CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Chaldez had imagined that when the great Sei Empire went to war it would be a startling and spectacular event. Actually it was a shambles.
News of the Karandi invasion had caused a mixture of disbelief, panic and outrage. Noblemen who had spent years warring against each other were suddenly companions in arms, but their rivalries lingered on, as, hoping for military glory they marched their private armies towards the common enemy.
In one such army Chaldez had the command of some 200 men.
"I pity you," said Dan when he saw them.
"You're as much in this as I am," Chaldez retorted, "so you'd better make something of them."
Chaldez, fully aware by now of his talent for languages, revelled in being able to show off his grasp of yet another one, and Dan responded by showing off his ability to impose a tough, Theigan-style discipline on the men in their command.
Chaldez owed his position to the young nobleman, Zhak Zoaden, to whom he and Dan had delivered the appalling Poiniffinni from Boa-Isgaad. Their success in that mission, coupled with his reputation as a warrior and the fact that he was a prince, had prompted Zoaden to recommend him for a command to his powerful patron and uncle, Zhak Kassimo, Nwodek of Rhabbin
Fat, bejewelled, richly dressed and possessed of a cold, haughty expression, Kassimo looked the powerful aristocrat that he was. He belonged to the surviving branch of a family which had ruled the empire in its days of real greatness, and his province of Rhabbin was vast, if poor.
He was, as it happened, no military man, but Chaldez and Dan were not to know that. His motives for raising an army against the Karandi were complex. He hoped, perhaps, to restore his family's fortunes; he may even have believed that a great victory would deliver the empire into his hands.
The Imperial Mo Wa at the time of the invasion was Jasti IV, cloistered with the voluptuous priestesses of Rendaryk Toje in the Holy City of Crarne. He was not greatly interested in anything to do with the empire, and when informed of the invasion he remarked "There's plenty of territory between here and the Karandi, is there not? I expect they will be satisfied long before they get anywhere near us."
Twenty two years earlier he had washed his hands of the empire and gone into voluntary exile, leaving his uncle, Zhak Adnar the Grandmarshal, to rule in his name.
Adnar, after a promising start, had gone into a decline, his authority sabotaged by drink, ill-health and incipient laziness so that by degrees it had shrunk until it barely extended beyond the city walls of Nadim, the capital. Publicly, he deplored the invasion; privately he hoped it would distract and weaken some of the empire's more ambitious and difficult nobles, among whom he included Zhak Kassimo. He certainly had no intention of going to fight the Karandi himself.
Kassimo, meanwhile, dreaming of military triumphs and a glorious entry into Nadim at the head of a victorious and powerful army, marched north, and was brought to a somewhat ignominious halt at the River Rashiddin. The only bridge was in the hands of the Karandi who were besieging the city of Arkyat on the opposite bank.
Kassimo summoned the commanders of the five or six smaller armies which were already in the area to a council of war, imposed himself as their commander-in-chief and out lined a plan-of-attack which Zoaden, advised by Chaldez and Dan, had already suggested to him. It involved a diversionary tactic, disguised as an attempt to take the bridge, while the main divisions made a night-time crossing of the Rashiddin where it became wide and shallow up river.
The Karandi were completely taken in by the assault on the bridge, which was led by the men in Chaldez's company, and when they found themselves being attacked in the flank by a much larger force they panicked.
Kassimo pursued them all the way to the banks of the Orbis, beyond which lies their own kingdom. Few survived the crossing.
After this great victory, he dismissed those of his allies whom he distrusted, and with the remainder began to make secret preparations to march upon Nadim. Then news reached him that another Karandi army was wrecking havoc in the northern province of Hizattia.
The next few days were filled with hectic attempts to recall the divisions which had dispersed, and a somewhat diminished force was preparing to strike camp when Kassimo learned that this second Karandi army was commanded by the great Taksibar. The Imperial commander immediately ordered a retreat. "We must get reinforcements," he said. "I will not fight with less than 50,000 men."
He sent a messenger to the Grand Marshal, demanding money and men, and he called on his fellow nwodeks for urgent support.
The response from all but the Grand Marshal, who remained silent, was as prompt as it was generous. Some of the nwodeks arrived in person at the head of their contingents, and for the first time the Sei army began to look genuinely imperial.
By the close of the year Kassimo was confident of crushing Taksibar. The Sei army was certainly an impressive sight as its encampment sprawled almost as far as the eye could see across the arid plain on which it had been assembling.
Among the splendid gathering of commanders there was mounting excitement; Kassimo exactly caught their mood when he told them that the empire was re-awakening and that a new age of great military conquest was dawning. Chaldez was ready to believe it, but Dan, when Chaldez told him what had been said, was contemptuous. "I don't know about the Karandi," he said, "but I do know that the Theigans wouldn't have much trouble with this lot."
Taksibar was assumed to be in the far north of the empire still, and ponderously the army up-rooted itself and began the northward march. Within days, however, its advanced guard was involved in a bloody skirmish with a powerful Karandi force. Kassimo immediately made his dispositions for battle.
Chaldez watched the tortuous manoeuvres with mounting bewilderment; he wondered how on earth Kassimo intended to conduct the forthcoming battle. He remarked to Dan "His archers are in the wrong place; his charioteers are blocked by the infantry, and his cavalry is scattered all over the place. He can't attack, and he's in no position to defend."
Dan shrugged. "I shouldn't worry," he said. "From what we've seen of the Karandi I'd say they'll be in just as big a mess."
Chaldez was not comforted and by the end of the day he was deeply despondent.
Taksibar attacked early the next morning, and although his army was outnumbered, the flaws in Kassimo's dispositions soon began to tell. By midday the Sei were in serious difficulties, and then whole companies began to fall back and break up. Kassimo had run out of ideas long before; he sat in his tent listening with disbelief, and then dismay to the reports of collapse that came from every quarter of the battlefield. Many of his brother nwodeks did not wait to see the outcome, and with varying degrees of discretion, slipped away. The company lead by Chaldez and Dan now formed the one unbreakable section in a crumbling side, and when Zoaden was summoned by his despairing uncle and told to take over the conduct of the battle, he was able to use it to avoid a complete rout.
Taksibar was left in possession of the field, but he had been denied the crushing victory which he had begun to think would be his.
The Sei army, reduced as much by desertion as by casualties, re-grouped outside the city walls of Arkyat, and Taksibar, confident now of outright victory, attacked at once.
On the eve of this new battle, Kassimo was discovered by Zhak Zoaden weeping with terror in his tent. Zoaden, who by now believed everything he had been told about the valour of Chaldez and Dan, met them privately and said that he was assuming control of the Sei Army, and that he desired Chaldez to be his second-in-command. He then informed Kassimo of his decision. The sobbing nobleman cheered up at once. "I rely on you to save us," he said. "Do whatever you think you must."
The new engagement was an entirely different story from its predecessor. Taksibar was ill-prepared and over-confident, and the local geography favoured the defensive strategy adopted by Zoaden and Chaldez.
The battle raged all day, with neither side gaining the crucial advantage. Towards nightfall a violent thunderstorm broke and quickly reduced parts of the battlefield to a quagmire. In the torrential rain and enveloping darkness, momentarily lit by huge slashes of lightning, the fighting began to peter out. Takisbar withdrew.
At first light the next day he launched a renewed attack, but his men, wet, cold, exhausted and hungry, were in no state to press it home and by midday they were being driven back.
Neither side could be said to have won, and neither side was in a position to renew the offensive. The Karandi withdrew, leaving the badly mauled Sei army to bury its dead.
Soon afterwards Kassimo, his hopes smashed, returned to his palace near Nadim. He made Zoaden his general and left him in command of the imperial army, but it proved to be a doubtful honour.