Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

The white fawn nosing contentedly at its rich dried grasses (for winter in Osca meant snow and ice, not grazing), Sertorius sat down on a boulder outside his back door and tried to insert himself inside Pompey's mind. A kid! Did Rome truly believe that a kid from Picenum could defeat him! By the time he rose he had concluded that Rome and the Senate had been tricked by the shell game Philippus performed so well. For of course Sertorius maintained contact with certain people inside Rome and they were neither humble nor obscure. Beneath Sulla's blanket many malcontents moved invisibly, and some of them had made it their business to keep Sertorius informed. Since the appointment of Pompey the tenor of these communications had changed a little; a few important men were beginning to hint that if Quintus Sertorius could defeat the new champion of the Senate, Rome might be glad to welcome him home as the Dictator. But he had thought of something else too, and privately summoned Lucius Hirtuleius to see him. "We'll make absolutely sure the old woman stays in Further Spain," he said to Hirtuleius, "for it may be that the Lusitani won't be discouragement enough. I want you and your brother to take the Spanish army to Laminium in the spring and station yourselves there. Then if the old woman does decide to try to help the kid, you'll contain him. Whether he attempts to break out of his province via the headwaters of the Anas or the Baetis, you'll be in his way." The Spanish army was just that, forty thousand Lusitanian and Celtiberian tribesmen whom Sertorius and Hirtuleius had painfully but successfully trained to fight like Roman legions. Sertorius had other Spanish forces which he had retained in their native guise, superb at ambush and guerrilla warfare; but he had known from the beginning that if he was to beat Rome in Spain, he must also have properly trained Roman legions at his disposal. Many men of Roman or Italian nationality had drifted to enlist under him since Carbo's final defeat, but not enough. Thus had Sertorius generated his Spanish army. "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.