Mid April 45 BC
Didius hauled on the reins of his horse and came to a halt on the top of a ridge, skittering gravel beneath with small patches of dry vegetation dotted about, nothing more than a knee-high bush. The view was excellent. The hill path below the ridge streamed with marines, still adjusting to the solid ground after weeks of shipboard life. A thousand men, split into three cohorts, enough to find and finish Pompey. His gaze took in the signal from the bare hilltop perhaps two miles to the north. Lento and his cohorts.
Pompey would be feeling the pinch now. He had moved north from the beach at the greatest speed he could manage, but it had not taken Didius long to finish off the enemy fleet and land his own force. Since then, every time they had reached a high peak, his signallers had picked out Lento and his scouts, the two forces remaining in close contact as they moved in on the fleeing rebels like pincers from the south and the east.
His gaze now moved to the high ground ahead. He couldn’t make out the details of what was happening there, but there was definite movement, figures like ants on a nest, swarming over the peak. Pompey and his men were there, and Didius’ scouts had been very informative. Too much so for their own good, in fact. As a naval force there had been few horses aboard the ships, and all of them had been employed by Didius and a few men chosen for their eyesight and hunting skills as scouts. Still, for all his efforts, they were poor compared with the native scouts usually employed by a Roman army and, while they had managed to provide a great deal of information, that was because they had come far too close and almost been caught and killed. The latest had lurched back to the column, badly injured.
Pompey was also wounded, or so it seemed. More than one injury, and debilitating, too, since he had now resorted to being carried on some sort of stretcher. Perhaps two hundred men accompanied the rebel general, all of them also tired and injured, yet determined and resistant. They had reached this place and now, it seemed, were digging in. Didius had mused on the situation as they rode. Had Pompey resigned himself to a last stand? A defiant showing in the face of insurmountable odds? Had he managed to signal someone and was holing up and waiting for reinforcements to reach him? Was he perhaps under the impression that he could still win? It was said, after all, that the Lusitanians continued to harbour support for the rebels and to resent Caesar’s control. It mattered not. The plan had to be the same. They had to take him down, and they had to do it here and now.
Didius did not know Pompey, other than by reputation. They said he was a pale shadow of his father, a tactician of limited scope. Thus far, however, the general had proved surprisingly wily since his escape from Carteia, and only luck and educated guesswork had allowed them to catch up with him. Pompey’s instincts were clearly still good, for in this world of green and grey peaks and valleys, the rebel general had chosen his position well.
A horseshoe of hill a quarter of a mile across, surrounding a single peak at the centre, was itself surrounded by a wide valley. Pompey had deployed half his force around that U-shaped ridge, while he himself, and his other hundred men had retreated to the heart of his domain, fortifying at the peak in the middle. Unless the man could pull something magically out of his sleeve, the result was still a foregone conclusion in Didius’ opinion, though he had to admit that he would lose a lot of men by the time he’d got to Pompey. Taking a slow, calm breath, he turned to the tribune he’d brought with him.
‘Deliver the plan to the centurions. We travel slowly, for Lento is perhaps an hour behind us, and we should hit him at the same time. Pompey must know we’re on his trail, but he might not yet be aware of Lento. We hit him from north and south at the same time and spread out as we arrive. I want our men approaching in an arc from west to east. Send a rider to find Lento and tell him this, advising him to do the same from the north, so that we can be sure of trapping them and not letting the villain escape. Once we’re all there, give the signal and the men can take the hill from every side. Once we control the outer ring, we can gradually close in on the central one.’
The tribune nodded his understanding, saluted, and rode back down the slope to the moving column of marines. Didius watched that distant hillside for a moment longer and then dropped back down to join his men.
For two more hours the three marine cohorts traipsed across the hillsides of southern Lusitania, always heading for that peak. As they climbed one forested slope, a scout ahead gave the signal. They were on Pompey at last. Following his gestures, the centurions began to lead their men out now, along the slope rather than up it, fanning out to create a cordon over a mile long, thin but wide. When they were in position, Didius looking left and right along a bristling, armoured line, the lookouts confirmed that Lento was in position, and the signal was given. The cohorts began to march up the hill, tightening the noose around Pompey’s position. Didius drew his sword as he urged his horse up after them. He would not be expected to bloody it, of course, but it always looked good for a commander to appear to be in the thick of it, and if the opportunity presented itself, he would love to be the one to finish it.
The cohorts crested the hill, flowing around that scout like a river around a rock, and then swarmed down the slope into the wide valley, their commander following on his steed, close to the men at all times. As he moved over the crest, he could see the rebels now and was impressed. Beaten in the greatest battle of recent months, limping away, these men had struggled at Carteia, fought for control of it, freed their general and then fled by ship. They had sailed west, fought another engagement and then fled once more across the hills to get here. Yet, rather than collapse in exhaustion, they were even now raising a fence and digging a ditch up there as best they could.
The marines flooded down into the valley and then began to climb that horseshoe hill, moving through the sparse, dry forest as they bore down on the defenders. The fighting started before Didius could see it. He could hear the shouts and the clangs and thumps, whistles and screams. As he emerged from the treeline towards the peak, he took in the scene with a moment of shock.
His men had arrived at a jog, climbing the last stretch of the slope only to meet a prepared and determined force. As they had emerged from cover, the enemy had unleashed their pila in a mass volley, and the effect had been gruesomely impressive. Didius arrived to see his front lines staggering back, stumbling to the dust, pinned and impaled. Marines fell to the ground, clutching at mortal wounds, and that single initial volley had cost Didius a quarter of his force. He could not see Lento’s men but the chances were that they were suffering something much the same.
His centurions roared and blew their whistles, urging the faltering charge on.
The cohorts regrouped from their initial disaster, stomping up between the bodies of their fallen companions, racing for that makeshift rampart. Didius watched, heart in his throat. He had seen this as a foregone conclusion, but his certainty had already been shaken. Now, it was diminished once more as he saw his men struggling to take that rampart from the defenders. The rebels had to be exhausted and hungry, but they were also the strongest of Pompey’s veterans. Indeed, in a swathe of destruction, Didius watched his attack falter again, marines falling all along the line. He felt his pulse pounding, and threw a prayer of thanks to the gods as his centurions once more urged their marines on and this third time saw some success. Through sheer numbers, they had finally managed to break breaches in the rebel lines and had penetrated the defences in places. The officers were hard at work now, directing the killing, securing those breaches to make sure there was no need for a fourth assault.
Then, in a sudden move, some enemy signal was given, and the rebel soldiers were gone. Disengaging from the fight they simply ran back away from the ridge. The retreat was so sudden, speedy and well-coordinated that the marines dithered too long to effectively pursue them. The centurions brought their men back into lines once more. As Didius now rode up to that hill crest, he could see what the enemy were up to. Lento had similarly taken the outer ring of hills to the north, his standards visible there. The enemy, though, had all pulled back and were even now climbing that central hill, where they pushed through the line of their fellows and into the position of reserves, heaving in relieved breaths.
Didius could see the figure that had to be Pompey on the hill now, at the peak in the centre, throwing out commands. ‘Finish it,’ he shouted to the officers on the hill. Remaining where he was, on that ridge with a good view, Didius, surrounded by a half century of guards, watched the fight. His men flowed down that inner hillside, across the narrow gap, and then up towards the peak where Pompey’s legionaries waited. He saw the two sides crash together, and knew finally, with some relief, that it really was, now, a foregone conclusion. His men would overcome the enemy, despite heavy losses, and Pompey was doomed. It would end here.
His gaze rose to the crest once more, and he frowned. Pompey was not there.
Shaking his head, he looked this way and that. The figure he’d seen at the centre had gone, and as his gaze raked the hillside, he could see no sign of the man. He felt a chill shudder through him. No, he couldn’t let the bastard slip away again. Pompey was certainly not visible from here. He had to be off to the northwest, then. Didius closed his eyes and rubbed his chin. That way lay the open arms of the horseshoe. If Pompey could slip through the lines of the Caesarians, he would disappear, and it would be much harder to track a small group than it had been this ragged band.
Didius looked around. The ten scouts he’d managed to find horses for had once more gathered, and he gestured to them. He needed fast men now. ‘Come with me.’
With that, he kicked his horse and began to canter off along the ridge, heading west, around that central hill. With the ten men following close, he rode for the open end of the horseshoe, his gaze always on that peak where the fighting raged. Nowhere was there any sign of Pompey. He couldn’t have slipped through anywhere Didius had been watching, so it had to be somewhere in this direction. He was galloping now, heedless of the dangerous ground. Ahead, the hillside dipped away into that low ground at the opening of the U, and his gaze tore through the vegetation, trying to find any trace of Pompey.
With his men at his heel, he raced down the slope, turning and angling back towards that central hill. His eyes scoured it, and he could see his men some two thirds of the way up, struggling to overcome Pompey’s defenders. They were winning, slowly. Still no sign…
A flicker of movement caught his eye. As he turned to focus on it, the cause had gone, whatever it was. In truth, it could have been almost anything. A bird of prey, one of the large, indigenous wild cats, even a falling branch. Yet somehow, in his bones, Didius knew it was Pompey.
Turning, waving the riders on with him, he made for the low ground, a small ravine at the base of that central hill. As they closed on it, the sounds of distant combat audible on the hill above, Didius and his riders slowed, swords at the ready, and began to make their way into the ravine. The enemy came at them suddenly, leaping from the rocks to either side. Four of Didius’ horsemen were down before they managed to pull ahead, yanked from their saddles. On the ground they struggled with Pompey’s desperate soldiers, swords and knives out, curses abounding, blades flashing and blood flowing. The rest of Didius’ men dismounted now as three legionaries edged towards them, swords ready.
Leaving his men to deal with them, the admiral took the two remaining riders, stepping around the fighting, heading for a gloomy black opening in the rock that they were clearly defending. As they approached, Didius dismounted and the three of them, on foot, stalked towards the cave.
One of Pompey’s legionaries managed to dispatch a Caesarian scout and ran after them. Didius turned at the last moment and managed to throw his own blade in the way, before one of the pair with him dived on the legionary, cutting him down, dropping him to the dusty ground, where he kneeled on the man and hammered his sword hilt into the soldier’s head again and again.
Leaving him to it, Didius and his companion stepped into the dark.
‘Beg Caesar for clemency,’ he said to the motionless gloom. There was no reply, then finally one piece of blackness detached itself from the rest, and a faintly human shape moved closer. ‘Caesar never regretted anything more than the way your father went,’ he tried again. ‘He has vowed to end this and to see all the leaders of your rebellion dead, but one entreaty from you, and he would be merciful. Surely you know this?’
‘Rebellion?’
Pompey moved out of the darkness now, into the gloomy light of the cave entrance where Didius stood. He was leaning on a stick for support, his leg ruined, and his arm hung useless by his side. Still, despite his clear pain and the failure of his last stand, there was a strangely triumphant gleam in the young general’s eye.
‘Your rebellion is over.’
‘Only the despot would consider this a rebellion,’ Pompey spat. ‘Caesar defied the just decisions of the senate of Rome. He did the unthinkable. He led an army on Rome, breaking so many laws he could have paved his journey with them. He threatened violence to the true senate of Rome, and forced them to flee for their lives. Senators, Didius! Forced to leave Rome itself, for Caesar’s army was coming to the capital in defiance of our oldest statutes. And because the senate of Rome stood against him, Caesar declared them enemies of the state and replaced them with men who would support him. Those true senators and their supporters were forced to flee to the periphery of the republic, to take arms against him. We fought to the end. We still do. But not in some rebellion, you blind fool. The rebel is the man you serve. We are the republic. We are Rome. And when you kill us, you kill Rome. What you do next will change the world, Gaius Didius. I give not a fig for my life. Take it, but I will never bend the knee to your criminal master. I will die a son of the republic, and my conscience will be clear.’
Didius nodded. He’d heard such sentiments before, of course. This was the rallying cry of the rebels. But he’d never had it put to him so succinctly and with such heart. It took some inner strength to straighten and nod once more.
‘I hear you, but I also know that Caesar has taken an ailing republic and saved it. He will step down when this crisis is over, and what he will leave will be a stronger Rome.’
‘What he will leave will be a throne,’ Pompey hissed, and staggered a painful step closer. Amazingly, given his condition, he let that walking stick fall away and lifted a blade. ‘If you want me, you must take me by force.’
Didius breathed again and stepped forward to meet the man. The scout beside him moved to intercept, but Didius waved the man away. He might not be the best swordsman in the republic, but Pompey was done for. The rebel general made a desperate lunge and Didius sidestepped it with ease as Pompey staggered forward and fell to his knees with a cry of pain. The man was no longer wearing a cuirass, his wounds making it difficult, and Didius’ blow, a single stab down with his gladius, slammed into the man’s back, grating between ribs and then sliding with a sigh through the offal within, coming to a halt against the inside of Pompey’s breastbone.
The general gave just a whimper and then jerked a few times and fell still.
The scout stepped forward now. ‘Sir, what do we do with the body?’
‘Caesar’s orders. Remove the head.’
His lip twitched as he said it. Had the general really meant it? Caesar had been furious when this man’s father’s head had been delivered to him. But that was the standing order if any senior commander of the rebel army was found. The head was to be delivered to Caesar, and he’d not made any clear exceptions for Pompey.
‘Take his head and a small force of riders. Deliver it to Hispalis. Caesar was last known to be there.’
He turned and strode from the cave, breathing heavily and trying not to listen to the gory sawing sounds behind him. It was done. The second of the three rebel leaders dead. Only Sextus left, and the man had disappeared. It appeared that the war was finally over.
* * *
Two days later.
The beach was quiet, the sun already sinking into the west, and Didius waved his acknowledgement to the optio who was calling him over to the camp fire for food. He sagged, tired. After the fight at the hill of Lauro, his scouts had joined Lento and taken Pompey’s head back east to deliver to Caesar. Didius had read the butcher’s bill with a heavy heart, having lost more than half his men. Still, they had killed Pompey, and most of his force, a few of the survivors of Lauro slipping away into the Lusitanian hills. Wearily, Didius and his column had begun the long trek back to the coast and the fleet.
Back on the beach, he had given the orders. The majority of the fleet had been dispatched that morning, sent back to Gades for the general. Didius himself had remained at the beach with two centuries of men and the crews of two ships that had been damaged during the engagement and which were being repaired in situ. They would be complete in a couple of days, and they would then follow the fleet and return to Gades. In the meantime, he had kept with him the more wounded and exhausted to give them a rest after their victory before going back to work.
There was a jubilant atmosphere. The war was over. Whether Sextus Pompey could be found or not, only a couple of towns in the whole peninsula now held out, and then Caesar would have control of Hispania and they could all return to Rome…
Some small, dark part of his soul then asked him whether that was a good thing, and he fought down the uncertainty. Pompey’s words had rung in his ears whenever the silence fell since that moment in the cave. Didius resolved to look deep into Caesar’s eyes when he returned to the general. He would know, somehow, when he peered into those two orbs, whether the general was what Didius had always claimed: the saviour of the republic, or what Pompey had earnestly believed: that he was its last dying breath.
‘Sestertius for your thoughts, sir?’ a centurion asked, falling in beside him.
‘Just wishing I was home. Still, soon we all will be. How are things?’
‘Quiet, sir. I’ve got four lads on watch, but we’ve seen nothing more than gulls in a day and a half.’
Didius nodded. ‘Get along to dinner, Centurion. I’ll join you all presently.’
As the man stomped away across the sand, Didius, stretching and enjoying the evening air, stopped at a pile of freshly-cut timbers and leaned against them, scrubbing his face with his hands. It was quite by chance that he happened to be looking across at the far end of the beach when the trouble began. As his gaze fell upon the man on watch on a low hillock beyond the beached shape of the Demeter’s Arrow, the figure suddenly disappeared behind the rise. Not a sound, but Didius’ breath stilled, his pulse racing. His gaze snapped round to the other end of the beach. The man there had gone too. Similarly, there was no sign of the two men up towards the line of vegetation above the beach.
‘To arms,’ he bellowed, even as the enemy appeared. Figures were pouring across the sand now from both ends of the beach, carrying pots and torches, blazing in the evening gloom. As the camp exploded into activity, there was nothing they could do to stop that attack, for already pots of pitch had been hurled at the two beached ships, fiery torches cast after them, catching the dry timbers and roaring across them. In mere heartbeats the two vessels were roaring infernos of golden fire.
The two centuries were doing their best to form up, but they had been taken entirely by surprise, and half their equipment was still either in their tents or on those very ships now burning away. As Didius hurried back towards the camp at the centre, drawing his sword, he turned his gaze to the men attacking them. Most of them wore just ordinary tunics, armed with long knives or axes or staves. Locals, he surmised. Lusitanians. For a moment he wondered what could have roused the locals so against him, but then he began to see familiar shapes among them. The survivors of that hilltop at Lauro. It appeared they did not yet consider the war over, and in their hike on Didius’ tail all the way back to the coast, they had picked up friends.
He gritted his teeth. He’d beaten this lot once, under a great general. He’d damn well do the same now, with their ragtag band of Lusitanian rebels.
As the centurions gathered their men into units, Didius gestured to them. ‘Falco, take that lot over by the Demeter. Statilius, take the others. Flaccus, you’re with me. We’re the reserve.’
In response to his command, the force separated. The two centurions each took their centuries, hurrying over to deal with the two ragged forces that had fired the ships. The remaining men, the ships’ crews, remained with Trierarch Flaccus and Didius at the campsite, watching their fellows fighting at the ships.
Damn it, but that was irritating. They’d burned the ships. Now Didius and the others would have to slog the hundred and fifty miles back to Gades by land, slowly and carefully, unless they could secure from another port. And if the Lusitanians could be so easily roused against them here, then the same could happen again.
Still, he said to himself, at least they had the best of it. The Lusitanians were unarmoured and lightly armed, and even tired and injured, Didius’ marines were more than a match for them. Even now, they were overcoming the two groups of attackers, having taken a few casualties.
A cry drew his attention, and Didius’ head snapped around.
A fresh flood of figures was now pouring from the trees, across the sand, making for the shambling group of tired sailors. Much the same as the ones at the ships, they were largely tunic’d locals with makeshift weapons, a small core of the survivors of Lauro among them. They matched the sailors in number, and as Didius started bellowing orders to form into a line, he tried to estimate their chances. There were few professional soldiers among the attackers, but then there were few among Didius’ reserves, too. Those men were poorly-equipped, but so were Didius’. The rest of the enemy were untrained locals with a bitch against Caesar, probably the usual over taxes and rights, fuelled by Pompeian propaganda, but then Didius’ men were sailors not soldiers. And while the locals would not be as strong as his sailors, they also had not spent all day chopping down trees and sawing wood.
It was too close for comfort.
Bracing, he held his place as the line of worried looking sailors formed to either side, two deep, many wielding either a small knife or some sort of tool, a mattock or axe. A quick glance over his shoulder told him he might be in trouble. The two centuries were still locked in their own fights near the ships, and Didius realised now what they were doing. The two enemy groups there were holding the marines to the fight so they could not come to the aid of those men remaining in the camp.
Turning back, he knew that all he could do now was pray and fight, and so that was precisely what he did. A trio of hasty prayers to Mars, Minerva and Neptune, vowing altars if he made it back to Gades, and then the struggle began. A filthy, tired, yet furious-looking Pompeian legionary, still wearing his chain shirt and carrying a war blade, leapt at him.
Didius managed to turn the blow, wishing he was armoured or had a shield, and somehow stepped past the man, turning to the next attacker. A man in a blue tunic, travel-stained, his beard ragged, his hair wild, came at Didius with a cleaver, and he managed to miss the swipe, then knock the attacker aside, smashing his sword into that arm wielding the blade. Before the man could recover, Didius had delivered two blows, to his gut and then to his weapon arm. The man fell away, but another took his place, a long dagger slashing into the flesh of a sailor, who screamed and disappeared in a cloud of spraying blood and kicked up sand.
Didius was on his killer in moments, hacking and stabbing like a madman.
He was no great warrior, sadly, and he knew it. He realised his mistake only as it came back to strike at him. He’d sidestepped that first soldier and assumed someone else would deal with him. But as he’d dealt with cleaver man and then the knife wielder, that soldier had simply stopped behind him, turned, and struck from behind.
Didius felt the legionary’s blade sink in. It was a professional kill, a masterful attack, aimed well as the man was under no pressure and had been presented with Didius’ back. The blade entered his side below the armpit, piercing vital organs and severing critical blood vessels. As the sword was pulled free, Didius felt a strange cold hollowness as evening air flowed into the wound for just a moment until it turned warm again, torrents of his lifeblood sheeting out and down his side.
He spun, gasping, staggering, to face his killer. His hand twitched. He tried to bring it up, but realised he’d dropped his sword. He tried to speak, but all he could manage was grunts and gurgles. He could do nothing now to stop the second blow as that sword, coated with blood – his blood – was pulled back and then slammed into his chest.
Didius felt the indescribable pain, but somehow the sense of confusion and dismay was stronger than the agony, and it was almost a relief when the sword was pulled free again and he collapsed to his knees. He saw the man’s legs only as the legionary moved off to kill another.
Didius toppled slowly forward to the sand. His watering eyes took in the scene even as his sight began to fade. They were lost. The enemy had simply overrun them, presumably in revenge for Lauro and Pompey’s death. It was a fair exchange, he supposed in a strange way. His death for Pompey’s. He could see the last of his men being finished off, and then the burning remnants of his ruined ships.
His fading gaze settled on one heartening sight. Between the two blazing hulks he could just make out a small boat, a pinnace, which had miraculously survived the fire. He could just see half a dozen of his men desperately rowing out to sea, and he willed them on. It would be a long and fraught journey for them to get back to safe lands, but they had made a start, and no one on this beach would catch them now. Those men would carry word of what happened here to Caesar.
Didius’ eyes closed, scratchy and filled with the sand in which he lay.
A last breath escaped his lips.
At least he’d finally caught Pompey first.