Mid April 45 BC
Gnaeus Pompey was a determined man. His cell for the past week had been a small prison close to the port of Carteia, usually used to hold those accused of piracy or smuggling until they were dragged through the courts in the city’s forum. As such it was very secure, comprised of solid stone blocks with a concrete roof, having been designed to hold dangerous men. The door was thick timber strengthened with iron bands, pivot-sunk into thick stones above and below, with two padlocked bolts on the outside and a small hatch near the base where food could be roughly shovelled, which it was, twice a day. The only light came from a small window, a foot square and strengthened with a grille of iron bars, as though any prisoner could hope to fit through it anyway.
It had been that window that had been his sole source of hope since his incarceration. He knew that Hispania still seethed. That not every town’s ordo was prepared to roll over and show its soft belly to the despot’s sword. Pompey was his father’s son. Unlike Sextus, who preferred to skulk and put walls between him and danger, Gnaeus was the scion of Pompey the Great, and he would never stop. Sextus had fled Corduba, they said, and his brother knew that was the last anyone would really hear of him. He would not concern himself with rallying the republic against the continued threat of Caesar. And with Labienus dead, alongside the other solid officers they’d had at Munda, everything would now come down to Gnaeus Pompey. As long as he lived, Caesar could never rest, of that he was determined.
He had run with his surviving men to Carteia, knowing little was to be gained at Corduba in Sextus’ trembling hands. No, Carteia had been their naval base and one of their strongest centres of power, and despite Caesar’s continued wars in the peninsula, he had yet to take Carteia. From the sources of intelligence, Gnaeus had gloomily concluded that only Asta, Gades, Munda and Urso held out for the republic, and Caesar was already marching on Asta, while his navy had begun to blockade Gades, which would fall in days. Munda was under siege, and once it fell, Urso would be the last town in the entire peninsula to hold out against Caesar. Apart from Carteia.
Or so he had thought.
Then, as he had begun to send out missives to draw what naval power they could still rely upon, and entreaties to allies in Africa, to his eternal bitterness, Carteia had turned on him. A pro-Caesarian faction he had never suspected existed had risen from nowhere and had secured military strength, taking control of the port and walls, and the next thing Gnaeus had known, he had woken one morning with a sword tip at his throat.
A week, but he’d not given up. The city may have thrown in its lot with the despot, but his own supporters remained devout. Every few hours a new scrap of parchment or wood was dropped through the window vowing that Pompey would not end his days thus. That there was change in the wind, and something would happen. Then, last night, a final scrap had come through. All it had said was ‘Three rings. Be ready.’
Since then, he’d ignored the food passed through the door, and spent every moment crouched by the window, listening for a bell. He’d not slept, but that did not bother him. He would run on his nerves and his hunger for victory and revenge. That would sustain him when sleep would not.
In the end, he really did not need the warning of three bells. The sun had been up for perhaps an hour, still a bright, cold thing shining between roofs, when it began. He heard the telltale sounds. Somewhere across the city an alarm went up, a horn blaring and suddenly silenced. Then crashes and shouts in the distance. Finally someone got around to ringing a bell three times, but by then Pompey was already standing by the door to his cell, tensed and prepared. He heard it happening. He heard the shouts of the two guards who stood outside his cell day and night. He heard their weapons readied. Then he heard the fighting, the screaming, the curses. The silence.
The hatch opened at the base of his door.
‘Domine?’
Pompey crouched. ‘Yes. I’m here. The keys to the locks are held by the ordo, not the guards.’
‘We have no need of keys, sir. Step back.’
He did so, frowning in interest as he heard scraping around the bolts. Peering into the crack at the door’s edge, he saw wire looped around the two bolts, and similarly, a thick rope was fed through the hatch at the base, looped through the hinges of the shutter. He saw them strain tight, and then heard whinnying. The slap of a hand on a horse’s rump and a neigh. The creaking of both iron and timber. More slaps, more neighing, more creaking.
When the door gave, it did so in an explosion of wood and torn metal, ripped from the jamb and dragged across the flags outside by the two horses attached to it. The doorway glowed with bright light, and outside stood several grizzled men in the madder-dyed russet tunics of legionaries. Beside them was a small hand cart upon which lay Pompey’s tunic and boots, cuirass and helmet, and his sword.
‘Victory is by no means certain, sir,’ the nearest soldier advised him. ‘The despot’s men still outnumber us, we have word of Caesarian troops in the hills under Lento, and their fleet under Didius sailing for us from Gades. The prefect who set this off died on the walls as the bell rang. Command is yours once more.’
Pompey nodded. ‘Estimates of manpower?’
‘In the city, we can muster maybe a hundred. There are twice that arrayed against us. We have been victorious so far by dint of surprise alone. When they regroup, we’ll find ourselves in trouble.’
Pompey chewed his lip. ‘The forces outside the town?’
‘Unknown but they must number more than a cohort.’
‘Carteia is lost to us, then.’
The soldier nodded bitterly.
‘But as long as we live,’ Pompey said, straightening, ‘there are things we can do. Caesar is not universally popular, and men can be bought. We still have friends in Lusitania, and the gold mines can be seized. If we do this, we will have coin sufficient to raise new legions or hire mercenaries. With coin I can send offers to allies and to those in Rome who still distrust Caesar. We must leave Carteia, and somehow skirt Didius and his fleet. We cannot meet them yet, but we must go by sea. We cannot trust anyone on land. We seize the port and all ships in it and sail west. Once we are past Gades, the great encircling ocean is ours and we can move up into Lusitania, beyond Caesar’s grasp. There we can begin to rebuild.’
The soldier gave him a satisfied look. ‘We already have a half century of men down at the port, attempting to take control.’
‘Are there still plenty of ships there?’
‘Twenty two,’ the soldier replied. ‘And they are crewed by loyalists, who have resisted the city’s betrayal. If we can make it to the ships we can escape the city.’
‘Good.’ Pompey stripped down to his loincloth in the street, the acrid stink of shit and urine filling the air. He’d had nothing but a bucket for facilities for a week now. By the third day he’d dreamed of a bum-sponge. As he began to pull on his fresh tunic and boots, donning the armour, he looked this way and that, his eyes having finally adjusted to the brightness.
From here he could see down into the port, on the edge of which the prison stood. To his experienced eye, their chances of securing the port were fifty-fifty at best. He could make out at least four fights going on, each of which could yet go either way. More of his men were busy at the port’s heart, raiding a pile of supplies on the dockside, while a party of men who were clearly not part of his force were approaching along the sloping road down from the forum. When they arrived, every man would have to fight to survive. As yet the ship crews remained on their vessels, uncommitted. If he were to be charitable, he might admit that their reluctance was sensible. If they committed to the fight in the port, they might lose too many men to effectively sail, and many of their rowers, thanks to short manpower, were slaves who needed to be controlled and supervised. Yet, there was also the fact that a sensible man would probably watch and wait now, to see who won, before committing to either side.
Well, that would be him.
Finally armed and ready, Pompey drew his sword. ‘Signal the men. I want every soldier we have down at those ships. We need to sail.’
One of the soldiers produced a short cavalry horn and blew three shrill blasts followed by one long wail, then dropped the instrument and followed as they hauled themselves up onto horses and headed down towards the port.
As they cantered, Pompey used his sword to point at the twin lighthouses that marked the end of the two arms of the harbour. ‘There is a ballista at the end of each. They need to be neutralised before we sail, or we will lose ships as we pass by.’
The soldier nodded. ‘We have men on it, sir.’
Indeed, at that moment, he could see more fighting breaking out at the ends of the two harbour walls. ‘We’ll pick up survivors as we pass.’
As they reached the harbour side, Pompey reined in and simply let the horse go. A shout drew his attention, and he turned to see a fresh group of the enemy emerge from some warehouse substructure nearby. His men stopped rifling through the stores and formed up, turning to face the fresh threat.
‘Sir, you need to get on a ship.’
Pompey nodded, but still he stood, watching as the two small forces closed. He realised his mistake only at the last moment. As the soldiers, armed with javelins and shields, bore down on his exhausted legionaries, they spotted the escaped general and gave a shout. Ignoring the men waiting for them, half a dozen of the enemy soldiers thudded to a sudden halt and launched their javelins up into the air. They were not careful, aimed shots, but there were six, and the distance was not great.
Pompey leapt away from the cloud of deadly missiles, but as he tumbled through the air, he felt the flesh of his left calf tear and yelled in agony. The javelin that had pierced him had ripped a chunk from the back of his leg, and a square of flesh there flapped open and shut as the blood poured free. The crimson missile clattered off along the dockside as Pompey rolled and staggered and lurched to his feet. He looked around, eyes wild now. The soldier he already considered his second in command, the man who had broken him out of jail, stood transfixed, pinned to a crate with a javelin, blood pouring from his open mouth.
The other, the man with the horn, was trying to marshal what men they had and urge them over to the boarding plank of a ship. The men who were facing the javelineers were fully engaged now, hammering at the new arrivals. They were winning, at least.
‘Sir. We have to go.’
Pompey turned, hissing at the pain as his leg almost gave under him, and saw the musician waving him towards a ship. He looked around. More and more enemy units seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork, making for the port. The man was right. If they didn’t leave now, they’d soon be overcome.
Limping, cursing, he reached a boarding ramp and staggered up it, almost toppling off into the water at one point. Then, finally, he was lurching aboard, and sailors were gripping his shoulders, helping him, half-carrying him over to a wooden chair bolted to the deck, usually occupied by the piper who kept the rowers in time. There, he slumped with relief as a capsarius hurried over with his bag, preparing to at least clean and bind the wound.
As the man worked, Pompey hissing with pain repeatedly, the commander watched, unable to do much more. The last of his men hurried down to the port, overcoming the javelineers and then hurrying for any ship close by. Already, vessels were pulling out into the water, turning, making for the gap between the reaching arms of the harbour wall.
He felt the lurching of the deck as his own ship departed, though at the time his eyes were solidly closed, partially through the exhaustion starting to catch up with him, and partially because he continually winced with pain at each prod and tug of the medic dealing with his leg. When he finally opened them fully, as the capsarius stood and stepped back, pronouncing that he had done what he could, the ship was two thirds of the way across the harbour and making for the open sea.
To his dismay, it seemed that his men had secured only one of the ballista port defences, for the other was merrily loosing into the fleeing ships. One trireme had been holed and was already beginning to dip below the water still inside the harbour. Another had made it through the opening, but was foundering and arcing east, its mast leaning at a ruinous angle.
Pompey clenched his teeth as they closed on the gap. The troops that had moved to take that ballista had not only failed to do so, but had in fact entirely disappeared. Consequently, the artillery remained active, being angled against ships and loaded, but also Caesarian archers had mustered at the wall edge and were loosing into the passing vessels.
‘To starboard,’ he bellowed at the trierarch, eying the ship in front of them, which was being raked with cloud after cloud of arrows as it passed, men dropping like flies as they sprouted shafts. Despite the damage to the crew, the ship managed to slip through to open sea, the last victim being the vessel’s trierarch, who toppled into the water with a cry.
The pilot of Pompey’s vessel did what he could, but there was no space to move starboard, away from the archers, because of the other ships hurrying to reach the sea. Gritting his teeth, he watched as they closed, unable to avoid the death-run. He had no chance to lurch out of the way this time, for his leg was numb, and he could not stand as the missiles began to fly. An arrow tore a small chunk from his shoulder, ripping away the leather pteruges, and then disappeared into the water with a plop.
Pompey roared with pain and fury as the fire of the wound raced through his veins. As the ship slid at speed past the crowd of archers, darting for the open blue of the bay ahead, the rebel general could see the faces of his would-be killers, the hunger in the eyes of men desperate to be the one to kill the general. Then they were past, through the harbour wall and into the open water, the impotent fury of the archers left behind. His shoulder pulsated with pain and blood ran down his arm. He was injured. Again. But they had made it out into the bay. From here, unless Didius was around the corner, they could cross to the African side and hope to slip past the Caesarian admiral without engaging him.
Then, the rebuilding could begin.
* * *
A fight had broken out between two of the water gathering parties, a barrel lying on its side and tipping its precious contents out onto the sand as men punched one another, shouting recriminations. Pompey stood at the rail and watched, a half-smile pulling at his lip. There was no real damage being done, just men taking out tension and frustration on one another. Better like this than on board and with a blade, after all.
The punch up raged until the fire started to go out of it and the men got tired, then faded into snarky name calling as the two groups separated. Of course, normally an officer would have stepped in long before now, had their names entered onto a clerk’s tablet for latrine duties or worse, and had men dragging the combatants apart. Not so now. A grand total of three centurions led his men, far too few to keep control of so many troops, but he’d not had the leisure to appoint new centurions yet. Soon, perhaps.
‘They’ve found us.’
He turned in surprise and, seeing the lookout waving at him, stumped his way to the opposite rail, where he stumbled with a hiss, gripping the timber to prevent collapse. ‘The man is like a bad rash, all over and very hard to get rid of. How did he find us?’
‘Maybe he got all the way to Carteia and turned around.’
Pompey nodded. If he had, then by gods the man had been fast. His twenty ships had slipped away from Carteia and turned east as though making back for the heart of the republic, an attempt to lay a false trail among those who were watching from the port. They had then, around the headland and out of sight, changed course, straight across to the coast of Mauretania. He had briefly considered attempting to gather support there, but with the knowledge that Bogud, the Mauritanian king, had been among the enemy at Munda, he maintained his original plan. They’d sailed along the coast and then, finally, they had crossed the straits once more at the wider point. Once they’d sailed past Gades, giving it a wide berth, logic said that they had to have missed Didius and his fleet, and they’d heaved a sigh of relief. Now, four days after their flight from Carteia, they had eased up considerably, knowing they were almost at the point where they would turn north and make for Lusitania proper. With a sense of freedom, they had pulled the small fleet into the coast and anchored there this morning, sending parties ashore to forage and hunt, to bring aboard fresh water from two local streams and supplies for the voyage, supplementing the meagre quantities they had secured at Carteia.
The last thing they had expected was Didius’ fleet.
Yet the lookout was right. The swarm of ships that were even now hurtling around the next headland bore the sails of Caesar’s fleet, and they were on the hunt, as was clear from their speed and formation. How they had determined that Pompey had doubled back west and had turned and raced to catch them, he could not fathom, but the fact remained they were here.
Moreover, they would be well-supplied, well armed for war, and stocked with soldiers.
Conversely, Pompey’s fleet was a quarter of the size, manned by stretched skeleton crews, barely armed, and poorly supplied. If it came down to a fight, there was no question as to the end result.
‘What are your orders, sir?’ the trierarch asked, a touch of nervous energy in his voice.
Pompey ground his teeth. No. He’d escaped. They thought they’d finished him and his cause – his father’s cause – the republic’s cause – at Munda, but he’d escaped. They thought they had trapped him in Carteia, but he’d managed to get away, prepared to start all over again. Now, Didius thought he had him. No. He didn’t. He couldn’t. The cause was not lost. The war would never be over.
‘We cannot beat him.’
The look on the trierarch’s face was in full agreement. He looked relieved. ‘Sir?’
‘Have every empty ship thrown at him. Send the slaves in. Slow him down.’
‘Sir?’
‘Didius is a sailor. He has ships. He won’t be able to pursue and finish us on land. Get every loyal man who can walk off the ships. Arm them all. We move into the hills and disappear. Give the order and pass it to the other ships. I will be on the shore, marshalling the men there.’
He'd sounded so positive and prepared, he wondered whether it sent mixed messages when he then took a single step and the agony in his wounded leg sent him crumpling to the deck. Teeth clenched in determination, he pushed himself with great effort back to his feet, grabbing the rail to steady himself. Passing a worried looking soldier, he snatched the pilum from the man’s grip and used it as a staff to step with more ease across the deck to the ramp. Behind him the trierarch started to bellow orders.
Pompey took his eyes off the world around him for a while then, staggering with pain in each pace down the ramp to the beach. Every step was an oath.
He was the son of Pompey the pirate killer. He would not fail.
He was the scion of a great republican family. He would not see Rome die.
He was better than his cowering brother. He would rise once more.
Oaths drove him across the sand and while he was stamping with determination, he was still grateful when a soldier appeared with a pony they had unhitched from the water barrel sled. He mounted with difficulty then realised the soldier, an optio from his kit, was watching him expectantly.
‘We move for the hills. I know this land. We will lose our pursuit and find allies in the Lusitani. Every man on this beach needs to move now. Get into the treeline and be ready, armed. We move as soon as all the crew who can be saved are on land. Go, now.’
The optio saluted and hurried off, shouting and pointing, waving his arms. Pompey let him go. It was always best to let the centurionate and their chosen men deal with the actual carrying out of orders. Pompey turned instead and looked out to sea.
His fleet were all moving now. Twenty vessels. They would never have escaped by sea. Didius and his killer ships were almost on them already. Pompey sent a prayer to Pluto that he be kind to the heroic sailors and, yes, even to the slaves. Some of them were the worst of men, but others were probably debtors and foreign captives, and they were now being made to give their lives for the cause. Every one of the twenty ships was crewed by but half a dozen free men and three oar banks of slaves. Every one of them was a dead man already.
Didius was, Pompey realised, very good at what he did. Even as the Caesarian fleet sped across the water, the admiral passed orders and the fleet changed form. He had looked to each of Pompey’s ships and had sized them up in a heartbeat. Those which could be easily taken and salvaged were targeted by Caesarian ships with heavy marine occupancy, often quadriremes. The lesser ships, the ones already partly damaged, crewed by the least men or aimlessly drifting, were not considered worth the effort.
In a heartbeat fire bolts and ballistae were at work from the prows of Didius’ ships, tearing into those ships the commander considered unimportant. They struck mercilessly, burning, holing, sinking. Pompey, a man who had not once in his life given a thought to his own slaves, suddenly found his eye watering with a single tear for all those men he had condemned, each one shackled to a bench that was either burning or being submerged, engulfed in an inferno or sinking beneath the waves.
As most of his ships disappeared into gold or blue, a few were overcome and became the scene of fierce fighting. Pompey finally tore his eyes from the scene and turned back to the beach. Those men who had been brought ashore from the ships were almost all safe now, back across the sand and among the trees.
He had already cast back his prodigious memory to a map he’d seen of the region. He was now plotting his route, a journey that would take him to the burgeoning settlement of Ebora, a rat-hole of a town founded on some native shit-pit but which was something of a nexus for the gold trains of the region. He had already figured the first three stops on his route, and was confident that with Didius controlling only ships and marines, he would not be able to follow, or at least, not for long.
‘Sir,’ called the optio, now standing at the treeline ahead.
Pompey nodded in his direction, turned, took one look at his fleet that was variously burning as it settled into the water, or being taken captive and manned by new, Caesarian, troops, and walked off into the trees.
* * *
Gaius Didius turned to the man beside him. ‘It would appear that Pompey is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for forces now. These ships are part crewed at best and rowed by slaves. How long does the man think he’s going to hold his rebellion like this?’
‘Maybe he has nothing to lose sir?’ the man replied.
‘Rubbish. Alright, Caesar has pronounced a death sentence on all the enemy leaders, but we all know that Caesar is a pushover for a contrite speech. If Pompey decided to lay it on thick and plead for mercy, Caesar would grant it. Hirtius reckons he still feels guilty that the man’s father was beheaded. Wasn’t responsible for it himself, but the general would have liked to have had the great Pompey submit, bow and accept his failure. He’d do the same for the boy, if he begged. But if he fights, yes, he’ll just die.’
‘Several hundred managed to get away to the trees, sir.’
‘Yes.’ That part irritated Didius. He’d managed to anticipate Pompey’s moves rather nicely. He’d reasoned that if the man went east, there was nowhere safe for him to go. Similarly, Africa and Mauritania were now closed to the rebels. As such, Pompey could only reasonably go west, up into territory he’d been dealing with over the past few years. He would feel safe there. Consequently, Didius had gone towards Carteia only far enough to meet up with Lucius Caesennius Lento, the man Caesar had sent to the city by land to secure Pompey. Lento and his force, fast moving light infantry and Hispanic cavalry, had met them at Baelo, and the plan had formed there. Didius had hoped to destroy Pompey at sea, but there was always a land backup now.
‘Signal Lento,’ he told the man beside him. ‘This is no longer just a sea pursuit.’
The man saluted and stepped across to the rail, raising his flags and facing the shore, northeast, away from where the rebels had disappeared into the treeline. With a flicker of signals, he fell still, waiting. After a few moments there came a series of flashes from the hills off to the west. Caesennius Lento was in pursuit.
‘What now sir?’
Didius took in the destruction all around them. Ships were now jutting from the water, sinking into the blue, while others roared in flames and yet more were being sailed back to his own lines to join the Caesarians. Months ago, he had chased the Pompeian fleet into Carteia. He’d won two impressive sea battles, and yet he’d still not been able to stop their commander fleeing onto the land and escaping. Caesar had been appropriately thankful and handed out plenty of praise, and yet none of it had mattered to Didius. That he had not completed his goals at Carteia still rankled. Since then, he had spent months securing ports, blockading them, building the fleet and patrolling from Gades to Carthago Nova. Now, once again, he had had Pompey’s fleet in his grasp, he had chased them down and thought to bring them to destructive battle off the south coast of the peninsula. Instead, he had accidentally come across them gathering water and supplies, the ships at anchor, the bulk of his men on shore. His naval victory had been about as memorable as the time he had entered a swimming competition at the Piscina Publica only to find out that he’d accidentally entered the childrens’ level, facing competition more than a decade his junior. And now once again, his prey had fled inland, escaping his grasp. And now Lento was going to gain Caesar’s ear for having been the man to capture or kill one of the three great rebel leaders.
‘Fuck it.’
‘Sir?’
Didius turned to the signaller. ‘Once the fleet is secured, I want all marines and excess crew on that beach. Lento is moving to take Pompey, but the villain won’t escape again. We’re going to follow him. With luck, we’ll get him before Lento.’