by Peter Tonkin
The next uncounted time for Artemidorus was a wild skirmish. The Seventh formed their lines, linked their shields and moved forward in self-supporting units behind Antony, his bodyguard and his Praetorians. But the legions they were facing simply gave up and scattered. Onto the sword-points of Antony’s Twenty Seventh and Twenty Eighth legions, who had been on their left in the original lines, but who were coming south as well as east as Cassius’ lines did in fact begin to break and run. Suddenly everyone they came across were friends calling the watch-word, ‘Hercules!’
Artemidorus paused, gasping and choking on the swirling dust, eyes streaming. He looked around, like someone waking from a nightmare. As he did so, a unit of horsemen appeared. Mercifully, they were from Legio X Equestris, but Artemidorus suspected he was not alone in thanking the gods that the horsemen were calling ‘Hercules’ instead of ‘Liberty.’
‘Septem!’ called Antony. ‘We need to get some order into this. I want you and Quintus to take two horses and ride to Caesar’s camp. They all know you up there and will tell you what’s going on at their end of things. Tell them we’ve routed Cassius down here and taken his camp. With any luck Caesar will have done the same to Brutus. Confirm what’s going on. Then come back and report to me. Take the rest of this unit as an escort. And hurry!’
Artemidorus and Quintus thundered through the murk with the cavalry unit immediately behind them. The brown dust billowed around them, one moment making it difficult to see beyond the labouring horses’ ears, the next revealing a panorama that made it possible to get their bearings and head for Caesar’s lines. ‘Things seem to be quietening down,’ called Artemidorus.
‘The main battle’s moving north by the sound of things,’ called Quintus in reply. ‘Cassius’ troops are finished…’
‘Or dead,’ said Artemidorus, guiding his horse round yet another pile of corpses.
‘Why in the names of all the gods didn’t Cassius ask Brutus for back-up?’ wondered the old soldier.
‘Communications broke down, just as we anticipated.’
‘It sounds as though Brutus is well engaged now, though,’ said Quintus.
‘But, like Cassius, if he is, then he’s alone. Half the Libertore legions are lost or scattered.’
No sooner had Artemidorus made this observation than one of those strange, almost supernatural moments that can happen in battle occurred. Perhaps it was the battle-rage still coursing through their veins, perhaps it was something ghostly after all. But the dust storm abruptly thinned and there, a couple of stades distant, stood a man holding the vexillum standard of the Thirty First. He was surrounded by guards and trumpeters and was clearly trying to rally the broken legions. Artemidorus reined back, slowing his mount as he narrowed his streaming eyes. But within a heartbeat the dust had thickened once again and the little group around the standard was gone.
Artemidorus gasped. ‘Did you see that?’
‘I did,’ said Quintus. ‘It looked like Cassius to me…’
‘And to me,’ said Artemidorus. ‘But in this fog, my eyes are almost as bad as his.’
Before they could do anything further, another cavalry unit came cantering out of the murk. ‘Hercules!’ shouted the spy, reining to a stop and reaching for his gladius just in case.
‘Hercules,’ came the wheezing answer. And even though he couldn’t make out the speaker’s face for it was wrapped in a scarf against the choking dust, he recognised the voice. ‘Caesar!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
iv
Artemidorus wondered whether he was stretching Antony’s orders past their breaking point as he and his Equestrian unit closed round Caesar and began to escort him off the battlefield and down towards the swamp. Especially as he suspected Antony would far rather that the unit went after Cassius himself now that they knew where he was. ‘I have to go where the air is clear,’ wheezed the young man, ‘or I shall choke to death.’
‘But your legions, Caesar! Who is leading them?’ demanded Quintus, his voice quivering with shock.
‘Rufus and Agrippa of course. I would have been no use. I can hardly stand. I can’t breathe and I certainly can’t shout orders. Besides, I had a dream last night. Divus Julius my father visited me as I slept and warned me to avoid today’s battle at all costs…’
‘But to come across the battlefield, almost completely unescorted. With only a few of your bodyguards!’ Artemidorus was almost as shocked as Quintus.
‘You would prefer me to draw attention to myself, Septem?’
‘You could have risked it as things have turned out, Caesar. Cassius’ men seem to be broken and scattered. But Antony wants to know how things are progressing between your forces and Brutus’ legions.’
‘You’ll have to ask Agrippa. He’ll give you a detailed report.’
This conversation was enough to get them south round the outcrop of reeds to the ridge that led to Antony’s causeway. The wide pathway between the tall reeds was clear both of soldiers and of dust. The air down here was clean, the reeds walling a passageway that led towards the last of the fighting, where the men on Cassius’ causeway were being overwhelmed by those from Antony’s causeway. Caesar and his escort began to trot down it. They had gone perhaps one stade when the rushes beside the causeway parted. Felix, Voadicia and Hecate stepped out. ‘It’s Caesar!’ shouted Artemidorus. ‘Get some of Antony’s soldiers to be a bodyguard. Look after him until his strength returns.’
He tugged at his rein, turning his horse’s head, then jammed his heels into its ribs, sending it speeding across the battlefield once more. Caesar’s presence here really disturbed him; more even than that strange glimpse of Cassius had done. He was no more superstitious than most of his acquaintances but the prophetic dream added to his sense of unease. Agrippa was a quick-thinking and able leader while Rufus would still be smarting from his naval defeat at the hands of Sextus Pompey off Sicily. But would they be able to hold Caesar’s legions together if Brutus launched a full-out attack like the one Antony had launched at noon? Neither of Caesar’s legates was anywhere near as experienced as Cassius and yet Cassius’ legions had crumbled under Antony’s wild charge. How could he realistically expect Caesar’s to have held together? Perhaps Brutus would have hesitated, waiting for word from his more experienced co-leader. And even if he had attacked, surely the Fourth and the Spartans would have held together and repelled the Libertore legions…
These thoughts were enough to take Artemidorus, with Quintus at his shoulder and the Equestrians of the Tenth Legion close behind him, from the southern section of the battlefield to the central section. Suddenly his horse’s hooves were pounding across the cobblestones of the Via Egnatia. Well that was that, he thought: they must have ridden past Cassius again - without seeing him this time. He tugged at his rein, turned his horse west, and led his little unit straight along the Via towards the main gate to Antony’s camp.
Even before he got there, Artemidorus knew something was badly wrong. This was a battlefield where the better part of forty legions with ancillaries and cavalry had spent the afternoon trying to kill each-other. So it wasn’t the piles of corpses, the screaming wounded or the staggering injured that disturbed him, even when they blocked the Via in sufficient numbers to slow his progress. It was the fact that almost every one of the dead, dying or wounded, seemed to be from Caesar’s legions, screaming or croaking Hercules to a man. The fact that, dead ahead, and growing disturbingly brighter as they proceeded, there was an inferno where there should have been a secure castrum. Memories of Xanthus rose unbidden in his mind – of the city ravaged by Brutus’ tax-collectors and his army when the city fathers refused to pay up, the inhabitants all slaughtered and the whole place ablaze. An eddy in the fitful breeze brought a disorientating combination of dust and smoke. Even the horses started coughing. Artemidorus slowed to a trot and then to a walk as he guided his mount through the ruin of Antony’s great gate into what was left of his camp.
*
The first thi
ng Artemidorus saw was Caesar’s gaudy litter. Its red and gold sides were stabbed and torn. The bed within it chopped open, drooling stuffing. The wooden struts that formed its skeleton were splintered, points of wood starting through the binding like broken bones. The red cloth looked disturbingly like blood, making the whole thing more dreadful still. In its own way, the fate of the litter was almost as shocking as the deaths of the soldiers whose bodies lay piled on the ground around it. Artemidorus shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if Caesar had still been in it.
Antony’s command tent was fiercely ablaze. The horreum, food-store beside it sacked – what little it had contained all gone. The secure tent torn wide, the dead guards lying sprawled before it telling their own tale. Antony’s war chest was gone, as were any legionary eagles that had been kept in there. Though, from the look of things, any of Antony’s or Caesar’s eagles that had been in the field at this side of the battle would be long gone too.
As Artemidorus sat, blinking, trying to comprehend the scale of the defeat, Agrippa and Rufus rode in, side by side. Both were white with exhaustion, scarcely able to keep themselves in the saddle. Most strikingly of all, these acting generals in the middle of an active battlefield, were unattended, unprotected; alone. ‘Antony sent me to determine the situation here and report back to him,’ said Artemidorus. ‘I can see what happened. Can you tell me how it happened?’
Agrippa shook his head as though he too could scarcely believe the disaster that had overtaken young Caesar’s legions. ‘When Antony charged, it caught Cassius’ legions by surprise,’ he began, his voice rough. ‘Going in over the new palisade like that simply stunned them. Then the immediate assault by our Eighth, Eleventh and the rest of the legions led by Saxa, Asinius and Bassus very nearly broke them then and there. We all watched it for as long as the air remained clear. So did Brutus’ legions. It seemed to us that they were straining to attack, and yet the order never came.’
‘Brutus waiting for word from Cassius I expect,’ nodded Artemidorus. ‘Word he was in no position to send when battle was joined so swiftly and effectively; certainly not over that distance…’
‘That’s as may be but it doesn’t matter,’ continued Agrippa, ‘because his legions suddenly ran out of patience. There was no clear order given. No trumpets. No careful controlled advance, no officers in evidence at all at first…’
‘Messala Corvinus and Lucius Bibulus got some of them organised later on, but that was about it,’ added Rufus.
‘No sign of the Casca brothers or Labeo?’ Artemidorus shook his head as he asked, anticipating a negative reply.
‘They could have been with Cassius I suppose,’ shrugged Agrippa. ‘Or with Brutus in his camp. We didn’t see them.’
‘I caught a glimpse of Horatius Flaccus,’ said Rufus. ‘But, as Agrippa says, there was no order; no control. We might just have been fighting Germanian ghost warriors in one boars head formation after another. There was no structure to it. No civilisation. No sanity.’
‘But the Spartans must have held them,’ said Quintus.
‘There were only two thousand of them, facing three legions – the better part of twenty thousand…’
‘And the Fourth?’ asked Artemidorus, fearing the worst.
‘Taken in the flank when the Spartans were overwhelmed,’ said Agrippa. ‘Wiped out to a man. Once that happened, the others broke and ran. Brutus’ troops sacked the camps and, as you see…’ The weary legate gestured to the blazing ruin. ‘Total defeat,’ he said.
Rufus, who knew what total defeat looked like – at sea at least – nodded in agreement. ‘Total,’ he whispered.
The two leaders wheeled their horses and walked them away into the dull brown fog, in search, no doubt, of survivors they could rally and begin to reorganise. It was a mark of their utter weariness and perhaps more, he thought, that neither of them had mentioned Caesar.
v
‘What we need before we report back is some sort of over-view,’ decided Artemidorus. ‘It seems to be the same for each army – half utterly defeated, half absolutely victorious. We really need to get a clearer idea of how things stand. And I know just where to go to get one.’ He turned his weary horse’s head and cantered out of the ruined gates.
Putting the Via behind themselves, Artemidorus, Quintus and their escort began to ride through the no-man’s land created by the strange battle between Brutus’ troops and Caesar’s. Unlike the southern section, which was littered with piles of corpses and alive with wounded – screaming, crawling or staggering - the ground here was fairly clear. With or without his orders, Brutus’ troops had charged across the battlefield, slaughtered Caesar’s men in their defensive lines, then run back to their own lines laden with whatever booty they had collected. There were a few walking wounded but nowhere near as many as there were south of the Via. Furthermore, it appeared that Brutus’ victorious men seemed to think they had done enough for one day – ending as they had begun: beyond their officers’ control. Even when the little unit approached the Libertores’ main palisade, they found it unguarded; watch-towers empty. So they were able to reach the forested flank of the hillside beside the waterfall that gave birth to the Gangites unmolested.
Artemidorus left the legionaries in charge of the horses as he and Quintus took the path they had explored a few days earlier up to the ruined temple of Dionysus. This time, Brutus had posted no watch-keepers up here. Or, if he had, they had gone to join their friends as they romped through the Spartans, destroyed the Fourth and ravished the Triumvirs’ camp. All, if Agrippa was right, without any orders from Brutus or any of his legates. In the mean-time, the flag-floored precinct was deserted, the fallen columns and fire pit as empty and dead as the place. The only mark from their previous visit was the blood on the marble. As before, Artemidorus walked towards the leading edge of the building’s open area, well past the holy shrine – the last part still standing. The tall black portal framed by two pillars topped by a triangular capitol boasting the Greek god of wine and pleasure in bas-relief had survived Time, and whatever other powers had caused the rest of the ruin to fall.
The vista was as wide as Artemidorus remembered, and the slowly-settling dust was beginning to allow a more detailed view of the situation. The main anchor-points were Cassius’ camp and the Triumvirs’ camp. Cassius’ camp in particular was sending up a steady column of grey smoke that reached high above the brown fog. Antony’s was only sending up intermittent wisps - the command tent was all that had been set ablaze there and it was either burned out or someone had doused the flames.
Beside each castrum, it was possible to make out the lines of the fortifications running parallel, north and south, in various states of disrepair. Between the lines north of the Via, closest to the two observers, there were surprisingly few bodies but Caesar’s lines, all the way down to the ruined gate and the Via, were thick with them. Legionary medics and legionaries, clearly returning from their impetuous retreat, were beginning to pick through them, looking for friends and survivors. South of the Via, the same process was going on among the much more scattered casualties in front of Cassius’ ruined camp. Artemidorus noted another difference; the destruction of Antony’s camp opened the rear of his entire position to the west but because the Libertore generals had insisted on having their own camps, the destruction of Cassius’ camp still left Brutus’ securely walled, even on the eastern side. The tiny dots of returning soldiers on foot and horseback were moving back towards Antony’s and Caesar’s lines unhindered. Those staggering into the Libertores’ lines, however, needed to make a special effort to get into Brutus’ castrum, and consequently there were men on foot and horseback moving north as well as west, effectively still shut out. It didn’t look to the secret agent as though communications on the Libertore side were much improved.
Brutus’ camp, almost immediately below them at the foot of the hill, was a mess. It seemed to both soldiers looking down upon it that the lack of discipline which had cause
d the legions to charge downhill without having been ordered to do so had come back to camp again with them; lack of discipline spread to a shocking extent – like some sort of plague. The regimented grid of the camp’s punctilious layout was blurred - to put it mildly – by the wild celebrations of the victorious soldiers, unfettered by the commands of their officers or the vinestocks of their centurions. The occasional gust of wind carried the shouting and cheering up to them. It sounded as though there was a riot going on down there – almost as though the place was being sacked and plundered rather than filled with victorious soldiers celebrating with their spoils. What he could see put Artemidorus in mind of the anarchy that had claimed the Forum Romanum following the death of Divus Julius two years and seven months earlier.
*
Artemidorus was jarred out of his reverie by Quintus’ elbow. The triarius gestured and Artemidorus saw a small group of horsemen cantering clear of the rear of Brutus’ camp, coming round onto the snaking path that led up the denuded eastern slope to the ruined temple. It seemed that Quintus and he weren’t the only one who wanted a clear view of the battle’s aftermath.
‘What do you think?’ asked Quintus.
‘Did you see where they came from?’ asked Artemidorus.
‘Not too clearly, but if I had to guess I’d say they came from the back of Cassius’ camp – what’s left of it. Libertores rather than our lads for my money. But that’s only a guess, mind.’