As for the rest of the horde, it was now trapped between Waffing's men to the west and Feric's to the east, halved in size, cut off from relief, and surrounded.
Waffing's troops were dug in along a wide front in the flattened suburbs of western Lumb. From behind the cover of trenches and rude earthen embankments, thousands of Helder troops sent a continuous hail of bullets at the waves of Warriors that the Zind horde ceaselessly launched against their positions. From far behind the lines, the old Helder steam dreadnaughts lobbed high explosives onto the horde without fear of retaliation from the shorter ranged mortars of the Zind war-wagons. Thick clouds of acrid smoke obscured the air for miles along this front, and the din was nothing short of terrific.
By the time Feric's force approached the Zind rear echelon from behind, the horde, by sheer force of numbers, had established forward positions no more than a hundred yards from Waffing's front trenches, quite literally behind a huge embankment of dead Warriors, and directly in the face of withering machine-gun fire. As Feric watched from the crest of a rise, rank after rank of Warriors marched forward firing their rifles in synchronized mass volleys. Almost immediately, these creatures were torn to pieces by the Helder machine guns, but they were just as rapidly replaced by yet another rank of robotized ten-foot giants. Each new surge of Warriors brought the horde a foot or two closer to the Helder lines, though at enormous cost in manpower. The horde moved forward by a process of slow erosion, as imperceptibly, but as irresistibly, as a glacier moves down a mountain.
The vast horde that stretched before Feric marched steadily westward, endless rank after rank, straight into the barrels of Waffing's guns. Feric grinned wolfishly at Best. "The last thing the Doms expect is an attack from the rear!" he exclaimed. "We'll crush them between us like the insects they are!"
Peric waved the Steel Commander thrice overhead, and the SS shock troops went into terminal battle formation: thousands of motorcycles spread out along a broad front on either side of'Feric, with the tanks evenly interspersed amidst this forward wall.
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Feric swung the Great Truncheon down through the air, gunned his motorcycle engine and led this grand troop of men and metal down the rise and across the charred and broken ruins of Lumb straight for the rear of the Zind horde. As the SS force swept forward, the tank cannon fired barrage after barrage into the ranks of the enemy, concentrating their fire on the war-wagons, blowing scores of them sky-high in a few short minutes, so that by the time the motorcycles and tanks actually reached the horde, dozens of Warrior formations had already been converted into mobs of drooling, panicked animals.
Feric fell on a score of Warriors from the rear, smashing their skulls from behind with a heroic blow of the Great Truncheon. Amazingly enough, the ranks of ten-foot giants continued to march forward toward Waffing's line, ignoring the SS motorcyclists and tanks even as this force tore them to pieces. The motorcycle SS mowed down rank after rank of Warriors with their machine guns without encountering resistance. Best cut down a score of the creatures with a single burst of his submachine gun, a look of utter incredulity on his face.
By the time the remaining Dominators managed to turn their rear echelons around to cope with the SS attack, Feric had led his men deep into the horde, inflicting incredible carnage on the enemy; moreover, so many war-wagons had been destroyed and Dominators slain that there were more rogue Warriors thrashing about insanely than there were disciplined troops. The Zind advance toward Waffing's positions fell apart in a mad melee of thrashing, shrieking, defecating animalism.
Seeing this and therefore knowing that Feric's men had arrived on the scene, every last man in Waffing's army erupted from the trenches and stormed forward in all-out do-or-die charge.
The Zind horde, already thrown into utter disarray, was now caught between two great advancing lines of Helder steel and heroism. The outcome of the battle under such conditions was a foregone conclusion.
Slashing his way through veritable seas of sour-smelling crazed Warriors who thrashed about pointlessly as they died, Feric was filled with a fierce elation. Each great blow of the Steel Commander felled another brace of obscene monstrosities; each Warrior slain was one less enemy left alive to bar his way to total victory. All around him, the SS
mowed down Warriors with an ever-increasing frenzy, sum-165
moning up vast reservoirs of hysterical strength, perhaps somehow drawing on the resources of the racial will itself.
Feric and his men were united in a battlefield communion of heroic and triumphant struggle in which time and fatigue were empty words devoid of meaning.
