There was nothing, now, but the fierce pride of the toughest fighters the world had ever known.
Greeks.
Latin armies had outfought them, centuries before, with superior organization and tactics. Beaten them so thoroughly, in fact, that they had even adopted the name of their conquerors. The Empire was Greek, now, at its core. But they called it the Roman Empire, still, and took pride in the name.
Persian armies, in modern cavalry battles, had outmaneuvered and outshot them, time after time. Until the proud Greeks, who called themselves Romans, had finally imitated their ancient Medean foe. The cataphracts were nothing but a copy of the Persian dehgans, at bottom.
In war, others had been better than the Greeks, many times. But no-one had ever been better in a fight. The Greek hoplite had been the most terrible of foes, on the ancient battlefield. They had introduced into warfare a style of bloody, smashing, in-your-face combat that had shocked all their opponents.
Achilles come to life; Ajax reborn. The same blood flowed in the veins of the grim men riding alongside Belisarius that day. The armor was different. The weapons had changed. They rode forward on horseback rather than striding on phalanx feet. But they were still the same tough, tough, tough Greeks.
A half mile, now. Syrian cavalrymen were still swirling in the ground between Belisarius and the oncoming Malwa. “A Hunnish kind of sally,” the general had asked for—and Huns couldn’t have done it better. Advance. Volley. Retreat—but with the “Parthian shot,” firing arrows over the shoulder. Counter-attack. Volley. Retreat. Swirl forward; swirl away. Kill; cripple; wound—and evade retaliation.
Belisarius could finally see a few of the advancing Malwa. He could sense their frenzied rage at the Syrian tactics. Full of their own arrogance, the Malwa thought only of closing with this infuriating army of skirmishers. Their lead units were pushing ahead, maintaining no battle order. The Ye-tai “enforcers” scattered among them were not driving the troopers forward. There was no need. The Ye-tai themselves were seized up in that same heedless fury.
The Malwa troops knew little of Mesopotamia, and the Ye-tai even less. Knew nothing of the crumbled bones which littered that soil—the bones of Roman soldiers, often enough, who had made their same mistake. Crassus and his legions had been slaughtered by the Parthians, half a millennium before, not so very far away.
Belisarius’ main concern had been that the Malwa might precede their troops with rocket volleys. He had not been particularly worried about casualties, as such. The Malwa rockets were much too erratic and inaccurate to fire genuine barrages. But he had been worried that the noise might panic some of his garrison troopers’ horses. The mounts which his Constantinople soldiers rode were the steadiest available, true. But they had little of the training with gunpowder weapons which his Syrian and Thracian cavalry had enjoyed.
It was obvious, however, that there would be no barrages. As he had hoped, the Syrians’ light cavalry tactics had been too agile and confusing to give the Malwa kshatriya a clear target. Now, it was too late. The dust thrown up by thousands of horsemen—friend and foe alike—had completely obscured the front of the battlefield from the Malwa commanders in the center. They would not even be able to see the charge of his Constantinople heavy cavalry. They would hear it, certainly. Even in the din of battle, a full charge by two thousand cataphracts would shake the very earth. But the sound of thunder is not a suitable target for rockets, and the sound would be short-lived in any event. Once the cataphracts closed, rockets would kill more Malwa troops than Roman.
Belisarius spurred his horse forward. No gallop, simply an easy canter. To either side, the garrison troopers matched the pace. There was no need, any longer, for the hecatontarchs and decarchs to maintain a steady formation. The cataphracts’ lines were as steady as if they had been drawn in ink. Battle was very near, and these were the same Greeks whose forefathers had marched in step at Marathon.
Five hundred yards. Though they were closer, the enemy had disappeared completely—swallowed by the dust which hovered over the battlefield, unstirred by even a gentle breeze.