magic on Mearhold, and she had a fairly firm idea about what the jealous little brat might have done. That was something else she’d have to address if they lived through the day. Right now, she’d found another use for Spring.
Drustan had helped a little, magic-wise. By sacrificing an ox, so he said, he’d caused the wind to veer round to the east so that it was behind them. But that was it. He said that those who could use the gods’ powers could only draw a limited amount. Lowa had asked him if there was anyone else. He’d said no. The gods had shown him that he was going to find a young person who was the greatest ever practitioner of magic. He’d thought that this was Ragnall, and he’d even tricked Ragnall into believing he’d lit fires with his mind in order to draw it out of him, but now he knew that the young man had no contact with the gods. The magic youngster foretold was Spring.
But now Spring had lost her magic. Had the gods deserted her, Lowa wondered, because the Maidun army was doomed to be annihilated by the Dumnonians, and gods don’t like helping losers?
There was one way to find out.
She raised her arm and dropped it. The Maidun trumpets spewed their cacophony. Her army’s left, her mass of heavy chariots, stirred then surged towards the Dumnonian line of foot soldiers.
On her right, the Dumnonian chariots charged the Maidun infantry. Javelins launched. Maidunite shields appeared like a sudden bloom of flowers. There was a great howl of disappointment from the Dumnonians as their missiles were deflected by the revealed defences, but they charged on, swords aloft, wheel-blades flashing.
At the last moment, all along Maidun’s right flank, long spears sprung up like hair bristling on a wildcat’s neck. The Dumnonian chariot line faltered as thousands of reins were yanked in panic, but it was too late. The horses and chariots hit the infantry’s spears. A heartbeat later she heard the sound of a thousand wooden poles snapping under the impact of horses and people, followed by the screams of Danu knew how many Dumnonian horses and men as iron spear heads punctured their limbs, stomachs, faces … She thought of her own soldiers, kneeling behind shields as tons of man, horse, iron and wood smashed down around them. All along the Maidun line, horses’ hooves would be crushing skulls and splintered chariot draught poles impaling the chests of her own people. That had been unavoidable. She prayed that not too many were killed, and that none of them was Dug.
The Maidun front line held. The Dumnonian attack crumpled as wave after wave of horses, chariots and charioteers crashed into and on to the broken pile of their fallen comrades.
On the left, Maidun’s chariots stopped twenty paces short of the enemy line, as, Lowa thought with some satisfaction, the Dumnonian heavy chariots should have done. Maidunite javelins flew. The volley whumped harmlessly into thousands of Dumnonian shields. The Dumnonians shouted in delight, dropped their shields and charged. The Maidun chariots paused for a moment, then unleashed their second, unexpected salvo of javelins. That was much more successful, as were the third, fourth and fifth javelin volleys. Hundreds of Dumnonians fell. Their line dissolved in disarray. Some ran back to retrieve their shields. Some ran at the chariots. Captains screamed contradictory commands.
For centuries it had been the pan-tribal British custom to carry only one javelin in each chariot. You chucked that as an opener, then the crew-warriors dismounted for some proper mêlée fighting with swords, axes, hammers and the like. It hadn’t been easy, but Lowa was glad she’d talked the charioteers into flouting tradition and carrying five javelins each. Hopefully now, if they survived this battle, some of the other innovations she had in mind might be more readily accepted.
On the right, her infantry dropped their pikes and dashed in to finish off the downed charioteers. The Dumnonians saw the line broken, rallied and came at them, but the Maidun soldiers rolled back into their line, retrieved their spare, unbroken pikes, held them aloft and retreated steadily, backwards and outwards, away from Lowa and the centre. The Dumnonian heavy chariots pressed, but, having seen what happened to the first lot, held back from all-out attack on those bristling pikes.
Another discordant trumpet blast honked from the Dumnonian centre and their light chariots set off at a gallop to swing around Maidun’s right and attack the flank of