For a moment it looked as though the whole battle would explode into a mutual butchery. The three war machines of the Looters surged forward to the threatened side of the square and hung in the air just above the line of infantry. Blade's hands tightened on the railing of his own machine. If the technician panicked and unleashed the purple rays-
But the technician's nerve or commonsense held firm. The three war machines slipped back inside the square. Two of them began ferrying reinforcements and ammunition out to the weakened side of the square. The technician's own machine rose into its usual place, to hang grim and gleaming in the sky above the center of the square.
By noon Blade felt as if the battle had been going on for a week. In the three hours since the first shot had been fired, the people had lost more than two hundred men and women and slightly more horses, as well as half a dozen chariots and two catapults. But the mercenaries had lost between three and four hundred men dead or out of action for the day. They had also fired off an astounding quantity of ammunition.
That was the Looters' vital spot, their ammunition supply. A good part of their supply must have gone up with the machines destroyed in the atomic-bomb explosion. Now they could have no more than they carried on their backs and was stored in the remaining machines. When this supply was exhausted, there was no more ammunition closer than the other side of the dimension door.
Now it was time to offer the Principal Technician of War what would look like a chance to score a solid victory against the enemy. It would look like a victory cheap in ammunition, a victory solid enough to restore the spirits of men who must be losing heart from their casualties and the broiling sun. To win such a victory the technician would almost certainly be willing to weaken his square, confident that at least the enemy would not charge home against an unbroken line of mercenaries.
That confidence would be misplaced.
Fifty or a hundred at a time, most of the people's cavalry drifted around to one side of the square and massed there. Before long two-thirds of the people's mounted fighters were there, under the command of King Rikard himself and Anyara. Under the eyes of their king, son of Mazda, they would maintain the discipline that had been hammered into them. Meanwhile Blade would be free to be wherever his understanding of the Looters' machines was most needed.
The massed cavalry galloped forward, pulled to a stop within bowshot, fired their arrows, took heavy fire and heavy casualties in return, then retreated. But they did not retreat at a gallop. They retreated at a walk, a slow pace not beyond the reach of a man on foot. They seemed to be flaunting themselves in the faces of the mercenaries, flaunting a willingness to meet them at close quarters, man to man, throwing caution and even commonsense to the hot winds blowing over the battlefield.
It looked like folly. It looked like such folly that the Principal Technician of War swallowed the bait dangled before him even faster than Blade had expected. The war machines began shuttling ammunition out to the side of the square facing the people's cavalry. Mercenaries from the other three sides began walking across the square to join their comrades in the great attack. The vision of a smashing blow at the enemy was obviously dancing in front of every man in that square.
Blade looked down from the platform of his machine to the opposite side of the square, where some two hundred horsemen and all the surviving chariots were assembled. Then he shouted an order to Chara at the machine's controls. Silora clung to him as the machine turned and headed toward the chariots.
Chara landed the machine and Blade and Silora both leaped out and scrambled into the four-horse chariot reserved for them. All of the other chariots were drawn by three horses instead of the usual two, and carried three fighters instead of the usual two. Each fighter was heavily protected and carried a bow and a sword. In each chariot was a box of grenades and in the chariots of the third line each man had a bomb and a captured Looter rifle or pistol. The fighters in the third line were the ones most likely to get all the way to the center of the square and need the extra firepower. Blade hadn't expected to have so many Looter weapons, but he wasn't going to turn down an unexpected stroke of good luck.
Blade's own chariot was in the center of the second line. Quickly he pulled on his gear. When he was finished, he carried a bow, a sword, two knives, a Looter rifle, a pistol, and a grenade launcher. He wore an iron helmet, a teksin vest, and leather boots and breeches. He looked like a pacifist's nightmare and would have felt ridiculous if he had not been so keyed-up.
Blade gave Silora another minute to finish putting on her gear. Then he took out the signal baton, extended it, and waved it three times over his head. Trumpets and drums sounded from both the chariots and the cavalry, and the whole mass began to move forward.
Five hundred yards from the square the screen of cavalry in front of the chariots parted to either side and Blade had a clear view ahead. The enemy line was still there, but it was perilously thin. There was at most one man for every thirty yards. The technician had not contracted the square to save men. He was making the fatal mistake of trying to hold all his ground.
The first line of chariots came within range and the mercenaries opened fire. A chariot and horses made an enormous target. Horses began to go down, sending chariots bouncing wildly into the air, hurling their fighters free. But there were too many chariots coming too fast, and too few mercenaries with too little ammunition. Some of them simply turned and ran as arrows from the surviving chariots whistled about their ears. Others turned tail when they ran out of ammunition. Some stayed and died, changing magazines or still firing. But over a space of five hundred yards there were suddenly no more mercenaries at all. The seventy surviving chariots and the whole two hundred cavalry swept through that gap, trampling the corpses of both sides into bloody paste, thundering onward toward the heart of the mercenaries' square.
Around Blade the thunder of hooves and the shrill war cries from four hundred throats drowned out the roar of gunfire from the far side of the square. Beside him Silora was screaming like a banshee, beside herself with excitement. He knew she was screaming, for her mouth was wide open, but he could not hear a sound she was making.
The people raced toward the center of the square. Its three machines loomed higher and higher as they drew closer. Looking ahead through the dust, Blade saw the mercenary guards scrambling into a small square around the three machines and the mass of Peace Lords. Their rifles began spitting pellets at the oncoming people. The first line took the full blast of their fire. Blade saw one chariot flip over at a full gallop, bouncing fifty feet into the air. Its three fighters sailed out and crashed to the ground. Two lay still, the third was still moving feebly when a chariot of the second line ran right over him, its driver unable to swing it clear in time. Hooves and wheels and the slashing knives in the hubs of the wheels all did their work, and the bloody thing left behind did not move again.
To press home a cavalry charge against automatic weapons is impossible in theory and always costly in practice. But when there are a lot of cavalry and not very many automatic weapons it becomes possible. The first line of chariots was almost gone now, and the second line was beginning to show ragged holes as the Looters shifted their fire. A chariot in the third line disintegrated in a blast of flame and smoke, and flying fragments mowed down two other chariots. Blade saw the Looter square disintegrating in its turn as the mercenaries on the disengaged sides ran around to reinforce their comrades who were facing the oncoming people.