Under the tossing ivory fronts the divisions parted and drew aside. Zoar increased the distance between his beasts. Into thirty wide aisles the army split. From forest to front, save for the dead, the way was clear. From the wild vortex of the battle rose a stormy burst of cheering as the amalocs thundered down the aisles, and Ruthar's exultant warriors welcomed their gigantic allies. Wilder still was the cheering when it was seen that at the ends of the pathways the phalanxes of Bel-Ar's men-at-arms were crumbling away. Flesh and blood could not abide the onset that was coming, and the Maeronican legions broke and fled ingloriously across the plains in droves, many of them casting away their arms and shields as they ran. Bidding his charioteer pull in his horses, Oleric climbed up on the high front of his chariot to watch how Bel-Ar would meet this new stroke. What would meet the drive of the amalocs? As he reached his vantage-point, the answer came--a cavalry charge! From the wall of his camp, where he had been taken, nursing an arm that was numb from wrist to shoulder, the Maeronican king ground his teeth in fury as he saw the new force enter the battle and witnessed the melting of his legions. Once before, in the morning, his cavalry had been rudely handled, and he had laughed. Now, with tears of rage in his eyes, he dispatched his shattered squadrons in the teeth of the oncoming peril. White-faced captains and quaking men scrambled into their saddles to do their king's bidding, and the horsemen rode desperately to meet the beasts. What happened was simple. The amalocs plowed through the clouds of cavalry that opposed them with scarcely a break in their stride, overthrowing men and horses as though they had been of paper, and leaving ghastly ruins behind them where their ponderous feet had trodden. One such onset was enough. No horse that ever lived could have been forced to face another. For the amalocs, when they joined battle, set up such a din of squealing and trumpeting as nearly split the ears that heard it. The horse that could have met that grievous onslaught must have been both blind and deaf. From above, in the basket-turrets, the archers and spearsmen poured down a deadly hail of missiles on the riders. Did a horseman avoid the thrashing chains and get near enough to the vast side of an amaloc to strike--and not many did so--he found his spear-point rebound from the tough hide. The utmost power of his stroke was not a pin-prick to an amaloc. Even as the swordsmen had fled, so fled now the riders, betaking themselves in a fear-maddened stream to their camp, whither the charioteers had preceded them.