Sands of Egypt

by S. J. A. Turney

  The battle was already won, but the enemy still had high numbers. What they could not now afford to do was allow Pharnaces time and opportunity to regroup. If he could manage to reinstil discipline into the army, they would still be a threat to Caesar. They had to be pressed and utterly broken, such that the force disbanded, enough dead or enslaved to remove any future threat, the rest encouraged to flee across the countryside far and wide, too spread out to possibly regroup.

  Somewhere back in the camp, Fronto could hear a new call. The call for melee. Caesar had removed the leash from his dogs. In response, the legions’ centurions put out their own calls, releasing their men to chase down and kill the enemy with impunity.

  Fronto paused, something nagging at him. He saw Carfulenus nearby. The Sixth were not yet falling upon the fleeing rabble in the melee, for Carfulenus and his subordinates had more of a job doing so. The Sixth was spread out down the hill in a line where they had flanked the enemy

  Fronto waved to him as he put the whistle to his lips, and Carfulenus paused.

  ‘Don’t let them loose just yet.’

  His gaze went up past the melee and the panicked, fleeing force of Pharnaces.

  He saw them a moment later: the royal banners among a small party of horsemen, beyond the broken army and fleeing up the slope, back towards their fortress. Pharnaces had managed to get the bulk of his army between Rome, and himself and was racing for safety. Fronto’s gaze rose further, realising what it had been that had nagged at him.

  Men still lined the ramparts of the enemy fortress. Pharnaces had left perhaps two or three cohorts’ worth of men defending his camp while he advanced. Now he was racing for the safety of those men. Fronto chewed his lip. There were not enough men there to hold it against Caesar’s army, and the fleeing men were too demoralised to be of use in that respect, but it still posed a problem.

  Pharnaces was escaping. If he got to that fortress unmolested, he would be able to gather those cohorts and flee the field. The rest of the army was bogged down chasing the routing force, killing with glee, and would take far too long to rein in, but the Sixth were still in formation. There was almost no chance of reaching the fortress on foot before the king, who was closer and on horseback, but they would take time to gather the cohorts and depart. Maybe, just maybe, Fronto could catch them before they left.

  ‘Carfulenus, have the entire Sixth break off and make for the enemy fortress at double time. The king is escaping.’

  Carfulenus took a precious moment to glance away at the riders on the slope, then nodded and began shouting orders to his signallers, waving and blowing his whistle. Moments later the Sixth were on the move, racing for the slope and the fortress atop it.

  Fronto took a deep breath. Whether the future held a return to the bosom of his family or another season of stomping through the grain fields of Africa in search of Titus Labienus, for now he had to finish this.

  Once more he found himself grumbling about his age and the youth of the men around him, legionaries beginning to pass by, as they crossed the flat ground and began to climb the slope. Few of the fleeing men of the flank remained before them. Those who had run for the safety of the defences would already be there, and many had fled the field, running for the edges of the fight and the open ground, seeking a way to depart this dreadful valley entirely. While Galronus and his scouts had found no mountain paths suitable to bring an army over, a small unit of fleeing soldiers could take any one of a number of such routes, as could Pharnaces, of course.

  Fronto stomped on up the slope. Briefly, he caught sight of Carfulenus up ahead with a century of men, almost at the ramparts of the enemy camp. Fronto paused for breath, the slope here surprisingly steep, and looked around. The main fleeing enemy force had started to change direction. With the Sixth now pressing up the slope for the fortress, the bulk of the escaping army had turned away from this fresh threat and were racing away to the west. Many had discarded their arms and shields to allow for greater speed in flight. Others had stopped, and were surrendering. Despite the legions’ battle fury, they were being well restrained by their centurions and optios, and were allowing the enemy to surrender without too many needless killings. Small groups of legionaries here and there were already guarding units of prisoners.

  That left only the few reserve cohorts atop the fortress, along with the fleeing king and his horse guard, and a few of the panicked routing flankers, who were largely unarmed. The quality of those men now facing them was clear from the fact that Carfulenus did not seem to be having too much trouble climbing the walls with his men.

  Fronto swallowed a little bile from the climb, took another deep breath that smelled of blood and sizzling dust, and began to ascend once more. Slowly, the ground began to even out, the slope less pronounced, and finally he reached the defences. Legionaries from the Sixth were still arriving, for they had been strung out along the flank. The walls had once been quite strong, and had been rebuilt with speed and efficiency, but not with skill. Legionaries had reached the defences and had pulled out whole handfuls of mortar from between the stone blocks to make handholds, climbing it with every bit of the ease they had displayed at the mudbrick walls of the Pharos fort. The south gate had been blocked up with rubble, the side and rear gates left open for the king’s force to use, but the rubble here had already been cleared down to almost head height by the legionaries.

  Fronto made for the gate. Soldiers were already fighting the defending cohorts for control of the wall tops, and Carfulenus and the First Century were visible up there. They would soon seize the defences, Fronto was sure, but there was an element of time involved here. He needed to get to Pharnaces before the man could escape.

  Briefly, he considered running to the fortress’s west gate, which would be where the king himself had entered the defences, but apart from the additional distance and the time taken to get there, he could be sure of a specially warm welcome there from the defenders. They would certainly have concentrated there if that was where the king was.

  Settling upon his path, he raced for the blocked south gate, facing the valley and the battlefield. The legionaries of the Sixth were fighting hard for ingress there, some of the men tussling with the defenders, swords and shields clattering and clanging as they fought hard. Others were trying to clear the blockage further, to make it more accessible, while their comrades held shields above them, holding off the enemy’s desperate blows.

  Fronto closed on the gate, watching as men continually pulled away huge stones, crumbling mortar puffing up in clouds into the dry heat. The enemy were warriors, not engineers. A Roman force would be horrified at the poor mix of the dry, weak mortar. He watched, tense, as the blockage shrank constantly. Finally, as he was starting to think about another access point, a legionary cried out in triumph and began to push his way through the gate, clambering up over the ruined stones. His mates tried to shield him. He fell to the defenders, two blades jammed into his sides, and the first man over the wall tumbled away out of sight. But the damage had been done.

  The two men who had dispatched the legionary followed him into oblivion a moment later at the hands of angry Romans. Another legionary pulled his way up and over the destroyed blockage, this time finding better luck. An enemy warrior came for him but was quickly put down by the other attackers from the Sixth. He was in, and behind him two more legionaries pulled themselves up with one hand, sword in the other and shield discarded for the climb. The third man in took a spear thrust from somewhere and tumbled back down the slope, falling at Fronto’s feet, but the access had been made, and men were now determined. Others pulled more stones out of the way, widening the aperture.

  Fronto, acutely aware of the time slipping by, pushed his way forwards.

  ‘Sir?’ one of the legionaries said, surprised at the legate’s presence.

  ‘The king is escaping. With me.’

  Ignoring the surprised stares of the legionaries, who hadn’t realised their commander was present, he pushed pas
t the man and grasped the stones in the gateway with his left hand, pulling himself up. As he tried to clamber up to the cleared opening, he cursed his weak knee and bit down on the pain as it sent him urgent messages that it was not happy with the climb. He forced the pain into the back of his mind, determined not to show weakness in front of the men, and hauled and pushed, trying not to pant and blow like an old man.

  He pulled his way through into the fortress in the wake of another legionary and was suddenly in the thick of it once more. The men Pharnaces had left in charge of the camp did not seem to have succumbed to panic like their friends on the plain below. They had seen it all happening and had clearly been waiting in defence of their fortress and their king’s banner.

  Fronto fought to stand. A Bosporan swordsman in one of those bronze helms with the pointed peak and the embossed cheek plates came for him, blade chopping. Fronto ducked out of the way, ignoring the screaming pain in his knee, and responded with a blow of his own. The soldier caught and turned his strike, and in moments the two were locked in one-on-one combat.

  For just a moment, Fronto wondered why the man’s eyes kept flicking away to the camp’s interior and, risking death for just a heartbeat, he glanced that way himself. In that instant, he saw the king and his horsemen at the banner and the large tent on the hill’s summit, and he knew exactly what was happening. The king was about to leave. He’d gathered a sizeable force about him now, and the defenders at the walls were thinning out.

  That was what was planned. The cohorts left to defend were dismounted cavalry, and were only expected to hold long enough for the king to get away. That was why the soldier kept looking that way. Any moment now the king would be gone, and every man in this fortress would abandon the defences, run for his horse and race for freedom.

  Fronto fretted.

  Galronus and the cavalry could have intercepted them, but they were back at the Roman camp, beyond the battle. They had not been fielded as no horse unit could fight effectively on a steep slope. They would never get this far in time to stop the king’s horsemen, and would be entirely unaware of the whole thing, since it was taking place in the enemy camp, and they were undoubtedly planning to leave by the north gate, unseen by the main force below. Worst of all, Fronto’s men were on foot and tired, while the king and his men would be on fresh, rested horses.

  Fronto clenched his teeth. Hundreds of horsemen had gathered around the king. Fronto had hundreds of legionaries, but their chances were small. Still, they had to try.

  With a grunt, he deflected another blow from the warrior with whom he had been locked in combat, and struck with speed, seeing a single opening. It was not a killing blow, and his sword struck armour, but it stunned and winded the man, and he had no time to recover before Fronto’s shoulder hit him in the chest and he sailed from the top of the gate, falling into the murk below. Fronto looked this way and that, and spotted the green feathered crest of Carfulenus some way along the wall, already atop the parapet and guiding his men with gestures from his vine cane. Fronto cupped his hands around his mouth.

  ‘Carfulenus!’

  The centurion’s head snapped towards him, and Fronto pointed at the crest of the hill.

  ‘The king. We have to get the king.’

  Carfulenus shook his head. Fronto stared in surprise. How dare the centurion refuse?

  The man was also pointing towards that tent, though, and Fronto turned.

  The king’s banner was no longer visible, and even as he watched, the horsemen were moving. The entire force, probably nearing a thousand now, was racing for the north gate and freedom. The king had gone. And as Fronto felt the hope of finishing this draining away from him, he realised that every remaining defender had pulled back and was running for the horse he had tethered somewhere nearby.

  Carfulenus had realised in an instant that they had no chance of catching the king. Indeed, they would be lucky to take down more than a few dozen of those remaining defenders fleeing the camp. Fronto straightened and lowered his blade, favouring the centurion with a nod of understanding and acceptance.

  Pharnaces had escaped.

  Still, Fronto reminded himself, they had won the battle. Against heavy odds, they had crushed the force of Pharnaces. Facing two to one odds, fighting on the enemy’s home ground and having raced unexpected into battle, they had won. It was a victory to make even Pharsalus look laboured. Pharnaces might have got away with perhaps a thousand horse, but with the defeat of his army, that would see the end of the king’s dreams of conquest and a new empire. He might yet be a thorn in Rome’s side, but the threat he posed had now diminished almost to naught.

  Fronto sighed and looked down.

  Gods, but he needed a bath.

  And a foot stool.

  And a cup of wine.

  Epilogue

  Tarsus, Ides of September 47 BC

  ‘Pharnaces could still cause further trouble, of course,’ Hirtius noted, drumming his fingers on his folded arms.

  Caesar shook his head. ‘Pharnaces may have fled with a force of a thousand cavalry, but he lost control of near twenty thousand men at Zela. Most of those were allies or clients who had thrown the dice and joined him. Having lost the game, they will be unwilling to take part again and risk worse. Pharnaces no longer has sufficient military power to launch any kind of campaign, and Calvinus will pursue him now until the last power he has is destroyed. If he lives beyond the winter it will be as a petty king back in his Bosporian land, and even there his time is coming.’

  The others nodded their agreement. Calvinus may have lost to Pharnaces once, but he would not let that happen again. After the astounding victory at Zela, Calvinus had been given command of all the forces barring the Sixth, with the veteran legate Caelius Vinicianus as his aide, and sent off to chase down the fleeing king. The last intelligence received suggested that the beleaguered Pharnaces had been trapped by Calvinus at Sinope on the north coast. There, he could not hold out for long. The would-be King of Pontus was done.

  ‘This land is settled, I think, thanks in no small part to our courageous allies.’

  Caesar gestured to the two men standing to his left, each surrounded by slaves and attendants.

  ‘Deiotarus, friend of Rome and King of Galatia, will administer Pontus, and also Cappadocia until the senate agrees the appointment of client kings there in due course. New ties between Galatia and the republic should see trade flourish in the region.’

  The king bowed his head. For his troubles, he had been given a transitory control of lands, but the benefits Galatia could reap in that time would be great. The king was more than satisfied.

  ‘Mithridates, victor of the Nilus, I charge you with seizing control of Bosporus, leaving Pharnaces nowhere to flee.’

  The prince of Pergamon nodded solemnly. He had been told to declare war, but the benefits of control of the Bosporus would grant him similar benefits to Deiotarus in Cappadocia. With Rome’s backing, he would double his territory and more. He would be pleased.

  ‘Thus,’ Caesar smiled, ‘is the region settled. Friends of Rome in control of every land. And between these two great kings and Calvinus in Syria, there will be nowhere for Pharnaces to run.’

  ‘Then the east truly is at peace,’ Nero said with an air of satisfaction.

  ‘I believe so. The Sixth should by now be closing on Italia to recover and rest through the winter.’

  Fronto smiled for a moment, remembering Carfulenus’ face at the news. After three major campaigns in a row, in Greece, Aegyptus and Cappadocia, every man in the Sixth dreamt of warm food, a warm bed and a warm girl. And having been given, along with the other victorious legions, the pick of the loot from Pharnaces’ camp, every last man had gone home with a stuffed purse to see him through the winter and beyond.

  Fronto winced at that, though, and the smile slid from his face. It seemed like grand largesse to give the soldiers such loot, but he worried about the other legions back home. The knowledge that they had already had the
ir noses put out of joint by Caesar’s lavish triumph on the Nilus without them made him nervous. What would those legions say when the Sixth joined them with purses overflowing with gold from the latest campaign?

  Caesar had deftly sidestepped his troubles with the senate, largely because of his ongoing popularity with both the people and the army. If the army started to take offence at him, though, then things could change.

  ‘And, of course, Aegyptus is secure,’ Brutus put in, earning a bitter look from Cassius.

  ‘With the queen now in full control,’ Caesar agreed, ‘the land remains a bastion of strength in the east. Indeed, the legions there could now safely be withdrawn, I think. And that leads me to tidings that I feel I should share with you all before they become public and reach Rome.’

  The officers gathered a touch closer. News was almost uniformly unpleasant these days, but Caesar’s face was calm, suggesting good tidings for a change.

  ‘Caesar?’ Hirtius prompted.

  The general leaned back, arms folded. ‘A missive from the palace in Alexandria reached me this morning, sealed with the royal seal. The queen of Aegyptus has given birth to an heir.’

  Fronto felt his teeth clench. The room underwent an odd change in atmosphere at this news. Some of the gathered dignitaries, in particular the two kings and Brutus, broke into smiles of genuine pleasure. Many officers seemed to struggle with how to accept the news, though, and Fronto watched smiles riveted over uncertainty. The tidings seemed, in particular, to sit badly with Cassius, whose face slipped into an expression of discontent.