For a time, the Lucanian camp was a whirlwind of chaos. Gnaenat and the other Pyxous chieftains were completely unable to rally enough warriors to quell the bloody uprising the men of Veii had unleashed in their thirst for vengeance.

“Captain, look!” Outside the Lucanian camp, a mercenary cavalryman, tasked with observing the enemy, shouted with excitement.

Laedes had been kicking himself for failing to intercept all of the Lucanian messengers. He was stunned to see the enemy camp suddenly go up in flames, and then, as he watched in disbelief, the people inside began to slaughter one another.

“Captain, it’s an uprising! The enemy is fighting amongst themselves!” the scout next to him continued to shout excitedly.

Laedes forced himself to remain calm. He observed for a while longer, and after confirming what he was seeing, he gave the order. “Quick! Ride back and inform General Davos! The enemy camp is in the grip of a major uprising! They won’t be able to send reinforcements anytime soon!”

***

Davos knew nothing of the mutiny in the Lucanian camp. At that moment, he was consumed with anxiety over the stalemate before him.

Despite being poorly equipped and exhausted, their footing treacherous on the riverbed now churned to mud by thousands of trampling feet, the Lucanian warriors attacked the Greek defensive line like a relentless tide, wave after wave. The agonized screams of their kinsmen only served to ignite their bloodlust. A warrior, even when impaled by a spear, would clutch the shaft and refuse to let go. Thrown back by a shield bash, he would desperately claw at a Greek soldier’s ankle, trying to drag him down before he slid back down the slope.

The Greek defensive line on the northern flank was on the verge of collapse.

“Report! General Drakos is down!”

“What?!” The news jolted Davos. From his position behind the heavy infantry line, he could feel the tremor of panic spreading through the mercenary ranks.

“Have Archytas pull three hundred men and reinforce the north!” Davos ordered, his voice strained with agitation.

“General, you’ve already given that order,” Axistes reminded him. “The Tarentines have no men to spare! They’re in just as much trouble!”

“Right.” Davos rubbed his face with both hands. This was the first major battle he had commanded independently, and with the fate of his men and their future on the line, the pressure was getting to him. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, and then gave a decisive command. “Order the slave corps and the peltasts to join the fight!”

He then turned to Martius. “It’s our turn!”

“Hooah!” Martius roared, excitedly banging his short sword against his shield. The men of the personal guard followed his lead, dropping their long spears, drawing their own swords, and letting out a primal yell. As experienced veterans, they knew that in a crush like this, long weapons were more of a hindrance than a help.

Davos was the first to charge forward. Martius and the guard surged after him, quickly forming a protective wedge around him. Axistes raised the army’s standard high, right behind his commander.

The sight of the soaring banner made the wavering mercenaries hesitate in their retreat. It also gave the chaotic mass of Lucanians a new focal point, and they began to swarm toward Davos, slightly relieving the pressure on the other parts of the line but dramatically intensifying the assault he now faced.

At that moment, the continuous blast of a bronze horn sounded.

Though the peltasts’ limbs were numb with fatigue from constantly throwing their javelins, they did not hesitate. Led by Epitenes and Tspites, they raised their light shields and long-handled reverse-bladed knives and charged forward to plug the gaps in the mercenary line.

The slave soldiers had been waiting impatiently for this moment. Davos had promised them their freedom if they won this battle.¹ When the order came, they charged forward with a thunderous roar: “For freedom!”

Fueled by fresh stamina and soaring morale, these men, who possessed no formal combat training, slammed into the enemy with such ferocity that they managed to drive back the warriors who had broken through the line. In their raw enthusiasm, they even knocked a few of the mercenaries back down the slope with them.

***

That same cry—“For freedom!”—was on the lips of the men in Mersis’s column. Led by veteran mercenaries, the thousand-strong slave corps had not only reached Philesius’s position with incredible speed but had also maneuvered around the chaotic melee, slamming into the enemy’s flank and rear like a sledgehammer.

Akperu and the other two paramount chieftains, who had been directing the battle from the rear, were caught completely by surprise. Their small personal guards were no match for the frenzied onslaught of the slave soldiers.

“Why?! Why hasn’t Cincinnag arrived?!” Akperu screamed in fury.

“Paramount Chieftain, we must retreat! If we wait any longer, we won’t get away!” one of his retainers urged frantically.

Retreat? And abandon nearly ten thousand of his warriors? Akperu couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted to hold on, but then he heard an anguished cry from nearby. “Paramount Chieftain! Paramount Chieftain!”

It was Udler, the paramount chieftain of the Niutum. He had been struck by several spears and had fallen, gravely wounded.

Akperu hesitated no longer. Under the protection of his retainers, who fought and died to clear a path, he and Tulas, the paramount chieftain of the Laos, fled westward with a few dozen men. The remaining five hundred Lucanian warriors were completely enveloped.

At that exact moment, Laedes’s cavalry finally arrived back at the battlefield. “The enemy camp is in revolt!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “There will be no reinforcements!”

The good news sent a massive surge of morale through the mercenary army. For the Lucanian warriors who understood Greek—and as neighbors to the Greek city-states, many did—the news was a devastating shock.² That, combined with their leaders’ blatant desertion, caused their morale to plummet.

The mercenary soldiers and the slave corps now attacked from both front and rear. The five hundred Lucanian warriors were either killed or they broke and fled. Without pausing to rest, the unified force, now under Philesius’s command, turned and rushed to reinforce the western defensive line.

The situation on the western flank was now even more dire than it had been in the north. Capus’s force was simply too small, stretched to the breaking point. The thin line had been breached in several places by the surging tide of enemy warriors.

Capus, Antonios, and Alexis were fighting in the front ranks alongside their men, shield-to-shield, spear-to-spear—a direct violation of the military law Davos had established, which forbade company commanders from engaging in personal combat under normal circumstances to prevent a breakdown in command.³

At this critical juncture, Philesius and his force of nearly two thousand men arrived, finally stabilizing the line.

***

The battle raged for over an hour. The force of the Lucanian assaults on the defensive line began to wane.

The entire riverbed was now a macabre carpet of bodies—men, their bodies riddled with wounds from spears, javelins, arrows, sling-stones, or trampled to death by their own kin. The air was thick with an unbroken chorus of groans, wails, and cries for help, a sound that grew louder with each passing moment as the number of men still fighting dwindled.

More and more warriors, seeing that a breakout was hopeless, tried to escape by wading into the Tino River and fleeing toward the hot spring marsh. They were either swept away by the current or became hopelessly mired in the swamp’s thick mud.

Davos saw that the time was right. He gave the order to attack.

The high, sharp call of the bronze horns echoed across the valley. The Greek soldiers, though utterly exhausted, were spurred on by the promise of imminent victory. Led by Davos, Archytas, Philesius, and the other commanders, they surged down from the slopes on the eastern, western, and northern sides, falling upon the nearly defenseless enemy below like fierce tigers pouncing on their prey. The Lucanian warriors could not resist. They fell back, again and again. In the end, with the exception of a small number who surrendered, the rest were either cut down or forced into the Tino River and the hot spring marsh, where they were picked off by the archers and javelinmen.

The Battle of the Great Riverbed, later known as the Encirclement at the Hot Spring Marsh, marked Davos’s first significant independent military command. With a combined force of approximately 7,500 men, including slaves, he faced an overwhelming adversary of over 9,000 warriors from the allied Lucanian army. Despite the odds stacked against them, the Greek forces emerged victorious. The Greek casualties amounted to just over a thousand, with half of them being slaves. In contrast, the Lucanian army, numbering over nine thousand, was completely decimated, with the exception of four hundred prisoners.

The great riverbed was a mountain of corpses, awash in a river of blood.

***

The efforts of Cincinnati and Gnaenat were futile. The Pyxous’s defeat was complete and irreversible. In the end, they managed to escape the camp with just over two hundred men, forced to watch helplessly as the great fire consumed their sprawling camp, reducing it to miles of smoldering ash.

Their mortal enemies, the men of Veii, marched west onto the mountain path under the leadership of Sedorum, intact and unharmed, on their journey home.