Chapter 41

“Report! The Persians are out of the gorge and are in pursuit!”

“Excellent. How many of them?”

“Approximately six or seven thousand! It looks like they’re all bowmen and horse archers!”

“Damn Persians! They must have the ridiculous idea that they can break us with arrows alone!”

“All the better! The more they send, the more we’ll kill!”

“Can Davos hold his position?”

“That is why our attack must be swift and fierce!” Chrysophus said with grim determination. “Gentlemen, return to your command posts at once! Deploy the battle line! We are pressing forward!”

“Hooah!” The generals, eager for a fight, moved to action.

***

Having exited the gorge, Artaozus wasted no time in arranging his troops into a battle formation, the same as the day before: archers in the center, cavalry on the wings.

They had advanced barely two miles from the gorge’s exit when his scouts returned. “The Greeks are marching to meet us!”

Though still in a state of high excitement, Artaozus was an experienced general. He knew that this kind of harassment tactic required room to maneuver; he had no desire to be pinned down at the mouth of the gorge. He immediately ordered his entire force to shift to the left.

While horse archers and bowmen were mobile troops, repositioning a seven-thousand-man army that was already in a battle line took time. The time that the Greeks were not about to give him.

Moments after Artaozus gave the order, the Greeks appeared on the horizon. A knot of tension formed in his stomach. He knew full well that attempting to change formation while an enemy was advancing was tantamount to suicide.

He countermanded his previous order, resuming the battle formation as his mind raced: Once they are in range, I’ll loose two volleys of arrows to break their advance, then immediately order a rapid move to the left, disengage, and look for a new opportunity.

His expression soured. The Greek line was long, far outstretching his own wings, and it was continuing to extend as it advanced.

Artaozus was familiar with the traditional Greek phalanx. They typically formed deep, dense ranks, usually eight men or more, relying on the sheer weight of their charge to crush their opponents. But the formation before him now was thin, perhaps only two or three ranks deep. Why would they dare do such a thing? The answer struck him almost immediately: because his own force consisted entirely of light cavalry and archers, the Greeks didn’t need the crushing power of a deep phalanx to ensure victory.

They intend to encircle me! I’ve been careless! A flicker of panic crossed Artaozus’s face. He wanted to retreat immediately, but his army was already deployed. To turn and flee now, without even an engagement, would be a blow to morale, not to mention the time it would waste.

I made a promise, he thought. Let me at least fire one volley. Seven thousand arrows should be enough to disrupt their formation, maybe even throw them into chaos. Even if it doesn’t, there will still be time to retreat.

With that, Artaozus decided to take the risk. He quickly summoned his officers and gave them precise instructions for the order of withdrawal.

Once the arrangements were made, he felt a measure of relief. He watched the Greeks marching steadily closer and decided to give the order to fire when the distance closed to about a hundred meters.

Come, you Greek barbarians, come to your deaths! he thought with a savage grin. But when the Greeks were about two hundred meters away, a bronze horn sounded from their line, and they stopped their advance. Annoyed, Artaozus resisted the urge to press his own troops forward. An immediate switch from offense to retreat could easily cause chaos, and he wanted his withdrawal to be orderly. He would wait for the Greeks to advance. He was now feeling the drawback of a larger force: it was far less nimble to command.

Then, he saw it. From behind the line of Greek heavy infantry, countless arms shot up, beginning to whirl something above their heads.

Slingers!

A jolt of terror shot through Artaozus. He remembered that the Greek mercenaries had no slingers. Where did they suddenly come from?

There was no time for him to ponder the question. A dense hail of fist-sized stones rained down on the center of the Persian army. The Persian archers had been drawing their bows, ready to fire. The sudden onslaught caught them completely unprotected by armor. The stones smashed into them, crushing skulls and shattering bone. Some were knocked unconscious instantly.

The Persian center collapsed into chaos.

The slingers’ rate of fire was astonishingly fast. In an instant, another volley of stones blotted out the sky.

Artaozus’s eyes turned bloodshot with panic. “Retreat! Retreat!” he screamed himself hoarse.

Just as his horn-blower raised the instrument to his lips, a piercing blast from the Greek horns cut through the air. The stationary Greek hoplites let out a thunderous roar—“Ares!”—and began to charge. The entire Greek line surged forward like a tidal wave, heedless of any obstacle, determined to swallow the land before it. The sheer, unstoppable momentum was enough to shatter what little morale the Persians had left. A gap even opened in the center of the Greek line, and from it burst a small troop of cavalry, leading the charge straight toward the enemy.

The Persian army broke completely. Ignoring the commands of their officers, they turned and fled, sweeping their own commanders along with them in a panicked mob. The carefully planned withdrawal sequence was forgotten. Cavalry, bowmen, the right wing, the left wing, the center—all of it dissolved into a single, terrified mass surging toward the mouth of the gorge. There was only one thought in their minds: Get away from those terrifying Greeks!

Defeated! Defeated without firing a single arrow!

Artaozus had been at the Battle of Cunaxa. As an ally, he had cheered as the Greeks effortlessly crushed the army of the Great King. But now, facing that charge himself, he finally understood the terror of the Greek hoplite. His mind went blank. He clung desperately to his horse’s neck as his attendants surrounded him, galloping toward the gorge. Since he had been positioned at the rear of the center, he and his retinue were now at the very front of the rout.

The mouth of the gorge lay ahead. The vast open space narrowed abruptly, and the steep, continuous mountain peaks funneled the air into a powerful wind that almost blinded Artaozus as he entered.

“Yah!” He dug his heels into his horse’s sides. He knew with absolute clarity that the faster they could get through the gorge, the fewer men he would lose.

The path through the gorge was not straight but a winding “S” shape. For Persian cavalry who had spent their lives on horseback, this was no great challenge. They controlled their steeds expertly, barely slowing as they approached a sharp bend.

But as they rounded the turn, a half-man-high wall of rocks and wood suddenly appeared before them. It was too late for Artaozus and his retinue to rein in their horses. They smashed directly into the barricade. The air filled with the shrieks of men and the screams of horses.

Artaozus was thrown from his horse. The last thing he saw was the rock face of the mountain rushing up to meet him.

The torrent of routing Persian soldiers poured into the gorge like a flash flood, packing it from wall to wall, each man pushing the one in front of him.

When the surviving horsemen at the front saw the barricade and reined in their horses in terror, the soldiers behind them were still running for their lives.

What followed was a scene of pure horror. Soldiers at the front were pushed over and trampled by those surging from behind before they could even get up. Their struggling bodies tripped the men running over them, who in turn were trampled by the next wave of panicked soldiers still flooding into the gorge to escape the Greek slaughter.

Men fell, were trampled, fell, and were trampled again. Beyond the stone wall, the bodies of Persians piled up in layers that stretched all the way back to the mouth of the gorge. Some soldiers were trampled into pulp; others still struggled, wailing in streams of their own blood. It was a hell on earth.

“Shield wall!”

“Javelins, ready!”

Looking at the mass of Persian soldiers crushed against the stone wall, Davos, though his heart was pounding, remained clear-headed, his commands crisp and precise.

The Persians who managed to scramble over the barricade were first met with a volley of javelins from the light shieldbearers led by Epitenes. Then, they ran into the Greek heavy infantry. Formed into a dense phalanx, their shield wall blocked the path completely. The first four ranks of soldiers pressed tightly against each other, giving support to the men at the front. Their spears, extended past the first rank, formed a solid wall of spear points that sealed the passage, easily impaling the disorganized and panicked Persians.

Davos had ordered his men to build the simple barricade with the intent of slowing a Persian cavalry charge, knowing that even multiple ranks of hoplites would struggle to stop horses at a full gallop without suffering heavy losses. He never imagined it would be so effective. The barricade, combined with the mountain of bodies, completely choked the gorge, preventing the routing soldiers from concentrating their force to break through his defensive line.

The battle did not last long. Trapped, with the enemy at their backs, no way forward, and a vision of hell in between, the spirits of the Persian soldiers shattered completely. One by one, they began to throw down their arms and surrender.