Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Pompey and Metellus Pius left Valentia behind, continuing north to Saguntum. The food they had plundered from Saetabis (there was nothing else to plunder) was a welcome addition to their dwindling supplies, and so was Pompey's cache in the disused quarry outside Valentia. They had agreed that both would march together up the east coast to Emporiae, and that Metellus Pius would winter that year in Narbonese Gaul; though his men had not voiced any complaint at their thousand mile detour to reinforce Pompey, the Piglet thought that another five hundred mile walk would do them for the year. Besides, he wanted to be in the thick of the action in the spring, and he knew that the annihilation of the Spanish army would keep the Further province safe from any raiding Lusitani. Saguntum had sent them an embassage to inform them that it would do whatever possible to assist them, and was still stoutly Roman in sentiment. Not surprising: it had been Saguntum's Roman (and Massiliote) affiliations which had caused the outbreak of the second Punic war against Carthage a century and a half earlier. Of food, however, the town had little to offer, and this the two generals believed. The harvest was poor because the rains of winter had not come to give the crops their best drink of the growing season, nor had the late spring rains come to send them shooting up heavy with ears of grain. It was therefore imperative that the two armies move as swiftly as possible to the Iberus, where the harvest was later and richer. If they could reach it by the end of Sextilis it would be theirs, not Sertorius's. The embassage from Saguntum had therefore been thanked and sent home; Metellus Pius and Pompey would not be staying. Pompey's leg wound was healing, but slowly; the barbs of the spear which had inflicted it had torn chunks out of sinews and tendons as well as muscles, and much tissue had to grow and reknit before he would be able to bear any weight on it. The loss of his Public Horse he seemed to feel, thought the Piglet, more than he did the use of his leg or the loss of its beauty. Well, a horse was more beautiful than a man's leg. Pompey wouldn't find one to match it this side of the rosea rura in Sabine country. Spanish horses were small and underbred. His spirits were down again, not unnaturally. Not only had Metellus Pius been the sole reason for the victory on the Sucro, but Metellus Pius had also slaughtered Sertorius's best general and best army. Even Lucius Afranius, Marcus Petreius and Pompey's new legate, Lucius Titurius Sabinus, had fared better than poor Pompey himself. All very well to say that it was upon Pompey personally that the brunt of Sertorius's venom had fallen; Pompey knew he hadn't met the test. And now, his scouts told him, the renegade Marian was dogging their footsteps as they marched north, no doubt waiting for his next opportunity. His guerrilla units were already in evidence, harrying what foraging parties were sent out, but Pompey had learned as much wisdom as the Piglet in this respect, so the two armies suffered very little. On the other hand, they obtained very little in the way of food. Then apparently quite by accident they ran into the army of Quintus Sertorius on the plains of the coast just after they had passed Saguntum. And Sertorius decided to engage them, making sure that he and his own legions faced Pompey. Pompey was the weak link, not Metellus Pius. The strategy was a mistake. Sertorius would have done far better to have contained Metellus Pius himself and left Pompey to Perperna; Pompey appeared on the field on his stretcher, unwilling to have it said that, like Achilles, he skulked in his tent while his allies got on with the battle. Hostilities began in the early afternoon, and it was all over by nightfall. Though he had sustained a slight wound on his arm, Metellus Pius had carried the day. He inflicted losses of five thousand upon Perperna but experienced few himself. Poor Pompey's ill luck continued to dog him; his cavalry was killed to the last man and his casualties stood at six thousand a legion and a half. That they could claim the engagement as a victory for Rome was due to Perperna's losses plus the three thousand men who died fighting for Sertorius. "He'll be back at dawn," said the Piglet cheerfully when he came to see how Pompey was. "He'll withdraw, surely," said Pompey. "It didn't go well for him, but it went disastrously for Perperna." "He'll be back, Gnaeus Pompeius. I know him." Oh, the pain! Oh, the gall! The wretched Piglet knew him! And he was right, of course. Sertorius was back in the morning, determined to win. This time he rectified his mistake and concentrated his own energies upon Metellus Pius, whose camp he attacked as soon as it was light enough to see. But the old woman was ready for him. He had put Pompey and his men in the camp as well, and trounced Sertorius. Looking a lot younger and fitter these days, Metellus Pius chased Sertorius into Saguntum, while Pompey on his stretcher was carried back to his tent. But the action had brought Pompey a personal grief, despite its success. Gaius Memmius brother in law, friend, quaestor was killed, the first of Pompey's legates to perish. While he wept huddled in the back of a mule drawn cart, Metellus Pius commanded the march north, leaving Sertorius and Perperna to do whatever they wanted, which was probably to exact reprisals on the inhabitants of Saguntum. They wouldn't stay long, of that Metellus Pius was sure; Saguntum could hardly feed itself, let alone an army.

At the end of Sextilis the two Roman armies reached the Iberus only to find the harvest such as it was safely in the granaries of Sertorius's formidable mountain strongholds, and the earth burned to a uniformly black desert. Sertorius had not stayed long in Saguntum. He had outmaneuvered them and got to the Iberus first, there to wreak devastation. Emporiae and the lands of the Indigetes were in little better condition; two winters of Pompey's occupation had made the purses of the people fat, but their harvest was lean. "I shall send my quaestor Gaius Urbinius to the Further province to recruit enough troops to keep my lands safe," said the Piglet, "but if we are to break Sertorius's back, then I have to be close to you in spring. So, as we thought, it will have to be Narbonese Gaul for me." "The harvest isn't good there either." "True. But they haven't had an army quartered on them for many years, so they'll have enough to spare for me." The Piglet frowned. "What worries me more is what you're going to do. I don't think there's enough here to fatten your men up and if you can't fatten them up in winter, they'll stay very thin." "I'm off to the upper Durius," said Pompey calmly. "Ye gods!" "Well, it's a good way west of Sertorius's towns, so it ought to be easier to reduce the local fortresses than it would be places like Calagurris or Vareia. The Iberus belongs to Sertorius from end to end. But the Durius doesn't. The few native Spaniards I trust tell me that the country isn't as high nor the cold as perishing as it is nearer to the Pyrenees." "The Vaccei inhabit the region, and they're warlike." "Oh, tell me what Spanish tribe isn't?" asked Pompey wearily, shifting his aching leg. The Piglet was nodding thoughtfully. "You know, Pompeius, the more I think about it, the better I like it," he said. "You go there! Just make sure you start before winter makes it too hard to cross the watershed at the top end of the Iberus." "Don't worry, I'll beat the winter. But first," he said grimly, "I have a letter to write." "To Rome and the Senate." "That's right, Pius. To Rome and the Senate." The blue eyes, older and warier these days, stared into the Piglet's brown ones. "The thing is, will you let me write and speak for you too?'' "You most definitely can," said Metellus Pius. "You're sure you wouldn't rather write for yourself?" "No, it's better that it comes from you. You're the one those couch fat experts gave the special commission. I'm just an ordinary old governor in the throes of a frightful war. They won't take any notice of me, they know perfectly well that I'm one of the old retainers. It's you they don't know, Magnus. You they probably don't quite trust. You're not one of them. Write to them! And give them a fright, Magnus!" "Don't worry, I will." The Piglet got up. "Well, I'll take myself off to Narbo first thing tomorrow. Every day less I'm here means less of your food I eat." "Won't you at least polish up my prose? Varro used to." "No, not I!" said the Piglet, and laughed. "They know my literary style. Give them something they've never seen before." Pompey gave them something they had never seen before.