Antigonus ordered the building of wooden casks and the gathering of ten days’ provision for the army. To avoid information leaks, he told his soldiers they were marching west to Armenia but then veered suddenly and led his men into the desert. His secret was then safe, since no spies or deserters could escape notice in an open, blasted plain. To further cloak his route, he ordered his troops to light campfires only by day, for the desert was surrounded by high hills from which night fires would easily be spotted. This order was obeyed for the first half of the march, but finally the troops could no longer stand the nighttime cold and cutting wind. Some of them kindled fires, and that gave their presence away.

From the distant mountains, herdsmen spotted strange lights in the desert and sent messengers on galloping camels to inform Peucestas, the nearest of the generals in Eumenes’ coalition. Peucestas was roused from sleep by the news and hastily summoned the other generals, convening an emergency council. Peucestas urged a retreat deeper into Gabene in order to buy time. Eumenes, again wrestling with Peucestas for control of strategy, countered that the army should stay where it was. He promised that by means of a trick, he would stop One-eye’s progress for at least three days, enough time to allow the scattered forces to assemble in one spot. His fellow commanders decided to let him try.

Eumenes immediately sent messengers to all the camps in Gabene, urging his men to join him on the double. Then he took a contingent of troops up to some high ground, measured off stations about thirty feet apart, and at each station posted a crew of fire tenders. Their orders were to light fires each night, letting them blaze up for a few hours but slowly die down toward dawn, just as the watch fires of an army on campaign would do. Eumenes knew how Antigonus, with his fear of deserters and moles, would react, and he was right. Seeing the fires on the ridge, Antigonus assumed that his plans had been divulged and that the entire coalition army was waiting for him. Disheartened, he turned aside from his desert route and took his men into country where they could rest and provision themselves. He assumed they would have not an ambush but an open-field battle ahead.

The stratagem bought Eumenes just enough time to assemble his units. The last to arrive, the slow-moving elephant herd, only barely made it, and Eumenes had to send troops to rescue it from attack, for Antigonus had by then discovered he had been tricked and had brought his troops to Gabene.

For the second time in six months, two great armies, each more than thirty thousand strong, came together for battle on the dry, dusty plains of what is now Iran.

Eumenes put himself and his best cavalry units on the left wing this time, facing Antigonus and Demetrius. He would confront his nemesis face-to-face. He put Peucestas directly on his right, perhaps as a way to ensure he could keep an eye on his troublesome colleague during the battle. It seems Eumenes realized that his fractious coalition was not in good repair. Plutarch reports that rival generals were plotting against his life and that Eumenes himself knew this, but the story lacks confirmation in other sources. In any case, Eumenes had tangled with Peucestas often enough to know not to trust him.

In front of his strong left wing, Eumenes placed a screen of his best elephants. They would attack the elephants of Antigonus while also fending off frontal cavalry charges, for horses were wary of the sight and smell of elephants and would not approach them. At the center of his line, Eumenes stationed his infantry phalanx, spearheaded by the Silver Shields, his greatest asset and best hope of victory. He kept his right wing weak and ordered it to stay out of the battle as long as possible. He would try to score a knockout blow from his own wing, aiming his best units squarely at the enemy leader. It was what Alexander had done in his battles against the Persians, and his model had already become the gold standard of military heroism.

As the two armies drew within a few miles of each other on the barren plain, Antigenes, the Silver Shields’ commander, ordered a lone rider to gallop forward and deliver a message. When this man came within earshot of One-eye’s lines, he shouted: “Villains! It is your own fathers you are wronging, men who marched with Philip and Alexander and conquered the whole empire!” The boast and the reproach had come, unmistakably, from the Silver Shields. The message unsettled Antigonus’ men, who had no great wish to fight the most revered—and most deadly—soldiers of their age. But it raised a cry of approval from Eumenes’ side, as a report of its content passed from unit to unit. Hearing that cry, Eumenes led his cavalry forward, and Antigonus, on his side, did the same.

The soil on which the troops were moving was dry and laden with salt. The tramp of horses, elephants, and tens of thousands of men raised a choking cloud of dust that quickly enveloped the field. As the two sides drew nearer to each other, Antigonus, a master at cloaking strategies, spotted an opportunity. He sent some light-armed Tarentine cavalry to ride past the flank of the oncoming army and attack the baggage train behind it. From within the shroud of dust, no one in Eumenes’ line saw them coming or noticed them passing by. The Tarentines easily overcame a few token guards and seized the whole train, including the families and worldly goods of the Silver Shields. These they led back around the line of battle to Antigonus’ side, still unseen.

Before Eumenes had learned of this setback, another blow landed, even more devastating for his chances. As the elephants engaged and began to gore one another, and Antigonus’ massive cavalry wedge began a flanking maneuver, Eumenes saw Peucestas, stationed immediately to his right, leave the field with his fifteen hundred horsemen. This was either an act of cowardice or, more likely, a prearranged move to sabotage Eumenes’ efforts and end his life. Eumenes was now stranded, cut off from his own line with only a small corps of elite cavalry. Peucestas, always an unwilling subordinate, had gone his own way at last.

Peering through the whirling dust, Eumenes spotted the huge figure of Antigonus in the oncoming throng of cavalrymen. His chance for a masterstroke, a bold charge that would decapitate the enemy with one sword thrust, was at hand. Eumenes spurred his cavalry on toward Antigonus. But his numbers were too few to penetrate and give him a chance at single combat. The deed he desperately needed, the coup de grâce that would have made a Greek scribe into a second Alexander, was just out of reach. After watching his lead elephant fall, sensing his position was collapsing, Eumenes rode his troops out of the fray and around to the right wing, which had not yet come into contact with Antigonus’ left.

Meanwhile, the Silver Shields were moving forward in the center, wielding their eighteen-foot sarissaswith customary resolve. They cut a deep swath into Antigonus’ ranks, quickly sending his infantry fleeing in a disordered mass. The resulting rout was total. Diodorus reports that the Shields inflicted five thousand fatalities without losing a man. Perhaps that is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that here, in the last battle they were destined to fight together, the Shields proved their prowess once again. “Like athletes of war, without a defeat or a fall up to that time, many seventy years old and none less than sixty—the oldest of those who had served with Philip and Alexander,” Plutarch eulogizes them. Thanks to their victory in the center, the outcome of battle was once again hanging in the balance.

Eumenes sought to rally his cavalry and sent a message to Peucestas demanding he come back to the fight. Peucestas sullenly withdrew even farther, taking refuge by the banks of a nearby river. Meanwhile, Eumenes’ victorious infantry had come under attack by Antigonus’ horse, but had formed a hollow square with lances pointing outward, a sure defense for those who could hold to it unshakably. With consummate sangfroid they retreated to the safety of the river, where they began berating Peucestas for his desertion of the left wing. If not for that, it was clear, the battle would already be won and the army would be reclaiming its baggage—the loss of which had now been learned and was causing considerable anguish.