Johannes the Armenian, one of Belisarius's best leaders, pressed with his countrymen through the stream, which reached only to their knees, and rushed out of it up the steeper Vandal shore. He was instantly hurled back. Zazo, with his foremost warriors, darted upon him with the weight with which a bird of prey strikes small game. Down the slope, into the midst of the stream, whose water was soon dyed red, and up the opposite bank, swept the Vandal pursuit. Hilda saw it plainly from her station. "Oh, at last, at last," she cried, "a breath of victory!"
But Zazo followed no farther. He prudently led his men back to the left bank of the stream. "We will pitch them down here again," he said, laughing; "we will profit once more by our position on the height."
The Armenians bore their brave leader away with them in their flight. Johannes, who had received through his shield a wound in the arm from Zazo's sword, said grimly to Marcellus, the commander of the bodyguard: "The devil has got into the cowards of Decimum. It confuses my spearmen to have them fight solely with the sword. The Barbarians thrust the long spears to the right, run under them, and cut the men down. And this fellow with the buffalo helm actually butts like a mountain bull. Give me your shield-bearers; I will try again."
With the shield-bearers, led by Martinus, the Armenians renewed the attack. Not an arrow, not a spear, flew to meet them; but as soon as they began to climb the Vandal shore, the Germans dashed down on them with the sword in a hand-to-hand conflict. Martinus fell by Gibamund's sword. Then the shield-bearers fled; the Armenians hesitated, wavered, fell into confusion, finally they, too, fled, pursued by the Vandals.
"Dash on the foemen!
Strive with and strike them
Down in close combat!"
rose in a roar from Zazo's troops, whom the latter again led to the left shore.
"They must repeatedly see the backs of the dreaded Byzantines before they have the courage to defeat them entirely," he said to Gibamund, who urged pursuit. "And where is Belisarius?"
The latter, with his five hundred horsemen, had reached the centre from Carthage just in time to see the flight of his men. When he learned that this was the second attack which had been repulsed, he ordered all his bodyguard, men trained to fight on foot as well as on horseback, to dismount and advance with Althias's Thracians for the third assault. His own special standard, the "General's banner," he commanded to be borne before them.