From high on the castle battlements, September calmly said, “Ready now” to his communicators. An acknowledging series of flashes came from a tiny house now perilously close to the front line.
Meanwhile more of the enemy poured into the harbor, slowed as they ran into their fellows. There must have been ten thousand pressing inexorably against the thin Sofoldian defenses, with more arriving each second, every tran a pillar of hatred and fury.
“Now,” said September quietly. The message was flashed to the waiting receivers. The flasher operators had guts. They didn’t drop and kiss stone until they were certain the command had been received.
There was a pause.
For one terrifying moment, nothing happened. Ethan raised his head slightly and peered through an arrow slot.
The ice convulsed.
Concussion lifted him from the ground and slammed him back into unyielding rock. He felt wet stickiness on his cheek, but he’d only scraped himself. A microsecond later he tried to metamorphose into a tiny ball. Down came a bitter squall of ruptured ice, mixed with pieces of barbarian armor and pieces of barbarian.
Far out on the southwest icefield, Borda-tane-Anst, knight of Sofold, felt the ice-earth shake under him, saw the huge column of flame and smoke erupt in the harbor of his home. His mind rejoiced because the magic of the alien magician had worked. But deep inside he was frightened near to death.
The earth did not open beneath them. Pulling at the pure white cloak that he’d been lying under all morning, he rose and waved his sword to right and left. Then he and six hundred picked Sofoldian troops spread their dan and started grimly for the rear of the nomad encampment. All carried torches in addition to swords and spears.
The Dantesque scene in the harbor was revealed as the smoke was borne away by the wind. There was no dust, but stinging, blinding particles of ice still hung in the air, and Ethan was grateful for the goggles.
Below, an awful cacophony had begun, not of defiance this time, but of pain and fear and terror. The two humans watched, completely oblivious to the antics of Hunnar. Usually dignified to the point of coldness, the solemn young knight had shed his reserve and was leaping about like a cub, hugging every man-at-arms within reach and whooping with joy.
Uncountable multitudes of barbarian soldiers, who had stood within the harbor a moment ago, now lay dead or dying from terrible wounds. The ice sheet had cracked from the hundreds of charges but had not broken through to the freezing depths below. Eer-Meesach and Williams’ estimates had been proven correct. The ice was much too thick here to be affected by such ancient explosives.
Not as sound was the harbor wall, which had been subjected to another violent shaking. Several sections looked dangerously near collapse. The schoolmaster’s fuse and firing mechanism, cannibalized from the wrecked lifeboat, had done its task efficiently. The hundreds of charges had gone off within seconds of one another.
During the night, funnel-shaped holes had been melted in the ice, then filled with glass, metal, bone, and wooden fragments, and a year’s accumulation of bronze, iron, and steel filings originally destined for re-melting in the volcanic forges. Filled with anything that could cut or rend or tear.
Water had been poured over the pockets of crude shrapnel and allowed to refreeze during the early morning. The barbarians had been cut down like grass.
Now the battered, weakened army of Sofold came boiling out from behind its barriers and temporary ramparts, howling and shouting as barbarically as their supposedly less civilized tormentors. Axes, swords, and spears fell indiscriminately among healthy and wounded alike.
Ethan stood shakily and turned away from the sickening slaughter.
Many of those who’d survived were in shock. They were completely incapable of putting up effective resistance to the ready, prepared Sofoldians. It must have seemed like a hundred lighting bolts had landed among them.
Now archers and crossbowmen broke from the castle and the stone barrier at the other end of the wall, began retaking their positions atop the ancient masonry. Only now they were firing into the harbor, picking off those still fighting and any trying to retreat.
The still considerable body of enemy warriors surged dazedly back and forth, with dozens dropping every minute.
Ethan stared out over the now cleared ice. Then he turned and got September away from his survey of the massacre.
The enemy raft fleet was burning. Some were raising sail and struggling to escape even as they went up in flames. Fanned by the uncaring, indiscriminate wind, the blaze spread rapidly from one raft to its neighbor, thence to three or four others. Ethan saw one sail rigged, only to be struck by a ball of flame blown from a burning storage craft. Pika-pina and mast went up like match and paper in the thirsting wind.
Distant screams drifted over the ice to Ethan and chills raced up his spine. He put his hands over his face and sank in stunned silence to the ground. September put a gentle hand on his head and tried to comfort him.
“I know what you’re thinking, young feller-me-lad,” he muttered softly. “But you’ve got to consider what these folk have suffered. The only difference between them and their traditional enemies out there is a little book learning and another philosophy of life. Underneath, they’re very much the same animal… just like most humans are, when we’re pushed. To them the nomad women and cubs are as dangerous as the menfolk. Not because of what they can do, but because of what they represent. Do you understand that?”
Ethan sat still as the stones. He looked up.
“No.”
September grunted and walked away. To the end of his days, Ethan would hear the far-away shrieking.
Confronted with a murderous, unstunned enemy in front of them and fire behind, the once proud, invincible Horde of the Death dropped helmets, weapons and armor, broke, and fled toward their flaming homes. September was trying to get Hunnar’s attention. The knight finally calmed down enough to listen.
“Your tane-Anst did his job well, what? Will he have enough sense to watch for those who escape? They’re scared and many are weaponless, but hysterical humans, and probably tran, have little regard for their own lives. Makes for difficult fighting.”
“Tane-Anst is a good soldier,” said Hunnar thoughtfully. “He’ll take care to keep his men together.”
Finally Ethan stood and had a look at the retreating mob of surviving nomads. “This tane-Anst only took about six hundred men with him, Skua. Won’t they be badly outnumbered by these?”
“No group of well-organized, disciplined soldiers is ever outnumbered by a mob, Ethan. Remember that.”
Ethan turned and looked down into the harbor again. The ice was literally blotted out by a vast array of twisted, broken furry forms and a small lake of rapidly freezing blood. Hunnar came up to him. The knight was trembling now and Ethan thought he saw a little of what September had meant reflected in Hunnar’s face. After hundreds of years of helpless genuflection, reaction to what he and his people had done today was beginning to sink in.
“The Landgrave watches from his rooms and can see well for himself what has been wrought this hour,” said the knight, his voice slightly shaky. “I go to give him official word of his troops… and to remind him of his promise to you, my friends. Will you come?”
“No, this is your moment, Hunnar,” said September.
The knight exchanged breath and shoulder clasps with both of them, then departed at a run into the castle. September strolled to the edge of the parapet and looked down into the harbor. The fighting had degenerated into a bloodcurdling mopping-up operation, with Sofoldian soldiers and militia examining each corpse and methodically slitting the throat of any who lived.