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 were useless, now. It was all sword, mace, and ax work. And utterly murderous.
Yet, for all the ensuing mayhem, the outcome was certain. The Medes were trapped between an equal number of Roman heavy cavalry and thousands of Roman infantrymen. Their greatest strength—that unequaled Persian skill at hard-hitting, fast-moving cavalry warfare—was completely neutralized. As cavalrymen, the average Roman was not their equal. But this was no longer a cavalry battle. It was a pure infantry battle, in which the majority of soldiers just happened to be sitting on horses.