It wasn't even that the arrows were more accurate or more destructive than the javelins flaying their ranks. They were more accurate and destructive, but that was almost beside the point. What truly mattered was that they were the emblem, the symbol, of the strange, two-armed demons who had completely changed the way war was supposed to be.
The right-hand column had already disintegrated. Now the dart-throwers began to follow suit, shedding individual warriors, first in trickles, and then in floods. For all their courage, the tribesmen lacked the discipline to stand under the vicious pounding, and the entire dart-thrower force came apart in turn.
The left-hand column was still in action, but its front was splintered and broken. Almost half of the total attacking army had already been driven from the field, and the flattened, blood-slick grass was heaped and mounded with the bodies of warriors who would never again be driven from any field. The conviction of defeat was upon the column, and as more and more of Sir George's allies swarmed forward to meet it, it found itself enveloped and outnumbered. The column formation which had given it so much weight as it charged forward now hamstrung its ability to defend itself, for those at the center of the formation could only stand there, unable to advance or retreat, while their more numerous enemies cut their way inward from both its flanks.
And then Sir Richard Maynton and Walter Skinnet completed their enemies' ruin. The handful of human cavalry were an armored spearhead of steel, the wicked tip of a sweeping charge of over three thousand of their native allies, almost as fast on foot as the humans were mounted. The charge had swept out to Sir George's right and then, at his relayed orders, hooked back and in, sweeping around the troops the enemy had put out to cover his left flank to take what was left of the dart-throwers in the rear and then thunder onward into the rear of the one remaining enemy column.
Sir George watched that column fly apart, like a bag of meal thrown into a