Emperor: The Blood of Gods (Special Edition) (Emperor Series, Book 5)

by Conn Iggulden

  He saw a messenger galloping across his ranks with dash, a young man delighting in his own speed. When the rider reined in, he was panting and flushed.

  ‘Discens Artorius reporting, Consul.’

  ‘Tell me Mark Antony hasn’t found something else to delay him,’ Octavian replied.

  The extraordinarii rider blinked and shook his head. ‘No, sir. He sent me to let you know Senator Cassius is dead. They found his body last night, up in the town.’

  Octavian looked over his shoulder at the legions opposing him. There was no sign of Cassius’ banners in the cluster around the command position. He wiped sweat from his eyes.

  ‘Thank you. That is … most welcome.’

  Those around him had overheard the rider and the news spread quickly. A ripple of thin cheering followed, though in the main the men were indifferent. They hardly knew Cassius beyond his name. Yet Brutus still lived and his legions were the ones who had forced the rout the day before. His legions were the ones they wanted to break. Octavian could see the determination in every face as he looked down the ranks. They surely knew the fighting would be hard, but they were more than ready for it to begin.

  The two Roman armies faced each other over a mile while the remaining legions came down from Philippi. As Mark Antony was coming in from the east, Octavian had to give him the right wing. He knew the man would expect it and he could hardly make him march through his ranks to take position on the left. Octavian sat and sipped from a canteen, feeling the breeze dry the sweat on his face. Mark Antony seemed to be taking his time, as if he sensed the armies would stand all day until he arrived.

  While he waited, Octavian half expected a sudden attack from the legions under Brutus. His men were certainly tense, waiting for it, but it seemed Brutus preferred not to leave a flank open to fresh legions coming off the ridge halfway through the battle.

  The morning wore on, the sun moving slowly up to noon. Octavian tossed the empty canteen back to Agrippa and accepted another as the right wing formed piece by piece and the military powers of Rome faced each other on a foreign field. It would be brutal when it began, Octavian realised. No matter what the outcome, Rome would lose much of her strength for years to come. A generation would be cut down on the plains of Philippi.

  On both sides, the extraordinarii gathered on the furthest point of the wings. Their peacetime roles as message-carriers and scouts were only to keep them occupied when they were not fighting. Octavian watched as the cloaked cavalrymen drew long swords and shields for their true purpose, their horses milling and snorting as the animals felt the growing excitement in their riders. He looked to his right, where Mark Antony had taken position at last in the third rank. The town and ridge were empty of men. They were ready.

  Octavian trotted his mount back to his own position behind the first and second fighting lines. The sun crept over the noon point as both sides prepared, emptying bladders where they stood and sipping at waterskins or canteens they would try to ration through the day’s heat. Against so many, a battle could not be over quickly and they had to prepare to fight all day. In the end, it would come down to stamina and will.

  Octavian checked his lines of command to his legates one last time, asking for confirmation that they were ready. Seven of them still lived, with Silva’s body somewhere among the carrion meat from the previous day. He did not know the man who had replaced him, but he knew the others. He knew their strengths and weaknesses; the ones who were rash and the ones who were cautious. Brutus would have no such personal knowledge of the legions he commanded, especially not those he had gained from Cassius. It was an edge and Octavian intended to use it.

  The responses came back quickly and Octavian made what plans he could beyond the first clash. The left wing was his to command.

  The men were looking to him, waiting for the order. Agrippa and Maecenas were there at his side, steady and solemn. They had saved his life when he was senseless with fever. It seemed another lifetime somehow and he felt the cares and trials of months fall away as he sat his horse and stared across the plain. His body was weak, but it was just a tool. He was still strong where it mattered.

  Octavian took a deep breath and a mile away the legions of Brutus began to move. He raised and dropped his hand and his own ranks began to march, the release of tension palpable as they strode towards the enemy. On his right, Mark Antony gave the same order. Out on the wings of both armies, extraordinarii dug in their heels, holding back their mounts as they eased forward, forming slight horns past the marching legionaries. Cornicens blew long notes across the lines, sounding the advance.

  The two armies walked over dry ground, raising great clouds behind the front ranks as the gap between them shrank down to a thread that was suddenly made black with thousands of spears in the air. Arrows came from the Parthian horsemen, cutting holes in the extraordinarii. The thread wavered as both sides soaked up dead and wounded men, stepping over and around them and breaking into a run. They crashed into each other with a noise like thunder on the plain.

  Brutus felt a deadly calm settle on him, a coldness at the centre of his chest as the armies came together. He was not a young man to be carried away on a tide of excitement and fear, and he gave orders with cool detachment. He frowned slightly to himself as he saw how long it took for them to be carried out, but he had not given complete freedom to his legates. This was his battle, though he began to learn how hard it is to command the best part of ninety thousand in the field. It was a larger army than Pompey had ever commanded, or Sulla, or Marius, or Caesar.

  He saw his Parthian archers do well on the right wing, surging forward almost a mile away from his position in the centre. He sent a command across the marching lines for them to go wide and empty their quivers into the enemy extraordinarii from a safe distance before closing with swords. It was the right order, but by the time it reached them, they had already pulled back and the moment was lost.

  At first, his legions pushed against both wings of the enemy and he felt a glittering pleasure as his men cut their way through thousands of Mark Antony’s men. The shade of Cassius would be watching and he wanted the old man to see.

  It didn’t last long. Where his lines grew weak, the enemy legions advanced before he could shore them up with reinforcements. When his men won a temporary advantage and cut into the forces with Octavian, they found fast-moving legions thickening the ranks against them and brief chances vanished like frost in the sun. Having two commanders halved the time it took for them to control their chains of command and though the difference was subtle, it began to tell more and more as the afternoon crept past in blood and pain.

  Brutus felt it happening. He could see the battlefield in his head as if from above, a trick of perspective he had learned from his tutors years before. When he saw the unwieldy lines of command were hampering his legions, he grew afraid. He sent fresh orders to cast his legates loose from overall control for a time, in the hope that they would respond faster on their own. It made no difference. One of Cassius’ Syrian legates staged a wild attack, forming an immense wedge formation that cut past Octavian’s front rank. Ten thousand men shifted right in saw orders against them, bolstering the lines and slaughtering the Syrian legionaries on two sides. None of his legates had moved fast enough to support the attack and the numbers of dead were terrible. The wedge fell apart inside Octavian’s ranks, engulfed in a flood.

  Brutus sent an order to rotate his own front line. For the length of a legion, two panting ranks moved back in tight formation with shields up, allowing fresh men to the fore. Beyond that distance, the front two ranks fought on, the order getting lost somewhere on the way. It was infuriating, but Brutus had to roar for extraordinarii messengers and send them out to the legates a second time.

  He took full command once more and the entire front line eased back and then forward as unblooded soldiers came through with harsh voices bellowing. They pushed on for a few brief moments, hacking down men who were panting and growing weary. T
hen the orders were mirrored and they faced fresh men in turn, all along the clashing front.

  Brutus found he had to move his horse back a step as the men in front of him were driven in on themselves. He cursed, shouting encouragement. He saw his Parthian archers had been cut to pieces, caught by swordsmen while they still held bows. His entire right wing was in danger of being flanked as Octavian’s legions began to spill around it.

  Calmly, Brutus ordered two of his legions to saw into them, then waited with his heart pounding for the orders to take effect across a mile of land. Mark Antony was pressing forward on the other flank at the same time. Brutus responded to that, bawling new orders and sending out riders and runners. When he looked back, the right flank had crumpled and he could see his legions falling back, shields raised as they stumbled into their own forces to get away.

  ‘Where are you?’ Brutus said loudly. ‘Come on! Where are you?’

  Only then did he see the legions he had ordered to support the wing begin to move sideways through their own ranks. It was a difficult manoeuvre in a marching line and he felt a wave of disgust and dread, seeing they were already too late. The flank was collapsing and the men falling back only hampered the attempt to support them in a clot of struggling soldiers. The enemy came in hard, using extraordinarii well as they swung out and back in at a gallop. It was butchery and Brutus began to feel a black despair. He needed Cassius, and Cassius was dead. It was like acid in his throat to know he could not command so many alone.

  With his heart in his mouth, he sent new orders to disengage, to come back a hundred paces and re-form. It was the only way to save his right wing before the enemy routed half a dozen of his Syrian legions. He thanked his gods that it was one command he could give by horn, and the droning notes sounded across the plain.

  Octavian’s legions also knew what the signal meant. They pressed forward to take advantage, even as his centurions tried to withdraw in good order. Brutus sensed his front line wavering as the horns blared. For tiring men, it was a dangerous distraction. Hundreds died as Brutus made his horse walk backwards, unwilling to turn from the enemy. For an instant, he saw a gap between the armies, then it was filled as Octavian’s legions charged forward, roaring and clashing their swords on their shields as they came in again.

  Step by step, his army came back with him, furious that they had been ordered away. Brutus saw the right wing sort themselves out as they went, so that the danger of a complete rout on that side began to pass. In the crush, he found himself in the front rank for a moment. He cut down at a helmet and grunted with the impact and satisfaction as a man fell. His ranks re-formed in front of him and he shouted to the cornicens to sound the halt and break off the slow retreat.

  The horns moaned again across the battlefield, but his right wing continued to fall back. Brutus cursed as he saw his position. He needed to send fresh legions in to hold it, but Mark Antony chose that moment to begin tearing into his left flank once more.

  Octavian cursed as the enemy legions pulled back before he could roll them up from the wing. His extraordinarii were down to a few thousand horses and their spears and lead shot were gone. All they could do was follow the wing’s retreat and then cut back in wild dashes, slicing throats as they went. More of the horses fell with kicking legs and the high screams of dying animals. Octavian clenched his jaw, letting anger give him the strength to endure.

  His mouth was dry, his tongue and lips a gummed mass. He shouted to Agrippa for water and his friend passed him another canteen. He sucked at it, freeing his mouth and clearing his throat. The sweat still poured off him and it took all his control to hand back the bottle while there was still a little sloshing at the bottom.

  He’d seen that the legions under Brutus were slow to respond to any new situation and he’d worked like a madman to make that weakness count. His legions swarmed, moving left and right as they advanced, threatening one spot to test the enemy response, then surging forward in another when the lines grew thin. Octavian felt the first sense of victory when the wing crumpled without support, but then Brutus pulled back in good order and battle joined again with renewed ferocity.

  When he moved forward, it was over dead and wounded men, some of them crying out in such pitiful agony that their own friends finished them with quick gashes to the throat. Octavian passed one soldier with his stomach ripped open, his armour torn and broken. The man was sitting hunched over, holding his guts in bloody hands and weeping, until a careless stranger knocked him onto his back. Octavian lost sight of the man in the press, but he could still see his terror.

  The fighting had gone on for hours and they had moved barely two hundred paces from where they began, even with the withdrawal Brutus had pulled off in the teeth of the enemy. Octavian was gasping once more, sick of an enemy that seemed never to shrink or falter. He was in no mood to appreciate Roman courage as he sent two almost fresh legions up the centre, using their shields to bow back the lines facing them.

  Brutus drew men in to block the advance and Octavian immediately snapped orders to launch the Seventh Victrix and Eighth Gemina at the wing, pulling back his extraordinarii into formation. The two legions chanted ‘Caesar!’ as they went, the name that had created panic in enemies for a generation.

  Brutus was caught by the sudden move, with too many of his forces committed in the centre. Octavian thought he heard the man yelling orders, though the noise of battle hammered his ears on all sides and he could not be sure. The wing crumpled again and the carnage went on and on before there was a sign of new men rushing to the position.

  The legion on Brutus’ right wing had almost broken once, saved only by the steady withdrawal. They were exhausted from the constant attacks by extraordinarii. As Victrix and Gemina came at them, roaring the name of Caesar, they turned and tried to retreat again. It had worked once.

  Octavian watched as the lurching retreat turned into a sudden rout, with thousands of soldiers turning away from the fighting and breaking into a run. He sent new orders to his extraordinarii and they swept back in as the wing disentegrated and the rout began to spread.

  More than fifty thousand soldiers still stood with Brutus, panting and bloodied. When the right wing was slaughtered before their eyes, the will to fight went out of them. Brutus could do nothing to stop them falling back, though he bawled until he was hoarse and his messengers raced away in all directions once more, as exhausted as the men fighting. They had ridden fifty miles or more on mounts lathered in sweat, so that his commands slowed even further each time.

  Octavian could see the panic in the legions facing him as they felt the wing go. They knew his next move was to get behind them and cut off their retreat. It was the ultimate fear for a foot soldier, to be attacked before and behind and have nowhere left to run. They fell back, further and further. A huge roar went up from the legions under Octavian and Mark Antony as they pressed forward, sensing they would actually survive it all, seeing their triumph in every step against a fleeing enemy.

  Brutus looked desperately around him, seeking some ruse, some factor he had not seen that could yet influence the outcome. There was nothing. His legions were falling away in full rout on the right wing and the left was in retreat. He could do nothing but come back with the battered centre, his front ranks fending off blows as they tried to save themselves from an enemy given new strength by the prospect of victory.

  His legates were sending riders to him every few moments, pleading for new orders. For a time, he had nothing for them and despair ate at his will. He could not bear the thought of Mark Antony’s smug pleasure, or the humiliation of being taken by Octavian.

  He took deep breaths, trying to force life back into limbs that seemed suddenly leaden. The closest legions still looked to him, thousands of men knowing he held their lives in his hands. He ordered them back, retreating further and further away from the bloody slash of dead soldiers that marked where the armies had met. When he turned his horse to leave the battlefield, it was over. He saw the
confusion and fear in his men as they retreated with him.

  Brutus looked further into the distance. The hills behind Philippi were not too far off. The sun was setting and many of his men would survive the slaughter if he could just reach the slopes. He told himself he could scatter the legions through the mountains and perhaps he would even see his wife again in Athens.

  The army of Octavian and Mark Antony pressed hard as they retreated, but the light was failing and the cool grey twilight was on them by the time he reached the foothills. Brutus led his legions up the rough ground, leaving a trail of dead the whole way as his men were cut down.

  He turned at the tree line, seeing with dull anger that only four legions had come with him. Many more had surrendered on the plain or been butchered. Even those with him were reduced in number, so he doubted more than twelve thousand made it to the slopes.

  The legions of Octavian and Mark Antony roared victory until they were so hoarse their voices failed. Then they clashed their swords on shields, spattering blood across themselves as they gave thanks for surviving the battle.

  Brutus climbed until his horse could carry him no further. He left the animal to run free, walking with the rest as the gloom darkened across the plain. He could still see for miles as he looked back. The bright lines of everything he had dreamed lay in bloody heaps on the dry soil of Philippi.

  In the darkness, Octavian and Mark Antony met. They were both weary and dirty with blood and dust, but they clasped hands, wrist to wrist, each man knowing only too well how close it had been. For that night, the triumvirs had the victory and all they had risked had paid off.

  ‘He won’t get away, not now,’ Mark Antony said. His legions had been closest to the foothills and he’d sent them up to stay close to the defeated soldiers trudging away from the battlefield. ‘When he stops, I’ll have him surrounded.’

  ‘Good. I haven’t come so far to let him escape,’ Octavian replied. His eyes were cold as he regarded his fellow triumvir and Mark Antony’s smile became strained.