Some of Ariaius' native troops positioned near Cyrus had also rushed back to defend the camp when they realized the Persians were targeting it, but their heart was not in a fight to the death with their own countrymen. They were easily repelled, bouncing off Tissaphernes' marauders like a ball thrown by a boy at a stone wall. They fled as far back as the previous day's camp, twelve miles down the trail, taking nothing with them but what they wore on their backs.
I continued riding, hoping to assist the hapless camp followers, and plunged blindly into the dust and chaos, ignorant even of whether I was entering the Persians' side of the fight or ours. Those in the camp were, in fact, acquitting themselves far more bravely than had Ariaius' troops. They had hastily arranged their meager defenses in a circle, surrounding their scant supplies and improvising the use of the Boeotian engines as they had seen the troops practicing. Amazingly, the ragged mass of sick men, prostitutes, cooks and mule drivers repelled Tissaphernes' attacking cavalry with frightening efficiency. Flames shot out in all directions from the terrorized mob, who had all gathered in a tight, wailing throng behind the engines, some hurling rocks ineffectually at the Persians, others desperately seeking shelter-behind tents, animals, and even fallen bodies-from the volleys of arrows and missiles raining down upon them from the riders. Mounds of Persians and frantic horses were stacked writhing in front of the engines, many burned black by the fire, some roasted alive in their heavy armor as the oily flames poured over the metal of their breastplates and helmets.
Dismounting to better pick my way through the chaos and slaughter, I saw a sight that chilled my blood to the marrow. Tissaphernes himself was among the marauders and had dismounted. Stalking through the rampaging troops in his heavy cavalry armor, he had seized Cyrus' beautiful Phocaian mistress by the hair as she ran terrified from Cyrus' flaming tent. The general handed her off to his battle squire to be taken behind Persian lines, then ordered three of his guards to race through the oily black smoke into the portion of the prince's tent that had not yet caught fire, to seize any battle plans or plunder they might find.
What they found was all the more valuable, and terrifying-for emerging a moment later, two of them carried scrolls and maps in their arms that they had blindly snatched up in a race against the flames, while the third was dragging Asteria by the collar of her robe. Tissaphernes froze as he watched her fight like a Fury, digging into the dirt with her bare feet and scratching the guard with her nails. She finally sank her teeth so deep into his wrist that he roared in pain and rage. He let go her collar momentarily and swiped her across the side of the face with his forearm hard enough to lift her bodily into the air before she landed, nimble as a cat, on all fours, spitting blood from her broken lips and glaring at him with hate-filled eyes.
Tissaphernes reacted in rage. He drew his jewel-encrusted scimitar and stormed to where Asteria crouched in terror and fury. Looking down at her, his face black and contorted with anger, he raised the glinting blade high above his left shoulder, and I felt the world grind to a halt. All the commotion and chaos around me seemed to freeze, as if time had become fragmented. The screaming of wounded men and terrified horses, which had risen to a deafening pitch, now thundered into silence, and the stench of the acrid black smoke and burning flesh was pushed into an odorless vapor in the back of my mind. The space between moments seemed to stretch, to become extended, and all my senses focused in utter concentration, to the exclusion of anything else, on the dream-slow trajectory of that lethal blade. It hesitated at the peak of its arc for an instant, quivering, and I held my breath, as the eyes of Asteria, the guard and myself all converged on its tip, each of us willing it with all the strength of our being in a direction to be ultimately decided only by Tissaphernes and the gods themselves. The world moved slowly, trancelike, as Asteria agonizingly raised her thin arms to ward off the blow and I involuntarily did the same, even though distant from the blade by many yards, by a lifetime.
My senses came crashing back to me with a roar, the mayhem that surrounded me bursting and flooding back into my consciousness and the din of the battle nearly knocking me off my feet by its sudden ferocity. My eyes did not waver from the blade. Tissaphernes, whirling quickly, slashed it viciously through the air almost faster than the eye could see, slicing off the head of the guard who had struck Asteria, as a gardener lops off a wayward branch from his fruit tree. Two thick streams of blood rose writhing and snakelike from the stump of the neck, crossing and twining about each other as they curved in a smooth arc to land with a spatter in the dust at Tissaphernes' feet. The dead guard stood upright for an instant, incephalic and spouting, stiffened and propped by his heavy cavalry armor, before his knees buckled and he slowly toppled into the dust, blood bubbling like black broth from the still-quivering flesh of the stump of his neck and mingling with the black, sour-smelling pools forming under his feet. Tissaphernes glared at the knoblike head lying several feet away, the helmet knocked askew from the impact, exposing the unfortunate guard's eyes and mouth, which were wide open in his now perpetual astonishment.
Tissaphernes then dropped his sword arm, and barely glancing at the cringing Asteria, shouted something to another of his guards standing nearby, and then strode back to his horse. The new guard roughly seized the girl by the collar and began dragging her again. She flopped jerkily like a fish being drawn in on a line, clawing desperately at her collar to relieve the pressure on her throat and keep from being garroted as she was finally forced behind the Persian lines.
Something snapped inside me, that instinct for self-preservation with which all men are born and which to a greater or lesser extent governs all our activities. At that moment, that instinct died, and I did things that no sane man should do. Throwing my shield up to my face to guard against the thrusting spears, I raced blindly into the Persian lines, slashing at any living being I could find, parrying and blocking in desperation. To my surprise, I suddenly found no resistance, as the enemy troops simply parted to let me pass through, a single maddened Greek being of little consequence to the Persians intent upon rushing the Boeotian fire and screaming camp followers. Each Persian soldier assumed that the man at his shoulder would dispatch me instead.
I did not let Asteria leave my sight, and although the entire lapse since she had been dragged kicking from the tent could not have been more than a minute, it seemed like an eternity to me as I hacked my way after her. When I had advanced to within several yards, her eyes fixed on me; though it is impossible that she could have known who I was through the helmet and nasal shrouding my face, and the sheets of blood and gore on my breastplate and limbs, a gleam of recognition seemed to spark in her eyes, reviving her from her half-strangled state. Suddenly summoning every fiber of strength remaining to her, her eyes bulging and her face an apoplectic red, she dug her feet once more into the ground, seized the silk fabric that had knotted and bunched around her throat in the guard's grasp, and pulled with all her might, ripping the robe from neck to waist.
The sudden release of her weight as she fell to her buttocks on the ground threw the struggling guard off balance, and he pitched forward onto his face. I was still several yards away, but just then was confronted by a Persian cavalryman who was startled to realize that a single, armed Greek was racing rampant through the middle of his lines. The man reined in his horse just in front of me, and with an evil grin raised his battle-axe, preparing to split my head like a melon. It was all I could do to tear my eyes off Asteria, who sat panting on the ground, ripping at the shreds of the long robe entangling her neck and legs. The guard who had been dragging her was struggling to regain his feet, hampered by the unwieldy cavalry armor he was wearing and the rushing mobs of men surrounding him and knocking him off balance.