In moments the troop of riders had come and gone, disappearing up the trail, and the guard resumed his main duty, making sure no one deserted Lord Modran’s army.
Sargon breathed a sigh of relief as they left the rear guard behind. Garal, riding at his side, laughed softly.
“Well, the first part of your plan worked. The rest of the warriors are coming through.”
“It will not be as easy to get out as it was to get in,” Sargon said. Still, he, too, smiled in the deepening darkness.
He and Garal had dressed in garments taken from the dead messengers. Just as important, they both spoke Elam’s main dialect, and that more than anything disarmed the sentry’s suspicions. The rest of Sargon’s men had been told to keep their mouths shut, and just ride through at the same steady pace. A handful of warriors had also donned whatever usable clothing they’d taken from the dead.
All the warriors had removed their feathers and any signs that would mark them as men of the steppes. They had also left their lances, a favorite weapon of the steppes fighters, behind. Their short, curved bows, worn across their chests, attracted no attention.
If Sargon and Garal had been challenged, they would have abandoned their plan to reach the enemy horses. Instead, they would have attacked the rear guard, and done what damage they could.
But the deception — Sargon remembered his father telling him that all warfare is based on deception — had worked perfectly. Now the entire group of warriors had moved into the gap between the support troops and the first of the horse herds. That gap, less than a quarter mile long, soon ended.
Once again Sargon saw a handful of sentries watching them approach. But this time Sargon didn’t halt. “Messages and supplies for Lord Modran,” he shouted as he brushed past the guards.
“Clear the way, you fools,” Garal shouted.
Nevertheless, Sargon slowed his horse to a trot. The horse herd, held in by ropes and separated on both sides of the trail, might be spooked by any large group of fast moving riders.
A hundred paces behind them, Den’rack matched Sargon’s pace, and his men followed his lead. They kept their eyes straight ahead, as if their only interest lay in reaching their destination. They followed the trail as it twisted and turned its way through the Pass.
The place selected by the Elamites to hold the horses was mostly flat. Small guard details of two or three men were posted every three or four hundred paces. Their assignment was to make sure some drunken fool didn’t stampede the horses, or possibly steal one in attempting to desert. Most of these sentries didn’t even bother to look up as Sargon’s warriors rode by in the gathering darkness. Each assumed that someone else had cleared the riders.
“By the gods, how many horses are there?” Garal spoke just loud enough to be heard by Sargon.
Sargon had been wondering the same thing. Many of the horses in the herd, lifting their heads to stare as the troop trotted past, showed more interest in their passing than did the guards. He kept counting, estimating the size of this herd.
Modran had entered the Pass with nine thousand cavalry. Likely he would keep a good sized force of horsemen near the front lines, in the event his Elamites could break Eskkar’s position. The rest would be kept here, in the rear.
Moving with care, Sargon’s force rode by the first horse herd, then the second and a third. The Elamites appeared to be keeping the herds about a quarter mile apart, which made sense with so many horses.
He tried to keep a rough count of the horses. Each herd numbered between three and four hundred horses, with ten or twenty guards for every group. If the herds grew too large, no one would be able to find a particular horse. After Sargon passed the fourth herd, they encountered a large campsite with at least two hundred men taking their ease.
By now no one even glanced at Sargon’s men as they rode by. Everyone assumed that he was riding to the front of the camp and Modran’s headquarters.
After passing two more herds, Sargon guessed he had ridden past more than two thousand horses. He raised his hand, and slowed the warriors to a gradual halt, easing to a stop just between the last herd and the one up ahead.
“I think we’ve come far enough, Garal,” he said. “If we go any deeper into the Pass, we’ll never get out alive.”
“Yes, I think this is more than enough glory for anyone, at least for me.”
“Let’s hope we don’t get more glory than we bargained for,” Sargon said. “I don’t want to be remembered as the fool who rode into the center of Modran’s army and disappeared.
Den’rack and the others joined them.
“We’ve ridden far enough,” Sargon said. “I’ll take sixty warriors and stampede the herds ahead of us toward Modran’s front line. Jennat will take forty warriors and stampede the herds we passed back down the trail.”
Neither clan leader had wanted that assignment. Both Den’rack and Garal wanted the honor and danger that would arise from moving toward the soldiers. And so Den’rack had placed Jennat of the Ur Nammu, and Yassur of the Alur Meriki in charge of driving the smaller herd back down the Pass and toward Zanbil.
Sargon, too, refused to lead the rear movement. “Jennat, wait until we’ve stampeded the next herd, then start your attack. That may give us both a few extra moments of surprise.” He turned to Garal and Den’rack. “Are you ready?” He didn’t want to waste any more time debating the assignments. Some too alert guard might wonder why the riders stopped in the middle of the Pass, with nothing but horses in front and rear.
“Yes! Let’s ride!” Garal’s loud voice echoed off the walls, and the nearby Elamite horses lifted their heads.
Den’rack began the stampede. He kicked his horse forward, letting loose a war cry that startled every Elamite horse. His booming voice filled the Pass. “Ride, warriors, ride!”
Garal matched him stride for stride, leaving a cursing Sargon three lengths behind. Giving voice to their war cries, the sixty chosen warriors moved forward, spreading out as they did. Arrows were launched at the herd in front of them. In moments both sides of the Pass erupted to the thunder of hundreds of horses on the move, all heading west toward Modran’s battle line, guided and urged on by Sargon’s warriors.
The Elamite horses, many struck by arrows meant to wound, not kill, turned away from the shouting and war cries bearing down on them. The flimsy ropes holding them in snapped unnoticed. The horses, their fear intensified by the screams of the wounded animals and the scent of blood, raced through the Pass, heading west.
Even the hard and rocky ground of the Dellen Pass shook under the horses’ hooves. The next herd, already spooked by the increasing sound, started stirring as well. The moment those animals saw the oncoming horses, they, too, stampeded away from the approaching and thoroughly frightened horses. Adding to the panic were the screaming war cries and sharp arrows of Sargon’s warriors.
By the time Sargon reached the third holding place, at least a thousand horses galloped ahead of him through the Pass. And while in a normal stampede the animals might run a quarter mile before slowing down, the presence of the warriors driving them along with shouts and arrows, and even their swords, ensured that the herd did not stop.
Elamite guards, caught by surprise as much as their horses, were trampled underfoot or forced to run for their lives to the sides of the Pass. Those that made it clung to the rocks, weapons and tools forgotten. They watched helplessly as the horses, kept to a frenzy by the strange horsemen, raced past. Campfires, cooking utensils, sleeping blankets, even tents disappeared under the hooves of a thousand terrified horses.
Den’rack, leading the way and launching arrows as fast as any of his men, finally held up his hand. Sargon and the others slowed to a stop beside him.
“Time to go back,” Den’rack shouted. “The horses will run for at least a mile now. We must turn around.”