A cheer rose from the ranks of the soldiers even before he had finished. Gaius Chaerea felt a wave of exaltation wash over him that he had not experienced in a long time, and he knew that his greatest desire at that moment was to avenge Caesar. Octavian descended the stands and waved to him and to the other members of the Sect of Mars Ultor to follow him. All – except for Maecenas, of course – joined him in a secluded area away from the legionaries who were darting everywhere, making last minute preparations and getting into formation for leaving the camp.
“That was the speech for the troops, my friends,” declared the young commander, who seemed to display no outward sign of his earlier crisis. “As for us, especially Mars Ultor requires above all the blood of Caesar’s murderers. And this time we are going to find them, one by one. I want each of you to use all possible means to flush them out of the ranks of the enemy and kill them. We will let Antony win the battle for us; our greatest concern must be to not let the murderers escape. And in any case, by killing them – who are the leaders – we will provoke disarray in the ranks of the enemy, leaving soldiers without commanders, and will obtain victory in any case. For Mars Ultor!” he cried, at last. “For Caesar!”
Agrippa, Rufus, Ortwin, Veleda, Popillius Laenas and Gaius Chaerea echoed his words with conviction.
XXIV
“There he is – Servilius Casca! It was he who was the first to stab Caesar! I want him dead – now!” shouted Octavian, pointing at a tribune fighting at the head of an enemy unit in front of them. Ortwin hesitated, wondering whether it was wise to abandon the protection of the triumvir in the midst of the battle, but the young commander gave him a gesture of assent, and urged him to deal with the murderer, from whom they were now separated only by a few steps and a horde of men fighting hand-to-hand.
Ortwin gathered his strength for another run. He had already run all the way over here from their own camp when they had engaged with their opponents – Brutus’s army, in fact, had been waiting immobile under their battlements so that they could retreat behind them should things go badly. The advance had been hard on Octavian’s men, but they had been able to exploit their momentum to compensate for the disadvantage of the counter-slope and break up the unity of the enemy ranks. There had been no throwing of spears or firing of arrows, just immediate, brutal hand-to-hand combat with the heavy infantry, and the area outside Brutus’s camp quickly turned into a battlefield, with men fighting individually or in groups with no clearly-defined front line and the two sides soon merging into a single, swarming mass.
Over the course of his long career, Ortwin had participated in countless battles, first between Germans, then between Romans and barbarians, and finally between Romans, and he was able to assess and sense the mood of the warriors on both sides and evaluate the most effective tools for victory. And at the moment, he saw that the desperation of Octavian and Antony’s armies gave his fellow soldiers an advantage. He could see the determination in their eyes, more ferocious than those of their opponents, and in their movements, which were more incisive, and he could hear it in the cries they gave to encourage themselves, which were feral. And he realised that, despite the adverse conditions, they actually had a chance of victory.
This knowledge motivated him to launch himself upon Casca. He would have to dodge many obstacles and climb a muddy slope, but he now genuinely believed Octavian’s speech to the troops, and was convinced that he too enjoyed the support of the gods. He broke into a run, and seemed almost to hover in the air with each leap over the mud, feeling powerful enough to hurl aside any other fighter in his path. He gave a wild scream, well aware that his intimidating appearance – with the bandage over his missing eye, the thousand scars that crowded every visible inch of flesh and his majestic physique – would intimidate any opponent. He even scared his own comrades, who leapt out of his way before he knocked them over, while his enemies took occasional swings at him before giving up, preferring to go back to facing legionaries who seemed more reasonable opponents than this crazed fury.
But as he approached Casca, the cordon of soldiers became denser. Octavian’s men had not yet got that far, and now he would have to open up his own way through. He did not hesitate, and barged forward with a swinging blow that cut the head of one of his enemies clean off, and as his blade swung back it slammed into the helmet of another of Brutus’s men, knocking him to the ground unconscious. Ortwin stood on him, crushing his face, then used his shield to ram another soldier onto the sword of one of his comrades, before, with a final swing of his weapon, transforming the face of yet another antagonist into a bloody mask.
He saw that only two legionaries remained between him and his target, who at that point noticed his presence.
“It’s the one-eyed assassin who killed Decimus Brutus and Trebonius!” shouted Casca, urging the soldiers around him to attack Ortwin. “Get him! Get him!” But the German had opened up the way for his fellow soldiers, who had forced the enemy to fan out to tackle them, and now they were fighting one-on-one. Casca looked behind him for a moment, obviously considering making a run for it, but some of his own soldiers blocked his way, and began pushing him forward. He turned to face Ortwin, shielding himself behind two of his own men.
It was him, though, that the German wanted. With his shield, he parried the blow of the man to his left, which meant lowering his guard to Casca’s sword. He blocked his blade, but found the sword of the legionary to his right pointed at his chest. He spun round on himself, knocking the weapon away with his shield while his own sword tore the enemy’s chest open. Casca stood frozen to the spot, and Ortwin shouted proudly, “I am no hired killer, Casca! I am a warrior!” Then he cut open the throat of the other legionary, who, thinking that the barbarian’s attack was concentrated on his leader, had allowed himself to relax.
Casca tried to hide his fear but Ortwin knew that he was terrified. It would be easy, he told himself as he prepared to swing the final blow, knowing that it could not miss – the other man was in such a state of panic that he did not even attempt to hold up his shield.
“No, Ortwin, no!” Veleda’s voice stayed his arm. Ortwin turned and saw Octavian with a sword pointed at his throat. Veleda was near him, together with some of the Germans he had left with the triumvir. But closest of all to Octavian was an enemy tribune.
“Let him go!” shouted Veleda, “It’s Casca’s brother!” Octavian’s face bore an expression which seemed both inscrutable and unafraid.
It must be Gaius Servilius Casca, then. He had found the most effective way to save his brother Publius.
They had two of Julius Caesar’s murderers at hand, and yet could not kill them.
Mars Ultor would not stand for it.
*
Tillius Cimber. One of the more important names on the list. Agrippa had identified him in the early stages of the battle, but had not managed to reach him. As tribune, he was also responsible for the legion Octavian had entrusted to him, and could not risk sending thousands of men to their doom to ensure the death of only one, and therefore he had to balance managing the general progress of the battle with his own goals – as well, unfortunately, as reining in the excesses of Popillius Laenas, who had made no attempt to hide his aspirations to earn himself a promotion to Primus Pilus on the battlefield.
The centurion had got it into his head to reach the enemy battlements and force their adversaries back against them using only his centuria. At the risk, however, of being cut off from the rest of the legion. He had not asked permission, the idiot, but had simply sent a runner to inform him immediately after setting off at the head of a unit on the opposite flank in an attempt to penetrate the defence which, for the moment, seemed unlikely to succeed.
Unless he, Agrippa, put some pressure on from his own side.
And he had to, if he didn’t want to lose an entire centuria.
That meant putting aside, for the moment, Tillius Cimber. He left the line and ordered the standard bearer of the first cohort to signal t
he outflanking attack on their wing. The officer waved his banner, the trumpeter sounded, and the approximately eight hundred men who made up the main unit began pulling back from their individual battles to gather around the signifer. Agrippa ordered them into a column, set himself at their head and began to march along the side of the enemy formation, which for the moment was being kept busy on the other front by the rest of the legion. But the tribune was careful not to expose his flank to the other enemy legion, which was in front of the unit of which Octavian had taken direct command.
But others noticed his attempt to bypass them. Both on the right side and on the left, centurions started rallying their troops and tried to cut them off in a pincer movement as they headed towards the fort. This meant that the pressure on Laenas slackened, but also that he was in danger of being surrounded.
To save a centuria, he was risking a cohort, but if the pincer movement worked, they would cut the enemy off from their own battlefield. He called a runner and told him to tell Laenas to persist at all costs, then extended the cohort’s line, entrusting the legionaries on the sides with the task of providing a defensive screen for those in the centre, who would deal with breaking through and penetrating the enemy forces. He ordered them thus into three columns, placing himself at the head of the central one and leading them off diagonally.
He was the first to meet the enemy, bearing down upon a group of legionaries who offered little resistance to their co-ordinated attack. Agrippa swung at their shields, driven on by the men to either side and just behind him and a breach was opened, but a denser enemy front line was revealed behind it. He began slashing away at the blockade, prompting his men to do the same, as though they were hacking their way through rock. He split shields, dented helmets, tore open throats, and slashed calves and hands with his sword until the second line gave too. And with each step forward his men praised his name, chanting it as they hurled themselves against their opponents.
A centurion stood before them, urging his men to group around him, and the new obstacle slowed Agrippa, who began to feel the pressure on his flanks too. He realised that the legion in front of Octavian had broken through the protective cordon he had set up. The soldiers began to crowd together in a crush that barely left them room to swing their swords, and each fighter found himself stuck, shoulder to shoulder with comrades and opponents, leaving many no choice but to head butt their enemy. Some were able to push an enemy to the ground and then stamp on him or finish him off with the bottom edge of their shield, while others even started biting, and Agrippa saw one soldier spit out a nose while the face of the man in front of him turned into a mask of blood.
Suddenly, the soldiers in front of him disappeared, and Agrippa realised that he and his men had driven them into the ditch of their own camp with their attack. This gave them more space to free themselves of the enemy pressure on their flank, so the tribune ordered several legionaries to attend to it, and they soon began to recover ground, pushing their opponents back towards the main body of their units. He peered more closely into the ditch and saw that the survivors were attempting to escape from the trench by climbing up over the bodies of their dead comrades, many of whom had broken their necks in the fall.
Agrippa urged his men to follow him and they immediately set about finishing off the soldiers who were forming a sort of human ladder in an attempt to climb back out. At the head of his column, he ran along the bottom of the embankment, holding his shield over his head for shelter from the projectiles fired from the battlements and tried to find Laenas, whom he hoped had broken through too, so that he could thus re-unite the two contingents and attack the enemy from behind while the rest of his legion continued to attack the front line, pushing them into the ditch. But Laenas was nowhere to be seen in the crowd of battling soldiers. Passing along the rear of the enemy formation, Agrippa noticed Tillius Cimber and set off to cross the moat, where there were now dozens of soldiers, and attack him, but at that moment he finally saw Laenas, his crest protruding from the centre of a group of legionaries carrying shields that bore his unit’s coat of arms.
They were standing in a circle and attempting to hold off the enemy who were attacking them from all sides.
They were surrounded and doomed.
Unless he once again gave up Tillius Cimber and went to help them.
*
Rufus intended to prove to Octavian and the rest of the sect for once and for all that he was a better man than Agrippa. He couldn’t stand the idea that in the previous battle – when it had so obviously been his friend who had failed in his defence of the camp – the triumvir had actually considered the possibility that the fault had been his for having led his men down onto the plain, and not Agrippa’s. Octavian had pronounced no judgements, but the mere fact that he had speculated upon his eventual responsibility was offensive.
This time there would be no complaints, and it was for that reason that he wanted to be the member of the sect who had the highest number of Caesar’s killers’ heads to his name, as well as the first commander to take the enemy camp.
He wanted to kill them himself, one by one, but there was one in whom he was more interested than the others: Marcus Junius Brutus. Killing him would also put an end to the battle.
It wouldn’t be easy, and he knew it. Brutus had remained outside the fray and was surrounded by a swarm of bodyguards, and to get to him Rufus would have to attempt to break through the right flank where the enemy general was. It was for that reason, knowing full well where he would be positioned, that he had requested and obtained the command of the left flank of Octavian’s legions. And he could barely wait to come face to face with Brutus.
“Chaerea! Your turn!” he shouted, feeling that the moment to implement his plan had come. His legion had engaged with its opposite number and was now fighting man to man, but Rufus had kept the first cohort of reserves in the rear to use when he needed to strike the decisive blow for the breakthrough. The manoeuvre would open the way for them to set off against the position occupied by Brutus with a second reserve which consisted of two squadrons of cavalry at his direct command.
A double reserve, as Caesar had used at Pharsalus. Brutus would never expect to see yet another contingent appear after the column which came to the rescue of the front line, and that would take him by surprise.
But Gaius Chaerea did not move.
Rufus rode up to join him in the head of the column. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you setting off?” he asked, in a surly voice.
“Don’t you see, Tribune? Our men are few, and are under pressure from the enemy. They are falling back and we are too far away from Brutus’s camp – we risk encirclement. If I attack now we risk causing further confusion: in my opinion, it would be better to simply reinforce our ranks and hold out until we have the strength to resume our advance.”
Rufus looked incredulously at the deployment before them. Chaerea was telling him nothing he didn’t know already: he had reckoned that by weakening their lines, the enemy would advance, albeit slightly. But there had been no breach, and that was what was important for the success of his plan.
“I know what I’m doing, centurion,” he said coldly. “Obey – that is all.”
“As you wish, Tribune,” replied Chaerea, in the same tone. He signalled to the trumpeters to sound the attack and ordered his men to follow him, then began to march quickly toward his fellow soldiers. At the sound of the trumpets, these should have moved aside to let them pass, but they were already partially out of formation, and their centurions could not get them back in place in time for them to manoeuvre, so many therefore remained isolated or in small groups along the route of the column headed by Chaerea who, upon reaching the front line, was forced to slow down.
Rufus shouted repeatedly, calling the slower legionaries – who were still struggling with the enemy and, lacking the assistance of their comrades, falling more frequently – fools, and he also raged against the centurion to whom he had entrusted the manoeuvre
but who lacked the courage to get rid of a few fellow soldiers in order to accomplish his task: the sacrifice of a handful of legionaries, he was convinced, would have been a small price to pay for the death of Brutus.
However, Chaerea’s initiative seemed to have been successful anyway. At least at that point, his column had brought the front line forward, and the concentration of enemy troops in that narrow sector had forced their opponents to retreat to the sides of the camp, where their ranks had even been broken in some places. Rufus observed the area where Brutus was on horseback, flanked by his bodyguards and encouraging his men to fight. He wondered for a few moments whether it was actually wise to undertake this personal manhunt himself, then decided he would try: there were still breaches open, and if he waited they would probably close. He had to exploit them now.
He raised his arm and ordered the cavalry column, of which had assumed command, to charge, then headed straight for the breach closest to the area occupied by Brutus. When he met the first infantrymen, he raced through and over them at a gallop, uncaring as to whether they belonged to his unit or the enemy. He could barely make out the features of his target beneath his helmet. Brutus was his. There was only one final cordon of legionaries to get past, an unbroken line of shields.
The wall of men withstood the impact, and the horses slowed to a halt. Some of them managed to get past the barricade of shields, but at least two horsemen were knocked off balance and fell to the ground, where they were rapidly finished off by the infantry. Rufus’s steed reared and brought down his hooves on the skull of a soldier, who fell to the ground, knocking down the man next to him and opening up a further breach. Rufus was about to spur him on at a gallop towards Brutus, but when he looked round to see how many men were following him he saw that some riders were falling back while others lay on the ground and others trotted about in front of a still intact wall of shields.
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