Battus’ face flushed with anger as he took a step towards Torquatus, who just stood there looking at him calmly.
Seeing that the situation was unraveling, I spoke up. “Battus, how many men are you willing to lose to keep them from marching away?”
Battus was still angry, and snapped, “As many as it takes.”
“Then who will be left to fight the Pompeians?”
That finally got through to him, as his mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he finally shook his head. “It’s just not right,” he muttered.
In that I had to agree with him, but I also did not want the rest of the army to mutiny, which I was sure would happen if we were ordered to try and stop them from marching away. Fortunately, Pedius had come to the same conclusion, which he informed us about once we were all gathered. He could not shed any more light on why the 13th had thrown in with the other two Legions, telling us that a dispatch had already been sent to Caesar, informing him of the defections. There was nothing much we could do except go back to our respective Legions, and of course by the time I returned, the men already knew what had happened.
I called a meeting of the Centurions immediately; as soon as they were assembled, I asked the question that had been pressing on my mind since I had heard. “Do we have anything to worry about?”
I was vastly relieved to see that all the men seemed to be in agreement that we did not.
“I’m just glad that the general didn't order us to try and stop them. That could have been ugly,” Scribonius said, and there was universal agreement about this as well.
“I don’t think he ever considered it an option, though I can’t say the same for some of the other Centurions,” I replied, then I was struck by a thought. “And now we’re suspect as well, because we’re Spaniards like the 8th and 9th. You need to impress on the men the need for them to keep their mouths shut about what happened and how they feel about it, at least if they’re sympathetic to their friends, which I suspect many of them are. The last thing we need is somebody from another Legion overhearing one of the men talking and having him accused of inciting a mutiny.”
It was not the best way to run an army, but I did not want a bad situation to become worse, and the Centurions all agreed that they would keep a tight lid on the men for the next few days.
~ ~ ~ ~
While Sextus Pompey was holding Corduba, older brother Gnaeus had decided to besiege the town of Ulia, one of the few in the region that still held for Caesar, but neither Pedius nor Fabius wanted to move until Caesar arrived. So we waited in camp, doing little more than conducting weapons drills, not even going out on forced marches because of the threat of ambush. We did run regular cavalry patrols, using native levies along with some of the men who had marched with us, thus keeping apprised of the enemy movements to a reasonable degree. Caesar wasted no time, taking just 27 days to travel what it took the army six weeks to cover, outrunning even his cavalry, which trailed behind several days. He arrived in early Januarius of the old calendar, which by this time was so far off being aligned with the seasons that it was still mid-autumn. Word of Caesar’s arrival spread quickly, and upon hearing it, a small party of elders from the town under siege managed to slip out to come to the camp, begging Caesar for assistance. In response, Caesar ordered three Cohorts of the 7th and three Cohorts of the 21st along with the same number of cavalry, under the command of a Tribune who had local knowledge by the name of Paciaecus, to leave shortly after dark, using the same route to enter the town as the elders had used to escape from it. In concert with that, Caesar ordered us to pull up stakes, then march on Corduba, the idea being that Gnaeus could not maintain a siege when his rear and base of supplies was under threat. As had so many of Caesar’s enemies, Gnaeus did not credit the idea that our general could move an army as quickly as he did, so before Gnaeus knew it, we were camped on the southern bank of the Baetis (Guadalquivir) river, just across from Corduba. Now Gnaeus had no choice but to lift his siege, hurrying to the aid of his brother Sextus. While Gnaeus was in the process of turning his army about and coming to confront us, Caesar put us to work building a bridge across the Baetis. There was already a stone bridge in place, but there was a fort guarding its northern side, which would have forced us to make a possibly costly assault, so instead, Caesar selected a site about a mile downriver to the south. We left a force of several Cohorts occupying a fort identical to the Pompeian fort on the north bank, the only difference being ours was on the southern bank, blocking Gnaeus’ army from crossing the river to get to Corduba. The bridge we built was a makeshift affair, constructed of baskets filled with stones, which we sunk to the river bottom to act as pilings. It was one of the shakiest constructions we had ever made while marching for Caesar, though it served its purpose. We crossed the river, then Caesar immediately disposed us into three separate camps, placing one to the west of the city, one to the north and one to the east, with the river serving as a barrier to the south. The 10th occupied the camp on the eastern side, which took us until past dark to finish since we had to build a camp in the face of the enemy. This type of camp is more strongly fortified while requiring more men to stand ready in case of attack. About mid-day the next day, Gnaeus’ army arrived on the other side of the river. Instead of immediately assaulting our fort and trying to force his way across the stone bridge, he chose instead to construct his own camp, siting it on a hill that rose up from the bend of the river that curved around the southern side of Corduba. This allowed Caesar to order a trench built that ran from our temporary bridge to our fort at the stone bridge that would allow us to send reinforcements to the fort under cover. The digging began immediately, and to Gnaeus’ credit, he did see that he had made an error, so he sent out a force of men that he could spare from the building of his camp to try to stop the work on the trench. There was a sharp fight, but after some hot work, our men repelled the Pompeians so that work continued. As this project was underway, Caesar and his engineering officers were surveying Corduba, yet even from my limited examination, I was not confident that we would be able to take the city easily. I had visited Corduba as a young recruit, but I had been too green to be able to assess the city’s defenses back then, not knowing what to look for. Now, almost 16 years later as I examined the approach and the walls on our side, I did not like what I saw. Fortunately, after his inspection, Caesar came to the same conclusion, so instead of trying to besiege the city, we spent the next several days trying to entice young Gnaeus to meet us in battle by forming up on the plain to the north of the city out on the open ground. The young Pompey was not biting, however; he was unwilling to put his mostly untested troops against the veterans of Caesar’s army. While Gnaeus may have had the three veteran Legions that defected from our army, he clearly did not trust them, because along with the 1st and the 4th, on paper that was more than enough to face us with a reasonable chance. After a number of days where we marched out to offer battle, only to be rebuffed every time, Caesar gave the order to break camp, our next objective being the fortress town of Ategua. It lies a day’s march to the southeast of Corduba, on the north bank of the Salsum (Guadajoz) River, a tributary of the Baetis, where there was reportedly a large supply of grain. In order to steal a march on Gnaeus, we were ordered to keep the campfires burning in order to deceive the enemy, so we left men behind in the camp to tend to them. We slipped past first Corduba, then the camp of Gnaeus, crossing over the makeshift bridge and marching through the night to arrive outside the walls of the fortress shortly before mid-day. While part of the army constructed the camp, the rest of us immediately began the contravallation of the town.