Behind his back, the long lines shifted and swayed. All the riders were mounted, simply waiting for a word. Where were the cats?
M’reen’s thought came like lightning as he slapped at a cloud of hungry gnats and mosquitoes. We are coming back! My males have found them! They come from the trees, many, many! Be warned!
Hiero hand-signaled as previously arranged, and the ripple of readiness welled away from him in both directions along the ranks.
The Children of the Wind appeared in a clump, running and dodging like the racers they were. Missiles fell around them, but none hit.
The general bore no lance. His white plume dipped as he bent and drew the long, straight sword from its sheath on Klootz’s saddle. The two Mantan brothers ranged up, one on each side, their slender war axes across their saddlebows. The front of the enemy appeared, Leemutes and humans completely intermingled.
Hiero raised his sword high in his gauntleted right hand, then drove it down, and they were off. Come on, big boy, he sent. This is what it’s all about! Beside the three leading morses, the light pads of the cat people spurned the sedges.
Hiero’s fist clenched inside the basket hilt of the cavalry saber as he held it straight forward like a spear. As Klootz gathered speed, his rider could hear the rising splash and thunder of the charging lines behind. He stole a glance to either side. Good! They had learned the orders!
The left wing, the northern line of the morse riders, was swinging slowly past him, never breaking ranks. The right wing was holding back, so that the line was beginning to show an arc. The left would strike first and then roll the enemy up, cutting them off at the edge of the swamp and driving them into the open, away from any cover.
Now there was no time to think at all, and he concentrated on what lay in front. The days and weeks of planning were over, and he was a killing machine and nothing more. Klootz bellowed with battle rage, and his kin answered from behind, a rolling, swelling roar which rumbled from one end of the line to the other.
The Unclean halted, milling in confusion. The Man-rats and the Plague Hounds, those that were left, had made little of the swamp, which hardly slowed them at all. But the men, though disciplined and deadly fighters on solid ground, were floundering, tripping over tussocks and slipping in the pools and mud. A great number of the Howlers were dismounted, and they liked this bog no better than their human allies. As the line of antlered heads and the glitter of the lance points and armor rose before them, many turned to flee. Others, of sterner stuff or with better officers, tried to form a line or at least a shield wall. The result was confusion! Order, counterorder—disorder!
From far left to far right, the terrible cavalry of the North charged home!
Hiero’s sword point split the face of a giant Howler, and he withdrew it as Klootz lunged on. Every lance, seemingly, skewered one of the enemy, front or back, and then, butt lifted high, was withdrawn and leveled once more, seeking fresh prey.
It made no difference whether the Unclean fled or tried to stand. If the riders missed, their mighty steeds did the work, slashing and trampling, pounding the enemy underfoot with their giant hooves, seizing them in their teeth and shaking them off like bits of tattered bark until they fell away, mangled and lifeless.
A monstrous Hound, jaws agape, sprang at Hiero’s bridle hand. Without thinking, he dropped the reins and raised the unbreakable shield, the gift of his strangest friend, to dash the brute aside. A long-handled hatchet swept past his side, and Reyn Mantan’s blow split the creature’s skull.
The impetus of the charge was slowing, but not very much. As all the riders angled to the right, never stopping or allowing the Unclean to form and make a stand, the edge of the deep woods loomed up in front. It was hard fighting now, for the compressed masses of the broken foe were trying desperately to reach that shelter. Enemy crossbowmen and javelin throwers, human and otherwise, shot and hurled their missiles from the trees in a last effort to hold the mounted men back from their quarry. Saddles were being emptied, but the mutated giant moose were no scared beasts when bereft of their riders! They fought on with empty saddles, keeping the lines intact, as they had been taught. If one of the gallant animals fell, the others, with men in the saddle or not, closed the line and kept on to the attack. The extreme left took the heaviest losses, but narrowed in without letup, herding the squalling Leemutes and their fragmented masters out and away from the refuge of the trees.
Hiero was unscathed so far, but his right arm was growing very tired. The beloved creature who bore him bled from a dozen light wounds, of which Klootz took no note at all. His eyes were red with blood lust and he felt no pain. Reyn Mantan and M’reen, her long knife bloody, watched Hiero’s left while the two male cats and Geor Mantan protected his right. The Mantans had produced light oval shields of laminated bark from some pack or other and deftly deflected the missiles of any sort which menaced their leader.
Hiero never noticed, intently only on coldly killing anything that stood before him. He struck and stabbed, hacked and slew, with no compunction at all. Here was the enemy at last, where he could be reached! Here was revenge for the empty months, the loss of his mate, the treachery, and the pain! Death to them! Kill them all in their vileness, until the decent earth was empty of them forever!
It took a strong hand on his bridle to check his pace and a strong voice to penetrate the madness of battle. His lifted sword dropped, and he finally realized that a friend was trying to get his attention. Breathing in great gulps, he saw that Klootz had stopped and was trembling with the aftershock of the melee. Hiero managed to break the fog in his brain and rest, though it was an awful wrench.
“Stop fighting, General! Look, we’ve beaten them. Maybe a quarter got into the woods, no more than that, sir. Look at what is happening now!”
Almost against his will, the Metz turned his head. It was Colonel Lejus who had reined him up, Hiero stared at where the man was pointing, half in disbelief.
The Unclean, beaten back and decimated on the waters of the Lake of Weeping, had been rallied, once they were back on shore and behind the screen of the forest. They were still a hideous and mighty host, and their leaders had turned them into the apparently empty marsh on their right. Here they were supposed to sweep around the defenses of the Republic, turn the long arm of the lake, and strike in the rear of their hated foe.
What had happened was just a little bit different. The wise old Abbot-General and Hiero himself had led the Unclean to conceive of this maneuver, and were waiting with the only cavalry in all the world’s history that could fight in a swamp even better than on dry land! The result lay before Hiero’s sight and was hard to take in, even though he had helped plan it.
Cut off from their rallying places in the woods, harried and shocked by the lances of the morse riders, what remained of the Unclean who had assaulted the marsh was being driven in a grim battle toward the waters of the lake. Stumbling, lurching, and screaming as it was ridden down, the ragged and broken crowd was herded toward the waters. The lines of morse and men had no gaps. The Republic had lost perhaps an eighth of its mounted force, but what remained was more than sufficient. A thin line guarded their backs, but no fresh eruption came from the silent trees to the east.
Out on the waters lay the final death. Silent and watchful, the five steamships waited. Extending their line out of sight, the arrow barges also waited. The late noon sun beat down from overhead on total destruction. Horns blew, and the Metz mounted troops halted and dressed ranks, tightening their formations. They now were a shallow half-moon; within its crescent, the Unclean, a shrieking mob of foul men and foul brutes, were driven inexorably to the place where the shifting foothold of the marsh became no foothold at all.