by her archers’ arrows.
By the time she focused on the heavy wagons again, they had rolled up the plain and turned parallel to her own sweep, but facing in the opposite direction. She was wary but couldn’t ignore the possible threat, and so attacked. As her women plunged into shooting range the covered sides of the wagons suddenly dropped, revealing cannons. Their firing teams stood at the “ready” position and as Elemnestra and her women raised their bows, an officer in the lead wagon drew his sword and shouted an order. The cannons fired simultaneously, spewing out a broadside of chain shot and broken metal, which ripped into the galloping archers. Three hundred horses fell, disintegrating in a crimson explosion of flailing limbs and riders.
A huge cheer erupted from the Imperial troops. The devil-women were no more.
Up on the defensive earthworks, Thirrin screamed in horror as she watched the slaughter of the archers. She turned and ran, calling for her cavalry as she went. Beside her ran Tharaman-Thar and Taradan, each roaring out a summons to their warriors. The horses of the cavalry were quickly assembled, their troopers mounted, and the leopards in position. In a blazing fury, Thirrin led the cavalry of the Icemark and the Icesheets out onto the plain. Tharaman-Thar kept perfect pace beside her stallion as his leopards let out the strange coughing bark of their war cry.
Aware of their approach, the enemy stood quietly, their cannons reloaded with chain shot. Theirs would be the greatest prize of all; they would kill the warrior-queen of the Icemark and her tame fighting leopards. The soldiers sang as Thirrin and her cavalry thundered toward them, certain this action would signal the end of the hard-fought war.
But among the scattered and broken bodies of the fallen Hypolitan archers, Elemnestra eased her badly wounded frame to lean against the corpse of her horse. She barked orders to the thirty or so women of the three hundred who were still able to shoot, and encouraged them to hurry. She knew she must destroy the cannons before Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar were in range. Her women quickly tied rags to their arrows and set them alight, laying them carefully among the flattened mat of bloodied wildflowers at their feet. Then, as Elemnestra struggled to her knees, they raised their bows, and on her orders shot their first flight. Thirty burning arrows rained down among the gunpowder barrels of the cannons. The Polypontian officer shouted orders to his musketeers, and they raised their weapons. With Thirrin’s six-thousand-strong cavalry bearing down on them, he couldn’t waste any more cannon shot on the fallen archers; he just wouldn’t have time to reload and fire again before they were hacked to pieces by sabers and claws. But by now the second and third flight of flaming arrows had already fallen among the barrels. With desperate speed the gun teams snatched the burning rags away and stamped on them, but more fell, faster than they could move.
At last the muskets fired, but the women had dived for cover and now stood ready again to shoot their deadly rain. With a desperate scream a young soldier tried to smother a burning barrel with his body, but then a vicious screaming crack erupted into the air and the wagon was blown apart. Almost simultaneously the remaining five wagons burst skyward on a blooming forest of flame. Broken cannon and shot burst outward in a deadly driving hail, killing and wounding hundreds of the soldiers who stood nearby. The survivors of Elemnestra’s mounted archers were also blown aside by a killing hand of fire that finally ended the elite regiment of the Hypolitan.
Thirrin cried out in grief and rage when she realized what had happened and, rising out of her saddle, she drew her saber and shouted out the battle paean of the Icemark. The six thousand warriors of her cavalry, human and leopard, answered, their voices ferocious and deadly. They swept down on the disrupted ranks of the Empire’s soldiers, killing and killing in an attempt to avenge the loss of Elemnestra and her archers, and when at last the iron discipline of the Polypontian army was broken, they rode after them, cutting them down as they ran.
When the few hundred who’d survived her attack scrambled to the safety of their lines, Thirrin led her cavalry in a charge across the plain to smash into the Empire’s units, who’d drawn out the fyrd with their sham retreat. By now the