At sunrise they saw the Persians. The enemy was advancing slowly. Experienced soldiers estimated their number at nearly two hundred thousand. Hill after hill unmasked new bodies of men, and the glittering of the arms on these detachments, in spite of distance and dust, was almost dazzlingly bright. The Romans, with hardly a word in the ranks, left the valley of the previous night and ranged themselves in battle-order. Their faces were stern, but not sad. Danger now stifled their hatred, and all looks were fixed upon the Emperor, Christians as well as Pagans seeking to surmise from his expression whether they might still hope for success.
At that hour Julian was beaming with joy. Long, long, had he awaited this encounter with the Persians, awaited the miracle in which victory would give him such renown and power that the Galileans could no longer resist. He was haughty as one of the old heroes of Hellas. Danger seemed to spiritualise him; and a gay and terrible light was in his eyes.
The heavy and dusty morning of the twenty-second of July seemed the prelude to a day of burning heat, and the Emperor objected to wear a breastplate, and remained clad in a light silken tunic. Victor, the general, came up holding a coat-of-mail, and said—
"Cæsar, I have had a bad dream; tempt not fate; wear armour!"
Julian silently waved his hand in negation. The old man fell on his knees—
"Put it on! Have pity on your slave!... This battle will be perilous...."
Julian took a shield, flung the light purple of his chlamys over his shoulder, and vaulting on horseback said—
"Let me be, old friend! I need nothing."
He vanished, his golden-crested helm glittering for a while in the sun, while Victor anxiously followed him with his eyes.
Julian disposed his army in a peculiar form, like a crescent. The enormous half-circle was to bury its two points in the Persian mass and squeeze it inwards from two sides. The right wing was commanded by Dagalaïf, the left by Hormizdas, Julian and Victor leading the centre. The trumpets sounded. The earth trembled under the soft and heavy tread of the Persian elephants, wearing huge plumes of ostrich-feathers on their foreheads. Turrets of hide were lashed on the back of the beasts by thick thongs; and each turret held four archers, who shot flaming arrows of tow and pitch.
The Roman horse did not stand the first shock. With deafening roars and raised trunks the elephants opened their huge moist gullets. The legionaries felt in their faces the hot wind of the monsters, maddened before battle by a special drink made of wine, pepper, and spices. With foot spikes painted in vermilion and tipped with steel, the elephants disembowelled horses, and their trunks whirled horsemen from the saddle and dashed them against the ground. The torrid heat of the afternoon raised from the trumpeting beasts a rank odour of sweat which made the horses wince, rear, and tremble violently.
One cohort had already taken flight. It happened to be a body of Christians. Julian pursued them, and striking the chief decurion full in the face, cried furiously—
"Cowards! I suppose praying is the only thing you are good for?"
The light Thracian archery and Paphlagonian skirmishers now advanced against the elephants. Behind them marched Illyrians, skilful throwers of the leaded javelins, the "Martiobarbuli." Julian gave the order to aim arrows, stones, and javelins at the legs of the elephants. An arrow struck an enormous Indian beast in the eye. He trumpeted and reared, the girths snapped, saddle and leather turret slid and upset, shedding the Persian archers like birds from a nest. Confusion followed among the huge pachyderms. Wounded in the legs they staggered and fell, and their squadron became little more than a mountain of grey masses. Their feet in air, their trunks bleeding, their armour smashed, they lay amid ruins of the turrets, half crushed horses, and piles of Roman and Persian dead.
At last the elephants took flight, and rushed headlong against the Persians, trampling them underfoot. This particular danger had been foreseen by the barbarian tacticians. The previous instance of the battle under Nizibis had shown that an army may be defeated by its own allies. Now the mahouts began to slash the monsters with curved cutlasses between the two joints of the spine lying nearest the skull; a single blow in this exact spot sufficing to kill outright the largest and strongest of the great beasts. The cohorts of Martiobarbuli charged, clambering over the wounded and pursuing those in flight.
At this instant Julian galloped to support the left wing. On that side rode the PersianClibanarii, afamous body of cavalry, bound man to man by a strong chain, and clad in invulnerable scale-armour. They received the waves of battle like a row of bronze equestrian statues. They could only be wounded through narrow slits left for mouth and eyes.
Against the Clibaniars Julian sent his old faithful friends, the Batavians and the Celts. They would die for a smile from Cæsar, gazing at him with eyes of childlike adoration. The right wing of the Romans was assailed by Persian chariots, drawn by galloping zebras. Scythes were affixed to their axles, which, sweeping along with incredible swiftness, mowed legs from horses and heads from soldiers, and lopped bodies in half, easily as the reaper's sickle takes the corn.
Towards the end of the day, weighed down in their overheated armour, the Clibaniars wavered. Julian massed all his forces against them. They broke, and re-formed, but their ranks at last became confused and fled. A cry of triumph broke from the Emperor's lips. He galloped ahead, pursuing the fugitives, not perceiving that he was far in advance of his main body. A few body-guards surrounded the Cæsar, amongst them old General Victor. This old man, though wounded in the hand, was unconscious of his hurt, not quitting the Emperor's side for a moment, and shielding him time after time from mortal blows. He knew that it was as dangerous to approach a fleeing army as to enter a falling building.
"Take heed, Cæsar!" he shouted. "Put on this mail of mine!" but Julian heard him not, and still rode on, on—his breast lying bared to drink in the wind—as if he, unsupported, unarmed, and terrible, was hunting his countless enemies by glance and gesture only from the field. Laughter was on his lips;through the cloud of dust, raised by the furious gallop of the horse, shone the Bœotian helmet, and the outspread folds of his chlamys streamed into two great wings of purple, that seemed to bear him farther and yet farther.
In front, a small detachment of Saracens was in flight. One of these horsemen, turning in his saddle, recognised Julian by his raiment, and pointing him out to his comrades, uttered a guttural cry like that of an eagle—
"Malek, malek!... The king, the king!"
All wheeled round, and at full gallop sprang upright, standing on their saddles, their long white vestments streaming, and lances poised above their heads. The Emperor saw the bronzed face of a young robber, one little more than a lad. Riding rapidly towards him on a Bactrian dromedary, from whose shaggy hair lumps of dry mud swung and dangled, Victor parried two lances aimed at the Emperor by Bedouins. Then the lad on the camel aimed, his fierce look glittering and white teeth showing while he cried gleefully—
"Malek, malek!"
"That boy is happy," was the thought that flashed through Julian's mind, "and I too...."
He had no time to finish; the lance hissed, and grazing the skin of his right hand, glanced over the ribs and buried itself below the liver. Julian thought the wound a slight one, and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his fingers. Blood gushed out. Julian uttered a cry, flung his head back, fixed his staring eyes on the pale sky, and slid from his horse into the arms of the guard.
Victor supported him with tender veneration, gazing with trembling lips at the closed eyes of his sovereign. The tardy cohorts in the rear came up.