The Excalibur Alternative

Half of Sir George's dart-throwers concentrated on the heads of the columns. The other half sent their javelins directly back at the opposing dart-throwers, and the enemy's fire faltered as the lethal shafts showered down upon them. The air was clotted with javelins, war cries, dust, and the shrieks of wounded and dying natives, and Sir George strained his eyes to see through the dust of thousands of charging feet.

"Computer! Tell Rolf to concentrate on the right-hand column!"

"Acknowledged," the passionless voice responded, and a moment later something twanged like half a thousand discordant harps. There were far fewer human archers than native dart-throwers, but their rate of fire was higher, their range was longer, they were more accurate, and the heavier armor the demon-jester's "industrial modules" had provided them with was almost completely proof against the incoming javelins.

Their arrows slashed into the right-hand enemy column, the one which had been least disordered by the fire of Sir George's dart-throwers, and the consequences were immediate. What had been a steady tide of casualties became a flood, and the entire column stumbled to a halt in a tangle of dead and wounded bodies. It hung there for a moment, the decimated survivors of its lead ranks standing shocked and confused, knee-deep in shoals of writhing bodies, and in that moment it was lost. Sir George had seen it on a dozen other fields—the instant when the belief that victory was within one's grasp suddenly transformed itself into the conviction of defeat—and he recognized it now.

The column hung on for a few more moments, wilting as the terrible waves of arrows and javelins slashed through it, and then, suddenly, it disintegrated. It didn't fall back, didn't retreat. It simply... came apart. One moment it was a solid mass of warriors; the next, it was a fleeing mob of individual refugees, each seeking his own safety in flight.

"Tell Rolf to shift to the dart-throwers!" Sir George barked. "And instruct Walter and Sir Richard to advance their wing and take the Mouthai flank guard from the right. If they can, I want them to circle completely around to the enemy's rear and come at them from the back!"

"Acknowledged."

Sir George heard Computer's acknowledgment, but he hardly noticed. The right column had been shattered and driven into flight, but the left one was still coming on. He would have preferred to rake it with arrows as he had the other, but the attackers hadn't hit the exact center of his line. He'd placed his archers there to receive the assault, but the way the enemy had slipped to Sir George's left meant his bowmen were concentrated too far to his right, and a slight rise would have shielded the oncoming natives from much of Grayhame's fire. Better to throw the longbows' weight into completing the destruction of the enemy's missile capability and let his allies, stiffened by Sir Bryan and his armored foot and horse, deal with the column.

Javelins continued to slam into the oncoming natives up to the very last moment, and the dreadful weight of fire tore huge holes in their formation, but they came on anyway, carried by their battle frenzy and howling their war cries. The rows of pointed wooden stakes and the thickly-seeded caltrops which had been strewn among them slowed the attackers, but still they came on. The warriors in their lead ranks absorbed stakes and caltrops alike with their own bodies, as their predecessors had absorbed the javelins, and at last the survivors were able to close with their foes.

But Sir George's waiting allies were more than ready for them. Unlike the charging column, they were unshaken, and they scented victory in the blood. They'd taken their own losses from the javelin exchange, but those losses, however painful, were a pittance compared to what they might have been. What they would have been without the pavises their human commander had insisted they use. Even the most stubborn among them realized that, and they also knew their enemies were already more than half broken.

Many of them discarded their shields, now that it had come down to the melee. The dart-throwers dropped their throwing sticks and snatched up axes, and Sir George heard a gleeful howl go up from his allies as they hurled themselves to meet what was left of the left-hand column. The enemy's dart-throwers might have taken advantage of the sudden disappearance of the shields which had so blunted their own attacks, but they were no longer capable of taking advantage of anything. Those of Sir George's native troops who weren't part of the melee continued to hammer them with javelins of their own, but it was the steady, pounding rain of clothyard shafts which truly broke them. It wasn't even that the arrows were more accurate or more destructive than the javelins flaying their ranks. They were more accurate and destructive, but that was almost beside the point. What truly mattered was that they were the emblem, the symbol, of the strange, two-armed demons who had completely changed the way war was supposed to be.

The right-hand column had already disintegrated. Now the dart-throwers began to follow suit, shedding individual warriors, first in trickles, and then in floods. For all their courage, the tribesmen lacked the discipline to stand under the vicious pounding, and the entire dart-thrower force came apart in turn.

The left-hand column was still in action, but its front was splintered and broken. Almost half of the total attacking army had already been driven from the field, and the flattened, blood-slick grass was heaped and mounded with the bodies of warriors who would never again be driven from any field. The conviction of defeat was upon the column, and as more and more of Sir George's allies swarmed forward to meet it, it found itself enveloped and outnumbered. The column formation which had given it so much weight as it charged forward now hamstrung its ability to defend itself, for those at the center of the formation could only stand there, unable to advance or retreat, while their more numerous enemies cut their way inward from both its flanks.

And then Sir Richard Maynton and Walter Ski

Sir George watched that column fly apart, like a bag of meal thrown into the air on a heavy wind. It shattered into thousands of individual, fleeing warriors, and he knew the battle was won. It was not yet over, for there were still thousands of enemies upon the field, and some of them would stand and fight to the death. His allies would lose many more warriors before they swept up all the pieces, and his own men would take casualties, as well. But the outcome was no longer in doubt, and he allowed himself the luxury of a brief, fervent prayer of thanks.

Then he opened his eyes once more, straightened his shoulders, and nodded to young Snellgrave.

"Let's be going," he said, and sent Satan trotting forward to join the slaughter.