A hot wind blew down from the distant ridge bringing with it the smell of warm sand and desert flowers. The night was clear and as chill as the next day would be hot. The cavalry were encamped on one of the small rocky rises which rose from the floor of the desert at intervals, ancient mountains which had been ground down by millennia of grit blowing in off the Atvari plateau. Several hundred tents were pitched in rows as net as the terrain permitted. Horses were picketed in neat rows beside small fires, kindled on the scant fuel the cavalry could scavenge in such inhospitable country.
 
Phaedra Comnemnos sat on a boulder staring out into the night. A small dagger in her hand whittled slivers of iron hard trail jerky which she popped into her mouth and chewed with soldierly determination. Like most of the natives of Miravet, a distant province on the other side of the Empire, Phaedra was a trim woman with wiry muscles, olive skin and dark, slightly almond shaped, eyes.  Miravet was a barbaric place on the borderland of great Kajari steppe and it bred cavalry soldiers that were prized by the Empire. The Miravet wore heavy coats of scale mail and were equally adept with long swords, lances and powerful compound bows which they fired accurately from horseback. Peculiarly all Miravet cavalry were female, the lighter weight allowing them to carry more armor and equipment than their male equivalents. This oddity of Miravet culture as well as the excellent quality of the riders made them a popular choice by Emperors and Empresses who would worried perpetually about generals making a claim with their swords. Women, it was thought, did not have the same kind of dynastic ambitions as men and the Miravet, like other semi-barbarians tended to view their oaths somewhat more seriously than the cosmopolitan Imperial heartlanders did. The current Emperor had a Miravet wife in point of fact, though she had only produced a daughter and it seemed unlikely that the Empress would present him with a son.
 
Like most Imperial officers, Phaedra had been inducted into the lowest rank of nobility, though she lacked land or income beyond her army pay and booty. Neither she nor her two thousand lances had seen much of either. The Atavari were an ancient enemy of the Empire and they were tough and canny foes. The latest war was a challenge to an aging and rather feckless Emperor, started on some pretext. As was their custom, the Atvari had come over the desert to pillage and raid the costal province of Keylara, falling back when Imperial forces had struck back from the their forts around the great cities of of Kestos and Pravis, driving the proud Atvari back into the perrenially contested borderlands and then into the desert. Phaedra, who had campagined in this part of the world before, was surprised at how quickly the enemy had been beaten back, even as the Imperials sacked several of the smaller towns the followed the river Kitri through the desert. There was even talk that they might capture Sidris, the capital of the western most Satrapy, though it was still more than three weeks march from the most advanced elements of the Imperial force.
 
"Phaedra," a voice called and she turned to see Eudoxia, one of her officers, crossing quickly towards her. Recognizing the posture Phaedra came to her feet, her hand straying to her spatha. 
 
"What is it Doxy?" she asked, using the diminutive of her old friends name.
 
"Something is moving out their captain," Eudoxia said urgently. The cavalry commander turned her eyes to the darkness, she was about to to dismiss Eudoxia concern when she caught sight of something in the moonlight. Focusing her attention she thought she picked up a glint of moonlight on metal. She stiffened at once.

“How is that possible, Georgius and his men are out scouting?” Phaedra began but she shook her head before Eudoxia could respond. It didn’t matter how it had happened, she had no doubt the enemy was sneaking through the dark towards them, there were enough dry creekbeds in this cracked desert landscape to conceal several thousand men if they were cunningly used, and while the ruling caste of the Atavri were a haughty lot, they didn’t lack for desert auxiliaries. 

“Pass the word, quickly and quietly as you can, when the horn blows, out fires and stand to,” she told Eudoxia quietly, slipping the jerked meat into a pouch and standing up as casually as she could.

“This might get interesting.”

When the horn blared, Miraveti reacted instantly. Blankets were tossed over fires and burning timbers, grasped from the fires with hands wrapped in damp cloth were hurled outwards in all directions. The result was that the center of the camp, went dark and a ring of illumination sprang up around it. Women grabbed weapons and shields and faced outwards in a loose circle. There was a sudden cry from one of the nearby creek beds and a flight of arrows fell from the darkness. Women screamed as the light Atvari arrows fell among them, but far more of the missiles thunked into their metal bound shields than pierced flesh. Warcries ripped the nights as a mass of Atvari infantry broked from the shelter of the creekbed. There were fierce looking men, bearded and wearing clothing of knotted linen. They carried light wicker shields and curved scimitars and triangular axes which had been blacked with charcoal to aid in their stealthy approach.

“Shields!” Phaedra shouted, shoving her troops into position to meet the oncoming rush. The burning brands were stuttering out now and the smothered fires were gone, leaving only the half illumination of desert moonlight. It was still better than having her cohort backlit by their own campfires and the moment of perilous night blindness was quickly passing.

“Zoe!” Phadrea shouted over the din of shouting troops and clattering equipment.

“Get your Tet mounted! Forget the armor,” she roared, ducking as an arrow shattered against her shield. Zoe, an abnormally short Miravet who served as one of the Tetrarchs, the four principle subcommanders of her legion, shouted something that was lost in the din, but held up her fist in an affirmative sign. There was no time for further orders as the charging Atvari were almost on the ragged line of dismounted cavalry women. A ragged volley of arrows ripped into the onrushing enemy, the heavy compound bows punching through light shields and men alike, hewing down a score of them in an instant. Phaedra would much rather her troops had focused on getting their shields locked, but no was no time for micro management. The Atvari hit the shields like a tide, axes and swords chopping down. The Miraveti formation bowed dangerously under the impact. Their smaller frames were an advantage in the saddle, but on foot and without their armor, they were dangerously out massed by the enemy. Men and women screamed as the they clashed. Long spathas stabbed from behind cavalry shields and scimitars arched down with brutal hacking cuts. Phaedra caught an axe on her battered oak shield and thrust up into her opponents belly from beneath the rim. The tribesman squealed and staggered back, intestines and blood pouring from his chest. She turned in time to see the woman next to her take a spear to the throat, dropping her in a spray of arterial blood, her hands still clawing at the terrible wound.

“Hold!” she roared over the din of battle and her troops closed up stabbing and striking as they struggled to maintain their formation. If they hadn’t been on the upslope of the hill, the weight of the enemy would have driven them under in a few moments. Phaedra pushed forward slightly, spatha cutting down another opponent as he reeled from a shield smash, a blow to her own shield numbed her arm and a scimitar point cut a long gash across her cheek. She felled the swordsman with an inelegant backhand blow that almost decapitated him. The press of shields and blades was intense, almost crushing, but they held, by The Huntress they held. With a shocking suddenness that made the Miraveti stagger, the pressure slackened. A volley of arrows, fired high over the front ranks from the increasingly organized Miravet riders, fell among the enemies rear ranks. The indirect fire robbed the arrows of most of their force, but it was still enough to kill or disable an unarmored man. Moments later the thunder of hooves announced that Zoe had managed to get at least some of her Tet mounted and the fine horses galloped into the night peeling out around the flank of the would be ambushers. The screams grew in intensity as Zoe’s contingent began to rake the Atvari from the flanks. No force of light infantry could stand against that murderous fusilade for long. Under normal circumstances the Atvari would have used their own horse archers or light cavalry to nullify their opponents, but their horses had been left behind in order to aid in their stealthy approach. They held for perhaps another thirty seconds before the panic that the scything arrows induced on the flank spread. The enemy broke and fled for the shelter of the creekbed.

“Pursue?” Zoe yelled as she reigned her horse in twenty yards from Phaedra, not pausing from the mechanical act of drawing and firing her bow at the retreating backs of the Atvari.

“Drive ‘em! But ware in case they have another ambush in the rocks,” Phaedra called, pausing to drive her weapon down into one of the badly wounded tribesmen. Zoe shouted a Miraveti hunting call and her troops wheeled and tore off after the retreating enemy, leaving Phaedra dismounted among the dead and dying.

There was no further ambush. Zoe’s troops ran the survivors for most of a mile, before they spotted the dust of onrushing enemy cavalry on the horizon. By that point there were perhaps two hundred of the thousand or so infantry left, a trail of arrow and sword pierced bodies leading back to the knoll. 

“No chance it was Gerogicus?” Phaedra asked as the exultant Zoe dismounted, her horse lathered in sweat from the pursuit. 

“None, we could see the moonlight winking off those damned pointed helmets of there,” Zoe said.

“Probably only six hundred of them or so, but more than I wanted to mix with with only half my Tet, and all of us naked,” Zoe explained. The riders had not been literally naked of course, but they tended to refer to themselves that way when they were not wearing their scale mail. The pointed helmets were a unique piece of equipment worn by Atvari heavy cavalry or Kahreeds. The peasantry might be wiley desert foxes but the nobility fought on horseback and in full armor, each noble with his own body guard of retainers. They were among the best heavy cavalry in the world and even the Miraveti respected them. A force of six hundred Kharreeds would have made short work of a hundred unarmored Miraveti.
 
“Are they closing?” Phaedra asked, fiddling with her scalemale to settle it properly. Zoe shook her head.

“Looks like they are turning of northwards, towards Zaldai, but I left a picket of scouts to watch them.”

“Speaking of scouts,” Eudoxia interjected as she walked over to them, the reigns of her horse in her hands and her full battle gear strapped on.

“The tents of Georgicus and his men were empty, took everything they owned with them,” she sneered.

“They deserted?” Zoe asked incredulously. Phaedra shared her puzzlement. Georgicus was an ass, and a top lofty noble to boot, but to desert? No that didn’t make sense.

“No they left us here, left us here where the Atvari could attack us,” Phaedra said, her mind working through the information in her mind, trying to make some sense of it. They had been sent out a week ago to reinforce Brasidas and his forces, Georgicus had been in overall command even though his own troops were only a quarter the size of hers. She thought back to her interactions with the man. He had been sneeringly superior, but she had taken that for his normal state. Could he have really sent her troops out here to die? Conspired with the Atvari? Why would he do that.

“How many did we lose,” Phaedra asked in a cold voice. Eudoxia, who doubtlessly had been coming to give her the butchers bill looked grim.

“Sixty seven dead, about as many wounded but able to ride,” she returned, her normally pretty features drawn back to make her face look like a skull. It could have been much worse, Phadera’s eyes tracked to the circling buzzards already descending to feed upon the Atvari. One way or another she would see that Georgicus paid for every one of those sixty seven dead.

“Do we have horses to carry the bodies?” Phaedra asked quietly. Miraveti funeral customs called for cremation. In theory it was supposed to be done with wood from the sacred yew trees of their homeland. Military expediency made this impossible, so as a compromise each soldier carried a twig of yew on a cord around their neck, to be used as kindling for their funeral pyre. 

“Barely,” Phaedra responded, “alot of arrows fell among the horses.”

“Put the wounded in the supply wagons then, have the dead strapped to their horses,” she decided.

“Serve a cold breakfast then get the girls mounted up, we will strike east and join up with Brasidus, maybe he knows what in the name of the Huntress is going on…”

[@POOHEAD189]