There came a triumphant shouting.
And in that strange sharpening of the senses that always goes hand in hand with deadly peril, that is indeed nature's summoning of every reserve to meet that peril, my eyes took them in with photographic nicety--the linked mail, lacquered blue and scarlet, of the horsemen; brown, padded armor of the footmen; their bows and javelins and short bronze swords, their pikes and shields; and under their round helmets their cruel, bearded faces--white as our own where the black beards did not cover them; their fierce and mocking eyes.
The springs of ancient Persia's long dead power, these.

Men of Xerxes's ruthless, world-conquering hordes; the lustful, ravening wolves of Darius whom Alexander scattered--in this world of ours twenty centuries beyond their time! Swiftly, accurately, even as I scanned them, we had been drilling into them.

They advanced deliberately, heedless of their fallen.

Their arrows had ceased to fly.

I wondered why, for now we were well within their range.