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None of it did any good. A hundred and fifty yards from the enemy more than eight thousand humans and androids of Mak'loh threw themselves flat on the ground. They raised their rifles and their grenade launchers, and suddenly the air between them and the enemy seemed to turn into white fire.
Now it was as if the great hand had slapped every soldier in the Shoba's front rank in the face. They went down by the hundreds, lying still or kicking furiously, eyes staring, faces bleeding or blackened, smoking patches on chest or stomach or thigh. The riflemen didn't try to aim; they simply pointed their weapons and held down the triggers.
A rapid pop-pop-pop sounded as powder exploded in muskets or in musketeer's pouches. A louder series of explosions crashed out, as the grenades started falling around the ca
Now the commanders must have started giving orders, because the Shoba's men began to move back. It was an orderly retreat by men who hadn't lost their courage or forgotten their skills, in spite of the sudden horrors all around them. Both musketeers and archers kept their faces to the enemy and kept firing. They didn't hit very often. Sela's people stayed flat on the ground as they fired. A rifle had the edge over a bow or a musket that way. A man did not have to stand to use it or even load it.
They left bodies behind every step of the way, but eventually the Shoba's men drew out of rifle range. Sela kept her people from leaping up and dashing in pursuit. That would bring them under the mortars, and Blade had many horrible tales of what happened to soldiers who ran in under their own artillery. Sela thought that seeing what the mortars did would be enough. There were broad patches of ground completely carpeted with bodies, not one of them intact, and sodden with blood and pulped flesh.
As if her thought of him had conjured him up, Blade's voice sounded on the radio.
«Sela, hold your position. We're moving out against the camp now. Geetro, it's time for the mobile column to go to work. Are they ready?»
She heard Geetro's voice saying, «Yes,» quietly, then heard him shout:
«Mobile column-mount up and move out!»
Blade scrambled down the tree as if it were catching fire, the High Chief's collar bumping and bruising him with every movement. He'd seen the mortars and Sela's people do their work on the Shoba's army. Now it was the turn of the second wave-the mobile column of trucks carrying riflemen and the mortars, and the Warlanders attacking the great camp.
On the lowest branch of the tree, Blade stopped, unslung his rifle, and fired it three times. He heard shouts and more rifle fire from behind him and hoped none of the villagers had hit any of their comrades in their enthusiasm. Then he scrambled down the last twenty feet of the tree and ran forward. Behind him the forest came alive with the crackling branches and scurrying feet as the Warlanders stormed forward.
They came out of the forest and onto the open ground that stretched a mile and a half to the camp. Now they could run even faster. They splashed through a shallow stream as if it weren't there, except for some athletes who leaped it at a single bound. Some of the men fell, others staggered along with twisted ankles, many began to sweat and pant. None of them slowed down as long as they could put one foot in front of the other.
Blade was out ahead of all of them. The camp grew steadily larger ahead. White smoke dotted the top of the palisade as musketeers on guard let fly. The range was impossibly long, but the sight of twelve thousand men ru
They might be u
He tried to signal the men behind him to slow down, but they were all too blind with fatigue or excitement or both to pay any attention. The charge swept on toward the camp, and Blade knew that all he could do was lead it and hope.
Sela ran along the lines of her army. Both humans and androids were already at work binding up minor wounds and laying out the dead. Nobody seemed to be ready to lie down unless they were dying or crippled. The courage she saw raised her spirits, while the amount of blood she saw soaking into the ground made her mouth tighten into a grim line.
She reached the far right flank of her army as the mobile column roared out of the smoke behind her.
There were more than a hundred trucks in the column. Ten carried mortars and their crews and ammunition. The rest were packed with android riflemen and humans with grenade throwers. Their sides were built up chest-high with heavy plastic that would stop an arrow or a musket ball. In front each carried a ten-foot metal bar, curved like a bow and studded with foot-long spikes.
On the open ground that the Shoba's men themselves had cleared of all trees and bushes, the trucks could move at nearly their full speed. They poured out of the smoke in a wild uproar of whining, growling engines, rumbling wheels, humans and androids shouting or cursing. None of the riders fired. They had strict orders not to. They only hung on grimly as the trucks swung in a great circle toward the flank of the Shoba's army.
As the trucks came on, trumpets called to the cavalry. A thousand lances dipped, and the hooves of a thousand druns made even more noise than the mobile column. The mortar carriers at the rear of the column slowed down and turned off toward the camp. The others rolled straight on toward the oncoming cavalry.
The Shoba's cavalry and Mak'loh's mobile column closed. Arrows plunged into the solid masses of bodies in the backs of the trucks. Humans and androids tumbled out, to writhe or be crushed flat under the wheels of another truck. Rifles flared and grenades arched out, to pick riders out of their saddles or blow druns limb from limb.
Flesh and blood crashed into metal. Sela put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. Her mind was simply not made to see and hear what was happening to the Shoba's cavalry, not without breaking. After a little while, though, she forced herself to open her eyes.
She saw druns and their riders going down and trucks crushing them into pulp. She saw other druns impaled on the spikes the trucks thrust in front of them and carried along screaming and writhing. She saw a lance drive through the bubble cab of one truck and skewer the driver. She saw a truck hit a pile of fallen bodies at full speed and flip high into the air, turning end over end and spilling out all its riders. She saw dismounted cavalrymen and dismounted androids rolling over and over, kicking and writhing, like some weird animal with four arms and four legs. She saw five hundred of the Shoba's cavalry die, and the other five hundred break and flee. A shiver went through the infantry when they saw that, and Sela felt like cheering. There were things that could shake the solid courage of the Shoba's men.
Then she saw the mortar trucks stopping and the crews leaping out, pulling their clumsy weapons with them and setting them up. She saw the smoke puffs as the mortars opened fire, and finally she saw the familiar smoke columns begin to rise around the camp.
Were the mortars in time to keep Blade from having to throw his mob of villagers against the camp's unbroken defenses? She knew that if that happened, he would die with them. He was that sort of man. If he had been a man of Mak'loh, not of England… Ah well, Geetro was not to be despised.