“Twenty-thousand.”
Megellus considered for a moment. “You know if you lie to me, I will know it and you will die.”
Gervas said nothing. Livius slapped him with an open hand on the back of his head. He lunged forward, almost losing his balance. Megellus shook his head slightly and Livius straightened.
“You understand that you will die?” Megellus asked.
Gervas nodded.
“Good. So I will ask another question. Where do your comrades — your brothers in arms — come from? Surely you are not all Africans?”
Megellus already knew the answer to this question. It was news of Carthaginian recruiting efforts that had convinced the senate to send two consular armies to the island to begin with. Agents in Massilia had reported fully on Carthaginian activities in Iberia, Liguria and among the Celts.
“Iberia mostly,” Gervas said.
“Iberia! Twenty thousand Africans, Iberians… Who else?”
“I don’t know who else. I do not understand the languages. I have never been outside Numidia before. I do not know where everyone is from. My unit is all Numidian.”
Even though he did not understand the language, Megellus heard fear in the boy’s voice and believed he was telling the truth. Of course, he did not believe the twenty thousand figure at all. If the Numidian was offering twenty, Megellus supposed ten. At most.
Megellus sat down in his chair.
“Are you hungry, son?” he asked.
Gervas shook his head.
“You look like you haven’t eaten in some time is why I ask. Perhaps you could use a meal when we are through here?”
“I am not hungry.”
“In fact, your appearance in general is not quite up to what we Romans would call military fit. Did you see the legions in the camp on your way in?”
Gervas nodded.
“These are what fighting men look like, Gervas. There is another army just like them camped a few miles from here. Did you know that?”
Gervas said nothing. Megellus sighed.
“Our soldiers have plenty to eat,” he continued. “I wonder what the citizens of Acragas think of your little army of Africans and Iberians. I wonder what they will think of you when they see the legions of Rome tomorrow. They will know that it is you who brought them here. I wonder how happy they will be.”
Megellus paused in thought for a moment.
“Who commands your little army, Gervas?” he asked finally.
“Juba, son of—”
Megellus allowed the name to roll around inside his head for a moment, and then shot forward in his chair. “Damn you, boy! I do not care who your decurion is! Who commands the army? The army!” Megellus’ face was red with rage.
“I don’t know.”
Megellus motioned to the centurion. Livius unsheathed his dagger and with the point under Gervas’ chin raised the cavalryman’s head so he was forced to look at Megellus for the first time.
“You are not the only captive we have,” Megellus lied. “If I do not get the answers I want from you, I will get them from some other. It makes little difference to me. It should make much difference to you.”
“Hannibal Gisgo,” Gervas gasped, his throat straining against the knife.
The point of the centurion’s dagger had sliced the skin under Gervas’ chin and a heavy drop of blood made a trail down the boy’s throat.
“Ahhh…” Megellus said. He waved his fingers and Livius put his dagger away. Gervas took a deep breath and went back to staring at the ground.
“Hannibal Gisgo,” Megellus said. “He was the one who failed to destroy Appius Claudius’ little fleet in the strait of Messana a couple of years ago, if I am not mistaken. And he was allowed to continue in command? I thought Carthage crucified its failed generals.”
Megellus stood and paced thoughtfully. “Hannibal Gisgo… A cautious commander, to say the least. He may be a man I can work with, a man susceptible to certain … persuasions, perhaps.”
Megellus paused, lost in thought.
“Perhaps young Gervas can be of some use to us,” he said. “Perhaps we should let the Numidian go,” Megellus said. “Send him back to Acragas. What say you, Centurion? Shall we give him back his mount?”
“The Numidian’s mount was killed,” the centurion said. “That’s how he was captured.”
“Well, give him one of ours.”
“Numidians disdain Roman mounts,” the centurion said with a sneer.
“Let him walk then!” Megellus fumed, jerking around in fury. He could see Gervas, head bowed, looking up from underneath his eyebrows. “No, wait, better yet, I’ve changed my mind. Kill him.”
Megellus turned away and strolled over to the document-littered desk. He picked up a parchment and casually examined it.
“Sir?”
Gervas looked up in horror.
“What would you have me do, my lord?” he asked through the interpreter.
The consul let the parchment fall to the desktop and turned, with a triumphant smile.
“Ah! I guess we are not as illiterate as we seem. Are we, Numidian? Even a dog cocks his head at a few choice words, eh?” Megellus laughed.
Gervas looked at the consul hopefully. The interpreter said nothing.
“What would I have you do?” Megellus went on after a moment. “I would have Hannibal give me Acragas. I would have you open the negotiations.”
When the interpreter had finished, Gervas stared blankly.
“I want Hannibal Gisgo — esteemed commander of the garrison at Acragas, high admiral of the Messanian fleet — to be made aware of his predicament. To be made fully aware of his predicament. Do you understand me? Is that something you think you could do, Gervas?
The interpreter began conveying his message, and then Megellus added, interrupting the translation, “In exchange for your life, of course.”
Gervas closed his eyes and nodded. Megellus called for his scribe and hastily dictated a letter. He folded it closed and applied his seal. He approached Gervas with the note and motioned for him to stand. He had the centurion untie his hands. The boy stood massaging his wrists, which had been rubbed raw.
“Take this to your commander, Hannibal Gisgo,” Megellus said. “It explains the procedure for handing the city over to me when the Roman armies arrive there tomorrow. It also explains how no mercy will be shown to the people of Acragas should he deny me. No mercy! Do you understand, son?”
Gervas nodded.
“Here’s a denarius.” Megellus reached into a pouch at his belt and produced the coin. Gervas took it and gazed at it in amazement. “Three more of them await your return, Gervas. But you must stress to your general the Roman might you have witnessed here today. Give him the note, and make him understand. Return to me with his reply and three more denarii are yours.”
Gervas nodded, the slight traces of a smile played on his lips.
“I will not fail,” he said. Megellus could tell by the look in his eye that he had just acquired a reliable courier.
“Good,” he said. “Centurion, fetch Gervas a mount. He leaves at once!”
Chapter 3
At the point where the Gela road entered Acragas, the wall was fifteen feet thick, Juba told them.
“The Romans will not storm the walls,” Juba said as he and his troop walked through the city on their way to their guard posts at the Gela gate. “They don’t have the ingenuity and cunning of the Greeks to build the great siege engines and other machines of war. No, they will instead surround the city with ditches in order to starve it into submission.”
“Starve us, you mean,” Tabat said.
“Of course, ‘us’,” Juba said. “Their idea will be to starve the entire city, including us. They will defend their ditches so we cannot get out and nothing, including food and water, can get in.”
“I’d rather just fight them,” Gauda said. “I’ve never been inside a starving city.”
“Well it’s not that easy,” Juba s
aid. “While we’re in here starving, the Romans will be out there starving. In addition, I think the Carthaginians will bring another army to the city to break the Roman ring.”
“I hope it’s soon,” Gauda said. “All this talk of starving is starting to make me hungry.”
“Cheer up! We want for nothing now,” Juba noted, in a lighter tone. “And we’re on guard duty. We don’t even have to ride today.”
It was shortly after dawn and the streets were already full. The same anxiety Juba had noticed in the people yesterday was even more pronounced today. As the troop rounded the corner and approached the gates, he saw that the anxiety had erupted into open conflict.
A man pushing a handcart was confronting a guard. The handcart was brimming with the man’s possessions — tools, bundles of clothes, even a chair, its legs jutting awkwardly skyward amid the jumble of stuff. With him were a woman and two young girls — his wife and daughters, Juba thought — and standing between the handcart and gate was a spear-wielding guard. It was apparent that the guard was not going to let the man proceed, even though the great doors were closed and locked. The guard yelled something at the man and the wife and girls cringed as the man’s temper flared suddenly. He lunged at the guard, using the cart to try to run the guard down. The guard, his own anger flaring, grabbed awkwardly at the cart, but it was too heavy to fling aside with any of the authority he had intended and the guard himself stumbled and almost fell.
Juba heard their angry voices, although he could not make out what they were saying. Others began paying attention to the fracas and started to gather around. The people were neutral observers at first, but soon they began taking sides, most siding with the man and his handcart.
“This is a closed city!” the guard shouted clearly now. “You might as well take your things back home because you’re not leaving through this gate.”
“What right do you have to tell me where to go?” the man asked. “You are a foreigner in this city. You have no authority.”
“All gates are closed by order of General Hannibal Gisgo!”
“Another Carthaginian!” the man spat. “Since when does Carthage tell us what to do?”
A chorus of agreement erupted from the crowd. The man’s words had struck a chord. The guard, by himself at the base of the gates, was beginning to look worried. He leveled his spear at the crowd. Juba noticed several of his fellows start down the stairways leading off the walls to come to his aid.
“The general closed the city, I guess,” Juba said to his troop. “The people don’t seem very happy about it.”
“If that man wanted to leave he should have left yesterday,” Hannon said. “The city was wide open then. He could have left as he pleased.”
“Even if he could, he shouldn’t leave through this gate,” Juba pointed out. “There’s nothing out there but Romans.”
“He won’t get far lugging that handcart, anyway,” Gauda said.
Some of the other guards arrived and arrayed themselves on either side of the first. The man with the handcart yelled at them as they lined up, but he kept himself behind the cart.
“Well, we can’t stand here all day,” Juba said. “Let’s get up on that wall.”
Juba led the troop around the edge of the crowd. He could hear the voices yelling in a variety of languages, but Punic seemed to be the most frequently spoken due to its commonality. At the top of the wall, he got a better look at the gathered crowd. The Carthaginian army in the city, like all Carthaginian armies outside of Africa, was entirely composed of mercenaries. The guards were mostly Iberians. They carried spears and wore bronze helmets. There were also some Libyan soldiers on the wall and Juba noticed a small group of Celts on the fringe of the crowd. They were easy to spot. Shirtless, they had long hair and drooping mustaches. The one that particularly caught Juba’s eye had dark blue tattoos on his shoulders. The tattoos made swirling patterns that extended all the way down to his wrists. The same pattern was evident on his forehead, too — only there the swirls concluded in a sharp point between his eyes. All the Celts carried swords in their belts.
“If there is going to be any trouble here, it will start with the Celts,” he said.
“They have been trouble from the first day,” Gauda said with a sneer. “It is best to avoid them.”
Gauda continued talking about the Celts. None of the Numidians cared for them — they were undisciplined and, it seemed to them, pointlessly irritable and rude — but Gauda passionately despised them and would talk about them at length. Juba, however, was only half paying attention to him, for something in the distance had just then caught his eye — a solitary rider coming toward the city along the Gela road.
Gervas had ridden all through the night and spotted the walls of Acragas with the breaking of dawn. Sometime during the night, because he was unaccustomed to the stocky Roman horse, his hips had begun to ache, a discomfort which merely added to his growing list of miseries. His head had begun to throb shortly after leaving the Roman camp and the pain had not ceased for a moment since. At least his vision had finally cleared. For a while he had been seeing double.
Despite his misery, he felt that he had just undertaken the most important ride of his life. Not only had he spent time within the enemy camp and had what he thought was an important report to make, but he also bore a message to the Carthaginian general from the Roman consul himself. Even though he had been threatened and almost killed within it, he felt that he had entered some kind of strange spirit world he had only been vaguely aware existed, a world of generals and consuls and of wide-ranging events. And here he was, Gervas, son of Gaia, only months ago thought to be too young even to be in the army, right in the middle of it. It caused him to shake his head in unbelief and imparted in him a great sense of urgency as he rode. He knew the Romans would just now be breaking the camp he had left behind hours ago, but he still felt them bearing down behind him and was surprised and dismayed to find the gates of the city closed when he arrived.
“Acragas is a closed city!” one of the guards yelled down at him as he sat his horse before the gates.
“I am a member of a Numidian cavalry troop, lost on patrol, stationed in this city,” Gervas shouted back. “I must see the garrison commander at once. It is urgent!”
“Gervas? I thought that was you! By the gods, boys! It’s Gervas!”
Gervas recognized the voice but could not tell immediately where it had come from. He scanned the walls and the guard towers and saw guards on all of them. Long shadows cast by the battlements obscured the figures on the wall and the faces peering down at him were indistinct, black silhouettes. Eventually, as he continued to stare, one of those faces resolved itself into that of Juba’s.
“Juba!” he shouted.
With a wave, Juba told him to wait and then disappeared. Gervas could hear him issuing commands from the guard tower. After a moment the massive gate opened and Gervas rode inside where Juba immediately greeted him. The rest of his cavalry troop was there as well.
Juba reached up to help Gervas from his horse, but when Gervas’ feet touched the ground his knees buckled. To Gervas, it felt as though all the strength of his legs had left him, as if it had leaked out along the road, drop by drop, until now he had none left. His legs were empty and hollow, no more capable of supporting him than strands of rope.
“Let’s get him into the shade,” Juba said.
He rushed Gervas to the base of the wall beside the gate. He took his own sheepskin from around his neck and gave Gervas some water.
“We thought you were dead!” Juba said.
“The enemy killed my horse,” Gervas said. “I fell and knocked my head. When I woke, I was tied up and in the enemy camp.”
“The Roman camp!” Juba exclaimed.
The other Numidians looked down on Gervas as he sat in the shade of the wall telling his story. Some of the townspeople and soldiers had gathered round as well to hear him speak. Gervas had been very impressed with the Romans and their ca
mp.
“It is like a fortress,” he told the crowd. “And they build a new camp every night. They can never be attacked except in their fortress.”
He told them of his meeting with the consul and of the appearance and bearing of the soldiers and officers he had seen. He was not able to keep the pride out of his voice when he spoke of the consul. How many of these people listening to him now, even the soldiers, had ever spoken directly to a Roman general? Or any general, for that matter? What he was careful not to mention, however, was the message he carried tucked inside his tunic. Upon recalling it, he touched the spot carefully to make sure it was still there. Happily, he felt the stiff crinkling of the parchment against his ribs.
Neither did he mention the denarius given him by the consul, for he had just then noticed a group of Celts listening intently nearby. He knew that if he mentioned the coin he would not make it through the day without being robbed by one of them. Drinking, thieving and whoring were all they had done since coming to the city. Gervas wondered what could be worse for the people of Acragas than having these barbarians as defenders. Even his return from the dead could not soften his opinion of them.
“So the Romans just let you go?” one of the Celts suddenly called out in a loud voice. It was the tattooed man Juba had noticed a few moments earlier. He had an evil glint in his eye. The tattoos gave him a decidedly unpleasant cast, whatever his intentions. He half-turned while he spoke, addressing the crowd as well as Gervas. He wanted everyone to hear him, and when he spoke there was a temporary hush. Even the handcart man and the beleaguered guards turned to look. “They just gave you a horse and let you go? Why would they do that, I wonder?”
“Maybe they took pity on me,” Gervas said lightly, but the thrust of the Celt’s suspicion troubled him.
The Celt turned to the crowd. “This man rides in here on a Roman horse, and his friends open the gates for him, just like that!”
“While we are penned in here like cattle!” A man emerged from the crowd and stood beside the handcart man, ready to take up his cause. He was a big, tall man. “I tell you, I myself have relatives in Heraclea. I would take my family there, just as this man wants to remove his.”
The War God's Men Page 5