Revenge

by Andrew Frediani

  In fact, in spite of all their predictions, Antony’s men had actually managed to overcome the fortifications and climb the slope leading to the camp, and now had a good chance of taking possession of the assassins’ most important stronghold without requiring any help from Octavian’s troops. The convoluted plans of that damned Etruscan risked actually backfiring against the sect, giving Antony a victory as resounding as it was unexpected.

  Helplessly, he watched the columns of Antony’s soldiers flow towards the fortifications around Cassius’s camp, keeping an eye on what was happening in Brutus’s fortress, where the battlements were packed with soldiers watching the battle. The triumvir was fairly close to the front row, surrounded by a swarm of squires acting almost as his personal tortoise to protect him from projectiles arriving almost continuously from the battlements. His presence among the soldiers highlighted the absence of Octavian, even from his own camp, and on the very day that battle had broken out.

  That was another of Maecenas’s brilliant ideas. Why didn’t he go back to Rome and be a politician instead of playing at strategist? The Etruscan, aware of how weak the still convalescent Octavian was, had put about a rumour saying that the new Caesar had seen in a dream that he must leave the battlefield. And incidentally, he had it the night his spies had seen Cassius’s men building the counter-fortifications which would make a battle inevitable. His idea was to pass off this dream as a warning from the gods to stay out of the battle until things had settled down, attesting to a divine predilection for the son of Caesar, and with the simultaneous action of his troops in favour of Antony and the subsequent victory, people would think that, as the favourite of the gods, Octavian was able to exert a powerful influence on events even in his absence. Only the ministers of the sect knew that, in fact, his presence on the battlefield would be irrelevant, because he was anything but a warrior.

  Too bad then that Octavian would now simply look like a coward. Rufus wondered what he could do to save the situation. He and Agrippa had split the tasks, he taking command of the legions deployed outside the camp and the other the command of those inside. In the original plan, it would have been for him to decide when it was time to march in support of Antony. And now? Should he send them off all the same? In all probability, Antony would be offended and accuse Octavian of trying to appropriate a victory achieved with his own strength, and it might result in a diplomatic incident for which he would be held responsible. On the other hand, if he didn’t mobilise, Octavian could accuse him of having scuppered the plan: there was always the chance of something going wrong and it would be good to have any excuse for claiming to have got Antony off the hook. With the propaganda that Maecenas was able to orchestrate, it should be possible to pass off his contribution as decisive even if it actually had been only chaining up the prisoners. But only if some of Octavian’s soldiers were present in Cassius’s camp.

  Rufus looked at Brutus’s fort again. The men there looked to be champing at the bit, but showed no intention of leaving the camp – they had not done even so to provide assistance to Cassius, as Maecenas had expected, perhaps out of fear that, in the meantime, Octavian’s troops would attack the camp they had left defenceless. And this detail too, made the question of rushing to Antony’s aid a sticky one. If Rufus moved, there was a real danger that they too would enter the battlefield…

  It was the hardest decision he had had to make as a commander but, considering all the possibilities, he concluded that mobilising was the least risky option. The chances of their own camp being attacked were, after all, minimal: there were more than enough of Agrippa’s troops to fight off any attempts at attack.

  He gave the order. The trumpets sounded across the valley of the Philippi and the units marched off, cutting diagonally across the plain. As they passed under Brutus’s camp, it occurred to Rufus that parading like this before the eyes of the enemy troops might seem a deliberate insult, a provocation. But he did not care: their commander, that coward Marcus Brutus, was afraid, and if he had not already emerged to assist his accomplice in his difficulties, he would not do so now either.

  He continued to march at the head of the long line which bisected the plain, studying what was going around Cassius’s camp. There was still fighting along the battlements, and some groups of soldiers were taking turns to break through the front door with long poles taken from the fortifications along the marshes. Perhaps there was still a chance of influencing the outcome of the battle, then. He had made the right decision.

  He was at least two-thirds of the way towards Cassius’s camp when he heard shouts from the rear of the column. He turned, and saw a sight that stunned him into immobility: Brutus’s legions were pouring out of their stronghold, taking advantage of the slope to rush down on the flank of his army.

  Which was straggling, and in marching, not battle, formation.

  *

  It was all going wrong. No one on Octavian’s general staff had imagined that Brutus’s entire army would have poured down out of its camp without finding any opposition outside. In fact, Agrippa said to himself as he tried to keep the men lined up, no one had imagined that Brutus would pay any attention to Octavian’s camp: at worst – they had said in the tactical meetings – the opponents would leave their stronghold only to provide assistance to Cassius or to join the battle. And in any case, all the ministers of the sect had been convinced that the troops deployed outside of the fortifications and led by Rufus would have stopped any attempt at penetration.

  Instead, his column had not only failed to give support to Antony’s army, it had even failed to stop the entrance onto the plain of Brutus’s men. Rufus had allowed himself to be surprised from his flank, with his legions in marching order and the units separated from one another, without adequate lateral cover from the cavalry and light infantry. And for Brutus’s legionaries it was like crushing flies.

  From the battlements, Agrippa had been forced to observe Rufus’s legionaries overrun by a human tornado that swept them away one by one. The soldiers had ended up under their enemies’ shields and feet without having had a chance to pull their swords from their scabbards and defend themselves. Others had fled immediately, only to offer their backs to the enemy swords. The few units that had tried to maintain formation and oppose the raging torrent had fallen apart in an instant, while still others tried unsuccessfully to return to their camp.

  And that was the most serious problem of all, because it threatened to turn a retreat into a total debacle.

  The men who were escaping wanted to find shelter in the camp, but Agrippa knew that letting them enter would mean letting their pursuers, who were advancing without any opposition, enter too. Yet he could not risk condemning thousands of legionaries to death by slamming the gates in their faces. There was an actual risk of losing half of Octavian’s troops in one fell swoop, and it would be a fatal blow to the prestige of his friend and to the aspirations of the sect. Especially if Antony managed to win the battle he was fighting.

  He had to save them, he decided when the first soldiers reached the still open gates of the fort. But there was practically no break between the fugitives and their pursuers. The plain between the two camps was teeming with armed men without a real battle.

  “Centurion! Line up your centuria next to the door, in columns! Only allow entry to our men and stop the others! And you, tribune, do the same with your units on the opposite side!” he shouted to the officers who were watching the retreat with him from the battlements.

  His two subordinates acted promptly, and soon the praetorian gate was surrounded by legionaries arrayed on either side, behind whom the first of their fellow soldiers to arrive hurried to find shelter. Many were even without their shields, panting desperately, unsteady on their legs, and could contribute little to the defence, on the contrary, their presence – Agrippa sensed immediately – was a hindrance to their comrades. Chaos was threatening. He called Maecenas, who was nearby.

  “Go down to the gate and get those wh
o are no use out of the way – they’ll cause us nothing but trouble!” he shouted, and the Etruscan nodded, climbed down from the battlements and raced into the throng. Agrippa saw him shouting and dragging the weakest ones, some of whom were injured, too confused and afraid to play any part in the fighting and too proud to accept being sidelined. He had given Maecenas a hard job, and saw that for every man the Etruscan managed to shift there were at least another three who refused to move: they were probably ashamed for running away and wanted to redeem themselves.

  Meanwhile, outside the fortifications, soldiers of both armies were starting to pile up, and the difficulty of entering the fort forced the fugitives at the rear to defend themselves from the attacks of their enemies. But the others had room to manoeuvre behind them and were better organised, with their respective officers alongside the soldiers issuing orders and co-ordinating the movements of the squadrons. Octavian’s men lacked cohesion and leadership, and their centurions and optiones were separated from their units. Agrippa wondered if Rufus had fallen or had ended up with the part of the column that had managed to reach Antony.

  Inside, the fleeing legionaries burst through the entrance in an increasingly chaotic flood, disrupting the ranks of the two lines on either side of the gate. The few opponents who managed to get in took advantage of the confusion and the difficulty of distinguishing them from Octavian’s men and immediately pounced on the defenders, managing to stab a few before being put out of action.

  Agrippa looked back outside. The fighting was mostly going in favour of Brutus’s men, because Rufus’s were crammed too close together to be able to move their swords freely or evade enemy blows, and with each of Rufus’s men who fell, Brutus’s soldiers moved a few steps closer to the wall. Octavian’s legionaries who could not get through the gate were pushed by the crowd along the ramparts, and some lost their balance and ended up in the ditch with broken necks. Agrippa noticed that the enemy were taking the opportunity to push other soldiers or corpses in. Their intention was clear.

  They wanted to fill up the gap with the bodies and then climb up the embankment.

  In fact, some had already started to do it, while the two armies on either side of the gate had become an indistinct mass of armed men moving this way and that. Agrippa summoned a dozen legionaries and rushed along the battlements to the most critical point. He arrived just as an enemy soldier, hoisted up by some comrades, showed his face over the top. He chopped the man’s head off completely, and the rest of his body fell backwards, though he was soon replaced by another enemy, who managed to avoid the young tribune’s swing, but not that of a legionary at his side, and his head too, rolled down the embankment.

  Meanwhile, the bridge of bodies in the ditch was allowing an increasing number of Brutus’s legionaries to climb up the battlements, and the area Agrippa had to defend was too large for the few soldiers he had brought with him. Furthermore, many of their opponents were busy forcing their way through elsewhere, and it was almost impossible now, to oversee all the threatened areas of the walls. From the entrance too, enemies flocked in increasing numbers, while outside, Octavian’s men, unable to prevail in combat or get over the battlements, began to lay down their arms and surrender, freeing the way for Brutus’s soldiers.

  It was no longer possible to hold them off along the battlements. Agrippa decided to organize a last line of defence around the praetorian tent, Octavian’s headquarters when the triumvir was present. He came down from the stands and ran toward the entrance, giving orders to each officer he met to pull back the men and assemble them in the middle of the camp. He also told Maecenas, who had by now given up attempting to create a semblance of order around the gate and sought only to form little pockets of resistance to oppose the increasingly overwhelming tide.

  The only hope was that Rufus would return and attack the enemy from behind while they were trying to break through the last line of defence, or that Antony would quickly prevail over Cassius and send them reinforcements. Otherwise, the number of opponents was too high to hope to resist. But from a glance at the fighting on the plain there was no sign of Rufus, and it was probably too far away for the commander – if he was still alive – to be able to reorganize the ranks and lead a counter attack.

  Their chances of getting out of this alive had been cut to the bone by Rufus’s recklessness.

  *

  Isolated on an enemy ship and surrounded by burning vessels, Gaius Chaerea tried to remember when he had been in a worse situation, but none came to mind. If nothing else, though, they had taken the trireme they had boarded, and the last of their enemies, now outnumbered, were throwing themselves into the sea to escape their swords. But it was pointless if they could not free themselves from the ring of fire surrounding them.

  Gaius looked around him. Not all the cargo vessels had managed to get away from those in flames, and the fire had spread from deck to deck, enveloping sailors and soldiers, sails and rigging, planking and masts. The air was full of smoke and heat from the other blazing ships, and those which had not caught fire were clumsily seeking an exit, but ended up crashing into one another and becoming wrecks in turn, blocking even more thoroughly any possible – although increasingly elusive – escape route.

  And yet, said Gaius to himself, if any of what had once been the fleet of Calvinus could get away, it would be they, who had seized a trireme. It was a smaller and more agile ship than the cargo vessels, and could slip through the fire and debris, with a little luck. Or with a lot of luck. The soldiers crowded around him, asking what to do. They all had the same horrible visions in their eyes: men stumbling, running, crawling all fours, rolling around on the deck, enveloped in flames, or leaving behind them a trail of fire before jumping into the water. The piercing screams of pain of the soldiers who had been turned into human torches were a gloomy funeral anthem for the survivors, for whom Gaius was now responsible.

  The ship closest to them suddenly practically collapsed in on itself, and the burning wreckage disappeared rapidly from sight, as if the hand of some great god had seized it and smashed it into matchwood, and a moment later, on the surface of the sea, flat and calm in spite of the many ships that had been there so recently, there was only scattered debris and men floundering in the water. Many struggled to grab pieces of flotsam to stay afloat, but sometimes the wood was still so hot they were forced to abandon them and look for another piece, if they still had the strength to swim at all.

  Yet in that way salvation might lie, thought Gaius. There was a gap between Murcus’s fleet and the wrecked ships of Calvinus, and at that moment, several enemy ships were concentrating their attentions on the triremes escorting the cargo fleet. He had to try. Gaius ordered the helmsman to turn in that direction, and the chief rower to demand maximum effort from the oarsmen. The ship began to rotate and move forwards amidst a landscape composed of ghostly immobile shipwrecks, the air thick and dark with smoke and the approaching dusk, the crackle of flames merging with the sighing of the sea and the moans and cries for help of those in the water. Gradually they gained speed, while Gaius watched the movements of the enemy fleet. For now, thanks to the thick blanket of smoke, their opponents seemed not to have noticed anything – or perhaps, ignorant of the boarding, still thought it was one of their ships, and were waiting for it to re-join them.

  Gaius looked down the sides of the ship and saw men in the waves stretching out their arms for help, and others disappearing under the water as they were submerged by the passage of the vessel. No, he could not stop to pick any of them up: he tried to convince himself that he had a delicate mission to accomplish, and that his safety was a priority. He looked away, and his eyes returned to the battle. On the deck, all were silent, their expressions tense and their faces contracted in dread that Murcus’s galleys would catch up with them. Without wind, the strength of the oarsmen would soon wane, but they only needed to get out of the sight of the enemy, who were probably already satisfied with their success.

  The centurion
held his breath when he saw a trireme pull away from Murcus’s fleet. It seemed to be heading in their direction and instinctively he gripped the pommel of his sword, but the ship veered off again and headed towards a cargo vessel that had surrendered. Immediately afterwards, another moved away, and once again proceeded toward them. Gaius commanded the chief oarsman to intensify the effort, but the rowers were already doing their best, under the threat of the soldiers’ swords. The trireme was approaching and the centurion resigned himself to fighting – hopelessly, because his men would have to defend themselves not only from their enemies but also from the oarsmen. It reached two transport vessels and stopped alongside another vessel of its fleet to rescue the men who were abandoning the deck to escape the fire.

  Gaius breathed a deep sigh of relief. Perhaps they had managed to escape the battle.

  But reaching the coasts of Epirus in that dead calm was another matter.

  *

  Maecenas was appalled. The circumstances and the unpredictable behaviour of Marcus Brutus’s men, not to mention the recklessness of Rufus, had turned his sophisticated plan upside down, and now all they could do was cut their losses. There was no question: Rufus could only be a follower, never a leader. If Agrippa had been commanding the troops outside and he those in the camp, Maecenas was sure things would have been different. And now they would probably have been attacking Brutus’s camp instead of defending Octavian’s.

  As he was dressed as a tribune, the men gathered around, waiting for his orders, but the idea of having to fight a pitched battle without the protection of fortifications still terrified him, despite the baptism of fire he had endured in Modena, and he was struggling to think clearly. Now the camp would become the battlefield, and he would have to defend himself against people who were more robust, athletic, trained, experienced and courageous than he. A horrible prospect and one which, as part of Octavian’s General Staff, he had hoped to be able to avoid.