The cops’ gas masks made them into armored bugs, things carrying death-wands, multilimbed. They began to move as if driven by the mask: it led them, they swiveled in unison, they beat their batons against their shields in unison, they stepped in unison, they breathed in unison. They closed ranks like centurions locking their shields together and then would push forward into the screaming, biting, shoving, crying, fighting mass of the crowd. By then Kierk had a serious antifascist psychological response going on and ended up getting too close, and so he didn’t notice that from the back of the army a few dozen armored horses bearing masked riders had all been maneuvered up behind the front line. Mike and Kierk were both right up front when the ranks of the cops opened up to clear space and from merely twenty feet away a cavalry wedge of two dozen horses charged the crowd.

“Oh fuck!” Kierk managed to get out, before he turned and grabbed Mike by the arm and the two of them were sprinting away, the thunder of hooves behind them. Leaping over a row of hedges, they ended up clear of the charge, but turned in time to see a backpack-wearing man whom they had raced past be trampled by three of the horses, his body and backpack flapping around like a rag doll. The girl next to them kept up a high, continuous scream. Then the cavalry wedge wheeled around and was absorbed by the waiting shield wall. There was a shocked, low silence, but still the protesters regrouped, re-congealed. And over and over the same series of events repeated themselves as the protesters were slowly, one foot at a time, pushed out of Queen’s Park and into the Toronto streets.