Thank you, Great Rider, for guiding me back to my army, my wife and my son.
Six weeks pass…
In his baking command tent, Crassus was preparing for his appearance of the day. Sweating slaves stood by, doing their best to ignore the buzzing flies as they held out the accoutrements of his office. The red tunic of a general. The polished, muscled bronze cuirass. The helmet with the scarlet horsehair crest. The gilt-plated belt with the studded pteryges that protected his groin and the red sash that circled his waist. The ivory-handled gladius with its ornate scabbard and bejewelled baldric. The calf-high, open-toed boots.
Gods, I’m glad that I don’t have to wear this all day. Crassus beckoned to the slaves, eager to get on with his duty, which was to show himself to his troops. To raise their spirits. To tell them how brave they were. To let them know that they were engaged in a task sent by the gods: to rid Italy, and the Republic, of the blight that was Spartacus and his slave rabble. And of course, he thought slyly, to make him more popular than Pompey Magnus.
He shrugged on the tunic, trying to ignore the way that it stuck at once to his clammy back.
Pompey! The young upstart. Crassus hated that his rival had more of a public name for martial prowess than he had. In his mind, it was totally unjustified. Had he not been the man who saved the day for Sulla at the Colline Gate? But for him, Marius would have been dictator. All Pompey had done in the civil war was to raise three legions that had won a couple of trifling victories for Sulla. If the man was such an amazing bloody tactician, why had he taken so long to quell Sertorius’ rebellion in Iberia? It still wasn’t over. I would have dealt with it long since. As Jupiter is my witness, I will mop up Spartacus’ unrest in similar fashion.
A slave helped him into his breastplate. Another slave crouched beside him to fasten the sash around his middle.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was tracing a bloody path towards the horizon. The army had left Rome two weeks before, seven days later than he’d wished. Despite this, they had travelled over two hundred sun-drenched, cloudless miles in that time. Thurii, the rebels’ reported base, was now less than a third of that distance away. As his skin prickled with the heat, Crassus tried to be grateful for their remarkable progress, and for the fact that the dreadful daytime heat had begun to abate. It was difficult, however. It was still as hot as an oven in his tent, and riding a horse for nearly eight hours daily was exhausting work. He was glad not to be one of the ordinary soldiers, who’d marched twenty miles since dawn — in full armour. Half of them were currently erecting a temporary marching camp while their exhausted but grateful comrades stood watch.
When that was done, all but the veterans had two hours of drill to look forward to before they could rest or eat. But it’s what they signed up for, he thought ruthlessly. They had done it every afternoon since they had left Rome, and so they would every damn day until the campaign ended. He would not relax the pressure on his new soldiers, not even for a moment. Not until Spartacus was dead.
Crassus lifted one foot and then the other, allowing his slaves to pull on his boots. More beads of sweat trickled down his back. I can’t wait for autumn to come. No doubt the prolonged hot spell had the farmers thanking Saturnus, Ops, Ceres and Lactans for their munificence, but Crassus didn’t give a shit about the harvest. What he wanted was for the unseasonably warm weather to end. He was sick of his officers whingeing about men who had dropped by the wayside each day. Casualties from heat exhaustion and lack of water were not the same as deaths through combat!
Yet Crassus knew that he couldn’t ignore such losses. And so he had had Caepio organise a number of special units whose specific duty it was to travel up and down sections of the hugely long column that was his army — all twenty-odd miles of it — providing assistance and water to those who needed it. That way, hundreds of men who would otherwise have died would continue to march south, towards their target. Spartacus.
The flea-ridden, Thracian bastard. Crassus’ memory of how close Spartacus had come to killing him was ever present. If it hadn’t been for the information provided by his spy, the attempt might have succeeded. Saenius had done well in recruiting the man. With luck, they would hear from the spy again. Crassus had every confidence in his ability to end the Thracian’s reign of terror with his ten legions. When it comes to it, he thought confidently, they won’t stand up against Roman courage. Roman virtus. Roman discipline. But he wasn’t averse to subterfuge if it brought the matter to a swifter conclusion.
‘Liner.’
At once a tightly fitting piece of felt was proffered. Crassus eyed it askance before pulling it on. It would make him sweat worse than a smith at his anvil, but he wouldn’t get bruised by the unforgiving inner surface of his helmet.
‘I haven’t got all day,’ he snapped, clicking his fingers.
His silver-plated helmet was handed over, and Crassus took a moment to admire it. It had cost him a fortune, but it had been worth every last as. It was a piece of art, topped with hair from the finest stallion in Italy, and sporting enamelled cheek pieces. The brow was decorated with a magnificent motif of Mars receiving offerings from ranks of officers and legionaries. Crassus donned it proudly. It was fitting, he thought, for a victorious general.
‘Sword.’
A slave hurried forward with his gladius and slipped the baldric over his shoulder.
Crassus used the full-length bronze mirror that stood nearby to make sure that his scabbard sat just so on his left hip. Lastly, he wiped his face clean of sweat with a cloth. Content with his appearance, he made for the door.
The sentries outside saluted as he emerged.
Crassus was pleased to see Caepio already waiting at the head of a half-century of veterans, some of the cohort that had been designated to protect him. Their helmets and mail shone in the sun. Even the bosses on their shields had been polished. To one side, his groom held ready a fresh horse.
‘Attention!’ bawled the old centurion.
In unison, the soldiers snapped upright.
Crassus allowed the trace of a smile to curve his lips. Few of his troops looked this good but, under Caepio’s direction, things were improving every day. ‘Centurion.’
‘Ready to make the rounds, sir?’
‘Indeed.’ He eyed the centurion with approval. From the start, Caepio had wholeheartedly thrown in his lot with Crassus. Despite his age, his energy was boundless. He recruited tirelessly, helped to train the new men and provided practical advice to whoever needed it, whenever it was asked for. Crassus now appreciated him greatly. Soldiers such as Caepio were a rare commodity indeed. He strolled over to his horse, and used the groom’s linked hands as a step up to its back. ‘I thought we might begin at the western rampart, and move out to the defensive screen afterwards. Try and see as many of the troops as possible.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Caepio barked an order. Twenty of his men and an optio trotted to stand four wide, five deep in front of their commander. ‘Towards the western gate. Forward march!’ cried Caepio. The soldiers tramped off. Crassus nudged his horse in the ribs; Caepio walked alongside him, and the rest of the soldiers took up the rear.
Crassus’ army was far too large to set up camp as one unit. From the outset, he had ordered his legions to pair off, meaning that five temporary encampments were built every afternoon, all of which accommodated close to ten thousand men. Each was shaped exactly the same, consisting of a massive rectangle with rounded corners, the walls of which were made up of a mixture of brushwood and packed earth that had been dug up by the legionaries around the perimeter. The resultant ditch served as part of the camp’s defences. Midway along the four sides of each camp, a gap in the rampart had been angled so that both sides of it overran one another, creating a narrow, passage-like ingress that was easily blocked overnight, and which could be well defended in the event of an attack. Two straight avenues connected the entrances, which cut the vast encampments into quarters. The camps’ headquarters, and the commanders’ tents, were situated at the roads’ intersection. Around these, every cohort, century and contubernium had an allocated position, which was marked out by the engineers each day.