Karnaki was at the flanks of the southern defense when she saw the attackers clash with her soldiers.
In a charge, the attacking cavalry always had the advantage of speed and impact: the sheer force of their charge often broke the spine of any defensive formation, driving them through the lines and into the heart of their target. In a pitched battle, that might not matter as much, since the whole field was filled with battling soldiers of both sides, but in a situation like this, it made a huge difference. The attackers were seeking to get past the defenses and into the grove of Riverdell, where they could achieve their main intent of killing the crown prince. That made the task of the defenders doubly hard: they had to not only stop the attackers from getting past them, they had to drive them back, as hard and as quickly as possible.
General Prishata’s solution was brilliant yet controversial. He had trained his defenders to attack the attackers. This was why the scouts and the positions mattered so much. Armed with that forewarning, the southern company of defenders had been instructed to begin their charge when their enemy was within a certain distance. They had begun racing at the approaching enemy, matching their approach with their own full-frontal assault.
Now, as Karnaki watched from the sidelines, staying well away from the main body of the defensive forces, she saw the attackers clash with the defenders. For some odd reason, a small bird was flitting over the heads of the attackers, wheeling about and tweeting as if alarmed by the madness of the humans below.
She forgot the sparrow in the next instant as the two forces clashed.
Both attackers and defenders, riding flat out toward each other, met in a deafening clash of armor and weapons, horses and leather, shields and swords, flesh and bones, and all the rest of the vulnerable, breakable things that armies are made up of.
The sound was as awful as anyone might expect. It made Karnaki’s hair curl and her spine crawl. She saw weapons and body parts flying through the air—saw soldiers and horses ramming full tilt into one another, smashing skulls, shattering bones, breaking bodies apart like ripe fruit. Animals screamed, people howled, and the air where they met was saturated with blood and dust and pain.
It took several more minutes of what looked like utter chaos and insanity before anything made sense again. It was only Karnaki’s practiced, battle-experienced eyes that could tell, even in those minutes, that the charge was going favorably for one particular side, and favorably only for them.
The attackers were prevailing.
The charge had smashed the brave southern defenders into pulp. Several hundred remained alive, but there were many more attackers still living, and they were already hacking and chopping and skewering the defenders with wild purpose. The defenders fought back bravely, sacrificing their limbs and their lives to defend their crown prince, but the weight of sheer numbers was telling. They could hold out for a while longer, keeping the occasional attacker from getting past them, but it was only a matter of time before they broke and were rubbed into the dust, into oblivion.
Karnaki rode westward, moving into a full gallop to get to the second point of intrusion. Due to the natural declivity and curvature of the landscape, these were the three most approachable points near Riverdell for any large-scale attack to be made. General Prishata’s deployment was perfect, in Karnaki’s opinion, and his tactics brilliant—but even the most acute knowledge of one’s theater of battle and the most astute use of one’s resources could not overcome the most basic advantage of war: numbers.