“We can appreciate the difficulties in raising such an army,” Adonibaal said, glancing at Shafat, who nodded his confirmation. “But it must be pointed out that the general has ignored several summonses to appear before the Council.”
“The immensity of the general’s task is perhaps more than you know,” Yaroah said brightly. “I’m sure these summonses have merely slipped his mind. But in his absence, I speak for the general. Perhaps I can answer your questions now.”
“I see a very large army here,” Adonibaal began. “By my estimation, perhaps fifty thousand men. The Council wants to know when the general plans to ship it off to Sicily to lift the siege of our garrison at Acragas. The situation there is really quite critical.”
“Oh, but the army has not been fully assembled,” Yaroah said. “Our men from the Balearic Isles arrived just today, for example. You might have seen them marching through the city.”
“The Balearic Isles?”
“Yes, the famous slingers. They form the backbone of our light-armed troops. In addition, we haven’t received any of our elephants yet.”
“Elephants?”
“Yes,” Yaroah said. “Then, of course, there is the matter of training, as you see in these fields around you.”
“How long will this training take?”
Yaroah’s bright smile suddenly vanished.
“My lord,” he said to Adonibaal, and then bowing his head to Shafat, repeated, “My lord… It should be remembered that it was Hannibal Gisgo who proposed putting an army into such a forward position as Acragas. General Hanno graciously assented to put the advance guard of his own mercenary army under Hannibal’s command, in accordance with the wishes of the Council and Hannibal himself.”
“Hannibal wanted the entire army,” Adonibaal corrected the young man.
“And in the spirit of compromise, Hanno allowed him the early arrivals and even proposed Hannibal command them in whatever forward post he wished, a compromise the Council eagerly agreed to, and, in fact, insisted upon. Acragas cannot be re-supplied by sea,” Yaroah reminded them.
“Indeed it cannot,” Adonibaal agreed. “Hannibal’s messages out of Acragas have painted an increasingly dire picture.”
“If you recall, Hanno proposed garrisoning the unassailable port cities,” Yaroah said evenly. “The general sees no reason now to rush into battle over such an insignificant place as Acragas.”
“But he is planning to use this army to lift the siege?” Adonibaal said, his temper rising.
Yaroah rose quickly. “Please excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, bowing. “But I must see if the general is ready. After all, he has been summoned to the Council.”
“I know the arrogant lad’s family,” Shafat said, after Yaroah had gone.
“Yes,” Adonibaal said. “We tread lightly all the way around here.”
The slave came back and refilled their cups once again. Silence descended inside the tent, as many of the people who had been there completed their duties and filtered out until only two armed guards remained. They stood in silence on either side of the entrance flap. The two councilmen waited … and waited … until finally they heard the crunch of approaching footsteps outside the tent. It was Yaroah. He stuck his head through the door of the tent without entering.
“Profuse apologies, my lords,” he said, offering a little bow. “But the general has gone to an important associate’s home to dine, and from there will be retiring for the evening.”
“We will not be seeing the general today?” Adonibaal asked wearily.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” Yaroah said. He ducked back outside again, taking the remaining armed guards with him, and left the councilmen alone inside Hanno’s now-empty tent.
Chapter 9
October 262 B.C.
Belenus opened the lid of the box and gazed down with satisfaction at the head inside. It was well preserved. He had sewn the eyelids shut and the face looked serene, like someone sleeping. If he had not sewn the eyelids together, they would have curled up and left puckered black holes where the eyes had been and the face would not have had the peaceful demeanor. He had done a good job. His only regret was that he had failed to snatch up the legionary’s helmet from the battlefield. For a showpiece, the head was a little plain. It would provide him more distinction if it looked like the head of an important Roman soldier. He felt the helmet would have helped. Of course, then he would have needed a bigger box.
He put the box down and strapped on his sword belt. Like the Roman face in his box, Caratacus and the other men were asleep. Pale moonlight shone through the windows. He crept among the snoring, grunting, stinking jumble of men on the floor. Even though he did not care if he woke every last one of them, he did not want to answer their inevitable questions, so he was careful not to step on their hair or stumble over their heads. He found most of them to be useless companions, dull and unimaginative. They were Iliatos’ gang of slaves. It was senseless even to speak to them.
Outside he heard a scuffling sound and saw that Caratacus’ snare had caught one of the big rats. Caratacus was a skillful trapper, and Belenus was not surprised that he had snared one of them. When the morning came, the men would argue over it. Belenus was hungry, as hungry as any of them were, but he was glad that he would not be there when the men devoured the rat. Simply eating the rat was one thing, but arguing over a rat was humiliating. Nobody had enough to eat, but he would not be reduced to such a poverty of spirit as he saw grip his companions.
He walked through the narrow streets towards the acropolis. The back streets of the city were plunged in deep darkness. Where the streets opened onto market squares and other clear areas, he could see officers of the watch stroll by or catch the outlines of guards up on the walls. As with his sleeping companions, Belenus was not concerned about alerting them, but he stayed in the shadows to avoid the nuisance of conversing with any of them. The tedium of having to utter his prepared excuses might be enough to cause him to give up the enterprise and go back home and argue over the rat.
In one of the streets, he heard the loud voice of a woman from behind the closed door of a house. From somewhere deep within the house he could hear her wailing with grief. Other, softer voices tried to comfort her. Belenus could not understand what any of them were saying. The whole city was like this now, he thought. It was quieter at night than in the daytime, but, day or night, there was always plenty of grief since the hunger and sickness had set in. The disease struck the youngest the hardest, infants in particular, so, in addition to the discomforts of famine, there was sadness among the people. No one thought the siege would have lasted as long as it had already, and there was no end in sight.
It was not until Belenus had climbed to the acropolis that he actively tried to keep in the shadows. He had been up on the acropolis many times and had examined the steep hill that protected the city on its north end. It was an impregnable precipice, so there was no need for a wall here. But that did not mean that it was insurmountable. Belenus had often climbed down it—not all the way, of course, but enough to know the difficulties he would encounter on his way to and from the Roman lines. Many men had gone over the walls in all parts of the city, but these were mere deserters. Unlike the deserters, Belenus also needed to get back in. The cliff face of the acropolis hill was the only place to make such a round trip.
He quickly crossed a narrow plaza and crept into the shadows at the base of the Temple of Athena. He was at once assaulted by the stench of the rotting meat that had been left at the altar. Even the priests of the temples had forsaken Acragas, and the people had abandoned their offerings to rot on the altar, unburnt. The temple itself was locked up tight, the treasure no doubt removed and secured elsewhere.
From the base of the temple, Belenus could see over the precipice and down to the lines of the Roman siege works far below. The Romans had enclosed the city in a double-ring of ditches. One ditch, surmounted by a rampart of earth and wooden palisade, faced inward, preventing the inhabitant
s from breaking out, while another identical ditch faced outward, preventing any relieving force from breaking in. Between the ditches, the Romans had erected strong guard towers made of timber, and manned them at all hours of the day and night. The towers were placed at regular intervals and at the gates where causeways crossed the entrenchments. During the day, an observer could see the soldiers marching and drilling in the clear spaces between the ditches. At night, he could see nothing but their innumerable campfires, twinkling like stars, enclosing the city in a ring of fire.
During his previous visits to the acropolis, Belenus had often seen the convoys of supply wagons and herds of livestock coming into the Roman lines from their stockpile to the north. It was a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the hungry and increasingly miserable defenders of the city and accounted for the mounting desertions. Even the stoutest heart could be swayed by the most obvious of contrasts: that the smoke drifting skyward from the Roman camps was from soldiers roasting their meat, while the columns of black smoke issuing from Acragas were from the people burning their dead.
Belenus heard a sound and froze. He drew his dagger when he saw that it was a guard. He could see the outline of his head and shoulders silhouetted against the sky. He pressed his back tight to the column of the temple. He watched the guard pace along the edge of the precipice until Belenus was sure he was alone. Then he crept toward the figure, careful to stay in the shadows.
He knew that the chances were good that it would come to this. Even though he would have rather just been left alone to climb down the cliff face, he was not going to let a solitary guard ruin his plan. As he drew closer, Belenus saw that the guard wore the simple dun-colored tunic of the Numidians. He carried neither spear nor sword. Crouching, Belenus rushed toward the figure, then bolted upright and sprinted the last few feet. With a single motion, he yanked back the guard’s head from behind and plunged his dagger deep into the man’s throat. His attack had been silent and sudden. There was no time for the guard to react. He issued a single muffled groan, and then went limp in Belenus’ arms. Belenus lowered him carefully to the ground. He knelt over him for a moment, watching his lifeless face. When he was certain that the guard was dead, he grabbed him under the arms and dragged the body over to the edge of the cliff.
He had chosen the place he would make his descent well in advance. It was full of flat ledges and handholds all the way down. It would not be an easy descent — and an even more difficult ascent, to be sure! — but from what he was able to ascertain it offered the most advantageous climbing terrain on the entire cliff face. He put the body down and rolled it over the edge. It landed with a fleshy slap on a flat rock below and Belenus followed it over, carefully climbing down to the ledge. Once there, he tucked the body beneath the shelf of a rocky overhang. It would be a while before anyone found him here, he thought. With so many desertions, it would be assumed that he was one of these, nothing more. Not until the vultures began circling would anyone even think to look for him tucked into the cliff face. Maybe not even then, Belenus thought, for he had often seen vultures soaring over the cliff. He had even seen them perched on the rocks, letting the sun warm their outstretched wings.
The moon had moved no more than half-a-hand when Belenus reached the bottom. He immediately began to run across the moonlit field toward the Roman works. As he approached, he could see the earthen rampart surmounted by a wooden wall and the thick guard towers looming over him. Overall, it was a much more formidable obstacle than it had looked from the city above.
“Halt!” came the voice of a sentry on the wall. “Who is there? Give me the password.”
While Belenus had no desire to be run through with a javelin or cut down by sword or spear, he felt an overwhelming impatience with the guard’s demands. He had no use for demands of any sort, passwords in particular. He decided simply to be blunt.
“I am from inside the city of Acragas,” he began in his broken Latin. “I have come here with an offer to betray the city to the Roman consul.”
After endless questioning by guards and centurions, Belenus was finally escorted into a large tent for his audience with the consul. The officers were annoyed at having been awakened in the middle of the night and such men as were up at this hour watched Belenus as if he were part of a festival procession. “You better not be just another deserter,” he was warned, as he was pushed roughly into a chair inside the tent. Belenus remained silent under the baleful glares of his guards.
Megellus entered a short time later. Belenus could hear him blustering impatiently from outside long before he saw him. Ducking under the doorway, the consul entered with a fuss and great commotion.
“What’s all this—” he was saying, but stopped short when he caught a glimpse of the long-haired, shirtless and tattooed Belenus sitting placidly in his chair flanked by the unhappy guards. Megellus’ expression went suddenly blank, his mouth hanging open. Belenus smiled inwardly. He was well aware that his own face bore little resemblance to the one in his box back in Acragas, and that the appearance and demeanor of his people struck fear in the hearts of Romans.
“Nobody told me we had captured a Gaul,” Megellus said irritably to the room. “Where did this man come from?”
“This is the man who offers to betray the city,” the centurion said.
“This man?” Megellus laughed. “He comes looking for a meal, like the rest of them. I was awakened from a sound sleep for this?”
“I am not a deserter,” Belenus said evenly.
Megellus looked at Belenus with a mixture of surprise and disdain.
“The creature speaks!” he said with a chuckle.
“I am not a deserter,” Belenus repeated.
“And yet you sit here in the tent of the senior Roman consul, and not at your post inside the starving city of Acragas. I wonder what your superiors would call it.”
“Acragas is starving,” Belenus offered. “There is also disease and much death and unhappiness. The people will welcome the Romans.”
“I know all I need to know about the condition of the city,” Megellus said. “I have half the garrison here in my camp under guard.”
“Deserters!” Belenus spat on the ground at his feet.
With disgust, Megellus looked at the gob between Belenus’ leather-bound feet and then back up at his Gallic guest.
“Do any of these offer you the city?” Belenus asked.
“Can you give me the city?” Megellus asked skeptically.
Belenus explained that for a price he could arrange to have the gates opened to the Roman soldiers. But it would not be cheap.
“It will take all my people to subdue the defenders, for the guards remain loyal.”
Megellus heard him out, and then dismissed the offer with a wave of his hand.
“But why should I pay anything at all?” he asked. “The city will soon be mine anyway. While your people starve and die of disease, our Sicilian allies have graciously stockpiled all the food we Romans could ask for at Herbesos. We receive a stream of deserters to keep us entertained. We don’t even suffer from boredom here. Why should I pay then merely to relieve your suffering? Your weakling commanders will come to me soon enough.”
Belenus began to regret coming here. His understanding of the Roman’s language was enough to convince him of the consul’s stupidity, if not always his exact meaning. He was torn between demanding more coin and walking out.
“You must know that you will be attacked,” Belenus said, with a sigh. He was convinced that the consul did not know.
“I have already been attacked from inside the city,” Megellus said.
“Not from within the city,” Belenus said.
“From outside the city? By whom?”
“The Carthaginians.”
“An army is coming here to relieve the city?”
Belenus looked the consul squarely in the eye, but he remained expressionless.
“Of course,” he said.
Megellus ran a suddenly nervo
us hand over his mouth and down his chin.
“That’s why I come to you now,” Belenus said after a pause. “There perhaps isn’t much more time.”
“I will consider your offer,” Megellus said. “I must consider it. Can you come back here to meet with me again?”
“Again? But I have taken great risks to come here now,” Belenus said.
“I said I will consider your offer!” Megellus snapped. “I can give you nothing now. Come back after I have thought this over and we will speak again. In the meantime, you must act as if nothing has happened. Go back to the city and come back here when I have had a chance to discuss this with my officers.”
With that, Megellus stood and left. Belenus was given his weapons back and escorted outside the line of ditches where he was left in the darkness of the frontier between the siege lines and city. With a sigh, he began the jog back to the towering black precipice. If he kept up a good pace, he could make it back by sunrise — perhaps in time to share the rat.
At dusk the next day, the Romans made the first of their deployments. In the frontier between siege works and city, the first two lines of heavy infantry from both of Megellus’ legions, as well as his allied cohorts, lined up in the familiar checkerboard pattern — over ten thousand men in all, occupying a frontage of some one thousand yards. Out of sight to the south, Vitulus’ army deployed also, without velites and triarii, without the cavalry, a thousand-yard-long line of armored fighting men deployed for action. It was the noisiest deployment on record. The men banged their swords on their shields, wailing war cries, and the cornicens’ trumpets blared.
“Do you think we got their attention?” Megellus asked.
“I think all eyes are focused on us,” Laberius said. “The Gaul doesn’t know what he has set off.”
“This will give him a sense of urgency at least, I should think,” Megellus said, smiling.
Laberius raised an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure he will come back?”
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