The Dark Lord

The scout's brown eyes were filled with worry.

'You're thinking you'll lead the wedge into the enemy.' Krythos shook his head in bemusement. 'You think you'll crash into them like a hammer, blade and lance drinking blood like some ancient hero.' The scout's eyes narrowed and Alexandros was shocked to see amusement flicker across the man's face. 'Like Achilles.'

'I...' The Macedonian paused, leaning down towards the man. 'I will prevail,' he bit out, angry at such impertinence. 'You've seen me fight—there's no Avar who could withstand my sword.'

'I know, I know,' Krythos said, nodding in agreement. His fingers curled around the stirrup strap. 'I saw you fight the Draculis lord, remember? I saw you take a wound that would have sundered any other man. Aye, and a fine price you exacted from him...'

Alexandros leaned back a little, remembering. Yes, Krythos had been at his side when the lamia had run him through, then lost his head in return. Suspicion darted through his thoughts—what did Krythos think of that strange event?—but he pushed it aside. Time was fleeting, even for men who did not feel death hurrying up behind them. The Avar noyan minghan in command of the facing wing was sure to notice their movement at any moment.

'Then rest easy and take your hand away—I must attack. The moment is right. I can feel it in the air.'

'No, my lord. You are not Achilles, slayer of men. You are our general. You must stay out of the fray, watch over the battle and see—like a god looking down from on high—what men locked in combat cannot.'

'Take your hand from my stirrup,' Alexandros hissed, suddenly furious. His carefully cultivated patience frayed and then he cast it aside entirely. The Macedonian had never accepted any guidance save his own. The man's advice—no doubt well intentioned—goaded his pride like a hot brand. Krythos flinched back from the black look on the general's face, jerking his hand away from the stirrup.

'Hai!' Alexandros spurred the black stallion and the horse bolted away. As he moved, so did the assembled mass of Companions and suddenly they thundered across the grassy field, banners and horse manes streaming in the wind of their passage. Alexandros raced ahead of them, gripped by petulant anger, his face terrible and he bore down upon the Avar flank guards like a lightning bolt.

Krythos stared after him, rubbing his right hand as if burned. Then he shook himself and looked around. His scouts had ridden up and were looking at him with interest.

'What do we do now?' Semfronius asked, stringy black beard jutting out at an angle from under his helmet. Krythos ignored him for a moment while he swung up onto his horse. The scout could feel the earth trembling a little. As he turned his horse, there was a burst of noise—shouting, screams, the wild screaming of an injured horse, the clash and rattle of metal on metal. Krythos didn't bother to look—he had seen men fight before—and waved his hand at the edge of the field.

'Spread out,' he called to his soldiers. 'We'll cover the far edge of Lord Alexandros' attack, to make sure no one is sneaking about in the orchards. The comes will take care of his own business, I'm sure.'

—|—

Clouds covered the sun by the time Jusuf limped up to the field hospital. He was glad to see the canvas awning and the bustle of men in priestly robes working among the wounded. There was a thick smell, but the Khazar was used to death, and the stench of drying blood and flesh no longer provoked stomach-churning nausea. A ring of tall willow-wands surrounded the hospital and there was a subtle change in the air as Jusuf passed between them. Inside the invisible barrier, he noted at once there were no flies or insects. Men lay in long rows on the ground, wrapped in woolen blankets. Most of the soldiers were bandaged on the arms or chest, a few in the leg. Some peered up at the gray sky through linen wrappings on their faces. Jusuf knew how they felt; he had lost part of an ear once, in a border skirmish with the T'u-chueh. Any kind of a head wound bled furiously.

He accounted the Eastern troops very lucky. Among the Khazars, priests with the healing arts were rare and highly prized and no one thought of gathering them together and sending them out with the army. The Romans, however, had an efficient and well-regulated medikus traveling with each Legion. The rare priests of Asklepius were supplemented by a large number of orderlies—brawny men easily capable of carrying a wounded man on their shoulders—who gathered the fallen from the field of battle and tended to their simple wounds.

'Jusuf!' Dahvos, kagan of the Khazar people, sat under a lemon tree at the edge of the medikus' encampment, his arm tightly bound to his chest. Jusuf smiled broadly and jogged up to his half-brother. Two heavy bundles, one long and one short, banged against his hip. Dahvos did not get up; content to sit with his back to the tree, in the shade. 'You look... battered,' the kagan said in a tired voice.

'There was some dispute over the field,' Jusuf replied in a nonchalant tone, squatting down beside Dahvos and laying down his packages. 'How is your arm?'

'It was bad,' Dahvos said, frowning down at the bandaged limb, 'but the priest laid his hands on and now he says it will mend properly. Did you see me fall? That shot destroyed my shield like a stone falling from heaven! The point tore clear through my mailed sleeve too.' Dahvos shook his head in dismay.

'I saw you fall,' Jusuf admitted, running dirty fingers through his hair. His helmet was tied to the back of his belt. The rest of him was stained with soot, mud and ground-in dirt. 'I saw blood and thought you'd been killed.'

Dahvos nodded, eyes hooded by the close passage of death. He fingered his chest, tracing the outline of an enormous bruise. 'I thought I was too! But my luck held and an iron strap blunted the arrow's flight. Did you see whose arm drove such a bolt of lightning?'

'Yes.' Jusuf ran his hand over the silk-wrapped bundle on the ground. His fingers brushed over embroidered leaves, rusty with fall colors and tinted with gold. 'I saw the man shoot, more than once. He killed many men— most of them our umen commanders.'

Dahvos frowned, seeing a strange look in his half-brother's eyes. 'Who was it?'

'It was Bayan himself.' Jusuf did not look up and his voice was soft. 'But I rushed him with my lancers and brought the dog to sword strokes before he could take a shot at me. I killed him, Dahvos, with my own hand and took his head as your prize.'

Jusuf picked up the smaller package—not bound in silk, but in rough woolens, now matted and dark—and untied the simple knot. The cloth fell away and the crown of a head was revealed. Blood and bits of bone were interspersed with stringy black hair. Pale skin, now the color of yellowed parchment, was revealed and then the face, frozen in a look of horror and surprise, as Jusuf rolled the skull over. Dahvos looked down with cold eyes, then reached out and turned the head so that he could look carefully upon the cold features.

'You knew him,' the kagan stated absently. 'I remember, you were sent away as a hostage.'

'Yes.' Jusuf's voice was flat. 'I was.'

'You're sure, then? Wasn't he supposed to be crippled?' Dahvos looked up and Jusuf nodded. The kagan smiled. 'Well done.'

'My duty, kagan.' Jusuf wrapped up the head again. They might need it later, to parade before the army. 'Did you see the end of the battle?'

'No.' Dahvos grinned ruefully. 'I saw some blue sky and my guardsmen carrying me from the field.'

'The comes Alexandros crashed into their left about the same time I cut down Bayan. I think our Macedonian expected to rout them himself—but then, he's never fought the Avars before... The Avar wing held, his charge was repulsed with loss, and the enemy withdrew in good order.'

'Their casualties?' Dahvos scowled, thinking of his own dead.

'Many of their allies perished in the center—but they are only spear- or axe-men. Slav or Sklavenoi vassals... no real loss.' Jusuf tugged at his chin, thinking. 'Of his heavy horse, perhaps one or two thousand men fell. Their true casualty was Bayan.'

'Yes.' Dahvos squinted at the trees beyond the medikus. 'Both the khagan and time—they will have to retire to Serdica and the hring, to quarrel and discuss and ultimately elect a new khagan to lead them. The rest of the year, at least, will be wasted in quarrels and feuds. The great families will need to decide which whelp of Bayan's rises to the throne.'

'His eldest sons are dead...' Jusuf mused. Then he felt a sharp stab of elation. That will be a