Alexander made a face. “And it’s the stones we’ll need to crack the walls,” he murmured, half to himself. “How long will it take to replace them?”
Charias shrugged. “Five days to get a bare minimum, but ten would be better.”
“Can you do it on the march?” The king’s eyes were fixed on nothing, calculating.
The two engineers exchanged glances, then Diades said, “Not easily. But there’s good material inland of here. We could quarry there, get a minimum supply, and then bring up more as needed.”
Alexander nodded slowly. “All right. Hephaestion, Craterus, detail extra men for the garrison here, enough to protect the quarrying parties.”
Hephaestion nodded his acknowledgement of the king’s order, mentally reviewing the forces at his disposal. He had plenty of men to spare: the Companion Cavalry were of little use during a prolonged siege. Craterus said, his mouth full, “The garrison’s already pretty strong, Alexander. I’d rather keep the rest with me.”
The king shook his head. “And I want to protect our landing. Leave another hundred men, that should do it.” He looked at the engineers again. “What about timber for rams?”
“Cut,” Diades answered, “but we’ll build the carriage and add the sheathing at the walls.”
Ptolemy cleared his throat. “This is all well and good,” he said mildly, “but what are we going to do when we get to Carthage?” It was the first time he had spoken in the day’s council session. The rest of the Friends glanced in his direction.
“We’ll know enough to make plans when the scouting parties return,” Alexander said, rather sharply.
“Ptolemy’s right,” Craterus said. “There’re a few things that ought to be decided now, before we get under the walls—and while we don’t have any Romans present.”
Ptolemy’s eyes narrowed, and Alexander said, “What do you mean by that?”
“Who’s going to be first over the walls?” Craterus said bluntly. “I say we send the Romans—and that snake Domitius for preference.”
Simmias son of Andromenes, who had been given command of what had been Meleager’s brigade, opened his mouth to voice a cautious protest, but Ptolemy spoke first.
“I have an obligation to them, you can’t try to get them killed.” Then he smiled with an effort, and said, “Besides, I’d have to go in with them. I am consul, remember?”
“If I send Domitius’s men in first,” Alexander said, “rest assured you won’t go with them, Ptolemy.” There was a new, bleak note in his voice that made the others look up sharply.
Ptolemy said, “You’re seriously considering it, then.”
“In Bactra, you told me to consider murdering the entire Sacred Band,” Alexander said. “So did you, Craterus. This way, at least the Romans would have some chance.” Then, like Ptolemy, he smiled tautly. “But we’ll see what happens. It probably won’t be necessary.”
The scouting parties, when they returned, confirmed Eumenes’s earlier information, and added a certain amount of unpleasant detail. As the secretary had reported, there was a triple wall stretching all the way across the isthmus; the outermost wall was of earth topped by a low wooden palisade, fronted by a ditch six feet deep and fifteen feet wide. The second wall was of masonry, perhaps twenty-five feet high and thirty feet wide, and it, too, was fronted by a broad ditch. The third wall was even taller than the others—the scouts estimated it variously as anywhere from forty-five to sixty-five feet high; they had not been able to get too close before being driven off by Carthaginian patrols—and capped at regular intervals by four-story towers. It was not particularly encouraging news, and Alexander sent messengers to Nearchus asking him to send a ship along the city’s seaward walls to see if there were any likely points for an attack from the sea. There were none, in the admiral’s considered judgment, and the king resigned himself to a long siege. It would be too costly to attempt to storm the triple walls without lengthy preparation.
The greater part of the Macedonian army left the landing site as soon as the engineers declared the siege train ready to travel, leaving only a slightly understrength mercenary brigade and six squadrons of cavalry to hold the camp. The army advanced slowly toward Carthage and the Carthaginian camp twenty stadia outside the walls.
Forty stadia from the triple walls, a scout squadron captured a Greek mercenary officer who claimed to carry a message to Alexander. When brought before the king, the Greek, who gave his own name as Cleomenes, swore that his commander, Deïmachus, was prepared, no, begged, to surrender to Alexander. The king, who disliked treachery even when it worked to his advantage, at first refused to listen, but both Ptolemy and Craterus pointed out that, if Deïmachus really were willing to betray his current employers, there was a chance that the Macedonians could take the walls without too great a loss of life. Alexander reluctantly agreed, and sent Balacrus, one of the scout squadron leaders, to negotiate with Deïmachus, keeping the mercenary officer as a hostage.
When Balacrus failed to return as planned, Alexander cursed the brigadiers and Cleomenes, and dispatched a squadron of cavalry under a flag of truce to the Carthaginian camp, with instructions to buy Balacrus’s return. The camp was gone. In its place stretched twenty stadia of smoldering farmland, extending almost all the way to the walls. Two tau-shaped wooden structures stood before the burned area, a shapeless bundle hanging from each. Hephaestion, already suspecting what he would find, rode forward warily. The bodies pinned to the wooden tau were almost unrecognizable, eyes gouged out, noses and ears hacked away. Hephaestion recognized Balacrus first by the faded scar that ran diagonally across his chest.
There were more bodies huddled on the ground beyond the crosses. Hephaestion, controlling the urge to vomit, ordered the squadron’s senior trooper to free the suspended bodies, and dismounted to examine the other bodies. They all seemed to be Greeks, and probably mercenaries; most were at least partly armed, and had died fighting. Hephaestion shook his head, unable to make any further guesses, and walked back to join his men. The senior trooper, his face ashen, had freed the bodies; they lay, wrapped in cloaks, across the backs of the two most placid horses. The squadron rode back to the main army in silence.
Alexander received the news with cold fury, and the army halted for the night to let the fires burn themselves out. Cleomenes identified the second body as Deïmachus’s, and the two bodies were burned on the same pyre. Overnight, a few more Greeks, survivors of Deïmachus’s brigade, straggled into the camp, and from their stories it was possible to piece together what had happened. The Hundred, the Carthaginian oligarchs who controlled the Carthaginian senate and thus the city, had gotten word of Deïmachus’s plan through one of the junior officers and had ordered the Carthaginian commander to attack at once. Deïmachus had been surprised in his tent and taken, with Balacrus; the rest of his brigade had done their best to fight back, but most of them had been killed or captured, only a few individuals managing to escape. The leaders of the Hundred had come in person to pass sentence on Deïmachus and Balacrus. Faced with the loss of Deïmachus’s two thousand men, and uncertain of other mercenary units’ reliability, the Hundred and the Carthaginian commander had jointly decided to withdraw to the safety of the wall, firing the last fields behind them.
Alexander listened to each of the survivors, and when they had finished, said simply, “It won’t be safe enough.” At dawn, the smoldering fires were out and the Macedonians moved forward through the ashy fields, to take up positions along the planned siege lines. Cleomenes and the other survivors of Deïmachus’s brigade went with them: they had their own injuries to avenge.
Despite his anger, Alexander proceeded methodically with the siege, setting up his own lines to cut Carthage off from communication with her allies in the interior, then turning his attention to the city itself. The outermost of the walls was not strongly made, earth topped by a thin, wooden palisade, fronted only by a reasonably shallow ditch, and Perdiccas and Neoptolemus both volunteered to lead a direct atta
ck. Alexander pointed out what each man should have known—that the first counterattack would pin them in the killing ground between the two walls, unable easily to retreat over palisade and ditch—and advised them to join the foraging parties.
The two engineers were in their element. While Diades concentrated on setting up the great stone-throwers where they could concentrate their fire on the towers of the innermost wall, Charias turned his attention to the aqueduct that supplied at least a part of Carthage’s water. Working through the days and at night by torchlight, Charias managed to construct a crude cistern of his own, and then diverted the water from the aqueduct into it, supplying the army fully. Alexander had hoped to use the waterless aqueduct as a way into the city, but when that proved impractical, the engineers began dismantling it. By the end of Artemisios, it had almost vanished completely. Diades used some of the rubble as ammunition for his catapults, coating the stones with clay to make them fly true—he had still not been able to make up for all the stones lost in the sunk on merchant ships—and Charias took the rest of the rubble to begin filling in the first ditch. Files of Foot Companions sweated under the stifling protection of Charias’s wooden penthouses, choking in the stink of the wet hide facings as they hauled yet another hundredweight of earth and stone up to the ditch. The catapults in the siege towers were manned day and night, and Ombrion’s archers stood a constant guard against any sally from behind the wall.
Returning from leading yet another foraging party, Cassius Nasidienis sighed to see how slowly the work was proceeding. He glanced over his shoulder to where his own legionaries sweated over a half dozen carts, manhandling them and their protesting draft animals over the uneven ground. They brought barely a day’s rations for the entire army, and he hoped the other foragers, the parties sent further west, had had better luck. The king had opened negotiations with some of the inland cities, cities that had no particular reason to love Carthage and every reason to fear and to placate Alexander, but nothing had come of that as yet. If—when, Cassius corrected himself firmly—the cities agreed, a regular supply system could be set up, and the army would not have to spend half its time foraging.
The first of the carts tottered on the brow of the hill. The legionaries who a moment before had been pushing frantically now clung to its sides to keep it from plunging out of control and overrunning the mules. A sweating centurion threw his weight against the cart’s tail, grinning, teeth showing bright in his dirt-streaked face. Then the cart tipped forward, descended the hill in a barely controlled rush, legionaries yelping their delight. Cassius shook his head dubiously and nudged his horse forward, letting it pick its own way down the uneven slope.
Somewhat to the tribune’s surprise, they managed to get all the carts down without overturning any of them, and without serious injury to man or mule. Of course, they might have sustained far worse injury during the foraging itself, but Alexander had insisted that his men pay for what they took.
The routine challenge at the camp’s perimeter turned to a cheerful greeting as the Foot Companions saw the well-loaded carts. Cassius returned the greeting as cheerfully, wondering if the other foraging parties had done that much worse. Once inside the camp, Eumenes and a gang of his slaves came forward to take charge of the food. Cassius turned the carts over to him gratefully—he had been smelling his own sweat for three days, and thought longingly of a bath even in seawater—and turned his horse toward his own tent.
There was not much activity in the camp itself. A line of soldiers with buckets, working always out of range of the catapults on the city walls, brought seawater to dampen the hide facings of the towers and the low penthouses, protecting them against the fire arrows the Carthaginians fired off at random intervals. From the center of the camp came the sound of metal against metal: the armory slaves were hard at work.
“Cassius!”
The tribune turned slowly on his horse, recognizing the voice. “Yes, Domitius?”
“I need to talk to you,” the other tribune said, catching at Cassius’s foot. “Now. In private.”
Cassius frowned, recognizing the urgency in the other’s voice, and did not try to pull free. “What is it?”
“Not here,” Domitius insisted. “But it’s important, Cassius.”
“All right,” Cassius said. Domitius released his foot and stepped back a few paces. Cassius swung himself down from the horse and glanced around for a groom. Domitius grimaced, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled; a second later, a slave appeared to take the horse. Cassius relinquished the reins unwillingly, glaring at the other tribune.
“This way,” Domitius said, and pulled back the door flap of his tent. Cassius ducked under the low doorway, then stood blinking while Domitius secured the tentflap behind them.
“What is it?” Cassius asked again, and Domitius waved him to a seat. Cassius sat carefully, composing himself to wait with at least outward patience for the other to come to the point, and glanced around him. He had never been in Domitius’s tent before, but it was much as he had expected: plain, with only the most necessary of furniture—a low bed, two fragile folding chairs, a single table to hold the single lamp—and severely clean, the dirt floor still bearing the marks of the most recent sweeping.
Domitius took his place in the other chair, dragging it close and lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “I’ll speak plainly,” he began, and Cassius barely restrained himself from snapping at him.
“It’s about Alexander’s plans for the attack on Carthage,” Domitius went on. “I have it on good authority that he plans to have us make the first assault—as soon as they make a breach, that is—and that he doesn’t plan to support the attack. What do you say to that?”
“What do you expect me to say?” Cassius temporized. He realized he was whispering, too, and deliberately raised his voice to a normal level. “What proof do you have?”
“Proof enough,” Domitius snapped. “The important thing is that your precious ally is trying to get us all killed.”
“Nonsense,” Cassius said. He glared at the other tribune. “Whatever else anyone has been able to accuse him of, Alexander has never broken his given word.”
“Look at how he treated Thebes.”
“Thebes betrayed him first,” Cassius retorted. “Look at how he treated the Sacred Band. No one would’ve thought twice if he’d had them all killed, and they’re holding Greece for him—”
“Is that the kind of power you want for Rome?” Domitius asked. “To be Alexander’s watchdog in Italy?”
Cassius flinched and was furious with himself for doing so. Domitius had a gift for hitting the sore spots, emphasizing the parts of the alliance that galled most. And Cassius did not dare give him Fabius’s answer, that Rome would still outlive Alexander, for fear Domitius would attempt to act on it. He took a deep breath, and said, “Show me your proof, then.”
For the first time, Domitius’s eyes wavered. “It’s common knowledge among the Macedonians.”
“When was soldiers’ gossip ever evidence?” Cassius demanded. “Have you spoken to Alexander about it?”
“What good would that do?” Domitius said contemptuously. “He’d only deny it.”
“Have you spoken to any of the generals?”
“No.”
“Then how can you say you have any sort of proof?” Cassius said, with what he knew was false triumph. “For the gods’ sake, Domitius, it’s Carthage that’s the enemy, not Alexander.” He stood up without waiting for the other’s answer and, reluctantly, Domitius rose with him, pulling back the tent flap.
The groom was still holding Cassius’s horse, and the tribune snatched the reins impatiently from him, swinging irritably and ungracefully onto the animal’s back. Only when he had settled his weight comfortably did he look back. Domitius was still standing stooped in the doorway of his tent, staring up at him, an odd, unreadable expression on his fine-boned face. Unaccountably disconcerted, and then angry with himself for being so, Cassius wheeled hi
s horse away, heading at a trot toward the opposite end of the Roman camp.
But before he had covered half the distance to his own tent, he pulled the horse to a walk. It was possible Alexander was planning to sacrifice the Roman contingent as shock troops. From a Macedonian point of view—and Cassius could even name the specific Macedonian—such a move could be good policy, weakening Alexander’s most dangerous ally even further. Cassius sighed deeply. The king was not a devious man, nor a particularly good liar: he had never had need to be. One way or another, in words or reaction, a direct question would get an honest answer—if the tribune dared to ask it. Cassius turned his horse again, skirting the edge of the Roman camp, and went in search of the king.
Alexander was standing in the shadow of one of the larger towers, staring thoughtfully at the gate it threatened. At his elbow, Diades said, “If you bring it closer, it does more damage, but it’ll be harder to defend against a sortie.”
The king nodded, and turned at the sound of hoofbeats behind him. “Cassius! How was the foraging?”
Cassius gave his reins to the page who appeared from nowhere to attend him, and dismounted rather stiffly to join the king. “The foraging went well enough, King Alexander,” he said slowly, “but there’s a thing I need to ask you.”
Alexander frowned. “Ask,” he said. Behind him, the engineers exchanged questioning glances.
Cassius took a deep breath. As far as he could tell, the king’s puzzlement was genuine, at least this far. “It’s come to my ears you’re planning to send my people first into any breach that’s made. We obey orders, of course—provided always that we’ll be supported in the attack.”
The balding engineer made a choked sound of outrage. Alexander silenced him with an outthrust hand. “I’ve made no firm plans,” he said, with surprising restraint. “Yes, it’s been suggested that Ptolemy’s men be the ones to make a first assault, but we were talking mainly of his Foot Companion brigade, not your legion. Someone seems to have misunderstood.”
A Choice of Destinies Page 25