The Horse Changer (4 page)

Our cohort’s prefect gave orders for us to feed our mounts and then make ourselves a breakfast of hardtack and spring water. We were told to finish with our toilets as quickly as possible and then to wait beside our horses, mounting up only when he gave the order. All of this we did in complete darkness, not even daring to light a few solitary torches. At just the moment when night turns grey and the first songbirds begin their cry, we heard elements of Pompey’s six-hundred-strong cavalry riding across the plain in our direction. I imagined they had discovered us, but our decurions whispered to their squads to remain as they were. Only when the enemy had passed did I finally understand. Pompey, his staff, and all of his cavalry had abandoned the fight. They were riding at full gallop in the direction of Cordoba.

Nearly an hour before, Caesar had sent Legio V against Gnaeus Pompey’s two legionary camps. These were set close together and fortified with an outer ditch and an encircling palisade. Outnumbered two-to-one, Caesar had to count on darkness and uncertainty. Sentries raised the alarm the moment Caesar’s men broke from cover, but it was still too dark to know the full extent of the attack; this meant Pompey’s legionaries spread across the camp to defend it, as military protocol dictates. Caesar, however, had concentrated his force at the east gate. When that gate fell less than a quarter of an hour after the initial attack, Pompey’s legions might still have prevailed. They had the numbers to overwhelm our men, but again darkness and uncertainty proved the deciding factor. And the western plain was temptingly open.

Pompey and his officers took off first. Then the cavalry departed. After that, the legionaries began stealing away. Soon a general panic flooded the plain with infantry. Through all this Caesar waited. He wanted the enemy combatants to believe they had found safe passage. When they were confident the way was clear, they began running without regard for their units or any kind of military formation. Only then did Caesar give the order to chase them down.

Caesar’s cavalry came out of the east, riding through the mist of a winter dawn. We came out of the west, five hundred cavalry bearing down on the vanguard of ten thousand infantry caught in the clutches of panic. When they saw us, Pompey’s men had no place to turn, nor any chance of fighting as infantry do. Making matters worse, there were only a few officers left. A centurion here and there formed men into a knot of resistance, but these were like tiny islets in a raging stream.

The first men we encountered threw down their weapons and raised their arms. As per our orders we killed them where they stood. Then we went after the rest. It was wanton slaughter with the aim of demoralising Pompey’s less determined allies, but in my innocence it seemed only a great sport. I rode with the same men who had tumbled me from my horse so often I had thought they hated me, but that day we covered each other exactly as we were taught to do in a rout.

Two horsemen would flank a man on the run, one to hold him from breaking away, the second to pierce him with a spear. This need not be a mortal blow, only enough to take him down and keep him there. This is best done, as we had been taught, in the lower back at about the kidneys. Once a man was no longer running, our infantry could follow up at its leisure and finish him off.

Sometimes the enemy did not even see us coming; sometimes, at the last moment, they turned to fight. A few legionaries carried spears, which made them more formidable; most possessed only a sword. When the enemy went low in the hope of cutting the legs of our horses we simply spread out a few paces. This forced a man to commit to one rider or the other. That meant he had to turn his back on one of us.

The only real danger came from slowing down and making a fight of it. That presented others with a chance at our backs, and these men were understandably desperate enough to leap upon our mounts from behind. I saw it happen to a young cadet. I knew his name in those days, but the years have taken it from me. An enemy combatant mounted his horse from behind and slit his throat before he even understood his mistake. I thought to chase the fellow who did it, but my companion roared at me to stay with him. We turned at once and found another.

If someone gave us even a moment of resistance we raced on and found easier prey. That left the man to deal with our infantry or perhaps even escape. No matter. We had orders to kill as many as possible, and there were plenty to find. When it was over, six thousand enemy casualties littered the plain. Even then Caesar was not finished. He sent the Larks to kill every enemy still breathing and then to identify Pompey’s fallen officers, any corpse at or above the rank of a centurion. The heads of these men he ordered impaled on stakes that soon enough decorated the ramparts of Oculbo’s city wall.

There was no rest that day, despite our victory. The infantry secured and fortified the camps they had attacked that morning; the cavalry began reconnoitring the region, more to discover other forces than to hunt down those who had escaped. That night, after our sentries were picked from Pedius’s forces, Legio V, the cavalry of Legio X, and our Spanish allies occupied Pompey’s camps. Caesar and his staff claimed one of the great houses inside the city.

In a celebratory mood we ate well, drank plentifully, and slept the night through in tents. It was our first full night of sleep in a fortnight. Next morning Caesar ordered his forces to feast and relax the whole day through. The necessary scouting and patrol duties fell to Pedius’s forces. Locals, commandeered for hard duty, cleared the plain of the dead.

Once it was obvious Gnaeus Pompey had no intention of returning in force, Caesar set about rewarding his Larks. By that I mean he brought in women. These were not commandeered like the burial details. Bad business that, especially when a general is trying to recruit allies. No, he scoured the ports and cities and hired any female, slave or free, willing to join us in our camps. No obligations other than to come and drink and eat; they earned a sack of coins for their troubles. Naturally there was more to be earned for those willing to sell themselves. There were no virgins or wives and quite a few were up for rough trade as long as it paid, but others were young widows who came for the chance to find a husband. The money for this, as Caesar made sure we knew, came from Pompey’s camp payroll, which we had just seized. It was Gnaeus Pompey’s party, in other words.

Such was the generalship of Julius Caesar. He demanded the impossible from his men and got it; afterwards he rewarded them with the extravagance of an oriental potentate. I believe on the fourth or fifth day of our luxury, the women departed, though more than a few of them settled in the city, now the wives of Gauls.

Even after we had returned to our soldierly duties we continued to eat well on Pompey’s stores and livestock, and we drank like men on leave, so that our mornings started slowly. But we had earned it, and Caesar knew to give his men their ease after the march they had endured for his sake.

A fortnight after our battle, the first cohorts of Legio X arrived, along with the full baggage train of Legio V. Within a month the remainder of Legio X, the
Equestris
as they called themselves, arrived in the company of Legio III and VI, the
Gallica
and
Ferrata
. Those cohorts of the
Equestris
which had stayed at Marseille until they took the city joined the fleet as it sailed south along the Iberian coast. Among the officers travelling with these legions was the commander of Caesar’s cavalry, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, my patron.

On orders from Caesar, cohorts of the legions began working inland. Caesar meant to take the fight to Pompey and kept the pressure on through the winter months. He employed his most senior officers, however, in the recruitment and training of another four legions of auxiliary infantry. From Africa, just across the straits, he summoned those same allies who had helped him finish off the last of the senate’s forces the year before. Caesar’s friends in Numidia shipped horsemen across by the thousands.

My training now concluded, I joined Dolabella’s staff at the rank of a junior tribune of the auxiliaries. Whereas cohorts of the legions were attacking and securing positions in the countryside surrounding Oculbo, Dolabella’s cavalry penetrated enemy territory far to the west. For over two months I was second-in-command to some three hundred cavalry recruits as we took the fight to Pompeian sympathizers in the countryside around Seville.

It was at this time I met Marcus Ulpius Traianus – Trajan. He was a wealthy eques living outside Seville and purportedly indifferent to Roman politics. In fact, Trajan was a Caesarean who happily provided us with a great deal of useful intelligence. With it we were able to intercept enemy couriers, rob payroll shipments, and set fire to enemy towns, farms, mines, and granaries.

We lived as highwaymen do, hidden away in mountain camps, never in one place for more than a few days. We ran couriers to Oculbo once a week, but got nothing in return by way of orders. Our job was to find targets of value and either seize or destroy them. By the time Dolabella called me back to Oculbo in late February, I considered myself an accomplished officer. In fact, I was more outlaw than soldier. Enough of one at any rate that I resented my return to military discipline.

My resentment lasted right up to the point Dolabella appointed me senior tribune to a cohort of his cavalry. These were all fresh recruits from the Pyrenees, murderously efficient men who had lately come to Caesar’s side. I was astonished by my sudden promotion, for I had not yet turned twenty and was only one step below a prefecture. But this was the way it went in Caesar’s army. Officers in love with war did not languish in the lower ranks.

I don’t think Dolabella anticipated any radical changes in strategy when Caesar ordered his staff to report to him one fine winter morning in early March. This occurred only days after I had assumed my new responsibilities as a senior tribune. There was too much to be done in the countryside for new orders to make any sense. We were still actively recruiting men-at-arms. Gnaeus Pompey waited with thirteen legions forty miles southwest of Oculbo, but he was showing no interest in advancing against us, and unless he did so everyone expected we would face him in late summer, when our forces might begin to approach parity.