From out of the Macedonian phalanxes a flurry of peltasts scampered, showering the advancing Athenians with arrows and javelins and rocks. The second and more rearward ranks raised their shields over their heads, protecting themselves and their first rank, who kept their shields before them. I saw a few men fall, but by and large the peltasts did little more than irritate the Athenians.
I was more worried about the advancing Thebans. Horses will not charge spears, no matter how you urge them. And a forest of Theban spears was approaching us, with nothing between us and them except a scattering of our own peltasts. They annoyed the Thebans but could not stop them.
Philip’s troops were advancing in oblique order, their farthest right phalanxes leading the others. It was a technique Philip had learned from the great Theban commander Epaminondas when, as a boy, he had lived in Thebes for several years, a royal hostage after Macedonia had been trounced by the Thebans.
I heard Alexandros gasp. The peltasts in front of Philip’s line turned away from the advancing Athenians and fled from the field. And the phalanxes began to retreat, as well.
“They’re running away!” Alexandros said. His voice was low, breathless.
Not running, I saw. They were retreating in good order. But retreating. Even before they had come to grips with the enemy line.
A great exultant shout went up from the Athenians and they broke into a headlong charge to close the distance with the retreating Macedonians.
“Should we send some of the cavalry to go help them?” I asked Alexandros.
“No,” he said grimly. “We stand here until he gives us the signal.”
The Thebans were moving toward us faster, now, but they were not charging wildly, as the Athenians were. The allied troops in the center of the enemy line were struggling to keep the line intact, with the Athenians rushing pell-mell on the left side of them and the Thebans advancing more slowly on the right.
Not a blow had yet been struck by the hoplites anywhere on either line, yet it looked to me as if the battle had already been lost.
And it had. But not by the wily One-Eyed Fox.
The allied hoplites could not keep up with the charging Athenians. Gaps opened up in their line. The Theban commander must have seen this, for now he began to move his phalanxes more toward the center of their formation, trying to close the gap—leaving some firm ground open between his own right flank and the marshland by the river.
Another trumpet sounded, blasting the air like the crack of doom. Alexandros grabbed the lance from the hands of his squire, raised it over his helmeted head and screamed, “Follow me!”
We charged headlong into the gap between the allies and the Thebans, thundering across the sloping ground like a torrent of death. The world around me slowed once again as my body went into overdrive. Right behind Alexandros I rode, gripping Thunderbolt with my thighs, levelling my lance as I leaned forward against the horse’s flowing mane.
We poured into the gap between the Thebans and the allied phalanxes before they could close the ground between them. Wheeling around faster than the phalanxes could turn, we hit them from the rear and sides. The allied hoplites broke and ran. The Thebans held their ground and fought back. But our light cavalry swung around their other flank, skirting the marshy ground, and completed their encirclement. In front of the Theban phalanxes our light troops harried them with arrows and javelins. They could not turn their backs on the peltasts. They could not turn their backs to our cavalry. Their commanders bellowed orders but their voices were lost in the thunder of the battle. They tried to form a circle of shields, but we cut through them and sliced their formation into smaller and smaller bits. I left my lance buried in a man’s chest and pulled out my sword, hacking and swinging madly at the milling, frightened, disorganized men all around me.
When an army loses discipline it loses the battle. The Thebans, good as they were, had lost the cohesion a phalanx needs to make it effective. They were not an army now, they had no phalanxes, only knots of shaken and confused men who were being cut to pieces by our cavalry.