The Horse Changer (6 page)

The open ground between the two armies offered a slight incline for us most of the way. Only at the end did we face a steep climb. Caesar therefore made no order to advance. He wanted Pompey to leave his plateau and come across the plain before he answered. Pompey of course understood his advantage and refused. He had waited all winter. If Caesar would not attempt an uphill charge Pompey would wait another day. He would wait all spring and summer if he had to.

Once it was clear Pompey did not intend to move, Caesar sent a courier to one of his cavalry prefects. The prefect sent three hundred light cavalry between the two armies. These men were armed with two javelins each and carried a shield sufficient for stopping darts and small stones. They drifted quite close to Pompey’s line as they crossed the field because Caesar hoped to lure the enemy cavalry forward. From there the fight might spread and leave Pompey no choice but to come off his high ground. Pompey refused to take the bait. Instead, he answered with two cohorts of archers. They came before their line in a cluster and began raining arrows down on our horsemen.

Caesar’s cavalry turned toward them at once, forming a slender column. When the first men were in range, they threw one of their javelins, then turned away at a ninety degree angle. The rapid breaking away from the column after a cavalryman threw his spear allowed the next man in line to throw his javelin, decimating the archers with a continuous barrage.

A second cohort of heavy cavalry left Caesar’s line in anticipation of Pompey sending horsemen forward to save his archers, but Pompey refused to engage. He let his archers run back to cover without assistance. With Pompey’s line standing at attention and offering nothing by way of a fight, our lancers came forward and chased them down with impunity, then retreated to the open plain, where both of Caesar’s cavalry units proceeded to gather the wounded and those men who had lost their horses. From there they returned to Caesar’s line.

Having no choice if he wanted a fight, Caesar sent his army forward in a cadenced march. In the old days, Roman armies came with rhythmic shouts as they beat their shields. This was to excite fear in the enemy. No longer. Caesar’s men came silently, thirty-five thousand strong with only the centurions calling out orders. Every centurion’s optio watched the flags in case the orders were suddenly changed, but the centurion watched the men in his century. On command, they could stop midstride or advance at a run. This is how they drilled: every man ready to obey his centurion.

As the distance between the armies closed, Caesar sent his archers forward, a cohort at either end of the line with cavalry standing by to defend them. Pompey’s archers answered, this time with cavalry in support. For the moment neither side wasted ammunition. Caesar called a halt when the two armies were a furlong apart, roughly an eighth of a mile. When Pompey still did not move, Caesar cut behind his legions and rode as far as the centre of his line. There, passing off his cavalry shield to one of his staff, he took up a legionary’s long shield and walked briskly through the files of his men. Passing his frontline, Caesar kept walking.

Thirty steps before the line he finally came to a halt and drew his sword. Holding it high, he shouted across the field: ‘If you’re looking for Caesar, children, HERE I AM!’

Not a sound came from either army, but Pompey’s archers before the lines let loose. The arrows came from both flanks. They climbed like hundreds of migratory birds, closing together as they soared. They were black specks against a blue sky, moving as if directed by a singular intelligence, rising, cresting and then curving down en masse toward a single point.

They snapped into Caesar’s shield with such force those closest to Caesar later said it sounded like hail cracking against tin. Caesar’s shield stopped nearly a hundred darts. At Caesar’s feet were more than a thousand arrows. In the next instant, without any order given, Pompey’s line broke and ran at us.

Our legions stepped forward, not yet running, but eager to cover Caesar. Once his army had overtaken him, Caesar called out to his men as they marched by. He showed them his ruined shield, if only to give them courage. As for his person he had received not so much as a scratch.

Much as he might have wanted, Pompey could not call his men back. They ran downhill in a ragged, insane charge; they roared as if every man expected a chance at Caesar himself. Caesar’s line stayed in better form. At twenty paces, both frontlines let fly their spears. These hit with a hollow thump of steel against wood, an odd cacophony that served as preamble to the thunderous crash of two lines colliding.

There was no subtlety here, nothing of our general’s genius at play, only a mile-long line with thousands of mortal duels transpiring at once. If one man proved stronger he would slip his gladius beneath the other’s guard or maybe over the top. A quick wound to the belly or the eyes, a twist of the point as the blade exited: that was all that was needed to take a man down. The next enemy came for more of the same, shields cracking again, blades slithering forward. If that failed to bring blood, both men pulled back. Then a second collision, one man suddenly taking ground, the other giving it away grudgingly, playing out their duels in tight confines, backs always to their own men. The blades slipping high or low or around the side of the shields, like serpents lunging.

Two or three duels saw a legionary finally brought down with a wound or too tired to fight another. Back he went along the files to the congratulatory shouts of his mates. The next man stepped up, happy for the chance to spill blood. Taking a charge, falling back, then pushing forward, the shield, swinging like a scythe, as much a weapon as the gladius. Up and down the line it went like this, anonymous men fighting in dust so thick they could hardly breathe. Young men eager for glory. Old fighters taking the measure of their foes before getting too serious.

For the first quarter of an hour I could see both armies; after that, the dust covered all but the back ranks of our legions. I could only listen to the fighting, the song of steel, the screams of the wounded.

Sometime during the third hour of the battle Dolabella began riding along our line of reserve cavalry. He called to his prefects as he went. I looked at the battlefield, but I could not see that anything had changed. On the right, Legio X had edged forward slightly, but this seemed to me only another of the permutations of the battle line.

In fact Caesar had suddenly pushed his men to take ground, and that is what prompted Dolabella to act. To my surprise our attack turned toward the army’s left flank, opposite Caesar’s position.

The enemy commander on our left, Titus Labienus, had served as Caesar’s second-in-command in Gaul for many years. He must always have resented Caesar, for when the time came to pick a side, Labienus had joined Pompey Magnus. And now, having no choice but to live with a very bad decision, he rode with Pompey’s son.

He saw us coming at the start of our attack and being hated by Caesar imagined we came for him. That was the point of Dolabella’s charge, but as we closed behind our left wing a few hundred of our number hit Labienus’s cavalry. As for the rest of us, we turned toward Caesar. Now completely screened from the enemy’s view by the dust in the field we rode at a controlled canter. I was coughing and blinded, like every man and horse out there.

Circling behind Legio X, I could see the fight being pressed with terrifying fury. Caesar’s cavalry had come against the infantry’s flank. Pompey’s cavalry answered with every man available. I heard horses and men screaming; I saw hundreds of combatants from both sides down with wounds or already dead.

At the centre of it the two cavalry forces had mixed completely together. A man could be fighting one enemy even as another closed on him from behind. The heavy lances were gone; this was sword against shield, and sometimes only the naked blades.

And all so that we might pass by like a stream of ghosts through clouds of dust.

We took arrows and stones from squads of archers and slingers at the rear. A few hundred reserve horsemen started to intercept us. Realizing our number exceeded three thousand, they turned back at once and retreated.

We met three cohorts of men on horseback close to the camp palisade. We hit them with our lances lowered and broke through without any trouble. I brought down one rider in this charge; those behind him had already turned back toward the open gates of their camp. I stabbed another’s back as he rode away. I was ready to chase down a third victim when one of my decurions shouted something.

He was pointing at the battlefield behind us and I pulled up for a better look. Gazing through the dust it was impossible to guess the number, but a mass of enemy cavalry had started across the plain in our direction. As I considered them, I felt my horse’s hindquarters dip; then the animal skittered excitedly.

It could have been an arrow struck its haunches, or my horse might have stumbled on a corpse, but I knew the truth. I had committed the great error. I had let one of the enemy on the ground leap up behind me. As his grip closed around me, I lifted both arms. I sought to block easy access to my neck. Stopped in one assault, my assailant drove a dagger through my cuirass and into my ribs. The pain of the steel coming into me was like touching fire. Cold, then white hot. Having no chance of resisting the man as long as he hung on my back, I could only think to throw myself to the ground. My assailant came off my horse as well.

We hit the ground together, his weight leaving me stunned. He rolled away. I blinked and tried in vain to breathe. I watched him pick up a heavy lance and tried to reach for my sword. A sharp pain in my shoulder stopped me; I had broken my collarbone without realising it. I hadn’t even strength enough to grip the weapon.

I sat up facing him, thinking I might dodge the killing thrust. As for fear, I was strangely without it. Utterly calm, if you can believe it. I hoped to anticipate him, somehow to dodge the blade. This was pure folly, but in my innocence I was not prepared to admit this was my death.

Dolabella rode over the man at a gallop; I had not even seen him coming. My would-be-killer flew several paces before landing in a heap. Once he hit the ground Dolabella’s Guard finished him, and that was it. Two of Dolabella’s men dismounted and lifted me up and carried me toward the enemy camp, which was already in our possession.