Fronto frowned for a moment and then slowly a possible explanation dawned on him. Some time ago, in camp, Bucephalus had encountered a snake in the grass. The hissing reptile had terrified the great black horse, who had thundered off to the far side of the paddock to get away. When Fronto had laughed and told the equisio, the man had shrugged and replied that most horses didn’t like snakes, and that Bucephalus’ panic was far from unusual.
Could it be the hissing? The drawn-out S in mid-chant? Certainly there was a growing wave of nervousness among the horses, and it rose exponentially as the chanting neared fever-pitch. It was one of the strangest, and yet grandest sights Fronto had ever witnessed on the battlefield. The chanting legionaries, their rhythmic devotion now so loud that it suppressed almost all other noises, moved among the Pompeian horse and killing like wildfire. Horses and riders fell with every heartbeat, and Fronto could almost see the depletion of the massive cavalry force happening. Their numbers had been drastically reduced and continued to be so. Now, even if they managed somehow to regroup and push through the spear men, they would be unlikely to have adequate strength to turn the flank. Labienus had failed, no matter what happened next.
As Fronto grinned his victory, he spotted the enemy commander once more, Labienus in his red cloak rising above the press, his face a stony visage of hate. He clearly also knew that he had lost.
Fronto watched, hawklike, his old friend and current adversary. Labienus raked his irritated gaze across the sea of men and snarled. For just a moment he locked eyes with Fronto, and his brow furrowed. Then the man turned in his saddle, red cloak hanging limp in the summer heat, and gestured several times to his musician. Moments later the call echoed out across the cavalry. Labienus had signalled the retreat. It was all his riders needed. As though they had only been waiting for permission, the entire Pompeian cavalry exploded in panic, wheeling their horses in the press and pushing for open ground.
Fronto was impressed with just how quickly the rout happened once it began. He wondered whether it was a symptom of having tried to form so many disparate peoples into one tactical unit, but unlike the orderly withdrawal of Galronus’ cavalry so recently, Labienus’ horse simply bolted as fast as they could, every man out for himself and racing for freedom. By the time the bulk were clear of the spear-wielding legionaries, they had spread out like wildlife fleeing a conflagration. They swarmed away in the direction of the hills and their own camp, to the north-west and a great cry of triumph rose in successively noisy waves from the victorious legionaries, replacing the chanting of their general’s name.
The last detail Fronto saw of the Pompeian cavalry was Labienus, roaring his anger at his men for fleeing so ridiculously and not forming a careful withdrawal. The commander suddenly realised that he was largely unprotected and that Fronto’s spearmen were hurtling towards him, and he too, wheeled his horse and raced off, musicians and personal guard alongside and following on behind.
Pompey’s entire cavalry had fled the field.
In a strange parody of their own action, the next line of Pompey’s forces became visible as the cavalry fled, just as Fronto’s men had appeared when Galronus’ cavalry had pulled away. There were two important differences between the two scenes, though. Firstly, while Fronto’s men had been a complete shock, and a dreadful one, for the waiting cavalry, Fronto had been expecting this. It was a standard tactic and the obvious play to follow the cavalry’s attempt to turn the flank. Once Pompey’s horse had destroyed Caesar’s they could move into the poorly defended rear and begin smashing the Caesarian legions and, with the auxilia following on in support, arrows would then begin to rake the Tenth. A good plan, but only if the cavalry succeeded, because the other difference lay in the horse. While Labienus’ riders were now fleeing en-masse for their camp, Galronus had stopped at the edge of the field, and there re-formed his remaining half thousand riders.
The Pompeian auxiliaries did not know what to do, the entire battle plan having failed before their eyes. For a moment, they looked as though they would charge Fronto’s men, and in fact some of the archer units among them did pause to release a rather paltry flurry of missiles. But they were dithering, uncertain of whether to press on despite the failure of the cavalry and hope for a miracle, or whether to flee and by doing so more or less consign Pompey’s entire army to the funeral pyre. It was not a position Fronto would have revelled in occupying, for sure.
Their decision was made suddenly as, with a whoop of fury, Galronus and his horse put heel to flank and raced back onto the field of battle, fresh and recovered and making directly for those lightly armoured Pompeian auxiliaries on the flank. Still they dithered for precious moments and, with that, sealed their doom.
Fronto shouted his orders and the musician relayed the commands. His spearmen-legionaries began once more to form into their cohorts, and he was impressed to discover that he had not lost much more than a quarter of his men, even against such a massively superior force. May the gods bless Caesar, Antonius and Galronus for their tactical insight, although Fronto allowed himself something of a quiet smug smile in the knowledge that whoever had planned such a thing, it had been Fronto that had carried it to its conclusion in the field.
The enemy auxiliaries began to pull back, their command devolved to individual prefects and their professionalism therefore showing through better than the mass debacle that had been the cavalry. In fact, Fronto was impressed. Rather than break and flee, despite the clear fact that death rode whooping at them, they retreated in good order, the infantry units shifting to protect the archers in the withdrawal.
It was professional, and nicely done, but it was too little and too late. Galronus’ cavalry hit them like a brick against old plaster, dashing them to pieces. The auxilia simply disintegrated. A unit of spearmen tried their best, pausing in the withdrawal to create a hedge of spears that would deter horses, but the cavalry, victory in their grasp, simply rode past, ignoring them, and then over and through units of swordsmen and archers, pulverising and mashing bodies beneath hooves and hacking and hewing with blades. The enemy’s orderly withdrawal lasted perhaps fifty heartbeats before it too became a rout, each man running for whatever perceived safety he clapped eyes upon.
As the cavalry carved their way mercilessly through the auxilia, and Fronto’s infantry reserve began to run along the periphery, supporting them and making a push for Pompey’s own flank, the Tenth Legion roared their approval and their own struggle against Pompey’s infantry redoubled in intensity, strengthened in the knowledge that not only had Pompey failed to flank them, but it would appear that that was exactly what was about to happen in reverse.
The ebb and flow of battle had changed. It had become a tide, and that tide was flowing Pompey’s way. Cut off from all allies, that single unit of Pompeian spear men who had formed up against cavalry took one look at Fronto’s roaring cohorts pounding towards them and broke, fleeing off to the north, into the only open space left to them, escaping the field of battle.
For the briefest of moments, Fronto considered giving chase. It was bad strategy in general to allow an intact enemy unit to survive behind you, but three things decided him against the idea. Firstly, given the way things were going, the rest of Pompey’s northern edge would soon begin to disintegrate, and no competent commander would take his unit back into that mess without good reason. Secondly, the battle teetered in the balance. They had won out on the northern flanks against massive odds, but they were still outnumbered by Pompey’s infantry and any lag in momentum now might give Pompey time to rally and change the situation, so Fronto had to press on behind the cavalry. And thirdly it was clear, at the very least from the dark swarthy skin tones of the fleeing spearmen, that they had come from some distant eastern land, perhaps even Arabia, and their commitment to any Roman cause would be very easily shaken and broken. It was extremely unlikely, while it looked like Pompey was going to lose, that they would commit to his support any further.
Dismissing them as no lo
nger important, Fronto kept his eyes ahead. Galronus and his cavalry had made minced meat of the auxiliary. Those who were not lying on the ground with dreadful sword wounds or covered in hoof prints and with pulverised bones, were running as fast as their legs could carry them. It mattered not where, so long as they were away from the dreadful Caesarian cavalry or the vicious legionary spear men even now thundering towards them.
They had done it. They had withstood the hammer of Pompey’s vast cavalry and then broken them, and followed up by shattering the enemy’s auxiliary reserve. The main struggle of the battle still raged along a two mile front across the plain of Pharsalus, but the opening to a most unlikely victory lay ahead now. Pompey’s flank was bare, and racing towards it were five hundred murderous horsemen and fifteen hundred exultant legionaries. Wars had been won on less.
The flank was theirs and, if they played the next moves right, so was the battle.
Chapter 23
The auxiliary units – or what was left of them after Galronus’ cavalry rode through them anyway – melted away from the battlefield in moments, and Fronto could now see only the flank of the Pompeians. The din of battle had given way, as the action on the northern edge of the field unfolded, to a surge of victorious cheers from the Caesarian legions, even as they continued to fight a superior enemy. A quick glance back across at their own lines made it clear to Fronto that the general was capitalising on the change in fortune across the field. Signals blared out, followed by choruses of whistles, and the third line marched forwards. As they filtered with relative ease through the spacious Caesarian formations, they fell into the front lines, hacking and stabbing and barging, fresh and energetic even as the tired former front liners fell back through the press to take up a relief position at the rear.
Pompey’s flank lay open.
Gods, but they had a chance now.
Fronto could see the men of the First Legion lined up, three ranks compacted, each one having taken their turn at the front, all tired. And now that they were exposed to danger, the centurions were blowing shrill calls, urging their optios to re-form the legion. Men were turning to create a flanking shield wall in a desperate attempt to preserve their lines.
Fronto turned to the men marching alongside him. Grim expressions of determination filled every face. This was perhaps the worst aspect of the war: the men awaiting them had once been allies. Friends, even. At Alesia, the greatest battle any man could ever know, the veterans among these soldiers had fought alongside the First, the consular legion that had then returned to Rome and to Pompey’s hand and now stood arrayed against them. Many of Fronto’s men would have shared wine and a joke with those gleaming eyes that hunkered down behind shields.
It mattered not. The men of Caesar’s legion had pushed aside all traces of sentimentality in that desperate press of horses. Fronto’s own gaze strayed further still. Behind the enemy lines would be the senior officers. Somewhere was Labienus, who had raced away at the rear of his cavalry. Would he have fled back to camp with the horse? Fronto somehow doubted it. He would stay and fight, no matter how bitter the struggle became. But also, somewhere out there was Pompey – the prize for all of them. The capture of the opposing general would not only signal the end of the battle, but the close of this entire war, for if Pompey fell, who might the senate be able to persuade to stand and command in his place?
Miraculously, Fronto saw him then. Far off, out on the plain some distance back from the First Legion, a grand figure on horseback who could only be Pompey. As Fronto watched in growing incredulity, that single figure trotted his steed further and further from the lines, several other officers and his personal guard joining him, and then, in a move as unexpected as it was pathetic, the great general ripped free his red cloak and let it fall to the ground. The symbol of his command of the army, fluttering down to the dust. In a heartbeat the general who had routed them at Dyrrachium and who had stymied Caesar at every turn was on the run. With his cronies and a detachment of his praetorian guard, Pompey raced away to the northwest.
There was a groan of dismay from the rear ranks of the First and Third, the two closest legions, but otherwise the fighting went on with no pause in intensity. It would take precious time for word of their general’s cowardly departure to reach them and even then, if they were good, solid legions as the First and Third had been, their commanders would keep them fighting.
But it was another blow. Their great weapon, the cavalry wing that was supposed to win them the battle, had failed dismally. Now their general had fled the field in disgrace with his staff, leaving the legions to fight on in his absence. Their morale had to be faltering, dipping to an almost critical level, especially with so many green, untried troops in their lines. One more failure could be enough to end it all.
There were veteran units among the Pompeian army, though. On the far flank were those men who had fled Hispania and joined their former commanders Afranius and Petreius. These would be good, solid soldiers – the ones they’d faced at Ilerda and others from Further Hispania. And at the centre were the Syrian legions brought west by Scipio. And then, of course, on the northern flank were the First and Third. If just one of these bulwarks of professionalism were to collapse, it would likely be the end of the army as a whole.
Ahead, he could see now that Galronus had brought his cavalry in at an angle and was adopting the time-honoured tactic of harrying the enemy at speed. Those men who had retained their spears prepared to use them. Skipping the first two ranks of the legion, the cavalry turned and angled in towards the third, who were already shaken by the disappearance of their cavalry and auxiliary support and the flight of their general from the field. Their confidence would be wavering critically now.
As he and his men veered off to move against the second rank, Fronto watched his friend’s force. As the cavalry pounded in, they formed a column two riders wide. The stratagem was well-chosen, and better than any wedge or Cantabrian wheel. Galronus had carefully organised his men and the first dozen or so pairs were the ones still bearing spears. With the expert skill of veterans, they cast their missiles as they neared the enemy and then peeled away to the sides, the next men coming forwards and casting their spears, veering off and so on.
At the heart of the hastily-formed legionary shield wall in the third rank, the spears did their job, punching through shields and men alike and creating a crucial gap. Then as the spears ran out those men who’d already cast theirs or lost them earlier in the fray, with swords drawn, raced into the hole their companions had made, driving into the legionary lines where they began to hack down at the soldiers in the tight press. It was terribly dangerous work for the cavalry, who would be easy targets for the infantry, but Galronus had two advantages. Firstly they were deep in a thick press of men, for Pompey’s ranks were in tight formation unlike Caesar’s, which meant that there was little room for the men below to effectively wield a sword, while the cavalry had open space above to hammer down with their blades. Secondly, morale among the legion was at its lowest possible ebb and more soldiers were concerned with pushing through their mates away from the horsemen than attempting to take out the riders among them.
As it had been ever since Galronus’ signal, the critical factor now remained pushing forwards, delivering blow after blow not only to the physical forces before them, but also to their spirits. Given the continued horrible odds that outweighed Caesar’s army, they had to break the enemy before they could hope to beat them in combat, and each blow to their spirits brought them a touch closer to that moment. If this went on for much longer, Galronus and his horsemen would be cut down and the legion would recover.
Bellowing incomprehensible shouts, Fronto and his cohorts hit the side-facing shield wall flank of the First. He could only imagine the bafflement and worry among the enemy, for the legionaries attacking them bore no shields, barring one or two who had taken shields from their Pompeian cavalry victims, half of them gripping sword and dagger, the other half carrying bloodied spears
.
Fronto had given no commands, for he had no idea what tactics might be successful in such unprecedented, peculiar circumstances. Moreover, he had given no encouragement to his men, who had needed none, for their blood was up and nothing short of a stone rampart was going to stop them now.
His cohorts simply waded into the First, those with spears using them expertly, jabbing them into any gap between shields they could find, certain of a wound delivered in the press of men. Screams echoed along the line, and the swordsmen capitalised on those small gaps created by the victims of the spears. In any other fight, the front man, when he fell, would be replaced with a man from the second line shuffling forwards. It was an old and serviceable system. But not when this was the flank and those men behind were as often as not facing another direction and trying to feed the front line against the Tenth. Their formations and careful lines began to disintegrate immediately, for no square block of men can feed a shield wall to both front and left simultaneously without confusion reigning and gaps inevitably opening up.
Fronto grinned and, with a brief prayer to Fortuna, threw himself into the nearest gap.
He could feel the atmosphere in the First Legion even as he pushed his way in among them. They were broken. Their morale had drained away and every man there knew the day was lost. They only fought on through a strange combination of ingrained professionalism and the discipline of their centurions, who were still driving them on, continually exhorting them to battle.
Fronto let go of his need to command and control and threw all his concentration and spirit into the blade in his right hand, proving once more that age need be no barrier to a soldier if he kept up his physique and training. That being said, once or twice he felt his knee going in the press and was forced to pause and recover, men from his cohorts clustering around him unbidden, keeping him from the worst of dangers in the press. Then, mere moments later he was up and fighting again, his sword parrying with bone-quivering metallic grating noises, stabbing into flesh and iron and painted wood.
Marius' Mules XI: Tides of War Page 34
