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 mass 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 slashing knives in the hubs of the wheels all did their work, and the bloody 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 shifted 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 mass 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.
It was another scene of butchery on both sides. Mercenaries shot down half a dozen Peace Lords, then died under stamping feet and clawing hands and flashing knives. Others kept their faces toward the oncoming people and died with arrows in their throats as they shot their attackers out of their chariots. None of the mercenaries could look in two directions at once and so all of them died in not much more than a minute.
By frantically waving the signal baton, Blade was able to keep the people's charge from crashing straight into the Peace Lords. Blade's driver pulled the chariot to a stop just beyond the Peace Lords, between them and the three machines. Seen close up, the command machine looked identical to the one Blade had fought in Miros. The cargo machine was still a great featureless box. The machine carrying the dimension door was so highly polished that the sunlight reflected from it was almost blinding.
Several men scrambled out of the chariots of the third line, carrying sacks of bombs under their arms. They ran toward the door machine, zigzagging to make themselves harder targets. They were running to place their bombs beside the machine and destroy the Looters' road home.
No one fired at them. But twenty feet from the door machine they seemed to run into a solid wall. They staggered and began to crumple, sparks flashing around them. As they fell their bombs exploded with tremendous crashes. Black smoke rolled up, concealing the door machine for a moment, and fragments of iron, armor, and bodies flew in all directions.
Blade turned to Silora and grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand, pointing at the Peace Lords with the other. «Quick. Get over to them, tell them that we are friends. Also ask if anyone can help us break through the electrical field into the dimension door machine. Everybody else should arm themselves from the cargo machine or the bodies and then run for it.»
Silora nodded and leaped to the ground. As she began to run, a shadow swept over Blade. A moment later he heard the rattle of a Looter rifle. Silora stopped dead, then staggered and turned around to face Blade as she went down on her knees. From belly to throat she was nothing but chewed and bloody flesh. A final bullet had smashed her jaw, and as she tried to speak it sagged downward in a ruin of bone and blood. Her eyes met Blade's for a final second, then she collapsed face-down in the dust.
An icy coldness filled Blade. He looked upward, to see a Looter war machine sailing over the Peace Lords. On the rear platform knelt the Principal Technician of War, his jeweled belt flashing in the sun, other flashes coming from the muzzle of his rifle as he fired into the Peace Lords.
With deadly precision Blade loaded his captured grenade launcher, raised it to his shoulder, sighted on the war machine's hatch, and fired. The grenade arched through the air and vanished exactly where Blade had aimed it.
The technician could think quickly enough when his own skin was in danger. He plunged head-first off the platform, turned a somersault in midair, and landed on hands and knees halfway between Blade and the Peace Lords. His rifle landed beside him. He was reaching for it when Blade snatched a throwing spear from under the seat of the chariot and hurled it with the same deadly accuracy as the grenade. The technician was just rising to his feet when the spear took him in the neck, driving clear through from one side to the other and bursting out on the other side. He finished rising, stood erect for a moment, then went over backward. He made a neater corpse than Silora once he had stopped thrashing around, but he was just as dead.
Meanwhile the grenade went off inside the war machine. The hatch flew off its hinges, smoke and flame shot out of the turret, and the machine wobbled and lurched in the air. Then it nosed down and plunged toward the door machine. It struck the electrical field in an explosion of sparks, then drove through the last twenty feet to crash into the metal with a terrible clang. It bounced like a stone- skipping on a pond, sailed on a hundred feet farther, and thudded to the ground in a cloud of smoke.
Blade shook his head. The glistening metal of the door machine showed no sign of damage from the impact of the falling war machine, not a dent or a scratch. If it was that strong the people's explosives wouldn't do it much harm even if they could be dropped close enough to it.
Meanwhile, the dimension door was forming, just as Silora had described it. A great milky sphere appeared in the air a hundred yards beyond the door machine, as its power was focused. The sphere seemed to wobble and pulsate, as though it were a balloon tied to the earth by a cord, and glowed with an inner light. It looked both beautiful and monstrous, but Blade remembered from Silora's description that it would be some time before the door was open between Tharn and Konis.
The rattle of mercenary rifles broke into his thoughts. He turned and saw half a dozen figures in the open door of the command machine, all blazing away. Blade picked up the grenade launcher and was loading it again when several of the people got in their blows first. Trailing smoke, their grenades sailed through the air, two of them straight into the command machine's door. Smoke and flame erupted half a dozen times in as many seconds and bodies and pieces of bodies fell smoking out of the murk. Then people and Peace Lords together were running frantically toward the command machine. Blade leaped from the chariot and joined them in time to be only a few seconds behind the leaders in reaching the machine.
The battle in the dark, smoke-filled corridors of the command machine was still another butchery. Blade remembered guns roaring in his ears, strangling one mercenary with his bare hands, stamping on the chest of another until the ribs caved in, being grazed by pellets in half a dozen places. But that was all he remembered between the moment he entered the machine and the moment he stood looking, down at an open locker. In that locker lay another atomic bomb.