“All right. At my command, we’ll charge out of here and round up as many men as we can. Then—it’s simple. Charge to the southwest. As fast as we can.”
He looked at the kshatriya. “Make sure our grenadiers are scattered through the crowd. When we get close enough, we can start tossing our own grenades.”
One of the faction leaders pointed to a figure huddled in the corner.
“What about the emperor? It’d help if he led the charge. Inspire the men.”
Balban did not bother to look at Hypatius.
“If your men need inspiration,” he growled, “tell them it’s victory or death. That should be simple enough.”
He lifted his head and bellowed at his kshatriya. It took not more than twenty seconds to explain the plan. It was simple enough.
“Nika!” shouted one of the faction leaders. He pushed his way out of the shelter and sprang upon the lowest tier of the Hippodrome.
He waved his sword, shouting at the mob above him:
“Nika! Nika!”
The other faction leaders joined him.. They also began shouting, and pointing with their swords to the southwest.
Balban and his kshatriya poured out of the bulwarks. Quickly, they formed a line across the dirt floor of the Hippodrome. At Balban’s command, they began marching forward.
Marching slowly. Every instinct in Balban—and his kshatriya—cried out for haste. But Balban knew that he had to give the faction leaders time to rally the mob. The Malwa by themselves could not overcome the Romans at the other end of the Hippodrome. They needed those thousands of thugs.
So, the kshatriya marched slowly. And began to die, as the grenade volleys came their way. But they were soldiers, and maintained their ranks.
From the mob in the tiers, dozens of men began leaping into the arena. Then hundreds. Then thousands.
Thugs, all of them. But not all thugs are cowards, by any means. And not all of them are stupid, either. Given a choice between battle and the horror of the stampeding crowd—which had already trampled hundreds of men to death—many of them chose to fight.
By the time Balban and the kshatriya were halfway across the Hippodrome, they had been joined by almost six thousand faction members.
Now, Balban ordered the charge.
“Pull them back, Antonina,” said Maurice.
Pale-faced, Antonina glanced at him.
“You’ve only got three hundred cataphracts,” she protested.
“Pull the grenadiers back,” he repeated. “They’re lightly armored and they’ve got no experience in hand combat.”
The hecatontarch gestured at the huge mob marching toward them.
“They’ll just get in my cataphracts’ way,” he growled. “Pull them back and keep tossing grenades. I’ll try to hold as long as I can.”
Maurice stalked forward, roaring commands. Antonina added her voice to his. The grenadiers and their wives scampered back up the tiers. The Thracian cataphracts moved in from the flanks, forming a solid line in front of the grenadiers. The bucellarii didn’t wait for Maurice’s order before firing a volley of arrows.
“Aim for the Malwa!” ordered Maurice.
The enemy broke into a charge. There was no discipline to that charge. No formation of any kind. Simply—six thousand men racing toward three hundred.
By the time the traitor army reached the lowest tier on the southwest curve of the Hippodrome, a thousand of them had been slain or wounded by grenades and arrows. The kshatriya, especially, had suffered terrible casualties—including Balban, who was bleeding to death in the arena. A cataphract’s arrow had ripped through the great artery in his thigh.
But the traitors sensed victory. Their own grenades were beginning to wreak havoc. And they were now too close for that horrifying cataphract archery. True, the armored Thracians loomed above them like iron statues—fierce, fearsome. But—there were only a few of them.
The mob poured up the tiers.
“NIKA! NIKA!”
The cataphracts raised their swords, and their maces. Soon, now. The first line of the mob was but twenty yards away.
Thousands of them.
Ten yards away.
The line of thugs suddenly disintegrated. Shredded, like meat. Stopped, in its tracks, by a thousand plumbata. The lead-weighted darts sailed over the heads of the cataphracts and struck the charging mob like a hammer. The entire front line collapsed—backward, driving the thugs who followed into a heap.