A brief, two-handed struggle with sword and mace—a sword stroke was parried, the swinging mace was not, and a splintered rib with shreds of flesh still sticking to it clung to the mace-pikes as an adversary fell, the left side of his body gone.
And the dead, still-quivering masses of flesh and bone were trampled as they fell, to be swiftly covered by other still-dying bodies which collapsed, writhing, atop them, to be trampled in their turn....
Doug shuddered uncontrollably. Kids, dying on a battlefield like this!
A pair of helmeted heads suddenly disappeared in a twin red gush from two pairs of sweating shoulders, and a group of twenty boys converged on the spot, fought for almost a minute, and then the heads were covered, and one boy at length dragged himself away, arms limp, helpless. He died while an evac ship was landing. The swinging mace that broke his back had not been necessary. He who wielded it fell also an instant later, his spine severed in a long, diagonal gash. And Doug thought how odd it was that a sword-cleft could look so like the tearing wound which a flying chunk of shrapnel would gouge.
He was so low now that he had long since lost sight of the lines' ends, had no way of knowing when encirclement at last would begin, when the center of each line would give way, when Final Phase would begin. But it seemed that the fighting had become less orderly, more closely-grouped, more frenzied. Within minutes the Third Phase map would be useless, and in Final Phase, there would be no knowing. No knowing until long after the end.
The altimeter needle said two hundred feet, when, if he had read the map with any degree of accuracy, he was over the area assigned to Tayne's Thirtieth Division. He had the ship straightened and descending when the blue light inset in the communications panel began to blink. He would let it blink. Yet if he answered, at least he would know their intentions....
Bloody young warriors sought desperately to give the great craft room as he descended. Some were incinerated in its back-blast, and Doug murmured a prayer that they had been among the already-dying. He would not let himself think that of all he had seen die, any two could have been Terry and Mike. He refused to let himself think that of the dozen turned to cinders by his descending jets, any two could have been Terry and Mike....
The blue-red ground came slowly up to meet him. The blue light kept blinking. He increased pressure on the bottom button—hovered, sank, hovered again, sank.
And when the ground was obliterated with the searing flame of his drive tubes, there was a gentle jar, and Doug let the button snap from beneath his finger. He was down, and there was not even time to feel relief.