Brasidas had no helmet on unlike his guards, but the Protos Kapetanos had donned his cuirass for the meeting just in case. Phaedra did not do anything he wasn't going to do, but seeing her doing it made him realize then and there that they were going to work well together. His two cataphracts reached for their weapons as the envoy's hand hit the sand, staining the ground with his blood. One grabbed a paramerion as the other grabbed their mace. Brasidas reached for his shield and axe, kicking Menelaus forward, the warhorse intuitively moving so its master could get into melee range, kicking and shoving at the other horses with abandon. Brasidas kept his head and upper torso protected with his shield, an arrow punching into it as another bounced off from a glancing shot. His two guards charged forward to join him, fighting for the life of their trusted commander and wading in the ever breaking formation of the envoy's guards, none of the kahreeds expecting to fight much less die this day. 

Brasidas felt a cut from a sabre on his leg to his left, the Protos Kapetanos raised his shield and used it to block the view of his swinging axe until the last moment, burying it in the neck of a kahreed mamluk, before bashing another with an open face helm by the butt of his shield, cracking the man's nose. All around them, the combat deteriorated with the cries of the dying and the demoralization of almost a dozen dead Atvari men on the ground, not to mention a few dead horses. Phaedra blocked, parried, and stabbed with the best of them, her and her guardswomen dancing around the kahreed horses with their own mares. 

Brasidas swung his axe upwards, splitting the chin of a rider like a melon; blood pouring out to cover the man's mail armor as he toppled out of his horse like so much dead weight. 

"Forward!" Brasidas roared to the Imperials, little mercy in his voice. 

That was the last straw, and the handful of Imperial soldiers watched as thrice their number tucked tail and called for their steeds to move, retreating from the melee with little thought to dignity or honor. One of Phaedra's escorts drew a slim bow like she was born to the weapon, aiming and firing in one breath. Her arrow struck the neck of a fleeing kahreed, felling the man; the group watching him slide from his saddle to die in the dirt. 

Brasidas rode Menelaus up to Phaedra, eyeing her with intensity. Unexpectedly, he grinned widely and held his hand out. "We leave in the morning?"