"You two," he told a pair of cavalry lieutenants. "Ride left till you come to the fighting. Find a good pivot-point, and one of you stay with it. The other will come back along the line, passing the word to swing left. We'll start swinging from this end. And find somebody to tell Harmakros what's happened, if he doesn't know it already. He probably does. No orders; just use his own judgment."
Everybody would have to use his own judgment, from here out. He wondered what was happening to Mnestros. He hadn't the liveliest confidence in Mnestros's judgment when he ran into something the book didn't cover. Then he sat, waiting for centuries, until one of the lieutenants came thudding back behind the infantry line, and he gave the order to start the leftward swing.
The level pikes and slanting calivers kept line on his left; the cavalry clop-clattered behind him. The downward slope swung in front of them, until they were going steeply uphill, and then the ground was level under their feet, and he could feel a freshening breeze on his cheek.
He was shouting a warning when the fog tore apart for a hundred yards in front and two or three on either side, and out of it came a mob of infantry, badged with Sarrask's green and gold. He pulled his horse back, fired his pistol into them, holstered it, and drew the other from his left holster. The major commanding the regular infantry blew his whistle and screamed above the din:
"Action front! Fire by ranks, odd numbers only!" The front rank pikemen squatted as though simultaneously stricken with diarrhea. The second rank dropped to one knee, their pikes advanced. Over their shoulders, half the third rank blasted with calivers, then dodged for the fourth rank to fire over them. As soon as the second volley crashed, the pikemen were on their feet and running at the disintegrating front of the Saski infantry, all shouting, "Down Styphon!"
He saw that much, then raked his horse with his spurs and drove him forward shouting, "Charge!" The heavily armed mercenaries thundered after him, swinging long swords, firing pistols almost as big as small carbines, smashing into the Saski infantry from the flank before they could form a new front. He pistoled a pikeman who was thrusting at his horse, then drew his sword.
Then the fog closed down again, and dim shapes were dodging among the horses. A Saski cavalryman bulked in front of him, firing almost in his face. The bullet missed him, but hot grains of powder stung his cheek. Get a coalminer's tattoo out of that, he thought, and then his wrist hurt as he drove the point into the fellow's throat-guard, spreading the links. Plate gorgets, issue to mounted troops as soon as can be produced. He wrenched the point free, and the Saski slid gently out of his saddle.
"Keep moving!" he screamed at the cavalry with him. "Don't let them slow you down!"
In a mess like this, stalled cavalry were all but helpless. Their best weapon was the momentum of a galloping horse, and once lost, that took at least thirty yards to regain. Cavalry horses ought to be crossed with jackrabbits; but that was something he couldn't do anything about at all. One mass of cavalry, the lancers and musketoon-men who had ridden behind the heavily armed men, had gotten hopelessly jammed in front of a bristle of pikes. He backed his horse quickly out of that, then found himself at the end of a line of Mobile Force infantry, with short arquebuses and cavalry lances for pikes. He directed them to the aid of the stalled cavalry, and then realized that he was riding across the road at right angles. That meant that he-and the whole battle, since all the noise was either to his right or left along the road-was now facing east instead of south. Of the heavily armed mercenary cavalry who had been with him at the beginning, he could see nothing.
A horseman came crashing at him out of the fog, shouting "Down Styphon!" and thrusting at him with a sword. He had barely time to beat it aside with his own and cry, "Ptosphes!" and a moment later: "Ptosphes, by Dralm! How did you get here?"
"Kalvan! I'm glad you parried that one. Where are we?"
He told the Prince, briefly. "The whole Dralm-damned battle's turned at right angles; you know that?"
"Well, no wonder. Our whole left wing's gone. Mnestros is dead-I heard that from an officer who saw his body. The regular infantry on our extreme left are all but wiped out; what few are left, and what's left of the militia next to them, reformed on Harmakros, in what used to be our rear. That's our left wing, now."
"Well, their left wing's in no better shape; I swung in on that and smashed it up. What's happened to the cavalry we had on the left?"
"Dralm knows; I don't. Took to their heels out of this, I suppose." Ptosphes drew one of his pistols and took a powder-flask from his belt. "Watch over my shoulder, will you, Kalvan."
He drew one of his own holster-pair and poured a charge into it. The battle seemed to have moved out of their immediate vicinity, though off in the fog in both directions there was a bedlam of shooting, yelling and steel-clashing. Then suddenly a cannon, the first of the morning, went off in what Kalvan took to be the direction of the village. An eight-pounder, he thought, and certainly loaded with Made-in-Hostigos. On its heels came another, and another.
"That," Ptosphes said, "will be Harmakros."
"I hope he knows what he's shooting at." He primed the pistol, bolstered it, and started on its mate. "Where do you think we could do the most good?"
Ptosphes had his saddle pair loaded, and was starting on one from a boot-top.
"Let's see if we can find some of our own cavalry, and go looking for Sarrask," he said. "I'd like to kill or capture him, myself. If I did, it might give me some kind of a claim on the throne of Sask. If this cursed fog would only clear."
From off to the right, south up the road, came noises like a boiler-shop starting up. There wasn't much shooting-everybody's gun was empty and no one had time to reload-just steel, and an indistinguishable waw-wawwaw-ing of voices. The fog was blowing in wet rags, now, but as fast as it blew away, more closed down. There was a limit to that, though; overhead the sky was showing a faint sunlit yellow.
"Come on, Lytris, come on!" he invoked the weather goddess. "Get this stuff out of here! Whose side are you fighting on, anyhow?"
Ptosphes finished the second of his spare pair, he had the last one of his own four to prime. Ptosphes said, "Watch behind you!" and he almost spilled the priming, then closed the pan and readied the pistol to fire. It was some twenty of the heavy-armed cavalry who had gone in with him. Their sergeant wanted to know where they were.
He hadn't any better idea than they had. Shoving the flint away from the striker, he pushed the pistol into his boot and drew his sword; they all started off toward the noise of fighting. He thought he was still going east until he saw that he was riding, at right angles, onto a line of mud-trampled quilts and bedspreads and mattresses, the things that had been appropriated in the village the night before. He glanced left and right. Ptosphes knew what they were, too, and swore.
Now the battle had made a full 180-degree turn. Both armies were facing in the direction from whence they had come; the route of either would be in the direction of the enemy's country.
Galzar, he thought irreverently, must have overslept this morning. But at least the fog was definitely clearing, gilded above by sunlight, and the gray tatters around them were fewer and more threadbare, visibility now better than a hundred yards. They found a line of battle extending, apparently, due east of Fyk, and came up behind a hodgepodge of militia, regulars and Mobiles, any semblance of unit organization completely lost. Mobile Force cavalry were trotting back and forth behind them, looking for soft spots where breakthroughs, in either direction, might happen. He yelled to a Mobile Force captain who was fighting on foot:
"Who's in front of you?"
"How should I know? Same mess of odds-and-sods we are. This Dralm damned battle…"