riders hesitated, then stopped, as men fought to control their animals. None of the Sumerians or Tanukhs had ever faced slingers before, and this new tactic by this strange foe had them confused. Their horses, too, reacted with fear to these men whirling things through the air.
Shappa knew his men looked helpless and vulnerable, without any real weapons. The obvious Sumerian tactic would be to ride them down. To accomplish that, the great numbers of Sumerian cavalry needed only to move as a concerted force, ignoring their losses until they could ride into the slingers’ midst. But the stones kept coming, smashing into the enemy horsemen with even greater force as the slingers drew closer.
A few riders charged the slingers. Some even managed to evade the dozens of stones flung at them. But when those hardy Sumerians tried to strike down the apparently helpless slingers, they saw their opponents throw themselves to the ground beneath the Sumerian swords, only to rise up an instant later and strike with their long knives at the rear legs of the horses. Wounded animals reared out of control, unhorsing their riders, who then became easy targets for the slingers’ stones or long knives.
Shappa had trained his men well, and they knew to seek out enemy commanders as targets for their missiles, those men who would be trying to restore order and rally their ranks. Without commanders urging them forward — ordering them to run down the slingers and kill them at any cost — the Sumerians continued to hesitate, then some began turning away from the rain of missiles. They saw the fate of those who had rushed into the slingers’ midst, and decided a more prudent course of action was to ride around them. A few galloped off, as much to get out of range of the slingers as to reach the Akkadian rear.
Shappa ignored them. He kept directing his slingers against the mass of horsemen still milling about. The stones sought them out, arcing higher in the sky before falling. When they struck the horses, the animals bolted or started bucking, often tossing their riders to the earth at the same moment. Shappa had to keep up the pressure. The Sumerians had thousands of riders, and if it occurred to all of them to simply ride around the flanks of the slingers, both Eskkar and the spearmen would be in trouble.
But the havoc and commotion of Eskkar’s charge had driven reason from their heads. They had thought only of attacking Eskkar’s smaller force, hitting them from the rear and wiping them out. They wanted to reach the Akkadian king, not waste time on insignificant slingers, and risking their own lives in the process.
Shappa had no time to worry about that. He kept dropping stones into his pouch, and flinging them toward the enemy. Suddenly his hand came up empty from the first pouch. He had already thrown over thirty stones. He ripped open the second sack, and hoped that the Sumerians turned back, or help arrived, before he emptied that one as well. Off to one side, he saw a large force of enemy horsemen moving across the battle line, intending to attack Gatus’s rear.
That didn’t concern him. His task this day was to halt or slow down the Sumerian cavalry, and by all the gods, he intended to do just that.
R azrek picked himself up from the ground. He didn’t remember falling, but a stone must have struck his bronze helmet and knocked him from his horse. He needed both hands to push himself to his feet. His sword had vanished, lost in the debris that now littered the battlefield. Bodies of men and horses lay scattered on the ground all around him. Those cursed slingers continued to hurl their missiles into his horsemen, many of them milling around like a bunch of frightened women.
With an oath he stumbled toward the rear. A horse kicked its heels, its halter tangled around its dead rider. The man’s body kept the frightened animal from bolting. A vicious cut with his knife freed the rope, and Razrek jerked the halter so hard that the stunned animal ceased its frantic efforts to get away. Still, it took all his strength to pull himself onto the animal.
“Razrek! Razrek! We can’t get through!” Mattaki pulled up beside him. “Those slingers are blocking the way…”
“I can see, you fool! Forget Shulgi, and forget these slingers. Get our men to the rear of the Akkadian infantry. We can ride them down. They’ve no one behind them.”
“I’ll rally the men…”
Two stones arrived at the same time. One hit Mattaki’s horse in the chest, and the other glanced off Razrek’s forehead.
For a few moments, Mattaki fought to regain control of his bucking mount. When he finally got the animal under control, he turned toward Razrek, and saw his leader motionless, flat on his back with his forehead a mass of blood, either dead or dying. More stones hissed through the air. The accursed Akkadian slingers still had a plentiful supply of missiles.
Mattaki thought of all the gold he’d buried deep in the earth near the edge of the desert, and decided he had had enough fighting for the day. Razrek was dead and, win or lose today, Shulgi wasn’t going to be too happy with the commanders of his cavalry. Mattaki wheeled his horse around and galloped at full speed away from the battle. A few other horsemen had already reached the same conclusion. By twos and threes, then by twenty and thirty, many of the Sumerian cavalry followed, riding away from the battlefield.
G atus heard the wild roar that signaled Eskkar’s charge. The enemy spearmen had pushed forty or fifty paces past their line of stakes, their bowmen moving up behind them. The first Sumerian arrows began to strike the Akkadian shield wall, and he knew that soon every Sumerian bowman would have the entire Akkadian force within range. But that didn’t matter any longer. The line of deadly stakes had vanished, overrun by the advancing enemy. The time had come. The anvil had to move forward.
“Spearmen. Ready to advance!” One brief moment to make sure the command reached up and down the line. “Advance! Fast march! Advance! Attack!”
Up and down the line, leaders of ten and twenty repeated the commands. The line moved forward. No slow step this time. The Akkadian infantry took full strides, moving as quickly as the ground permitted, determined to close with their enemy and get past the arrows beginning to rain down on them. Ignoring the noise and cries of battle all around them, they quick marched in silence, shields raised, spears still carried low in the right hand.
The two soldiers responsible for guarding Gatus pulled him from his horse. One handed him a sturdy shield. As the only mounted man, he would have drawn every Sumerian arrow, and Eskkar himself had warned them about that possibility. One guard smacked the mare on the rump, sending it away from the coming battle.
Gatus had no time to do more than swear at his guards. He rushed forward, slipping his arm through the shield’s leather grip and hitching it into position. His two guards stayed in front, using their shields to protect his sides from any stray arrow. Behind him, he heard Mitrac ordering the bowmen forward as well. If the archers were going to face a Sumerian arrow storm, they’d be safer as close behind the spearmen as they could get.
Arrows now flew in both directions, and the Sumerian arrows started to take their toll. Men dropped out of the advancing line, killed or wounded, but the line kept its cohesion and those in the rear ranks moved forward to fill the spaces of those who’d fallen.
Gatus stretched his body upward, jumping every few steps so that he could see the men’s progress and gauge the remaining distance to the enemy spearmen. A dozen more paces. The approaching enemy had closed to within a hundred and fifty paces. Close enough, he decided.
“Spearmen! Ready to charge!”
Those words rippled up and down the line, the men growling impatiently. Voices called out from the ranks, to add their own encouragement to their leaders orders, as they waited for the final command that would release them to the attack. But they never stopped moving forward.
Gatus’s bellow rolled out over the battlefield. “Spearmen! Charge! Charge! Charge!” The two Akkadian drummers, silent up to this moment, now pounded the attack drumbeat.
With a roar that drew every head on the battlefield, the Akkadian spearmen broke into a run. The spears were lifted to the attack position, raised just over the shield, which they held at eye level. With their bronze helmets, only Akkadian eyes and spear points were visible to the enemy.
Everyone shouted as loud as they could. The line surged forward. They’d been silent throughout the battle so far, and now they intended to make up for it. War cries filled the air as the line rushed forward. Some parts moved a bit quicker than others, but the three-man-deep attack line remained in good order, holding its cohesion. For long months the men had trained to charge together, spears raised, shouting as loud as they could. Now all that training would be put to the real test.
The Sumerian line, which had moved at a regular marching pace, heard the savage drumbeats and saw the enemy approaching at a run, screaming war cries as their spears moved up and down with each stride. The Sumerian line slowed slightly. They had expected the two lines to close together at the fast marching pace. No one
