They were a hundred yards away.  The sound of their howling was thunder on the plain.  The earth trembled beneath their charge.  Brandor peered over the top of his rectangular shield.  He knew what was to come.  The mob of faces advancing towards him would eventually resolve into one face, the face of the man who would crash a club down on his shield with all his might. 

Brandor would fix on that face.  And that man, that wild man would be fixed on his.  War would come down to the two of them.

Eighty yards, seventy.  His grip on the shield strap tightened.  A light sweat crept between his right palm and the hilt of his sword.  Sixty yards, he now could single out one man, staring back, mouth open in a war cry, black hair flying about in the rising breeze, heading directly for him. 

Then a whoosh of air, a hum, a vibration like a thousand strings plucked.  The thwack of steel on flesh followed by cries of pain and the thud of bodies on the grassy turf.

All along the line men were dropping like flies, festooned with arrows.  Those following them stumbled over their bodies, falling as well, then trampled by the surge of more ranks of the enemy. 

The man he had singled out was dead on the plain, an arrow to his eye, his body pounded to a pulp by the mob overtaking him.  Now Brandor saw another man fix on him, a new doom.

Again the air was roiled with a storm of arrows.  Again the Balchoth front line melted away in screams and falling bodies which were trundled over by the crush of the following wave.  Once again Brandor was spared.

But now he did not care.  Neither did the long spear men behind him, anxious to bury their points in the faces of any snarling Balchoth who would venture to other side of Brandor’s shield.  Now they had seen swift death at the point of an arrow.  The enemy was not invincible. 

His pulse was rising, face flushing.  They were scarcely thirty yards away now.  He imagined the first blow of a club on his shield, then the weight of men pushing against it.  He also envisioned the rip as his sword point plunged past a shabby tunic deep into the body holding that club.  An electric thrill shook his body, strength swelled his limbs.  The world closed in again to one man charging him, wild eyed, mouth writhing in snarl, club raised for the blow.

 He was at war.