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reds. Despite their appearance, these were hard men. They’d seen a multitude of troubles in their time, and this was their home, though their city, Cyrene, had seen its golden age long past.
    Some few cataphracts there were amongst the Greeks, and these were well armed and armored, having come by sea in haste from Byzantium. Armored knights in scale-mail wielded their much feared kontos lances, each four meters long, the tips deadly sharp and capable of skewering a man in one swift blow. Their captain was renowned, a veteran of conflicts past. Giannikas was his surname, though his men called him the Wolf, for he was cunning and fast, a predator on the battlefield.
    As the Greek soldiers watched across the field, by some unseen signal the Ummayid army as one faced eastward and knelt; the cavalry dismounted too, and their noble figures merged into the mass of prostrating figures. A lone voice carried on the wind the adhan , the call to prayer. The muezzin’s voice was warm and sonorous, and his words lifted the hearts of the Muslims.
    “God is great. God is great. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet.”
    The Greek army, wary of this alien custom, began to chatter and talk as they witnessed the spectacle of the enemy bowing in unison. Some priests among them administered communion and spoke derisively of these heathens and their barbaric ways. “These are not Christian men!” they called, and admonished the men of Cyrene to slaughter the foreigners in the name of their Lord and the Emperor.
    Soon thereafter, the Arab army arrayed themselves again facing the Byzantines. Horns sounded and the multitude advanced towards the Greek lines, pennants and standards bobbing and swaying as the men marched. The Bedouin cavalry as one trotted to the left flank of the Ummayid lines, keeping to the southern slope of a hill and thus remaining out of sight of the Greeks. One Byzantine archer, a farmer whose given name was John, was the first to let loose a white-feathered arrow, its shaft hewn from good cypress. The missile whistled as it flew upwards and fell back down into the invaders’ lines, its iron tip striking a dark eyed spearman in the shoulder who screamed as he fell to the ground. A hundred more arrows soon followed, and the Ummayid men raised their embossed, circular shields skyward for protection. Arab archers began to return volleys of fire as they moved to the rear of the Ummayid formation. Advance. Stop. Draw. Fire. Advance.
    As the lines closed, the difference in size between the two armies became readily apparent. The Arab formation like a crescent moon slowly began to encircle the Byzantines. Archers on both sides retreated as the waves of armored swordsmen and spearmen slammed into one another with a deafening clash. Screaming the names of their God, each army meted out vicious blows with sharpened metal. Suddenly, with a terrible cry the mounted Greek cataphracts, flashing scale armor blinding in the noonday sun pierced the Ummayid army’s western echelon, attempting to break out of the enveloping swell of their enemy. Men were trampled wholesale underfoot as the chargers thrust full gallop into the Ummayid lines. The cataphracts’ kontos lances skewered infantrymen as the professional Greek cavalry, well practiced in this ancient art of warfare, pushed onwards, led by their wolfish captain.
    With a howling likened to a thousand djinn , the Arab cavalry, unseen until that moment, counter-charged the Byzantine knights. African horses bucked and whinnied as spears and long scimitars slashed their sides; many of their riders dismounted or hacked down in the fray. The Greek lines, already exhausted as they fought, rippled with desperation upon seeing their valiant knights overwhelmed.
    It was all over rather quickly. Forty minutes after the battle had begun the Byzantine conscripts’ lines broke and fled to the city, pursued by the victorious Arab army. Most of the Greek fighters were captured, for