‘If he’s done, why do we still chase him, sir?’ Hirtius put in.
Fronto answered for the general. ‘Command or no command, Pompey is a powerful symbol and there are men who are still fanatically loyal to him. He might have given up his command of this army, but men like Ahenobarbus or Afranius will be up there trying to gather the legions back together and form a new command, and there are men like Attius in Africa with an army of his own, too. As long as Pompey is at large, he can be used to rally men against us. Legions don’t care about the needs and desires of senators like Cato, but if those men speak through great successful generals like Pompey, the armies will listen and obey. We have to stop Pompey as well as his legions and senior officers. And if we don’t do so here, it’ll come back to bite us on the arse somewhere down the line.’
He turned to Caesar. ‘Which leads me to my next question. If Pompey’s not here, and he’s not on that hill, then where in the name of Hades is he?’
‘A good question indeed. He needs to retreat to somewhere where he is still in favour.’
The officers spent a short while searching the rooms in a fruitless attempt to ascertain what it was Pompey had taken, in the hope that it might provide some sort of clue, though in the end the answer came from an entirely different source. The main door of the tent swung inwards and Ingenuus dipped inside.
‘Sir?’
‘What is it?’
‘Pompey’s been spotted, sir.’
The officers broke off their search in an instant, turning and paying sudden attention. ‘What?’
‘Pompey has been cornered by our scouts with some of his praetorians near the north gate.’
‘Come,’ Caesar said simply, and hurried from the tent, mounting his horse with an agility that belied his age.
* * *
It was clear from the moment the officers rounded the corner of a huge tent complex and were treated to a view of the sloping northern reaches of the massive camp that the incident, such as it was, was over. A small group of men were gathered in a cluster near the north gate, but though one was clearly holding aloft a Pompeian standard, they were definitely men of Caesar’s legions, with no blue scarves, and instead the bull motif on their shields.
The officers, the wind somewhat knocked from their sails, slowed to a walk as they neared the scene. There had been a short but very vicious conflict here. Half a dozen of Pompey’s guard lay dead, one with a spear rising like a flag pole from his back. Their standard was clearly the one now being handled by a soldier from the Ninth. But alongside the six dead Pompeians several dozen scouts.
‘Pompey?’ the general prompted as they stopped.
The legionary with the standard looked up and saluted. ‘Gone, sir. He’d gone by the time we got here.’
The officers moved across to the gate nearby and peered out. Far off, to the left, they could see the beaten legions of the Pompeian army gathering on the high hill top. To the right, some of Caesar’s scouts had just taken a small lookout station from the enemy. And ahead…
Pompey was on the road north, along with perhaps thirty horsemen. They were already some distance away, though Fronto noted with some excitement a detachment of Gallic cavalry cutting across the slope in pursuit.
‘We might get him yet,’ Fronto murmured.
‘No,’ said a familiar voice nearby, and he turned to see Galronus on his horse, one leg soaked crimson to the boot, the thigh wrapped tight.
‘You alright?’
‘I’ll live,’ Galronus replied quietly. ‘But Pompey’s gone.’
‘Your men?’
‘They’ll not catch him. My riders and their mounts are all exhausted after the battle while Pompey and his guard just sat at the back throughout, so they’re well rested. They have the edge and my men simply will not be able to keep up with them.’
Caesar nodded. ‘You are correct, of course. And Pompey makes towards Larissa where he still has some control. He will find succour, aid and supplies there. But he will not stay. He has no more military strength there. He must flee for now.’
‘Then we must catch him,’ Fronto said.
‘Yes, but not now. Firstly we must finish off his former army, accept their surrender and deal with their commanders. We cannot afford to chase Pompey and leave an enemy force behind us with the freedom to recover and rebuild. We will follow Pompey, and before this season is at an end. But first: the legions.’
Fronto could not tear his eyes from that rapidly disappearing group of horsemen, though.
‘Where will he go? Back to Dyrrachium?’
‘No,’ Caesar replied with a sigh. ‘His fleet disintegrated and he brought the bulk of his forces from there to Pharsalus. He has no power any more in Illyricum, and it is too close to lands loyal to us.’
‘Then Africa.’
‘Perhaps. But not directly. He dare not travel west. But the lands to the east will likely still owe him loyalty. My wager would be Asia. Or Syria perhaps. He will travel swiftly and put a sea between himself and us, for he knows we cannot transport the entire army across water quickly. No, we deal with his legions here, rest and consolidate, and then we will follow Pompey and then, Fronto, you can be my terrier once more and root out the man for me.’
Fronto sagged. Caesar had taken his wish to pursue as a personal desire to hunt the man. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Pompey could still cause trouble, yet Fronto would happily let the man go. He had agreed, though, despite everything, to command legions for Caesar until they had beaten Pompey and brought order once more to the republic. With Pompey in their grasp, the notion that he might be able to sail west and see Lucilia and his sons had felt real and close. Now, watching that rider disappear north, he could feel that hope slipping away. He would not be going home yet. At least not until they had caught and finished Pompey.
* * *
They found Marcus Antonius sitting on a low spur, peering up at the hill. The legions of Pompey were massed up there, and their number still sufficient that they resembled an army of ants. The dependable officer had split his legions into individual cohorts and spread them out around the hill.
‘What news, Marcus?’ Caesar enquired as they arrived on the low rise.
‘We’re in the shit,’ Antonius replied.
‘Oh?’ Caesar said with a hint of disapproval. ‘How so?’
‘We have fewer men than them and I have a massive hill to surround. I considered simply marching up at them, but our men are tired, for all their enthusiasm, and the hill is steep. I fear we would lose, and that would be a poor result on the back of our recent victory. So attacking them is out as an option, I fear.’
‘But you’re surrounding them,’ Fronto noted, ‘and they can’t have much in the way of supplies. And no water source.’
‘Fronto, look how thinly we’re stretched. If that force up there suddenly decides to go for a drink at the river, then we’ll be hit by the better part of twenty five thousand men. Where along our lines do you think we’d hold them for more than a couple of heartbeats?’
Fronto nodded silently. The only reason Caesar’s army was still ascendant was because of morale. The opposition were tired and defeated and had not yet managed to rally their spirits. If they came together as an army once more, they would roll over the cohorts below in short order.
‘Then get them to work,’ Caesar said flatly.
‘What?’
‘Start siege lines. We did it in days at Alesia and this place is far smaller.’
Antonius stared at the general. ‘It’s also dryer, harder and rockier. And the men have just fought a battle.’
‘The men will appreciate having a rampart and palisade to stand behind if that army decides to, as you said, come down for a drink.’
Fronto looked up at the hill once more. This afternoon was going from bad to worse. From the extraordinary high point of having beaten a superior enemy in the field and achieving a phenomenal victory, they had lost the enemy’s general and with h
im Fronto’s hope for a quick resolution and a journey home before winter, and now the hill began to look more and more like Alesia. The last thing he wanted was to live through a repeat of a siege that had left him with years’ worth of nightmare fodder.
He chewed his lip. Their best hope was to keep the enemy at odds with one another so that they failed to come together as a force and turn upon Caesar’s legions once more. A smile spread slowly across his face. No, this was not Alesia, with a focused king like Vercingetorix and an army that shared one heart and one goal. This was an army in chaos and their one commanding figure had gone, leaving them as a force run by a committee.
‘Afranius and Petreus,’ he mused out loud.
‘Pardon?’ prompted Caesar.
‘What? Oh, I was thinking that this looked like a repeat of Alesia, and I think we all want to avoid a repeat of that nightmare. But now I think again, it’s more like Ilerda. More so, even, because some of the men up there were actually at Ilerda, and I think we might safely assume Afranius and Petreus to be up there among them.’
‘You are suggesting a disparity in their command?’ Caesar enquired, eyebrow arched.
‘Something like that. At Ilerda things were a mess for the enemy because those two couldn’t agree. This time there’s those two, but since we’ve found no sign of corpses, I think we can assume others like Cato and Scipio and Ahenobarbus to be there also. Imagine how difficult an agreed-upon course of action will be with those men.’
Caesar nodded. ‘We pressed Ilerda repeatedly and in concert. Eventually they broke and ran and we caught them only after some pursuit across the hills of the region.’
‘The same, I think, is going to happen here. They will not be able to gain enough focus to launch an assault. I think if you pressure them, they’ll break. And when they do they’ll go north, because that’s the only area they’re familiar with, and where they might find aid. And once they cross a small valley to the north they’re in the only damn range of hills to be found in this plain. We need to be ready in advance this time and not spend a month trailing them across the hills. We need to block them off each time they move, and you need to offer them a good deal.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You, Caesar. You need to reprise your famed clemency of the Italian campaign. You need to present them with an offer they cannot refuse.’
‘Fronto, that army has fought us in the field as an enemy. They should be disbanded, their eagles and standards confiscated, and they should be scattered across the republic in veteran colonies where they cannot hope to stand together once more. And as for their commanders…’
But Fronto was shaking his head. ‘No, sir. Most of those men were fighting for their officers and their eagles, because that is what a legionary does. They took an oath and they kept it. Make them take a new oath. Then they can keep that. Bind them to you. Offer them retirement or assimilation into our legions. The gods know how short of manpower we are. The Tenth has a nominal strength of near five thousand and we can’t in truth muster half that. There are still enemies to beat – in Africa if nowhere else. Bind those men to us.’
‘Though their commanders…’
‘Bind them to you also. Many of them are senators and could be our allies if we only play things right.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’
‘I am. And you know it. But we have to put enough pressure on them first to make them want to talk.’
And then, when the army here is finished, we can deal with Pompey.
His memory treated him momentarily to an image of Labienus racing away with the cavalry. Those units were drawn from various eastern allies and would even now be deserting back to their lands of origin. They would be no further trouble.
With luck he wouldn’t have to deal with Labienus, either.
Chapter 25
The hill, known locally as the ‘Priest’s Hill’ for some unknown reason, was an entirely different proposition to Alesia, as were the works being constructed around it. Alesia had been considerably larger, of course, calling for many more miles of siege works and while this place was only a minor hill, for all its rocky outcroppings and vertiginous slopes, the conditions were far less conducive to a siege. The ground was soft enough, as the plain itself was extensively farmed, but timber was just as hard to come by for Caesar’s army as it was for Pompey’s. It had taken less than six hours to depopulate the three copses they had located within a mile of the hill.
Still, though it took longer, especially with troops exhausted from a recent battle, they had at least begun a solid investiture of the hill. The rampart went up swiftly, built with the earth taken from the ditch. It was dry, dusty, filthy work, for this was arable land and not grass, so there was no good turf surface to apply to the rampart. Just dirt.
The scouts had done an excellent job over the day following the battle and into the next morning, checking the surroundings with a view to the changing situation. Fronto’s initial fears that the beaten army might spend a month leading their pursuers through hill country as they had at Ilerda turned out to be groundless. The small range of hills of which this was the southernmost stretched only a few short miles and then gave way to the flat plain once more. As long as the enemy could be kept on those hills, they would remain thirsty and trapped. And while they could move freely from hill to hill, the terrain made them slow in doing so, and even the most cautious of Caesar’s officers was content that they could easily outpace the enemy on the flat ground and keep them penned in. Thus it was that there was little urgency to the siege works, as long as they did the job of sealing off the enemy from the nearest water source, which they did admirably.
And while the legions worked with spirit and vim at starving the enemy on their hill, Galronus and his riders came into their own. The plains of Thessaly were prime cavalry terrain and the Remi noble and his men could move with impunity to any quarter in a short space of time. Scouts and pickets had been put in place, and there was little chance of moving across the flat ground without bumping into a roving patrol. Thus it was that small units from Pompey’s beaten legions – especially the young, barely-trained recruits – had already begun to sneak away under cover of darkness that first night. They had made it down from the hill heading northeast, away from the siege works. They had thought themselves lucky and safe, right up to the moment they bumped into a hundred veteran Gallic cavalry.
So far several hundred deserters had been brought to Pompey’s old camp, where they were kept, under minimal guard. In fact, they came to consider themselves the lucky ones soon enough, for they were fed and watered as Roman prisoners of war, while their ‘free’ colleagues on the hill went thirsty and starved. Caesar had begun once more his conquest of hearts and minds.
Later in the second day it had become clear that the army atop the hill was on the move. The beleaguered legionaries on the heights shifted north, along the ridge that kept them relatively safe from Caesar’s horse and his infantry. But as they moved north, so did Caesar begin to seal them in, leading four legions – all he could spare – out across the easy plains and to the north.
Fronto walked his mount alongside the Tenth, peering up at the range of hills to his left. There was no visible sign of the enemy, but they were definitely up there – the scouts had confirmed it. The small range of hills ended after perhaps three and a half miles and, as the legions arrived at that northern perimeter, Fronto heard the general’s signal. Scouts sent ahead had located a second watercourse, more a stream than a river, but one that could in theory feed the enemy. Already the engineers who had moved ahead with the vanguard were marking out the lines to fortify and seal off this second source of water as they had the first.
Fronto turned to give his orders and was momentarily taken aback once again at the absence of Salvius Cursor. He’d never particularly liked the tribune, that was for sure, but over the last year or two he had become strangely accustomed to the man’s presence, and not having him there to question Fronto’s order
s seemed strange. It would be some time before the tribune would march or ride with the legions, though. He languished now in the hospital section under the scrutiny of a medicus and his orderlies. He was expected to survive, though no one seemed confident that there would be no ongoing ill effects from such a bad head wound. Fronto had found it hard not to smile when the medicus had voiced his concerns over Salvius after a brief conversation with his patient, and Fronto had had to explain to the physician that the language and bile he’d encountered were entirely normal for the tribune.
Ignoring the hopeful-looking young junior tribunes, Fronto waved over to Atenos, himself sporting an arm splinted and slung tied to his chest.
‘Have the Tenth Cohort join the others in constructing the works. The remaining nine can line up nice and shiny, facing the hill.’
Atenos saluted and issued the orders to his men. Similar commands were given out across the legions, and soon four cohorts of engineers and pioneers were at work constructing the rampart to block off the stream, while the bulk of four legions stood silent, waiting, watching the hill. Already, by mid-morning the late summer sun was searing hot, the landscape abuzz with insects and smelling of dust and flora.
It was a tedious wait. The scouts had only been able to estimate roughly the speed of the enemy in the hills, given the terrain they would have to cross, and therefore only the rough time of their estimated arrival. Five hours the legions stood, sweating in ordered lines while the four burly cohorts dug and heaved, constructing the rampart with all speed to block off the water.
As the trapped Pompeian survivors finally put in an appearance, swarming up to the northern edge of the hill and beginning to gather atop the slope above Caesar’s waiting force, Fronto was struck once more by how many there still were. Caesar had brought four legions. It was all they could spare, with the others committed to the siege works around the other end of the hills, guarding prisoners, protecting both camps and the ever-busy medical complex, and gathering supplies and forage.
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