Caesar's Spies- The Complete Campaigns

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘I dare say he did,’ said the harbourmaster. ‘But if you look carefully, you can tell that the wind is pushing Caesar’s fleet onto the southern course. So they won’t be heading for Dyrrachium.’

  ‘Where then?’ asked the spy, genuinely surprised.

  ‘Apollonia, I’d say,’ answered the harbourmaster.

  *

  The next couple of days proved the harbourmaster right. Calvinus and Enobarbus fussed impatiently waiting for the troop ships to return. ‘Apollonia is closer,’ said Enobarbus to the exasperated legate. ‘They’ll get there – and back – faster. But the port is tiny: it will take ages to get the men off and organised. Caesar knows both Apollonia and Dyrrachium and the roads between them pretty well, though. He was studying in Apollonia and working with the Legio Martia in preparation for going east as Caesar’s Master of Horse on the Parthian Campaign when Divus Julius was murdered.’

  It was not until well after noon two days later that the troop ships and their trireme escorts hove into view. At least the extra time had allowed Calvinus to make sure that all the Martia’s legionaries were back ashore from the barges guarding the south of the harbour, their task now pointless as Antony’s ships had sailed. Enobarbus noticed the sharp-eyed Gaius Memmius among them. Enobarbus was struck by the delicate beauty of the youthful centurion’s countenance, the high cheekbones, the long chin, the Greek nose that would not have looked out of place on Alexander’s face. Enobarbus frowned pensively, wondering how to make best use of the young man’s clear vision and wide knowledge.

  From well before dawn next day, the entire legion marched, century by century down to the transports with their supplies and support units close behind. Ship after ship was tugged out of the port and set its sails. The wind had shifted southerly once again and the vessels were all bound for Dyrrachium. As the legion marched by, Enobarbus pulled Gaius Memmius out of his unit and assigned him to his own modest staff.

  Almost the last men to leave, Calvinus and Enobarbus with their staff, slaves, servants and campaign households boarded the smaller boats at the jetty and were rowed out to the trireme Nerio, which, with some of Caesar’s other warships, was detailed to escort the troop ships across the strait for one last time before returning to Brundisium and loading with yet more armaments and supplies, ready to run the blockade in case Murcus and Ahenobarbus re-established it. As soon as the officers and their attendants were aboard, the treirarch gave the order to set the sail and the sleek warship spent the last of the morning catching up with her charges and falling into place on a parallel course to the south of them. The moment it did so, the trireme’s lookout came clambering down from his position on the cross-trees where the yards that held the sail met the topmost section of the mast. He hurried across to the captain. Something about the urgency of his movements alerted Enobarbus. He walked over towards the ship’s officers in time to hear the last of the lookout’s report. ‘… I couldn’t count how many, but they’re coming up from the south.’

  ‘Any idea who they are?’ asked the captain.

  ‘No, captain – just that there are a lot of them.’

  ‘I have a man who’ll be able to tell us more,’ offered Enobarbus. ‘He’s got the sharpest eyes in the legion and he’s been one of Antony’s lookouts.’

  The captain nodded and moments later Gaius Memmius was clambering up the rigging. He returned almost at once, his youthful countenance folded in a frown. ‘It’s both Murcus and Ahenobarbus with their fleets, Tribune,’ he reported breathlessly. ‘They have more than a hundred and fifty warships.’

  ‘We’d better crowd on all sail and warn the others to do so,’ said the captain grimly. ‘We have weapons – including artillery – he gestured at the pair of battlefield-scale scorpion bolt-throwers mounted in the bows. ‘But we have no ammunition. We fired it all at Sextus Pompey off Sicily and what a waste of time, effort and material that was.’ He sighed. ‘But as long as the wind holds we can make a race of it. Beat them to Dyrrachium and safety.’

  vi

  The wind died in the early afternoon. All the rush, splash and musical rigging-song stopped abruptly and it was as though they were sitting at the heart of a great silence. A quiet word from the captain sent the sailors to the rigging and within moments the flaccid sail was furled as, at the same time, the oars came out. Nerio hardly hesitated in her progress; nor, as far as Enobarbus could see, did any of the other triremes as they swapped from wind-power to oar-power. But things were very different for the troop ships. The moment the wind died, their progress slowed and, inevitably, stopped. Within a disturbingly short time they were all becalmed. Looking ahead and astern, the spymaster did a rapid calculation. The gods had deserted them just at the worst possible moment. Dyrrachium was an impossible dream far below the eastern horizon dead ahead, just as Brundisium was invisible and unreachable below the western, dead astern. He looked south and was forcefully reminded of the morning he had first met Gaius Memmius. The rampart of sailcloth was the same, stretching from horizon to horizon. The hulls below the sails were rushing north, their velocity unabated as they too began to furl their sails and run out their oars; well over a hundred bright bronze rams shouldering the seas aside. That time the oncoming vessels had been friends. This time they most decidedly were not.

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Domitus Calvinus. ‘There are so many of them and so few of us! The troop ships are helpless, unable to move or to defend themselves…’

  Enobarbus turned to the captain. ‘How many escort vessels do we have?’

  ‘Less than fifty.’

  ‘That’s a much smaller fleet than Caesar took to Sicily, surely?’

  ‘It is, but his last order was that we leave as many as possible in the harbour at Brundisium.’

  ‘Gaius Memmius,’ called Enobarbus. ‘How many battle ships did you say Murcus and Ahenobarbus have between them?’

  ‘Battle ships? At least one hundred and fifty, Tribune. With at least a hundred lighter scouting vessels, liburnians and so-forth. All well armed.’

  ‘Three to one in triremes and bigger,’ said Calvinus. ‘And they have hundreds more in reserve while we have just the helpless troop ships. The odds would be against us, even had we ammunition for our artillery, which we do not!’

  ‘Our primary responsibility is to protect the troops,’ said Enobarbus.

  ‘The problem is to decide how best to do that,’ said Calvinus. ‘We can’t protect them very efficiently if we just sacrifice ourselves. If we went at the approaching fleet head to head, how long would we last? And what would happen after we were dead or destroyed?’

  ‘So, what is the plan then?’ asked the captain. ‘Given, as I say, that we used all ammunition fighting Sextus Pompey down in Sicily and haven’t been given the chance to re-arm since?’

  ‘Each trireme should engage individually,’ said Calvinus. ‘Do its best to slow or stop the… the…’

  ‘The inevitable,’ said the captain. ‘Yes, as do or die plans go, it’s not the worst I’ve heard…’

  ‘As long as we’re all content to die whatever we do,’ growled the gubernator.

  Even as the pilot and helmsman spoke, the first barrel of boiling pitch came sailing, smoking, out of the sky, shattered on the Nerio’s foredeck and immediately exploded into flames.

  *

  Murcus’ and Ahenobarbus’ tactics soon became clear. Whether or not they knew they were dealing with the greatest of Divus Julius’ legions, ill-protected by ships with almost no artillery ammunition aboard, they had clearly decided not to engage in close combat. Most of the great sea-battles Enobarbus had participated in were basically land-battles afloat. Ships under oar-power might ram each-other and often did, but even that was usually a prelude to sending legionaries from one deck to another to fight it out with sword and shield as though they were on dry land. Some of Octavian’s more elderly ships still had corvi bridges that could be dropped onto opposing ships to let legionaries attack in formation as though they were involv
ed in a siege or charging across a battle field.

  But this battle was nothing like that. Murcus’ ships never came anywhere near Caesar’s, never allowed Caesar’s close to them; never came anywhere near Antony’s troop ships filled with their eighty-soldier centuries of the best fighting men in the Triumvirate army. Instead the huge Libertore fleet stayed well back, circling round the becalmed onerariae like wolves around a herd of sheep, picking them off as they wallowed helplessly in the dead calm. The toothless sheep-dogs of Octavian’s navy were powerless to prevent what was going on. As Corvinus ordered and Nerio signalled, the individual vessels tried to come alongside their enemies but if they got too close, they were simply subjected to the same intensity of fire that the transports were suffering and were utterly helpless to stop. One by one they either pulled away or burned.

  That fire was terrifyingly powerful and effective. Right from the outset, all one hundred and fifty attacking ships used the catapults on their foredecks to rain down bombs filled with boiling and burning pitch. Any attempts to smother the flames simply ensured that they spread and set fire to whatever was put on top of them – and whichever crewmen were in charge of it. This was especially true of blankets and old sailcloth. Water simply made the flames spread and even if they were washed overboard they continued to burn as they sat on the surface of the sea, endangering the sides of the nearest vessels dooming anyone who jumped overboard to burn before they drowned.

  And the gods help any soldier or group of soldiers who received a direct hit. Those not killed outright ran blazing and screaming, spreading the fire with every footstep, infecting anyone or anything they touched as though the inextinguishable flames were a kind of plague - until one of their merciful friends ended their agony with a sword or a spear. Those troopships slow to furl their sails were among the first targets, for the great sails burned with volcanic intensity, dropping unquenchable fire onto everyone and everything below.

  It came as a kind of mercy, Enobarbus thought, when the attacking vessels added scorpion bolt-throwers and ballistas which fired missiles powerful enough to sweep decks clean and smash the frail wood of ships’ sides - as they had been designed to smash the solid stones of city walls.

  But as the troop ships burned, so did Enobarbus – with frustration that Nerio was doing so little to help and he was by no means alone. ‘Tribune!’ called young Gaius Memmius, his face reflecting all too clearly the agony he was feeling. ‘What can we do? Are we as helpless as my century, my legion? Are we just going to stand by as the Martia dies all around us?’

  ‘General,’ Enobarbus swung round to face Calvinus. ‘We are achieving nothing by our current strategy. Let’s at least go in and see whether we can tug some of these poor bastards free!’

  ‘It is better to die with honour than live with shame,’ said Calvinus decisively. ‘Captain, take us in and prepare to start pulling the transports out.’

  vii

  As Nerio nosed he way into the flaming Tartarus that Murcus’ tactics had made of the troop transports, Enobarbus stood on one side of the stempost as Gaius Memmius stood on the other, each with a useless scorpion bolt-thrower at his back, both peering through the clouds of smoke which stank of the pitch from which it sprang, of the wood and cloth that it ignited and, most horribly, of the flesh that it roasted. Flecks of fire floated through it and the intensity of smoke and heat brought tears to both men’s eyes. The captain’s bellowed orders, the rhythmic pounding of the pausarius and even the song of the oarsmen were all lost beneath the roaring of the flames, the cracking and crashing of the planks as they burned or burst and the screaming of the men. The heat was almost intolerable and Enobarbus found himself checking time and again to see whether the hairs on his arms were being singed away.

  ‘Which one?’ bellowed Gaius Memmius. ‘Which one should we help?’

  It was the crucial question, thought the tribune grimly. For it would be pointless to try and pull a burning ship out of this flaming Hades – always assuming a burning crew could get a tow-line organised. But it was becoming terribly obvious that there were very few ships left undamaged. And there was always the risk that if they did start to pull any vessel clear, they would only make it and themselves an obvious target.

  But Gaius Memmius put all such hesitantly negative thoughts firmly in their place. ‘There!’ he shouted. ‘That one!’

  Enobarbus followed the boy’s pointing arm and saw that there was indeed a relatively undamaged troop-ship dangerously close to a blazing companion. Trying not to pay too much attention to the men leaping into the water from the second ship, the tribune called back to Calvinus and the legate ordered the captain to take the relatively undamaged vessel under tow. When they saw what was happening, the men on the ship they were trying to save started to cheer and wave. ‘By all the gods!’ said young Gaius, ‘that is the Ponos, the ship I was detailed to board! And those are men from my unit! We must help them!’

  ‘We’re doing our best, boy,’ grated Enobarbus.

  And indeed, Nerio eased round the side of the troopship opposite the flaming wreck of its companion. As she pulled ahead, the sailhandlers aboard threw a rope and the men aboard the onerarius caught it. Moments later, Nerio was tugging Gaius Memmius’ friends in their relatively undamaged vessel Ponos clear. But they had hardly started to do so before Enobarbus’ worst fears began to come brutally true. As Nerio and Ponos headed for freedom and some illusory safety, Murcus’ well-armed vessels began to close on them. A sizeable squadron of half a dozen triremes led by a pair of massive quadriremes, detached themselves from the slaughter and came in pursuit.

  *

  The seemingly inexhaustible rain of fire intensified. Smoking pots of pitch came sailing low over Nerio. One after another, they smashed onto Ponos. ‘Faster,’ bellowed Enobarbus, hoping that speed would spoil the warships’ aim. And the oarsmen below him responded, hurling themselves into battle speed, then ramming speed. The ruse worked. The two ships raced out of the killing zone. Although Ponos’ forecastle remained ablaze, the rest of the enemies’ fire bombs fell harmlessly into her wake. The men of Gaius Memmius’ unit began to fight the fire, motivated by the faint but burgeoning hope of survival. Covering the conflagrations with sand and soaking the tow-rope with water when the flames came too close to it.

  But Murcus’ ruthless captains, seeing what was going on, adapted their tactics. The massive quadriremes moved to take up position dead ahead while their attendant triremes fanned out to the sides. Now the enemy had a relatively helpless pair of targets sideways-on, while the simple threat of the quadriremes sitting almost within oar’s length of each other, dared them to stay at ramming speed and rush to their destruction. But Nerio’s oarsmen were tiring now, the strain of pulling Ponos beginning to tell. Furthermore, the quadriremes began to concentrate their artillery on the lone trireme while the rest of their squadron focussed on the troopship.

  The quadriremes’ captains seemingly preferred their bolt-throwers rather than their catapults, and fired man-sized metal darts instead of barrels of burning pitch. The first great iron arrow howled low past the stempost and smashed into the foot of the mast, burying itself so deeply that it nearly split the heartwood column. The next slammed along the deck, scarring the wood for the better part of a yard and spitting splinters into unprotected legs. The third bolt took the captain in the chest and blasted him back against the sternpost where he hung like a butterfly in some child’s collection. It seemed that only Enobarbus was on top of the situation. ‘Quickly,’ he roared. ‘Collect those bolts. Scorpion crews to me!’

  Nerio lurched forward. Enobarbus and the young centurion staggered, then turned and looked back and as the scorpion teams loaded up with the ammunition their enemies had just fired at them. As they did so, the tribune and his young friend watched as Ponos at last succumbed to the relentless fire-storm. The tow rope had at last burned through and parted, leaving Ponos as helpless as all the rest once more. Half a dozen legionaries stood in the middle of
the deck – the only part of it not ablaze. With no notion that they were being observed, the last eight men of the Martia except for the junior centurion took out their swords and inserted the points beneath their armour.

  *

  ‘Don’t look,’ said Enobarbus to his young companion, turning away himself to oversee the loading of the scorpions on Nerio’s foredeck, just in time to see them set and ready to fire. ‘Domitius Calvinus,’ he bellowed, ‘call for ramming speed again. Scorpion commanders, you see your targets?’ he pointed and the men nodded grimly. ’Very well. Wait for my signal.’

  He ran back and stood by the pilot as the sailhandlers freed their captain’s corpse and laid it on the deck beside them. The trireme was moving as fast as she could now, her ram heading directly for the pair of quadriremes dead ahead. Their rams were longer, larger. Their bows higher, their foredecks and the artillery on them more than a man’s height above Nerio’s foredeck. They were still firing, but Nerio was too close to present a target. They couldn’t depress their bolt-throwers sufficiently to hit the smaller vessel, especially as she was powering so swiftly along a course that was so obviously self-destructive, like a billy-goat charging a pair of bulls. The last few iron arrows hissed above their heads and plunged into their wake, wounding the empty water between their stern and the seething mass of foam where the blazing Ponos had disappeared beneath the waves.

  ‘You see your way?’ Enobarbus demanded and the pilot nodded, his full weight – and that of his burly assistants – holding the steering oar steady.

  ‘What…’ demanded Calvinus, his voice shaking as the bows of the huge quadriremes towered above them, Nerio apparently preparing to strike the right-hand vessel, ram to ram. ‘This is madness…’

  ‘Now,’ said Enobarbus. The helmsmen and his assistants pushed the steering oar to one side, then pulled it back again. The trireme jinked sideways, no longer heading for either of the quadriremes, but powering towards the oar-lined space between them. ‘Scorpions!’ bellowed Enobarbus and both of the bolt-throwers threw the quadriremes’ massive bolts back at them. The man-sized iron arrows, smashed into the rowing boxes on the nearest side of each enemy ship. Even as their commanders registered what Nerio was up to and started yelling orders of their own, the huge metal darts hurled through the splintering sides and in amongst their oarsmen like Jupiter’s thunderbolts. The chaos that resulted from the unexpected attack made the commanders’ orders absolutely pointless. By the time the oarmasters had established any kind of order, it was far too late to retract the oars.