In the camp of Bel-Ar that call found answer in the howl of hate and terror that went up from the ranks of the Maeronicans when they saw that their terrible foes were coming.
"Fire!" shouted Bel-Ar to his generals. "We must meet and turn the beasts with fire! Man the walls with torches and set a blaze before each gate."
Bel-Ar had pitched his encampment in a loop of the River Thebascu, a broad, swift stream, now swollen by the spring freshets into a dun-colored torrent. From bank to bank across the loop, the soldiers had constructed a wall of earth and stones, ten feet high, and pierced by six wide gateways, wherein were set heavy gates of steel and oak. Inside the line of the outer wall, with some fifty feet of space intervening, was another rampart, also of earth, and a few feet higher than the first. Outside of the works the camp was protected further by a semicircular ditch, or moat, spanned at each of the gateways by a solid bridge of timbers. The Maeronican engineers had turned the waters of the river into the moat and filled it level full. At the rear of the camp was the crossing of the Thebascu—three wide bridges of stone, which had been built in the long ago.
When they saw the advance of the amalocs, soldiers swarmed from the camp with ropes and horses, and strove to pull the timber bridges away from the ditch. But the weight of the passing and repassing of the army had sunk the beams into the earth so deeply that they could not be stirred. Failing in that attempt, the Maeronicans piled débris on the floors of the bridges and set fire to it, hoping to burn away the approaches. That, too, was a failure. The water of the moat, nearly level with the side-beams, was ankle-deep on the bridge-floors, and had soaked the timbers so that they would not catch from the fires.
As Zoar and his monsters came to the moat, the men of Bel-Ar shot at them with arrows, stones, and javelins. But Ruthar could play that game, too. Oleric lined the ditch between the bridges with slingers and archers, who kept up so thick a bombardment that they killed many men, and soon drove the Maeronicans to the shelter of their walls. As they went in, Bel-Ar's men touched flames to the piles of timbers and wrecked chariots before their gateways and closed their gates.
"Shall we cross the bridges and clear the way, Father Zoar?" asked Oleric.
"Nay," the master of the beasts replied, "that would be at the expense of many men, and yon is an ill place to fight in. Methinks I know a better plan."
Under his directions, his foresters ungirthed one of the mammoths and took from its back the wicker turret. Zoar called the driver of the beast to him. Whatever it was that the old man said, the amaloc-driver blanched somewhat at the words. He cast a quick glance toward the armed camp, and under his swarthy skin his face turned pale. Then he drew himself up proudly, saluted, and went back to his beast.
Clambering to his perch, the man found and pulled two small chains connected with the armored plates which protected the skull of his ponderous steed. These drew into place and closed fast two small doors, or lids, cunningly wrought of steel, and devised to cover the eyes of the beast. So blinded, the heart within the vast bulk became uneasy, and the mammoth began to back and sway, groping before it with its trunk.