It was a matter of minutes before they rounded a bend in the trail and saw the burning wagons. The horses had been cut free, and the bodies of several of the drivers could be seen with arrows jutting from their chests. Premian dragged his exhausted mount to a halt and swiftly surveyed the scene. Smoke was billowing around the area, stinging the eyes. Five wagons were burning.
Suddenly he saw a man with a blazing torch run through the smoke. He was wearing a white head-scarf. ‘Take him!’ bellowed Premian, kicking his horse forward. The Lancers swept out around him, riding through the oily smoke.
A small group of Nadir warriors were desperately trying to fire the remaining wagons. As the thunder of hoofbeats reached them over the roaring of the flames they dropped their torches and ran for their ponies.
The Lancers tore into them, cutting them down.
Premian swung his horse, just as something dark came launching at him from a blazing wagon. He instinctively ducked as a white-scarfed Nadir warrior cannoned into him, sending him hurtling from the saddle. They hit hard and Premian rolled, scrabbling for his sword. But the man ignored him and, taking hold of the saddle pommel, vaulted to the gelding’s back. Drawing his sabre the Nadir charged the Lancers, hacking and cutting. One man fell from his mount with his throat slashed open, a second pitched to his left as the flickering blade pierced his face. A lance ripped into the Nadir’s back, half lifting him from the saddle. Twisting savagely, he tried to reach the Lancer. Another soldier heeled his horse forward, cleaving his longsword into the man’s shoulder. The Nadir, dying now, sent one last lunge at the sword-wielder, the blade piercing his arm. Then he sagged to his right. The gelding reared, throwing him to the ground with the lance still embedded deep in his back. He struggled to rise and groped for his fallen sabre; blood was bubbling from his mouth and his legs were unsteady. A rider closed in on him, but he lashed out, his sword cutting the horse’s flanks. ‘Get back from him!’ shouted Premian. ‘He’s dying.’
The Nadir staggered and turned towards Premian. ‘Nadir we!” he shouted.
A Lancer spurred his horse forward and slashed his sword down at the man. The Nadir ducked under the blow and leapt forward to grab the Lancer’s cloak, dragging him down into the path of his own sabre which sliced up into the man’s belly. The Lancer screamed and pitched from the saddle. Both men fell to the ground. Soldiers leapt from their mounts and surrounded the fallen Nadir, hacking and cleaving at his body.
Premian ran forward. ‘Get back, you fools!’ he yelled. ‘Save the wagons!’
Using their cloaks, the Lancers beat at the flames, but it was useless. The dry timbers had caught now and the fires raged on, unstoppable. Premian ordered the five remaining wagons pulled clear, then sent out riders to gather the wagon horses which, having picked up the scent of water, were walking slowly towards the pool. Ten of the drivers were also found, hiding in a gully, and were brought before Premian. ‘You ran,’ he said, ‘from seven Nadir warriors. Now half our wagons are gone. You have put the entire army in peril by your cowardice.’
‘They came screaming out of the steppes, in a cloud of dust,’ argued one man. ‘We thought there was an army of them.’
‘You will take your places on the remaining wagons, see them loaded and the water delivered back to the camp. Once there, you will face the Lord Gargan. I don’t doubt your backs will feel the weight of the lash. Now get out of my sight!’
Swinging away from them, Premian thought through the mathematics of the situation. Five wagons with eight barrels each. Some fifteen gallons could be stored in each barrel. In these conditions a fighting man needed, minimally, around two pints of water per day. By this rough estimate he calculated that one barrel could supply sixty men with water. Forty barrels would be barely enough for the men, let alone the horses. And horses for only one day . . . From now on there would need to be a constant shuttle between the camp and the pool.