"These poor bastards," Iona chuckled as she watched the battle unfolding below. They were in full view from the battlefield below, but no eyes were looking there way. It wouldn't matter if they were spotted now in any case, there wasn't a commander in the world who could extricate a force from such a bloody chaotic encounter now.
 
"Lets save our sympathy for someone other than the stinking Khareeds," Phaedra said as she pulled her hair back and pulled her helmet down over her head. Iona matched the action and hefted her bow.
 
"With your permission First?" Iona asked formally. Phaedra nodded at her Tetrarch.
 
At first the Atvari didn't pick out the horn blast from the other sounds of battle, but the sound of five hundred hooves drumming the ground was harder to ignore. Even so it wasn't until the Miravet cavalry burst over the low rise in a cloud of dust. The Atvari recoiled at the sudden appearance of cavalry at their rear. The Imperials, forewarned by Eriene, were ready for it and they surged forward into the faltering enemy. As they crested the rise each cataphract drew her bow and released an arrow before hanging their bows on their saddle horns and drawing their lances. A rippling wave of missles fell on the enemy from the rear, punching through the light backplates of the Khareed armor and sending men and horses tumbling down in a bloody ruin. The armored horsewomen hammered down the slope at a gallop, closing the hundred yards to the rear ranks in under a minute. To their credit, the Atvari at the rear, seeing the danger, managed to form a ragged line. Unfortunately those at the rear were not the best or the bravest, those soldiers were already being spitted by Brasidas and his men. They also lacked polearms and so the long lances of the Miravet left them all but defenseless in the inital second of contact. Metal and men screamed as the wedge of riders smashed into the rear ranks, killing hundreds of men in a few seconds, many were spitted on lances, but many more were simple rode into the ground by the weight of horses and armor. Phaedra dropped her shattered lance and drew her spatha, thrusting downward as she drove her horse towards the center of the battle line. They were terribly outnumbered, but the sudden shock of their attack was armor for as long as it lasted. Phaedra could hear nothing, over the din of battle and the pall of dust that five hundred horses and several thousand men kicked up was enough to obscure her vision more than a few dozen yards. She simply had to trust that Eudoxia and Zoe were carrying out their own assignments.
 
"Forward! Press them!" she shouted uselessly as she split the helm of a Khareed with a blow from her spatha. The impact jarred up her arm as her horse carried her passed into the mass of the dead man's retainers. The force of the charge was spending itself rapidly and while the mass of the Atvari infantry was breaking as there were knots of resistance beginning to coalesce around  the dismounted Khareeds. As Phraeda watched one of her riders went down as a spear thrust into her horses flank, the woman hit the ground on her back and was immediately hacked open by half a dozen enemy soldiers.

“Iona, sound the…” Phraeda began but even as she spoke a bloodied Atvari hamstrung her Tetrarch’s horse. The stallion screamed as its rear legs gave out. Unlike the previous rider though Iona was not caught by surprise. She stood up in her stirrups and vaulted clear landing heavily on the dusty ground. It would have been a perfect dismount if she hadn’t tangled her feet on a corpse, the slippery entrails staggering her. An Atvari raised a curved sword to strike her, but before he could drive home Phaedra drove the iron wrapped edge of her shield down into his face. The heavy oak shield shattered the Atvari’s face in a spray of blood and teeth. Iona regained her feet, stabbed the reeling infantryman in the throat, then leaped up onto Phaedra’s saddle, getting one foot into the styrip and pulling herself up over the saddle bow. As soon as Iona was secure Phaedra drove her horse away. Iona unslung Phaedra’s bow and began to fire back over her body in the steppe fashion. For her own part Phaedra pulled her horn from her saddlebag and blew three sharp blasts. The Miravet riders wheeled away from the line, following Iona’s example and sending volleys of arrows back over their shoulders as they pulled back. The technique didn’t provide the kind of nail driving accuracy of their normal archery but it slashed into the staggered mass of Atvari with brutal effect. There was another horn blast, this one off to the north.

“Eudoxia is bringing her riders in,” Iona shouted over the screams and clamor of battle.

“Keep up the archery and reform!” she shouted, “We will drive back in if we have to.” She hoped she didn’t have to. Without the lances and with the enemy prepared, casualties would be much heavier. With luck Brasidas and Eudoxia would be sufficient to break the stalemate.
 
  
 
 
A hot wind blew down from the distant ridge bringing with it the smell of warm sand and desert flowers. The night was clear and as chill as the next day would be hot. The cavalry were encamped on one of the small rocky rises which rose from the floor of the desert at intervals, ancient mountains which had been ground down by millennia of grit blowing in off the Atvari plateau. Several hundred tents were pitched in rows as net as the terrain permitted. Horses were picketed in neat rows beside small fires, kindled on the scant fuel the cavalry could scavenge in such inhospitable country.