But Paulos’s men held steady, and there was neither shouting nor cheering, only the harsh cries of the N.C.O.’s bidding them shoot steady and all together. For a space we held the attackers off, but ever the pressure increased as they drove upon us again and again, till finally they forced us from our last cover out on to the open hilltop, where my little reserve of mounted men were already busy loosing arrows against the enemy now massing behind us.
We flung back our flanks to complete a circle, and then they swarmed upon us from all sides, and we fought in a close-packed ring as with a last endeavour they sought to dislodge us before our main army, now clear to view, gleam of spear-point and glint of mail in the dust, could reach the hills.
They broke into our ring, and we beat them out once, fighting hard in silence. There was no more chance for the long bows, and men fought with sword or knife or heavy axe, and here and there, in stark primeval fashion, with tooth and clutching hand. Then a last rush broke into our centre, and the fight swayed and split as my little troop was carried right over the hilltop in a stabbing, spitting rush of savage men in Shaman mail, and Brown Sakae wadded felt or sheepskin. My standard-bearer, most of my mounted men, Payindah, Philos, and a handful of his own company—we checked them once again, and found our feet; and, looking backward, I saw our leading troops very near, and below us enemy pouring past to try and check their onslaught while those above finished us. In they came again, while beyond us—close-packed—some forty of my men fought in a little ring of trees, while Shamans and Brown Sakae surged about them like a pack around a bayed boar.
Philos—just in front of me—sent his sword home in the throat of a mail-clad Shaman, and as he did so was beaten down by an axe-blow over the head. My last pistol bullet settled the axeman as I sprang in over Philos, Paulos’s blade in my hand. I thanked my stars then for my early-fostered taste for swordsmanship, for there was no time to reload.
A long-haired, long-moustached man, with a face like a bird of prey, leapt in at me with others on either hand, while behind them more dim figures surged up. His long knife came sweeping up from below, but I caught it in time with the low parry my old maître d’armes used to rub into me when I was a lad in France, and the instinctive riposte drove in below the man’s belt, and he swayed over sideways, nearly wrenching my sword from my hand. A spear rang home on my chest, knocking me sideways as I freed my blade, and then I realized Payindah’s presence as his rifle spoke almost in my ear, and the owner of the spear went down in a huddled mass.
The enemy checked a second then, and I saw that Philos moved and tried to raise himself, and the absence of any heavy flow of blood about his head made me think he was only stunned. Then in they surged anew, and for a breathless instant I fought for my life with a mail-shirted, clean-shaven Shaman, with an expressionless face and the mouth of a fiend, and eyes that seemed made of yellow jade. Once he nearly got home with a thrust that I parried only just in time, and the riposte was too slow, for he jumped out and in again like a wild-cat. But, as he came on the second time, I caught him in the throat with the long, straight-armed coup d’arrêt, and my point stood out a clear three inches behind his neck muscles as his expressionless eyes rolled upward, and he sank a dead weight on my sword. Then a tearing hot pain in my right thigh brought me to the ground as my leg was swept from under me by a spear with a greasy sheep-skin-coated ruffian at the other end.
My jade-eyed man and I came down in a heap over Philos, who was trying to get to his feet again, and there was another sickening wrench as the greasy man dragged his spear-point clear for a final thrust. Luckily in Sakaeland they favour the thin, small, leaf-shaped spear with razor edges.
He shortened spear as I struggled on the ground, and then Payindah leapt across me—a shadow against the blue sky and the ring of men around—and his bayonet went home under the man’s ribs. Hardly was it in when he pulled it free again to drive the rifle-butt with all his force into the jaw of a knifeman who sprang upon him. The man reeled backward—his jawbone smashed—and then with a rush and a whirl the first wave of our people from behind swept over us in a storm of steel; and a mixed mob of Shaman, Brown Sakae, and our own Blue Sakae troops went swirling on down the hill, and the little hilltop was silent a moment ere a new rush of our people pressed over it.
Philos had got to his feet and stood unsteadily, looking round over the stricken remnants of our companies. Then a new throng of Kyrlos’s folk passed over us, Andros sword in hand, his eagle plumes gay in his steel cap ahead of them. Seeing us, he waved on his men and stopped.
“Sore hurt, Harilek?” he queried, as I lay on the ground, while Payindah and my standard-bearer tied up my leg, which was bleeding freely.