Phaedra encouraged her horse forward with cries and a soft shaking of the reigns. It was not the Miravet way to spur horses except in the gravest of necessity, and they trained their mounts from birth to respond to a riders touch. They had raced through the night as fast as could be managed. The force of Khareeds behind them might be following but Phaedra rather doubted it. It wasn't the way of an Atvari nobleman to press home an attack. In their minds a battle was decided and the desert would finish off the loser. It was also possible that the ragged survivors of their abortive ambush, many bearing wounds from spatha strokes or pierced with heavy cataphract arrows, had convinced them that following a superior force was folly. Twice during the night Phaedra had detached her rearward Tets to take positions on the periodic rises along the river banks, giving the enemy a chance to overhaul them while the main body of her force slowed to a gentle canter, resting the horses. On both occasions the Tets had come galloping up an hour later with no sign of puruit. Had the Khareeds followed, she would have wheeled around and driven them up against her rearguards. It would have been over quickly unless they had significantly more men than her scouts had reported to her.

It worried her somewhat that the enemy didn't appear to be in strength. The further east into the Atvari heartlands they pressed, the stiffer resistance should have been. After all the Atvari had started this conflict by raiding Keylara in the spring. Both sides had paused over the hot summer before the campaigning season began again in the autumn. There should have been whole armies coming west from the central plateau that formed the heartland of Atvari. Phaedra scratched at her neck, the fine mix of sand a grit irritating where her armor rubbed against her collar. Somehow she felt that Gregorius's desertion was linked with the unusual behavior of the Atvari, but she couldn't figure out how. Not yet anyway.

"Protos!" Zoe called, her own horse galloping down the column. Like Phaedra she was dressed in full armor despite the fact that her Tet were serving as the scouts and flankers today. Zoe was unusually fair for a Miraveti, probably as a result of a foreign marriage but unlike many other peoples in the Empire, such details of birth were irrelevant among the horsewomen of that distant kingdom. A woman derived her status from her mother, fathers were incidental, though they may be important parts of the family unit, it was decent from the maternal line which determined a place in the Saleri, or hereditary regiments, which made up the forces Miravet tithed to the Emperor. Not that one had to be born into to belong. Long experience of campaigning across the length and breath of the Empire meant that a Saleri had to recruit as it went to maintain its numbers. Recruits from more patriachal socites were few, but there were always a few women who were willing to submit themselves to the often brutal training regimes. Once accepted a woman was considered as much a Miravet as if she had been born to it, and would be welcomed if she lived to take her pension and decided to return their. While the bulk of her Saleri were Miravet natives, she had under her command women from Chalcedon, Kumar, Trebzana, Tylis and other provinces of the Empire and beyond. THeir daughters would be Saleri and Miraveti also, if they lived long enough to have them.

"The outriders have reached the hills outside Arbela," Zoe said, wheeling her horse around in a spray of grit to ride alongside her commander. Her smile would have done very well for a wolf that had just discovered a flock of unprotected sheep.

"Several thousand Khareem are attacking the place, maybe six thousand with as many infantry in support. Armored ones, maybe from the Satraps army," Zoe reported wiping muddy sweat from her brow. Wearing armor in this heat was a bit like standing too close to a blacksmiths furnace, an experience made more miserable by the constant dust that was blowing up from the west.

"Brasidas and his men are still holding the place then?" she asked quickly, discomfort and heat forgotten by the prospect of action. Zoe nodded vigorously.  Like most of the riders her long hair was braided tightly then coiled an pinned so it stayed under her helmet. She wasn't wearing the helmet yet, none of them would done it until they were ready to join the battle, so the braids bobbed as though agreeing with her assessment.


"Looks like they just repulsed an attack," the enemy is falling back and looks to be settling in for a siege," Zoe reported. Phaedra scowled, like most cavalry she disliked siege warfare, preferring the cut and thrust of battle where she could maneuver.


"Pass the word for Eudoxia and Iona," she called to a nearby trooper. There was no need, both women along with their subordinate tribunes were making their way towards her having seen Zoe make her report.

"Should we halt," Zoe asked, but Phaedra was nodding her head before she finished speaking. Brasidas was holding for now, and the enemy wasn't yet engaged. It was a shame they hadn't arrived a half hour sooner to take the engaged Atvari in the rear.

"Do they have scouts out?" she asked quickly. Zoe shook her head.

"Sorry bastards don't even have pickets," she said with a tone that combined delight and disgust. The column slowed to a canter and then halted. Cataphracts slid from their saddles and pulled open feed bags for their mounts, others began to lead their horses to the water, slaking their thirst alongside their mounts.

"Water the horses quick as you can, an hours rest," she declared, taking her water skin and pouring some of the precious contents over her face before tossing the skin to another trooper to refill.

"Zoe," she said to the scout commander, who knew from long exposure what her Protos Kapetanos wanted. Quickly and succinctly she laid out the terrain ahead for the command group. When she was done Phaedra nodded.

"If they don't send out scouts before then we are going to wait till either night falls or they try another frontal attack. The any fortifications they build will be facing the village so it shouldn't be a problem." As a group they all looked at the sky, gauging sunset to be perhaps an hour and a half away.

"Doxy, I want you to send have your Tet back to that ford we passed a mile or so back, have them cross and come up on the south bank. There is a ford at Arbela and I don't want the Atvari to be able to cross and use it as a strong point.

"Iona and I will take our tets up the center, Zoe, take your scouts, we haven't got time to put them in armor and seize the high ground north of the city. Drive in once we have them stired up, but don't press, I want them to be able to slip out to the north east, force them away from the river.

"We are going to ride through their camp and if any woman stops to loot I'll have them whipped," Phaedra went on sternly. That was the real risk, that her troops would get caught up in pillage rather than pressing home the attack.

"Plenty of time to pick the bastards clean once they are supping with Old Lady Winter," she cautioned, getting nods from her commanders also. Speed and shock were essential here and these were veterans, they knew the danger as well as she did.

"Questions?" she demanded.

"Are we going to warn Brasidas that we are here?" Eudoxia asked, clearly feeling that a coordinated attack had a better chance of success.

"How are we going to get word to him? He is under siege for the sake of the Huntress?" Iona demanded, she was the only one of the senior commanders not from Miravet but rather from the island of Patryia, her hair was red and her skin had once been pale before the sun had baked it a light tan. Dark freckles could still be seen across her nose. Phaedra's answering grin would have done for a wolf. Done very well indeed.

__________

The Atvari sentries noticed the body as it floated passed their siege line. It hadn't yet begun to bloat, but even in the moonlight they could tell the black skin of a several days dead corpse. It was dressed in what might have been Atvari desert clothing, another corpse floating down from the fighting further up river. Both of the sentries made quick prayers to Gathal'anan, the Great God, wishing the soul well in its journey to the Lavender Kingdom. It was a shame that the body was too far from the shore to be retrived, but eventually some fisherman would find it and see to the rites.

The Imperial sentries noticed the body too. They could hardly miss it infact as they were witness to a bonafide miracle. The bloateded black corpse, still with death, suddenly seemed to sit up, even more astonishingly it seemed to break into two pieces, one of which began to swim towards the bank of the river. To their utter astonishment, a woman, dressed in soaking black clothes and with skin which appeared to have been blacked with boot polish splashed ashore holding her hands up to show she meant them no harm.

"I have a message for General Brasidas," she said in accented Imperial, wiping uselessly at the boot blacking on her face.