At twenty paces, his regiments broke into a charge, roaring. Mardonius watched the front ranks reach the Spartan spears. Those first, brave men did not fare well. They lunged and knocked iron leaves aside, trying to slip past the points. The leaf-shaped heads broke coats and shields, finding flesh. Mardonius could hear barrel-chested Spartan officers chanting time with the thrusts. Their voices were perfectly calm, sounding over and over like a training ritual. The spears were long and they had weight and strength behind each blow. The wounds they made tore men from life and left them standing, dead on their feet.

The Spartans held well against that vast charge. They did not seem to panic when the Persian advance went around them, swallowing them on all sides. Mardonius had been taught that no army could fight surrounded. It terrified men to have an enemy on more than one side, never mind behind them, flanked and battered to the fore. Yet the Spartans kept formation and Mardonius could only recall the determination he had witnessed at Thermopylae. They had not given up then, despite appalling odds. He felt a cold hand touch his stomach, a sense of illness. No. He still had the Immortals.

He sent his messenger through the dust storm to bring Hydarnes in. The lad raced away, cursing those in his path. Some time passed and a bass roar went up, confirming they were coming. Mardonius grinned then.

The empire did not lose, not in the end. God knew, they had experienced disasters before, but they were the tide. They came in, regardless, carried on gold or blood, or fear, it did not matter much which it was. They still came in.

He let himself be carried closer to the Spartan square, drawn to the noise of clashing death, of metal and flesh and pain. Movement flashed away in the madness, like a spinning top of gold and red, drawing the eye in horrible fascination. He nudged his horse closer still, and in that moment understood he had come too close. One of the Spartans looked up to see which horseman had drifted in on the flood. That man recognised the armour and helmet of a senior officer and pointed. Mardonius could not pull back, not when his men were being killed on all sides. If he turned, they would think he had lost his nerve. They would run.