The Horse Changer Read online

  Nearly an hour before, Caesar had sent Legio V against Gnaeus Pompey’s two legionary camps. These were set close together and fortified with an outer ditch and an encircling palisade. Outnumbered two-to-one, Caesar had to count on darkness and uncertainty. Sentries raised the alarm the moment Caesar’s men broke from cover, but it was still too dark to know the full extent of the attack; this meant Pompey’s legionaries spread across the camp to defend it, as military protocol dictates. Caesar, however, had concentrated his force at the east gate. When that gate fell less than a quarter of an hour after the initial attack, Pompey’s legions might still have prevailed. They had the numbers to overwhelm our men, but again darkness and uncertainty proved the deciding factor. And the western plain was temptingly open.

  Pompey and his officers took off first. Then the cavalry departed. After that, the legionaries began stealing away. Soon a general panic flooded the plain with infantry. Through all this Caesar waited. He wanted the enemy combatants to believe they had found safe passage. When they were confident the way was clear, they began running without regard for their units or any kind of military formation. Only then did Caesar give the order to chase them down.

  Caesar’s cavalry came out of the east, riding through the mist of a winter dawn. We came out of the west, five hundred cavalry bearing down on the vanguard of ten thousand infantry caught in the clutches of panic. When they saw us, Pompey’s men had no place to turn, nor any chance of fighting as infantry do. Making matters worse, there were only a few officers left. A centurion here and there formed men into a knot of resistance, but these were like tiny islets in a raging stream.

  The first men we encountered threw down their weapons and raised their arms. As per our orders we killed them where they stood. Then we went after the rest. It was wanton slaughter with the aim of demoralising Pompey’s less determined allies, but in my innocence it seemed only a great sport. I rode with the same men who had tumbled me from my horse so often I had thought they hated me, but that day we covered each other exactly as we were taught to do in a rout.

  Two horsemen would flank a man on the run, one to hold him from breaking away, the second to pierce him with a spear. This need not be a mortal blow, only enough to take him down and keep him there. This is best done, as we had been taught, in the lower back at about the kidneys. Once a man was no longer running, our infantry could follow up at its leisure and finish him off.

  Sometimes the enemy did not even see us coming; sometimes, at the last moment, they turned to fight. A few legionaries carried spears, which made them more formidable; most possessed only a sword. When the enemy went low in the hope of cutting the legs of our horses we simply spread out a few paces. This forced a man to commit to one rider or the other. That meant he had to turn his back on one of us.

  The only real danger came from slowing down and making a fight of it. That presented others with a chance at our backs, and these men were understandably desperate enough to leap upon our mounts from behind. I saw it happen to a young cadet. I knew his name in those days, but the years have taken it from me. An enemy combatant mounted his horse from behind and slit his throat before he even understood his mistake. I thought to chase the fellow who did it, but my companion roared at me to stay with him. We turned at once and found another.

  If someone gave us even a moment of resistance we raced on and found easier prey. That left the man to deal with our infantry or perhaps even escape. No matter. We had orders to kill as many as possible, and there were plenty to find. When it was over, six thousand enemy casualties littered the plain. Even then Caesar was not finished. He sent the Larks to kill every enemy still breathing and then to identify Pompey’s fallen officers, any corpse at or above the rank of a centurion. The heads of these men he ordered impaled on stakes that soon enough decorated the ramparts of Oculbo’s city wall.

  There was no rest that day, despite our victory. The infantry secured and fortified the camps they had attacked that morning; the cavalry began reconnoitring the region, more to discover other forces than to hunt down those who had escaped. That night, after our sentries were picked from Pedius’s forces, Legio V, the cavalry of Legio X, and our Spanish allies occupied Pompey’s camps. Caesar and his staff claimed one of the great houses inside the city.

  In a celebratory mood we ate well, drank plentifully, and slept the night through in tents. It was our first full night of sleep in a fortnight. Next morning Caesar ordered his forces to feast and relax the whole day through. The necessary scouting and patrol duties fell to Pedius’s forces. Locals, commandeered for hard duty, cleared the plain of the dead.

  Once it was obvious Gnaeus Pompey had no intention of returning in force, Caesar set about rewarding his Larks. By that I mean he brought in women. These were not commandeered like the burial details. Bad business that, especially when a general is trying to recruit allies. No, he scoured the ports and cities and hired any female, slave or free, willing to join us in our camps. No obligations other than to come and drink and eat; they earned a sack of coins for their troubles. Naturally there was more to be earned for those willing to sell themselves. There were no virgins or wives and quite a few were up for rough trade as long as it paid, but others were young widows who came for the chance to find a husband. The money for this, as Caesar made sure we knew, came from Pompey’s camp payroll, which we had just seized. It was Gnaeus Pompey’s party, in other words.

  Such was the generalship of Julius Caesar. He demanded the impossible from his men and got it; afterwards he rewarded them with the extravagance of an oriental potentate. I believe on the fourth or fifth day of our luxury, the women departed, though more than a few of them settled in the city, now the wives of Gauls.

  Even after we had returned to our soldierly duties we continued to eat well on Pompey’s stores and livestock, and we drank like men on leave, so that our mornings started slowly. But we had earned it, and Caesar knew to give his men their ease after the march they had endured for his sake.

  A fortnight after our battle, the first cohorts of Legio X arrived, along with the full baggage train of Legio V. Within a month the remainder of Legio X, the Equestris as they called themselves, arrived in the company of Legio III and VI, the Gallica and Ferrata. Those cohorts of the Equestris which had stayed at Marseille until they took the city joined the fleet as it sailed south along the Iberian coast. Among the officers travelling with these legions was the commander of Caesar’s cavalry, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, my patron.

  On orders from Caesar, cohorts of the legions began working inland. Caesar meant to take the fight to Pompey and kept the pressure on through the winter months. He employed his most senior officers, however, in the recruitment and training of another four legions of auxiliary infantry. From Africa, just across the straits, he summoned those same allies who had helped him finish off the last of the senate’s forces the year before. Caesar’s friends in Numidia shipped horsemen across by the thousands.

  Hispania Ulterior: January to March, 45 BC

  My training now concluded, I joined Dolabella’s staff at the rank of a junior tribune of the auxiliaries. Whereas cohorts of the legions were attacking and securing positions in the countryside surrounding Oculbo, Dolabella’s cavalry penetrated enemy territory far to the west. For over two months I was second-in-command to some three hundred cavalry recruits as we took the fight to Pompeian sympathizers in the countryside around Seville.

  It was at this time I met Marcus Ulpius Traianus – Trajan. He was a wealthy eques living outside Seville and purportedly indifferent to Roman politics. In fact, Trajan was a Caesarean who happily provided us with a great deal of useful intelligence. With it we were able to intercept enemy couriers, rob payroll shipments, and set fire to enemy towns, farms, mines, and granaries.

  We lived as highwaymen do, hidden away in mountain camps, never in one place for more than a few days. We ran couriers to Oculbo once a week, but got nothing in return by way of orders. Our job was to find targets of val
ue and either seize or destroy them. By the time Dolabella called me back to Oculbo in late February, I considered myself an accomplished officer. In fact, I was more outlaw than soldier. Enough of one at any rate that I resented my return to military discipline.

  My resentment lasted right up to the point Dolabella appointed me senior tribune to a cohort of his cavalry. These were all fresh recruits from the Pyrenees, murderously efficient men who had lately come to Caesar’s side. I was astonished by my sudden promotion, for I had not yet turned twenty and was only one step below a prefecture. But this was the way it went in Caesar’s army. Officers in love with war did not languish in the lower ranks.

  I don’t think Dolabella anticipated any radical changes in strategy when Caesar ordered his staff to report to him one fine winter morning in early March. This occurred only days after I had assumed my new responsibilities as a senior tribune. There was too much to be done in the countryside for new orders to make any sense. We were still actively recruiting men-at-arms. Gnaeus Pompey waited with thirteen legions forty miles southwest of Oculbo, but he was showing no interest in advancing against us, and unless he did so everyone expected we would face him in late summer, when our forces might begin to approach parity.

  Most of the senior officers assumed that Caesar wanted to discuss the possibility of sending more cohorts to Cordoba. In that city the younger of the two Pompey brothers, twenty-year-old Sextus Pompey, was putting up more fight than anyone expected. So long as Cordoba remained in enemy hands, Caesar was incapable of moving against Gnaeus Pompey’s thirteen legions. At least that was the thinking of men who knew anything about military campaigns.

  Dolabella did not generally bring all of his tribunes to staff meetings, but it was customary for a senior officer to have an escort of a tribune or two, and that morning it fell to me to join him. I heard Caesar’s voice within his office as we waited with several other officers in the atrium of his house. He was ordering ships sent out to make a search. For what or whom I could not fathom. This I knew: there was urgency in the matter. A moment later I saw one of his staff leaving his office. A voice that was not Caesar’s called to the steward, who then escorted our party into Caesar’s office.

  I had seen Caesar frequently on our six-hundred-mile march from Narbonne to Oculbo. He often sat on his horse at the side of the road as we jogged by. Whenever he saw a man he knew, centurion, optio, decurion, or legionary, he would call to the fellow by name, taking the tone of an old friend. He generally liked to play with the fellow’s pride and asked if Caesar led an army of men or pansies. On other occasions, when he could see we were all close to exhaustion, Caesar promised gold and women when our march had finished. He swore on Jupiter’s Stone he could smell both coming on the breeze out of the south. Other times he would be frank with the fellow he addressed. ‘A few more days of it, friend,’ he would say, ‘and we’ll repay those bastards for all our suffering!’ Curiously, I had never seen Caesar except astride his horse. My first impression of the great man dismounted was more than a little disconcerting. In his headquarters he looked to me like an old man dressed up in a general’s uniform. I believe he was fifty-five that winter.

  Caesar was completely bald. I had not noticed this previously because of the helmet he wore. His dark leathery skin was wrinkled, close to ruin from an active life lived outdoors. His eyelids were so hooded one could hardly see his eyes. In his youth Caesar had been handsome; I had seen his image so often I thought he must still be that fellow, but no, he was mortal after all.

  Caesar stood up from his desk at our entry. There were some twenty officers in our party; fewer than a half-dozen of these men were actually important. The rest of us were there to observe the protocols of command and learn how Rome fought her wars. Caesar had already started toward us with a greeting when he stopped suddenly. ‘Octavian?’

  He spoke hesitantly, with a shadow of anger in his tone. To my astonishment he was looking past the legates, focusing on the back row. In fact, I was quite certain he was looking at me. My expression told him all he needed to know. I had no idea what he was talking about. Caesar seemed to shake himself out of his trance. ‘By the gods, lad, I thought you were my nephew Octavian.’ The officers parted as Caesar signalled me to come forward. He wanted a better look, if only to be sure.

  ‘Quintus Dellius, Caesar,’ Dolabella said. ‘One of our tribunes.’

  ‘Well, Quintus Dellius,’ Caesar answered, ‘I can see the differences in a better light, but as you stood in the shadows you seemed the very image of Octavian. I thought that rascal had come sneaking in to surprise me.’

  ‘No word of his fate?’ one of the legates asked.

  Caesar looked at the man with the courage of a relative who fears the worse. ‘It is still possible he is detained somewhere needing to repair his ship. I am sending the fleet to look for him.’ Caesar shook his head, suddenly furious. ‘He insisted on manning his own ship with young men loyal to him. Even the ship’s captain was no better than a boy.’

  ‘Marcus Agrippa, wasn’t it?’ Dolabella asked.

  ‘A bright lad,’ Caesar answered with a distracted nod of his head. ‘A raging bull in a fight. Still, he’s only a lad. I wish I had forbidden it. They were taking off a week behind the rest of the army because they were waiting for Maecenas to cross from Greece. I’ll wager whatever you like Octavian thought to arrive before the fleet by sailing due west for Corsica. From there straight to the Balearic Islands. At that age I would have done the same. Arrive a fortnight before everyone else and greet our ships as they sailed into the harbour!’

  ‘From Corsica to the Balearic Islands is three hundred miles of open sea.’ This was muttered by another of the legates. Caesar nodded miserably, this time not daring to meet the fellow’s gaze. Better than most men Caesar knew the dangers of open water.

  Caesar had called his legates together for the purpose of arranging an immediate advance on Gnaeus Pompey’s position in the south. The idea caught even his closest advisers unprepared. The countryside was not yet pacified. Our forces were not up to strength. Worse still, the siege at Cordoba had bogged down. By waiting until summer Caesar might perhaps find himself in a better position to advance.

  Caesar gave his officers the chance to protest because he could see they were distraught. All the same, he was unmoved by their arguments. He told them frankly, ‘I do not have the luxury of waiting for summer. If I am still in Andalusia in three months my enemies in Rome will take advantage of my absence.’

  ‘Surely Mark Antony can control the situation.’

  ‘Antony has trouble enough controlling himself. Only Caesar can quiet those wolves, and even Caesar cannot be in two places at once.’

  The seriousness of the situation seemed to settle over the room. Finally, one of the legates answered. ‘Surely you are not anxious to engage Pompey in open battle?’

  ‘I am, actually.’ Caesar smiled as he said this, though it was not a pretty smile. ‘More to the point,’ he added, ‘with thirteen legions at his command, I expect Pompey will be eager to take the field. Otherwise he might be tempted to force us to tear down walls to get at him.’

  ‘And what about Cordoba?’ another of the legates asked. ‘Caesar surely does not intend to leave a powerful army at his back.’

  ‘We have Sextus Pompey contained. Let’s destroy Gnaeus Pompey’s legions and then see how much fight is left in the younger brother. My question for you, friends, is how soon can we get our legions to Ronda?’

  With cohorts of every legion scattered over hundreds of miles the question was not easily answered, but soon enough a consensus formed. Eight weeks, sometime in early May. Caesar shook his head. That was not good enough. Revised estimates followed: a fortnight, ten days, a week at the absolute minimum.

  ‘A week it is,’ Caesar declared.

  And so it came to be that Caesar prepared to advance against an enemy nearly twice the size of his own army, leaving open sedition in his wake and an enemy force encamped some fo
rty miles behind him. I had never doubted Caesar in my life. He was the paragon of a fighting man, a genius at war; but seeing the faces of his legates that morning I felt a chill of uncertainty. Had the old fellow lost his wits? Even I could see that Caesar was courting every kind of disaster with his impatience.

  But Caesar did that to men. They would follow him happily to the gates of hell. They were charmed by his manner, mad for him even, but there was always a moment when he defied reason and wilfully broke every principle of war. Then even those who loved him balked. No matter. He pushed his men through gates they had thought were impossible to pass. More than his skill in directing a battle, this taking men to their very limits was Caesar’s ultimate talent; this occasion was only one more in a long list. So we began packing for the march as our cohorts came streaming into our camp over the next few days.

  As for Caesar’s missing nephew, Octavian, I gave that poor fellow hardly a second thought. I had no time to worry about him. Truth is I soon forgot his name. Why not? I counted him lost at sea. There were so many casualties of war in those days one grew used to hearing about death. Even Caesar’s kin were not immune. But of course our precious Octavian was far from finished with the worries of this world.

  III

  RONDA

  Ronda: 15th March, 45 BC

  Ronda, which Romans generally refer to as Munda, was a fortress town fifty years ago. It lay midway between Oculbo and Cordoba forty miles to the south. The way there was mountainous and hard going. Before the town lay a great undulating plain leading up to a nest of high rocks, where the city stood. With steep ravines at his back and covering his flanks, young Gnaeus Pompey had picked his site with care. Caesar might come at him in force from only one direction. Pompey had meat, grain and fresh water in abundance. More importantly he had time. Caesar was the one desperate for battle. Caesar had spent the winter fighting skirmishes, taking towns, and negotiating with potential allies. None of the fighting had value except as it persuaded certain wavering allies to commit fully to him. What really mattered was defeating Pompey’s army at Ronda. All the rest was propaganda.