The Horse Changer (5 page)

Most of the senior officers assumed that Caesar wanted to discuss the possibility of sending more cohorts to Cordoba. In that city the younger of the two Pompey brothers, twenty-year-old Sextus Pompey, was putting up more fight than anyone expected. So long as Cordoba remained in enemy hands, Caesar was incapable of moving against Gnaeus Pompey’s thirteen legions. At least that was the thinking of men who knew anything about military campaigns.

Dolabella did not generally bring all of his tribunes to staff meetings, but it was customary for a senior officer to have an escort of a tribune or two, and that morning it fell to me to join him. I heard Caesar’s voice within his office as we waited with several other officers in the atrium of his house. He was ordering ships sent out to make a search. For what or whom I could not fathom. This I knew: there was urgency in the matter. A moment later I saw one of his staff leaving his office. A voice that was not Caesar’s called to the steward, who then escorted our party into Caesar’s office.

I had seen Caesar frequently on our six-hundred-mile march from Narbonne to Oculbo. He often sat on his horse at the side of the road as we jogged by. Whenever he saw a man he knew, centurion, optio, decurion, or legionary, he would call to the fellow by name, taking the tone of an old friend. He generally liked to play with the fellow’s pride and asked if Caesar led an army of men or pansies. On other occasions, when he could see we were all close to exhaustion, Caesar promised gold and women when our march had finished. He swore on Jupiter’s Stone he could smell both coming on the breeze out of the south. Other times he would be frank with the fellow he addressed. ‘A few more days of it, friend,’ he would say, ‘and we’ll repay those bastards for all our suffering!’ Curiously, I had never seen Caesar except astride his horse. My first impression of the great man dismounted was more than a little disconcerting. In his headquarters he looked to me like an old man dressed up in a general’s uniform. I believe he was fifty-five that winter.

Caesar was completely bald. I had not noticed this previously because of the helmet he wore. His dark leathery skin was wrinkled, close to ruin from an active life lived outdoors. His eyelids were so hooded one could hardly see his eyes. In his youth Caesar had been handsome; I had seen his image so often I thought he must still be that fellow, but no, he was mortal after all.

Caesar stood up from his desk at our entry. There were some twenty officers in our party; fewer than a half-dozen of these men were actually important. The rest of us were there to observe the protocols of command and learn how Rome fought her wars. Caesar had already started toward us with a greeting when he stopped suddenly. ‘Octavian?’

He spoke hesitantly, with a shadow of anger in his tone. To my astonishment he was looking past the legates, focusing on the back row. In fact, I was quite certain he was looking at me. My expression told him all he needed to know. I had no idea what he was talking about. Caesar seemed to shake himself out of his trance. ‘By the gods, lad, I thought you were my nephew Octavian.’ The officers parted as Caesar signalled me to come forward. He wanted a better look, if only to be sure.

‘Quintus Dellius, Caesar,’ Dolabella said. ‘One of our tribunes.’

‘Well, Quintus Dellius,’ Caesar answered, ‘I can see the differences in a better light, but as you stood in the shadows you seemed the very image of Octavian. I thought that rascal had come sneaking in to surprise me.’

‘No word of his fate?’ one of the legates asked.

Caesar looked at the man with the courage of a relative who fears the worse. ‘It is still possible he is detained somewhere needing to repair his ship. I am sending the fleet to look for him.’ Caesar shook his head, suddenly furious. ‘He insisted on manning his own ship with young men loyal to him. Even the ship’s captain was no better than a boy.’

‘Marcus Agrippa, wasn’t it?’ Dolabella asked.

‘A bright lad,’ Caesar answered with a distracted nod of his head. ‘A raging bull in a fight. Still, he’s only a lad. I wish I had forbidden it. They were taking off a week behind the rest of the army because they were waiting for Maecenas to cross from Greece. I’ll wager whatever you like Octavian thought to arrive before the fleet by sailing due west for Corsica. From there straight to the Balearic Islands. At that age I would have done the same. Arrive a fortnight before everyone else and greet our ships as they sailed into the harbour!’

‘From Corsica to the Balearic Islands is three hundred miles of open sea.’ This was muttered by another of the legates. Caesar nodded miserably, this time not daring to meet the fellow’s gaze. Better than most men Caesar knew the dangers of open water.

Caesar had called his legates together for the purpose of arranging an immediate advance on Gnaeus Pompey’s position in the south. The idea caught even his closest advisers unprepared. The countryside was not yet pacified. Our forces were not up to strength. Worse still, the siege at Cordoba had bogged down. By waiting until summer Caesar might perhaps find himself in a better position to advance.

Caesar gave his officers the chance to protest because he could see they were distraught. All the same, he was unmoved by their arguments. He told them frankly, ‘I do not have the luxury of waiting for summer. If I am still in Andalusia in three months my enemies in Rome will take advantage of my absence.’

‘Surely Mark Antony can control the situation.’

‘Antony has trouble enough controlling himself. Only Caesar can quiet those wolves, and even Caesar cannot be in two places at once.’

The seriousness of the situation seemed to settle over the room. Finally, one of the legates answered. ‘Surely you are not anxious to engage Pompey in open battle?’

‘I am, actually.’ Caesar smiled as he said this, though it was not a pretty smile. ‘More to the point,’ he added, ‘with thirteen legions at his command, I expect Pompey will be eager to take the field. Otherwise he might be tempted to force us to tear down walls to get at him.’

‘And what about Cordoba?’ another of the legates asked. ‘Caesar surely does not intend to leave a powerful army at his back.’

‘We have Sextus Pompey contained. Let’s destroy Gnaeus Pompey’s legions and then see how much fight is left in the younger brother. My question for you, friends, is how soon can we get our legions to Ronda?’

With cohorts of every legion scattered over hundreds of miles the question was not easily answered, but soon enough a consensus formed. Eight weeks, sometime in early May. Caesar shook his head. That was not good enough. Revised estimates followed: a fortnight, ten days, a week at the absolute minimum.

‘A week it is,’ Caesar declared.

And so it came to be that Caesar prepared to advance against an enemy nearly twice the size of his own army, leaving open sedition in his wake and an enemy force encamped some forty miles behind him. I had never doubted Caesar in my life. He was the paragon of a fighting man, a genius at war; but seeing the faces of his legates that morning I felt a chill of uncertainty. Had the old fellow lost his wits? Even I could see that Caesar was courting every kind of disaster with his impatience.

But Caesar did that to men. They would follow him happily to the gates of hell. They were charmed by his manner, mad for him even, but there was always a moment when he defied reason and wilfully broke every principle of war. Then even those who loved him balked. No matter. He pushed his men through gates they had thought were impossible to pass. More than his skill in directing a battle, this taking men to their very limits was Caesar’s ultimate talent; this occasion was only one more in a long list. So we began packing for the march as our cohorts came streaming into our camp over the next few days.

As for Caesar’s missing nephew, Octavian, I gave that poor fellow hardly a second thought. I had no time to worry about him. Truth is I soon forgot his name. Why not? I counted him lost at sea. There were so many casualties of war in those days one grew used to hearing about death. Even Caesar’s kin were not immune. But of course our precious Octavian was far from finished with the worries of this world.

Ronda, which Romans generally refer to as Munda, was a fortress town fifty years ago. It lay midway between Oculbo and Cordoba forty miles to the south. The way there was mountainous and hard going. Before the town lay a great undulating plain leading up to a nest of high rocks, where the city stood. With steep ravines at his back and covering his flanks, young Gnaeus Pompey had picked his site with care. Caesar might come at him in force from only one direction. Pompey had meat, grain and fresh water in abundance. More importantly he had time. Caesar was the one desperate for battle. Caesar had spent the winter fighting skirmishes, taking towns, and negotiating with potential allies. None of the fighting had value except as it persuaded certain wavering allies to commit fully to him. What really mattered was defeating Pompey’s army at Ronda. All the rest was propaganda.

We arrived on the broad plain below the fortress in the early afternoon of the Ides of March and proceeded to build eight interconnected legionary camps. These Caesar fortified with a staked ditch and high palisade. I was not privy to Caesar’s battle plan; I only knew that Dolabella’s cavalry was supposed to wait in reserve with our forces spread out evenly before the ditch. When called forward, we might come in smaller units and be expected to support a folding line. If the battle was going well we might arrive in force, hoping to break through the enemy line at its weakest point. At the start, however, our only job was to wait. This allowed me the chance to watch Caesar’s army take the field.

Caesar anchored his line with Legio X at the far right wing, where he would fight as well. This legion Caesar trusted beyond all others, and they loved Caesar as men love their fathers. Why not? He had turned them all into heroes with his book,
Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul
. What man, once named and lauded for his courage in a famous book, can ever back down from a fight? No, he will die before he will run. The same as Caesar would do. Leaving aside Dolabella’s reserve cavalry, Caesar amassed five thousand horsemen evenly at either end of the line. When the army had settled into formation, each legion was clearly marked out on the field. Eight legions, each with its own reserve cohorts behind it.

After his army had formed for battle Caesar rode across the frontline. We could see Caesar’s scarlet cloak even from our camp. Caesar’s inspection was a leisurely one. He called out to men in every legion, officers and infantry alike. As I learned later, he made light of the high ground Pompey commanded. He said when a man has filled his army with slaves and untried boys they’ve only enough courage to run downhill. He also made the point that their great numbers meant Pompey had plenty of gold in his camp to pay them. ‘That’s our gold, friends!’

When he had finished his survey, Caesar took his position with the cavalry on the right flank, just behind Legio X. An hour passed, and Pompey still remained in his camps. After that Legio X started with the catcalls. Soon enough some of the more animated fellows began running out before their frontline. Turning their backs to the rebel camp, they lifted their tunics to expose their arses.

When it was clear that Pompey’s son had no intention of coming out that day, Caesar ordered the flagmen to signal the legions to return to camp. They formed their lines again, grew quiet, and left the field with the good cheer of men who haven’t played the cowards. As for the talk that evening, it was uniformly in praise of Gnaeus Pompey. The lad had finally looked at Caesar’s legions and resisted the impulse to run away.

Next morning, Caesar’s army spilled out across the plain again exactly as before. As on the previous morning, Gnaeus Pompey remained behind his palisade while we formed for battle. I thought he might refuse to fight again, but once Caesar’s army was in place, Pompey ordered his army to the field.

With thirteen legions, Pompey’s fighting men numbered well over sixty thousand infantry. In addition to these men, he enjoyed another six thousand cavalrymen. This against Caesar’s thirty-five thousand infantry and eight thousand horse. Using his numbers to advantage, Pompey’s legions spread across the plain with reserve lines twice as deep as those of Caesar’s legions.