"I'm sure you would be," Grus said, and then turned toward the freed thrall. "Why do you want to learn them? Most men born free can't read and write, you know." There had been Kings of Avornis who needed to use a stencil to sign their names to decrees. Not all of them were bad kings, either.

"Fulca is a long way away now," Otus said. "We can't talk anymore. If I am going to say anything to her, I have to say it with words I write down. Someone back at the palace will read them to her. She will say what she wants to answer, and someone will write it down."

He didn't want to dictate a letter. That gave Grus an idea. "Maybe Fulca will learn her letters, too," he said.

Otus looked startled. Then he nodded, a nod that was almost a bow. "You're right, Your Majesty. Maybe she will. Learning things is good. I've seen that ever since I found out I could."

"I'm glad," Grus said. "I hope all the thralls will be like you and turn into ordinary people as soon as they can."

"So do I," Otus said. "The other king told me learning as much as I could was the most important thing I could do."

"Did he?" Grus said. Otus solemnly nodded. Grus hid a smile. Lanius was a born scholar, so of course he thought that way. Grus wasn't sure Lanius was wrong, but he wouldn't have put it as strongly as the other king had.

"Freeing all the thralls will take a lot of wizardry," Pterocles said. "We haven't come close to doing it, not yet. We won't for quite a while, either, even if we win all the fights."

He was bound to be right about that, and he was wise to be cautious. What he said wasn't what Grus wanted to hear; the king wished everything were going smoothly, and that all the thralls would be free by day after tomorrow at the latest.

What he got two days later wasn't the freeing of all the thralls south of the Stura. Scouts came galloping back to the army from the south and southeast, shouting, "The Menteshe! The Menteshe are coming!"

"Well, well," Hirundo said. "Maybe this is what we get for telling the Banished One's ambassador where to head in."

"Maybe it is," Grus said. "But I'd rather fight the nomads out in the open than have them stand siege in Yozgat."

"A point," Hirundo agreed. He shouted to the trumpeters. Horn calls blared out. The Avornans started shifting from columns into line of battle. Hirundo and Grus both shouted for them to hurry. If the Menteshe were moving forward as aggressively as that, the army needed to be ready when they got there. An attack before the Avornans were fully deployed was only too likely to turn into a disaster.

Hirundo also shouted for the engineers to get the stone- and dart-throwing engines into place as fast as they could. Grus echoed that cry, too. The engines could do what Avornan archery couldn't – they could outrange the nomads' fearsome horn-backed bows. If the Menteshe wanted to make the fight nothing but an archery duel, they would pay for it.

"Are these Korkut's men, or are they Sanjar's?" Grus asked a scout.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," the man answered. "They just look like a bunch of howling barbarians to me."

Grus laughed in spite of himself. "Well, by the gods in the heavens, we'll give them something to howl about, won't we?"

More scouts began falling back on the main body of the army. Some of them were wounded, and either lurched in the saddle or rode behind men who hadn't been hurt. Some, no doubt, wouldn't make it back at all.

Hirundo pointed ahead. "Here come the Menteshe."

"There are enough of them, aren't there?" Grus said.

"Too many, if anybody wants to know what I think," the general replied.

The plainsmen shouted something, but Grus couldn't make out what it was. He shrugged. They were unlikely to be welcoming him to the lands south of the Zabat. He did some shouting of his own. He and Hirundo both noted a hillock on their left flank, and posted a sizable detachment of archers and lancers there. That would make a good anchor for the left wing. On the right, the ground was far less generous. To make sure the Avornans didn't get outflanked there, Hirundo sent over a large fraction of the catapults. The great darts and flying stones would – with luck – keep the Menteshe from getting too adventurous over there.

"Nicely done," Grus said. "If they have to come straight at us, it's our kind of fight."

"That's what I'm hoping for, Your Majesty," the general agreed. "The only thing wrong with the scheme is, the cursed Menteshe are liable to have hopes of their own." He clucked in indignation that the nomads should presume to do anything so impolite.

Grus looked around to the royal guardsmen, who waited behind a screen of archers and other men more lightly armed and armored. If the Menteshe tried to smash through the Avornan center, they would get the same sort of unpleasant greeting as they had the last time they fought a large battle against Grus' army. Grus wondered whether any of the Menteshe commanders here had fought his men the summer before. That was something he wished he knew. It would have made a difference in his own dispositions.

Arrows began to fly. The first ones fell short, as happened in almost every battle Grus had ever seen. Men got more excited than they should have. They thought the enemy was closer than he really was, or thought they were stronger than they really were. Those wasted arrows mattered little. Soon enough, the shafts would bite.

And, soon enough, they did bite. Hit horses screamed. So did wounded men. Others crumpled to the ground without so much as a last sigh, dead before they struck it. In a way, they were the lucky ones. A quick death without pain was hardly more common on the battlefield than it was in the humdrum world of everyday life.

Hirundo bawled orders, shifting men to the right to cover what looked like building trouble there. The trumpeters' horn calls sent those orders winging even farther than his battle-trained voice could have. One of the trumpeters took an arrow in the arm even as he blared out a call. The music drowned in a horrible false note. Then the man lowered the horn and let out an honest shriek.

No sooner had Hirundo swung men to cover the perceived threat than he discovered that these Menteshe generals, whoever they were, had more imagination than the leaders he'd faced the year before. The perceived threat turned out not to be the real one. After luring Avornan reinforcements to the right, the nomads struck hard at the left, about halfway between the Avornan force on the hillock and the center.

For a moment, Hirundo and Grus seemed to be struggling to find out who could curse more foully. Grus had hoped his royal guardsman would hurtle forward and smash the nomads, as they'd done before. Now, with Hirundo sending the heavily armed and armored riders back and to the left, the king hoped the guardsmen could keep the Menteshe from smashing his army.

"Grus!" the guardsmen shouted as they spurred their horses forward. "Hurrah for King Grus!" That was flattering. The king would have liked it better had they not used his name for a war cry in such desperate straits.

The Menteshe poured a fierce volley of arrows into the guardsmen. Some of the Avornans fell from their horses with a clatter. Some of the horses went down, too. But armor for men and mounts proved its worth. The Menteshe didn't break the guardsmen's charge, as they'd plainly thought they would.

Because they didn't break it, they had to try to withstand it. Their ponies and the wax-boiled leather they used in place of chainmail were not up to opposing lancers on big, heavy horses. They fought bravely. Grus didn't think he'd ever seen the nomads fail to fight bravely; they would have been much less dangerous if they hadn't been brave. Brave or not, though, they couldn't keep the guardsmen from breaking the momentum of their advance.