“Spear, worse luck. It seems to have made a largish hole, doesn’t it?”
“Might be worse, and it’s clean-looking. No arteries touched, which is the chief thing. I’ll get a first dressing on, and then we’ll get you back to Aornos. Feeling limp?”
“Not too bad. Should like a meal more than anything.”
Wrexham, having discovered that I was not seriously hurt, had hurried on again to catch Kyrlos and join in the fight.
Some of my men had come up now with a rough stretcher, and when Forsyth had tied me up they carried me down the hill to the road, where such of our men as were left were collecting. We were a sorry sight when we finally took count. There were about sixty sound men; another sixty or so who, though wounded, could stand; seventy or so badly wounded, some of whom were not likely to see the day out. The rest were dead: Paulos’s contingent would take no further part in the war for some time. I was more than glad to see Philos’s cousin among the last to come in. He had collected the débris of his company in the huts at the last, and held out there with a score of men. After one or two efforts the enemy had left them, doubtless intending to smoke them out or burn them out at their leisure. He had been wounded again after I had first seen him, and his mail was hacked and scarred, and his leather under-jerkin stained with blood and ripped in places, but he was still in fighting form.
He wrung me by the hand as he came up.
“A good fight, Sir Harilek. We shall have much honour in the land. And there are very much fewer Shamans now than this morning. Over two hundred we slew on our hill, and you must have killed twice that number on your side. But we have suffered sorely. There will be many desolate homes round Aornos to-night.”
The bulk of Kyrlos’s army had passed us, and the fight had swayed back over the stream. The enemy were in full retreat, it seemed. Kyrlos had missed us, having gone straight on down the road, whereas Andros had come up over the hill, but he sent me a little note later in the afternoon, which I keep as a memory of that day on the Astara. The Sakae are a most straight-spoken people, either when pleased or displeased.
Our pack-animals came up presently, and we had some food, which was very welcome. Andros had given Philos orders that we were to go back to Aornos for the present, taking our wounded and leaving a guard over our dead, who would be fetched next morning for burial by their folk. The Sakae set great store on burying their dead in their own villages, whenever possible, rather than in a strange place. Rough stretchers were improvised for such of the wounded as could not walk, and with the assistance of the sound men some of us were carried and others packed into bullock-carts, which Andros had brought for us. It was dark before we reached our camp at Aornos, and I was glad to get to bed in the warm firelit room in Torka’s house, and, after more dressing by Forsyth, to eat a meal specially prepared for me, and brought up by Torka’s wife in person, a talkative but kindly lady, who fussed over me a lot. But the only person I wanted to fuss over me just then was the only one I couldn’t have, and I was glad when Forsyth produced some hot milk and aspirin, with an order to go to sleep if I could.
I got to sleep eventually, despite my leg, but the silence was broken now and then by women wailing over their dead, for some of the Aornos men had been the van of Kyrlos’s troops. The day had been distinctly hectic, which did not aid sleep. And, lastly, Aryenis came into my mind, and refused to go away at all, despite the insistent memory of Andros’s mauve-bound eagle feathers. It was a bad night altogether, and I was glad when, in the morning after he had dressed my leg again, Forsyth announced that Paulos had sent in demanding immediate delivery of my person at his house, since I was the leader of his men, and therefore his house was mine for as long as I wanted it.