by Dan Wallace
Casca had begun to smile himself when the trumpets blared the call to assemble.
“That’s it, lads, to your posts. Let’s get this over fast, and to the wine-drinking.”
Fannius and Tiberius looked at each other, eyes wide and round. They jointly commanded a cohort charged with pushing two of four siege towers forward from the main blockade mole across separate levees thrown up to the walls of Carthage. Other towers and rams would be moved forward simultaneously on land, stretching and squeezing the remaining defenders beyond their limits, if they hadn’t been already by the constant bombardment.
Tiberius shouted to his men to begin pushing the great wooden tower forward, admonishing them to stay in its shadow. The huge wheels creaked and groaned as a hundred men manned long timbers yoked to the lower walls, nudging the massive structure forward. Carthage loomed ahead, less than a quarter of a mile away. Fannius urged his men behind another tower on the jetty parallel to the one Tiberius walked. Both towers and that of the two other junior tribunes on the remaining dirt levees moved forward in unison, making reasonably good progress. The soldiers behind those pushing the towers pounded their swords against their shields in time, creating a fearsome din aimed at filling the Carthaginians with dread.
Casca yelled out a verse, and the legionaries began to sing a vulgar song of death, rape, drink, love, and honor. As they reached the halfway point on the bulwark, the Carthaginians fired their ballista.
At first, the projectiles thudded into the wood of the towers, harmless to the soldiers beneath and behind. They hooted and cried obscenities in ecstasy as the large pila and stones bounced off the tower walls. Casca howled, gesturing them forward with his gladius.
A rain of arrows poured out from behind the walls, arcing high over the towers into the ranks of the soldiers below. Expecting the tower to protect them, they hadn’t raised their shields overhead in the protective turtle formation, and many of them were impaled as a consequence.
Those hit screamed agony, clutching at shafts buried in their shoulders, in their arms, their necks. One legionary was forced into a split with a leg pierced through by an arrow, blood pumping out from a severed artery. Tiberius watched him go pale, slump over, and die, his hands still wrapped around the arrow’s shaft.
“Get your shields up!” roared Casca as a second flight of arrows descended. “Press tight to the tower,” he yelled, raising his shield as an arrow struck him. “My God Mars, I’m killed!” he said as he sat down on the packed earth and fell back dead.
His jaw slack, Tiberius ran over to the body. He saw that the arrow had pierced Casca in the notch of his breastbone just above the edge of his lorica, angling down into his heart. Like Achilles killed Hector, Tiberius thought oddly as arrows pounded the ground around him. He turned quickly to the men. “Push the tower forward!”
Glancing over to the other levee, he saw Fannius staring at him. Tiberius waved his sword, and Fannius returned to shouting his men to go forward.
They were just a hundred feet from the walls when the Carthaginians launched ballista arrows into the towers, their points covered with burning rags soaked in lamp oil. Flames started to course up the front, but still the towers moved inexorably forward. The Carthaginians intensified their barrage, arrows, pila, ballista, stones. Tiberius thought they had a good chance to reach the walls before the flames consumed his tower when a large boulder smashed into the lower left corner, knocking one of the great wooden wheels into a dozen pieces. He heard a sharp, cracking sound and looked up at the structure as it shook, shuddered, and lurched horribly to one side.
“Get out, get off!” Shouts raised from the ranks as the tower leaned over, men leaping from it with abandon. Tiberius watched it hold still for a single instant at an impossible angle, then slowly fall sideways, slipping down the edge of the levee and dropping into the harbor with a thunderous smacking noise, sending twin spouts of water angling up from its sides.
A withering cascade of arrows flew down from the walls as the defenders concentrated upon the exposed Romans. The soldiers scrambled for cover on the narrow levee, crying out as they were struck, some of them beginning to turn toward the rear.
Tiberius crouched on one knee, his shield angled up at the walls. Across the half-submerged wreckage of the tower, he saw Fannius exhort his troops, glance at him, then back to his soldiers. Three arrows struck Tiberius’s shield in rapid order, almost driving him into the ground, and he wondered if Scipio had sent him out here to be killed.
Tiberius jumped up and yelled to his men, “If you want to die, stay here or turn your backs. If you want to live, follow me!”
He dashed to the side of the levee, dropped his shield and plunged into the water. The men close on his heels stopped short, until they saw him splash and paddle to the tower wreckage, then clamber onto it, running toward the other end as fast as he could. The others followed closely on him, many of them punched off the tower wreckage by pila and rocks from the walls.
Tiberius reached the end only to realize that he was a good 30 feet from the other levee. Fannius stood on the edge and motioned them down. Tiberius’s men dropped low on the tower wreckage, cringing for cover. On the other side, archers sent flights of arrows up toward the enemy walls. Tiberius snapped to his men behind him, “Drop your shields and helmets, cut away your loricas. If you want to live, swim!” he roared as he plunged into the water. He covered the ten yards quickly, worked his way halfway up the mole’s bank, and crouched to look back at his men behind him. Many floundered in the water, desperate to reach the other side. Others still stood on the broken tower, feigning to jump then hesitating at the last instant, terrified of drowning. Tiberius watched as scores of them fell to arrows. He glanced down to see others struggling, pulling on shafts in their bodies as they disappeared beneath the surface. He wheeled around to shout for help from Fannius when he saw men forming human chains down the embankment. Ignoring the fusillade of bolts aimed at them, they reached out with their hands or threw lengths of rope out to the splashing men and pulled them in. As soon as the last man reached the bank, everyone scurried for their lives behind the standing tower. Leaning against a bulwark, breathing heavily, Tiberius gazed back at his command. Out of 300 men, fewer than half had survived.
“Jupiter’s balls,” Fannius snarled, “I’ll slit the throat of the first woman with short hair I see in there!”
“We’ve got to get off of this levee, Fannius, we’ve got to move!” Tiberius gestured to his men to press in with Fannius’s troops on the tower. With Tiberius’s men helping, before long the tower had been pushed to the end of the mole onto the permanent docking area in front of the wall. But the storm of projectiles grew worse, and the men huddled close together in the tower’s shadow.
“Tiberius, the tower is starting to burn!” Fannius cried out. Tiberius looked up and saw that the flames were beginning to work their way inside the structure. He bit his lips, then licked them. He started to look out, then stopped himself. His stomach felt leaden. Finally, he pulled around the edge of the tower and looked over to the other moles. The other two towers were stalled, and one seemed to be burning badly.
He quickly ducked back in. “Fannius, the other towers are far behind us. They might not make it at all.”
“Hades gods, what’ll we do? Maybe we can wait, maybe Scipio has taken the city already, from the other side!”
Tiberius shook his head, “We can’t wait. This tower is about to fall in on us. We need either to fall back or go forward.”
Fannius peered up fearfully at the tower, then back at the body-strewn levee. He looked in panic at Tiberius.
“Why are we here, Tiberius?” he gasped, “Why us?”
Tiberius almost whined his low reply, “I don’t know! Someone had to attack across the mole.”
He grimaced, his expression darkening. He sprang up and yelled, “Where do you want them to find us, Fannius, skewered here while cringing, or on the walls?” Then, louder, he shouted, “To me, let’s
go!”
He bolted inside the tower and began pushing it forward. The men around him shouted and began to heave again. Slowly, the stalled wooden beast moved forward, staggering, until it gained momentum. Fannius summoned a small troop around him and sprinted in front of the tower, shield raised, to clear any debris away from the path to the walls. He and his men barely careened out of the way and back around as the tower accelerated. Before the city’s defenders could throw any more impediments down, the wooden front crashed hard against the stone, bouncing some of the pushing soldiers off balance and back on their hindquarters.
“Up!” yelled Tiberius, who ran up the ladder to the first, the second, and the top level of the siege tower, ignoring the flames around him. Fannius had bolted up the other side, gingerly sidestepping the burning ladder that halted his ascent on the second level. He ran to the ladder Tiberius had used and joined him at the tower top. They crouched behind the heavy wooden platform up front, held in place by stout ropes and ready to be dropped to bridge the wall.
They heard the thuds of rocks and beams smash against the wooden parapet as the defenders tried to dislodge the tower. Tiberius darted a glance through a crack between the timbers of the platform, then motioned to Fannius. They both positioned themselves at the ropes, swords poised. Tiberius nodded his head, and they slashed the hemp. The platform dropped, Tiberius sweeping across it before it struck the top of the wall. When it hit, it bounced once, which helped propel him up over and past a line of archers, arrows notched to strike down the first wave of soldiers. Pivoting quickly, he hacked ferociously down on the bowmen, killing two before they could turn. Fannius leaped from the tower to the wall as the other bowmen scattered through the ranks of the Carthaginian foot. Fannius ran to Tiberius to meet the charge of spears and swords aimed from both sides at the two Roman invaders.
Tiberius parried a spear thrust, quickly blocking a sword stroke almost in the same motion. He stepped in and attacked furiously, beating them back and into each other, packing them too close to fight effectively. So many, he thought, as he sliced the air with his sword.
He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his lower back, and ducked low and left to see Fannius backhand his assailant off the wall, who screamed as he fell. Tiberius swerved back in front to snatch the haft of a spear as it jabbed past his head. Pulling the soldier close with surprising ease, he stabbed him in the breast, and twisted the spear to flip him off the wall. The edge of a heavy sword drove his blade down, sliding off to cut him high on his left arm. He dropped his sword and instinctively butted the Carthaginian with his forearm and shoulder back into the mass of attackers. He knelt to retrieve his sword and slashed at the legs of soldiers forging forward. A ringing blow sent his helmet flying from his head. Tiberius skipped, leaning back to dodge the sweeping arc of a curved blade.
He bumped into another back and cried out, “Fannius!”
“Ho!” yelled Fannius at his shoulder. This is it, then, Tiberius thought. He gripped his sword tightly and pressed his back against Fannius’s, ready to strike again. The Carthaginians howled and surged forward, and suddenly were intercepted by a group of legionaries jumping from the tower.
Tiberius relaxed momentarily as the legionaries beat back the Carthaginians in front of him. Another group of Romans dropped over the wall, running past Tiberius and Fannius to battle on the other side. Tiberius had a chance to look further down the parapet, where he could see that another tower had made it to the wall intact. The legionaries were bounding from the far tower in numbers, pressing the Carthaginians hard on both sides. The enemy defense was beginning to disintegrate around them.
“Look, they’re leaving the walls,” Fannius said in a thin voice. “They’re almost done for.”
“Over there, Fannius,” Tiberius pointed to the interior of the city, which was full of Roman soldiers. He realized that to have gotten that far, the resistance at other points along the city must have collapsed precipitously.
“It’s almost over,” breathed Fannius.
“I think so,” said Tiberius. He watched the legionaries in the city cutting down anyone in their way, killing running Carthaginian soldiers from behind.
A tumultuous roar went up from the walls, startling Tiberius and Fannius. The survivors of their cohort shouted out again, their swords and shields raised high, clattering one against another. The wall had been swept clear, the victory was theirs.
A cry welled up, “Hail Tiberius Gracchus!” It grew in volume as the soldiers shouted out their praise, “First over the wall! Gracchus! First over the wall!”
Tiberius raised his hand in acknowledgment, first one way, and then the other. He whispered to Fannius, “Do you think it’s true? We were first?”
“You, Tiberius!” said Fannius, “You were first!”
Tiberius gave him an incredulous, almost ridiculing expression. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said, “it took us so long to get here.”
“Long?” Fannius said. “Look at the sun. We’ve been here less than an hour. We fought up here for perhaps fifteen minutes at the most.”
Bewildered, Tiberius gazed at the sun, then at the city. Fifteen minutes?
“Still and all,” he said, “we couldn’t have been first; we’re still where we started, while the rest of the legions are deep into the city itself. Someone else must have been first.”
“Perhaps so,” Fannius conceded. “In any case, look at you, you’re a mess!”
Tiberius looked down at himself, and for the first time he felt the dull pain in the small of his back from the spear puncture, pain from the cut in his bicep, and the throbbing of his head. He turned his gaze to Fannius, “Well, you’re not ready for a wedding party either.”
Fannius sported a jagged slash across his clavicle just above his molded lorica. A few inches deeper and he would have been another lifeless corpse spilled on the wall. He had a gash on one forearm and a slight stab wound in his thigh. Fannius grinned and slapped Tiberius on the shoulder, “We’ll live. What now?”
“Call the troops to order, I guess, secure the wall, and move down into the city.”
Fannius nodded sadly, “That’s what Casca would have had us do.”
Tiberius grinned a tight smile and barked a command to his men. They left fifty legionaries on the wall to prevent any escapes or sorties. The remaining 350 soldiers descended the steps where Tiberius and Fannius formed them up for a sweeping action through the streets. Before they could begin, however, a troop of horse pulled up in the small plaza between the walls and the buildings. Scipio Aemilianus pranced in front of the group and shouted out “Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Fannius.”
The two tribunes stepped forward. Scipio riding his horse, mused Tiberius. The battle truly was over.
“Tiberius, Gaius, first over the wall?”
Fannius shouted, “Tiberius, Consul, Tiberius was first!”
Tiberius looked at him with a puzzled expression, but the cries of approval from their men shook the air.
“Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus,” Scipio declared in a raised voice, “First over the wall, winner of the Mural Crown!”
And the city rang with the blood-thickened voices of the legions cheering the young officer, celebrating the final conquest of the greatest enemy in Rome’s history, Carthage.
In the physician’s tent, Tiberius and Fannius lay exhausted as Scipio’s surgeon tended their wounds. He had stitched up the gash above Fannius’s collarbone and had placed herb poultices on the sword cuts. The herbs were good enough for Tiberius’s cut on his bicep, and he held a compress to his head. But the surgeon felt that he had to cauterize the spear wound in his back to ensure that the poison wouldn’t enter. Tiberius lay prone, waiting for the iron to sizzle.
With his head hanging slightly over the edge of the table, he stared at his hand dangling close to the ground. He was tired, sad. Visions of the battle and aftermath crowded his aching brain. Once the invasion had succeeded, Scipio ordered a march through the city. Tiberius and F
annius were charged with cordoning off the streets in the wake of the first wave of legionaries, easy duty to acknowledge their triumphant sacrifice in leading the attack.
Tiberius instructed his men to form two lines and begin to move slowly behind the rest of the troops, who had broken up into informal gangs. As they walked, the exaltation from the wreathing by Scipio and the army’s acclaim had faded by what he saw then.
The ganged Romans broke into each home and building and turned out all of their inhabitants. In the street, they forced the men to their knees and killed them, slashing their throats, taking off their heads, or simply hacking them to pieces. Old men and women, infants, and babies were dispatched as quickly as possible so that the conquerors could go about their business of taking everything.
Women and girls were dragged out, some clutching scraps of cloth to their bodies, some naked, some already dead from repeated, brutish rape. Those alive were tied together by their necks and marched off along with any boys too young to wield weapons, back to the harbor to await sale to the slavers.
Most were killed. After a brutal, three-year siege, the Romans exacted their revenge as expected. But something else was going on, Tiberius realized. He watched as a woman of 30 or so, a comely young matron, he thought, was pulled out by three soldiers. She was thrust on one knee to the cobblestones, her arms jerked straight out to steady her. She looked up at Tiberius, dark brown eyes dead already, and an optio sliced her head from her body with one measured stroke of his sword. As her head fell, Tiberius noticed her hair, closely cropped, almost to the skull. He quickly fixed his sight on Fannius, who witnessed her death with an expression frozen in shock. Fannius glanced at Tiberius, then averted his eyes, almost guiltily.
The sudden, searing pain from the red-hot blade in the small of his back brought Tiberius back to the physician’s tent.