[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 on rank, saying to themselves the pursuit would stop when their own movement was seen. [22] But Cyrus never slackened his pace a whit: in a transport of joy he called on his uncle by name as he pressed forward, hanging hot-foot on the fugitives, while Cyaxares still clung to his heels, thinking maybe what his father Astyages would say if he hung back, and the others still followed close behind them, even the faint-hearted changed into heroes for the nonce.