Idomeneus took up the shout. ‘Drivers!’ he said, pulling his great bow to his ear and punching a finger-thick shaft into the mahout of the next beast in line. The man threw up his hands and fell back, and the beast, riderless, stopped.
‘Be ready!’ Philokles roared beside him.
Satyrus felt his arse clench, felt his guts turn and turn again. Three times now, his fear had fallen away, and every time it came back.
Elephants.
He looked at the front rank, and it was bending because the Foot Companions weren’t keeping up. ‘Dress up, phylarchs!’ he shouted. Really Philokles’ job, but he had his attention on the trumpets and the battle in the front. ‘Theron!’ Theron was a hundred paces distant – a hopeless distance on a battlefield. ‘Theron! Step up!’ he called, and other voices repeated it – the front rank flexed, and there was Theron, waving his spear and pushing forward. The file-followers struggled to close up from behind. A pikeman fell and the whole body of men rippled and someone cried out in pain. ‘Close up!’ Philokles bellowed.
Satyrus tore his eyes off the recovery of the middle ranks – he was drifting left because he’d turned his head. ‘Watch your spacing!’ Namastis growled. A deserved rebuke.
And then, through the limited vision of his close-faced helmet, he saw that the elephants had stopped. ‘Look!’ he said to Namastis. ‘Look!’
The monsters were in the line of pits. Almost half managed to walk right through without touching the obstacles, but they didn’t exploit their success – they had a curious morale of their own, and when the archers began to clear the crews off the backs of the animals in the pits, the whole elephant advance broke down.
Idomeneus was the first man to run forward and Melitta loved him for it. Stripped of their psiloi, the elephants were vulnerable once they stopped. The archers ran in among them in their open formation and began massacring the crews. It wasn’t even a fight – the men on the backs of the huge beasts had no reply to make to the hundreds of shafts aimed at them, and a few even tried to surrender.
No prisoners were taken. The archers slaughtered the crews in a paroxysm of fear and rage, and then the beasts began to turn away, the masses of sharp shafts and the point-blank shots beginning to scare them, and suddenly they were running – away.
‘Halt!’ sang the trumpets.
‘Halt!’ echoed the officers.
The phalanx ground to a halt. All along the line, officers raced up and down ordering the line to dress. The front was disordered everywhere, and the Foot Companions were almost a full phalanx-depth to the rear.
‘If they hit us now, we’re wrecked,’ Philokles said to Satyrus. ‘Gods!’ He ran off along the front of the phalanx, ordering men to dress the line.
The White Shields took up the cry first, and in a heartbeat, all discipline was forgotten. ‘The elephants run!’ men shouted, and the front ranks, the men who would have had to face the brutes first, all but danced.
Philokles roared for silence. Ptolemy appeared from the right and rode down the front rank. ‘Look at that, boys!’ he called. ‘Every man of you owes our light troops a cup of the best! By Herakles!’ Ptolemy halted in the centre of the White Shields. He seemed to be addressing the whole line. ‘Ours to win, boys! Right here! Right now! Remember who you are!’
The White Shields roared, and so did the Phalanx of Aegypt, but Satyrus thought that the other cheers were muted. He hoped it was just his fears.
Philokles reached past Namastis. ‘Don’t point,’ he said. ‘It’s not all good.’
Over to the left, the cavalry fight wasn’t going well for anyone – but suddenly, in a flaw in the battle haze, the whole line of the phalanx could see forty more elephants waiting.
‘Ares,’ Satyrus cursed. His heart sank. Again. So he made himself turn his head. ‘Drink water,’ he yelled.
Philokles was nodding. ‘We have to break the phalanx in front of us before Demetrios throws those elephants into us,’ he said. ‘That just became the battle.’ He drank and spat. ‘When I fall, you take command. ’
‘When you fall?’ Satyrus asked.
Philokles gave him a brilliant smile – the kind of smile his tutor scarcely ever smiled. Then the Spartan ran out of the ranks towards Ptolemy. He grabbed at his bridle, and they could see Ptolemy nod and signal to the trumpeters, and the signal for the advance rang out before Philokles was back in the ranks.
Ptolemy turned his horse and rode away towards the cavalry fight on the left. Way off to the right, Satyrus saw Diodorus. He wasn’t eating sausage any more, but he hadn’t moved.
The Foot Companions were still not in their place.
Philokles jumped out of the front rank, held his spear across their chests and roared ‘Dress the line’ so loudly that Satyrus flinched, helmet and all.
‘Prepare to execute the marine drill!’ he called. He ran along the front rank, heedless of the javelins that were starting to fall, until he reached Theron, and then he sprinted back, fast as an athlete despite age and wine and armour.
‘Spears – up!’ came the order. They were less than a stade from the enemy. A handful of brave or stupid psiloi still stood between the two mighty phalanxes, but they were scattering, running for the flanks. Satyrus watched the last of their own archers running off to the right to get around the killing ground.
Now that he could see the enemy phalanx, he could see that it looked bad – there were ripples and gaps where he assumed the elephants had burst back through, and officers were dressing the ranks.
Half a stade, and he could see the enemy move – they had their ranks dressed – they shivered as if the phalanx was a single, living organism and the whole thing leaned forward as the enemy began their advance, and suddenly everything happened at twice the speed.
The length of a sprint – he could see the emblems on their shields.
‘Spears – down!’ came the command – by trumpet, repeated by word of mouth. And the sarissas came down. In the Phalanx of Aegypt, the men in front had the shorter spears, and they lifted them over their heads in unison – a sight that literally banished fear, as training took over and Satyrus got his shoulder firmly under the rim of his aspis.
‘Sing the Paean!’ Philokles called, and the Alexandrians started the call to Apollo. The song carried him forward a hundred paces – literally buoyed him up – but at its end, in step and facing the foe, he still had ten horse- lengths of terror to face.
Ten horse-lengths, and he was confronted by a wall of spears that filled his mind as Amastris’s body had filled it, so that nothing and no one could take his eyes away from the lethal glitter of twelve thousand pike points.
The White Shields were slowing down. Ares ‘Eyes front!’ Philokles roared. ‘Ready, Alexandria!’
The taxeis growled.
Five horse-lengths. The thicket of steel was pointed right at his throat – his head – too thick to penetrate. Thick enough to walk on.
It was impossible that a man could face so much iron and live.
His legs carried him forward.
‘Charge!’ Philokles’ voice and Rafik’s trumpet sounded together, and the front rank responded like trained beasts – left shoulder down, spear down, head down.
Spears rang against his aspis, reaching for his guts, again and again, and he bulled forward, legs pushing, blow to his helmet, step forward, another blow and another with enough weight to shift him sideways so that he stumbled, but he pushed, he pushed, nothing but the power of his legs and the weight of a dozen spear shafts on his aspis tilted almost flat like a table, and he pushed – Diokles’ shield pushing him forward – through! UP and PUSH and he rammed his spear straight ahead, felt the weight of Diokles pushing him another half pace forward. THROUGH!
To this right, Philokles roared like a bull and his spear hit a man’s helmet just over the nasal and burst it in a spray of blood and the man fell back and Philokles pushed Suddenly, as if his wits had been restored, Satyrus saw the fight for what it was, and in one smooth motion he killed a phalangite – not the man in front of him, but the man in front of Abraham whose shield was open, and then he placed his big shield against the enemy’s and pushed and Abraham pushed forward into the new space, on his own or carried forward by his file, and now he took the file- follower by surprise and simply knocked him down, and Satyrus rammed his spear over his shield, once, twice, three times – connected with something – again and again. Glance at Philokles, cover his shoulder – and then his
