Nit'zak sat his horse in silence. He was angry at the tone of rebuke in his commander's voice, particularly in front of the other staff officers. It was a gross breach of Temujai behavior for Haz'kam to speak to him in such a fashion.

"So:what do you propose?" he asked finally.

For a long time, the general didn't answer. He gazed across the intervening space to the Skandian lines, looking from the command position in the center to the line of archers drawn up on his left-the Skandian right wing. Those two positions, he knew, held the key to this battle.

Finally, he turned to his deputy, his mind made up.

"Strip the first fifty Ulans of their Kaijin," he ordered. "And assemble them here as a special force. It's time we got rid of those damned archers."

"H ERE THEY COME AGAIN," H ORACE SAID, AND W ILL AND Evanlyn both turned to look toward the Temujai forces. The riders were cantering forward again, and this time it looked like a major attack. Haz'kam had committed nearly two thousand men to a frontal assault on the Skandian lines. They rode forward, their hoofbeats echoing in the valley, formed in a wedge shape that was aimed at the Skandian center and the command post where Halt, Erak and Ragnak directed the Skandian defense.

Will and Evanlyn had taken advantage of the lull in the fighting to take a quick bite to eat, and a welcome drink of water. Will's throat was parched, from both the tension and the nonstop shouting of orders. He guessed Evanlyn felt the same. Horace, who had already eaten, had been keeping watch. Now, at his call, Evanlyn slipped down into her sheltered position and the archers, who had been sprawled comfortably against the earthworks, came to their feet, bows in hand. The shield bearers, who had also been relaxing, took their positions beside them.

Silently, they waited. In the lull, the arrow bin in front of each archer had been replenished with new shafts. Even now, the women of Hallasholm were gathered in the Great Hall, making fresh arrows for the battle.

Will studied the mass of riders. He had seventy-five archers still standing in the line, several of them lightly wounded. They had lost eleven men, killed by Temujai arrows, and a further fourteen had been wounded too seriously to continue fighting. As the Temujai force advanced, Will estimated that he could manage four volleys before they reached the Skandian line. Maybe five. That would be three hundred arrows raining down on the tightly packed mass of horsemen, and in that formation, the incidence of hits would be high. If Will aimed for the center of the mass, even his undershoots and overshoots would be effective.

"Left front, position three!" he called, and the machine swung into action again.

"Ready!" called Evanlyn.

"Draw:shoot!" shouted Will. He gestured for Horace not to call the shields into position. As yet, they were not under attack. The more time he had to do damage to that mass of Temujai horsemen, the better chance he would give Halt and Erak to repel the Temujai's main thrust.

"Reload!" he called, and waited for Evanlyn's call once more. When it came, he sent another volley on its way. As it started its upward trajectory, the first volley came down and he saw horsemen falling once again.

"Left half left!" he called, swinging the aiming point to match the progress of the horsemen as they moved from right to left across his front. He called the elevation again, shortening this time, then another seventy-five shafts soared away with that now-familiar slithering sound of arrows scraping across bows. Now the horsemen were galloping and he adjusted the angle once more.

"Left left! Position two," he called. Evanlyn's call told him that the men had reloaded.

"Draw:shoot!"

And now he heard the first sounds of close combat as the leading ranks of horsemen made contact with the Skandian lines. It would be too risky to try to shoot into the Temujai front ranks now, but he could still interdict the ranks behind them.

"Left half left!" he called, and the archers swung their aim point back to the right by twenty degrees. Then suddenly, the air around him was alive with the hissing sound of arrows and all along the line his archers were falling, some crying out in pain and shock and others, more ominously, silent.

"Shields! Shields!" Horace was yelling and the shield bearers moved into position-but not before more archers went down. Desperately, Will swung around and saw, for the first time, the smaller group that had moved forward to attack his position while he had been busy engaging the main force. There were about fifty archers, he estimated, all mounted, pouring steady, accurate shots into his position. Behind them rode another, larger group armed with lance and saber.

"Target front!" he called, and muttered an aside to Horace: "Be quick with those shields when we need them."

The warrior apprentice nodded, watching anxiously as the fifty riders continued to shoot. Now arrows were thudding into his own shield, and into the earth rampart in front of them.

"Position one!" Will called. This was straight and level-point-blank range. "Draw!"

"Ready!" he heard Evanlyn call. Then Horace yelled for the shields to open and Will, almost on top of him, called for the release.

As the volley hissed on its way, Horace was already calling for the shields to come back into position again. But even in that short time, another half dozen of their men went down to the Temujai arrows.

Now Will noticed the red insignia on the Temujai shoulders and he realized why the standard of enemy archery had picked up in accuracy and rate of fire.

"They're all Kaijin!" he said to Horace. As he spoke, he raised his own bow and, shooting rapidly, emptied three saddles before Horace dragged him behind the shelter of his shield again. Half a dozen shafts slammed into it as he did so.

"Are you mad?" Horace cried, but Will's eyes were wild with pain as he looked up at his friend.

"They're killing my men!" he replied, and went to lunge out into the open once more, obsessed with the idea of stopping the Temujai specialists from picking his men off one at a time. Horace's big hand stopped him.

"It won't help if they kill you!" he yelled and, slowly, the sense of it all sank into Will's brain.

"Ready!" called Evanlyn. He realized that it was the third time she had given the call. She was prompting him to action. Still covered by Horace's shield, he assessed the position.

The lancers and swordsmen, unhampered by any harassing fire from the archers, were already closing with the Skandians in front of his position. Hand-to-hand fighting was breaking out along the line. Farther to his left, the main body of Temujai were engaged in a savage battle with the center of the Skandian line. The position was too confused to see who was winning if, indeed, anyone was.

Meanwhile, to his front, the Temujai marksmen, gathered by Haz'kam into a special unit, were cantering parallel to the Skandian defensive line, widely dispersed so as not to offer a massed target to his volleys, and engaging his archers with accurate, aimed shots as they were exposed. He knew that if he attempted to direct another volley at the Temujai, he would lose half his men in the exchange. There was only one solution now, he realized. He leaned over his parapet, yelling to the line of archers below him-a line that was now severely depleted, he saw.

"Individual shots!" he yelled, pointing to the cantering lines of Temujai Kaijin. "Shoot whenever you're ready and aim for their bowmen!"

It was the best he could do. At least this way the Temujai would not be presented with an open line of shields as his men fired. They would have to react to individuals firing irregularly. It would give his men a better chance of survival. It would also lessen the effectiveness of their shooting, he knew. Without central direction, their accuracy would fall away.