In the half light Ninus towered above his followers, his bare arms raised aloft, his great voice rolling forth commands, till those who had lost their wits in the sudden fury of attack, plucked courage from their master's fearless front. Where tossing, disordered troops ran riot among themselves, balking defense and fanning the torch of panic into flame, they now pressed backward from the valley's sides and the zone of plunging rocks, raising their shields to protect their heads from showers of arrows and smaller stones. Where horsemen proved a hindrance, the riders dismounted, and while one force was sent ahead to tear away the spear-set barrier, still others charged the hillsides, scrambling up by the aid of projecting roots, in a valiant effort to dislodge their foes; but the Bactrians beat them back with savage thrusts of javelins and of spears. So soon as an Assyrian head arose above some ledge, a wild-haired mountaineer would cleave it with an axe and laugh aloud as the corpse went tumbling down, itself a missile, thwarting the progress of its scuffling friends.
Again and again the assault was checked, till the climbers faltered and then went reeling down the slope, while the Bactrians shrieked their triumph from above, and the wrath of Ninus knew no bounds. He raged about him, striking with his sword at every flying warrior within his reach, cursing their cowardice and leaping from his steed to lead one last mad onslaught on his enemies.
There were those who fain would save their King, so they flung themselves upon him and clung in the manner of wriggling eels; yet even as they struggled a louder shouting rose among the rocks, and the strugglers paused in awe. Commingled with the shouts came cries of sharp alarm, while the Bactrian shafts were aimed no longer in the valley's bed, but upward at the crags. King Ninus looked and marveled. The gloom of dawn was thinning rapidly; great coils of mist, that swam among the peaks, unwound and disappeared, scattered by shifting winds, or sucked into thirsty, deep defiles. The red sun shot above a ragged spur, flinging his torch of hope into the death-strewn pass, for upon the heights on either hand the warm light lit the arms of Menon and Kedah as they led their men.