Fortune's Favorites (89 page)

Finally, with December almost upon him and a pressing need to return to his own province, the old woman from Further Spain got down to business.

“I do not think it necessary to dwell upon events already in the past,” he said crisply. “What ought to concern both of us is next year's campaigns.”

Pompey had always liked Metellus Pius well enough, though he now found himself wishing his colleague had rubbed him raw, crowed and exulted; he might then have been able to dismiss his opinions as worthless and healthily hated his person. As it was, the genuine kindness and consideration only drove his own inadequacy home harder. Clearly the Piglet did not deem him important enough to despise. He was just another junior military tribune who had come a cropper on his first lone mission, had to be picked up, dusted off, and set astride his horse again.

However, at least this attitude meant they could sit together amicably. In pre-Sertorian times Pompey would have taken over what was obviously going to be a war conference; but the post-Sertorian Pompey simply sat and waited for Metellus Pius to produce a plan.

“This time,” said the Piglet, “we will both march for the Sucro and Sertorius. Neither of us has a big enough army to do the job unassisted. However, I can't move through Laminium because Hirtuleius and the Spanish army will be back there lying in wait for me. So I will have to go by a very devious route indeed, and with as much stealth as possible. Not that word of my coming won't reach Sertorius, and therefore Hirtuleius. But Hirtuleius will have to move from Laminium to contain me, and he won't do that until Sertorius orders him to. Sertorius is a complete autocrat in all matters military.”

“So what way can you go?” asked Pompey.

“Oh, far to the west, through Lusitania,” said the Piglet cheerfully. “I shall fetch up eventually at Segovia.”

“Segovia! But that's at the end of the earth!”

“True. It will throw sand in Sertorius's eyes beautifully, however, as well as avoiding Hirtuleius. Sertorius will think I am about to move into the upper Iberus and try to take it off him while he's busy dealing with you. He'll send Hirtuleius to stop me because Hirtuleius at Laminium will be more than a hundred miles closer to Segovia than he.”

“What do you want me to do, precisely?'' asked this new and much humbler Pompey.

“Stay in camp here in Emporiae until May. It will take me two months to reach Segovia, so I'll be moving long before you. When you do march, proceed with extreme caution. The most vital part of the whole strategy is that you look as if you're moving with purpose and completely independently of me. But that you do not reach the Turis and Valentia until the end of June.”

“Won't Sertorius try to stop me at Saguntum or Lauro?”

“I doubt it. He doesn't work the same territory twice. You are now in a position to know Saguntum and Lauro well.”

Pompey turned dull red in the face, but said nothing.

The Piglet went on as if he noticed no change in Pompey's complexion. “No, he'll let you reach the Turis and Valentia this time. They will be new to you, you see. Herennius and the traitor Perperna are still occupying Valentia, but I don't think they'll stay to let you besiege them-Sertorius doesn't like making his stand in coastal cities, he prefers his mountain strongholds-they are impossible to take.”

Metellus Pius paused to study Pompey's face, faded back to its new pinched whiteness, and was profoundly thankful to see that his eyes were interested. Good! He was taking it in.

“From Segovia I will march for the Sucro, where I expect Sertorius will maneuver you into battle.”

Frowning, Pompey turned this over in his mind, which, the Piglet now realized, was still functioning well; it was just that Pompey no longer possessed the confidence to make his own plans. Well, a couple of victories and that would come back! Pompey's nature was formed, couldn't be unformed. Just battered.

“But a march from Segovia to the Sucro will take you right down the middle of the driest country in Spain!” Pompey protested. “It's an absolute desert! And until you reach the Sucro itself you'll be crossing ridge after ridge instead of following valley floors. An awful march!”

“That's why I shall make it,” said Metellus Pius. “No one has ever chosen the route voluntarily before, and Sertorius will certainly not expect me to do so. What I hope is to reach the Sucro before his scouts sniff my presence.” His brown eyes surveyed Pompey with pleasure. “You've studied your maps and reports intensively, Pompeius, to know the lay of the land so well.”

“I have, Quintus Caecilius. It can't substitute for actual experience, but it's the best one can do until the experience is accumulated,” said Pompey, pleased at this praise.

“You're already accumulating experience, don't worry about that!” said Metellus Pius heartily.

“Negative experience,” muttered Pompey.

“No experience is negative, Gnaeus Pompeius, provided it leads to eventual success.”

Pompey sighed, shrugged. “I suppose so.” He looked down at his hands. “Where do you want me when you reach the Sucro? And when do you think that will be?”

“Sertorius himself won't move north from the Sucro to the Turis,” said Metellus Pius firmly. “Herennius and Perperna may try to contain you at Valentia or on the Turis somewhere, but I think their orders will be to fall back to Sertorius on the Sucro. I shall aim to be in Sertorius's vicinity at the end of Quinctilis. That means that if you reach the Turis by the end of June, you must find a good excuse to linger there for one month. Whatever happens, don't keep marching south to find Sertorius himself until the end of Quinctilis! If you do, I won't be there to reinforce you. Sertorius's aim is to remove you and your legions from the war completely-that would leave him with vastly superior numbers to deal with me. I would go down.”

“Last year saw you come up, Quintus Caecilius.”

“That might have been a freak occurrence, and I hope that is what Sertorius will call it. Rest assured that if I meet Hirtuleius and am victorious again, I will endeavor to conceal my success from Sertorius until I can join my forces to yours.”

“In Spain, difficult, I'm told. Sertorius hears everything.”

“So they maintain. But I too have been in Spain for some years now, and Sertorius's advantages are melting away. Be of good cheer, Gnaeus Pompeius! We will win!”

To say that Pompey was in a better frame of mind after the old woman from the Further province left to take his fleet back to Gades was perhaps a slight exaggeration, but there certainly had been a stiffening in his spine. He removed himself from his quarters to join Afranius, Petreius and the more junior legates in putting the finishing touches to his restructured army. As well, he thought, that he had insisted on taking one of the Piglet's legions away from him! Without it, he could not have campaigned. The exact number of his soldiers offered him two alternatives: five under-strength legions, or four normal strength. Since he was far from being a military dunce, Pompey elected five under-strength legions because five were more maneuverable than four. It came hard to look his surviving troops in the eye-this being the first time he had really done so since his defeat-but to his gratified surprise, he learned that none of them held the deaths of so many of their comrades against him. Instead they seemed to have settled into a dour determination that Sertorius would not prosper, and were as willing as always to do whatever their lovely young general wanted.

As the winter in the lowlands was a mild and unusually dry one, Pompey welded his new units together by leading them up the Iberus a little way and reducing several of Sertorius's towns–Biscargis and Celsa fell with satisfying thumps. At this point, it being the end of March, Pompey withdrew again to Emporiae and began to prepare for his expedition down the coast.

A letter from Metellus Pius informed him that after taking delivery of his forty warships and three thousand talents of gold in Dianium, Sertorius himself had departed into Lusitania with Perperna to help Hirtuleius train more men to fill the reduced ranks of the Spanish army, leaving Herennius in charge of Osca.

Pompey's own intelligence network had markedly improved, thanks to the efforts of uncle and nephew Balbus (now in his service), and his Picentine scouts were faring better than he had expected.

Not until after the beginning of May did he move, and then he proceeded with extreme caution. A man of the land himself, he noted automatically as he crossed the Iberus at Dertosa that this rich and extensively farmed valley looked very dry for the time of year, and that the wheat coming up in the fields was sparser than it ought to be, was not yet eared.

Of the enemy there was no sign, but that fact did not fill Pompey with pleasure on this second march into the south. It merely made him more cautious still, his column defensive. Past Saguntum and Lauro he hurried with averted face; Saguntum stood, but Lauro was a blackened ruin devoid of life. At the end of June, having sent a message he hoped would reach Metellus Pius in Segovia, he reached the wider and more fertile valley of the Turis River, on the far bank of which stood the big, well-fortified city of Valentia.

Here, drawn up on the narrow flats between the river and the city, Pompey found Herennius and Perperna waiting for him. In number, his Picentine scouts informed him, they were stronger than he, but had the same five legions; some thirty thousand men to Pompey's twenty thousand. Their greatest advantage was in cavalry, which his scouts estimated at a thousand Gallic horse. Though Metellus Scipio and Aulus Gabinius had tried strenuously to recruit cavalry in Narbonese Gaul during the early winter, Pompey's troopers numbered only four hundred.

At least he could be sure that what his Picentine scouts told him was reliable, and when they assured him that there was little difference between scouting in Italy and scouting in Spain, he believed them. So, secure in the knowledge that no Sertorian cohorts lurked behind him ready to outflank him or fall upon his rear, Pompey committed his army to the crossing of the Turis. And to battle on its southern bank.

The river was more a declivity than a steep-sided trench, thus presented no obstacle even when battle was joined; its bed was rock-hard, its waters ankle deep. There was no particular tactical advantage to be seized by either side, so what developed was a conventional clash which the army with better spirit and strength would win. The only innovation Pompey used had arisen out of his deficiency in cavalry; correctly assuming that Perperna and Herennius would use their superiority in horse to roll up his flanks, Pompey had put troops bearing old-fashioned phalanx spears on the outside of his wings and ordered these men to use the fearsome fifteen-foot-long weapons against mounts rather than riders.

The struggle was hotly contested and very drawn out. By no means as gifted a general as either Sertorius or Hirtuleius, Herennius did not see until it was too late that he was getting the worst of it; Perperna, to his west, was ignoring his every order. The two men had, in fact, not been able before the battle began to agree upon how it should be conducted; they ended in fighting as two separate entities, though this Pompey could not discern, only learned of later.

The end of it was a heavy defeat for Herennius, but not for Perperna. Deciding that it was better to die if Sertorius insisted he must continue the war in tandem with this treacherous, odious man Perperna, Herennius threw his life away on the field, and the heart went out of the three legions and the cavalry directly under his command. Twelve thousand men died, leaving Perperna and eighteen thousand survivors to retreat to Sertorius on the Sucro.

Mindful of Metellus Pius's warning that he must not reach the Sucro until the end of Quinctilis, Pompey did not attempt to pursue Perperna. The victory, so decisive and complete, had done his wounded self the world of good. How wonderful it was to hear his veterans cheering him again! And to wreath the eagles and the standards in well-earned laurels!

Valentia of course was now virtually defenseless, only its walls between the inhabitants and Roman vengeance. So Pompey sat down before it and subjected it to a merciless inspection which revealed more than enough weaknesses to suit his purpose. A few mines-a fire along a section made of wood- finding and cutting off the water supply-and Valentia surrendered. With some of his newly learned caution, Pompey removed every morsel of food from the city and hid the lot in an abandoned quarry beneath a carpet of turf; he then sent the entire citizenry of Valentia to the slave market in New Carthage-by ship, as the Roman fleet of Further Spain just happened (thanks to the foresight of a certain Roman Piglet) to be cruising in those waters, and no one had seen a sign of the forty Pontic triremes Sertorius now possessed. And six days before the end of Quinctilis did Pompey march for the Sucro, where he found Sertorius and Perperna enclosed in two separate camps on the plain between him and the river itself.

Pompey now had to contend with a distressing dilemma. Of Metellus Pius he had heard nothing, and could not therefore assume that reinforcements were nearby. Like the situation on the Turis, the lay of the land bestowed no tactical advantage upon Sertorius; no hills, big forests, handy groves or ravines lay in even remote proximity, which meant that Sertorius had nowhere to hide cavalry or guerrillas. The closest town was little Saetabis five miles to the south of the river, which was wider than the Turis and notorious for quicksands.

If he delayed battle until Metellus Pius joined him- always provided that Metellus Pius was coming-then Sertorius might retreat to more suitably Sertorian country-or divine that Pompey was stalling in the expectation of reinforcements. On the other hand, if he engaged Sertorius he was grossly outnumbered, almost forty thousand against twenty thousand. Neither side now had many horse, thanks to Herennius's losses.

In the end it was fear Metellus Pius would not come that decided Pompey to commit himself to battle-or so he told himself, refusing to admit that his old greedy self was whispering inside his head that if he did fight now, he wouldn't have to share the laurels with a Piglet. The clash with Herennius and Perperna was only a prelude to this engagement with Sertorius, and Pompey burned to expunge the memory of Sertorius's taunts. Yes, his confidence had returned! So at dawn on the second-last day of Quinctilis, having constructed a formidable camp in his rear, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus marched his five legions and four hundred horse onto the plain opposite Sertorius and Perperna, and deployed them for battle.