliat when the princes first struck at them. It was not an attack of horsemen against horsemen; that his force would have faced gladly. But the Vaspurakaners were less eager to face them. And so, instead of couching lances and charging home on those unlovely horses of theirs, they pushed rocks down the mountainside, touching off an avalanche they hoped would bury their foes without their having to face them hand to hand.
But they were a bit too eager and began shoving the boulders too soon. The rumble and crash of stone striking stone drew the Makuraners' eyes to the slopes above them. They reined in frantically, except for some in the van who galloped forward, hoping to outrun the falling rocks.
Not all escaped. Men shouted and wailed in agony as they were struck; horses with broken legs screamed. But the army, as an army, was not badly harmed.
Abivard stared grimly ahead toward the walls of Khliat as his men labored to clear boulders from the track so that the supply wagons could go forward. The sun sparkled off the weapons and armor of the warriors on those walls.
He turned to Kardarigan. «Take your soldiers and burn the fields and orchards here. If the Vaspurakaners will not face us in battle like men, let them learn the cost of cowardice as we taught it to the Videssians.»
«Aye, lord,» the great captain said dutifully, if without great enthusiasm. Before long flames were licking through the branches of the fruit trees. Great black clouds of smoke rose into the blue dome of the sky. Horses rode through wheatfields, trampling down the growing grain. Then the fields were fired, too. Come winter, Khliat would be a hungry place.
The Vaspurakaners shut up in the fortress shouted curses at Abivard's men, some in the Makuraner tongue, some in Videssian, but most in their own language. Abivard understood hardly a word of that, but it sounded fierce. If the sound had anything to do with the strength of the curse, Vaspurakaner was a fine language in which to wish harm on one's foes.
«The gloves have come off,» Romezan said. «From now on we fight hard for everything we get.» He sounded delighted at the prospect.
He also proved as good a prophet as any since the Four. Khliat was not well placed to keep invaders from moving west; that showed that it had been built in fear of Makuran rather than Videssos. Abivard and his army were able to skirt it, brush aside the screen of Vaspurakaner horsemen trying to block the pass ahead, and force their way into the valley of Hanzith.
As soon as he saw the shape of the mountains along the jagged boundary between earth and sky, Abivard was certain he'd been this way before. And yet he was just as certain that he'd never passed through this part of Vaspurakan before in all his life. It was puzzling.
No—it would have been puzzling had he had more than a couple of heartbeats to worry about it. No cavalry screen lay athwart the valley here; the Vaspurakaners had assembled an army of their own to block his progress toward the valley and fortress of Poskh. The riders were too many to be contained in the pair of fortresses controlling the valley of Hanzith. Their tents sprawled across what had been cropland, a few bright silk, more dun- colored canvas hard to tell at a distance from dirt.
When the Makuraners forced their way into the valley, horns cried the alarm up and down its length. The Vaspurakaners rushed to ready themselves for battle. Abivard ordered his own lightly armed horsemen ahead to buy time for himself and the rest of his heavy horse to do likewise.
If you rode everywhere in iron covering you from head to toe, if you draped your horse in what amounted to a blanket and headpiece covered with iron scales, and if you then tried to travel, you accomplished but one thing: You exhausted the animals. You saved that gear till you really needed it. This was one of those times.
Supply wagons rattled forward. Warriors crowded around them. Drivers and servants passed their armor out to them. They helped one another fasten the lashings and catches of their suits: chain mail sleeves and gloves, finger-sized iron splints covering the torso, a mail skirt, and iron rings on the legs, all bound to leather.
Abivard set his helmet back on his head after attaching to it a mail aventail to protect the back of his neck and a mail veil to ward his face below the eyes. Sweat streamed from every pore. He understood how a chicken felt when it sweltered in a stew pot. Not for nothing did the Videssians call Makuraner heavy cavalry «the boiler boys «
He felt as if he were carrying Varaz on his shoulders when he walked back to his horse and grunted with the effort of climbing into the saddle. «You know,» he said cheerfully as he mounted, «I've heard of men who've had their hearts give out trying this.»
«Go ahead, lord,» someone said close by. With metal veils hiding features and blurring voices, it was hard to tell who. «Make me feel old.»
«I'm not the one doing that,» Abivard answered. «It's the armor.»
He surveyed the Vaspurakaners mustering against him. They did not have his numbers, but most of them
