CHAPTER LII.
THE BATTLE OF CALNOGOR.
Long ere we reached Calnogor we discovered the royal army alreadymarshalled to meet us. It lay above the city in globes of wayleals andbockhockids still more prodigious than ours. It was composed of threearmies, ranged one above the other, and each army being equal innumbers to our own. Thus, forming a solid parallelogram of amazingmagnificence, the royal army awaited our onset. Its bockhockids,formed in ten globes of ten thousand in each, and led byGrasnagallipas, the lord of invention, were the flower of the army,and occupied a central position, where possibly they would do thegreatest damage to us. High overhead in a chair of state, supported bytwenty wayleals, sat Coltonobory, commander-in-chief of those immenselegions that were ready to do battle for the defeat of the cause oftheir late goddess and the honor of their king.
The sight of two such armies of winged gladiators sweeping toward eachother in revolving globes was one of breathless interest. Theapproaching fight was a question of life or death to both combatants.Defeat to Aldemegry Bhoolmakar meant possibly the loss of crown andkingdom, and our defeat meant the annihilation of the party of reformand the cause of Lyone. We were eager to begin the fight withoutdelay.
To obtain greater freedom of action, I led the army up into the regionwhere there was no gravity. The movement was followed by a similarmovement on the part of the royal armies, who rose like a swarm oflocusts to meet us. The noise of so many wings in motion was like thatof a roaring storm, and formed an inspiring accompaniment to the musicthat rang upon the sunlit air.
Here, fifty miles above the white city beneath, both armies closedupon each other. There was a fearful yell of "Bhoolmakar!" answered byas loud a shout of "Lyone!"
Our army was literally buried in the centre of the enemy. Theimpetuous priests of Egyplosis and the no less eager priestessesperformed prodigies of valor.
Our mitrailleuses were a complete surprise to the enemy. Thousands oftheir wayleals were killed ere they could deliver a blow with theirspears.
There was considerable slaughter on both sides, but the enemy dependedlargely on their magnic spears and shields, while we handled our gunswith terrible effect.
The volunteer army under Hushnoly suffered greatly by thedemoralization caused by the enemy's bockhockids under Grasnagallipas.The terrible legs of those machines destroyed the military formationof our wayleals, producing a continuous panic, and permitting theenemy's wayleals to work a ghastly slaughter in their broken ranks. Inrevenge our bockhockids with their more deadly weapons literally toretheir globes to pieces. Notwithstanding our superior arms, the greaternumbers of the enemy made them a match for us.
The rushing of wings, the explosions of the machine guns, the clashingof spears and the yells of the combatants made a scene of infernalhorror. As the focus of battle swayed hither and thither, it leftbehind a trail of blood, dead and wounded bodies, broken wings, spearsand revolvers. The _debris_ of the battle simply floated out on theair, veritable clouds of disaster. Irregular masses of dead andwounded wayleals and broken bockhockids floated in heaps amid pools ofblood.
The enemy could only succeed by stabbing, whereas our wayleals werescorpions whose guns were fatal. With the points of their spears theymade great havoc in our battalions. But as long as our ammunitionlasted their formations were immediately shrivelled up.
Coltonobory began to mass his army in the form of an immenseoutspreading hemisphere of the form of an open umbrella. His intentionwas to enclose us on all sides, and so if possible devour us. I atonce ordered the army to take the form of a cone, each legion being asegment thereof, whose apex was formed of bockhockids, and whose basewas wide circles of wayleals. With a blast of the trumpet I drove theentire army like an enormous javelin right through the heart of thefoe, tearing a yawning chasm, half a mile in diameter, in his ranks!
We lost fully two thousand men in this movement, and the foe over tenthousand in killed and wounded.
The enemy, paralyzed by the onset, became consolidated into three orfour immense globes. In front of these they placed their bockhockids,whose monstrous limbs alone could keep our spears at a safe distance.It was the intention of Coltonobory to ram us with the cohorts led byGrasnagallipas and his bockhockids.
Hastily re-forming our broken ranks as before, I ordered a flankmovement, rapid and decisive. Our bockhockids plunged into atremendous mass of wayleals. Into the chasm thus made in the ranks ofthe enemy General Zooly-Soase threw her amazons, protected on eitherside by the legion of priests of Egyplosis under Gerolio. Thepriestesses, whose spears were particularly long and powerful, didterrible execution. The enemy was for a time panic-stricken as theglorious girls made their successful onset. Their dramatic beauty andthe flash of their spears made a scene of imposing grandeur.Coltonobory, recovering from his surprise, ordered his bockhockids tothe centre of the fight. To prevent the sacrifice of the priestessesby overwhelming odds I sent the bockhockids of art to theirassistance. These swept to the rescue like a flight of eagles, and theempyrean echoed to the roar of the combat.
The fighting now became general. The sunlit heavens seemed filled withthe ferocity of war. The discharge of guns, the yells of wayleals, thetrumpet signals of the commanders, the crash of swords and spears, theceaseless motion of wings, and the long trail of dead and woundedcombatants that followed the fight like the _debris_ of a comet, was asight but rarely beheld by human eyes.
Each army seemed so equally balanced--the king's army had theadvantage in numbers and our own the advantage in weapons--thatneither party could yet claim a victory. Further fighting seemeduseless until some new tactics were employed; therefore I gave ordersfor a cessation of the battle, and caused flags of truce to behoisted.
Both armies indeed required food and repose, and the wounded requiredimmediate attention. The enemy was no less anxious for a truce thanourselves, consequently all fighting ceased and both armies withdrew.Several miles apart sentinels were placed on guard on outposts in theatmosphere, and our wayleals threw themselves upon the air in variousattitudes of repose.
In company with Generals Hushnoly, Ladalmir, Gerolio, Zooly-Soase,Thoubool, Charka, Yermoul, Starbottle and Goldrock, I visited thescene of the battle.
How ghastly the realities of war! There floated irregular piles ofdead and wounded bodies, from which poured many a trickling stream ofruddy life, which formed immense cloud-pools of blood surrounding eachghastly pile. The heaped-up masses of the dead would vibrate, as somepoor suffocating wretch struggled in his last agonies. Dr. Merryferryand his assistants hastily took possession of the wounded, andministered to their necessities. Water was supplied them from theleathern bags of water that formed part of the commissariat supplies.
I ordered a detachment of wayleals to separate the living from thedead, and bear the wounded to Kioram for immediate attention.
The saddest sight of all was a cluster of fifty beautiful priestesses,embracing one another in the long caress of death. They had been slainwith the magnic spears, so happily there were no gaping wounds fromwhich the life-blood flowed. Ardsolus and Merga lay dead where thefight was hottest, both slain at once.
The dead and wounded twin-souls were sent to Egyplosis as quickly aspossible, and the process of clearing the air of the havoc of war wascarried out both by the enemy and ourselves with the greatestdespatch.
The losses of the enemy were four times greater than ours, owing tothe tremendous execution done by our gigantic pistols. The royaltroops presented in ghastly groups every possible posture of the humanbody that could be created by rage, pain, fear or madness.
How I wished some eloquent historian could have floated through thatabyss of horror on distended wings, and, pen in hand, describe itsdramatic desolation and terror. Clouds of vultures and the seemorghwere devouring the dead bodies, and, as they fought for choicemorsels, flapped their wings in pools of gore. Many of the combatants,including some of my own sailors, were drowned in globes of blood.