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. Then 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.
‘I found some of the Liberatores hiding in the town last night,’ Mark Antony said. It was a peace offering between allies and he was pleased to see life come back to Octavian’s expression as he stood there.
‘Have them brought to me.’
Mark Antony hesitated, disliking the tone that sounded so much like an order. Yet Octavian was consul as well as triumvir. More importantly, he was the blood and heir of Caesar. Mark Antony nodded stiffly, conceding his right.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Brutus couldn’t sleep. He had driven himself to the edge of endurance for two days and his mind kept scrabbling away like a rat trapped in a box. High in the hills, he sat on a clump of scrub grass with his hands in his lap and his sword unstrapped and lying at his feet. He watched the moon rise above him and took pleasure in air so clear that he could almost reach out and take the white disc in his hand.
He could smell the sourness of his own sweat and his body ached in every joint and muscle. Some part of him knew he should still be looking for an escape, but the night was stealing through him and he recognised it as the numbness of acceptance, too strong to resist. He was too tired to run, even if there had been a way through the mountains at his back. Perhaps Cassius had felt the same at the end – no anger or bitterness, just peace descending on him like a cloak. He hoped so.
In the moonlight, Brutus watched the dark masses of men moving to surround the tattered remnants of his army. There was no way back to the plain, no way back even to the man he had once been. He could see lights on the ridge of Philippi and he tried to blot out the mental images of Octavian and Mark Antony toasting his failure and their success. He had rejoiced at being alone in command as the sun rose that morning, but it was not a fine thing at the end. He would have taken comfort from the dry wit of Cassius or one of his old friends with him one last time. He would have taken comfort from his wife embracing him.
As he sat there, under the stars, his men sat in groups on the hillside, talking to each other in low voices. He had heard their fear and he understood their hopelessness. He knew they would not stand with him when the sun came up again. Why should they when they could surrender to noble Caesar and be saved? There would be no last great stand on the mountains by Philippi, not for Brutus. All he could do was die. He knew the coldness in his bones was his mind preparing for the end and he did not care. It was over. He had killed the first man in Rome and the dark rush of blood had carried him over the sea to this place, with a breeze tugging at his cloak and his lungs filled with cold, sweet-scented air.
He did not know if the shades of the dead could truly see the living. If they could, he imagined Julius would be there with him. Brutus looked up into the stillness of the night and closed his eyes, trying to feel some presence. The dark pressed in instantly, too close to bear. He opened them again, shivering at the soft blackness that was so much like death. For just a little while, he had held the future of Rome in his hands. He had believed he had the strength to alter the passage of a people and a city as it moved into the centuries ahead. It had been a fool’s dream; he knew that now. One man could only do so much and they would go on without him and never know he had lived. He smiled wryly to himself then. He had been the best of a generation, but it had not been enough.
A memory came back to him in fragments, a conversation from too many years before. He had sat in the shop of a jeweller named Tabbic and talked about making his mark on the world. He had told the old man that he wished only to be remembered, that nothing else mattered. He had been so young! He shook his head. There was no point recalling his failures. He had worked for something more than himself and age had crept up on him while he was blinded by the sun.
Alone on the hill, Brutus laughed aloud at the mistakes he had made, at the dreams and the great men he had known. They were ashes and bones, all of them.
In the town of Philippi, Octavian stared coldly as four men were dragged into the room and thrown to the floor before him. They had been badly beaten, he saw. Suetonius lowered his head and stared wonderingly at the bright blood that dripped from his scalp to the floor. Gaius Trebonius was bone-white with terror, visibly trembling as he sat sprawled and did not try to rise. Octavian did not know the other two as men. Ligarius and Galba were simply names on the list of proscriptions to him. Yet they had been part of the group of assassins, stabbing knives into Caesar just a year and a dozen lifetimes before. They stared around themselves through swollen eyes and, with his hands bound, Galba could only sniff at the blood dribbling from his nose.
The man who rose to peer down at them was young and strong, showing no sign that he had fought a battle that day. Suetonius raised his head under that interested gaze, turning aside for a moment to spit blood onto the wooden floor.
‘So will you be emperor now, Caesar?’ Suetonius said. ‘I wonder what Mark Antony will say about that.’ He smiled bitterly, showing bloody teeth. ‘Or will he too fall to your ambition?’
Octavian cocked his head, assuming a puzzled expression.
‘I am the champion of the people of Rome, Senator. You see no emperor here, not in me. You do see Caesar, and the vengeance that you have brought down on your own head.’
Suetonius laughed, a wheezing sound from his battered frame. His lips bled fresh as the scabs cracked, so that he winced even as he chuckled.
‘I have known C
aesars to lie before,’ he said. ‘You have never understood the Republic, that fragile thing. You are nothing more than a man with a burning brand, Octavian, looking at the scrolls of greater men. You see only heat and light and you will not understand what you have burned until it is all gone.’
Octavian smiled, his eyes glittering.
‘I will be there to see it, even so,’ he said softly. ‘You will not.’
He gestured to a soldier standing behind Suetonius and the man reached down with a knife in his hand. Suetonius tried to jerk away, but his hands were tied and he could not escape the blade as it cut across his throat. The sound he made was terrible as he looked up at Octavian, in hatred and disbelief. Octavian watched until he fell forward and looked away only when Gaius Trebonius gave a broken cry of grief.
‘Will you ask for mercy?’ Octavian said to him. ‘Will you call on the gods? You did not wield a blade on the Ides of March. Perhaps I could offer a reprieve to one such as you.’
‘Yes, I ask for mercy!’ Trebonius said, his eyes wide with fear. ‘I was not there on the Ides. Grant me my life; it is in your power.’
Octavian shook his head in regret.
‘You were part of it,’ he said. ‘You fought with my enemies and I have discovered I am not a merciful man.’
Once again he nodded to the executioner and Gaius Trebonius gave a great yell of anguish that choked into gurgling as his throat was opened. He fell twitching and scrabbling onto the floor by Suetonius. The smell of urine and opened bowels filled the room, bitter and pungent.
The remaining pair knew better than to plead for their lives. Ligarius and Galba watched Octavian in sick fascination, but they did not speak and prepared themselves to die.
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