The beast stopped. It made a sound – a horrible sound, the same sound that Satyrus would have liked to have made when he saw the blood pouring out of Philokles, rage and sorrow and mourning compounded.
Abraham’s spear plucked the Macedonian pikeman from the beast’s back and the man fell into the phalanx, screaming as he died on a dozen spears. The Aegyptian taxeis turned into a mob tearing at the men on the elephants, and in some palaces the beasts rioted, killing a dozen men in a few seconds. One animal threw an Alexandrian Jew so high in the air that his fall injured as many men as the elephant’s rage had. Another animal pinned a man under one huge foot and used her trunk to pull the dead man apart, but everywhere the crews were being butchered at close quarters. The files who had retreated to form the gaps came charging back down the alleys without orders, without any intention but to join their comrades and kill, and even the horrors of the death wreaked by the monsters couldn’t slow the inevitable conclusion as a thousand men fought ten elephants.
The elephant closest to Satyrus gave another hideous cry and then slumped, almost unmoving.
All around him, the sounds of fighting died away. Most of the elephants had broken free of the phalanx, and now, their crews gone, they ran away over the plain, but three of the elephants were trapped in the press of bodies and they simply stood, waiting for their fates.
Abraham caught at Satyrus’s spear arm as he prepared to kill the beast. ‘Stop!’
Satyrus turned his helmeted head. ‘What?’
‘Stop!’ Abraham said. He pulled his helmet off, his long hair falling in a sweat-caked mass. ‘They’re ours! We’ve captured them!’
In seconds his cry was taken up, and as long as Satyrus lived, he would remember that cry, and the thousands of Alexandrian hands reaching out, not to kill, but just to touch the great beasts.
‘The elephants are ours!’
The Exiles went through the crowds at the gate like a scythe through the stalks of wheat on an autumn day when the wheat is dry and the stalks are brittle. Then they passed under the great gate of the camp and into the narrow streets behind the gate.
Melitta followed Diodorus as they entered the town. There was no real defence, just panicked men running from horsemen who seldom stopped to cut them down. Then they were through the town and into the tented camp, and Melitta could see the enemy horsemen and many of the infantry already streaming away from the back of the camp – a complete rout, the enemy already abandoning their own camp, their wives, their treasure.
‘Follow me!’ Diodorus roared. He pointed his charger’s head at the complex of tents in the centre, like a palace built of canvas, with a magnificent central structure of Tyrian purple. ‘Exiles, follow me!’
Melitta had been all but born to the saddle but she still found Diodorus difficult to follow. He rode over obstacles, jumping tent ropes like a centaur, his officer’s cloak streaming away behind him. Melitta rode around obstacles that Diodorus jumped, but she stayed with him, and Crax and Eumenes and both of their troops followed, their faded blue cloaks marking them as friends.
So far, they had the camp to themselves.
‘Ares and Aphrodite!’ Diodorus shouted as he rode under the gate of the command area. It had its own temple to Nike, its own fountains. Behind him, the handful of guards surrendered to the Exiles. More poured in behind him.
Rows of gilded bronze statues decorated every entryway, and a bath of silver stood in the middle of the court. Diodorus let his horse drink from it.
‘What an idiot,’ Diodorus said. ‘Eumenes! File-leaders at the door of every tent. Four files in the gate and every fucking coin gets shared. Understand, lads?’
Eumenes’ men didn’t wait for orders – they were off their horses and moving to protect their posts as soon as they heard the hipparch. Eumenes took more files out of the gate to surround the tent complex.
‘Take it all!’ Diodorus bellowed. The Exiles roared. To Melitta, he said, ‘This beats glory any time.’
‘We have to find Amastris!’ Melitta shouted.
But Amastris was one woman, and here was reward for years of fighting – here was the treasure of an enemy army, and most men knew that this was the hoard that would pay for their return.
Leon rode into the courtyard. He saluted Diodorus. ‘Third troop is sweeping the officers’ lines and fourth is off to cull the horse herd.’ He nodded. ‘I see that we’re the first ones here.’
Uncle Leon had a line of blood along his lip. ‘You’re hurt!’ Melitta said.
‘Look who it is!’ Leon said. He didn’t smile.
‘We need to find Amastris. Everyone is looting!’ Melitta shouted at her uncles. Behind Leon, Coenus was directing a crowd of eager men with crowbars.
Melitta shrank away.
‘Ptolemy’s flank was getting the worst of it, last I saw,’ Leon said to Diodorus over her head. ‘Won’t do us any good if the Farm Boy dies while we’re looting.’
Diodorus shook his head. ‘Demetrios was over there with all his best cavalry,’ he said. He pulled off his helmet. ‘Ptolemy can handle it. If he can’t win with both his left and his centre victorious, we were doomed from the first.’
‘Eumenes looted the enemy camp at Gabiene, and you still lost.’ Leon was watching the dust to the east. ‘Let me take the mercenaries-’
‘You think that you could get them out of an enemy camp once the looting starts?’ Diodorus looked around. ‘Ptolemy’s good, Leon. Coenus, forget the marble! Apollo’s golden balls, that man will stop to look at art.’
Leon looked around. ‘If you’re sure, there may be some items amidst all this vulgarity that I want.’
Melitta looked back and forth. ‘We need to find Amastris!’ she shouted.
‘Look sharp there!’ Diodorus yelled when a knot of mercenaries tried to push past one of his files. ‘This is ours, comrade. Push off!’
Leon saluted. ‘On your head be it, brother,’ he said. He ignored Melitta, clasped hands with Diodorus and rode off.
It was ugly, and there were things that Melitta didn’t want to watch – rape, brutal killing without mercy – but not as much as she would have seen if the camp had been defended. The Exiles hadn’t lost a man, and their blood wasn’t up – and their discipline held. They found the treasury, took prisoners who seemed to be worth ransom and formed caravans of their loot before the rest of the army was in the camp.
Melitta watched it, sickened, and she watched the remnants of the beaten army flood away over the back gates and the back walls and on to the sand.
Just beyond the cordon of Exiles, she watched a line of men raping a woman – the victim didn’t even scream. Tanu, the Thracian in her file, caught her eye and shook his head. ‘Don’t watch, lass,’ he said.
‘We should clear ’em out,’ Carlus said.
‘Ain’t harming us none,’ Tanu said. He shrugged. ‘I could use a piece of that,’ he said.
Melitta straightened her spine. ‘My friend is out in that somewhere,’ she said. ‘I need some men who will watch my back while I find her.’ She kneed her horse forward, until she was in front of the pickets. ‘Who will follow me?’
‘Lord Eumenes put us here,’ Tanu said.
‘Making trouble, girl?’ Coenus said. ‘You – Hama! And Carlus. And Tanu, damn your black heart. Get your arse in the saddle.’ He looked up at Melitta. ‘Well?’
Melitta moved her gorytos and put the hilt of her akinakes in easy reach. ‘Stratokles is no fool,’ she said. ‘Diodorus is too busy looting to care, and Uncle Leon is too angry to listen to me.’
Coenus nodded. ‘I wonder why, girl?’
Melitta dismissed Leon with a flick of her hand. ‘But Stratokles would have run as soon as he knew the battle was lost. He’s gone and he’s got Amastris with him – I know it.’
It wasn’t her best rhetoric – Satyrus would have been better at this – but something in her tone went home, both to the men like Carlus who knew her and to Coenus. He nodded and waved at the man holding his charger.