by Peter Tonkin
Artemidorus pushed forward into the space he left so swiftly that the opposing lines could not replace him. The body was still there, stinking and smoking, as the secret agent stepped over it into the midst of the enemy ranks. Quintus and Ferrata closed in on him, the three of them thrusting into Brutus’ lines, with Hercules, Notus, Furius and the Seventh close behind.
‘They’re beginning to give way,’ bellowed Legate Enobarbus from further down the line to the right. ‘Push!’
*
They’re beginning to give way, thought Antony, frowning with frustration. Octavian’s legions were being pushed slowly back. At least they were holding formation, but the western end of the swamp stood all too close behind them and once they got hard up against that they might well break. To be fair he couldn’t blame young Caesar this time. The youngest Triumvir was leading a team up at the western gate into Cassius’ camp – closing it off and holding it closed in spite of the heavy fire from bows, slings and spears raining down from the walls above. No-one would be going out or in through that at any rate. Nor could he blame Rufus, or Maecenas, Octavian’s legates on the army’s left flank. They were holding their men together almost as well as Agrippa was, nearer the centre. But they were up against Messalla Corvinus and his legions and Messalla was just too strong for them. Time to unleash his secret weapon as Caesar had unleashed his extra attack-lines on the unsuspecting Pompey at Pharsalus.
Antony swung his horse until he was facing his most trusted messenger mounted on the fastest horse the Legio X possessed. He pulled off his ring and tossed it to the man. ‘Get down to the causeway,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a tribune called Felix, a Greek called Kyros and two women waiting there. Show them this ring and tell them I want the Legio V Alaude off the causeway and up here to bolster my left flank as fast as they can manage.’
As his messenger galloped towards the western end of the swamp past the end of Rufus’ slowly retreating lines, Antony took the briefest moment to survey the battlefield. He and Legio X were holding Brutus’ hesitant cavalry which was beginning to break so they were ready and able to protect Rufus’ flank for a while. Brutus, never best beloved of the gods, had made the sensible decision of recruiting mostly local cavalry from Thrace and Macedonia who could sustain themselves and their horses on local fodder, even though he had plenty of supplies to give them. The down side to this seemingly sensible plan was that when things started to go wrong – as now – the local cavalrymen had plenty of places they could go to if they wanted to escape. The fact that they were doing just that now was giving Antony leisure to assess his problem here in the west, and hold things together as he came up with ways to address it.
He had no worries about the eastern flank because the Sixth and Seventh were there, over-extended slightly, perhaps, but in no danger of being outflanked by the legions they were facing – and Brutus had concentrated all his cavalry here in the west. If everything in the east went to plan, The Seventh would push their opponents back until they were trapped against Brutus’ extended palisade and then, as soon as the Libertore legions began to waver, Legate Enobarbus would shut the back gate into Cassius’ camp as Octavian had shut the front gate. That way when Brutus’ troops started to run, there would be no safe haven on either side of the Libertore encampment for several miles. No-one here in the west was going to get anywhere near safety – Antony and his cavalry squadrons from Legio X would see to that.
It all depended on the Sixth and the Seventh pushing forward in the east and Legio V Alaude arriving up from the causeway in time to stop the rot in the west. ‘Legio X Equestris,’ he bellowed. ‘Follow me! Let’s offer these poor bastards some support before they are pushed right back into that fornicating marsh!’
v
‘Whose standard is that?’ demanded Quintus.
Artemidorus snatched a glance over the head of the legionary opposite, who was being held up by the blade of his gladius in any case. A toughened leather cuirass was no match for the sharp steel of a well-honed blade. He had exchanged the axe for the sword a while back as things became too tight and crowded to allow him to swing the powerful but clumsy weapon effectively. The increasing constriction was a situation Brutus’ troops were finding increasingly disturbing but it was giving the Seventh renewed confidence. They were causing it and controlling it. The boy hanging on Septem’s sword was no threat. He was barely alive, with his own sword dropped to the ground by powerless – soon to be lifeless - fingers. His life-blood pumping out over his executioner’s forearm.
The standard Quintus was talking about had to be the new standard that had just appeared behind the Libertore ranks, Artemidorus thought. It was surprisingly close, seemingly flat against the palisade, demonstrating at once how thin the enemy lines were becoming and how far they had been pushed. The answer that sprang to mind was one born of logic as much as of observation and knowledge. He jerked his gladius back. The man in front of him crumbled and vanished underfoot. His shield clashed against that of the next man behind. ‘It has to be Brutus’ standard,’ he gasped. ‘He’ll be doing what any general would do. Rallying the troops before they break.’
‘Thought so,’ wheezed Quintus. ‘Think he’ll do any good?’
The next soldier in front of Artemidorus was again nothing more than a boy – a pair of exhausted eyes, wide with terror, under too large a helmet staring over the top of a shaking shield; it was a wonder he had survived this long. Artemidorus stabbed his gladius over the top of his own shield straight into the terrified eyes, its point smashing through the bridge of the young soldier’s nose and piercing the front of his brain behind. The boy screamed, jerked his face off the blade and staggered back, blind and dying, getting into the way of the men beside and behind. Quintus slit the throat of the whimpering youth on the left without a second thought despite the fact that he could have been the triarius’ son – or grandson. Hercules, Ferrata, Notus and Furius dispatched the three on the right and pushed forward ruthlessly.
‘He won’t do any good at all,’ said Artemidorus, pushing forward with them. ‘These are the reserves and they won’t hold together long now. Not trapped between us and the palisade like this.’ Then a thought struck him and the confusion in Brutus lines allowed him leisure to voice it. ‘Quintus, who commands our middle?’
‘Bassus with the four legions he brought back down from the hill in Cassius’ old camp, Saxa and Norbanus beyond him with their eight.’
‘If we can get a message to them to give an extra push, Brutus’ centre might well give way sufficiently to isolate him out here on the eastern wing.’
‘Which is just about to crumble, leaving him to our tender mercies. Good idea. But how?’
‘On me, all of you.’ As he barked the order, Artemidorus exchanged his gladius for his battle axe once more, turned and began to hack his way across the front lines until he could communicate with his friend and spymaster the new Legate Enobarbus. Quintus, Ferrata, Hercules Notus and Furius guarded his back as he waded forward through the increasingly youthful, exhausted and terrified enemies who were trapped helplessly between the rock of their reluctant general’s orders and the hard place of the Seventh Legion.
‘Good idea,’ the legate agreed at Artemidorus’ shouted suggestion. And he had access to a messenger who could speed between the rear lines and the marsh to carry it westwards to Bassus in the centre.
Artemidorus and the others returned to their place in the battle-line. The relentless training that they habitually put themselves through was really beginning to show now. Even the Seventh was beginning to tire but the crypteia fought on, finding almost superhuman reserves of energy and the iron will to keep pushing and fighting, even despite the state of Artemidorus’ battered back. The afternoon was gathering towards evening. Brutus’ lines were yielding at last, beginning to step back and back in the face of the relentless pressure. Artemidorus could sense it, as though his men and he were pushing against some enormous machine that was slowly but surely giving way.
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*
Then suddenly, things changed again. A kind of a ripple seemed to come along the Libertore ranks, spreading eastwards. Something had happened either on the west flank or in the centre; something that Brutus’ legions found worrying. The Seventh pushed forward, finding reserves of energy in the belief that the Libertores were beginning to break. And indeed, even with Brutus’ banner waving defiantly behind them, the legions on his left flank – those facing the Seventh, began to run out of room. They started to give way a little more rapidly under the relentless onslaught, their general’s attempts to rally them increasingly futile. So that at last they literally found that their backs were to the wall. The remnants of, perhaps, four legions with Brutus and his senior command at their backs, simply ran out of fighting room. The palisade that had been built as a defensive work became a trap instead. The exhausted, increasingly desperate legionaries started to look for ways to escape before the relentless blades of Antony’s army began to hack the life out of them. There was no way out to their right, for Bassus, Saxa and Norbanus were pushing the legions in the centre hard up against the wall as well. There was some hope of escape to the east, but the Sixth and the Seventh dominated the plain between here and the south-running Via. There was no escape to the south for that was where the swamp lay spread against the feet of the coastal hills.
The easternmost flank of Brutus’ army, therefore, began to ooze round the end of the palisade and run north like liquid escaping from a leaky vessel. Artemidorus only suspected this was going on to begin with – it was a feeling rather than a belief and nowhere near a certainty. The afternoon was drawing towards its close, the light was thickening – or certainly seemed to be doing so as exhaustion at last began to dull his vision and – ironically – only the pain in his back kept him awake and sharp. But that trickle of desertion relentlessly became a stream. ‘They’re breaking,’ observed Quintus.
‘They are,’ agreed Artemidorus. ‘Can you still see Brutus’ banner?’
‘Yes. Looks as though it’s being forced eastward along the palisade.’
‘Time for one last push, then,’ said Artemidorus, even as Enobarbus, away on his right, bellowed, ‘PUSH!’
It was as though the legate’s order released some secret reservoir of brutal energy within his legionaries. Certainly, Artemidorus, Quintus, Ferrata, Hercules, Notus and Furius felt it. They were all shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield now, only the newly-appointed Primus Pilum – Artemidorus’ replacement – between them and Enobarbus’ bodyguard. All of them were covered head-to foot in blood and worse. Their shields were painted thick with it. Their arms and armour lacquered with it, their faces and helmets crusted with it. Their brutal blades smoking with it. They made such a fearsome spectacle that Brutus’ legionaries – little more than recently recruited boys now – shrank back in horror when confronted by them. And in this situation, it was attack or die. As Brutus’ front line shied away, stepped back and died, therefore, the ranks behind them became literally trapped with their backs to the solid palisade. Increasing numbers of them glancing over their shoulders rather than facing forward. The impulse of their movement changed from southward to eastward – then northward. The stream running away round the end of the palisade became a torrent, then a flood. And, with a huge wave of relief and excitement, Artemidorus saw Brutus’ banner joining them.
‘We’ve done it!’ he yelled to the blood-covered friends with whom he was surrounded. ‘We’ve won!’
vi
Marcus Junius Brutus looked down the hill slope towards his camp. The woods around him were full of exhausted legionaries – the remains of four legions. Those that had followed him out of the battlefield after he had yielded to seemingly inevitable defeat and ran north with the rest late yesterday afternoon. He was more exhausted than he had ever been in all his forty-three years. After one of the worst days of his life, he had spent the night without food or rest, going from one group of soldiers to another, thanking them for their efforts, emphasising the justice of their cause and trying to raise their spirits. That had been an almost impossible task after the horror of the battle, the ignominy of defeat, the shock of realising – once they had fled past Cassius’ old camp and crossed the east-running Via – that the soldiers guarding the gate to his own camp had no intention of letting their general and his followers in. They had seen how things were falling out. They were ready to make their peace with Antony but would not go so far as to capture Brutus themselves and hand him over in order to seal the deal. The men who had tried to bribe Caesar with Pompey’s head after Pharsalus had all died, after all. As far as they were concerned, Brutus was on his own. As isolated as a leper. One or two stragglers following the defeated legions up into the hills confirmed that he had only survived thus far because he had come up the east side of the massive fortification. The west side, its gates blocked by Octavian and his men, was a hunting-ground for Antony and Legio X, and for units guided by locals under the orders of the friendly Thracian monarch Rhascus.
Now, as the dawn began to brighten towards a dull, chilly morning, Brutus’ senior officers started to assemble for their usual briefing. With a gathering sense of shock he realised just how many of the companions with whom he had started out along the road that led from the Pompey’s theatre on the Ides of March 710 to this bleak hillside on the twenty-fourth of October two years later were missing. He could see none of them, in fact; not Cassius’ brother Lucius, neither of the Casca brothers nor Cornelius Cinna, last of a long line of consuls… His mind reeled until his eyes at last refocused on the grim visages of the relative strangers in front of him. Oddly, the ones he trusted most from the younger generation were not there either. Messalla Corvinus, Lucius Bibulus, Horatius Flaccus, all notable by their absence. The general could tell from the expressions on the faces of the men who were in front of him that this was going to be a difficult meeting, but he still tried. ‘We have four legions. We could make a stand or fight our way down the Via to Neapolis. Tillius Cimber is still there with the fleet. He would, surely…’
But they were already shaking their heads. ‘We are going to Antony,’ said one of them. Brutus could not see which. ‘There might still be time to make a compact with him. The decision to go to battle yesterday was a terrible mistake, General.’
‘But it was you who forced me into it! Despite my warnings, you forced me - like Pompey at Pharsalus all over again!’ Brutus bit off the words, suddenly aware that his eyes were wet with tears of frustration – which might all too easily be misinterpreted. Besides, to whine like this was beneath the dignitas of a member of the Junius family with its four-hundred-year history of fighting tyranny from Tarquin the Proud on down. He could at least surrender to his fate with the same dignity as that member of the Julii clan – Gaius Julius Caesar. And he was, after all, the man who had not blenched at the news of his beloved Portia’s terrible death by suicide through eating burning coals. He was a true heir of Zeno, the soul of Stoicism. He closed his lips, therefore and awaited their reply.
But they had nothing more to say. Except, ‘We suggest you look out for yourself General. You and all the other murderers responsible for slaughtering Divus Julius. We are taking our legions and suing for peace.’
‘By all means run,’ he said bitterly, mostly to himself. ‘But remember you can escape by using your hands as well as your feet.’
After they had left, he found himself unexpectedly alone. He looked around in mild confusion. The only men nearby were two of the late-comers who had brought news of the total defeat to the west of the wall. ‘Come here,’ he called. ‘I have a favour to ask of you.’ As he spoke, he loosened his cuirass and let both breastplate and backplate fall. Pulled his gladius out of its scabbard. ‘All I ask,’ he said, ‘is that you hold this steady.’
The two soldiers looked at each other silently. He studied their faces, felt a glimmer of recognition. But before he could pursue the thought any further, the taller of the two held out his hand and t
ook the proffered sword. ‘As you wish, General,’ he said.
Marcus Junius Brutus hesitated for an instant longer. His gaze shifted from the tantalisingly familiar faces to the rock-steady point of the sword they were holding. ‘Do not forget, great Jupiter, whose fault this all really is,’ he said, again as much to himself as to the King of the Gods. And with no sense of irony that he, who was here because he had tried to stop a man becoming a king - who had become a god instead - should address his dying words to the King of the Gods himself.
With no further thought, he threw himself forward toward the two soldiers holding the sword. He crashed against them, one hand on a left shoulder, the other on a right shoulder. Their fists closed around his upper arms, holding him erect for a few moments. He looked beyond them, at the mountainside sloping away down towards his camp, framed by the cheek-pieces of their helmets. There was no pain, simply a disturbing sense of invasion, almost as though he was being ravished. A scalding flood washed down the front of his thighs and an errant flicker of pride made him hope that it was all blood and no urine. But the heat of the liquid bursting out of him was superseded by the deathly chill of the steel blade buried almost an arm’s length deep within him. The whole of his being seemed to clench around it, the icy chill of it driving his last breath out onto the wintery air. And there, beyond the brief, grey cloud it made, he could have sworn he saw his first cousin and second wife Porcia, as young and lovely as the moment he had first fallen in love with her, standing waiting for him to join her, so close… So close…