Blade looked along the line of stolof killers and raised his hands in a signal. A thousand fighting men scooped throwing pots out of bags with one hand and raised their sprayers with the other. There were still pale faces in the line, but the tension was gone. They had seen the charge of the stolofs already blunted by Blade's innovation of massed archery. Now they confidently expected to smash the charge entirely with the Prince's new sleeping water.
The fourth flight of arrows whistled across the narrowing gap between the two lines. A few of the braver warriors went down, those who hadn't ducked for cover behind the stolofs. A couple of dozen stolofs also went down. That was all-the vulnerable spots on a stolof were too small to make good targets even at close range. But every stolof that stumbled and sagged and dropped out of line made the line still more ragged. Instead of crashing into Draad's warriors as a solid, irresistible mass, Trawn's attack was coming forward as an increasingly ragged and disorderly mob, stolofs and warriors all mixed up together.
The archers pulled arrows for a fifth flight out of their quivers, but held their fire. Blade raised his hands still higher, until everyone in the line of stolof killers could see his signal. Then he flung his arms downward. Trumpets blared again, and the whole line surged forward.
They dashed up through the gaps between the archers and other warriors of the front ranks and out into the open. The warriors of Trawn reacted swiftly, springing out from behind their stolofs, swords and spears held ready for battle.
As the warriors of Trawn burst out of cover, every one of the running stolof killers bent forward at the waist without breaking stride. A few of them lost their balance and sprawled on the grass, scattering pots and sandals as they rolled over and over. A moment later the archers of Draad loosed their fifth flight of arrows, straight over the heads of their running comrades, straight into the faces of the warriors of Trawn. At close range the arrows stabbed through leather armor into hearts and lungs, stomachs and vital arteries. Hundreds of warriors went down as if someone had turned a death ray on them, and several dozen stolofs also folded up and slumped to the ground.
This had been the riskiest part of Blade's whole battle plan. If the archers had aimed only a little bit low, they could have wiped out hundreds of the stolof killers and very few of the enemy. Blade could see they had aimed well. The enemy's ranks were gaping, while only a few of the stolof killers and a score or so of the attendants running behind them were down. That was all Blade had time to see before the charge of the stolof killers struck the enemy's line.
Most of the stolofs' masters were either too badly wounded or too surprised to order their charges to launch ribbons. A good many ribbons went out, nonetheless, as the stolofs got it into their tiny brains that something ought to be done about all those men running toward them. Most of those ribbons struck; the stolofs were good shots to the end. The stolofs who had a victim on the end of their ribbons reared back as they'd been trained to do. The stolof killers who hadn't been caught threw their pots and opened up with their sprayers. Then the battle dissolved in a screaming, hissing, swirling chaos so complete that Blade himself couldn't keep track of anything going on more than six feet from him.
He saw a ribbon coming at him, darted aside, and saw the ribbon slap against the cheek of a girl loaded with a stolof killer's extra pots and sprayers. She screamed and went down, her bag bursting open and scattering pots across the grass. Some broke, some didn't. The stolof killer snatched up one of the unbroken pots and hurled it at the stolof. It struck the creature just as it reared, dragging the girl forward and making her scream again. Sleeping water poured down over the breathing holes, and the stolof seemed to freeze and stand still, reared back on its hind legs, forelegs in the air, mandibles clicking steadily. The stolof killer bent to slash the ribbon with his bone knife. As he did so, a warrior with a spear ran past him, straight at the stolof. The man drove his spear with all his strength into the vulnerable part of the stolof's belly. Then he sprang clear of the spray of foul-smelling yellow fluid, as the creature quivered all over and collapsed. An enemy warrior sprang up from behind the fallen creature, leaped up on top of it, and attacked the man from Draad, sword against spear.
Blade dashed forward. A single leap carried him up onto the stolof's back beside the enemy warrior, and a single slash from his sword took off the man's head. The spouting corpse toppled off the stolof in one direction, and Blade sprang down in another. Before the warrior he'd saved even had a chance to thank him, a sudden surge forward by the enemy drove them apart. Blade found himself surrounded by stolofs who were jammed too close together to fire their ribbons. A moment later they came to a stop, too crowded together to even move.
Blade ducked in and out between the thick green and golden legs as if he was running through a forest. At unexpected moments he popped out from under the stolofs, sword in one hand and spear in the other. In those moments warriors of Trawn died screaming or choking in their own blood. Blade must have killed eight or ten without taking a single scratch. Then stolof-whistles blew and the creatures began moving backward. Blade ducked under a last one, stabbed it in the belly, ran across in front of another one to thrust his spear into its eyes, then broke out into the open.
As he did a fresh wave of Draad's warriors came in, more spearmen and some of the archers as well. The archers dropped into cover behind the dead stolofs that now littered the ground and began picking off any enemy they could hit without risk of hitting a friend. The spearmen pushed forward, stabbing wounded or stunned stolofs and dying or crippled enemy warriors as they came to them. Blade stepped back through the advancing line, and for the first time in quite a while got a clear view of the battle.
The main formation of Desgo's army was still intact and unmoving, unable to see or perhaps understand what was happening to the stolofs' attack. What was happening to that attack was quite simply a massacre. Two-thirds of the warriors and stolofs were already dead or dying. The rest were too paralyzed by fear or surprise or sleeping water to make any effort to flee or defend themselves. It was only a matter of time before they also died.
It was also only a matter of time before Lord Desgo and his commanders recovered from the shock of seeing their stolofs and several thousand of their best warriors massacred before their eyes. That was why speed was so vital for Blade's tactics. He had to deliver his second and finishing stroke to Desgo's army before the enemy recovered enough to realize what was about to happen to them.
Blade turned and sprinted back toward the rear, angling toward the left of his own army. King Embor could and would do all that was necessary to push the main battle. It was time for him and Neena to lead their own attack.
Blade slowed down as he approached the mass of civilians. He didn't want to be seen running by people who might not clearly understand why he was doing so. That was the way panics and routs got started and victorious armies could disintegrate in the moment of victory.
Blade trotted through the civilians, ignoring the cheers and the hands reaching out to touch him, and reached the meytans. Neena was already in the saddle. He swung himself up onto the back of his meytan and thrust his feet firmly into the stirrups.
Lord Desgo felt sweat trickling under his helmet. The sun had just cleared the treetops to the east and was only beginning to thin out the mist over the battlefield. Desgo's sweat was the cold sweat of a man who has just seen his army's main striking force destroyed in ten minutes. Desgo found it hard to keep his hands from shaking as he held the reins of his meytan or his voice from shaking as he gave his orders.