The Dark Lord

cloudy and a constant wet haze lay over the rumpled green hills and the flat, dark waters of the narrow sea. With summer far advanced, it was far too hot. The eastern horizon was a gray line marking the shore of Chalcedon. 'I have puzzled through the old books—Hieronomyus of Cardia's Historia and Polybius—and once upon a time the Greek phalanx could withstand any cavalry charge, and break it, drenching the field with blood. Now? Those Goths can barely find a privy pit to piss in... much less march in order and keep those pig- stickers straight.'

'They are getting better.' Jusuf tried to keep his tone level. 'Their skill improves daily and even the Eastern troops are starting to regain their color. I doubt the Eastern foot has been drilled so fiercely in generations!'

'Fine.' Dahvos made a sharp motion with his hand. He was still very angry. 'What about their cataphracts? Do they drill? No—they mope about the camps, drinking until they fall down, cursing the gods—as if the lord of heaven had anything to do with Great Prince Theodore's idiocy on the Plain of Mars—and acting the lackwit. Listen to me, Jusuf, if we meet the Persians again in full battle, those Eastern knights will break like a rotten trace and spill us all on the cold ground.'

Jusuf rubbed his long nose in response, and tapped his chin with his knuckles. 'Do you think that the next battle will be decided by the actions of cataphract and clibanarus?'

'Yes,' Dahvos snapped, 'how else?'

Jusuf shrugged, then leaned an elbow on the battlement again. 'I wonder... I think our new commander, this same comes Alexandros you dislike so much, smells the wind changing. The heavy horseman with lance, mace or striking sword in hand, girded in armor from head to tail, his horse likewise barded all about with heavy padding or even iron, has ruled the Eastern battlefield for what? Three centuries?'

'Since Emperor Valens bled out like a trussed pig at Adrianopolis,' Dahvos grunted, scowling. 'A little less than three hundred years...'

'Yet,' Jusuf interjected smoothly, hooking a thumb down at the busy chaos in the harbor, 'in the West, Rome has ridden out shock after shock, losing whole provinces and then wresting them back from the barbarians. Where are their clouds of horsemen, their cohorts of knights? They have kept their traditional Legions—oh, supplemented by barbarian horse, surely—but the core of their armies, which have been victorious for more than seven hundred years, remains the foot soldier with his shield, his stabbing sword, his weighted javelins.'

'What does this have to do with Alexandros and his Goths?' Dahvos winced, hearing a surly whine creeping into his voice. 'He's brought a mishmash of men on foot, men that ride then fight afoot, archers, that bastardized outdated phalanx, lancers...'

'More than that,' Jusuf said, laughing, bending close. 'Did you know Alexandros has appropriated all those loose horses we gathered up during the retreat from Constantinople? His quartermaster levied every wagon he can find in Thrace. He even stole all the mules that should be going with those Western troops—said they didn't have enough hulls to carry them away.'

Dahvos' scowl faded, slowly replaced by a considering look. 'How many horses and mules does he need?'

'Enough,' Jusuf said, grinning at the audacity, 'to put every man in his army on horseback, and all their biscuit, gear and arrows on mule or wagon. He marched down here from Magna Gothica with half his men on horseback and it took them two months. I was breaking bread with that big moose tarkhan of his—Clothar Shortbeard—and he guesses they could make the return trip in half the time.'

'Huh.' Dahvos' eyelid twitched. He did not seem impressed. 'But can they... no, can he fight?'

'He can.' Jusuf seemed very sure. 'If that is your worry, set it aside.'

'You're so sure? Why?'

'You'll see.' Jusuf was still grinning. 'You will see.'

Dahvos didn't see how his half-brother could be so sure, but Jusuf was so confident he let the matter drop. The kagan had enough work of his own to do, getting his own troops ready to take the field. Jusuf, on the other hand, seemed to be looking forward to a battle.

—|—

Jusuf was letting his mare trot along at an easy pace, enjoying clear blue skies and a warm summer day, when battle presented itself. Five weeks had passed since the conversation on the town wall, and true to his word, Alexandros marched his army—ready or not—out of their camps at Perinthus and up the northeast highway towards Constantinople. The Goths and Khazars broke camp with admirable efficiency and got underway the first morning. The Eastern troops struggled manfully for most of the day, finally being forced to march by torchlight into late evening to catch up with the rest of the army. Jusuf had been out watching with the picket when they straggled into the main camp. As he expected, the Eastern infantry arrived in good order, wagons packed, gear stowed and kit in fighting trim. The cavalry had not, in fact, arrived until the next day, heads low and banners furled.

Alexandros had not been pleased, but despite everyone's expectation, he did not punish the cavalry officers. Instead, the army had been roused the following day by horns and bucina-call before dawn and they marched for three straight days at what amounted to breakneck speed for the legionaries. Forced to keep up with everyone else, the Eastern horse shrugged off their ill-humor. Faced with obvious loss of face to some mud-footed infantry, the cataphracts rose to the occasion. The Khazars, laughing behind their hands, tried not to jeer the Eastern horsemen, but it was difficult. The Eastern legionaries and Gothic foot had shown no such restraint.

This morning, Alexandros had deployed the Khazar light horse under Jusuf's command in a wide-ranging screen in front of his main advance. Everyone expected to reach the large town of Selymbria today, through which they had fled in such haste four months before. Jusuf's memory of the place was poor—rain, exhaustion and a wagon hanging from the road, wheels spinning uselessly in the mud. He remembered straining, packed shoulder- to-shoulder with a dozen other men, pushing it back onto the road while rain bit his eyes and his boots slurped into clinging black mud.

A shout of alarm and the peculiar whistling sound of arrows plunging from a high shot roused Jusuf from his memories. His riders were turning, swinging away from the road and into a field of wheat stubble. Other men—in darker clothing, with tubular, trailing dragon banners—appeared across the lot, pouring out of two lanes cutting through thatch-roofed houses. Jusuf clucked at the mare and she picked up the pace, high-stepping down the bank. Black arrows flickered in the air and one of them struck the road a wagon's length away, then sprang back up, flipping end for end, before rattling onto the paving stones.

'Avars!' Shouted one of Jusuf's men, wheeling his horse around to face the tarkhan.

'Quite a number of them,' Jusuf said, shading his eyes with a hand. The crowd of Avar horsemen was growing bigger. Now some had appeared on the main road and they spilled out into line on either side of the highway. A few of the stronger Avar archers were shooting high, hoping for a lucky hit. Jusuf nudged his horse to the side. She whickered at him questioningly, then skipped away as a black-fletched shaft sank into the earth inches from her fetlocks. 'Ride back and find Alexandros,' he said, watching the Avars pour around the farm buildings like water from an opened sluice. 'Tell him we've found about, oh, six thousand Avars—mostly light horse, but a goodly proportion of their knights.'

The man rode off in haste, kicking up a cloud of dust. Jusuf moved himself under the shade of a big willow standing beside the road above a culvert. He was pleased to see his riders spread out into a skirmish line, loosing long shots from their bows when they spied an interesting target. Three couriers found him under the tree, riding up with their young horses streaked with sweat.

The Avars continued to arrive. Now Jusuf spied tall horse tail banners and golden horns and a thick cluster of men in bulkier armor. He whistled, standing in his stirrups, peering at the enemy.

'Avi, you ride back and find comes Alexandros and tell him the Avar khagan—or at least his household guard—is on the road in front of us.'

The boy bolted off, like a good courier, and Jusuf called to his signaller to blow retreat in good order, which produced the skirling wail peculiar to Khazar horns. More arrows lofted into the air, the sun glittering from their points and Jusuf and his command cantered away, back towards the line of trees on the southern side of the stubbled field. The Roman army will arrive soon, he thought.