brazenunrest. Alongside the beasts walked Derba carrying Barbara

- their refuge the mountains, should the cause of the king be lost;
as soon as they were over the river they turned aside to ascend the

Cliff, and there awaited the forging of the day's history. Then
first Curdie saw that the housemaid, whom they had all forgotten,

was following, mounted on the great red horse, and seated in the
royal saddle.

Many were the eyes unfriendly of women that had stared at them from
door and window as they passed through the city; and low laughter

and mockery and evil words from the lips of children had rippled
about their ears; but the men were all gone to welcome the enemy,

the butchers the first, the king's guard the last. And now on the
heels of the king's army rushed out the women and children also, to

gather flowers and branches, wherewith to welcome their conquerors.
About a mile down the river, Curdie, happening to look behind him,

saw the maid, whom he had supposed gone with Derba, still following
on the great red horse. The same moment the king, a few paces in

front of him, caught sight of the enemy's tents, pitched where, the
cliffs receding, the bank of the river widened to a little plain.

CHAPTER 33
The Battle

He commanded the page to blow his trumpet; and, in the strength of
the moment, the youth uttered a right warlike defiance.

But the butchers and the guard, who had gone over armed to the
enemy, thinking that the king had come to make his peace also, and

that it might thereafter go hard with them, rushed at once to make
short work with him, and both secure and commend themselves. The

butchers came on first - for the guards had slackened their saddle
girths - brandishing their knives, and talking to their dogs.

Curdie and the page, with Lina and her pack, bounded to meet them.
Curdie struck down the foremost with his mattock. The page,

finding his sword too much for him, threw it away and seized the
butcher's knife, which as he rose he plunged into the foremost dog.

Lina rushed raging and gnashing among them. She would not look at
a dog so long as there was a butcher on his legs, and she never

stopped to kill a butcher, only with one grind of her jaws crushed
a leg of him. When they were all down, then indeed she flashed

among the dogs.
Meantime the king and the colonel had spurred toward the advancing

guard. The king clove the major through skull and collar bone, and
the colonel stabbed the captain in the throat. Then a fierce

combat commenced - two against many. But the butchers and their
dogs quickly disposed of, up came Curdie and his beasts. The

horses of the guard, struck with terror, turned in spite of the
spur, and fled in confusion.

Thereupon the forces of Borsagrass, which could see little of the
affair, but correctly imagined a small determined body in front of

them, hastened to the attack. No sooner did their first advancing
wave appear through the foam of the retreating one, than the king

and the colonel and the page, Curdie and the beasts, went charging
upon them. Their attack, especially the rush of the Uglies, threw

the first line into great confusion, but the second came up
quickly; the beasts could not be everywhere, there were thousands

to one against them, and the king and his three companions were in
the greatest possible danger.

A dense cloud came over the sun, and sank rapidly toward the earth.
The cloud moved all together, and yet the thousands of white flakes

of which it was made up moved each for itself in ceaseless and
rapid motion: those flakes were the wings of pigeons. Down swooped

the birds upon the invaders; right in the face of man and horse
they flew with swift-beating wings, blinding eyes and confounding

brain. Horses reared and plunged and wheeled. All was at once in
confusion. The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors,

but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers.
Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of

pinion in the face. Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping
wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against

its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and
descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast

of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to
skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the featheredmultitude in

the grim game of war. It was a storm in which the wind was birds,
and the sea men. And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the

enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to charge again.
The moment the battle began, the princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess's pony took fright, and

turned and fled. But the maid wheeled her horse across the road
and stopped him; and they waited together the result of the battle.

And as they waited, it seemed to the princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess right strange that
the pigeons, every one as it came to the rear, and fetched a

compass to gather force for the reattack, should make the head of
her attendant on the red horse the goal around which it turned; so

that about them was an unintermittent flapping and flashing of
wings, and a curving, sweepingtorrent of the side-poised wheeling

bodies of birds. Strange also it seemed that the maid should be
constantly waving her arm toward the battle. And the time of the

motion of her arm so fitted with the rushes of birds, that it
looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she was casting

living javelins by the thousand against the enemy. The moment a
pigeon had rounded her head, it went off straight as bolt from bow,

and with trebled velocity.
But of these strange things, others besides the princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess had taken

note. From a rising ground whence they watched the battle in
growing dismay, the leaders of the enemy saw the maid and her

motions, and, concluding her an enchantress, whose were the airy
legions humiliating them, set spurs to their horses, made a

circuit, outflanked the king, and came down upon her. But suddenly
by her side stood a stalwart old man in the garb of a miner, who,

as the general rode at her, sword in hand, heaved his swift
mattock, and brought it down with such force on the forehead of his

charger, that he fell to the ground like a log. His rider shot
over his head and lay stunned. Had not the great red horse reared

and wheeled, he would have fallen beneath that of the general.
With lifted sabre, one of his attendant officers rode at the miner.

But a mass of pigeons darted in the faces of him and his horse, and
the next moment he lay beside his commander.

The rest of them turned and fled, pursued by the birds.
'Ah, friend Peter!' said the maid; 'thou hast come as I told thee!

Welcome and thanks!'
By this time the battle was over. The rout was general. The enemy

stormed back upon their own camp, with the beasts roaring in the
midst of them, and the king and his army, now reinforced by one,

pursuing. But presently the king drew rein.
'Call off your hounds, Curdie, and let the pigeons do the rest,' he

shouted, and turned to see what had become of the princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess.
In full panic fled the invaders, sweeping down their tents,

stumbling over their baggage, trampling on their dead and wounded,
ceaselessly pursued and buffeted by the white-winged army of

heaven. Homeward they rushed the road they had come, straight for
the borders, many dropping from pure fatigue, and lying where they

fell. And still the pigeons were in their necks as they ran. At
length to the eyes of the king and his army nothing was visible

save a dust cloud below, and a bird cloud above. Before night the
bird cloud came back, flying high over Gwyntystorm. Sinking