its baldric and hewed the man's arm off with the same motion. Another Mede, again from the back. The sword butchered into his neck, below the rim of the helmet. Another Mede—facing him, now. The sword hammered his shield down, hammered it aside, hammered his helmet sideways. The man was driven off his mount and fell, unconscious, to the ground. In that mad press of stamping horses, he would be dead within a minute, crushed to a bloody pulp.
The entire Roman cavalry piled into the Persians, caving in the right rear of their already disorganized formation. The initial slaughter was horrendous. The charge caught the Persians completely by surprise. Many of them, in the first few seconds, fell before blows which they never even saw.
To an extent, of course, Belisarius now found himself caught by the same dilemma that had faced the Medes. The thousands of Persian cavalrymen jammed against the Roman camp in the center of the battlefield were not quite a wall. But almost. Combat became a matter of men on skittering horses hammering at each other. Lances were useless, now. It was all sword, mace, and ax work. And utterly murderous.
Yet, for all the ensuing mayhem, the outcome was certain. The Medes were trapped between an equal number of Roman heavy cavalry and thousands of Roman infantrymen. Their greatest strength—that unequaled Persian skill at hard-hitting, fast-moving cavalry warfare—was completely neutralized. As cavalrymen, the average Roman was not their equal. But this was no longer a cavalry battle. It was a pure infantry battle, in which the majority of soldiers just happened to be sitting on horses.
As always