expected a wild charge by the smaller force, still only three ranks deep.
Most of the others didn’t notice the slight slowing, the doubt creeping into the Sumerian forward line. Gatus, however, had been searching for it. By now he could see wide-eyed Sumerian faces showing the first hint of fear. The Sumerian army might win the battle, but those spearmen in the front line knew who was going to take the full brunt of the collision.
“Attack! Charge! Kill them all! Akkad! Akkad! Attack!”
Gatus’s words, bellowed with every breath within him, swept over the ranks. The frenzied spearmen repeated the war cries. They all screamed like demons possessed. Then the gap between the forces disappeared.
The Akkadian spearmen crashed into the still advancing Sumerian line. At the moment of contact, spears were driven forward with every bit of strength the men could summon. Sounds of splintering wood crackled over the deeper crash as shield wall met shield wall, both overshadowing the sudden cries of the wounded and dying. The noise drowned out every other part of the battle, as the shields smashed together up and down the line.
In the front rank, bronze spear points tore right through Sumerian shields, to impale the shrieking body behind it. The Akkadian second rank pushed their shields into the backs of the men in front of them, leaned forward, and drove their spears into the faces of the enemy, jabbing again and again at any thing that moved, any flesh that showed itself.
The Sumerian front line went down by the dozens. Despite having twice as many men in the ranks, and overlapping the Akkadians to some extent, the Sumerian countercharge slowed, and stopped.
As the Akkadian second and third ranks closed up, the six-deep Sumerian line found themselves, to their own surprise, being pushed back by the smaller force. To the Sumerians, these Akkadians were indeed demons, unafraid to attack a superior force. The Sumerian spearmen — forced to take a step or two backward to regain their momentum — found themselves incapable of moving forward again. Instead they found themselves slipping or stumbling, unable to use their weapons. Some tried to duck behind the shield of another, to gain a moment’s protection from the spears and swords now being thrust at their faces.
The Akkadians kept pushing, pushing, driving the heavier line backwards, their powerful leg muscles thrusting furiously against the earth, as they tried to shove the Sumerian line into the ground. Men tripped and stumbled over dead bodies, and live ones, too, whose howls rose up from the ground as they were trampled on.
The smell of dying men was in the air and blood now soaked the ground. Shields, helmets, faces, all were splashed in hot liquid that spurted from open veins and splattered like rain against men’s faces and shields. Soldiers shouted their battle cries into the faces of their enemy, sometimes only a hand’s width away from their own. Other men screeched in agony as sharp spear points thrust into their bodies.
Many in the Akkadian front rank had lost their spears, either splintering from the collision or hopelessly entangled with the enemy. But despite the press of bodies at their front and rear, each could still manage to draw his short sword. Some men — squeezed in front and back by the pressure of opposing shields — had no room to use a blade. Instead they smashed the pommel of the weapon into their opponents’ faces. Others jabbed the sword’s point into the heads and necks of those pressed against them, or those in the rank behind. They struck again and again, until the man in front of them went down. When that happened, the now ragged line would surge another half-step forward, bringing a new opponent into reach.
Some of the dead had no room to fall, kept upright for a few moments by the sheer press of numbers. Others, their bodies slippery with blood, slid to the ground, many still alive and gasping at the thought of what awaited them. To fall meant never to rise again. Scrambling feet from both sides trampled those underfoot, adding new pain to existing wounds or simply crushing the life from their bodies.
The battle had degenerated into individual combat, with each man pressed against the opposing man’s shield. But the Akkadians had trained hard for just such an encounter. They welcomed the pressure of their companion’s shield in their back, and as Gatus had taught them, they never stopped struggling to move forward. They knew their legs would win the battle for them, as long as they pressed ahead. The days of long and hard training under Gatus’s tutelage kept the shield wall not only intact, but moving forward, a half-step every few moments. The smaller force had not only stopped the advancing Sumerians, but now began to drive them backwards, step by step.
For the Sumerians, to reach the front rank meant death, but still they held their ground, clinging stubbornly to their position. The Sumerian commanders urged their men forward, and determined men hurled themselves against the backs of their ranks. The Akkadian advance slowed, then stopped. The greater weight of numbers on the Sumerian side began to weigh against the tiring Akkadian infantry. The battle line surged and rippled, but the Sumerians, now in a battle frenzy of their own, halted the onrush and began to push their enemy backwards.
K lexor led his men at the charge, at first following the path of Eskkar and Hathor. Klexor’s orders were to take his men between the other Akkadian commanders. The battle plan required that the king break through the line with his men and seek out Shulgi. Hathor would attack the Sumerian left flank. Klexor’s objective was to guide his three hundred men between Eskkar and Hathor’s forces, and crumple the Sumerian spearmen’s rear, to disrupt the Sumerian infantry from behind. Only by attacking from the front and rear could the Akkadians hope to prevail over the superior numbers of their enemy. Nevertheless, this meant Klexor’s men had the greatest distance to cover before they came to grips with the enemy. To make sure his horsemen followed his lead, Klexor had the steadiest men under his command. All of them knew where to go, and what to do.
Eskkar’s men had vanished into a mob of swirling horses and screaming men. Still, Klexor found the tiniest of gaps, only a few paces wide, between Hathor and Eskkar’s fighters. Klexor raised his sword and guided his horse toward the opening. “Attack! Follow me! Attack!”
He swept past Hathor’s still struggling horsemen. In front of Klexor the enemy spears loomed up. The enemy left flank still extended beyond the line of Gatus’s spearmen, and hadn’t yet engaged in battle. Now they saw Klexor’s thundering horsemen approaching, and tried to turn to their rear to meet this new threat. But that maneuver required some doing. Men had to shift and reform ranks, a task that would take precious moments. If they could raise a wall of spear points between them and Klexor’s men, they would be able to stop the advance.
But before the Sumerians could form up, Klexor’s cavalry began hurling their javelins at the mass of men struggling to regroup. Flung with all a man’s strength, and aided by the speed of the galloping horse, the deadly missiles rained down on the reforming ranks. Arrows, too, flew into the Sumerians, disrupting their effort to form a solid line. Some men panicked, trying to shift out of the path of the onrushing horsemen that had suddenly appeared in their rear.
Klexor saw the fear in their faces as he swung his sword down with all his might, striking right and left at anything that moved, pushing the horse ahead with all his strength.
“Attack!” he shouted. “Kill them all! Kill them all!”
H is horse killed beneath him, Fashod broke through his own ring of attackers, and saw Eskkar a dozen paces ahead, swinging his sword and surrounded by enemies. Fashod’s bow was gone, wrenched from his hands, and he’d seen Grond go down, crushed by a mass of surging Tanukhs. Fashod saw Chinua jump his horse over the mounting bodies of the dead, to move to Fashod’s side.
“Eskkar!” Fashod used his sword to point at the Akkadian.
Chinua still had his bow. Gripping his horse hard with his knees, he fit a shaft to the string and shot it, striking a Tanukh horseman trying to ride down the king. Three more shafts followed, launched faster than any Fashod had ever seen, and the rush that threatened to overwhelm Eskkar slowed. His quiver empty, Chinua dropped his bow and snatched out his sword.
Behind them, the Ur Nammu war cry sounded, and a half dozen warriors broke through their enemies and swept past Fashod and Chinua. Kicking their horses to the gallop, they charged the Tanukhs, brushing past Eskkar as they hurled themselves into the mass of enemy horsemen. Behind them rode another shouting handful of Akkadians desperate to reach the king’s side. If Eskkar went down, the battle could still be lost.
60
Shulgi’s voice rasped with every order he shouted. The Akkadian bowmen had raked his men with their
