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 t