‘All closed up!’ Eumenes called. Satyrus managed a glance over his shoulder — the rhomboid was like a single living thing.
A stade.
He could see the man who would be his first opponent — the point of the Antigonid wedge. An aristocrat, a man born for war.
Through the narrow opening of his helmet, what Satyrus saw was a man who did not ride well, on a horse far smaller than his.
Individual shafts began to hiss past him as the best archers let fly. Hard to miss, even at this range and from a moving horse, against a target that filled the horizon.
The Antigonids had no bows.
More arrows, now — half a stade, and there was nothing to life but the rhythm of the trot, the ripping cloth sound of the arrows in flight, the man he would fight.
Fifty horse lengths.
Twenty horse lengths.
‘Now!’ he shouted to Artaxerxes, his trumpeter.
The calls rang out, and the tip of the wedge gave their horses their heads, and in one stride his charger was at a gallop — whistle arrows screamed over them in a volley, making untrained horses shy. There were tumbling horses all along the Antigonid front, their wedge tearing itself apart as rear rankers tried to ride over the dead, or worse, wounded and thrashing mounts — Satyrus’s lance crashed through his chosen opponent, the point of the enemy wedge — crushed his breastplate and then burst through like an awl punching heavy leather, carrying the man right off his horse …
Satyrus dropped the lance — the head would never come back out of the wound — and drew his sword as his horse rose on her haunches and punched with her feet — two rapid blows and an enemy stallion dropped, dead, rider trapped under the hooves, and Satyrus was up on his horse’s neck, chopping with his sword — heavy blows, falling on men’s helmets and armoured backs, but they were shattered and his men had knocked them flat. Their horses were tired, smaller, had come further across the plain, and the arrows from the sky were a surprise, the whistling arrows spooked their horses, and they were dead men.
Panic, his charger, carried him effortlessly, despite his armour, seeming to skim the ground. It was like elation, like the daimon of combat magnified by the daimon of speed.
But I’d rather be on the deck of a ship, he thought, inconsequentially. He wondered where Abraham was — where Miriam was. He had a firm picture in his mind of the meadow below Tanais, where he’d ridden as a boy — where he’d killed a Sauromatae girl.
He was clear of the tail of the Antigonid wedge. Instead of going straight through, he could see that his rhomboid had collapsed the wedge and then gone at an angle. He looked back — the tired enemy horses were unable to flee, caught against the bigger mounts, going down into the dust.
Even as the victor, it was horrifying.
To his left, Demetrios’s men were throwing spears at the elephants, clearing their crews. It was hardly one-sided — only the bravest of the Antigonids dared face the beasts, and many horses baulked or fled — but the elephant crews had a hard time inflicting casualties on the riders, too.
Satyrus couldn’t see Seleucus at the other end of the line.
Closer, on his right, Diodorus charged the Lydians, and the fight flowed right to the walled enclosure around the house — men pressed in close, horses breast to breast, the fire of the Exiles against the depth of the Lydians. The Marine archers in the farmyard poured their shafts into the Lydians’ unprotected horses from the flank.
And then something gave. The Lydians shifted — even through the dust, Satyrus saw the movement. He’d been about to order Artaxerxes to rally his knights to the right, to support the Exiles, but the Lydians bulged, and men began to look over their shoulders — terrified men.
Crax had ridden into the rear of the Lydians, out of the olive grove below the farm where he’d lain concealed, a Sakje trick. They were a hundred men against two thousand, but their flashing scale armour and their appearance in the enemy’s rear turned the fight, and suddenly the Lydians were urging their tired horses back — back.
Like Diodorus, less than a stade away, Satyrus had come to the conclusion that the farm was now the key to the battle. Diodorus and Apollodorus held the farm.
Satyrus waved his sword and pointed south, towards the flank of the next wedge. ‘Sound rally — rally left.’
Nikephorus had extended his right as far as he could without surrendering any hope of his men holding when struck. Despite his efforts, there was a gap a taxeis wide between his rightmost file and Stratokles’ left — and the Athenian had charged off down the field with his flank in the air — vanished into the dust.
Elephants came out of the dust — mostly riderless, some with crews. The gap had this advantage — elephants and peltasts funnelled harmlessly down it, an alley between the spear points.
Two elephants came together, just a few spear lengths west of his position — both with crews intact- and the two animals reared up, trumpeted, and their sounds were more terrifying than their savagery. Quick as lightning, both beasts seemed to be sweating blood — tusks ripped, and shattered — the pikemen in the opposing howdahs thrust at each other and at the opposing animal, and the archer in the Seleucid howdah shot furiously from a long, cane bow, his heavy arrows taking the Antigonid crew, one at a time, until the Antigonid beast stopped fighting — despite the blood, despite the continuing efforts of his adversary — to place a gentle foot on the dead meat of her master, fallen from his perch between his ears. Then he turned away with a sound like a mother mourning a dead child, and fled.
Nikephorus’s men roared their approval.
And then Antigonus came out of the dust.
They came slowly, carefully — spears down, marching at the slowest pace. Nikephorus saw Antigonus immediately, near the very right file — a proper man.
His own taxeis was only half depth on the right so he had to go forward or risk being broken. Nikephorus stepped out of his line. ‘Spears down!’ he roared.
And as the points glittered, he lowered his. ‘Nike!’ he roared.
Three thousand voices answered him. ‘Nike!’
‘Forward!’ he bellowed.
And then the elephant, wounded and furious, stumbled into a run between the two closing phalanxes. Men flinched away on both sides and in a few heartbeats, both sides were like tangled skeins of wool yarn, files every which way, all order lost as the pain-maddened elephant crashed back and forth, taking long, deep wounds from brave men’s spears, but snapping them, trunk flashing, bronze-capped tusks dripping blood and ordure and he slayed men and no more men could touch him. It was every soldier’s nightmare — a mad elephant trapped in a phalanx. Men died like wheat or oats scythed down at harvest time.
Nikephorus stood fast, put his spear into the elephant’s side — mad beasts have no allies — and drew his sword.
‘Close up!’ he cried. ‘Get in your files!’
His men began to give ground.
‘Apobatai!’ he shrieked ‘Hold the line!’
His very best men died there, putting their shoulders behind their shields, trying to push at Antigonus’s best men while they defended themselves from thousands of pounds of pain-crazed war-elephant. They dug in their heels and pushed, they cut high and low with their swords when their spears broke, they punched and bit when they lost their swords.
Nikephorus aimed himself for Antigonus, and killed — forward, a step at a time, an eye for the elephant, still wreaking havoc to his right — but in the chaos of the mêlée, where there were no ranks, no files, just the vortex of death that was the elephant and the sight of Antigonus’s gold helmet and red plumes, he pushed himself to the limit, cut, step, shield up, step-