‘One more step!’ the voice of the war god said. ‘Now!’
The whole Phalanx of Aegypt planted and pushed. The Macedonian phalanx shuddered, and then, as if, having given one step, they could give another, they fell back.
And now the Aegyptians caught fire. Maybe they’d never believed. Or maybe they’d just hoped - but in those seconds, those heartbeats, the same message went out to every man in the taxeis.
We are the better men.
‘Alexandria!’ Namastis called. He was the first, Satyrus thought, but then everyone was shouting.
Then there was no battle cry that any one man could discern but a roar, a roar of rage and triumph and fear - the bronze-lunged voice of Ares - and the enemy phalanx gave another step, another. Something had broken at the back and the spears were dropping, and suddenly there was—
Nothing. Scattered men stood confused in front of Satyrus, the enemies too foolish to have broken, and Satyrus killed one without thinking, stepping up to the man and cutting - one, two, three, as fast as thought.
‘Ares,’ Philokles said. He sounded weak. ‘Satyrus! We’re not done. Rally them. Rafik, sound the rally!’
Satyrus looked back. He couldn’t see anything behind him but his own men, but to the side, there were still enemies - some so close that he could hear the orders their officers shouted.
The notes of the rally sounded. Philokles was leaning on his spear. Satyrus thought that he was just breathing hard, but then he saw that there was blood all down the Spartan’s legs - pouring away from under his bronze breastplate.
‘I’ll go for Theron,’ Satyrus said.
‘No time,’ Philokles said. His knees went, and he slid down his spear, but he didn’t turn his head. ‘Right into their flank - now, boy, before they recover.’ His arm shot out, pointing at the uncovered flank of the enemy phalanx, and Philokles fell just that way, his face to the enemy, his arm pointing the path to victory.
And Satyrus did not flinch. He stepped across Philokles, the same way he’d stepped across the deck of the Golden Lotus, as if he’d done it all his life - although the man he loved best in all the world lay in the sand at his feet.
Diokles snapped forward to fill his place.
‘We will wheel the taxeis to the left!’ Satyrus called. ‘On my command! ’
Through the cheekpieces of his helmet, it sounded remarkably like Philokles’ voice, right down to the Laconian drawl. ‘March!’ he roared.
The taxeis pivoted on Theron, the left-most man - unless he, too, was dead. This was the manoeuvre they had so often done wrong - this was where the centre of the line would fold, eager men going too fast, terrified men going too slow.
Halfway around. All the time to consider how much like sailing a trireme it was to command a phalanx. All the time to watch the men opposite him. They were turning, but men at the back were already giving way, running for their lives past their file-closers. There was no hope for a phalanx taken in the flank.
The taxeis of Alexandria pivoted well enough. The centre buckled at the end - someone tripped, a man got a butt-spike in the head and the spears were still down, not erect. Too close for that.
Too late to worry. ‘Three-step charge!’ Satyrus called.
Rafik sounded it.
Only half the files responded. The centre was a wreck, just from two men going down and the spears of their files flying in all directions. Theron’s end of the line never heard the command, or if they did they didn’t respond.
It didn’t matter. Because the fifty files that did respond covered the distance to the enemy at the run, and their shields deflected the handful of sarissas that opposed them, and then their spears were into the flank of the enemy, and the enemy regiment collapsed and ran like a herd of panicked cattle - two thousand men turned into a mob in a matter of heartbeats. Satyrus, the rightmost man of his line, never reached an enemy - by the time he’d crossed the space, they were gone.
They were gone, and the White Shields were unblocked. They had started to cheer. However late they had come into the fight, they were moving - wheeling to the left, just as the Alexandrians had done.
Philemon, the polemarch of the White Shields, was calling to Theron, and Theron came running across the face of the victorious Alexandrians. ‘Drink water!’ Satyrus called. No one left the ranks to pursue the fleeing Macedonians. Instead, a few men cheered, the rest simply stopped. Like exhausted runners at the end of a race.
‘Philokles?’ Theron asked. His nose was broken under his helmet, and blood covered his breastplate. He had blood on his hands.
‘Down,’ Satyrus said.
‘Philemon wants us to march to the right to make space for him,’ Theron said. ‘I’ll take your orders,’ he continued.
‘Good,’ Satyrus said. He stood straight. He wanted to laugh at the notion that the taxeis of half-soldiers from Alexandria were being asked to face to the right and advance by files - a hard enough manoeuvre on the parade square - on a battlefield.
He did what he’d seen Philokles do. He ran all the way down the front rank, repeating the command - again and again. He waited precious seconds, the polemarch of the White Shields yelling from further to the left. He ignored him, waiting for the phylarchs to pass the word back. Then he sprinted to Rafik, cursing his greaves. They were eating his ankles.
‘Face to the spear side!’ he ordered. ‘March!’
As one - almost as one, because he watched Dionysius face the shield side and then pivot on his heel - the Phalanx of Aegypt faced to the right and marched off - one hundred, two hundred paces deeper into the enemy lines.
From here, on the front right of the phalanx, Satyrus could see all the way to the cavalry fight on the left - could see the forty-elephant reserve.
‘Theron,’ he shouted. Satyrus pulled his helmet off. ‘Face to the shield side! Restore your files! Dress!’
They knew the facing order was coming and they did it like professionals, and then the ranks dressed. Next to them, the White Shields wheeled up into the new line, while to their front, the next enemy phalanx began to shirk and flutter and men on the flanks realized what was coming.
Theron appeared from the dust as if by the hand of some god. ‘Polemarch?’ he asked.
‘Go and find Philokles. Save him if you can.’ Satyrus had his war voice on - no quaver of emotion. Why can’t you be like this all the time? Melitta had asked him once. He wondered where she was and if she was alive.
‘I’m the left phylarch—’
‘If we don’t flinch from the contest, nothing on earth or in the heavens can save the army of Demetrios,’ Satyrus said. He pointed to where, before they were even charged, the centre phalanx of the enemy was melting away, throwing down their sarissas. Even the sudden arrival of the reserve elephants might not save Demetrios now. His centre was lost.
Satyrus looked back to where the Foot Companions waited in the sand, unblooded, less than a stade away.
Theron needed no second urging. He turned and ran off towards the site of the first fight. Around Satyrus, all his men had canteens at their lips.
Satyrus sprinted out to the ranks and found the White Shield polemarch.
‘My men need a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go shame the Foot Companions into joining the line.’
Philemon had a helmet shaped like a lion’s head. He tipped it back on his head and glared at the Foot Companions. ‘They’re supposed to be our best,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘We won’t beat the elephants without them.’
Satyrus saluted the older man and ran back across the sand - just a stade, the same distance as a hoplitodromos, the race in armour at the Olympics. A stade had never seemed so long.
The Macedonians stood in neat ranks, their plumes undisturbed by a breeze. Panion was nowhere to be seen.
Satyrus pulled his helmet off his head. ‘Do you want men to say that we won this battle while you watched ?’ he shouted. ‘Or are we better men than you?’
He spat, turned on his heel
and ran back to his own taxeis. When he reached his place in the ranks, he was so tired that his knees shook.
‘The Foot Companions are wheeling into line,’ Diokles said.
Satyrus pulled his helmet back down, got his aspis back on his shoulder - a shoulder that hurt as if it had been burned - and raised his spear.
‘Alexandria!’ he shouted, and fifteen hundred men roared.
And then they were moving forward, the White Shields strong on their flank, the Foot Companions on their other side, and Satyrus could all but see Nike holding her wreath over the end of the enemy line.
Melitta and the rest of the toxotai finished their battle when the elephants broke. When the phalanxes started forward in earnest, the light troops ran in all directions, and Melitta wasn’t ashamed to run with them. They ran so far to get around the flank of the Foot Companions that she was severely winded. They all were. It beat being dead. She knelt on the ground, breathing so hard that she almost retched.
‘Look at that,’ Idomeneus wheezed. She followed his gaze.
The Foot Companions had slowed to a walk, and the Phalanx of Aegypt moved away from them.
Idomeneus spat. ‘Fuckers been bought,’ he said, sitting back on his heels. ‘We beat the elephants for nothing.’
And then they watched as the Phalanx of Aegypt charged home. Dust rose, and the sound of a thousand cooks beating a thousand copper pots. Satyrus. Xeno. The Foot Companions halted just short of contact with their opponents.
Watching the rear ranks, Melitta had no idea what she was seeing. Idomeneus walked off and started collecting archers, and then she saw that her uncle Diodorus was sitting on his charger just a dozen horse-lengths to the right, watching the other side of the field and then watching the dust cloud where the phalanxes had engaged.
There was a roar - something had happened - and she saw the rear of the Aegyptian taxeis ripple as if a breeze had stirred wheat on a summer day, and then they roared again.
She felt the shadow and looked up. Diodorus loomed over her.
‘You fought the elephants,’ he said.
‘We did,’ she said with pride.
Diodorus pointed at the back of the phalanx. The Foot Companions were moving forward now, as if they could no longer resist the attraction of the enemy. ‘Philokles has just given us the chance to win the battle,’ Diodorus said with quiet satisfaction.
‘What?’ Melitta asked.
Diodorus turned and looked across the field, where squadrons of enemy cavalry sat motionless. He raised his arm. ‘See that cavalry? They outnumber me. And they aren’t coming forward.’ He gave her half a smile. ‘I’m just supposed to keep them in check - but I think that Philokles has just broken golden boy’s centre. I think I may just go and widen the hole. Care to come?’ He grinned. ‘Let’s go and show Macedon why we’re the best.’
Melitta sprang to her feet, fatigue forgotten. ‘Of course!’
Diodorus waved to Crax, who trotted up with a cavalry mount. ‘Ah, the mysterious archer,’ Crax said when he handed her the reins. He grinned at her. ‘Some people think they can fool other people,’ he said.
Melitta was briefly abashed. ‘I just wanted to—’
‘Save it for Sappho,’ Diodorus said. ‘Myself, I wouldn’t keep Kineas’s daughter off a battlefield any more than Kineas’s son. Second squadron, third rank. Go and find your place, Now.’
Melitta saluted and followed Crax. She waved to Idomeneus, who shook his head and then waved back.
Behind her, the Phalanx of Aegypt surged forward. She caught the movement, and Diodorus nodded. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘Ready to move, hippeis!’
The enemy’s centre taxeis never fought - they just melted away, the rearmost men running first, so that the whole regiment seemed to unravel like moth-eaten fur in a strong wind. Satyrus halted when the White Shields halted. He was amused to see the Foot Companions close up on his right at the double. He wondered if the bastards had even seen any fighting. But they were there and now they were committed.
Then the whole right of the army, formed at a ninety-degree angle from their original line, swept from right to left, and the rest of the enemy centre collapsed. The enemy’s easternmost phalanxes were heavily engaged against Ptolemy’s loyal Macedonians and they had no chance to run and many were cut down and more of them surrendered rather than be butchered from the open flank.
Satyrus had no idea what the cavalry were doing, but the infantry battle was over, and the enemy’s infantry were gone, destroyed or surrendered or run. His taxeis was now in the centre of the canted line, facing a wall of dust and whirling sand. All he wanted to do was walk back and find Philokles, but he knew his duty and when the line halted he ran down the front rank, all the way to the left, where he found the polemarch of the White Shields.
‘Now what?’ Satyrus demanded.
The polemarch had a purple shield with inlaid ivory. He looked like Achilles come back to earth, but when he took his helmet off, he was bald as polished marble. ‘Fucked if I know, son,’ he said. ‘You in command of those Aegyptians, right? Those boys are on fire.’ He grinned. ‘Not that we did too badly ourselves. And I’m so pleased that our Foot Companions chose to join the dance. Where’s your big Spartan?’
‘Wounded,’ Satyrus said. He got his canteen to his lips - no easy feat in armour - and drank deeply.
‘Hope he makes it. Don’t know. Never been in a battle like this. Never seen the enemy phalanx so badly broken. It must be over - what can they do?’ He shrugged. ‘What have they got left to fight with?’
Just then, some of the Macedonian file-leaders started to shout, and Satyrus turned to look.
Demetrios’s other forty elephants were shambling out of the battle haze.
Diodorus had the hippeis - the Exiles - and six other squadrons of mercenary cavalry. From the third rank, Melitta couldn’t see much, but she thought that they were all going forward together. They rode forward at a walk, and when she knelt on her borrowed charger’s back, she could see over the left squadron to the phalanx.
They moved and then halted, then moved at a walk again - and then halted. She drank water and waited.
‘You look bored,’ Carlus said from two ranks ahead. He laughed his big laugh.
Tanu, the Thracian who was just ahead of her, turned and joined in the laugh. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to fight!’ he said. ‘Pay’s just the same!’
‘I can’t see!’ Melitta said.
‘The cavalry in front of us are unsteady,’ Carlus said. ‘Their whole centre is gone.’ The big man shook his head. ‘Never seen anything like it, and I’ve been in a few fights.’
Diodorus cantered over to Crax at the head of her troop.
‘Melitta, front and centre,’ he called.
She rode out, sure that she was about to be sent to the rear for all his protestations. But he waved her forward impatiently.
‘You know this Amastris?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Good. Stay with me. I’m going to have a go at breaking right through into his camp. If we make it through that cavalry, I don’t think there’s anything to stop us - and then, my dear girl, we’ll all be rich.’ Diodorus smiled and his beard, which was mostly grey, glinted with red.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we are mercenaries. But shouldn’t we be finishing off those infantrymen?’ She waved at the thousands of broken pikemen who were racing, weaponless, for the safety of the fortified town of Gaza.
Diodorus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. He grinned. ‘If you kill them, who will you use to retake Tanais? What we need is the money to pay them.’ His grin grew broader, and Crax’s grin and Eumenes’ grin echoed his. ‘And there it is - Demetrios’s camp. Let’s go and get it, shall we?’ He gave orders and turned back to her. ‘Stay right at my stirrup,’ he said. ‘Your friend the princess ought to be close to golden boy’s tent. We need to get to her before all of Ptolemy’s other cavalry.’
He turned and backed his ho
rse until he was facing his squadrons. ‘Over there,’ he cried, his voice carrying easily, ‘are all the riches of Asia. All you have to do is take them!’ They were the words of Miltiades at Marathon, and the Exiles roared their approval.
They went from walk to trot, and then from trot to canter, the files opening uncontrollably the farther they moved, but the enemy did not await their onset. Rearguard squadrons who had stayed together this long fell apart when they saw themselves charged. No one stayed to fight a lost battle - especially against the same cavalrymen who had harried them for weeks out in the desert.
Crax dropped off five files to round up prisoners - mostly men whose horses were so poor that they couldn’t outrun their pursuit. And then the whole line was rumbling up the long, gentle slope towards the fortified town of Gaza.
The gates were open.
28
The elephants came on undaunted by the long lines of pikemen - forty elephants against eight thousand men. Satyrus ran back down the front rank to his own men. Sandwiched in the centre of the line, his men had nowhere to go to escape the beasts. He knew what Alexander’s phalanxes had done against elephants.
‘Drop files! Listen, Aegypt! I’m going to count off the front rank by five files. I want those files to make a Spartan march - around to the rear and then halt. Make lanes through the phalanx!’ Some men, like Xeno and Abraham, looked as if they understood, while others, like Dionysius, looked blank. Satyrus began to run down the rank. ‘One, two, three - four, five! All of you - countermarch to the rear! Go!’
The men he touched - most of them he tagged by hitting their shields quite hard with his butt-spike to make sure they knew they were the ones he meant - turned and began to force their way back between the files - and their file-followers followed them, pushing and shoving where they had to, turning their shields side-on to the ranks to make space. It was ugly - it looked as if his whole phalanx had collapsed. Satyrus turned and looked back at the elephants, who were close.
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