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This screaming onslaught confirmed our intentions long before the Hamalese had been drawn away by
feint attacks. The Bridge and Gate of Voxyri were the widest and quickest way into the city and
therefore the best. They were and it was. Except except that right here and now we saw cogent
reasons why they and it were the worst possible ways we could have chosen.
From the Gate moved out long columns of soldiers, swods of Hamal in perfect line and dressing, trotting
on with ranked shields, with crossbowmen flanking, with standards unfurled, trotting on to deploy into
their long lines of armed and armored men. They were ready. They had not suddenly been called up from
barracks or billets, summoned with drumming urgency from their beds. They were ranked and ready
waiting.
And, from the narrower Gate of Rosslyn along the way giving access over the canal trotted squadron
after squadron of cavalry.
For whatever reason, the Hamalian army had not been decoyed. Now they deployed, faced front, and
advanced.
The roaring ranging mass of people hurtling down on them had no form or order. Archers and spearmen,
swordsmen and axemen, all mixed up together in a boiling torrent, they spumed along like the primeval
breakers of the sea itself. The long ordered lines of shields would meet them unyieldingly and the swords
of the swods, blood-drenched, would be unmerciful.
As the iron legions of Hamal moved into view there was perceptible in the mass of crazed onrushing
people the barest check. The noise suffused reason. The regiments of Hamal marched out, deploying,
ranking shields. And my people, gathering themselves as men do about to burst into burning buildings,
gave a loud vociferous shout, a high shrilling moan of rapture, and flung themselves headlong on.
No rapture, no headlong charge, was going to carry partially armored and casually armed and shieldless
mobs over or through that iron wall.
Useless to sound the recall. All there was left to do was to kick in heels and go pelting down after those
crazed people of mine and burst through and so lead them, hoping that the inevitable stumbling falls of the
zorcas might break a way through the shield wall.
I turned to bellow at my choice band, I lifted out my legs to kick in, and I heard and saw the wonder,
the marvel as, indeed, I had surmised I might, hoping, and condemning my hope as evil.
The brazen trumpets shrilled high demanding notes into the heated air, all together, trilling
blood-thumpingly on sounding the Advance. I saw ah! I remember it I remember it... I saw
the long serried lines of vosk-skull helmets, bronze-fitted, glittering, the crimson plumes nodding defiantly
above. I saw the level wall of shields, crimson and yellow, gleaming. I saw the thickly-clumped forest of
pikes, all slanting as one, rank on rank. I heard the heavy resonant blam-blam-berram of the deep-toned
drums, and the trampling onrush of bronze-studded war-boots. Rank on rank, Relianch and Jodhri
advancing, the files of the Phalanx pressed on.
A pungent smell of the red flowers of the letha tree wafted to my nostrils hallucination, memory,
evocation of another time and place where this advancing machine of glory, devotion, war and
destruction had been born.
I trembled.
I, Dray Prescot, in the evil grip of grandeur, trembled. For Jak the Drang had warned and warned, and
the brumbytes had laughed and not cared to listen. And I knew what I knew. My tumultuous mobs of
undisciplined Freedom Fighters would be savaged and destroyed by the iron of Hamal. The temptation
shook me, terrible visions of what would occur tormented me. The Phalanx advanced, perfect in order,
moving as a single gigantic organism.
Could I? Dare I? What right had any man to demand the sacrifice of blood and life from another? Even
with the fate of a country, an empire and all its people, at stake?
I knew what Nath Nazabhan would say. I knew what the answering roar from the brumbytes and the
Hakkodins would be. And yet the consequences of selfishness were incalculable.
So, shaking, filled with indecision, hating the fates that had brought me to this, I sat my zorca. What
right...?
Because a man is called emperor and sits in the seat of power over multitudes of men and women
does that give him the right? I did not think so. I had been called to be emperor by those crazed mobs
who would so soon be destroyed and by those ranked and orderly pikemen who awaited my signal.
They had placed the power in my hands, and not because I am blessed or cursed with the yrium. I
cupped their fates in my hands. Worthy or not worthy, it was all down to me, and to me, simple
sailorman though I am, the fate of empire had been entrusted.
This vision of empire at Voxyri, this fleeting hallucination of power and glory as the Phalanx halted as
one, glittering, splintered with sun-glory, waiting my signal my signal! overwhelmed me. I saw the
flags proudly lofting above the Jodhris. Nath had told me the Jodhris had been given new treshes.
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