standing so quietly beside their horses?" "Enemies they are too for
all that," said the king. "And are those enemies too?" the boy asked,
"those who are riding over there?" "Yes, to be sure." "Well,
grandfather, a sorry set they look, and sorry jades they ride to
ravage our lands! It would be well for some of us to charge them!"
"Not yet, my boy," answered his grandfather, "look at the mass of
horsemen there. If we were to charge the others now, these friends of
theirs would charge us, for our full strength is not yet on the
field." "Yes, but," suggested the boy, "if you stay here yourself,
ready to receive our supporters, those fellows will be afraid to stir
either, and the cattle-lifters will drop their booty quick enough, as
soon as they find they are attacked."

[20] Astyages felt there was much in what the boy said, and thinking
all the while what wonderful sense he showed and how wide-awake he
was, gave orders for his son to take a squadron of horse and charge
the raiders. "If the main body move to attack," he added, "I will
charge myself and give them enough to do here." Accordingly Cyaxares
took a detachment of horse and galloped to the field. Cyrus seeing the
charge, darted forward himself, and swept to the van, leading it with
Cyaxares close at his heels and the rest close behind them. As soon as
the plunderers saw them, they left their booty and took to flight.
[21] The troopers, with Cyrus at their head, dashed in to cut them
off, and some they overtook at once and hewed down then and there;
others slipped past, and then they followed in hot pursuit, and caught
some of them too. And Cyrus was ever in the front, like a young hound,
untrained as yet but bred from a gallant stock, charging a wild-boar
recklessly; forward he swept, without eyes or thought for anything but
the quarry to be captured and the blow to be struck. But when the
Assyrian army saw their friends in trouble they pushed forward, rank