Fortune's Favorites (86 page)

“Can you do without us against Pompeius?” asked Hirtuleius.

“Easily, with Perperna's men.”

“Then don't worry about the old woman. My brother and I will make sure he stays in Further Spain.”

“Now remember,” said Metellus Pius to Gaius Memmius as that worthy prepared to march for New Carthage, “that your troops are more precious than your own skin. If things should take a turn for the worse-that is, if Pompeius should not do as well as he thinks he will-get your men into shelter strong enough to keep them safe from attack. You're a good reliable fellow, Memmius, and I'm sorry to lose you. But don't forget your men.”

Handsome face solemn, Pompey's new quaestor who happened to be his brother-in-law as well led his single legion eastward across country commonly held to be the richest and most fertile on earth-richer than Campania, richer than Egypt, richer than Asia Province. With exactly the right summer and winter climates, lavish water from rivers fed by perpetual snow and deep alluvial soils, Further Spain was a breadbasket, green in spring and early summer, golden at the bountiful harvest. Its beasts were fat and productive, its waters teemed with fish.

With Gaius Memmius there journeyed two men who were neither Roman nor Spanish; an uncle and nephew of almost the same age, both named Kinahu Hadasht Byblos. By blood they were Phoenician and by nationality citizens of the great city port of Gades, which had been founded as a Phoenician colony nearly a thousand years before and still kept its Punic roots and customs very much in the foreground of Gadetanian life. The rule of the Carthaginians had not been difficult to accept, as the Carthaginians were also of Punic stock. Then had come the Romans, who proved to suit the people of Gades too; Gades prospered, and gradually the noble Gadetani had come to understand that the destiny of their city was inextricably bound to Rome's. Any civilized people of the Middle Sea was preferable to domination by the barbarian tribesmen of eastern and central Spain, and the chief fear of the Gadetani remained that Rome would eventually deem Spain not worth the keeping, would withdraw. It was for that reason that the uncle and nephew named Kinahu Hadasht Byblos traveled with Gaius Memmius and his single legion to make themselves useful in any way they could. Memmius had gladly handed them the responsibility for procuring supplies, and used them also as interpreters and sources of information. Because he could not comfortably pronounce their Punic name, and because they spoke Latin (quite well, both of them!) with a lisp emerging from their own lisping language, Pompey's new quaestor had nicknamed them Balbus, which indicated a speech impediment; though he couldn't work out why, Memmius had learned that they were enormously pleased to be dowered with a Latin cognomen.

“Gnaeus Pompeius has instructed me to proceed through Ad Fraxinum and Eliocroca,” said Memmius to the elder Balbus. “Is that really the way we ought to go?”

“I think so, Gaius Memmius,” said the foreign-looking Balbus, whose hooked nose and high cheekbones proclaimed his Semitic blood, as did his very large dark eyes. “It means we'll follow the Baetis almost all the way to its western sources, then cross the Orospeda Mountains where they are narrowest. It is a watershed, but if we march from Ad Fraxinum to Basti we can pick up a road leading across the watershed to Eliocroca on the far side. From Eliocroca we descend rapidly onto the Campus Spartarius. That is what the Romans call the plains of the Contestani around New Carthage. There are no advantages to going any other way.”

“How much opposition are we likely to encounter?”

“None until we cross the Orospeda. Beyond that, who knows?”

“Are the Contestani for us or against us?”

Balbus shrugged in a very foreign way. “Can one be sure of any Spanish tribe? The Contestani have always dwelt in proximity to civilized men, which ought to count for something. But one must call Sertorius a civilized man too, and all the Spanish admire him very much.”

“Then we shall see what we shall see,” said Memmius, and worried no more about it; first reach Eliocroca.

Until Gaius Marius had opened up the mines in the ranges between the Baetis and the Anas (called the Marian Mountains after him), the Orospeda Mountains had been the chief source of lead and silver exploited by Rome. As a result the southern part of the ranges was thin of forest, and that included Memmius's line of march. Altogether he had a distance of three hundred miles to negotiate, two hundred less than Pompey, but because the terrain was more difficult Memmius had started out somewhat earlier than Pompey, in mid-March. At the end of April, not having hurried at all, he came down from the Orospeda to the little town of Eliocroca on a southern branch of the Tader River; the Campus Spartarius stretched before him.

Having been in Spain too long to trust any native people, Memmius tightened his ranks up and marched defensively toward New Carthage, some thirty miles away to the southwest. Wisely, as he soon discovered. Not far down the good mining road from Eliocroca he found the Contestani lying in wait for him, and promised an offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus of a bull calf if he kept his legion intact until he could reach safety. Safety obviously was New Carthage itself; Gaius Memmius wasted no time thinking about remaining anywhere outside its island peninsula.

They were a very long twenty-five miles, but the two hundred Gallic cavalry he had with him he sent ahead to guard the approach to the bridge between the mainland and the city, deeming his plight hopeless only if the Contestani cut him off at that one narrowest point. He had started at a brisk pace from Eliocroca at dawn, encountered the massed tribesmen five miles further on, then fought his way crablike with his cohorts in square on the road, the men forming its sides within the moving column spelling the men on its exposed sides. Foot soldiers themselves and unused to pitched battle, the Contestani could not break his formation. When he reached the bridge he found it uncontested and passed across to safety, his legion intact.

The elder Balbus he sent to Gades aboard a dowdy ship which reeked of garum, the malodorous fish paste so prized by every cook in the world; the letter Balbus carried to Metellus Pius was a whiffy one, but no less important for that. It explained the situation, asked for help, and warned Metellus Pius that New Carthage could not last out until winter unless it got food. The younger Balbus he sent on a more perilous mission, to penetrate the boiling tribes north of New Carthage and try to reach Pompey.

Pompey left the vicinity of Emporiae fairly early in April, his local advisers having informed him that the volume of the Iberus would be low enough by the end of April to allow him to ford it comfortably.

He had satisfactorily solved the problem of his legates by commissioning none but Picentines or Italians and investing as his two senior legates Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius, both viri militares from Picenum who had been under Pompeian eagles for some years. Caesar's messmate from Mitylene, Aulus Gabinius, came from a Picentine family; Gaius Cornelius was not one of the patrician Cornelii, nor was Decimus Laelius related to the Laelii who had risen into prominence under Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus. Militarily all had proven themselves or showed promise, but socially none of them save perhaps Aulus Gabinius (whose father and uncle were senators) could hope to advance in Rome without large rations of Pompey's patronage.

Things went very well. Advancing rapidly down the coast, Pompey and his six legions and his fifteen hundred cavalrymen actually reached Dertosa on the north bank of the Iberus before encountering any opposition at all. As Pompey began to ford the Iberus some two legions commanded by Herennius attempted to thwart him, but were easily beaten off; Pompey's chest swelled and he proceeded south in optimistic mood. Not far down the road Herennius reappeared, this time reinforced by two legions under Perperna, but when the soldiers in their vanguard began to fall, they drew off southward in a hurry.

Pompey's scouts were excellent. As he moved steadily further from the Iberus they brought him word that Herennius and Perperna had gone to earth in the big enemy town of Valentia, almost a hundred miles to the south of Pompey's position. As Valentia lay on the Turis River and the wide alluvial plains of the Turis were rich and intensively farmed, Pompey increased his speed. When he reached Saguntum–near the mouth of a small, short river which lay in the midst of fairly poor country–he learned from his trusty scouts that Sertorius himself was completely out of range, could not possibly assist Herennius and Perperna to hold Valentia. Apparently afraid that Metellus Pius was going to invade northern Spain from the headwaters of the Tagus, Sertorius had positioned his own army on the upper reaches of the Salo at Segontia, where he would be able to intercept the Piglet as he emerged from the narrow bridge of mountains which separated the Tagus from the Iberus. Crafty, thought Pompey smugly, but you really ought to be within hailing distance of Herennius and Perperna, Sertorius!

It was now the middle of May, and Pompey was learning how cruelly hot the long summer of the Spanish lowlands could be. He was also learning how much water his men could drink in one short day, and how quickly they could devour his food supplies. With the harvest still several months off, foraging for grain had yielded little from the granaries of what towns he had passed through once he left the Iberus. This coast-which had looked so rich on his maps and sounded so rich when his advisers spoke of it-was no Italy; if he had always thought of the Adriatic coast as poor and underpopulated, it was fairer and denser by far than the littoral of eastern Spain.

Protesting itself loyal to Rome, Saguntum was unable to give him grain. Pirates had raided its storage silos, the people of the town would eat sparingly until their crops came in. Thus Valentia and the plains of the Turis beckoned; Pompey struck camp and marched.

If the sight of the formidable crags inland gave even a remote promise of how tortuous and difficult it would be for any army to march through central Spain, then Sertorius, sitting in Segontia in early May, could not hope to relieve Valentia before the end of June-and that, his scouts assured Pompey, only if Sertorius learned to fly! Unable to credit that any general could lead men faster than he could, Pompey believed his scouts, who may have been genuinely of that opinion-or who more likely were secretly working for Sertorius. Be that as it may, not one day south of Saguntum, Pompey learned that Sertorius and his army were already between him and Valentia-and busy attacking the loyal Roman town of Lauro!

What Pompey could not have been brought to understand was that Sertorius knew every kink, every valley, every pass and every track between the Middle Sea and the mountains of western Spain-and that he could move through them at seemingly incredible speed because each village and hamlet he encountered would if asked give him all its food, would push him onward with a love which amounted to adulation. No Celtiberian or Lusitanian welcomed the Roman presence in Spain; every Celtiberian and Lusitanian realized that Rome was in Spain only to exploit the country's riches. That this bright white hope, Sertorius, was himself a Roman the native Spanish peoples saw as a special gift from their gods. For who knew how to fight the Romans better than a Roman?

When the scouts reported back that Sertorius led but two small legions, Pompey gasped. The cheek of it! The gall of it! To lay siege to a Roman town not far from six crack Roman legions and fifteen hundred horse-! It beggared description!

Off went Pompey to Lauro in a fever of anticipation, exultant because Fortune had given him Sertorius as his adversary so early in the war.

A cool dispassionate look at Lauro and Sertorius's lines from atop a vantage point to the north of the little plain was more than enough to reinforce Pompey's confidence. A mile to the east of Lauro's walls lay the sea, while to the west there reared a high but flat-topped hill. To one looking down on the situation from Pompey's superior height, the hill to the west was the ideal base from which to conduct operations. Yet Sertorius had quite ignored it! Mind made up, Pompey hustled his army west of the city walls intent upon occupying the hill, and sure that the hill was already his. Riding upon his big white bedizened Public Horse, the twenty-nine-year-old general led his troops and cavalry himself-and at the double- striding out in front so that those who were massed atop Lauro's walls would be sure to see him in person.

Though he was looking at the hill all the way to its foot, Pompey had actually arrived there before he saw its flat top bristling with spears. And suddenly the air was rent by boos, jeers, catcalls: Sertorius and his men were shouting down to Pompey that he'd have to be speedier than that if he wanted to take a hill from Quintus Sertorius!

“Did you think I wouldn't realize you'd make for it, kid?” came one lone voice from the top. “You're too slow! Think you're as clever as Africanus and as brave as Horatius Cocles, don't you, kid? Well, Quintus Sertorius says you're an amateur! You don't know what real soldiering is! But stay in the vicinity, kid, and let a professional show you!”

Not foolish enough to attempt to storm Sertorius in such an impregnable position, Pompey had no other choice than to retreat. Eyes straight ahead, aware that his face was burning, he wheeled his horse and ploughed straight through the ranks of his own men and did not stop until he stood once more upon his original vantage point. By now the sun was past its zenith, but the day was long enough to fit one more maneuver into the hours left, and pride dictated that Pompey should fit it in.

Chest heaving as he fought to discipline his emotions, he surveyed the scene again. Below him his own army stood at ease, gulping the last of the water from shrinking, wrinkled skins athwart each water donkey, and all too obviously talking to each other as they exposed their steaming heads to the drying rays of the sun and leaned upon their spears or shields. Talking about their lovely young general and his humiliation, wondering if this was going to be the first campaign their lovely young general couldn't win. Wishing they had made their wills, no doubt.