by Rob Edmunds
Gala made a little leap in his chair and clapped his hands in abrupt delight. “Ah, you’re a general already. I’m convinced.”
Masinissa let the compliment fall, gave a few shallow nods as gestures of gratitude, looked his father square in the eyes and gave him a pursed smile, which left a little questioning and melancholiness in his eyes.
Gala was intuitive enough to realise that Masinissa’s silence heralded an end to their martial theme, or the pragmatic part of it, at least. Before him was his son, after all, and a goodbye that had the prospect of being a final one. His elation ebbed like a retreating wave, and he sagged back in his chair and felt his larynx constrict a little as his body tightened with the emotion of the moment. “I’m proud of you,” he said quietly, “and I always will be.” His voice faded, but his eyes shone bright as they glistened with the tears that his taut frame held back.
“There is nothing I could cherish higher,” Masinissa replied, wavering only slightly less than his father. “And that will be the case forever, regardless of what kudos or fortunes may come my way.”
He held his father’s arm as he rose, and they held each other with a rare intensity.
As they broke their embrace, Gala said softly, “My sweet boy, only children believe in forever when they say it. We all know the word doesn’t mean what it promises. Everyone’s forever comes sooner or later. My prayers and hopes are that yours will come later than mine. I’m supposed to watch over you in the heavens, not the other way around, remember.”
“Let me watch myself for a while yet,” Masinissa replied, squeezing his father’s hands tightly. He let one go and held the other as the two men walked together to the courtyard where Capuca was waiting with the horses. They lingered in their farewells, both men wrestling with their emotions.
Finally, Gala bid Masinissa a final farewell and kissed him paternally on his forehead before dipping his skull gently to his offspring’s, as if communicating his knowledge and affection as directly as he could, cranium to cranium.
“Bye, my boy,” Gala said hoarsely, and, with that, the father and son parted, perhaps forever.
Nemesis
It wasn’t long before the march west began, and the prospect of meeting the rival Masaesyli tribe in open warfare became very real and very imminent. There would be no last-minute diplomacy. It had been drummed into all sides that the fissures between the Numidian tribes were irreconcilable. The relationship had always been more than merely fractious. There could never be acceptance or wary coexistence. One would have to conquer the other and gain hegemony, and that was that.
To Masinissa, for whom the genesis of the separation was obscure and impersonal, the enemy was distant, even though they occupied adjacent territory. There was no sense of kinship either, even though they claimed to be the same state, and possess the same identity and bloodlines. He was sure that he would not find himself in an embrace with the rival king Syphax one day, insisting mutually that the years of hatred and mistrust were just a terrible and unfortunate misunderstanding. The wider world only exacerbated the tensions and the factionalisms. Carthage had Massyli as its proxy. The Romans courted Syphax and the Masaesyli as theirs. They were like gladiators or cornered wolves. They had no choice but to fight each other.
After long years of having the Masaesyli diabolised, and their otherness and wretchedness inculcated in him, Masinissa found himself in their territory, riding west with his army and the Carthaginians to reach Tingi, and from there to sail to the Iberian front. He knew they would be intercepted, or they would be fortunate enough to take the initiative and create their own ambush. However, their numbers were the largest he had ever witnessed, and there were more allied forces coming east who had disembarked at Tingi, and were looking to reunite with them or, even better, catch Syphax’s army between them. In any event, the swelling of tribal hatred was about to burst.
His nemesis – the man he had heard condemned from every quarter from the moment he could distinguish between the basic concepts of good and bad, or friend and enemy – was in his way, and he was prepared for him. Certainly, Syphax had taken heart from the encouraging Roman campaigns of Gnaeus and Publius, and was attacking settlements to the east more frequently. The raids were increasingly well orchestrated and savage. Masinissa and the Carthaginians were aware of the Roman mission to Syphax, and of the fact that they had sent three centurions to him to train his men and make assurances to him that he would be well compensated by an indebted Rome if he attacked his neighbours and helped tilt the balance in the field to the Romans favour.
According to Massyli spies, some of the emissaries to Syphax had returned to Rome, but they’d left seasoned soldiers and trainers behind, who were working intensively with Syphax’s recruits, and creating a more disciplined and organised force. The effectiveness of his infantry brigades in particular appeared to be benefitting from the tutelage of the expeditionary legions. The Numidians, of all denominations, were renowned as poor infantry soldiers, so if the Romans could upgrade their competence in this area, Syphax would have a much more balanced army to utilise. They would also no doubt be a lot fitter. A typical, and more or less daily exercise of the Roman instructors was to march, in full kit, roughly twenty miles within a five-hour limit. Anyone who trooped in after that time would be beasted. Those boys would be exhausted, but they’d also be a physical proposition.
Masinissa and his fellow soldiers were passing through a vineyard, and Masinissa caught himself feeling a little envious and resentful of the quality of the soil, which would surely produce some excellent wine and vinegar. Whilst Numidian wine lacked the reputation of that of the growers on the other side of the great sea, he could testify to its quality. The harvests could also be abundant. He remembered, as a child, enjoying squashing the fruits in the autumn under the benevolent gaze of his mother, aunts and the local growers. As he reminisced, his optio rode up to him. Pun was always good company and had a knack of knowing when to be around. He could read people well, and had a quality of wisdom that could only have germinated from a perfect union of intelligence and experience.
“What’s new, BP?” Masinissa asked, affectionately breaking down Big Pun’s nickname into its acronym; a form doubly expressing affection and familiarity.
“I’m just seeing how you’re doing. Are you doing all right? This thing is going to light up at any time. Have you made your peace?” Big Pun questioned.
“As far as I am able,” Masinissa replied, not really very convincingly.
“Did you get any tail before you shipped out? How about that rich piece with the poppin’ arse that we’ve seen you knocking around with?”
Masinissa took the ribald comment in his stride. All airs and graces were gone by then. You lose any contrived formalities fairly quickly when riding into death’s guts. “Yup. We left on pretty good terms. Who knows, maybe I left a little bit more than a good time memory with her too.”
“Dawg!” Big Pun whistled. “I won’t pry any further. Just as long as you’ve got something fresh to take your mind off stuff. You know, I find a good way of prepping yourself is to remember the time you spent with survivors and the stories they share with you. People do walk away from these things, you know. Some of us are lucky and do get old. I remember a veteran whom I used to spend time with who had fought in the first war for Hasdrubal’s father Hamilcar – yeah, the Baraq, the thunderbolt himself.”
“Oh man.” Masinissa looked at him a little askance. “You like to go back a way, don’t ya?”
“Sure do! That’s how you learn. Those old boys can teach you plenty, and they always have a juicy anecdote ready to go. Anyway, this old lag’s name was Jugurthu. He was being cared for by one of his daughters, but she left him alone for most of the day with only his dog for company. He knew he had only a short time left, and he wanted to share some of his stories. He went right back to when he was a small child for some of them. He was one of those
kids who always got into fights. He was destined to end up a soldier. Well, anyway, he was talking one time about being surprised by the enemy. They’d crossed a river somewhere and were in rough country, and thought they were safe from any marauding Romans. They didn’t anticipate any trouble. Their runners and outriders had spotted nothing. Out of nowhere, this legion appeared in full battle order and with plenty of cavalry. They had no time to plan, but they were all mounted and armed, and they flew right into the enemy’s nearest flank. The speed of the offensive surprised the Romans, and the initiative was reversed quickly.
“Most of their cavalry were caught, and lost their lives or their horse before they could react. Unlike his compatriots, who had flung their javelins and were flailing their falcatas at anything in red tunics and greaves, Jugurthu was using his as a lance and was spearing everything that got in his way. He wouldn’t take any of them in the midriff as he would lodge his javelin too deep, but he had the strength to hold it in front of him like a sword, and take the impact if it was against the shoulder or the head. They say he took out about twenty Romans that day in that way. See, there’s more than one way to skin a goat. You’ve got that kind of strength, Masinissa. I can see the power in your shoulders. You could force most of a man back at full clip and slide him off your javelin. For his valour, the men called Jugurthu Bloody lance after that battle. Do you fancy that kind of honorific for yourself after we get past Syphax’s mob?”
Masinissa smirked and clicked his tongue. “You know, maybe you could have suggested novelty combat tactics some time ago. If I’m plunging into the columns of Roman-trained troops, I don’t know how far down the experimental route I want to go. I’d rather have more range of motion, and get those horses stampeding with a few licks of my falcata if I can. I’m not on a suicide mission.”
“Do what you need to do, sire.”
“I do have an innovation I want to try, though. When we have them broken or reduced into smaller pockets, I want to split our riders. Have one group continue the harrying and encirclement, circling the pocket continually, whilst the other better-armed cohort go straight through the middle, looking for the points of least resistance and hacking their way to the end. I’ll be in the vanguard of that one. Straight in, straight out… and if there’s no blood on the end of your face by the time you make it through, most likely you’ve joined the dead.”
Big Pun looked impressed. His lower lip pinched into approval. “I’ve ridden similar tactics before. It suits the stronger riders, and the ones with more brawny thighs and calves. If you can hold arms in both hands as you plough through, you are almost like a chariot wheel but harvesting your enemy’s blood much higher. The trick is not to take a man’s weight on both hands at the same time, or else over you’ll go, straight into the gore, and you’re done.”
“Now that I can try,” responded Masinissa almost euphorically. “If you want a sturdy-legged rider, then look no further!”
“One more thing, Mas; well, two more things. Firstly, I know you well and I know your qualities; they shine out of your pores. But you’re not a veteran yet. Don’t think you know everything or have seen it all before, even after we engage with Syphax. There’s always plenty to learn about staying alive. The other thing is that it’s OK to be afraid. It really is. You’d be an idiot or a stone otherwise. Feed off it. It’s the natural consort of courage and bravery. Keep that fire burning in your pit. Keep it burning hot. It keeps you alert.”
“One day I’ll ask your real name, Optio. Thank you. I’ll take your advice and your boost.”
“Save it till your dying hour, sire. You can laugh at it then.”
The two men left it at that.
*
A little while later, they received orders to head for the upper end of a ravine a little further into the mountains. The elephants, and there were about forty of them, were driven to the front, followed by auxiliary pikemen with sarissas. The slingers and some of the more accurate javelin throwers took considerable amounts of arms, and were given orders to march quickly and fan out at the top of the nearby ridge lines.
They had heard word that Syphax’s troops were heading their way and appeared oblivious to the presence of Masinissa’s army. They were hurrying, disorderly and seemed to be maintaining a high pace as if being pursued, quite possibly by the disembarked army of Hasdrubal Gisco. They were thousands strong, and combined effective infantry as well as cavalry, but, apparently, Syphax had only a few elephants that could be turned anyway on the terrain they were in. Things were looking promising, and word was being carried through the lines that Syphax’s army appeared to be funnelling itself into the maw of the Massylian ambush.
His tesserarius, Tigerman, rode up and past them, giving them his signature cry as he did so. It was far more reassuring when sung on the advent of battle than at the start of some form of arduous discipline. He whirled his javelin and bounced heavily on his horse yelling, “I’m the king of all battles, and they call me Tigerman… If you cross my path, you take your own life in your hands.” He rode up and down the line to the amusement of Masinissa and Pun, but his exclamations were clearly having a galvanising effect. It was an untypical military cadence, but he wanted the soldiers to pick it up and they quickly did.
Soon, the counterpoint chant was being bellowed out from all sides: “We’re the kings of all battles, and they call us Massylians… If you cross our path, you take your own life in your hands.”
Masinissa joined in forcefully, but only with the rhythm initially, “Da da da da da… da da da da…” with another pause and then the correct last phrase, “in your hands,” in his deepest, most baritone timbre.
Pun laughed and tried an even more resonant, “in your hands!”
Breathless, Tigerman rode back to them. “This is going to go well. Syphax is going to lose many men today. Unless this is a feint, we’re going to squash him.”
“I think you’re right,” Pun replied, endorsing the battlefield assessment, almost fervidly. Their chanting and the apparently auspicious position of their forces had tipped him over the edge.
“What could go wrong, Pun?” Masinissa asked as a genuine enquiry, rather than a triumphalist expression of the inevitable, trying to dampen the warrior’s ardour.
“Not much, as long as Gisco can keep funnelling them towards us, if that is what he’s doing, and he holds his line if they turn. And if their elephants are being held in reserve, we’ll splat ’em. You know when you have a fly on the air and you try to swat it, it hardly ever works.” He made a few theatrical clapping motions to demonstrate his point. “But if you have a bug on the wall; smack!” And he cracked his left hand on his right and mashed them together. The physical insinuation was obvious.
“I hope you’re right, Pun, The last thing I want to be doing is putting my hand in a big old wasps’ nest. We’d never get to Iberia, and I’ll have my back to Carthage with the Punic javelins pushing me back.”
“The omens are good, don’t worry,” Pun reassured him. “This sort of battle is unconventional. There are no open fields or flanking positions. The cavalry are not going to do anything other than charge right at broken lines and chase their fleeing counterparts. This one is not going to be like in the storybooks when the two great kings or princes meet in combat. You may not see Syphax at all, unless you’re chasing after his fleeing backside. You won’t fight your way to each other for an epic duel that all your men will pay attention to whilst saving their own hides. It’ll be waves of our men and beasts crashing into them from both sides. By the time your wave crests over them, you might not have much to chew over.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Masinissa replied.
The two of them settled onto their horses’ backs, and waited for the horns, drums and shouts to give them their signals. He noticed that most of the waiting riders behind him were alert, with postures in which they were pulled up close to the withers of their steed
s; the exception being his cousin Capuca, who had flopped forwards and was resting with his groin on the loins of his horse and his head on the shoulder and mane of his mount. Maybe he was talking to it, whispering some soothing words that would echo back at himself.
They didn’t have to wait long for the muster, and, after that, time paused for Masinissa as the vanguard of elephants, infantry and auxiliaries pressed forwards, leaving the cavalry in the rear. He found himself relying on his ears for clues about the battle that had erupted in front of him, as distinguishing between cries was impossible. From an auditory point of view, a man’s agony doesn’t vary between tribe or caste. The only clues he had were trying to identify the epicentre of the commotion, and whether or not that was receding from them. As far as he could discern, the whirlpool of dying was moving further from him.
The soldiers he could see at the top of the ridge lines were also now out of sight, which must have meant that they were either pursuing a retreating enemy, or else they had exhausted their ranged weapons and were entering the melee below. All indications urged Masinissa forwards right then. The enemy may not yet have been a carcass, but, before it had a chance to regather itself or take a larger remnant from the battle, his mounted troops needed to swarm over it. He waved his javelin arm high and twirled it as if it were a ribboned baton that dancers sometimes used to accentuate their movements. The few soldiers who had dismounted remounted speedily, and Capuca was given a quick nudge from his nearest comrade to rouse him from his practically horizontal posture.