Julius dismissed the scouts to fetch food and get some well-deserved rest. It would be little enough, he knew.
Gaditicus came to his side, his eyebrows raised in interest as the scouts left.
‘We’ve found him,’ Julius confirmed. ‘Ten thousand of them at the highest estimate. I’m thinking of moving ten miles tonight and then the last twenty or so when it gets dark tomorrow. Our archers will drop the sentries and we’ll hit the main force before dawn.’
Gaditicus looked worried.
‘The veterans will be close to exhaustion if you push them that far in darkness. We could be slaughtered.’
‘They’re a great deal fitter than when we left their city. It will be hard and we’ll lose a few, I have no doubt, but we have surprise with us. And they have marched all their lives. I will want you to organise a fast retreat after that first attack. I don’t want them to think about a death struggle against so many. Pitch it to them as a running blow – straight in, kill as many as we can and away. We get as far away as possible before dawn and, well, I’ll see what shape we’re in then.’ He looked up through the mossy trunks at the sky above.
‘Not long till darkness, Gadi. Make your men ready to move. I’ll halt them as close as I can for tomorrow night, but we must not be seen. We’ll work on the tactics when we’re closer. There’s no point planning the details until I can see how they have set themselves. We don’t need to beat them, just force them to break camp and move west towards the legions coming from the coast.’
‘If they are coming,’ Gaditicus replied quietly.
‘They will be. No matter what happened after Sulla’s death, the Senate can’t afford to let Greece go without a fight. Form the ranks, Gadi.’
Gaditicus saluted, his features smoothing. He was aware that any attack would be risky against such numbers, but he thought the night strike Julius suggested was the best choice, given the men they had available. In addition, Mithridates had assembled an army from untrained irregulars who were about to meet a force that included some of the most experienced gladius fighters alive. Against ten thousand, it wasn’t much of an edge, but it would make a difference.
As he gave Accipiter cohort the order to break camp, he watched how the younger men and veterans worked together, quickly and quietly assembling in loose formation until they cleared the woods. Wolves indeed, some of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mithridates had lost his perimeter guards and didn’t yet know it. Julius had watched his outer ring for almost an hour, smiling at last when he saw the simple system the Greek king used. Each of his guards stood next to a burning torch set atop a wooden pole. At random intervals, they would detach it and wave the flame above their heads, answered by the inner ring and the others spaced around them.
Mithridates may have been a king, but he was no tactician, Julius had realised. The Wolves had broken the defence with pairs of archers, one to down the sentry as soon as he had signalled, the other to take his place. It was quickly done and they were able to draw in to the inner circle. Those men were closer to each other, and replacing them took almost an hour. Julius had urged caution, but even he was growing tense as the time wore on waiting for the last to make his signal, the man completely unaware that only Romans could answer him.
Cabera loosed the final silent arrow and the enemy soldier fell in a shadowy heap without a sound. Moments later, the spot of light illuminated another dark figure who stood calmly as if all was well. There was no alarm and Julius clenched a fist in excitement.
The camp at the foot of the hills was lit by pole torches like the ones the sentries used. Seen from afar, the dark winter night was broken by a sea of golden spots, unwinking eyes that glowed at the Romans as they waited for Julius’ signal. For the young commander, the whole world seemed to be hanging on his word. He approached the nearest of his false sentries and nodded to Cabera, who lit an oil-soaked arrow from the torch, firing it quickly as the flames spread towards his fingers.
Gaditicus saw the splinter of flame launch upwards and pointed his sword at the camp before them. His men moved in from their staggered position without a single shout or battle cry. They ran in eerie silence towards the pools of light that marked the camp, converging with Ventulus on two sides to cause maximum panic and disruption.
The Greek army had retired with the coming of night, depending on their far-flung rings of guards to warn them of an attack. The first many of them knew of danger was when their leather tents were ripped open and unseen swords stabbed through at their sleeping bodies, killing dozens in the first few seconds. Shouts mingled with screams and the sleeping camp began to wake and take up weapons.
‘Wolves!’ Julius bellowed, judging the time for silence was over. The excitement swept him as he and his men ran through the camp, killing anyone who stumbled out of their tents. He had told his men to kill two each of the enemy and then fight their way out, but three had fallen to his own blade and he was barely at the end of the first rush. He could feel the panic of Mithridates’ men. Their officers were slow to respond to the attack and, without orders, a hundred individuals tried to take the battle to the shadowed attackers, dying in scores on veteran blades. Julius’ cry was echoed by Gaditicus’ cohort, hundreds of voices adding to the confusion and fear of the enemy. Cabera fired his remaining arrows into dark tents and Julius cut a naked man down as he tried to bring his sword to bear. It was chaos and in the confusion Julius almost missed the moment he’d sworn he would not ignore.
It came after many minutes, when horns sounded and the running Greeks began to gather in their units. In the tents the Roman forces had missed, the enemy had armed themselves and now began to fight back, orders in Greek heard over the hack and thump of blows.
Julius spun round to take off a man’s hand at the wrist as he leapt at him. Every cut with the heavy blade caused awful damage, but his next blow was blocked neatly and he found two men against him and more running in from all sides. They had recovered and it was time to retreat before his Wolves were cut to pieces.
‘Disengage!’ he bellowed, even as he swung low with the gladius, cutting deeply into the ankle of the man closest to him. The second sprawled over the body as he rushed in and Julius stepped clear, turning in the space and suddenly sprinting away, his sandals skidding in the bloody dust. His men came with him on the instant, turning and running as soon as they could get free of the press.
Outside the torches of the camp, the night was a black hiding place. As Julius called the disengage, all the sentry torches had been extinguished and the Romans scattered invisibly, disappearing rapidly from the edge of the camp, leaving wreckage and bodies behind them.
The Greek units halted at the edge of the camp lights, unwilling to run into a darkness that seemed to contain thousands of the enemy – a foe they had been told were more than a week of marching away in a different direction. Confused orders were shouted back and forth as they hesitated and the Wolves ran clear.
Mithridates raged. He had been torn from sleep by screams at the furthest end of his camp. His own tent was in the mouth of the narrow pass and, as his sleepy mind cleared, he realised they were under attack from the safe side, where he knew his men had cleared out Roman settlements all the way from the encampment to the frightened cities along the eastern coast.
His ten thousand men covered a vast stretch of the valley and by the time he had brought his captains to the scene of the attack and begun restoring order, the Romans were gone.
Grimly, they tallied the dead. The officers who survived estimated a full five thousand had come against them, leaving more than a thousand Greek dead on the ground. Mithridates roared in grief as he saw the bodies piled in tents, killed before they had even had a chance to face the enemy. It was carnage and he knew again the frustration he had felt when Sulla had come for him years before.
How could they have got behind him? he wondered silently as he walked amongst the ungainly dead. He looked into the dark scrub and was overcome
with anger, throwing his sword into the night. The darkness swallowed it almost as soon as it left his hand.
‘The sentries are dead, sir,’ an officer reported.
Mithridates looked at him with eyes made red from smoke and interrupted sleep.
‘Post more and break the camp ready for a dawn march. I want them hunted down.’ As the man ran to fulfil his orders, Mithridates looked again at the desolation around him. A thousand men had been lost and he had seen only a few of the Romans on the ground amongst them. Why did they retreat? Whichever legion it was, it looked as if they could have run right over the camp before light came, such had been the panic and disarray of his men. Where would they be safe, if not in the heart of their own land, their own camp?
When he had retired that night, it had been with the confidence of leading the biggest army he had ever gathered, ever seen. Now, he knew he would not sleep again without fear that their strength would be mocked, their lives cut from them with savage ease. He watched the faces around him, seeing the fading shock and terror, and doubt crept into him. He’d thought himself surrounded by lions, but found they were lambs.
He tried to shrug off despair, but it pressed heavily on him. How could he hope to take on Rome? These men had come to his banner after a few quick victories against the hated Romans, but they were young men filled with dreams of Sparta, Thebes and Athens. Dreams of Alexander that he might not be able to bring about. His head bowed and his heavy fists clenched as the men scurried around him, not daring to speak to the furious king.
‘We should go back,’ Suetonius said. ‘One more attack while they are breaking camp. They’d never expect it.’
‘And how would we escape again, with dawn coming?’ Julius replied irritably. ‘No. We march until we find cover.’ He turned his face away so as not to see the sullen expression that he knew would follow his words. Even that was slightly more bearable than the vicious pleasure that had gripped the young officer since the raid. It sickened him. For Julius, the short battle had been without honour, a simple practical business of reducing the enemy numbers. The hot rush of excitement that had filled his veins in the fighting had faded as soon as he was clear, but Suetonius had been almost sexually aroused by the easy killing.
The veterans too, Julius noted, had moved away from the Greek camp as fast as they were able, without cheers or care for minor wounds. They kept a professional silence as he had ordered. Only Suetonius had chattered as they marched, seemingly unable to stop himself spilling over with self-congratulation.
‘We could send in our archers and fire from cover before retiring,’ he said, his mouth opening wetly at the prospect. ‘Did you see the sentry I shot? Straight through his throat, perfect it was.’
‘Be silent!’ Julius snapped at him. ‘Fall back in the ranks and keep your mouth shut.’ He’d had enough of the man and there was something deeply unpleasant in his enjoyment of the slaughter. It hadn’t seemed to surface in the sea-battles, but, somehow, killing men as they slept had awakened something ugly in the young officer and Julius wanted to push it as far from him as he could. A thought of the crucifixions flashed into his mind and he shuddered, wondering if Suetonius would have shown mercy or gone on to the very end of them. He suspected it would have been slow if Suetonius had been giving the orders.
The young watch officer didn’t drop back immediately and Julius nearly struck him. He seemed to think they shared some private relationship that sprang from the memories in common, right back to the cell on Celsus’ ship. Julius looked him in the face and saw that it was twisted in spite, the mouth working as he thought of a reply to the order.
‘Get back, or I’ll kill you here,’ Julius snarled at him and the lean figure trotted away at last into the darkness of the marching men behind.
One of the veterans stumbled with a curse. It was easy enough to do without a moon to see the ground. They had set a hard pace from the first, with no complaints. Every man there knew Mithridates would be out looking for them as soon as it was light enough to see. They had less than two hours to dawn, and at full speed they could cover nearly ten miles in that time.
With the wounded, it would be less. Without having to ask, those men who had trouble walking were supported by two others, but most of the wounds were minor. The nature of the fighting had left the Romans either dead or untouched for the most part. Julius hadn’t had time to judge their losses, but he guessed they had done well, far better than he had hoped.
As he marched, he worked through how he would have defended the Greek army, if he had charge of them. A better sentry system for a start. It was that weakness that had let them run straight into the heart of the camp without an alarm. The Wolves had been lucky, it seemed, but, for all his faults, Mithridates was not a fool. It would be harder the next time, with more Roman dead. Unseen at the head of the long column, Julius was finally able to take a moment in the silence of the night march to examine the success. For all Suetonius’ debased enjoyment, he was right. It had been perfect.
As dawn came, most of the men were exhausted. Grimly, Julius forced them to stagger on, keeping up a string of orders and threats. A few miles more brought them to a series of sharp wooded hills that would hide them from the day and discovery. They would sleep and eat there, but as he listened to the groans of the veterans as even their iron will faded under the endless march, he guessed they would have to stay hidden for a while longer to recover their strength.
At dawn, Mithridates sent out all his small store of horses in groups of twenty, with orders to report back the moment they sighted the enemy. His original plan of uprooting the entire camp for the search had worried him. Perhaps that was what they intended him to do, to leave the apparent shelter of the small valley and march out onto the plains where the hidden legion could take them apart. He paced his tent in an agony of frustration, cursing his indecision. Should he retreat to a city? They were all Roman and would defend their walls against him to the last man. But where was safe on the plains? He knew it was possible that more legions would be coming from the west to crush the rebellion and played with the idea of disbanding his men, sending them back to their farms and valleys. No, he couldn’t do that. The Romans could well take them one by one as they looked for rebels and he would have gained nothing.
He ground his teeth in the same impotent anger that had coursed through him ever since he had seen the bodies of his men the night before. Would Alexander allow himself to be trapped between legions?
He stopped his pacing suddenly. No, Alexander would not. Alexander would carry the fight to them. But in which direction? If he moved his army back into the east, he could still be caught by those coming from the coast. If he moved west towards the Roman ports, he would have these night killers to harry his rearguard. The gods forgive him, what would Sulla do? If the scouts came back with no news, and he didn’t act, he would begin losing men to desertion, he was sure.
Sighing, he poured himself a third cup of wine, despite the acid feeling in his empty stomach as it rebelled at such punishment so early in the day. He ignored the discomfort irritably as he tipped it back. In a little while, he would have to tell his sons that they had cost lives by not moving fast enough during the night.
He drank more and more as the day wore on and the scouts returned on lathered mounts with nothing to report. Of all the camp, only Mithridates the king had drunk himself to sleep as night fell.
Julius knew the estimates of the short night raid were going to be vague or exaggerated. It was the nature of soldiers to claim greater success than they had achieved. Yet even allowing for that, he thought they had reduced Mithridates’ force by between eight hundred and a thousand, losing only eleven of their own. Those men would not be buried under the eyes of Roman gods. There had been no time to collect the bodies, but it was still a thorn under the skin of the veterans, who had never liked to leave their own in enemy hands.
The younger men had released some of the night’s tension as soon as they reached the s
afety of the tree line in the hills and Julius had given permission to stand down. They had whooped and cheered until they were hoarse, while the veterans looked on smiling, more concerned with cleaning and oiling their equipment than celebrating.
Quertorus had sent out fifty of their best hunters to bring back meat, and by mid-morning had a steaming meal ready, roasting hedgehogs, hares and deer together on small fires. Any flame was a risk, but the trees would break up the smoke and Julius knew they needed the rejuvenation and warmth of hot meat and only insisted the fires be scattered as soon as the last of the hunters’ kills were cooked.
The difference that age makes was clear that afternoon. The young recruits were fully recovered, moving energetically about the camp in small groups, chatting and laughing. The veterans lay like the dead, without even turning in sleep, so they woke stiff and cramped. Bruises spread under their skin, appearing where there had been no mark the night before. The younger ones shrugged off their wounds, but didn’t mock the veterans for their stiffness. They had seen their skill and not their age.
Julius had found Cornix chewing amiably as he sat close to the cooking fires, obviously enjoying the warmth in his old bones.
‘You survived, then,’ Julius said, genuinely pleased the old man had lived through the chaos of the attack. The knee was still heavily wrapped and flat against the ground to rest.
Cornix gestured in welcome, waving a piece of meat vaguely. ‘They couldn’t kill me, right enough,’ he agreed, sucking dry the meat he held before pressing it into his cheek to soften enough for chewing. ‘There were a lot of them, I noticed.’ His eyes searched out Julius’, full of interest in the young man.
‘Eight or nine thousand left, we think,’ Julius said.
Cornix frowned. ‘It’ll take for ever to kill that many,’ he observed seriously as he worked the piece of meat around his mouth, ruminating.
The Emperor Series: Books 1-5 Page 62