Vault of the Ages by Poul Anderson

Carl!”
    He looked up into Owl’s anxious face and climbed unsteadily erect, leaning on the younger boy. “Not much,” he mumbled. “Flung stone—my helmet took the blow—” His skull throbbed, but he stooped to pick up his weapons.
    Back and forth the struggle swayed, edged metal whistling against armor and flesh, deep-throated shouts and hoarse gasps and pain-crazed screams, the air grown thick with arrows and rocks. Ralph was not in sight—Carl’s heart stumbled, then he glimpsed his father’s tall form on foot, hewing about him. His horse must have been killed—
    Horse! Where were the Lann horses?
    Carl grew chill as his eyes ranged past the fight, down the hill to the river. Only the empty tents and the empty trees to be seen. What were two thousand mounted devils doing?
    A scream of horns and voices gave him the answer. He looked right and left, and a groan ripped from him. They had come from the woods into which they had slipped. They were charging up the hilland from the side against the Dalesmen’s cavalry. He felt the rising thunder of galloping hoofs, saw lances drop low and riders bend in the saddle, and he yelled as the enemy struck.
    The impact seemed to shiver in his own bones. Lances splintered against shields or went through living bodies. The inexperienced Dalesmen fell from the saddle, driven back against themselves in a sudden, wild whirlpool… Swords out, flashing, whistling, hacking, rising red!
    The Dale foot soldiers had all they could do to stand off the unending Lann press. Meanwhile, their flanks were being driven in, crumpling, horses trampling their own people, warriors speared in the back by lances coming from the rear. Carl fumbled for an arrow, saw that he had used them all, and cursed as he drew his sword and slipped his left arm into the straps of his shield.
    The Lann gongs crashed and the Lann pipes screamed in triumph, urging their men on against a wedge that was suddenly breaking up in confusion. Carl saw one of the guards fall, saw Ralph leap into the vacant saddle, and dimly he heard his father’s roar: “Stand fast! Stand fast!”
    It was too late, groaned the boy’s mind. The Dalesmen’s host was broken at the wings, forced back against itself by Lann cavalry raging on the flanks and Lann footmen slipping through loosened lines. They were done, and now it was every man for himself.
    A couple of enemy horsemen saw the little knot of archers at the thicket, laid lances in rest, and charged. Carl saw them swelling huge, heard the ground quivering under hoofs, caught a horribly clear glimpse of a stallion’s straining nostrils and the foam at its mouth and the rider’s eyes and teeth white in a darkened, blood-streaked face. He acted without thought, hardly heard himself shouting. “Tom, Owl, get that horse—the legs—”
    His own sword dropped from his fingers. The lance head was aimed at his breast, he skipped aside, and it blazed past him. He sprang, clutching at the reins beyond as he had often done to stop runaways. The shock of his own weight slammed back against his muscles. He set his teeth and clung there, and the horse plunged to a halt. Tom’s knife gleamed by Carl’s feet, hamstringing. The horse screamed, and a dim corner of Carl’s mind had time to pity this innocent victim of human madness. Then the Lann warrior was springing lithely from the stirrups, to meet Owl’s spear thrust andfall in a rush of blood. The other horse was running riderless, its master sprawled in the grass with a Dale arrow in him.
    But the Dalesmen were encircled, trapped, fighting desperately in a tightening ring. Lann were among them, cutting, smiting, riding their foes down. Carl and his little band stood by the thicket looking at a scene of horror.
    Light was dimming—gods, was the sun down already? Or… had the struggle lasted this long?
    “To me, Dalesmen! To me!”
    Ralph’s deep shout lifted over the clatter and scream of battle. He and the remnants of his guards