There were screams of pain, fear, panic. Those closest to the horses began to run; their panic spread; soon all of Alish's army was in retreat.
A sudden outbreak of shouting from Hearst's army signalled a spontaneous infantry charge. Sensing victory, they were mounting an assault. Hearst swore. This was no part of his plan! The battle had just started, and already he was losing control.
'Sound retreat!' he shouted.
The trumpets sounded retreat, but to no avail. If any men bothered to listen, none bothered to obey.
Hearst strained to see. The darkness was easing away; he began to make out parts of a confused grappling- groping battle on the plains, a hideous, brawling gang-fight from which came the screams of murder, the clash of weapons, the monstrous noise of badly injured horses.
Then the enemy trumpets sounded retreat.
'Sound retreat!' shouted Hearst.
'But the enemy's running away!' yelled a trumpeter.
Hearst cursed him; belatedly, retreat was sounded. But nobody obeyed. As light began to conjure colours on the plain, Hearst, from his vantage point, saw, all too clearly, exactly what was happening.
Alish had kept his cavalry in the rear. The cavalry was holding firm as the infantry retreated through their ranks. Very shortly, Hearst's disorganised infantry, attacking as a formless, anarchic rabble intermixed with cavalry, would be confronted by the massed, 'waiting discipline of Alish's horse.
It happened.
As Hearst watched, the last of Alish's infantry retreated to safety behind the cavalry screen. The attack wavered, faltered, broke. Alish's cavalry charged. Dismayed, Hearst saw his own horse and footsoldiers flung back. Alish's infantry, without any orders, began to charge.
As the battlefield disintegrated into a chaotic free-for-all, Hearst abandoned his original battle-plan: to brunt the enemy's attack, then break through on the flanks, encircle the enemy and crush them. He was a fool to have thought he could try anything so complicated with this mostly raw and virgin army. His only consolation was that Alish seemed to have no more control than he did.
But, inexorably, weight of numbers was beginning to tell; Hearst's army was – he thought – slowly being forced back into the 'V made by two diverging rivers.
It was time to try the hind legs. He would try and lure Alish's army in between the pyramid and the burial mound, then crush it between those two strongpoints. He had massed archers lurking out of sight behind the burial mound which would give him a fist to use against infantry; wet ground in front of the mound would protect against a cavalry charge.
'Smoke!' yelled Hearst, to the men manning blazing bonfires. 'Blue – '
But someone had already thrown a bag of chemicals onto a fire. Red smoke billowed up.
'Blue smoke!' yelled Hearst. 'And – trumpets! -sound the retreat!'
A bag of chemicals was thrown onto the fire – this time for blue smoke. A pillar of green and yellow flames shot up into the sky as chemicals mixed. Some of the trumpets sounded the advance, and some the retreat. Wind blew the smoke this way and that, obscuring the battlefield completely.
Then someone threw on black smoke.
'Who threw black smoke!' screamed Hearst. 'I'll kill the man responsible!'
Black smoke was the signal which would summon ships Hearst had waiting upriver. The ships were his reserve force, and this, to his mind, was hardly the time to employ them. He was well aware of the fact that the general who wins a battle is often the one who has the last reserves to commit to the fight; the black smoke, calling in the ships prematurely, might have cost him victory.
Still, it would be a little while yet before the ships got here.
As the smoke cleared, Hearst was able to see that his men were retreating. A few came scrambling up the burial mound; most fell back toward the pyramid, or went mobbing back through the gap between the pyramid and the mound. They were retreating, obviously, not because of the totally incoherent signals, but because they were losing.
Alish managed to stop his men from following.
Hearst saw Alish's battle-standard, the blood-red banner of Rovac, moving to the northern flank.-Alish's cavalry began to mass on that flank. Hearst's plan, to lure Alish's men in between two strongpoints then crush them, had failed. Alish was obviously going to attack the burial mound, the strongpoint guarding Hearst's right flank, hoping, by seizing it, to win the battle.
'Well then,' muttered Hearst, 'Come on!'
Then, in a loud clear voice, he shouted orders. On his command, a scattering of soldiers down in front of the burial mound retreated to its heights, their legs boggy with mud.
There were dead bodies on the ground between the two armies – dead men, dead horses, broken spears, fallen banners. As dust settled through sunlight, both sweating, panting armies were silent but for the screams and groans of the wounded.
'What happens now?' said Farfalla.
'Alish is gathering his cavalry for a charge,' said Hearst.
He could hear the unintelligible tail-end of shouted orders from the enemy army. Riders were galloping up and down the ranks, distributing orders. Alish was planning something. What? 'Are we winning?' said Farfalla.
'We're alive,' said Hearst.
He could not look at her: he could not take his eyes off the battlefield. His gut was knotted up. His muscles were trembling with tension. He had felt like this in other battles, but had always been able to release the tension by expending it in the fury of a battle-rage, his sword sweeping to slaughter, a shout in his throat as he gave himself to combat. Now he could only stand and wait.
'What does the enemy hope to do?'
'To storm this mound,' said Hearst.
And took his eyes off the field of battle just for a moment to glance behind him. There, sheltering out of sight of Alish's army, hidden by the rise of the burial mound that was six hundred paces long, were his archers, ten ranks of old men, children, women, servants, slaves and cripples. They had moved into position during the night; they waited patiently, gazing at the banners on the burial mound.
Hearst knew that if Alish's army gained the mound, there would be fearful slaughter amongst those rag-tag ranks. There were five thousand people there; perhaps all would die. He had been forced to argue long and hard with Farfalla to get her permission to bring them here; if they died, the responsibility would be all his.
Hearst turned back to the field of battle. Alish's blood-red banner advanced to the head of the cavalry. So Alish would lead the attack himself.
Hearst waited.
Farfalla's green and gold banner rippled in the wind. Hearst's battle-standard snapped this way and that with a crisp, clean sound. The wind stirred dust from the dry, trampled ground; Hearst smelt the dust. The sun, shining into the eyes of Alish's army, was warm on his back.
Alish's cavalry advanced at a trot on a front six hundred paces wide, facing the burial mound. The horses slowed their pace as the men walked them through the lines of potholes and sharpened stakes that were a hundred paces in front of the mound, then they formed up again for a charge to send them sweeping up to the top of the burial mound.
Hearst glanced anxiously at the ground in front of the mound. Part had been trampled into mud by stray soldiers, but most was covered with dead brown grass. However, a little water still remained at the bottom of the shallow irrigation ditch. Would the riders notice? He hoped not. Their charge, after all, would take them into the sun.
The cavalry were moving forward. At a trot. At a canter. Sunlight glittered on the sharp points of spears. They gained to a gallop. Thunder. Thunder of hooves.
The honour guard and the other soldiers on the mound wavered.
'Stand fast!' shouted Hearst.
And they answered his shout: 'Wa – wa – Watashi! Wa – wa – Watashi!'
Blood. Fear. Death.
The first riders hit the waterlogged ground. It was soft as a knee-deep bog, the same as it would be after the
