He uttered a fierce battle-cry and waved his arm, signalling those following to form a tight wedge behind him. He selected the centre Enemy phalanx, aimed his feral beast directly at its point, and at the last possible instant, kicked it into full gallop.
He could see clearly the goblin leader standing at the apex of the phalanx, yelling orders first to one flank, then to the other, anticipating that the defenders would break either to the left or to the right. It wasn't until Akaru and his mount came hurting towards him down the last thirty yards that he began to waver in alarm.
In Akaru's mind the last yards seemed to vanish as in a dream, to meld with a slow-motion, bone-jarring riot and chaos of broken bodies flung like rag-dolls, trampled and crushed torsos and heads, their contents flung about and inextricably mixed with black divots cast from flying hooves, white shards of bone snapping free of mangled flesh, disbelieving screams of agony and horror . . . everything stood out in a stark series of stroboscopic, frozen-in-time gestalt images, in jerky
sequences of movement that seemed to start and stop . . . and then pass ahead, without transition, to a series of events that seemed almost unconnected . . .
Connected with the severed, still images and bursts of movement, there was emotion . . . a bizarre sort of emotion that seemed somehow made up of lurching bits of time, and uneven, pent-up, ragged breathing. It was an emotion of clenched terror, punctuated by bursts of release because it could not be held in forever . . . it was an emotion, too, of dread purpose, for to falter for an instant was to be cut down . . .