"There they are!" Clearchus cried eagerly.
Straight before them, perhaps three miles away, they saw a confused mass of gleaming banners and the glint of countless spears. The shallow Pinarus, flowing down from the mountains, rippled across the level, and on its further bank, where the ground was high, the Great King had taken his stand. For a mile and a half, from the hills to the sea, the plain was blocked by a living rampart, gay with the pomp of Oriental splendor.
As the squadrons of Macedonian cavalry emerged from the pass, they wheeled to the right and formed their line close to the lower slopes of the mountain.
"Here come the men of Thessaly," Chares cried.
Their plumes fluttering in the breeze, the Thessalian horse poured out of the pass and ranged themselves behind the Companions.
Then the phalanx appeared, marching rank after rank, with the precision of a machine. The lancers under Protomachus and Aristo's Pæonians, who had been thrown forward in advance of the cavalry, raised a shout as the scarred veterans, each holding his long sarissa erect and bearing his heavy shield across his shoulder, followed the proud Agema.
While the phalanx was forming on the left of the cavalry there was a movement among the Persians.
Clearchus and Nathan saw a large body of horse and foot advance across the river. Although in numbers they exceeded the entire Macedonian army, their departure from the main body of the Persians seemed to make no diminution in its size. They halted as soon as they had crossed the stream and from the host beyond came the bray of trumpets and the hoarse murmur of many voices.
"They are taking their positions," Nathan said. "They will not attack."
His conjecture proved correct, for in half an hour the troops that had advanced fell back again across the river through openings that had been left for them in the wings of the main force, and the glittering front of the Persian army was revealed, drawn up in battle array.
The Macedonians had continued to advance slowly across the plain, forming as they went, so that only half a mile now separated them from the Persians. Nathan's eyes sought the centre of the enemy's line.
"There he is!" he exclaimed, pointing with his finger.