Cyrus was not about to wait for us to arrive, and for his own forces to be encircled, before he attacked. Astonishingly, he sounded a trumpet and began charging toward the king's heavy infantry, his own six hundred horsemen beside him in close formation, struggling to keep up with their racing leader, screaming the horrifying, ululating Persian battle cry as they sprinted. The king's men halted their march immediately, standing stock still in amazement. These were well-trained troops, not about to turn tail at the first approach of the adversary like those we had met; yet they were not so foolhardy as to continue advancing in the face of Cyrus' flying cavalry.
The king shouted an order, and his ranks of bowmen launched their arrows, forming a thick cloud as of evil birds, whizzing and humming through the air. Some struck home among Cyrus' lead horses, tripping them up, throwing their riders and creating chaos as those behind them stumbled over the writhing bodies of the fallen. Another volley of arrows was launched, this time more of them finding their mark; still Cyrus raced on, his long mane of hair streaming behind his helmetless head like a torch in a stiff wind.
With a roar of frenzied men and horses and a ringing crash of metal on metal, the prince's cavalry hit the king's armored troops in what seemed an explosion. Terrible screams rose from men and beasts, as the first ranks of the Persians were mercilessly trampled and Cyrus' lead horses were run through with javelins, or their legs hamstrung by enemy swords, toppling their riders into the dust. We were now running as fast as our fatigue would allow, determined to support the prince in his impossible charge against the king's hugely superior forces, yet also scarcely daring to believe what we were seeing: none of Cyrus' horses were retreating from the whirling cloud of dust, and that in fact a steady stream of broken and terrified enemy soldiers were flying toward the King's rear, shifting the cloud steadily back and obscuring what little we could see of the battle.
At this point my vision failed me for the dust and lengthening shadows of the day, and I shall have to rely on what I was told after the battle by Cyrus' comrades. Even by the light of day it is impossible for those doing the fighting to see everything, and in fact in battle, as in much of life, no one really knows anything more than what is happening right around himself. When we finally arrived at the prince's initial point of impact with the enemy, there was no one there still living. The battling forces had raced away, like rabid dogs rolling over each other down a street in a frenzy, and Cyrus' initial line of six hundred cavalry had been broken up and dispersed in the confusion into small bands that were running down Persians by the dozen. The prince had personally launched himself against the king's general, lancing the officer's horse through the haunches to trip him up and make him throw his rider, and then using the lance again to impale the man through the neck as he lay helpless on the ground.
The sight of their general pinned twitching and writhing by the broken lance point broke the nerve of the few enemy forces who were still maintaining order, and they began fleeing, singly and in small groups, across the wide plain, scattering to avoid being run down by Cyrus' marauding cavalry. His strategy was working, for as he routed the king's guard, the Persian right wing stopped advancing in its encircling movement as its officers tried to discern the outcome of the battle before committing themselves further to an attack against Ariaius' and Menon's forces.
After a frantic sprint across several hundred yards of the plain, Cyrus finally spied the king and the remnants of his guard attempting to maintain order in the retreat. "There he is!" shouted the prince. "Death to anyone who strikes the king before me!" Galloping up to Artaxerxes he struck him on the chest with the blunted end of his broken lance, knocking him off his horse. Just as he struck, however, one of the king's guards, throwing his own lance to ward off the blood-mad prince, struck Cyrus in the cheekbone under the eye, knocking him unconscious and off his horse. The king's bodyguards and Cyrus' nobles began viciously hacking at each other over possession of the respective bodies of their leaders. Neither side knew even whether the king and the prince were still alive, for they lay still as stones, brothers almost touching each other with their outstretched arms. After a few seconds, the king groggily arose, and himself actually began contributing to the fighting, which was no longer a kinglike affair on splendid stallions, but rather like one fought by common soldiers, on the ground in the piss and the mud, and the king was fighting for his very life.
Artaxerxes' men finally gained the upper hand, killing eight of the soldiers defending the prince's unconscious body. One of those soldiers, Artapates, a massive, scarred Scythian who had been with the prince since his boyhood and who was Cyrus' most trusted protector, leaped off his horse and threw his enormous body over the prince, shielding him with his own, and receiving the points of twenty lances in his back which had been intended for Cyrus. Even so, the man continued to live and breathe, and when the king ran over to where Cyrus lay, he was chagrined to find the old warrior still snarling at him through his broken teeth in hot hatred, shattered lance tips sprouting from his back like bristles on a boar and blood pouring from every orifice. Kneeling, the king pleaded with Artapates to roll off the prince's body, that the king would spare him, for the old Scythian had been his own boyhood instructor as well as Cyrus'. The warrior spat at him in fury, too spent and near death to even curse him with his lips, though his fast-glazing eyes still glowered at the king in a poisonous rage. Sorrowfully, the king drew Artapates' own scimitar from his belt, and muttered a quick prayer. He then brought it down hard, in one hasty stroke removing both the massive, battered head of the fearsome old fighter, whose eyes continued to glitter fiercely from their sightless sockets, and the small, smooth, almost childlike head of Cyrus, which rolled several feet along the same downward path, settling against Artapates' grizzled jaw as if still seeking the shelter and protection of his old tutor, in death as in life, like two plaster masks tossed carelessly in the corner after the performance is complete.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SIGHT OF their still-living king revived the Persians' hopes, and officers began forming them again into battle array. The king, now recovered from his fall, personally led a large contingent across the field, searching for the main body of invaders that he knew must be in the vicinity, but which in the chaos of the moment he had lost sight of.
Proxenus had ordered Nicarchus and me to gallop to a small hillock a mile or two distant from our troops, to survey the overall scene and attempt to determine where we could be of most use. Suddenly, from out of the dusty confusion, we saw several hundred Persian riders break away and begin streaking in the direction of our own camp. The realization struck us both at the same time like a blow to the face-Tissaphernes! The Greeks had left the camp unguarded in the rush to prepare for battle, assuming that the enemy forces would never be able to slip behind our lines, and that if we were forced into a retreat, we would simply fall back directly to the camp we had left behind, to defend our provisions and camp followers. We wheeled our horses.
"Ride to the camp!" Nicarchus screamed, as he raced his horse back down the steep slope. "Round up the camp followers behind the supply wagons! Do your best to hold!" He tore off to Clearchus' troops, hoping to intercept them before they had marched even farther from the camp, and tell Clearchus to turn around to defend our precious stores.
It was a contest I was destined to lose. Though the Persians and I were racing to the camp from opposite sides, the rough terrain I encountered hampered my horse, and I knew there was no chance of warning the camp ahead of the hordes about to sweep down on them. My horse descended a shallow gully and followed a dry stream bed for several hundred yards, during which time I lost sight of the camp. By the time I ascended several minutes later, I was too late-the cloud of dust had swept over Cyrus' followers and baggage train, and was now hovering there like a tornado stalled over the one spot where it inevitably does the most damage.