March 16th 45 BC
Fronto squinted into the golden inferno as the sun began its final dip beneath the western horizon, shedding a gilded gleam across the rebel army. Caesar was busy expounding on the terrain, presumably for the benefit of the more recently commissioned officers, since anyone who’d fought in a campaign or two before would be able to pick up on the advantages and disadvantages themselves. Indeed, beside him, Galronus and Atenos were nodding half-heartedly at the general’s monologue while they examined the ground for themselves.
The legions had covered some fifteen miles the day after Ventipo’s fall, scouts ranging ahead and confirming the location of the rebel army awaiting them. Arriving within view of Pompey’s force, the general had given the order to make camp and the legions were even now settling for their evening meal, tension crackling among them in the knowledge that nothing now stood between them and finally ending the civil war that had claimed so many of their mates.
Caesar’s camp sat on rolling easy ground to the east of a seasonal stream, which was still swift with the winter’s floods from the mountains of the south. Beyond the river lay a wide, easy plain with just the gentlest of gradients, gradually climbing to a slope upon which sat the rebel army, sheltered before the ramparts of the city of Munda.
‘Good terrain for cavalry over there,’ Galronus noted.
‘But committing the cavalry without good infantry support would be suicidal,’ Fronto replied. ‘The moment you moved across the river, Pompey’s entire force would have you.’
‘And the infantry will be hampered by the stream,’ said Atenos in a frustrated tone.
‘It’s not a wide stream,’ Hirtius noted from nearby.
‘But the near bank is a quagmire of marshes and bogs. The legions will be slow and laborious even reaching the river, and it will tire their muscles before the battle. I don’t like this battlefield.’
Fronto nodded. ‘It’s not the best. Labienus chose this ground. It’s good for his cavalry, has the walls to his back, he’s got the high ground, and the swampy river makes our infantry’s approach trouble.’
‘We could decamp and find better ground?’ Pedius murmured.
‘But there is no reason for Pompey to follow,’ Fronto sighed. ‘He has the best position here, you can bet Munda is crammed with supplies to keep him going, and all the indications are that every garrison in Baetica is being mobilised to join him. The longer we delay the harder it will be to beat him. The ground is shit, but we have to fight here. We have to finish it now, while we can.’
‘How will the enemy respond if we press them, I wonder?’ Pedius mused.
‘That,’ Caesar said, finishing his appraisal of the terrain and turning to them, ‘is the important question. Pompey has thus far shown little interest in offering an easy fight, preferring to dominate the high ground. He has done as much in every engagement so far. I doubt Pompey will be keen to bring his forces down into the plain to face us in a fair fight. He will want us to assail his position.’
‘Which will further tire the men,’ Pedius sighed. ‘First the marshes, and then a struggle uphill to the enemy lines.’
‘But,’ Fronto added, ‘Labienus and his cavalry will be largely useless lurking behind the defences on the hill. He knows that his best chance of taking the initiative would be to hit us on the plain, fast and hard just as we struggle across the stream. If he can get Pompey’s infantry down there with him, they can kick us hard as we make good ground.’
‘So what we’re saying,’ Pedius said, ‘is that we cannot predict what the enemy will do. It all depends who wins the argument in their headquarters. Either Labienus will lead a strike at us on the plain, or Pompey will have them all settled in on the hill. So we cannot prepare for either eventuality.’
‘Or rather, we must prepare for both,’ Caesar said. ‘They have, if our intelligence is accurate, thirteen legions, six thousand or so light infantry and around the same number of horse. That puts their numbers at somewhere between seventy and eighty thousand. We have eight legions now, some eight thousand cavalry and just five thousand auxiliaries, totalling just over fifty thousand. Pompey outnumbers us significantly, but we know from experience that his legions are still largely new and green, while ours are uniformly experienced veterans.’
The general began to point across the field. ‘Galronus and King Bogud will have the command of the cavalry, who have the edge in numbers over Labienus. We cannot be certain of our best position until we see how the enemy deploy, but I want our cavalry ready to counter theirs. Labienus will want to use his horse to best effect, so I need our cavalry to stop them. As long as Labienus cannot find a way in, this will come down to the legions, and when that happens, we have the advantage. Pompey has thus far been putting his weaker legions in front, using them to wear us down, but not tomorrow. We will field our strongest legions in force at the front and break them early. Tomorrow, we cross the marsh, we form with the Tenth and Sixth beside me on the right, and the Third and Fifth on the left under Pedius, who will take that wing. The rest of the legions will hold the centre. It is my belief that the Tenth and Sixth will be able to best any force Pompey throws at us, and so they will be the ones to break the enemy, though Pedius’ wing will be almost equally strong and will attempt the same. The cavalry will cross after the infantry, by which time, Pompey and Labienus will have deployed and so the horse commanders, to whom I grant autonomy in this engagement, will deploy their forces as they see fit to contain Labienus.’
‘It works,’ Fronto said. ‘In principle.’
‘We shall by necessity be slow in crossing,’ Caesar noted. ‘With luck that will bring the enemy down to the plain. But if not, we shall take the fight to them. Terrain or no terrain, by sunset tomorrow this war will be over.’
* * *
‘They’re not coming,’ Tribune Quintus Pompeius Niger murmured, sheltering his eyes with his hand and peering off into the dawn-lit distance.
‘There’s time yet,’ Fronto noted, riding alongside at the rear of the Tenth. The legion had slowed as they reached the low ground near the stream, men plodding wearily through the sucking mire, cursing and complaining. Such was the difficulty that even the centurions, who would usually be barking at their men to hold their tongues, let the grievances run amok, adding their own curses to the refrain. Fronto felt Bucephalus starting to suffer with the marshy ground now. The army was going to be weary when it reached the fields beyond, and Fronto eyed the rise with distaste.
The scouts had informed the officers before dawn that Pompey’s army had mobilised into battle formation by the third watch, and were waiting on the hill as the sun rose in their eyes. Even with Fronto’s eyesight, he could determine their battle lines. The legions were amassed in a solid block, with auxilia to the sides, and then cavalry on the flanks.
With difficulty the Tenth, alongside the other Caesarian legions, made the far bank and with some relief began to squelch and slosh up onto good solid ground at last. Still the enemy remained atop the hill, watching from a distance. Though the slope would present them with its own difficulties, he was, in his own way, relieved that apparently Pompey had won the argument. Had the enemy flooded down and met the Caesarians plodding out of the river ditch, it would have been damn hard work. With a series of calls, the army re-formed on the western bank, the legions re-dressing their lines, while the auxilia took positions towards the rear. Given the disposition of the enemy, Fronto had expected the cavalry to divide, placing half their number on each flank, facing those of Pompey. Instead, he frowned as just two turmae of horse took position on the right, outside the Tenth, while the vast number formed on the left. It was only as they moved closer across the field and more of the enemy’s details came into view that Fronto realised why.
Off at the far flank, way over to the left, the enemy cavalry was stronger, and the banners visible suggested the presence of Labienus and his Gallic riders there. The wily bastard had concentrated his strength preparing to do something sneaky, but it seemed that Galronus and Bogud, the strange Mauritanian, had spotted the ruse and moved already to counter it.
A rider reined in and saluted. ‘New orders from the general, sir. Form deeper and shrink the line. Caesar wishes to limit operations to the centre of the field.’
Fronto nodded but paused before passing on the order to the musicians, inwardly marshalling his arguments. Caesar might think the Tenth invincible, and damn it they were the closest thing, but pulling them away from the edge of the field with such a small cavalry screen increased dramatically the chance of being flanked. He turned to Niger.
Ride out to the front. Find Atenos and tell him to ignore the orders the horns are about to give. Tell him he didn’t hear the call.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m not being flanked because Caesar’s worrying about the terrain. You didn’t hear the call. Responsibility rests with me.’
Niger rode off, looking unhappy, and Fronto plodded on behind the Tenth as the mass of Caesar’s army crossed the plain. His gaze took in the forces on the hill ahead, and he recognised what was happening up there, the realisation bringing a smile to his face. The rebel lines were undulating, bowing in places, backed by a cacophony of calls. Fronto knew those cadences, standard legion ones that ordered the men to hold their ranks. The men up there, many still untested by true battle, were itching to run down the slope and charge the Caesarians. Labienus was probably urging them on, in fact, while Pompey was constantly having the orders to hold position relayed in order to keep them atop the slope.
Fronto’s grin ratcheted up a notch as an idea occurred. He trotted forward until he was close to one of the optios, stomping along at the back and driving any slackers on. The optio saluted.
‘Sir?’
‘Pass the word. Without calls or signals, I want the legion to come to a stop every twenty paces. Just a momentary pause and then the centurions can order them on again until further notice.’
Frowning, the optio saluted again and then spoke to his men. Fronto watched the command ripple out across the Tenth from the rear, and noted no few centurions’ faces turning to him in surprise. Still, the command spread silently, and suddenly the Tenth staggered to a halt. A moment later, centurions were blowing whistles and bellowing at their men. The legion moved once more. Fronto’s gaze rose to the force atop the hill. As he’d predicted, the front lines there were rippling as eager men were held back by their officers.
A few moments later, the Tenth paused once more and the centurions shouted them on into action. This time, atop the hill there was activity. Though calls to hold firm were blown like mad, whole centuries of Pompey’s men were stepping out across their defences, eager to take on the Tenth, for now every green recruit on that hill was under the impression that the Tenth were reluctant to attack.
The third pause was expertly carried out, for now the men at the front had realised what they were doing, and made it look as realistic as possible. One or two even decided to break ranks and make to flee before they were ordered back into line by their centurions. Horns blew with desperate urgency up the slope, but Pompey’s legions were moving. They had not committed to a charge, for even they were not ready to utterly disobey their commanders, but they had moved forward some twenty paces from their initial position. It might not seem like much to the raw recruits of those legions, but Fronto knew what a difference it made. A few moments ago, the Tenth were facing the entire slope, and would be fighting up the last of it against a front line who held the brow of the hill, and who enjoyed the additional support of a two foot rampart, all that could be managed on the rocky hill in the time they had. Now, however, the enemy were deployed on the slope itself, forward of their meagre defences.
Fronto felt the terrain change now, as the army began to climb that slope. Still, the Pompeians atop it shoved and shouted, expecting an easy fight.
‘Pila at fifteen paces,’ Atenos bellowed from the front. ‘Watch for their volley first.’
Sure enough, as they neared the enemy lines, Pompey’s men braced and released their javelins. Atenos knew what he was about. The enemy could afford to release at thirty paces, for they had gravity on their side. The Tenth were throwing uphill, and their range had to be reduced appropriately. All along the slope, pila came out from the rebel lines like a black cloud against the blue sky. Centurions along the line bellowed, and the Tenth braced as best they could, pausing for only moments to take the strike. It was impressive, and to the layman, it might even appear that the rebels had brutalised the Caesarians. Fronto knew better. He’d seen good volleys and bad, both cast and received. Despite terrain, these were not well thrown, and it was only quantity and the weight of gravity that made it formidable. All along the line, men of the Tenth cried out and fell, but the drills were familiar to every man on the slope, and hardly had the javelins stopped vibrating with impact before the injured were pulled back into the press and gradually filtered through to the rear, where medical staff could deal with them. Pila were pulled free of shields and, where this was not possible, the shields were abandoned, and replaced with others, passed forward by their mates in the rear lines. In a matter of heartbeats the front line of the Tenth was intact and, with the centurions’ whistles, marched on once more.
The speed of the legion’s recovery and their implacable nature had to be unnerving the rebels now, who had probably never faced such a threat. Fronto tried not to laugh as Atenos took up the task of adding to the enemy’s quaking bowels. The primus pilus began to shout, and the entire legion echoed his words.
‘Rip their throats!’
‘RIP THEIR THROATS!’
‘Pompey’s whores!’
‘POMPEY’S WHORES!’
‘Shit in their mouths!’
‘SHIT IN THEIR MOUTHS!’
‘Pompey’s girls!’
‘POMPEY’S GIRLS!’
The chanting went on in time with the thud of five thousand boots, and Fronto chuckled as he watched small pockets along the rebel front trying to pull back behind their little rampart, only to find they couldn’t as the whole army had shuffled forward with them.
Finally, the command to halt went out, and the entire front line of the Tenth braced and cast their pila with a blood-curdling roar. The effect of this volley was vastly different. The Caesarians were throwing uphill, so their arc was low, and the javelins thudded into the front lines, rather than coming down like rain. Fronto watched men all along the lines fall, and no one in the enemy legions seemed to be ready for it. There was no flood of reserves filling the holes in the line, but more a bumbling shuffle as they attempted to re-dress the front. Indeed, they had done nothing to ready themselves when the order to charge was given and the Tenth suddenly surged up the last fifteen paces of slope, slamming into the rebel lines.
Fronto took a deep breath. It had begun.
* * *
Galronus peered ahead. He rode out on the left flank with the Mauritanian king, where he could get a good view of what was happening. Whistles were blowing in the enemy lines, and horns trumpeting, while the cavalry on the flank largely waited, scuffling occasionally, but sitting back and letting the infantry battle it out for now.
‘What are they doing?’ Bogud asked him in his thick African accent.
Galronus concentrated. Labienus and his horse remained in position, their discipline holding well even as the legions fell apart. They held the flank implacable and immovable. Next to them, at the southern edge of the enemy infantry, he could see the legions thinning from the rear. Now those calls he was hearing made sense. Glad that he had learned the legions’ calls over the years, he turned to the king.
‘Sounds like Fronto’s causing him trouble. Pompey’s pulling a legion from here to help at the far flank.’
‘That gives us an advantage.’
‘It does. They strengthen their left and weaken their right.’
‘You know this Labienus. What do we do?’
Galronus sucked on his teeth. ‘We have to keep him out of the main fight, but also break the weak spot where they’ve thinned.’ He smiled. ‘What do you want, Majesty, battering the cavalry or flattening the infantry?’
Bogud grinned. ‘There is nothing I like more than riding across screaming enemies.’
‘Good. Take your horse and put the infantry flank to flight. I’ll keep Labienus busy.’
Bogud gave him a friendly wave and then turned and galloped off, shouting to his officers. Galronus watched him go with mixed feelings. The Mauritanian cavalry had a good reputation, but he had yet to see them in action. Would they be capable of routing legions? He wasn’t sure. But then, he also would not trust an untried force against Labienus, who fielded men the Romans called Gauls, men of fierce tribes, tried and tested over a decade of war.
‘Druccus?’
The Lingonian chieftain turned, spotting Galronus, and rode for him, as the Remi spun and called also to Fridumar, commander of the Germanic contingent. As the two officers converged on him, Galronus gestured up the slope.
‘Their infantry flank has been thinned. Bogud is taking his Mauritani to break them, but that means we need to keep Labienus out of the fight. The moment he commits, wherever he presses the whole fight might change. At the moment he’s sitting and watching, waiting to see where he can do the most damage. He doesn’t want to commit against us, because he knows we’ll be a struggle and that prevents him from breaking the infantry elsewhere. So we’re going to force his hand. We’re going to make him fight us. He’s used to fighting us all. He knows our tactics, even yours, Fridumar. He knows how to counter them all, how to take on each of our units. He’s put his tribes out front because they’re the strongest and most experienced. We need to give them something they don’t know how to deal with.’
‘But you said it yourself,’ Fridumar frowned. ‘He knows how to deal with all of us.’
‘Not at once.’
‘What?’ said Druccus.
‘He’s faced the Aedui and Lingones and the Arverni among us. The Helvii and the Santones, and every tribe of your lands and peoples. He’s fought us, too. The Remi and Bellovaci, the Suessiones and Mediomatrici, all the men of the Belgae. Then he’s fought the Germans of Fridumar, from the Tungri and the Ubii, the Treveri and the Suevi. But we’re all different. The tribes of the south prefer to slowly cut away lines of the enemy in sweeps. My own people like to punch a hole in the enemy line and hack at them from the inside. We all know how Fridumar’s lot work,’ he added with rolling eyes that made the German chieftain grin.
‘What can I say?’ Fridumar laughed. ‘I like to take heads.’
‘But Labienus knows us all,’ Druccus reminded him.
‘But he’s never had to deal with it all at once. Here we have all the forces together. Druccus, when we give the call, I want each of your standards to fall in beside one of mine, and the same goes for you, Fridumar. Between the first and second whistles, they all move, and so by the time the second goes, our army is all mixed up, whether you be Boii from across the Rhenus, Helvii from Rome’s old lands or Remi from the north. Then we attack together. No separation of our forces. Labienus won’t know how to counter it.’
‘It could work,’ Druccus mused.
‘It’ll make him shit himself,’ Fridumar laughed.
‘Pass the word to your men. We go as soon as we can. We need to keep Labienus off balance so he can’t stop Bogud.’
As the two men hurried off, Galronus quickly repeated the plan to one of his chieftains with orders to pass it to the others, and then sat watching, thinking. Off to the right, Bogud was gathering his riders and the Third were peeling back a little, shortening their line to make extra room for the Mauritanians to charge. The Remi took a deep breath and looked up. He frowned. A bird was circling low, over the cavalry. That alone made little sense. One of the first things a warrior learns about battle is that the sky will clear of wildlife when the clash begins, and when it returns it will only be the carrion feeders over the swathes of the dead. Yet above the riders, Galronus could see the singular bird, impossible; incongruous.
It swooped again, a small bird with a white chest and black and white wings spotted in a regular pattern, its species clear from the red patch on its belly. He held his breath. A woodpecker was the chosen bird of Icovellauna. He could remember from his earliest days leaving offerings at her shrine at Durocortorum with his aunt, one of the goddess’s most devoted servants. It had been a woodpecker that had decided him on leading the warband to Caesar’s side all those years ago. A woodpecker had no place in the sky above a field like this.
As he watched, the woodpecker finally came out of a swoop and darted off west in a straight line. His wide eyes followed it as it disappeared into the distance above the enemy lines, first a bird, then little more than a dot, and then nothing but blue sky. Galronus’ eyes slipped downwards from that place, and somehow it came as no surprise to find himself staring at a shape standing out among the waiting cavalry, surrounded by standards.
Titus Labienus.
A command from the gods themselves.
His heart fluttered. The gods granted such things, but they could demand a price, and sometimes the price was high. His aunt had paid such a price. On the interpretation of a sign, she had set out to raise a statue by the great river Mosela. She had done so, and that statue had brought her a husband from among the Treveri, who had given her a young chieftain, but with his arrival she had passed from this life on the birth bed. The gods gave. The gods took. Icovellauna was offering him Labienus, but what would she take?
His memory shot back to a dozen nights this past two months shared with Fronto and good wine. Talk of what was to happen in Hispania and of what was to come after. This would be the last battle for Fronto, and probably for Caesar. Atenos felt certain that would make it the last battle for the Tenth, and therefore for him. And for Galronus of the Remi, prince of that people, but also senator of Rome, betrothed to a patrician? He’d not yet thought on whether this would be his last battle, but suddenly the notion that it may not be his decision arose. That perhaps he would be selling his life for that of Labienus. He closed his eyes and found his mind full of images of Faleria. He shivered at the thought of never seeing her again.
When he opened them, he was decided. He would pray, beg that he walked away from this field and saw Fronto’s sister again. That this would be his last battle, but not his last day. But the gods had offered him Labienus, the man who had driven half the campaign against Caesar, and who had slipped their clutches at every turn across the whole world.
He had to try.
A call told him that his men were ready. He looked around. Bogud’s standards were on the move now, pressing towards the enemy, leading a charge against Pompey’s legions. Galronus looked across the cavalry and nodded to the trumpeter, who gave a single, powerful blast. Like a choppy sea, the mass of cavalry on the flank began to move, currents of men and horses pulling this way and that, and as Galronus watched, he saw their standards converge. Despite their many differences, the standards of the three peoples shared much in their design and content, and that, he realised, was something that they had always had, but which Rome had seen and capitalised on.
They moved so swiftly into position that he realised with a start that they were ready and awaiting the signal. He gave another nod to the musician and then rode forward. Riders gave him looks of surprise and worry as he forged a path between them to the front lines. Only there was he going to reach Labienus, and oddly, though he had a doom-filled premonition of the day, since the goddess had offered him Labienus, he also bore a certain sense of invincibility. He might end this day sightless and still somewhere on the field, but not while Titus Labienus still breathed, and that meant that no man could fell him until then.
Armoured with divine certainty, Galronus moved to the front lines of his people, settling in at a trot alongside the others. Across a narrow stretch of open ground kept deliberately there by both sides, the rebel cavalry awaited.
Galronus gave a roar, thrust his sword up and forward, and the cavalry bellowed their war cries, horns resounding, and surged forward into a charge. His horse pounding, the Remi brought down his sword and, noting that he had adequate space to his right, held it out ready to swing. A heartbeat later the two sides met with an almighty crash.
Had he more leisure to watch his tactics at work, Galronus would have marvelled. As units of Remi and Bellovaci and their Belgic allies smashed into the enemy lines here and there, pushing in deep, the riders of the Gaulish tribes instead struck fast and turned, sliding away before they could be repelled, ducking around their allies and then falling in somewhere else along the line and repeating the process, like dolphins leaping in and out of the water. And while this was happening, the Germanic riders were scattering like the seeds from a fallen pomegranate, some leaping from their horses and disappearing beneath the bellies of their enemy’s steeds to rip them open under their riders, others simply pushing in and hacking around them with weapons in both hands.
The rebel horse failed to achieve an adequate defence. They tried, and tried admirably, but their inability to cope with such a varied and unpredictable attack was evident, and they were being cut down rapidly.
Galronus, of course, saw little of this, for his gaze was set upon that collection of standards dead ahead. The Remi’s sword swung and hacked, chopped and sliced, carving a path through the enemy horsemen, heedless of danger. He saw Labienus here and there through the press, and caught the moment the enemy commander realised what he was dealing with. Orders were given out and relayed by enemy musicians. The riders were called back into formation, but other calls were made, too. Labienus seemed confident. The man knew now what Caesar was up to, and had decided how to deal with it. Galronus found himself praying with every sword stroke, through the mizzle of red and the screams of agony that surrounded him, that he could get to Labienus before the enemy recovered. He knew that his tactic had worked for now, but he also knew that it was a one-shot thing, and that when Labienus managed to deal with it, the bastard would gain the upper hand somehow. By then, Bogud had to have broken through, and Galronus had to have reached the enemy commander.
All around him he sensed the change in the fighting. The Gauls of the enemy cavalry were dancing their horses around now wildly, even as they fought, and the beasts were turning the tide against the dismounted Germans, trampling them and kicking them, breaking bones. Coming to know what to expect from the Caesarians, they were now raising their shields to protect them from the skirmishing riders of Druccus, who had cast what javelins they had and were now coming down to sword fighting. Things were slowly moving into a solid, traditional struggle.
Something clanged off Galronus’ helmet and for a moment he went both deaf and blind, vomit rising up his gorge. He threw up over a rider as his eyes began to focus once more. His head hurt. But he was still alive and still in the saddle. He was also almost alone, just he and half a dozen of his men, cut off by the surrounding enemy.
Then, ahead, he saw Labienus once more, and realised how close the enemy commander was. And in that moment, the former Caesarian lieutenant turned and their eyes met. Galronus felt the recognition in Labienus’ gaze, and then the man was lost to sight once more.
No. Labienus had to fall. If he lived, this would not be the last battle after all.
Gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain in his head, Galronus pushed his way on.