As they drew behind the fortified camp, Belisarius ordered a halt. He thought there was still time, and he wanted to make sure that the battle had become locked in the center.
While the Army of Lebanon’s lancers allowed their horses to rest, therefore, Belisarius trotted up to the camp and passed into it through the west gate. He could begin to see now, even with the dust.
Just as he had planned (and hoped-not that he’d ever admit it to that morose old grouch Maurice) the main body of Persian lancers in the center had smashed into his trap. True, they had done so in a charge ordered by an idiot, but-that’s the beauty of the first law of battles, after all. It cuts both ways.
Sitting on his horse not thirty yards from the fortified wall, Belisarius found it hard not to grin. He hadn’t seen it, but he knew what had happened.
Imagine three thousand Persian lancers, thundering up to a wretched little earthen wall, guarded by not more than a thousand terrified, pathetic, wretched infantrymen. They sweep the enemy aside, right? Like an avalanche!
Well, not exactly. There are problems.
First, each cavalry mount has been hauling a man (a large man, more often than not) carrying fifty pounds of armor and twenty pounds of weapons-not to mention another hundred pounds of the horse’s own armor. At a full gallop for half a mile, in the blistering heat of a Syrian summer.
So, the horses are winded, disgruntled, and thinking dark thoughts.
Two-all hearsay to the contrary-horses are not stupid. Quite a bit brighter than men, actually, when it comes to that kind of intelligence known popularly as “horse sense.” So, when a horse sees looming before it: a) a ditch b) a wall c) lots of men on the wall holding long objects with sharp points
The horse stops. Fuck the charge. If some stupid man wants to hurl himself against all that dangerous crap, let him. (Which, often enough, they do-sailing headlong over their horse’s stubborn head.)
It was the great romantic fallacy of the cavalry charge, and Belisarius had been astonished-all his life-at how fervently men still held to it, despite all practical experience and evidence to the contrary. Yes, horses will charge- against infantry in the open, and against other cavalry. Against anything, as long as the horse can see that it stands a chance of getting through the obstacles ahead, reasonably intact.
But no horse this side of an equine insane asylum will charge a wall too high to leap over. Especially a wall covered with nasty sharp objects.
And there’s no point trying to convince the horse that the infantry manning the wall are feeble and demoralized.
Is that so? Tell you what, asshole. Climb off my back and show me. Use your own legs. Mine hurt.
The horses would have drawn up short before the ditch and the wall even if the fortification had been, in truth, guarded by only a thousand demoralized infantrymen. In the event, however, just as the horses drew near, Hermogenes had given the order and the cornicens had blown a new tune. Oh, a gleeful tune.
Surprise!
The other three thousand infantry hiding behind the wall and in the ditches had scrambled to their feet and taken their positions. The wall was now packed with spears, in the hands of soldiers full of confidence and vigor.
The front line of horses had screeched to a halt. Many of their riders had been thrown off. Some had been killed by the fall itself. Most of the survivors were badly shaken and bruised.
The second line of horse had piled into the first, the third into the second, the fourth into the third. More men were thrown off their mounts. To the injuries caused by falling were added the gruesome wounds suffered by men trampled by horses. Within seconds, the entire charging mass of Persian lancers had turned into an immobile, struggling, completely disordered mob. And now, worst of all, the Roman infantry began hurling volleys of plumbata into the milling Persians. At that close range, against a packed mass of confused and disoriented cavalry, the lead-weighted darts were fearsome weapons. The more so since the soldiers casting the weapons were expert in their use.
The cornicens blew again. Thousands of Roman infantry began scrambling over the wall. Many of them were carrying spathae, but most were wielding the even shorter semi-spatha. Each of those men would plunge into the writhing mob of Persian cavalry and use the time-honored tactic of infantry against armored cavalry.
It was an ignoble tactic, perhaps, and it never worked against cavalry on the move. But against cavalry forced to a halt, it was as certain as the sunrise.
Hamstring and gut the horses. Then butcher the lordly nobles once they’re on the ground like us lowlife. See how much good their fine heavy armor does ’em then. And their bows and their lances and their fancy longswords. This here’s knife work, my lord.
Belisarius rode out of the camp. The battle was his, if he could only drive home the final thrust.
For all his eagerness to win, Belisarius was careful to keep his pace at an easy canter. There was time, there was time. Not much, but enough. He didn’t want the horses blown.
Without even waiting for his orders, Valentinian and Anastasius reined in the overenthusiasts who began driving their horses faster. There was time. There was time. Not much, but enough.
As they passed the western slope of the hill, the two thousand cavalry of Belisarius’ own army fell in with him. He now had a striking force of four thousand men, unblooded and confident, riding fresh horses.
Belisarius saw a small figure standing on the slope, watching the army pass. Menander, he thought, still at his unwanted post. Even from the distance, he thought he could detect the bitter reproach in the boy’s posture.
Sorry, lad. But you’ll get your share of bloodshed in the future. And for that I really am sorry.
Now his force was curving around the northern slope of the hill. They had passed entirely across the line and were on the verge of falling on the enemy’s unprotected right flank.
They came around the hill with Belisarius in the lead. The center of the battlefield was still obscured by dust, but the Romans could now see the Persian horse archers who were trying to storm the hill. The slaughter here had been immense, and it was immediately obvious that the Persians were discouraged.
Discouragement soon became outright terror. The four thousand Roman lancers hammered their way through the mounted archers without even pausing. Moments later they were plunging into the dust cloud, aiming at the mass of Persian lancers stymied at the center.
Belisarius turned halfway in his saddle and signaled the buglers behind him. The cornicens began blowing the order for a full charge. Their sound was a thin, piercing wail over the thundering bedlam of the battlefield.
Yet, for all the noise, the general was able to hear Valentinian and Anastasius, riding just behind him.
Valentinian: “I told you so.”
Anastasius: Inarticulate snort.
Valentinian: Mutter, mutter, mutter.
Belisarius: “What was that last? I didn’t quite catch it.”
Valentinian: Silence.
Anastasius: “I think he said ’fuck brave officers.’ ”
Valentinian: Hiss.
Anastasius: “But maybe not. It’s noisy. Maybe the cold-blooded little killer said, ’Fuck brazen coffers.’ Idiot thing to say on a battlefield, of course. But he’s-”
All else was lost. The first Persian lancer loomed in the dust, his back turned away. Belisarius raised his lance high and drove it right through the Mede’s heart. The enemy fell off his horse, taking the lance with him.
Another Mede, turned half away, to his right. Belisarius drew his long cavalry sword out of its baldric and hewed the man’s arm off with the same motion. Another Mede, again from the back. The sword butchered into his neck, below the rim of the helmet. Another Mede-facing him, now. The sword hammered his shield down, hammered it aside, hammered his helmet sideways. The man was driven off his mount and fell, unconscious, to the ground. In that mad press of stamping horses, he would be dead within a minute, crushed to a bloody pulp.
The entire Roman cavalry piled into the Persians, caving in the right rear of their already disorganized formation. The initial slaughter was horrendous. The charge caught the Persians completely by surprise. Many of them, in the first few seconds, fell before blows which they never even saw.
To an extent, of course, Belisarius now found himself caught by the same dilemma that had faced the Medes. The thousands of Persian cavalrymen jammed against the Roman camp in the center of the battlefield were not quite a wall. But almost. Combat became a matter of men on skittering horses hammering at each other. Lances
