Battlefield Earth by Hubbard, L. Ron Page B

horse.
        
    Walking Windsplitter, he went up ahead of the thing. It didn’t move. He went about a hundred feet in front of the thing. It didn’t move. He carefully spotted the position of a slitted eye.
        
    He began to whirl the kill-club. It swooshed in the air.
        
    He put a heel to Windsplitter and they raced straight at the thing.
        
    The kill-club, carried with the full speed of the running horse, whooshed down straight at the slitted eye.
        
    The crash of impact was deafening.
        
    Jonnie slowed beyond the thing. It had not moved.
        
    He trotted Windsplitter back to the original position, a hundred feet in front of the thing. He turned and made ready for a second run.
        
    The lead horse came up behind him to its habitual place. Jonnie glanced at it and then back at the thing. He calculated the distance and the run to strike at the other slitted eye.
        
    He touched a heel. Windsplitter plunged forward.
        
    And then a great gout of yellow bloomed out from between the eyes. Jonnie was struck a blow like all the winds of Highpeak rolled into one.
        
    Windsplitter caught the full force of it. Up into the air went horse and rider. Down they came with a shuddering crash against the earth.
        

Battlefield Earth
         Chapter 13
        
         Terl didn’t know what he was looking at.
        
    He had bunked down in the car in the outskirts. He had the old Chinko map of the ancient city, but he had no curiosity about it.
        
    With a few shots of kerbango, he had eased himself off into sleep, intending to be gone with the dawn, through the city and into the mountains. Senseless, even risky, to go on in the dark.
        
    The car, however, had grown hot with the morning sun before he awoke. And now he stared out at an odd thing in the street before him. Maybe it had been the footfalls that had awakened him.
       
     
    He didn’t know what it was. He had seen horses- they were always falling down mine shafts. But he had never before seen a horse with two heads.
        
    That’s right. Two heads. One in front and one in the middle.
        
    And a second animal of similar sort behind. Only this one only had a second body in the middle, as if the second head was bent down out of sight.
        
    He batted his eyebones. He shifted over into the driver’s seat and stared more intently through the armored windshield.
        
    The two beasts had now turned around and were walking the other way, so Terl started up and began to follow.
        
    It became apparent to him at once that the beasts knew he was after them. He took a hasty look at his ancient street map, thinking he could flash around a couple of blocks and head them off.
        
    But instead it was the beasts who turned.
        
    Terl saw they would dead-end and knew they would circle a block. It was elementary indeed to handle that.
        
    He glanced again at his map and spotted the right buildings to make a barricade.
        
    The firepower of the old Mark II was not very heavy but it was surely enough for that. He adjusted the force lever with a fumbling and inexperienced paw and steered the tank into position. He hit the fire button.
        
    The resulting explosion was extremely satisfactory. A whole building tipped over to make a barricade.
        
    He jockeyed his throttle and wheeled around and went down the street, turned, and sure enough! There they were. He had his quarry trapped.
        
    Then he sat with slack jawbones to see the beasts go straight up over the smoking rubble and vanish from view.
        
    Terl sat there for a minute or two. Was this any part of what he was trying to accomplish? He was puzzled by the beasts but they didn’t have anything to do with the business he was in.
        
    Oh, well. He had lots of time, and hunting was hunting after all. He pushed a button and fired off an antenna capsule set to hover three