"Stay back, Ella," the prince commanded, as he spurred his black stallion into action, determined to be at the forefront of the attack.
Seeing her friends in the line, Ella ignored the prince and joined Shani, Bartolo, and Jehral, keeping her horse close by her red-robed friend.
Ella had to admit she was impressed, even exhilarated, to be travelling with such an army, imagining the fear that the lightning, storms and the horses themselves must strike into the enemy's hearts.
Yet as the air was filled with the thunder of hooves on the hard earth, the temperature suddenly dropped, giving Ella a premonition that something terrible was about to happen. Ella gripped her reins tightly in her hands, her knees pressed hard into the horse's flanks.
Ella saw that her breath was steaming in the chill air; surely such a rapid decrease in temperature wasn't natural?
The ground before her rose in a steep incline. Ahead, the thundering mass of riders crested the rise in front of her and then vanished under the hill as the warriors went down the other side. As the steepness increased Ella leaned forward in the saddle and spurred her horse on, realising she had lost sight of Jehral and only Shani and Bartolo were with her now.
Ella reached the crest and the vista opened up before her. An army such as the world had never seen raced down the hill: horses' hooves thundered, desert warriors raised scimitars above their heads, and lightning crashed around them so that the Hazarans must appear to be flying out of a storm that a moment ago had simply not been there.
Ella could now see the grey banner flying over the tightly-formed ranks of their enemy, with the opposing soldiers arranged into three columns. In the centremost column pikes could be seen rising up into the air, while the first dozen ranks held theirs bristled in front. The column to the left consisted of heavily-armoured men and women in grey tabards, each holding a sword or an axe. On the right was a smaller column of warriors with maces, while half a dozen men in silver robes clustered at the rear.
Ella knew something was terribly, desperately wrong. They were too disciplined; too motionless. Surely no one faced an attack like this without some men breaking.
The grey-clad axemen and swordsmen all held their weapons in the air, moving in perfect synchronisation. The pikemen braced themselves, grim and unwavering. One of the silver-robed men raised his arms in the air, as if summoning powerful magic.
The column of axemen and swordsmen on the left moved forward at an angle, the macemen on the right following suit, while the pikemen in the centre began an orderly retreat backwards, with the pikes in front still facing the screaming riders.
Unwittingly, Prince Ilathor's men were funnelled into the space that opened up in front of the retreating pikemen. Some of the long line of riders smashed into the swordsmen and macemen on the left and right, but the majority fell in behind those ahead, forming a spearhead that thrust into the space opening up in front of them.
Ella was no strategist, yet even she could see the disaster about to unfold. Placed as she was somewhere in the middle, she could see that the grey warriors now flanked the riders on the left and on the right, like the horns of a bull. Ella wondered at the incredible discipline of the enemy; they still hadn't made a sound, and their ranks were in such tight formation they reminded Ella of Halrana constructs.
Then the riders in front hit the bristling wall of pikes, and the grey warriors to the sides closed in.
The sound of thousands of horses being impaled was a scream and crunch that Ella never wanted to hear again. The prince's army, however, was by far the larger, and the momentum of the horsemen took them deep into the ranks of the pikemen. Desert warriors slashed down from horseback, their heavy sabres designed specifically for this type of combat, and Prince Ilathor turned them in an arc, evidently intending to drive into the swordsman on his left flank and burst through to regroup outside the enemy's attempted encirclement.
It might have worked, but the majority of the riders were facing forwards, and the swordsmen were on their left. With unbelievable ferocity, the flanks closed in, attempting to envelop the Hazarans in front, on the sides, and most dangerous of all, the rear.