Win or lose, this fight was going to be close, and plenty of Akkadians were going to die. The loss of so many of his valuable spearmen and archers was bad enough, but to fail to defeat the enemy would make their deaths in vain.
Alexar cantered back toward the center, and waved at Drakis, who waved his spear in return. Alexar swung down from his horse beside Eskkar. “Our men are ready, Captain, at least as ready as they’ll ever be. But it looks like it’s going to be close. Good hunting.” He handed his horse’s halter to one of his men and strode calmly back toward his position in the center of the left flank.
Eskkar knew Alexar preferred to fight on foot, beside his men.
Then Mitrac’s drum sounded and the time for orders and doubts had passed. The Elamites had moved within range.
“Loose!” Mitrac launched the first flight of arrows into the sky.
The third battle of the Dellen Pass had begun.
From his higher position up the slope, Eskkar could see almost the entire Elamite army, and he saw the weight of Modran’s cavalry, grouped closer toward Eskkar’s right flank. He guessed Modran had less than four thousand mounted fighters remaining, and the effectiveness of that force might be the key to victory or defeat today.
Nevertheless, almost eighteen thousand Elamites, a mix of infantry and archers, filled the width of the Pass. All of them urged on by their commanders, and determined to finish off the Akkadians once and for all.
But first the Elamites needed to come to grips with their enemy. Once again, more than fifteen hundred of Mitrac’s archers continued to pour arrows into the advancing troops, slowing their approach. Another three hundred bowmen, Muta’s dismounted cavalry, faced the approaching Immortals. Now they, too, began launching their arrows. The screening Elamite infantry lacked a sufficient number of shields, and the Akkadian arrows ripped into their ranks.
However despite taking heavy losses, the enemy commanders drove their men onward.
Eskkar, keeping his shield between himself and the enemy, trotted his horse behind the bowmen. He ignored the occasional shaft that overshot the Akkadian ranks. The Elamites, those who survived the arrow storm, were almost within charging distance. In another fifty paces, they would fling themselves forward.
The time had come. Eskkar raised his sword, and waved it back and forth. Two drummers, awaiting that signal, pounded out a quick beat, a special sound meant to alert every Akkadian in the Pass. That sound was repeated by one of Muta’s men at the top of the slope. Almost at once, Eskkar felt the ground rumble. From higher up the Pass, a herd of horses galloped into view, running toward the Akkadian position.
More than a thousand riderless horses, urged on by the swords and shouts of another six hundred mounted Akkadian horsemen, burst around the curve in the Pass and thundered down the slope. The terrified horses stampeded down the Pass, driven to a full gallop by the swords and arrows of Muta’s riders.
As soon as the animals appeared, the Akkadian infantry and archers abandoned their positions on the left and center, and raced toward the right flank, opening a wide gap in what had been the center and left flank of the battle line.
The Akkadian soldiers from the left flank, running for their lives across the width of the Pass, barely had time to reach the right flank. Brandishing their spears and bows, they created a wall of weapons and shouting men that kept the stampeding horses in the center and left side of the Pass. Still racing at a full gallop, the panicked Akkadian horses poured through the suddenly empty gap in what had been only moments before two-thirds of the Akkadian position.
The Elamites, about to launch their own charge, looked up to see a stampede of wild-eyed horses bearing down on them, with mounted Akkadian cavalry waving their swords and urging the riderless beasts on from behind.
The onrushing horses, fearful of the line of spears and bows brandished by Eskkar’s shouting men, charged past the Akkadians and into the open space. Out of control, they jumped over the dead bodies littering their way. Although many of the beasts went down, the mass of crazed animals, driven by the loud battle cries of Muta’s men, tore into the approaching Elamites.
The front ranks of enemy soldiers disappeared under the horses’ hooves, trampled to death. Many of the Elamite soldiers panicked, as the animals continued to force their way through the advancing enemy, and even their great number of soldiers could not halt them.
The center of the Elamite assault collapsed. Men scrambled to get out of the path of the charging animals. The forward progress of the assault vanished. At the back of the Akkadian horses now appeared a line of slingers. Shappa and his four hundred men, hidden in the rocks just behind the abandoned front line, had raced into the wide gap where the Akkadian left flank and center had been only moments ago.
The slingers formed a rough line, and then they, too, moved forward, following the horses. Their task was to prevent the Elamites from regrouping and launching an attack at Muta’s rear.
Running hard and using their stones, they kept the stampede moving, striking animals and inflicting pain that caused the panicky beasts to continue surging down the slope. Even those Elamites who managed to keep their feet and avoid the maddened animals had no chance to use either their swords or their bows.
For a brief moment, all of Eskkar’s soldiers, with the exception of Muta’s horsemen and the slingers, were packed together on the right flank.
Then a column of Akkadian archers, standing just behind the wall of spears, charged fifty paces down the slope, before halting and aiming their weapons toward their right. They poured arrow after arrow into the front rank of the few surviving Elamites who had screened the Immortals. Shooting at close range, sometimes less than ten or twelve paces, they inflicted such horrendous losses that those soldiers abandoned their position and fled toward the rear, despite the efforts of Modran’s commanders and the Immortals to keep them in place.
The last of the three thousand infantry leading the Immortal attack vanished, either dead or running to the rear. Now the shafts of Mitrac’s bowmen poured into the front and side ranks of the Immortals with a fury that devastated the battle-hardened and elite Elamites. Each of Mitrac’s archers, supplied with two quivers of arrows, had at least sixty shafts to launch.
The Immortals on Eskkar’s right flank suddenly found themselves opposed on two sides, their front and right flank, by the entire weight of Akkadian infantry and archers. Almost two thousand bowmen launched shaft after shaft at the Immortals. Their advance slowed, but somehow they kept moving forward.
Brave men who had never known defeat, they continued advancing, the men in the rear replacing those in front who were struck down. Despite horrific losses, the Immortals struggled on, until they were within thirty paces of Drakis and his front line of spearmen.
But before Immortals could launch their final charge, Drakis bellowed an order and his drummers sounded their own call to action. More than twelve hundred spearmen burst into a run, screaming their war cries and leveling their spears as they rushed across the last bit of open ground that separated the two armies.
With a shock that echoed off the cliff walls, the Akkadian infantry tore into the tattered front ranks of the Immortals. Their long spears were driven forward on the run with all the strength in each man’s arm, and even the Immortals’ sturdy shields could not deflect them.
The entire front rank of the Elamites went down, most without striking a blow. A moment later, the second met the same fate, entangled by the dead in front of them, and driven backward or into the ground by the Akkadian spears that reached over their companions or between gaps in the line.
Meanwhile the last of the stampeding horses had charged their way past the disorganized mass of Modran’s infantry that had advanced toward Eskkar’s left flank and center. Now Muta turned his six hundred remaining cavalry away from the path of the stampeding horses, and swung them to his right.