Indira watched—first with surprise, and then with awe—as Joseph’s javelin rose higher and higher into the sky. Higher and higher. Beyond its flight, far back, stood the figure of the ogghoxt commander.
I don’t believe it.
“I don’t believe it,” whispered Julius. “That’s a gold medal in the Olympics.”
The javelin reached the top of its arc and began sailing down.
“No, Julius,” she said.
Straight toward the ogghoxt commander.
I don’t think she even sees it coming.
The javelin struck right between the commander’s eyes, and sank at least two feet into her head. She fell like a stone.
“That spear cast belongs to an earlier time. Only Homer could have done it justice.”
Joseph and Jens, side by side, smashed into the Utuku. The other members of the shock squad formed a wedge behind them. As the ferocity of their attack split open the Utuku center, the Pilgrims poured in behind, widening the breach.
On the left, Ludmilla and Takashi now ordered a change in tactics. The platoons abandoned all subtlety and fell onto the Utuku, assegais flashing. The Utuku right flank, already demoralized, began to give way completely.
On the right, Indira heard a sudden burst of gukuy voices, speaking in a tongue she did not know.
Kiktu battle language, she realized. Far back, perched upon a battlemother who had remained out of the fray, she spotted the figure of a gukuy. The new commands were issuing from her, and being passed forward. Suddenly, the Kiktu warriors abandoned their fluid maneuvers and smashed directly into the Utuku.
That must be Kopporu. She, too, realizes that the decisive moment is here.
The Utuku left began to collapse.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Julius whisper.
She looked to the center, and held her breath. Joseph, Jens, and their small squad of shock troops had become isolated. Inexperienced in a large battle, using combined forces, they had overestimated the ability of the Pilgrims to keep pace with them. They were surrounded now by Utuku warriors. Here, in the relatively unblooded center, the Utuku battle commanders had been able to maintain a semblance of discipline and control. Now, seeing the demons finally immobilized, the Utuku took courage and began a frenzied assault.
The Mother of Demons watched her children begin to die. The combat was furious, the carnage incredible; and for every human boy who fell, a dozen Utuku were slain. Some strange, new, cold part of her mind took satisfaction in the fact. But—
Indira watched the blood gush from Harry Jackson’s neck, half severed by a flail blow, and knew he would be dead within seconds; and remembered the time she had held him in her arms, trying to console a sobbing eight-year-old boy desolated by the death of the little owoc spawn he had tried to shelter. She watched an Utuku warrior, with her dying effort, wrestle Esteban Sanchez to the ground. Watched as the flails of other Utuku rained down upon him. Watched Jens try to save him, be driven back, then rally. Watched the methodical fury with which he butchered the Utuku assailing his comrade. Watched his heroic effort fail of its purpose. For even at that distance Indira could read the lifelessness in Esteban’s body, when Jens finally reached him. Watched a cluster of Utuku surge over Ahmed Khoury and Ed Kincaid, stripping flesh from bones. And saw them recoil, their murderous work done, from Joseph’s terrible vengeance.
The Pilgrims pushed forward, trying to break through to the isolated humans. The shield wall held them back. The Utuku warriors in the center were regaining courage, seeing the demons finally die. The Utuku flanks were now caving in completely, and Indira thought the battle would be won. But not in time to save the handful of boys trapped in the center pocket.
And now we’re learning the oldest secret of war, she thought bitterly. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Were it not for Joseph and Jens, she knew, the little pocket of human warriors would have been overrun by now. But those were the two strongest of the human warriors, the greatest, and they were now in the fullness of their rage, and their power, and their glory. And while a part of Indira’s mind wept for her dying children, and another part quailed at the fearsome slaughter Joseph and Jens were wreaking in their downfall—