"If he holds the high ground."
"Aye." I nodded.
"Then what about Adrianople? Heavy concentrations of horse in that engagement wiped out an entire Roman army."
I shook my head. "No, that was a fluke, a trick. The army's commander must have been negligent in the first place."
Caius was frowning, shaking his head. "Do we know that, Publius? Really? I doubt it. There are no flukes in war. Trickery is a legitimate principle of warfare."
I shrugged, beginning to feel very mildly exasperated. "I don't see where this is leading us."
"You will. Tell me, what would you say was the difference between Alexander's cavalry and ours?"
Again I paused to think before answering. "Discipline, I suppose, if anything. And tactical deployment. Alexander refined his father Philip's tactics, which were already superb. But apart from that, the major difference was that the Macedonian cavalry was heavy cavalry of a kind that we don't use today. Big horses, carrying heavily armed men. All trained to operate in concert."
"Like hammers, Varrus?"
He had surprised me again. My mind jumped backwards, twenty-odd years, to the special unit, "the Hammers," that Caius and I had assembled to smash back the Caledonians after the Invasion of 367. I nodded, slowly. "Yes, I suppose you could say that. Like hammers. Or like one big hammer."
There was the vestige of a smile on his lips. "Now do you see what I'm thinking, Varrus?"
"I think I'm beginning to."
"Imagine the effect, Publius." His voice was excited. "Imagine the effect of a squadron, or even more, a cohort, of heavily armoured soldiers, mounted on big horses and trained to ride as a unit. Not skirmishers, Publius, no, nor mounted archers, but front-line troops — shock troops! Imagine a solid line of mounted spearmen riding at the gallop against a boatload of Saxons caught on land. Can you see it?"
I could. I could see it clearly and something stirred in my gut, but I had to be sure that I was seeing what he was seeing. "Spearmen? You mean with sarissas? The long, sixteen-foot spears Alexander's Companions used?"
"Why not? Or even axemen. But trained to fight together, as one force, like an infantry maniple. Could it be done?"
I was seeing a solid wall of charging men on enormous horses. "Why not? They would require a lot of training, but it could be done, if you had the horses." I stopped short, disappointment sharp in my breast over the death of my own sudden enthusiasm. "Unfortunately, we don't.
Not the kind of horses we would need — big, heavy brutes. They would have to be massive to carry heavily armed men. Ours just aren't big enough. And we would need so many of them! Hundreds."
He laughed aloud and rose to his feet. "We shall have them, Publius! We'll breed them! Big horses! By the hundred!"
"No, Caius, hold up!" I felt it my duty to interrupt, to bring him back to earth. "That would take years!"
"Of course it will. No doubt of it, none at all!" His voice was fierce and jubilant. "But we have years, Publius! We'll start tomorrow. And the first thing we have to find is someone who has knowledge about horses, and I know just the man. You remember the bailiff who was tending Terra's villa when he bought it? Fellow called Victorex, or Victrix, or something? Terra told me his father used to run a hippodrome in Gaul. The son learned about horses as a child and was a horse physician of some kind. I'll have Terra send him over tomorrow, and we'll ask him what he knows of breeding. He knows horseflesh, from all accounts. He may just be our man. You, in the meantime, can concern yourself with finding out all you can about Alexander's methods."
I grimaced. "How will I do that? I know of his campaigns and his battles, and a little about his strategy. But there's little or nothing in our books about his actual tactics — how he deployed or trained his men. We Romans have never concerned ourselves with cavalry tactics of that kind."
"Not until now, my friend. Not until us."
"Anyway," I went on, "I don't like the sarissa idea. Those things were too cumbersome — sixteen-feet long and useless after the first charge. They had to drop them then, and use swords. I don't like that at all."
He nodded. "Nor do I. Find me some way of keeping hold of a spear so that it can be used after the first attack. Our men should be able to kill with it again and again, as often as is needed to win a battle."
"Hmmm," I said. "Sounds like you want a short spear."
"I don't know what I want. But you may be right. A short spear with a two-edged blade. Something that will cut as well as thrust. Something that will let our horsemen fight from horseback without having to dismount. That's what we need, and that's your department. See to it, please, and let me know as soon as you have solved the problem." The bridge from infantry to cavalry had already been built in the mind of Caius Britannicus.
"Let me think about it," I told him. "I'll talk to Equus, too. Perhaps between us we can come up with something."
"Good." He was standing close, leaning over me, his hands clasped in front of his chest, making little explosive noises as he brought the hollows of his palms together unconsciously again and again. "Excellent, excellent. Now let's go and find some more food. That pear was excellent, but I want meat. Thinking makes me hungry. In the meantime, I want you to think about that spear."
I laughed and stood up, stretching. "I will. I don't know what I might be able to come up with, but I'll think about it. You just reminded me of something else, though."
"What's that?"
"I'm due to meet that merchant again, Statius, the one who's collecting iron for me in the north-east. I arranged to meet him again in Noviomagus next month. I'd forgotten. You reminded me of it when you made me think of the Glevum trips we used to make."
"Is that important?"
"Very important." I grinned at the memory of the merchant's expression when he had seen my bag of gold auri. "You should have seen his face when I pulled out the money to pay him! Now that he knows how mad I am to exchange gold for iron, he'll probably have ten wagons loaded to overflowing. I hope he has, I'll gladly take them off his hands."
Cay frowned. "That much? Do we need that much?" His tone made me smile again, but I wiped the smile off my face as I answered him.
"As much as I can get, Cay, and then ten times as much again. You were the one who made me worry in the first place about what's going to happen in the future. Now I am convinced that your prophecies were short of the mark. If things keep deteriorating the way they have been, iron is going to be worth a hundred times its real weight in gold, and there's going to be little time or opportunity to mine it, smelt it and carry it here from wherever we might find it. A storeroom full of gold ingots will give you no more than indigestion when you have to grow and make your own food because there's no one left to buy from, Cay. But with a storeroom full of iron ingots, I can make all the tools we'll need to grow and harvest our own food and fight off anyone who tries to steal it from us."
He was nodding in agreement as I spoke. "You are correct, as usual, Publius. I can be very dense at times."
"No, not dense, brother. You were simply not brought up to see that iron might someday be worth more than gold, that's all."
"God! Was anyone?"
"Of course, I was."
"Oh. Silly of me, I should have known. So when will you leave?"
"In about three weeks."
"Just in time to take Lignus with you."
I shook my head in disgust. "By the Christus, I hope not! But you are probably right, and if I have to, then I will. But he had better behave himself until he gets out of my sight."
"He will, my friend, he will." Caius yawned and stretched. "Aye! I think I shall forgo that food after all. I am ready to sleep. I had no more than three hours last night and I'm too old for that. Good night to you, and don't forget to think about my two-edged spear."