Looters Of Tharn Part 11

Blade nodded slowly. "If they don't-" It was time to face something he had not felt it necessary to mention until now. "Suppose we can only destroy the machines if we are willing to destroy your people, the Peace Lords, along with them? Will you stand by me even then, or would you rather be left here and picked up on my way back rather than see that?"

Silora was silent for a moment. "I will fly with you all the way, Mazda. That is as it must be. But if the bomb must fall on the Peace Lords as well as the mercenaries, then-" Her voice failed her for a moment. She swallowed and continued. "Then when it comes time to drop the bomb, I want to go out on the platform and jump with it. It is better that the Peace Lords die than that Tharn and its people die. But if the Peace Lords die, then I must die with them. That is also as it must be, for I could not live long in that case."

Blade was silent for quite a long time. He hoped she wasn't expecting an answer to that, because he honestly couldn't think of one. Finally he turned back to the controls and lifted the machine into the sky again.

The armed bomb now rode securely in a complex and rugged cradle of leather strips and teksin rods. A quick tug on the cord running in through the hatch and the whole cradle would collapse, letting the bomb roll off the platform of its own weight and fall free. It was fused to explode when it hit the ground. That would not give absolutely the best results, but with an atomic bomb who needed absolutely the best? It would flatten everything; for a mile in every direction, which was more than good enough.

They slid onward through the darkness, listening to the signals of the Looters grow stronger and stronger. About twenty miles out they saw a dim glow on the horizon ahead. It grew steadily stronger as they steered straight for it. At ten miles both of them shouted out loud in delight, as the glow began to separate into three distinct parts, the center one fainter than the other two. At the same time it became possible to distinguish three distinct signals on the direction-finder, each coming from a slightly different location.

Silora's face was one enormous glowing smile that seemed to light up the whole cabin. "They are as usual, Mazda. The Princ.i.p.al Technician of War has not thought anything new was needed against this opponent."

Blade did not smile. He merely nodded and said, "He will be a very surprised man before too long. Which one is the machine camp?" Within, he felt a great relief. He had not been looking forward to returning home without Silora, after watching her leap to a death he knew she welcomed.

"The farthest one is giving off the usual signal of the machine camp," she said.

Blade swung the machine to the right and started it on a long curve around the triangle of Looter camps. The one with the machine was at the opposite point of the triangle. If they could skirt the whole patrolled area, they could come up on their target without any warning.

But whatever else he hadn't done, the Looter commander had extended his patrols farther than usual. Five minutes later the radio crackled into life with a loud, harsh voice that completely drowned out the directional signals.

"Unknown machine approaching Sector Seven of Patrol Zone, identify yourself immediately."

Silora switched the radio to SEND and replied, "Machine 576 returning to operations in control of Peace Lord Second Cla.s.s Silora Jou after escape from natives. Repeat, this is Peace Lord Second Cla.s.s Silora Jou. I have escaped from the natives of this dimension. I have-"

"Understand, Peace Lord," said the voice sharply. "Identification insufficient. You are ordered to ground your machine immediately and await inspection. Failure to do so will lead to your being fired on. Repeat, ground your-"

Silora switched the radio back to SEND and made a rude noise into the microphone. As she shut off the radio entirely, Blade was at work on the power and the controls. The machine shot forward as he fed in the power, accelerating rapidly. When it was moving as fast as he dared to go this close to the ground, he shouted at Silora: "Hang on!"

He put the machine into a steep climb, opening the power even wider. The machine leaped upward, its speed mounting rapidly. On the screens the plain began to spread out below them, an endless velvety black rug with moving sparks of light on it that were the patrol machines.

Now came the most dangerous part of the whole mission. Instead of using stealth they would have to use speed, hurtling straight down the center of the triangle of Looter camps and dropping the bomb by sheer guesswork from a high alt.i.tude.

Blade fed in still more power. The shriek and howl of the air rus.h.i.+ng past outside blasted in through the open hatch. It sounded like a hundred madmen all screaming in chorus. Silora put her hands over her ears and Blade would have done the same if he hadn't been too busy with the controls.

They must have been doing close to five hundred miles an hour. The circle of lights that was the camp of the machines was a good fifteen miles away, but it swept toward them with frightening speed. Blade kept the machine lined up precisely on the center of the circle. He wished he didn't have to fly a straight course, but there was no choice. Otherwise he might miss the target, even with the atomic bomb.

At least they would be hard to hit at this speed. Hitting them with a ray or a rocket now would be like hitting a flying mosquito with a pistol shot. It could be done, but it would take good luck as well as good shooting.

The target leaped toward them out of the night at the rate of more than a mile every ten seconds. Blade checked alt.i.tude, remembered wind conditions on the ground, did a quick set of mental calculations, wished for a pocket calculator, let alone a bombsight. Now the machine camp was about to pa.s.s below. Blade saw the perimeter lights reflected from scores of humped and curved and flat metal shapes in a dozen different sizes spread out in a circle a mile across. As the nearer edge of the circle pa.s.sed across the center of the forward screen, Blade jerked on the leather loop at the end of the bomb-release cord.

He felt the machine give a little jump as it suddenly became half a ton lighter. A black finned cylinder swept across the rear screen, plunging downward, appearing on the down-looking screen. Blade didn't pay any attention to it. He nosed the machine over into a dive and pulled the hatch shut. The madmen's howling of air outside died to a distant mutter and moan as the machine plunged down through the miles of air, heading for the relative safety of low alt.i.tude.

So far, there was no sign that anyone on the ground had even noticed them, let alone fired at them. That was just as well. Blade knew they would have to stay closer to the Looters than he liked until after the bomb went off-or didn't go off. He had to watch what happened and then return to the people to tell the tale. If the defenders would just stay asleep until the bomb woke them up, that was all right with him!

Blade had guessed it would take the bomb roughly two minutes to reach the ground. Before the first minute was past they were racing through the patrol line. On one screen Blade saw a distant flash of purple as one of the patrol machines let loose with its ray. A desperate shot at them, or was the enemy firing at some ghost sprung from his own surprise and nerves?

One minute. One minute twenty seconds. One minute forty seconds. Two minutes. Two minutes ten seconds. d.a.m.n it, was the b.l.o.o.d.y thing going to take forever to fall? Or had it already hit and smashed itself to bits instead of going off? In another min- Then there was no darkness anywhere, as the sun seemed to rise behind them. Silora screamed and clapped her hands over her eyes as the rear screen dissolved into a searing blaze of blinding white light. Blade shut his eyes and fumbled for the b.u.t.ton to cut off the screen. When he heard the switch click over he opened his eyes again.

The plain still showed up with almost daylight clarity in the other screens. Blade nosed upward, so that the shock wave would not slam the machine against the ground.

The shock wave caught them a hundred feet up, throwing the machine nose down and tail up until Blade thought it was going to turn a complete somersault, end over end. Then the roar and rumble was past, spreading out into the darkness that was slowly returning to the plain.

Blade cut in the rear screen again. The fireball was almost gone now. Where it had been a terrible glowing gray white pillar of smoke loomed miles high in the night. The top was already reaching the stratosphere and beginning to spread out in the high winds and thin air many miles aloft. Around the base of the pillar were scattered hunched dark shapes, some of them giving off their own clouds of smoke.

Blade swung the machine around and raced back toward the base of the pillar. Three miles out he stopped. That was close enough to see clearly, not close enough to risk catching too much fall-out or being an easy target if some Looter was somehow still alert and on his feet.

Blade did see clearly, and what he saw was enough to make him turn away again. Not a machine in the whole machine camp could have been more than a mile from ground zero. The ones that hadn't been vaporized completely or melted into slag would never fly or fight again. Less than a hundred yards away a full-sized war machine lay on the ground, flung three miles through the air by the blast, half-buried and half-crushed by the impact of its landing. On one blackened metal side a pale man-shaped silhouette stood out with startling clarity. That was doubtless the shadow cast by a Looter, a Looter who had been standing between the machine and ground zero, a Looter who now formed part of the cloud that towered ten miles above the plain.

A crack Royal Air Force bomber crew might have dropped the bomb more precisely. But any more precision than Blade had managed would have been wasted. Blade's eyes and reflexes and instincts had done all that was needed.

Blade let out a sigh of relief as he turned the machine homeward. He could return to the people bringing word that the first part of their victory had been won this night.

He could also return bringing Silora with him. He could not say that he loved her as he had loved Zulekia. But he could say that he would not have been at all happy to leave her behind as part of that monstrous cloud-pillar.

Chapter 25.

Blade's return with news of destroying the Looter machines set off a grand celebration. Only the fighting men and women of the people were now left in the camps around the New City, nearly three thousand of them. It was they who danced wildly up and down the streets, drank up what seemed like every drop of beer in Tharn, dragged each other off into deserted buts and sheltered places to make love. Blade saw Chara leading one of the lines of dancers, waving a sword in one hand and a beer cup in the other.

"They seem to think the war is already won," said Blade as he watched the celebration from the roof of the King's House.

His son shrugged. "A great victory has certainly been won, as you yourself promised. They are happy about that, happy that now they can face the Looters on equal terms."

"The terms will not be equal if in their pride and courage they forget what we have taught them," said Blade quietly. "Even if they can remember, many of them will still die in the battle against the Looters."

King Rikard smiled. "All the more reason for them to celebrate. For many of those down there this may be the last time they will ever make love, taste beer, dance with their friends. Would you deny them these last pleasures?"

Blade could hardly argue that point. In fact, it reminded him of Silora. He was Mazda, but that did not make him immortal or mean that tonight might not be his last chance to make love.

So he went off to the chamber where Silora lay, and soon they were locked around each other. They did not unwind until the light of dawn and the sound of drums and trumpets told them it was daylight and time to mount up and ride out.

Blade did not leave the New City on horseback. He and Chara and Silora rode in one of the war machines that formed a scouting line well out in front of the advancing people. Possibly the mercenaries would stay where they were, paralyzed by the shock of the bombing. It was even possible that they were right now marching through the dimension door, back to Konis. But Blade doubted it, and Silora doubted it even more.

"The Princ.i.p.al Technician of War is not a fool," she said. "But he is stubborn enough to seem one. The mercenaries will fight, and fight hard. We must face that."

That meant the Looter army would have to be found, in all the endless miles of plain. Three of the captured machines formed an aerial scouting line, radioing reports back to the fourth, which flew just above the center of the main army.

There was something strange in aerial reconnaissance for an Iron Age cavalry army. But Blade knew that the plains of Tharn would see even stranger sights before much longer. The coming battle would mix more ages and stages of weaponry and the military art than Blade would have believed possible.

It was a pity that no Home Dimension military historians were ever likely to hear of this battle. He would have liked to hear them trying to explain away all its apparent contradictions and impossibilities. He was not going to worry about those contradictions and impossibilities, however. He would worry about winning, and nothing else.

The Looters were easy to find and not hard to count. There were more than two thousand of them. An army of that size could not be hidden on the open plain even in camouflaged uniforms.

They advanced on a front of about two miles, with their main body in three columns. Behind them came a fourth column, most of which seemed to be unarmed. In that column were also three large machines -a command machine, a large cargo machine, and a gleaming silver ovoid shape.

"That fourth column will be mostly unarmed Peace Lords under guard. They are bringing them along so that their guards can aid the main force when the fighting starts." That was Silora's guess.

She went on. "The Princ.i.p.al Technician of War doubtless rides in the command machine. The second probably carries ammunition and spare weapons. The oval one carries the machinery for creating the dimension door."

"They can create it at will, from one side or the other?"

"Yes. But it needs a machine at each end to sustain it after it has been opened."

G.o.d, what science Konis had, even now! And how little opportunity he was likely to have to examine the dimension door machine and try to discover some of its secrets. Lord Leighton's scientific curiosity would be frustrated, and that would not make his Lords.h.i.+p terribly happy.

d.a.m.n Lord Leighton's scientific curiosity and Lord Leighton too! He was in Home Dimension, not here in Tharn facing a battle for the life of the people, the life of his son's people, the lives of those he had helped once before and would help again. Blade knew what his first job was, and would worry about anything else he might be able to do when and if he had the time to do it.

Only three of the smaller war machines were visible, flying in a V-formation high above the Looter army. The technician wouldn't want to let his last possible air support wander off and be swallowed up by whatever monsters might be lurking beyond the flat horizon. None of the three paid any attention to Blade's machine.

After looking as long as he needed and getting as close as he dared, Blade swung his machine away into the sky. He saw that Silora's face was grimmer than it had been for some time.

"They have not come in the strength I hoped they would," she said. "No more than half or a third of the mercenaries march against the people."

As far as Blade was concerned that was quite all right. He would not care to try pitting the people against five or six thousand of the mercenaries. But he could see why Silora was unhappy. Even total victory for the People of Tharn today would still leave the mercenaries able to rule Konis and leave her forever an exile in Tharn.

The army of the people camped for the night about twenty miles from the Looters. They did not camp until the air scouts reported that the Looters were also settling in for the night. Neither Blade nor King Rikard wanted to risk a night attack by the mercenaries.

Blade and Silora had a tent to themselves, but it seemed stiflingly hot inside it. After an hour or so of desperately trying to get to sleep, they both went out and lay down on the gra.s.s to stare up at the star-filled sky. The cooler air and the peaceful stars soon sent both of them off to sleep.

The next morning Blade could see the Looters in their camp from a war machine only a few hundred feet up. They were less than ten miles away. Once again their three war machines floated high above them-and stayed there.

The army of the people moved out, three thousand cavalry, a hundred chariots, a dozen portable catapults. Some of the chariots and all four of the captured war machines carried loads of bombs, and practically every fighter had at least one or two grenades.

As the people trotted and rolled toward the enemy, a Looter war machine swept low over the head of the column. A hundred or so archers loosed futile arrows at it. That should be enough to give the Looters the impression of a typical undisciplined barbarian horde. Blade's plans depended on the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War continuing to despise his opponents until it was too late.

Within an hour the Looter army was in sight from the scouting line on the ground. Blade saw that so far his plan was working. As Silora had predicted, the Princ.i.p.al Technician was bringing a strong force of the mercenaries to Tharn, to fight it out on the ground. The battle would be terrible for both sides, but it could be a much greater victory for the people if they won.

The Looters were drawn up in an enormous square nearly a mile on a side. Most of the two thousand mercenaries formed the four sides of that square. Each side was a single line, with no more than one man every ten feet. In the center of the square was a small reserve, who doubled as guards for the Peace Lords and the three large machines. One of the war machines now floated only a few feet above the center of the square. Blade caught strangely brilliant sparkles of sunlight from the equipment of someone moving about on the rear platform.

"That will be the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War himself," said Silora. "On days of battle he dresses in his most elegant uniform and equipment, including a wide belt studded with jewels. You see the sun sparkling on the jewels, I think."

The technician might be a fop, but he also seemed to know his business. The great hollow square gave equal firepower on all sides. Even with only one man every ten feet, the automatic pellet rifles could slaughter anyone trying to close within a hundred yards. The grenade launchers that every tenth man carried could finish the job. Against a barbarian enemy able only to charge in wildly, the battle would have been won the moment the square was formed. But the people had done Mazda's bidding in training and arming themselves, and they were no longer that kind of barbarian enemy.

Blade watched from the rear platform of his machine as the people deployed, spreading out until they completely surrounded the square. The catapults were unloaded from their chariots and a.s.sembled. Then their crews carried them to just inside accurate range of the Looters and opened fire.

Just inside accurate range for the catapults was well beyond accurate range for the Looter's rifles. On full automatic they could hit anything within a hundred yards with enough pellets to rip it to pieces. Beyond that range things got more difficult. At two hundred yards they were doing well to hit a man, at three hundred yards it was almost hopeless unless they simply sprayed away on full automatic. The catapults were firing from a carefully calculated three hundred and twenty-five yards' range.

Even there they had pellets buzzing about their ears soon enough. But at long range the light pellets lost much of their speed and striking power. They could hardly kill or disable unless they hit a vital spot. All the catapult crews were encased from topknot to toe in teksin, iron, and boiled leather armor. Most of the pellets bounced off harmlessly, and those that didn't seldom did more harm than a wasp sting.

Meanwhile the catapult crews were shooting back, alternating three-foot arrows with expanding heads and explosive bombs. When the arrows. .h.i.t a mercenary they tore through his armored vest as though it were made of paper. When a bomb landed on a mercenary there wasn't enough of him left to put on a stretcher, while the men on either side of him were likely to be out of action for at least the rest of the day.

Many of the arrows missed, many of the bombs didn't explode. But all of them kept the mercenaries shooting with one eye on their target and one eye on what might be coming down on them. Their shooting was enthusiastic-the rattle of their rifles soon became almost continuous. But its accuracy left a good deal to be desired.

After each few shots the catapult crews picked up their weapons and ammunition and ran fifty yards or so. They lost men, but each time they lost someone the gap was filled in a moment.

On and on went the duel as the sun rose higher in the sky and began to bake the plain with all its usual fury. Eventually the mercenaries got tired of standing under the shower of bombs and arrows and blazing away almost impotently at their distant enemies. A portion of one side of the square surged forward at a dead run, firing from the hip as they ran, trying to close to effective range.

Instantly a score of chariots and ten times that many hors.e.m.e.n swept forward. The chariots swung around between the mercenaries and the catapults, s.h.i.+elding them. The catapult crews threw their weapons into the chariots and scrambled on the backs of the chariot horses, while the archers in the chariots rained arrows on the approaching mercenaries. Then the chariots rolled away across the plain, rapidly drawing out of range. The cavalry swept across between them and the mercenaries, and a blizzard of arrows answered the enemy's ma.s.sed rifle fire. A good many horses went down and a good many saddles were suddenly empty. But out of more than a hundred mercenaries, no more than forty were left on their feet. All of those forty ran-the sensible ones back toward the square, the brave or foolish ones on toward the people. None of the second group got very far or lived very long. Then cavalry and chariots and catapults were all drawing rapidly out of range of even the longest and wildest shots from the square.

In any land, in any age, in any dimension, the man who rides a horse can still move faster than the man who walks on his own feet. At least he can when the land is flat, and the plain where Blade had chosen to give battle was as flat as a tabletop.

The mercenaries were tough, well-trained soldiers. Their courage was undoubted, their weapons were on the whole well-chosen and effective. But they had not fought a well-disciplined enemy of any sort for more than twenty years.

They had never fought a disciplined army of hors.e.m.e.n, neither in Konis nor in any of the dimensions they had looted.

This was a gap in their military education that Blade was determined to fill. In fact, he was determined to fill it so thoroughly that most of the mercenaries would not survive the lesson.

The duel of catapult and bow against rifle sputtered on around the square, occasionally flaring up savagely. The next time the mercenaries tried to charge the catapults on foot, the people's cavalry got a little out of hand. Instead of retreating, they charged the flanks of the advancing mercenary line. If they had tried to charge it from the front, they would have been butchered. As it was they hit it on either end, where only four or five mercenaries could fire accurately, and that wasn't enough. The butchery was mutual. The mercenaries chopped the people out of their saddles at point-blank range moments before pain-maddened horses trampled them into the ground. Then in full sight of hundreds of their comrades and the technician himself, the surviving mercenaries all turned and ran. All their discipline and courage could not hold them in place against the ancient terror of a wall of advancing hors.e.m.e.n.

For a moment it looked as though the whole battle would explode into a mutual butchery. The three war machines of the Looters surged forward to the threatened side of the square and hung in the air just above the line of infantry. Blade's hands tightened on the railing of his own machine. If the technician panicked and unleashed the purple rays- But the technician's nerve or commonsense held firm. The three war machines slipped back inside the square. Two of them began ferrying reinforcements and ammunition out to the weakened side of the square. The technician's own machine rose into its usual place, to hang grim and gleaming in the sky above the center of the square.

By noon Blade felt as if the battle had been going on for a week. In the three hours since the first shot had been fired, the people had lost more than two hundred men and women and slightly more horses, as well as half a dozen chariots and two catapults. But the mercenaries had lost between three and four hundred men dead or out of action for the day. They had also fired off an astounding quant.i.ty of ammunition.

That was the Looters' vital spot, their ammunition supply. A good part of their supply must have gone up with the machines destroyed in the atomic-bomb explosion. Now they could have no more than they carried on their backs and was stored in the remaining machines. When this supply was exhausted, there was no more ammunition closer than the other side of the dimension door.

Now it was time to offer the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War what would look like a chance to score a solid victory against the enemy. It would look like a victory cheap in ammunition, a victory solid enough to restore the spirits of men who must be losing heart from their casualties and the broiling sun. To win such a victory the technician would almost certainly be willing to weaken his square, confident that at least the enemy would not charge home against an unbroken line of mercenaries.

That confidence would be misplaced.

Fifty or a hundred at a time, most of the people's cavalry drifted around to one side of the square and ma.s.sed there. Before long two-thirds of the people's mounted fighters were there, under the command of King Rikard himself and Anyara. Under the eyes of their king, son of Mazda, they would maintain the discipline that had been hammered into them. Meanwhile Blade would be free to be wherever his understanding of the Looters' machines was most needed.

The ma.s.sed cavalry galloped forward, pulled to a stop within bowshot, fired their arrows, took heavy fire and heavy casualties in return, then retreated. But they did not retreat at a gallop. They retreated at a walk, a slow pace not beyond the reach of a man on foot. They seemed to be flaunting themselves in the faces of the mercenaries, flaunting a willingness to meet them at close quarters, man to man, throwing caution and even commonsense to the hot winds blowing over the battlefield.

It looked like folly. It looked like such folly that the Princ.i.p.al Technician of War swallowed the bait dangled before him even faster than Blade had expected. The war machines began shuttling ammunition out to the side of the square facing the people's cavalry. Mercenaries from the other three sides began walking across the square to join their comrades in the great attack. The vision of a smas.h.i.+ng blow at the enemy was obviously dancing in front of every man in that square.

Blade looked down from the platform of his machine to the opposite side of the square, where some two hundred hors.e.m.e.n and all the surviving chariots were a.s.sembled. Then he shouted an order to Chara at the machine's controls. Silora clung to him as the machine turned and headed toward the chariots.

Chara landed the machine and Blade and Silora both leaped out and scrambled into the four-horse chariot reserved for them. All of the other chariots were drawn by three horses instead of the usual two, and carried three fighters instead of the usual two. Each fighter was heavily protected and carried a bow and a sword. In each chariot was a box of grenades and in the chariots of the third line each man had a bomb and a captured Looter rifle or pistol. The fighters in the third line were the ones most likely to get all the way to the center of the square and need the extra firepower. Blade hadn't expected to have so many Looter weapons, but he wasn't going to turn down an unexpected stroke of good luck.

Blade's own chariot was in the center of the second line. Quickly he pulled on his gear. When he was finished, he carried a bow, a sword, two knives, a Looter rifle, a pistol, and a grenade launcher. He wore an iron helmet, a teksin vest, and leather boots and breeches. He looked like a pacifist's nightmare and would have felt ridiculous if he had not been so keyed-up.

Blade gave Silora another minute to finish putting on her gear. Then he took out the signal baton, extended it, and waved it three times over his head. Trumpets and drums sounded from both the chariots and the cavalry, and the whole ma.s.s began to move forward.

Five hundred yards from the square the screen of cavalry in front of the chariots parted to either side and Blade had a clear view ahead. The enemy line was still there, but it was perilously thin. There was at most one man for every thirty yards. The technician had not contracted the square to save men. He was making the fatal mistake of trying to hold all his ground.

The first line of chariots came within range and the mercenaries opened fire. A chariot and horses made an enormous target. Horses began to go down, sending chariots bouncing wildly into the air, hurling their fighters free. But there were too many chariots coming too fast, and too few mercenaries with too little ammunition. Some of them simply turned and ran as arrows from the surviving chariots whistled about their ears. Others turned tail when they ran out of ammunition. Some stayed and died, changing magazines or still firing. But over a s.p.a.ce of five hundred yards there were suddenly no more mercenaries at all. The seventy surviving chariots and the whole two hundred cavalry swept through that gap, trampling the corpses of both sides into b.l.o.o.d.y paste, thundering onward toward the heart of the mercenaries' square.

Around Blade the thunder of hooves and the shrill war cries from four hundred throats drowned out the roar of gunfire from the far side of the square. Beside him Silora was screaming like a banshee, beside herself with excitement. He knew she was screaming, for her mouth was wide open, but he could not hear a sound she was making.

The people raced toward the center of the square. Its three machines loomed higher and higher as they drew closer. Looking ahead through the dust, Blade saw the mercenary guards scrambling into a small square around the three machines and the ma.s.s of Peace Lords. Their rifles began spitting pellets at the oncoming people. The first line took the full blast of their fire. Blade saw one chariot flip over at a full gallop, bouncing fifty feet into the air. Its three fighters sailed out and crashed to the ground. Two lay still, the third was still moving feebly when a chariot of the second line ran right over him, its driver unable to swing it clear in time. Hooves and wheels and the slas.h.i.+ng knives in the hubs of the wheels all did their work, and the b.l.o.o.d.y thing left behind did not move again.

To press home a cavalry charge against automatic weapons is impossible in theory and always costly in practice. But when there are a lot of cavalry and not very many automatic weapons it becomes possible. The first line of chariots was almost gone now, and the second line was beginning to show ragged holes as the Looters s.h.i.+fted their fire. A chariot in the third line disintegrated in a blast of flame and smoke, and flying fragments mowed down two other chariots. Blade saw the Looter square disintegrating in its turn as the mercenaries on the disengaged sides ran around to reinforce their comrades who were facing the oncoming people.

Then suddenly the whole ma.s.s of Peace Lords standing beyond the winking guns of the mercenaries exploded into action. They had seen the mercenaries too distracted to keep watch on them. They took advantage of that distraction to strike, most of them unarmed but all of them burning with rage and a desire for vengeance.