by Peter Tonkin
*
Just before dawn, safe in the knowledge that no enemy speculatores had penetrated their defences, Artemidorus led his contubernium back through the row of backup legionaries and into the silent bustle that was the artillery line. Only the larger torsion catapults had been moved – the onagers and ballistae, both capable of firing bolts – huge metal arrows – or rocks and stones. Or, as soon a surprise was no longer a vital element, burning barrels full of Greek Fire. If they had time they might employ the smaller, anti-personnel scorpios later, either swung round and pointed at Hirtius’ men – or in their current position against Decimus Albinus when he sallied out to support his rescuers. But the plan was to start with the heavy artillery at dawn.
Artemidorus and his command reported to Enobarbus and then changed into the arms and armour recovered from Pansa’s dead soldiers. ‘You will not take part in the initial attack,’ the tribune confirmed, fresh from Antony’s final briefing. ‘You are to think of yourselves exclusively as a Spartan cryptaia unit. Licensed to kill outside the normal rules of warfare. The general wants you to wait in the camp here and join in when Hirtius’ and Caesar Octavius’ troops overrun it. Going in behind the enemy as they come past, driving our men back. The Thirty-fifth Legion will take the brunt of the first retaliatory attack. Which is likely to be fierce, as the general is also bending the rules of war with this unexpected and undeclared artillery assault. They will fall back until the Second Sabines can support them. But it is vital that they retreat in good order while seeming to break and run. They will abandon this camp with a maximum of apparent confusion but a minimum of actual resistance. Just enough to make it look good and give you a chance to seek and destroy anyone in an obvious leadership role as discussed.
‘The Fifth Alaude, Antony’s Larks, will be commanded as usual by the general’s brother Lucius. They will oversee the retreat up the Via Aemilia, which he and I have already scouted. Past Placentia and into the mountains if we make it. The plan is that Antony’s army will simply vanish, leaving Hirtius, Caesar and Decimus Albinus – if they are still alive – in possession of an empty camp, the dead and any wounded who are too weak to move.
‘If you do your work well, there will be further confusion among Hirtius and Caesar’s men because many of their leaders and senior officers will be dead. You will then use the cover of this confusion to run south. Gretorex will leave you an alae wing of his best horses in the woods a mile south of here. And will be there to escort and guide you if he can. You should be able to reach Ventidius Bassus within three days. And get him to rendezvous with us by early Maius if he is still willing to keep his word. We’ll be easy for you to follow and find. Antony has already agreed most of the route with Gretorex and the Gaulish cavalry who know the mountains – distantly if not intimately. All clear?’
‘They’ll be easy enough to follow if anything goes wrong,’ said Ferrata after Enobarbus left. ‘Because the Via Aemilia will just be one long line of dead Larks.’
ii
Artemidorus stood at the top of an east-facing watchtower, looking towards Hirtius’ and Caesar’s lines. The tower was part of the wooden wall of the palisade that marked the perimeter of Antony’s camp. He was dressed in full armour with the identification badges of a centurion in the Martia legion. In Antony’s camp behind him, the general’s haruspex was sacrificing another white bull. Antony had already made it clear to the man that, no matter what he saw when he studied the beast’s prophetic liver, he would pronounce the signs as positive. Today was going to be a good day no matter what the gods predicted. Artemidorus was put in mind of the Ides of Mars last year when Divus Julius also had paid no attention to what the gods were telling him. Or to what Artemidorus and his secret agents had discovered about the conspiracy against him, come to that. Which was why he was in Olympus now and they were all here. It was strange, thought the centurion, how the entire weight of history sometimes seemed to turn on one action or failure of action. Like a great gate turning on a hinge.
The centurion’s dark reflective mood had several causes. The main one of which was Antony’s order that he should kill his enemies while disguised as one of them. He knew well enough about Leonides’ Spartan cryptaia special troops. Had he been living several hundred years in the past, he would probably have been one of them, running forward in secret to try and murder Xerxes in his tent the night before the Persians threw their army at Thermopylae. But he was uneasy about emulating them here and now. He could see Antony’s reasoning, and the necessity for working outside the rules of war. A necessity dictated by the general’s desperate situation and the increasingly effective machinations of Cicero in the Senate. There had been thirteen so-called Philippics so far – and no sign that they would stop, even though Antony was now officially an outlaw. But what he had been ordered to do – like the unannounced artillery bombardment which would be under way in almost no time now – seemed to the brooding spy to signal a change in Antony’s character. The bluff, charming, inspirational leader – and occasional bellicose drunkard – was being replaced by someone much more cold and calculating. Someone more like Cassius.
Someone more like young Caesar Octavius.
‘Well, Septem?’ Quintus arrived at his side as he spoke. Recalling Artemidorus to himself and refocusing him on the scene he was looking down upon. ‘When the enemy comes over – or through – this wall,’ Quintus continued, ‘I will be removing all the badges that identify me as a soldier in the Martia legion. I will fight as an anonymous legionary rather than go to war as a lie.’
‘I was thinking of doing that as well,’ said Artemidorus. ‘We’ll brief the others. But our targets remain the same. I will not betray the general’s trust.’
‘Neither will I. But I will not follow his orders either. Not in this.’
The two men stood side by side looking down and waiting. During the last few heartbeats of peace.
The whole battlefield between their lines and the enemy’s was a milky lake of mist, just becoming visible in the gathering light of a spring dawn. The low fog heaved gently, like the surface of a calm sea, trapped between the stout wooden walls of Antony’s lines and those of Hirtius. There, as here, a watchtower stood every hundred paces. Rearing above the milky surface like the pharos lighthouse of Alexandria. Manned, as this one was, with guards. Guards who must surely understand precisely what the mist concealed at any moment now. For the light was growing inexorably stronger as the sun approached the eastern horizon. But the horizon – and the sun – was behind the enemy, casting a darkening shadow that served to further conceal what was going on between the two camps.
From their vantage point it was just possible for Artemidorus and Quintus to see dark figures and angular constructions sunk deep within the undulating haze. But they could only tell what was actually there because they knew. In the distance, the artillery. Behind it, the ranks of Legio XXXV. Behind them, Legio II Sabine. Standing as silently as they had arrived. Ready. Waiting. To their right, down a slight incline, even deeper in the mist, Gretorex and his alae wing of five hundred cavalry. And Antony would be up on the via – on their left – with the rest of the cavalry as soon as the pre-battle rituals were completed. In the ditches along the roadway, Antony’s slingers and archers waited for the enemy to show themselves.
The sun pushed its red disc up above the eastern horizon and the watchkeeper Antony had placed in the tower above the Temple of Apollo in Forum Gallorum gave the signal. And the battle commenced.
A cacophony of trumpet calls shattered the silence. Flames flared, making the vapour glow like a sea of molten gold. The artillery opened fire. Suddenly the mist’s calm surface was torn by flight after flight of metal bolts, rocks and stones. The vague grey-brown wall of Hirtius’ wooden palisade shivered and began to give way under an assault designed to shatter massive city walls. Distant concussions echoing back strangely out of time with the twangs and crashes of the launching. And with the sights of destruction as the missiles hit their targe
ts. The watchtower opposite Artemidorus’ was shattered with a rending crash! The men within it smashed to a red haze by a rock the size of an elephant flying faster than a pigeon. The next wave of iron bolts was followed by blazing barrels of Greek Fire. The smell of burning swept back towards them as the dawn wind began to stir.
During his boyhood in Greece, before he fell into the hands of Cilician pirates, Artemidorus had been brought up in the old-fashioned Spartan way. But in between the bouts of training he had managed to fit in many youthful adventures. One of which involved throwing a rock at a huge nest of enormous hornets he found hanging in a wild olive bush. The result of that experiment came into his memory now. As Hirtius’ legions reacted to Antony’s unannounced attack.
But, unlike the angry hornets, these legions did not boil out of their shattered camp and counter-attack as a cloud of individuals. Even as they ran out of their tents tightening their armour and settling their helmets, buckling their sword-belts and easing their gladii in their scabbards. They grabbed their pilum spears and scutum shields as they fell into their contubernium groups. Which coalesced into their cohorts as the decanii sergeants got them organised. Then the cohorts joined their centuries as the centurions arrived with the signifier standard bearers. These were with their legions in an astonishingly short time – even under the weight of Antony’s unrelenting artillery fire. By the time his Thirty-fifth Legion had marched through the line of war machines and began to approach the enemy encampment, Hirtius’ legions were almost ready to meet them, tribunes in place, aquilifers holding the legionary eagles high. The generals arrived then, attended by their legates and surrounded by the Praetorian Cohorts of their bodyguards. And all of them threw themselves into the battle.
Artemidorus and Quintus were joined by the rest of the contubernium then and they silently watched Antony’s plan begin to unfold. Even Puella was dressed in armour covered with the identification marks of a Martia legionary, her face set, eyes narrow. With Mercury close behind her, his face hideously swollen, the line of his wound a red trench held closed with a network of black stitches. The pain must have been immense, thought Artemidorus. But the depth of his infatuation with the beautiful spy outweighed it. She had not trained for this as the men around her had and it was difficult to assess how she felt about being ordered to break almost all of the normal rules governing military combat. ‘When the enemy breaks through and we go to work,’ he shouted, raising his voice above the increasing din of battle, ‘Quintus and I are going to remove all the badges that identify us as being members of their legions. We will fight as ordered. But not disguised as enemy soldiers.’
The others all nodded their agreement. Even Puella. And so the matter was settled.
iii
The Martia legion swept over Antony’s artillery line soon after the mist cleared. And Hirtius’ own men immediately set to swinging the machines into position so that they could return the damage to Antony’s lines. Not even the pincer-shaped intervention of the two cavalry wings could stop this. Although Antony and Gretorex appeared to be using all of their skill and power, they could not drive their enemies off the siege engines – or even do much to incapacitate them. They withdrew in apparent confusion. And the bolts, rocks and barrels of Greek Fire began to rain down on Antony’s camp instead. Under cover of this fire, the Martia legion moved forward, sweeping the XXXVth before them. The IVth joined them, and it became immediately clear that Caesar Octavius had joined Hirtius on the battlefield. At the same time, the great gate of Mutina swung open and Decimus Albinus led his men out onto the Via Aemilia in a full charge. Twelve full legions were now engaged on the Senate’s side. And those under Antony’s command were showing every sign of crumbling. Sensing victory already, the three columns of the Senate’s legions swung towards Antony’s encampment where the last of his forces seemed to be trapped with their camp-followers, slaves and wounded. The three generals, Albinus, Hirtius and Caesar Octavius, their legates and Praetorian bodyguards were to the fore. Where the danger was greatest. But also where the chances of glory were the highest. Of fabulous rewards from a grateful Senate. And of political advancement to ultimate power.
*
‘Here they come,’ called Artemidorus. He threw the dead Martia centurion’s identification badges on the ground, drew his sword, gripped his shield and prepared for battle. This was cut-and-thrust warfare. The disciplined lines of legionaries had broken up. In this section of the battlefield at least. Some soldiers still carried their shields but they had all thrown their pila spears and were using their gladii swords now. They came boiling through the ruined palisade as the last of the XXXVth and Second Sabine Legions fell back, still fighting fiercely, hand to hand.
In this sort of situation, the contubernium of spies had a distinct edge. More than one, in fact. Their opponents did not see them immediately as enemies, for they wore no legionary identification badges. They were in a tight group, offering protection and support to each other – while the units of Caesar Octavius’ army had split up long ago – or been whittled down by death. They were using the arrowhead formation they had used in Smyrna. But this time most of them carried shields as well as swords. The spies were fresh and focused. Their opponents exhausted and caught in the confusion of battle. That being said, Septem’s little command was still thrusting itself into the middle of a battlefield. And there was no guarantee of protection – even from the gods who were appealed to by the good-luck charms. Which were the only additions to the dead men’s armour they did not throw away.
Artemidorus had chosen their battleground carefully, however. They were fighting inside Antony’s camp which gave them several more elements that might be to their advantage. They knew the lie of the land. Every alley between every tent. Those still standing at least. Between all the supply wagons that were still left. Where the wounded were. Where the general’s command tent was. A list of advantages that meant they were likely to be safe from slings and arrows which would be difficult to deploy in the cramped space. They could be sure their feet would not be snagged by unexpected guy ropes or slip on unseen areas of mud. That, if the worst came to the worst, they knew where the best hiding places could be found nearby. That it would be difficult for anyone to bring much in the way of cavalry in here. Especially Praetorian cavalry – those bodyguard units that the leaders of the armies needed to surround themselves with. And yet the three generals might well need to come in here themselves. Even if they weren’t looking for Antony himself, they would want to know what he had left in his command tent, which, as with most other commanders, he shared with his quaestor paymaster general. In the way of expensive personal items. Gold. Coin. Battle tactics. Escape plans.
The contubernium of spies started out in their tight arrowhead wedge therefore. Artemidorus in the lead with his left side protected by his scutum, Quintus with his shield on his left – and Puella left-handed on his right shoulder – gladius in her right hand, a sharp-edged cavalry spada instead of a shield in her left, Ferrata and Kyros on theirs, Kyros also with a spada instead of a scutum; Hercules and Mercury at the rear. Though Artemidorus was as unsure of controlling the lovesick messenger as Pansa had been of controlling the Martia legion.
The first soldiers they met were the retreating Thirty-fifth Legion, and it was immediately obvious that removing the enemy legion badges had been a good idea. For the moment at least. Antony’s men were happy to retreat past them without getting involved in more sword-play. And when the next wave of his army came past there were even men from the old disbanded VIIth who recognised Artemidorus and Quintus. And from the VIth who recognised Ferrata. But the spurious peace could not last long. As Antony’s men worked their way back through the camp towards the northern arm of the Via Aemilia and the Vth Alae who were controlling it under Lucius’ command, so the first of their opponents arrived. The spies’ orders were clear – focus on the generals and their senior officers. And yet, at first at least, they had to deal with ordinary soldiers from the Martia
and the IVth who were drunk with bloodlust and keen to slaughter anyone they came across. Especially after the way they had been attacked without warning. Subjected to an artillery barrage while in their beds believing themselves still protected by a truce. But bloodlust, like drunkenness, adds to self-confidence while undermining ability. The first soldier who threw himself at Artemidorus raised his gladius as though it was a sharp-edged cavalry spada. And raised his chin as he did so. The spy’s gladius stabbed straight through the exposed throat and the entire contubernium were blooded by the result.
iv
Artemidorus’ focus closed down after that. There was no more strategy; no more overall view. As he had observed to Quintus long ago – the first thing that died in a battle was the plan. This battle became one duel to the death after another. And he slowly became less and less aware of the men and woman fighting at his back as Caesar Octavius’ legions swept into Antony’s camp, already scenting victory. Single opponents became groups that challenged the tight squad of the contubernium. But there was always that fatal hesitation as the Senate’s men took a second look at the anonymous oncoming soldiers.
Then, behind the increasing numbers of legionaries, the senior officers began to appear. And the work of cutting their way through became harder. Artemidorus felt the tight structure of the contubernium begin to unravel as he found himself face to face with a grim centurion who might have been his own reflection. Quintus and Puella, then each of the others in turn also became involved in a personal conflict. Artemidorus defeated the centurion in the end by using a gladiator’s trick – letting go of his scutum, going down on one knee and driving the point of his sword past the edge of his opponent’s shield under the studded leather apron of his armour and into the top of his inner thigh. Destroying the tendons that kept the man upright and opening the femoral artery – which bled out in half a dozen heartbeats while he floundered helplessly in the rust-coloured mud.