The impact was devastating in its physical finality.
The shins of the front-rank cavalry mounts struck the rigid three-inch hemp thick ship rope. Then, the physics of dynamic driving force took total control. The horses’ forelegs were checked instantly. Meanwhile, their twelve-hundred-pound bodies continued forward under unstoppable heavy rush.
Ten massive warhorses somersaulted wildly through the air all at once, crashing into the chalk hardpan with sickening thuds that shook the ground. Saddles snapped, stirrup leathers tore away, and riders were catapulted twenty feet forward into the dust, their armor clattering like sacks of discarded iron.
The second rank of hired blades, blinded by their own torches and unable to check their headlong driving force, plowed directly into the tangled mass of downed horses and rolling men. Mounts screamed, rearing and tumbling sideways, their riders thrown under the hooves of the horses behind them.
In less than ten seconds, twenty-eight of the forty vanguard horsemen were unseated, sprawling in a dazed, tangled heap across the limestone shelf.
From behind the wagon low roof wall, not a single shot had been fired.
“Bring up the lashing irons!” Tomas shouted from the wagon tailgate.
Thirty refugee wagon drivers vaulted over the wagon side-boards, armed not with swords, but with six-foot ash timber levers, heavy leather hobbles, and coils of half-inch hemp lashing line. Moving with the calm, careful teamwork of dockworkers securing loose deck cargo in a squall, they moved among the fallen hired blades.
