Yes, you could use guards. But quite often it will compile into the same internal representation in Haskell.
import Numeric.Container
import Numeric.LinearAlgebra
mpow :: Field t => (Matrix t) -> Integer -> (Matrix t)
mpow x 0 = ident $ cols x
mpow x 1 = x
mpow x n | (mod n 2) == 0 = multiply (trans x) (mpow x $ n - 1)
| otherwise = multiply x (mpow x $ n - 1)