No less than three horses Oleric had killed under him. When the last was gone, he climbed into a chariot and fought at the point of his rumbling wedge. Behind him from the forests a force entered the plain and the conflict that was mightier than all the red captain's horsemen and battalions.
Zoar had come.
In the shadow of the tall trees where the bending limbs swept their mighty backs, Zoar marshaled thirty of his amalocs and set them in battle array—a single line, with twenty intervening feet between each beast. If Zoar knew aught of amalocs, and he thought that he did, there would be need for no second line. A hundred men and as many horses ran about the legs of the monsters, tightening the broad girths that held the basketlike turrets on the mammoths' shoulders. The beasts stood quietly, swinging their huge trunks and weaving from side to side, as was their habit. Occasionally one of them cocked forward a great blanket of an ear as though in lazy wonderment at the din on the plains.
On the head of each, with his back to the turret, and clutching his keen-pointed ankus, sat a driver in full armor.
When all was ready, the spear-throwers and archers clambered up by rope-ladders and took their places in the towers.
At the left of the line, and nearest to the river, was Ixstus, patriarch and giant of the herd. And on the broad head of Ixstus beside the driver rode Zoar of the many years.
Along the line from beast to beast passed the word:
"We are ready, Father Zoar."
"Ixstus!" said the old man. The sail-like ears gave attention. "Ixstus, I have raised you since a calf, and I think you love me after your fashion. Do not fail me now, Ixstus. Go forward, fearing nothing. Akko dor!"
Zoar's last words were spoken loudly. Thirty vast trunks lifted up. From thirty huge proboscides pealed forth the amaloc trumpet-call—such a call as might have shaken the forests in the ages before the first puny man began his life of fear.