Volume 6: The Meeting of Two Heroes, Chapter 94: The Battle of the Ramato River (Part 3)

The experienced Syracusan soldiers stared coldly ahead through the narrow eye slits of their helmets. Though they had never yet fought the Daonians head-on, they knew a larger assault was coming, so their pace quickened.

The Daonian light infantry rapidly withdrew through the gaps between the small phalanxes. The infantry small phalanxes in the rear moved forward quickly, soon linking the entire Daonian formation into a continuous line.

By now the enemy had entered within fifty meters. Without any need for officers to give orders, Ephialtes and the other heavy infantrymen stepped forward, raised their arms, and hurled their weapons. Tens of thousands of javelins flew from the allied center along a battle line nearly two miles long, blotting out the sky as they struck the Syracusan phalanx. Prepared for this, the Syracusan soldiers held their round shields overhead, overlapping them top to bottom and side to side to form a long wall of bronze. But the deadly storm of javelins could no longer mask the screams of the Syracusans, and they began to run faster.

Ephialtes and his comrades at the very front of the line had no time to throw another javelin. Without hesitation, they dropped their remaining one, held their long shields forward with their left hands, gripped their spears tight in their right, and charged together. They had to reach maximum speed in just thirty meters.

One side was a golden wall; the other, a black tide.

“Apollo!!!...”

“Hades!!!...”

With a deafening roar, the two sides crashed into each other. At that moment, even the earth trembled.

In that instant, Ephialtes felt an immense force slam into his shield, nearly breaking the arm that held it. His body lurched backward involuntarily, but the equally powerful push from behind shoved him back forward. His thrusting spear was blocked by the enemy’s round shield, while his long shield stopped the opponent’s spear. The momentum of the charge was so great that both spears snapped.

Ignoring the pain in his right hand, Ephialtes drew the short sword from his waist.

The soldiers of both sides were packed tightly together, each man with very little room to move. The Daonian soldiers in the front ranks, whether their spears had broken or not, discarded them and drew their short swords. Many Syracusans across from them also took up their curved short swords, and close-quarters combat began.

...

In front of the center formed by the Daonian Army Corps, the Daonians held the advantage in the skirmish of light infantry. But on other sections of the line, the Syracusan light infantry had the upper hand.

Because Croton, Scylletium, and Trina were not accustomed to having light infantry harass the enemy while the heavy infantry phalanx advanced, they suffered considerable losses. Their solution was to speed up their advance and engage the Syracusan heavy infantry in direct combat as quickly as possible.

Except for the Daonians, all the allied light infantry were concentrated at the far left of the entire battle line, behind the cavalry. Only this area remained calm while the two sides were locked in combat.

Philistos knew that in terms of cavalry, the allied horsemen were far inferior to the Syracusan cavalry both in numbers and ability. So he gathered the five hundred cavalry under Sobecus together with horsemen from other city-states to form a single cavalry unit of fifteen hundred men, guarding the flank of the allied left wing to prevent the enemy cavalry from circling around. (Because the Lamato River lay on the outer side of the allied right wing, Philistos believed the Syracusan cavalry could not possibly be deployed there.) He warned them: do not move out lightly. If the enemy cavalry attacked, let the nearly four thousand light infantry behind them break up the charge with ranged fire, then supplement with a cavalry charge—this should be enough to counter the fierce Syracusan horsemen.

Philistos’s real killer move was on the left wing. The formation he had set up was similar to the strategy Davos had used to defeat the Bruttians on the Cosenza Plateau: place weaker troops on the right wing, relying on the river for flank security, and use the strengthened left wing to win the advantage. But unlike the Battle of Punat, the allied left wing now had weak cavalry but strong infantry. Seventeen thousand Croton infantry and over ten thousand Scylletium infantry (with a small portion of the Scylletium troops near the center) formed the left wing, with a formation depth of more than forty ranks.

When Phoebidas reached the Syracusan right wing, he did not know the detailed deployment of the enemy opposite him. But standing at the front of the line, he gazed out and saw the dense forest of upright spears stretching far behind. With his experience, he immediately realized: once the bugle sounded, the enemy’s charge would be terrifying.

He made a quick decision: thicken his own formation as well.

But this would inevitably make his right wing shorter in line length than the enemy’s, since he had fewer troops, making it easy for the opponent to encircle his flank.

Phoebidas also made a startling decision: he ordered the soldiers on the right wing to immediately form a curved battle line, convex outward. This way, during the fighting, the Syracusan soldiers would be on the inside of the curve, naturally compensating for the shorter line length.

When the bugle sounded, nearly thirty thousand infantry on the allied right wing strode forward in vast numbers toward the enemy.

Among the Croton soldiers, many citizens like Kolebus had been captured twice by the Daonians. Burdened by the guilt of defeat, they had experienced Croton’s decline from glory, watched helplessly as their former enemy Daonia rose swiftly, and felt a constant mix of loss and confusion.

So today, like their commanding general Ascamas, they wanted to prove themselves with a victory, to prove Croton’s former glory! Though things were no longer what they once were and Croton’s strength had long fallen behind the Daonia City-State League, this was the pride of the Crotonians, the nature of the citizens of the city of athletics.

Thus, even as arrows rained down like hail, nothing could slow their advance. Keeping their formation as best they could, they gradually quickened their pace.

The massive host rumbled with a terrible roar as the Croton soldiers began their charge.

Every man’s eyes were fixed on the enemy drawing nearer, faces a mix of tension and excitement, longing only for that terrible and intoxicating moment to arrive at once.

“Apollo!!!...” They roared wildly and smashed into the Syracusans.

Usually, when the heavy infantry of both sides locked together, the forward pressure from the rear ranks began to take effect. To prevent the enemy from pushing their line back step by step until it broke and collapsed, the rear-rank soldiers not only pressed close to their comrades ahead, extending their spears as far forward as possible to threaten the enemy, but also pushed forward with all their strength. This made the space for the soldiers at the very front increasingly cramped.

Ephialtes was not worried. As trained, he lunged forward, slightly crouched and leaning in, his half-body long shield covering almost his entire legs, torso, and neck. From time to time, using the force coming from behind, he would suddenly shove his long shield forward. The power concentrated on the bronze semicircular ram at the center of the curved shield. The force was immense. If it struck an enemy without sufficient protection, it could cave in his chest and break bones; even hitting an enemy’s round shield could leave dents in the hard bronze.

In contrast, when a Syracusan round shield struck the long shield, the latter’s round ram often caused the round shield to slip off, unable to strike squarely. Moreover, the powerful force from the round shield, after spreading through the curved shield board and then to Ephialtes, was greatly reduced. This gave Ephialtes enough time to catch his breath.

While using his long shield to disrupt the enemy’s defense, Ephialtes gripped his double-edged, thick-backed short sword, more than half a meter long, in his right hand. Seizing opportunities, he would quickly thrust it through the gaps between his shield and the enemy’s, then withdraw. Unfortunately, the two Syracusan soldiers pressed close to him seemed experienced; he missed them several times.

The Daonian Army Corps and the Syracusan center were of similar thickness. With nearly equal strength, the compression in the middle grew more severe.

Ephialtes and the enemy across from him pressed closer and closer. He could even feel the hot breath of the opponent coming through the narrow slit under the nasal guard of his Corinthian helmet.

When he saw that grim gaze suddenly brighten, he instinctively lowered his head and raised his long shield.

“Bam!” The enemy’s curved short sword struck the shield board. But as he lowered his head, he suddenly saw something that excited him.

It was the enemy’s foot! Though the Greek round shield was large, it was not as long as the long shield. The enemy’s foot, clad in a leather sandal, was exposed beneath the round shield. If Ephialtes had not raised his long shield, he would not have spotted this weakness through the gap below.

He immediately used his long shield to brace hard against the opponent’s round shield, lowered his head further, bent his waist more (a move impossible if he were wearing a Corinthian helmet), and drove his short sword diagonally downward and forward with all his might. The sharp tip pierced straight through the top of the enemy’s right foot without resistance.

A piercing scream came from the opponent. Without checking the result, Ephialtes quickly withdrew his short sword. As he shoved his long shield forward, he took a step with his left foot. In the instant the enemy fell screaming and the one behind was about to replace him, Ephialtes squeezed into a small gap in the enemy’s shield wall.

In the blink of an eye, his blood-stained short sword lashed out again like lightning to the right. The enemy beside him, locked shield-to-shield with Ephialtes’s comrade and not yet prepared for his fallen neighbor, had his unarmored right arm stabbed through. He cried out in pain, dropping his curved short sword to the ground.