by Peter Tonkin
As Artemidorus leaned on his shield and pulled himself to his feet, he saw the first horse. Which was a telltale sign that there were senior officers close by. Only Praetorian guards amongst the enemy would be riding horses into this restricted killing ground. And even then only to protect the men whose bodyguards they were. He glanced back and beckoned to the others to re-form on him. Half a dozen heartbeats later they were back in that tight wedge, and Artemidorus was back in the hunt for the enemy leaders as ordered.
Where the generals were in relation to their standards and their eagles would vary from man to man. Some, like Divus Julius and Antony, liked to be in the thick of things – on horse or on foot – close to their standard and the eagle of their favourite legion so they set the sort of an example men would fight and die to follow. Others preferred to hold back. Take a more considered view. This was Brutus’ style of leadership. Also, sometimes, Cassius’. And, apparently, Caesar Octavius’. There were even generals who used common soldiers who resembled them as doubles on the battlefield, sending the stand-in to the front line while hanging back themselves. Men who fought like this rarely progressed far – either as commanders or as politicians. But the whole point was that, even in the noise and confusion of battle, with soldiers and horses from either side charging this way and that, the eagles and the standards stood tall, offering rallying points to the men on one side. Offering targets to the men on the other.
The first standard Artemidorus saw was Decimus Albinus’. Which seemed as logical as any argument in Aristotle’s Analytics. After so many months of siege and humiliation, Decimus must want Antony’s head as much as Antony wanted his. Artemidorus began to hack and stab his way towards it, hurling himself at rank after rank of enemy soldiers as though he and his companions were a bolt from a ballista. Their opponents became more and more challenging the closer they came to Albinus’ standard. Thin and half starved they might be. But they were also desperate. Agonisingly aware of the alternatives before them – victory, starvation or death. Well led, they had used the time of their imprisonment behind Mutina’s walls, to train and train for this very moment. And, like any sensible leader, Albinus surrounded himself with his best soldiers – not even counting his special Praetorian Cohorts.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the stakes of the game escalated. Artemidorus found himself confronted by a tight-knit group similar to his own. And it was led by Decimus Albinus’ right-hand man legate, Senator and murderer of Divus Julius, Pontius Aquila. Aquila did not hesitate as many of his soldiers had done, for he was not looking at the spy’s armour. He was looking him in the face. And he recognised the man who had delivered the deceitful message that almost got his legions wiped out a week ago. The eyes beneath that one long eyebrow narrowed. The lips thinned back from yellow teeth in a snarl that would have done credit to a wolf. Aquila threw himself forward and his men all came with him. Like Antony’s soldiers, they were covered in the blood of the men they had slaughtered already. Unlike Artemidorus’ little command, they were backed up by a complete army. And, by the look of things, by a wing of cavalry from Hirtius’ or Caesar Ocatavius’ command.
As their leaders’ shields slammed together, so each arrowhead spread out until there was another line of hand-to-hand duels being fought in the middle of the mayhem. Both the centurion and the legate were too well trained and expert to leave themselves open to the classic upthrust their gladius swords were designed for. They were equally matched in size and strength, though the spy had some advantage in being the less exhausted of the two. Aquila, however, was incandescent with rage and burning to exact revenge. So every thrust was parried, every cut countered. Even as they were jostled by the duels being fought on either side of them.
Artemidorus fought almost mechanically, his mind detached, assessing his opponent’s strengths, which were many, and his weaknesses which were few. Then he began to go through the catalogue of feints and tricks that had kept him alive in the arena, and eventually earned him Rudiarius, and the wooden sword of honourable retirement.
Little by little he began to give ground. Moving back as though weakening under Pontius Aquila’s onslaught. Keeping his focus flickering between Aquila’s eyes and his gladius. The sword strokes started coming more swiftly as the enemy scented victory. The expression in the narrow eyes showed no suspicion. Showed nothing but gathering triumph. Aquila really thought he was winning. That he was within heartbeats of killing this enemy spy who had fooled him and his general and nearly destroyed them both. But he was mistaken.
As soon as he was free of the jostling line of one-on-one duels and had a momentary space on his left, Artemidorus let go of his shield and threw it aside. In the same movement, he snatched the pugio out of its sheath with his empty left hand as he stepped forward, smashing his breastplate against Aquila’s shield. Disregarding the shock and pain. The legate was too surprised to think of pushing back.
Instead, perfectly trained in legionary sword-play as he was, he drove his gladius upward. But even as he did so, Artemidorus stepped inside the blow so the blade slid past his ribs and missed him altogether. Their faces were so close that Artemidorus could smell the rank breath of the starving man as it came through clenched teeth over the top of his scutum. Could look deep into his narrowed eyes beneath the ridge of his helmet and the one long line of his brow, savouring the confusion dawning in them.
‘Vale, interfector! Goodbye assassin!’ He spat.
Then he drove the dagger in his left fist unerringly into Aquila’s right ear. Burying it to the hilt in his skull. Jerking it out and stepping back. As the dead man stood there for an instant longer, unaware that his battle was lost and his life was over.
‘Septem!’ bellowed a huge voice, and a leg clad in checked material astride a horse appeared as if by magic. A spada flashed down. And the murderer’s head, already assaulted by the spy’s pugio, was chopped in half. Gretorex’ blade sliced through the crown of Aquila’s helmet past the eye-ridge and split the face beneath it. For the first and last time in his existence Pontius Aquila had two eyebrows. Separated by the cavalry commander’s sword-blade as it sat bizarrely on the bridge of the dead man’s nose.
As Gretorex jerked the spada free, Aquila’s body toppled backwards beneath the stamping hooves of the Gaulish cavalry horse. And the already bifurcated face was crushed out of existence in an instant as it was trampled into the thick red mud.
All Artemidorus could think of as he sheathed his pugio, retrieved his shield and returned to the battle, was how angry Antony was going to be. Pontius Aquila was the second of Divus Julius’ assassins to die. And the general still didn’t have a clearly identifiable head that he could spike in the Forum.
v
Gretorex wasn’t here by accident. ‘Septem!’ he bellowed again. ‘We’ve been looking for you! Follow!’
Artemidorus glanced along the line of his contubernium. Those who hadn’t settled matters personally had been helped by the unexpected arrival of the cavalry. Aquila and his bodyguard were all dead. ‘Form on me!’ he bellowed, his voice almost as loud as Gretorex’. Then, ‘Where?’ he called to the decurio cavalry commander as they fell into the familiar arrowhead formation behind him. Speeded and protected by parallel lines of Gaulish horsemen, they ran through the battlefield. Across the wreck of Antony’s camp.
Gretorex answered, but the only word Artemidorus understood was, ‘Hirtius!’
Gretorex and his men took them unerringly to where the fighting was most intense. A section of the battlefield which seemed unnaturally well endowed with standards and eagles. Most of which were those of Antony’s enemies. And Artemidorus could see at once why Gretorex had called for him. The most intense fighting was on the entire width of the via itself. Where the three attacking armies were thrust up hard against the steely hearts of the IInd Sabines and the Vth Alaude whose duty was to guard the road as an escape route for the rest of Antony’s army. Under the immediate command of another ex-gladiator, Antony’s brother Lucius. Thous
ands of men had died here – their corpses filling the roadside ditches and flooding out onto the fields beyond. The stones of the roadway were icily slick with blood and a range of other fluids. It was hard enough for men to stand. A slimy deathtrap for horses.
And yet, there in the centre of it all were the eagles of the IVth and the Martia, as well as Hirtius’ personal standard. It was clear that the Larks and the Sabines were fighting a solid defensive rearguard action. They were holding the line as they slowly retreated. And the line stretched from one corpse-filled ditch to the other. There was no sign of the dashing Antony’s maxim that the best form of defence is attack. The axiom Artemidorus had in mind himself when advising Antony several days since. But, he thought now, he and his contubernium had been specifically designed and detailed by Antony to make up for his legions’ orders. In the face of two legions falling back and twelve legions pushing forward, the six soldiers of his contubernium were under orders to attack. At all times. Under every circumstance. Like Leonides’ cryptaia.
Which was precisely what they were going to do now.
As Gretorex and his alae peeled away, Artemidorus led his command across the ditch, treading lightly but uneasily on the solidly packed bodies of the dead and dying. The roadway itself was crammed solid with soldiers. Two straight lines of legionaries stood shield to shield across it, fighting in the old style. As the Senate’s army pressed relentlessly forward – and Antony’s men slowly gave ground. Because of that measured retreat, the roadway was jammed. No one was going anywhere at any speed. The Senate’s legions were packed tight but effectively held almost still. And in the midst of them, hemmed in and with apparently nowhere to go, were the Praetorian horsemen whose primary duty was to protect Hirtius and Caesar Octavius. Whose standards waved beside the eagles of their legions.
The spies attacked from the side just behind the foremost line of Martia legionaries but ahead of the hard men of the triarii line. Here was where the generals and their senior officers could most often be found. Just behind the first lines, confident that their men would dull the edge of the opposing legions. Surrounded by their own Praetorian bodyguards. Backed up by the solid triarii. And yet up with the standards, cheek by jowl with the eagles. Where the glory was.
Artemidorus put his professional conscience away. He had to. It seemed to him that the surprised legionaries he slaughtered before they even had a chance to turn and face him were dying outside the rules of civilised combat he was being ordered to disregard. If the idea of civilised combat was something that had ever really existed – beyond the stories of his Spartan childhood. Which, oddly, had failed to say much about the cryptaia and their licence to kill. And yet, as ever, there was the larger picture. He understood all too well that if he failed here – if the contubernium failed here – then Antony’s plan might also fail. And the fate of the empire as he understood it would turn once again. Like a great gate on a hinge.
He felt some empathy for the men he was slaughtering in this almost underhand manner. And, in a strange way that he was never able to understand, he also felt a kind of sympathy for the horses. As though they too were enemy soldiers he was attacking unfairly. The Praetorians sat on them almost uselessly. They were grouped around their generals, but were otherwise trapped and held helpless by the press of legionaries around them on the via. They could not deploy themselves as Gretorex and his alae could – or Antony and his cavalry wing. There was no space for them to charge. Nor opportunity to do so. Nor surface safe enough to allow it.
Instead, as Artemidorus slashed the last legionary away and came up against the first Praetorian mount, he took immediate and fatal action. Shield raised in case the rider was quick thinking enough to slash down with his spada as Gretorex had just done to Aquila. Aware that it would be unlikely – he was coming in from the rider’s left – the shield side, not the sword side. Without pausing, just as he had done with the nameless centurion, he went low and stabbed inwards with his gladius. He had no idea of the names of the muscles or tendons he was severing in the horse’s foreleg – nor of the veins and arteries lying beneath them. But he knew that if he was fast enough and had a long enough reach he could extend his arm beneath the horse’s chest and sever the tendons and muscles of its far foreleg. The horse would collapse at once. Falling away from Artemidorus. Pitching its rider to the ground in the middle of a cavalry melee. And, as likely as not, knocking the rider off the horse beside it. Two men down at once – and with any luck, killed or crippled beneath the falling bodies and plunging hooves of their mounts. While, focused on their leader and quick thinking as ever, the rest of the contubernium were soon doing the same.
The first horse’s chest and belly swelled like a brown barrel above him as he drove inwards. The stench of blood was momentarily replaced by the warm scent of the stable. Then his gladius reached its target. Point first, but also relying on the sharpness of the edge, he drove the blade through the brown column of the horse’s far foreleg. Watching in something like horror as the gash exploded in a welter of blood and the thin line of the wound yawned the moment the muscles and tendons separated. The leg simply collapsed. And the horse toppled sideways away from him. Exactly as planned. And the five horses behind it did exactly the same as the rest of the contubernium struck.
As they realised what was going on, the Praetorians reacted. Not by turning their horses’ heads towards their attackers. Something they could not do in any case because of the wall of crippled, dying horseflesh between them. Instead, they turned their horses’ heads away and retreated as best they could across the road packed with legionaries and the corpse-filled ditch beyond it. Into the field where the battle beneath Forum Gallorum had been fought six days ago. But as they did this, the horsemen spread panic and confusion among the foot soldiers surrounding them. Regardless of rank or importance.
Running through the line of screaming, thrashing horses, dispatching as many of the animals and their fallen riders as they could on the way, Artemidorus’ contubernium fell upon the mayhem left in the wake of the fleeing cavalry like the Friendly Ones themselves. But almost immediately, Artemidorus raised his right hand, sword dripping and steaming in his fist. The five men and one woman behind him ceased their slaughter. Looked around at the chaos on the blood-slick roadway and wondered what was going on now.
vi
Artemidorus found himself confronted by a sight he had never even dreamed that he would see. The uncontrolled retreat of the mounted Praetorians had caused total chaos. There were legionaries of all sorts and ranks lying hurt and dying on the roadway. Who had been knocked aside by the armoured breasts of the fleeing horses. Who had slipped and been trampled as they tried to run out of the way. Who were endeavouring to pull themselves up on the red-running icy slickness even now.
A standard bearer lay on his side amid the corpses filling the farther ditch. Still alive and fighting to find his feet and raise his standard. Beside him, face-up on the roadway, staring at the sky with lifeless eyes, the owner of the standard. Consul and General Aulus Hirtius. Whether he had been thrown from a horse or trampled as he fought on foot, the spy would never know. Beside him, face-down with the back of his helmet crushed, the Aquila eagle bearer of the Martia legion.
As the stunned centurion began to register the utter havoc he and his command had caused, he saw a slight figure begin to pull itself out from among the dead men packed in the ditch between the Martia legion’s eagle and General Hirtius’ standard. Even as a kind of horrified recognition began to dawn, his attention was claimed by something else. A flash of movement. There, on the far side of the ditch full of dead men, stood Decimus Albinus himself. Frozen. Staring with a terrible intensity at the slender figure dragging itself erect. As though in the grip of utter drunkenness – like Antony on the night of Caesar’s murder when Cleopatra left for Alexandria – the slim, blood-covered figure reeled onto the roadway. When Artemidorus looked again, Decimus Albinus was gone. Leaving the lone legionary to his fate.
B
y the grace of the gods, the young soldier’s unsteady footsteps did not slip. He staggered to the fallen eagle and tried to pick it up. But the dead aquilifer had lashed the pole to his body. The slim figure pulled out his pugio and cut it free with a couple of deft slashes. Then, clutching both the pole and the dagger in his left hand, using the eagle’s pole as a crutch to steady himself, he limped over to Hirtius’ dead body. Stooped, reached down and took a grip on the top of the dead man’s breastplate. Clearly planning to pull the general out of the battle to some place where his corpse could be treated with the respect it deserved.
Seeing what was happening – and who was watching events narrow-eyed, smoking sword in hand, with five equally fearsome companions at his back – the nearest of Hirtius’ soldiers fell back, wide-eyed and silent. The soldier holding the eagle, unaware of the scrutiny, pulled at the dead general’s armour but slipped on the ice-slick road and fell to his knees once more.
Driven by motivation he did not understand. That he would never understand. In the grip, perhaps, of the will of the gods themselves, Artemidorus moved forward at last, sheathing his gladius. He reached down and took Hirtius’ breastplate at the throat. Heaved the corpse into a half-sitting position so he could be moved more easily. Leaned it against the belly of a dead horse as he reached down once again. Took the free hand of the young man fighting to pull himself upright on the Martia’s eagle standard. Dragged him to his feet as he spoke.
