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The rebels marched in poor order, especially the Moorish cavalry and camel-riders on the flanks, who had little notion of military discipline. Our Roman mutineers were easy to spot. Their infantry marched in column in the centre, with auxiliary cavalry guarding their flanks and rear.
       Anger coursed through me as I watched them advance. The mutineers were still flying Roman standards, as though they were the loyalists and we the rebels.
       The screech of bucinae called me to my duty. I scrambled aboard my horse and steered her towards the great imperial standard, where Belisarius was forming up his guards. He was already mounted and armed, and shading his eyes to observe the movements of the enemy across the dust-whipped plain. Photius was at his side.
       Our garrison troops were a shade slower to form into line of battle, though Bessas and Troglita and other officers rode among them, screaming and striking at the laggards with iron-tipped truncheons. I galloped past the chaos and took my place in the front rank behind Belisarius.
       My heart shivered at the sight of the grim mass of steel and flesh tramping towards us. The enemy numbered some eight to ten thousand, and my only solace was that Belisarius had faced worse odds before and triumphed.
       I expected the rebels to march straight on and roll over our pathetic array, but instead their forward squadrons stumbled to a halt. A smile spread across my face as I watched their officers galloping to and fro, shouting and gesticulating at each other. Seeds of confusion were sown in the rebel ranks as their infantry shuffled this way and that, colliding with their comrades. War-drums and bucinae sounded a stream of conflicting orders.
       Stoza was a ttempting to arrange his army into one long column, so their centre could engage us while the wings wrapped around our flank and rear. It wasn’t a complex maneuver, but at least half his force was made up of ill-trained levies and skirmishers.
       The effort proved disastrous. With the exception of the Roman troops, Stoza’s entire forward line collapsed into a mob of baffled and angry men. Belisarius saw the opportunity and raised his spatha as the signal to charge.
       I had taken part in many cavalry exercises outside the walls of Constantinople, learning to steer a horse with my knees while handling sword and shield, javelin and bow. I fought as part of a cavalry squadron at Ad Decimum, and witnessed the shattering assault of the bucelarii at Tricamarum, but Membresa was the first time I rode in a cavalry charge.
       My sluggish blood quickens as I recall t he excitement and urgency, the bunch and flow of my horse’s muscles under me as I spurred her into a full-hearted gallop. The shriek of the bucinae, the roar of the men around me, the dust kicked up by hundreds of hoofs, the howl of the gale sweeping across the plain.
       As we thundered into a gallop the rebel line vanished, concealed behind billowing clouds of dust and sand.
       Instinct and training took over. Belisarius had drilled his guards in the use of the kontos, a slender four-metre long lance, wielded in both hands for greater thrust. The heavier shields carried by our garrison troops were a needless encumbrance to men carrying such a weapon, so instead we wore small round shields strapped to our left forearms.
       I held my kontos at a low angle across my horse’s neck. In this position it would outreach the weapons of the rebel infantry, and hopefully skewer any man foolish enough to hold his ground against me. Some of my comrades held their lances high, to strike and stab downwards at the enemy.
       We charged blindly through the storm. The gold and silver figures of Belisarius and Photius disappeared, swallowed up inside a wall of dust. We roared in fury and drove our horses to the limit, determined not to lose sight of our beloved general for long.
       The mu ffled yell of a trumpet sounded away to my right. Horsemen