“Ah!—la—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la—la!” deep, prolonged, bellowed in chorus from every bronze visor which peered above the serried shields.
“Faster,” stormed the Persian captains to their slingers and bowmen, “beat these madmen down.” The rain of arrows and sling-stones was like hail, like hail it rattled from the shields and helms. Here, there, a form sank, the inexorable phalanx closed and swept onward.
“Ah!—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la!”
The chant never ceased. The pipers screamed more shrilly. Eight deep, unhasting, unresting, Pausanias was bringing his heavy infantry across the two hundred paces betwixt himself and Mardonius. His Spartan spearmen might be unlearned, doltish, but they knew how to do one deed and that surpassingly well,—to march in line though lightnings dashed from heaven, and to thrust home with their lances. And not a pitiful three hundred, but ten thousand bold and strong stood against the Barbarian that morning. Mardonius was facing the finest infantry in the world, and the avenging of Leonidas was nigh.
“Ah!—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la!”
Flesh and blood in the Persian host could not wait the death grip longer. “Let us charge, or let us flee,” many a stout officer cried to his chief, and he sitting stern-eyed on the white horse gave to a Tartar troop its word, “Go!”
Then like a mountain stream the wild Tartars charged. The clods flew high under the hoofs. The yell of the riders, the shock of spears on shields, the cry of dying men and dying beasts, the stamping, the dust-cloud, took but a moment. The chant of the Spartans ceased—an instant. An instant the long phalanx halted, from end to end bent and swayed. Then the dust-cloud passed, the chanting renewed. Half of the Tartars were spurring back, with shivered lances, bleeding steeds. The rest,—but the phalanx shook now here, now there, as the impenetrable infantry strode over red forms that had been men and horses. And still the Spartans marched, still the pipes and the war-chant.
Then for the first time fear entered the heart of Mardonius, son of Gobryas, and he called to the thousand picked horsemen, who rode beside him,—not Tartars these, but Persians and Medes of lordly stock, men who had gone forth conquering and to conquer.
“Now as your fathers followed Cyrus the Invincible and Darius the Dauntless, follow you me. Since for the honour of Eran and the king I ride this day.”
“We ride. For Eran and the king!” shouted the thousand. All the host joined. Mardonius led straight against the Spartan right wing where Pausanias’s life-guard marched.