‘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.