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Indeed, men tried to bring their birds into the center of the flock, to protect themselves from arrows, and the interior positions were then fought for, as the enemy competed with one another, and wounded and lacerated one another, to command this cover. - (Swordsmen of Gor, Chapter 17, Sentence #67)

The dojo was fired. I saw, too, flames consuming the stately pavilion of Lord Nishida. As the birds milled above, crowded and screaming, hemmed in by our fellows, their riders, wise now to the dangers of breaking formation, but much aware now, too, of hundreds of arrows fired into their mass of birds and men, which constituted a large, almost stationary target in the sky, knew themselves, to their terror, at the mercy of our soaring fellows. Indeed, men tried to bring their birds into the center of the flock, to protect themselves from arrows, and the interior positions were then fought for, as the enemy competed with one another, and wounded and lacerated one another, to command this cover. And unto this mass, from above, were hurled dozens of weighted nets, which tangled the birds, and riders, and dozens, half crippled, unable to fly, fell brokenly toward the earth, and some riders freed themselves of the safety straps and tried to leap to the saddle rings of other birds, and some failed to grasp them, and fell screaming to the earth. Others fell with the tarns to earth, the nets half cut to pieces. I saw another net fall gracefully, like a broad, circular, open veil, on a bird starting to climb from the plaza, and the bird fluttered back to the earth, screaming, protesting, rolling in the dust, the rider caught in the safety straps, and then the helmeted head was twisted about, and the body was inert, a raglike, meaningless object in the saddle. - (Swordsmen of Gor, Chapter 17)