The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (55 page)

The messenger Shigurtish had sent out to see if his trap had worked came back with disconcerting news. The little frishiu had escaped and was rallying his troops. Soon the units that had stood by would enter the fray.

The Mukthar commander decided on a radical tactic. He gave the order to disengage and regroup in the center of the field. The Amirathan Militia was exhausted and had sustained heavy losses. It didn't chase the retreating enemy.

Anaxantis was grateful for the breather Shigurtish's sudden decision gave him. He called all the generals together for an emergency war council.

While the Mukthars were regrouping, the Ximerionians did the same. Anaxantis kept the Mirkadesh Home guard and both remaining cavalry units in the back as reserve. Before them he positioned what remained of the Amirathan and the Landemere infantry regiments in one line. The Ximerionian Army, who hadn't seen any action yet, he placed before them. He himself, with the Clan, took up position in front of his troops.

Hemarchidas doubted the wisdom of this last decision.

“It's dangerous,” he grumbled. “I can see no reason why you should expose yourself to peril like that. Are you looking for an early death? Or a guaranteed place in the chronicles? Have you thought about the consequences for all of us if anything happens to you?”

“I have,” Anaxantis said.

“
They say it's important for a good general to lead from the front. It's not true. It's far more important that
he stays alive. Battles have been lost in many ways. They're always lost the moment the commander in chief
is killed in action,”
he remembered Tarno saying. “
But there is no alternative,”
he thought.

“Why then?” Hemarchidas asked.

“For this to work, I need the Mukthars to concentrate on our center. I must dangle a prize before them. Bait.

Me,” Anaxantis answered.

Hemarchidas could hear he was unsure, nervous, afraid even. Yet, there could t, /p>also was an undertone of resolve. He knew his friend was going to do this. He sighed resignedly.

Shigurtish looked satisfied at how his opponent had arranged his army. He felt confident. The numbers were still in his favor. Not overwhelmingly so, maybe, but that didn't matter. He reckoned part of Anaxantis's troops had suffered a severe beating and were disheartened by now. He commanded Mukthars. Furthermore, the little frishiu had put more than half of his troops on a long thin line.

He decided to pack his own men tightly together. Simple tactics. That's how he liked it. Nothing fancy.

Sheer, brutal force. He would storm upon the Ximerionians like a big human battering ram, and pound right through and over them.

With a savage cry he gave the order to attack. Yelling, the Mukthar host descended like a giant sledgehammer on their opponents. Shigurtish smirked triumphantly as the Ximerionians almost immediately retreated under the onslaught. He saw the enemy troops veer sideways, left and right, to avoid the brunt of the impact, while the little frishiu himself retreated to seek safety among the men behind him. He could smell his prey. He could almost taste it. Deeper and deeper he and his men hacked their way into the Ximerionian ranks.

Shigurtish didn't notice that surprisingly few enemy soldiers died. They just seemed to recoil at the same rhythm the Mukthars advanced. Their lines gave way in an elastic sort of way, but didn't break. He didn't know of course, that was precisely what they were trained to do. Concentrating on the Ximerionian prince who was so tantalizing near he could almost touch him, he also didn't notice that the troops that had veered sideways, were now closing in again.

When the Mukthar commander heard horses ride to his left and his right, the first suspicion that something could be wrong, very seriously wrong, began to dawn.

Timishi and Rodomesh were following the battle from upon their hill.

“Anashantish is being thrown back,” Rodomesh said worriedly. “His lines are folding. They could break any moment now.”

“No... No, I don't think so,” Timishi said slowly, straining his eyes.

“Yes, he is. Look for yourself. The whole formation is disintegrating.”

“No, they're giving way, but they are not disintegrating. I think I know what he's doing. Actually, I'm certain.

Look left and right, Rodo.”

“What?”

“Don't you see it? The bag. He is luring Shigurtish into a bag.”

Rodomesh looked again. The Mukthar army was as good as encircled. The two cavalry units had circled the fighting and were engaging the enemy from the back.

“Close the bag, he said,” Timishi exclaimed. “That's it. See, there at the back? There's a gap. The enemy is trying to keep it open by holding the horsemen off. Let's go.”

The quedash raised his sword, and followed by some two hundred Wolf Mukthars he thundered down the hill and crossed the river again. Minutes later they threw themselves in the last gap of the encirclement.

Anaxantis had seen the Wolf Mukthars leave their hill and knew Timishi had understood. He smiled.

“We're not there yet,” Hemarchidas said panting, after just having wounded one of the enemies.

“No, not yet. But almost. Seewidth=mosjus? Numbers don't matter if you can change them. They can't use all their men anymore. Only the ones on the outside. Ours are trained in this. Theirs are not.”

The fighting was brutal.

On the Ximerionian side, when a man got tired or lost his weapon, he simply took a few steps backwards and was replaced by another soldier. Every Mukthar on the outside of their by now packed formation had to deal with two, often three adversaries. They were pressed together and couldn't retreat without causing confusion further down the ranks. In fact they were pushed outward by men deeper inside their formation. The Mukthars in the middle were helpless to come to their aid. They tried though, but with everybody attempting to get to the outside of the circle, they soon found they were effectively hemmed in.

Like too many horses in a pen, they started to panic. The ones on the inside heard the death cries of their comrades and tried to get out, while the ones on the outside tried to get away from the superior, deadly force.

The result was pandemonium.

Looking back, Shigurtish saw what was happening. He turned back around, curled his lips and ordered his companions to a desperate surge forwards. If only he could catch the little frishiu, he could still turn this disaster around, he thought in his desperation.

The Clansmen almost buckled under the sudden severity of the attack. A small group of Mukthars got to Anaxantis and Hemarchidas. One of them managed to wound the prince on his left arm. He almost dropped his sword at the sudden, burning pain. Immediately he was fenced off by Clansmen, and Hemarchidas grabbed his reins and forced him to leave the fighting.

Escorted by some twenty clansmen he dragged him halfway up the ridge.

Anaxantis protested furiously.

“You can yell all you want,” Hemarchidas shouted back. “You're out. The battle is over as far as you are concerned. Look. You're not necessary anymore.”

Anaxantis looked out over the battle and saw the Cheridonian was right. Timishi had closed the bag. The Mukthars were now completely surrounded. With no way out they began to trample each other, trying to get out of the seething mass their army had become. The ones who made it to the outer ranks were greeted by multiple swords waiting for them and were mercilessly hacked down. They fell by the dozen.

Hemarchidas had ripped off a strip of his tunic and was, as good as he could, bandaging his friend's wound.

He would rather have taken him to the medical unit to get him away from the fighting altogether, but he knew he would never succeed.

Shigurtish saw that his position had become untenable. Retreat was impossible. He gritted his teeth. There was nothing else for it: he would go down with his sword in his hand. Better to die once, than live every day with the shame of having been beaten by the boy-frishiu. Or fall in the hands of that red haired Wolf Mukthar.

There was really nothing to it, he thought. Mukthars lived with death from the day they were born. They preferred it before surrender.

That was the legend. That was the reputation. That was what every young Mukthar was told, over and over again.

It was however not reality. No matter how strong the tradition might be, at a certain moment bleak despair and the irrepressible urge for self-preservation took over.

The Mukthar commander saw how to his right more than fifty of himkthar ty ove men threw down their swords and raised their arms in surrender.

“Pick up your swords and fight, you cowards,” he roared beside himself.

More Mukthars threw down their swords. Shigurtish looked around to his friends who were fighting beside him. He decided on a last-ditch effort and tried to steer his horse into Anaxantis's Clansmen. Three of them fell on him and dragged him from his horse. Still not prepared to concede defeat he drew his dagger, but two opponents got hold of his arm and wrestled the ragged weapon out of his hand. He tried to strangle the nearest Clansman with his bare hands, but by then he was restrained by five of his enemies.

“Kill me, you shorringah, rats, vermin,” he roared, almost demented, trying to insult his opponents into a deadly rage.

The worst part was that his enemies laughed.

“Can't oblige, Mukthar,” one of them said mockingly. “I think the warlord may want you alive.”

The Mukthars who had surrendered made it difficult for the ones still on the inside to make another choice.

Demoralization spread like wildfire in Shigurtish's ranks. With every barbarian that threw down his weapons, the options of those who still hadn't done so melted as fine snow under the sun.

Around five in the afternoon it was clear that the Ximerionian forces dominated the field and that nothing could save the Bear Mukthars from utter defeat.

“The battle is as good as over,” Hemarchidas said, “Off you go, to the medical unit.”

The warlord saw that his friend was right, nodded, and let the Cheridonian guide his horse further up the ridge and behind the trees. Several half open tents were erected there and under each stood dozens and dozens of low field beds. Moaning and cries abounded all around. He saw one of the younger pages, white as a sheet, stand against a tree, just having lost his dinner. There was a smell, not a pungent stench, but a wan, sickening smell of burning flesh mixed with wafts of strong herb concoctions. Wounds, a lot of wounds, were being cauterized.

Hemarchidas led him to the largest tent. He knew Munro Tollbir himself was working there.

The doctor wore something long, between a shirt and a tunic. Over that he wore a leather apron, like a butcher. It glistened with blood. He had rolled up its sleeves.

A man was just brought in.

“Lethoras,” Hemarchidas yelled as they were laying him on a long wooden table.

“What happened?” The prince inquired, worried.

Lethoras's explained, his face contorted with pain, that his horse had fallen over and probably broken his left leg.

“Is it serious?” Anaxantis asked of Murno.

The doctor had carefully torn a part of the pants away and looked unsurely.

“Depends how you look at it,” Murno said, scratching his beard, leaving streaks of blood in the gray hairs.

“His foot and lower leg are crushed. Can't set it. It's splintered. It has to come off crush cos o. Good news is that it is beneath the knee.”

Lethoras, lying down, had followed the conversation.

“No, no,” he moaned, “Anaxantis, don't let him cut off my leg. Not my leg.”

He clawed desperately at the prince's tunic as if only if he could keep him nearby they wouldn't touch his leg.

Anaxantis looked at the damage himself and winced. Even for someone not initiated in the art of healing it was clear. Little fragments of bone stuck out in all directions from Lethoras's shin. The boot was too flat to contain an unharmed foot.

“No, no, no,” Lethoras shouted, coming half upright. “Stay away from me. It will heal. It will heal.”