by John Stack
‘And the centre?’ Atticus asked.
‘After our horse fled, the Carthaginian cavalry attacked the right flank and swept around the rear. Some of the hastati broke through the elephant charge, but they were swallowed by the enemy infantry, and the bulk of the legions were trapped by the cavalry. We re-engaged on the right and the proconsul broke out with maybe five hundred men, but they were isolated and surrounded again and we were pushed back, so I ordered a fighting retreat.’
‘You fled and left the legions trapped?’ Septimus said, rising to his feet, his fists balled by his side.
‘There was nothing we could do,’ Salinator replied, standing to face down Septimus. ‘If we’d stood our ground we would have been slaughtered like the legions.’
‘So you ran,’ Septimus said contemptuously, ‘and saved your own skin.’
‘Enough!’ Atticus shouted, and stood to lean between the two soldiers. He turned to Salinator. ‘Did you see the proconsul fall?’ he asked.
The Etruscan tore his eyes from Septimus and looked to Atticus, the anger in his eyes never abating. ‘No,’ he replied after a moment. ‘I think he was captured but I can’t be sure.’
‘What does it matter?’ Septimus said, turning away from the table, concern for the Ninth overwhelming him.
‘Were you pursued?’ Atticus asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Salinator replied and, looking at Atticus, he spoke aloud a thought that had plagued him during his flight from the battle. ‘But with the legions destroyed, nothing stands between Tunis and here.’
Atticus nodded and walked from the table. Salinator sat down again, his gaze moving to Septimus, his mouth creased in anger once more.
Suddenly a clarion call of alarm sounded, followed by another and then another, until they overlapped to form a continuous sound.
Salinator shot up once more, panic in his face. ‘We were followed; the Carthaginians are attacking.’
‘No,’ Atticus said, his expression equally dread-filled, but for another reason. ‘Those are naval horns.’ He rushed to the door, pushing it open to run outside, his eyes blinking rapidly in the sunlight after the gloom of the interior. His gaze swept the seaward horizon. He felt Septimus come out to stand beside him, but his focus never left the fearsome sight that had prompted the sound of alarm from the galleys of the fleet. Atticus instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword.
‘Poseidon protect us …’ he whispered, and he broke into a run as he headed down to the shoreline, calling to the nearest galley to launch its skiff. In the distance, the dark-hulled Carthaginian galleys continued to deploy across the mouth of the harbour, their number already exceeding a hundred, the windblown waves dashing against their rams as their oars crashed endlessly into the restless sea.
Marcus Atilius Regulus straightened his back as he heard footsteps approaching the door, the proconsul drawing himself to his full height in the darkened, airless room. He stepped into one of the shafts of sunlight permitted by the shuttered window, feeling the sweat roll down his back in the infernal heat. He blinked a bead of moisture from his eye. Regulus was nearing fifty years old but his body was that of a younger man, the harsh campaigning of the previous twelve months having stripped his frame of the softness that had accumulated over many comfortable years in the Roman Senate.
He was thirsty, the meagre amphora of brackish water he had been given the night before long since gone, and he licked his lips to moisten them, conscious that his first words should not be spoken with a cracked voice. He watched the door shudder as a harsh metallic sound cut through the near silence; the room was flooded with harsh sunlight as the door was opened. Regulus squinted against the light but he resisted the urge to wipe the blindness from his eyes, instead staring directly ahead to the two figures facing him. They were both soldiers, but senior in rank, their bearing revealing the arrogance and confidence of command.
The younger man entered first. He was Carthaginian, his uniform of the style that Regulus had come to loathe over the previous months. He looked the proconsul in the eye, staring at him as if in fascination, studying him, and Regulus returned the gaze, suddenly conscious of the soiled, sweat-stained tunic he was wearing. The other man stepped in. He was taller than the Carthaginian, his skin a paler complexion, and his gaze wandered the room before settling on the Roman, a half-smile of disdain creasing the edge of his mouth.
‘You are Regulus,’ the Carthaginian said; more a statement than a question, but the proconsul nodded in reply regardless.
‘I am Hamilcar Barca,’ the Carthaginian continued. ‘And this is Xanthippus.’
Regulus held his tongue, taking the moment of silence to study the men anew. He had heard their names many times over the course of the year-long campaign – from ally and captured foe alike. Hamilcar Barca was the overall commander of the Carthaginian forces, and Xanthippus, the Spartan mercenary, hired to command their army after their overwhelming defeat at Adys over a year ago, the man who had given the enemy victory only two days before at Tunis.
‘What of my men?’ Regulus asked, speaking for the first time, his voice low and hard in an effort to instil authority in his question.
‘Sit down,’ Hamilcar replied, indicating the single chair against the far wall.
Regulus glanced over his shoulder but remained standing. He stared into the Carthaginian’s face, keeping his expression unreadable. Hamilcar stepped forward.
‘Sit down,’ he repeated menacingly. ‘Or I will have my men come in and strap you to the chair.’
Regulus hesitated a second longer and then moved slowly to the far wall, sitting down in one fluid movement as if by choice.
Hamilcar smiled, although the gesture did not reach his eyes. ‘For now your men are in the prison beneath this fortress,’ he replied, his eyes never leaving those of the proconsul’s. ‘I have not yet decided their fate.’
‘They are soldiers captured in battle,’ Regulus said, leaning forward. ‘Their lives must be spared.’
‘They are Roman,’ Hamilcar shot back. ‘And their lives are forfeit to the whim of Carthage.’
Regulus made to retort but again he held his tongue, sensing that to antagonize the Carthaginian further was to risk the lives of the five hundred legionaries who had been captured with him. He repeated the number in his mind. Five hundred out of an army of twelve thousand. He whispered a prayer to Mars, the god of war, as he struggled to keep the burden of the terrible loss hidden from his enemy.
‘You are defeated, Roman,’ Hamilcar said, as if reading Regulus’s thoughts. ‘Your army is no more and your invasion is finished.’
‘Is that why you have come here, Carthaginian?’ Regulus retorted. ‘To tell me this. To mock me?’
‘No,’ Hamilcar replied, stepping forward once more until he stood over Regulus. ‘Your light infantry escaped our grasp at Tunis and have fled to Aspis. I have come here to demand you order those forces to surrender.’
‘Surrender?’ Regulus scoffed. ‘The fleet at Aspis will already have evacuated them. There will be no surrender.’
‘You are wrong, Roman,’ Hamilcar replied, the arrogance of the proconsul stirring his anger. ‘The port is blockaded and your fleet is trapped, and if you do not order those men to surrender, I will kill every last one of them.’
Regulus was stunned into silence, his mind racing to devise an alternative.
‘You have until tomorrow to decide,’ Hamilcar said, and he turned and left the room, Xanthippus following without a backward glance.
Regulus stood up as the door was closed, the room once more plunging into semi-darkness. He breathed in deeply, trying to clear his thoughts, but the warm air caught in his throat and he coughed violently. He reached out instinctively for the amphora and picked it up, remembering immediately that it was empty, and he threw it at the wall in anger, the clay shattering into a dozen pieces.
Over a year ago he had sailed south in triumph from Cape Ecnomus. He had met the Carthaginian army at Adys and
swept them aside, had taken Tunis without a fight and had plundered the land around Carthage. The war was won, the enemy beaten on all fronts and, conscious that his consulship was nearing its end and that a successor could arrive any day from Rome to steal his victory, he had confidently sent envoys to Carthage with his terms for their surrender: abandon Sicily, disband the navy and admit total defeat.
Even now Regulus remembered the anger he had felt when the Carthaginians refused his terms. Thereafter he had spent every waking hour preparing his army for the moment the enemy would dare to step outside the city. They had emerged, a new leader at their head, and Regulus had marched on to the plains south of Tunis, ready to deliver the fatal blow that would finally subdue the Carthaginians.
But that victory had been snatched from him, replaced with ignominious defeat, and Regulus cursed Fortuna for the ruination of his fate. He strode to the shuttered window and squinted through a crack in the timber to gaze at the city of Tunis spread out before him. In the distance, a dark pall of smoke rose from the plain, the funeral pyre of the battlefield, and Regulus whispered a prayer once more for the lives of twelve thousand men.
‘We should attack now,’ Xanthippus said as he followed Hamilcar across the battlements, ‘before the enemy becomes entrenched.’
‘No, I cannot risk the destruction of the Roman fleet. I need those galleys intact. We will wait,’ Hamilcar replied, turning to look out from the heights of the fortress over the city of Tunis, the late evening sunlight reflecting off the taller buildings. His gaze settled on the pillar of smoke to the south, its tentacles reaching towards the city, borne on by the eternal wind, the ghibli. The fires had been burning since dawn the day before, when Hamilcar had witnessed the lighting of the pyres under the Carthaginian slain, their bodies ceremoniously committed to Mot, the god of death, while nearby the Roman carrion were put to the torch, a separate fire to which Hamilcar had added ten more bodies – those of the members of the council of Tunis who had opened the gates of the city to the Romans.
‘You think this Roman will order his men to surrender?’ Xanthippus asked, following the Carthaginian’s gaze.
‘Regulus will comply,’ Hamilcar said with certainty. ‘He knows their situation is hopeless.’
‘Then surely those men know it too,’ Xanthippus replied. ‘Perhaps they have already surrendered.’
Hamilcar turned to the Spartan, a smile on his face. ‘They have not surrendered,’ he said. ‘Nor will they under force of arms.’
‘You are sure?’ Xanthippus said.
Hamilcar nodded. ‘I am sure,’ he replied. ‘For I know the resolve of the man who commands there.’
Over the previous year, Hamilcar had been determined to discover the identity of the lone captain who had frustrated his attack at Ecnomus. Learning that he had survived and had been promoted for his actions, Hamilcar had burned the man’s name into his mind, searching for it in every spy’s report that crossed his desk, tracking his movements during the course of the campaign, waiting for an opportunity to avenge his defeat at Ecnomus.
‘Who is this Roman?’ Xanthippus asked, seeing the expression of hostility on the Carthaginian’s face.
‘He is not Roman, he is Greek, like you,’ Hamilcar said, the words spoken slowly as the strength of his conviction coursed through him. ‘And when I have Regulus’s order, I will deliver it to this man and accept his surrender personally.’
Hamilcar turned from Xanthippus and looked to the east, the horizon rapidly slipping into darkness as the sun fell away in the west. In his mind’s eye he pictured the port of Aspis and the enemy within, his mouth forming the name of his foe. Perennis.
Atticus ran his hand along the forerail of the Orcus as he stared out across the thousand yards to the Carthaginian blockade, the two hundred dark-hulled quinqueremes slowly taking shape in the dawn light. He looked to the galleys of his command, each one with its bow facing the mouth of the harbour, the outgoing tide stretching their stern anchor lines behind them as if the ships themselves were eager to be let loose on the enemy after four days of silently watching the Carthaginian galleys.
‘Dawn, at last,’ Septimus said as he came up to the foredeck, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, his face darkened by stubble.
Atticus nodded, the tension in his stomach easing, feeling the same relief at the sight of the rising sun. He had spent the night on deck, as had all his crew for the past four nights, ready for an attack that had never come, silently watching the Carthaginian running lights sweep slowly across the horizon under the star-filled, moonless sky, the enemy visibly holding station.
‘Day five,’ Atticus remarked, frustration in his voice.
‘And still no advance,’ Septimus said, finishing his friend’s thought. ‘You’re still sure they’ll attack at night?’ he asked after a moment’s pause.
‘I would,’ Atticus replied. ‘The confines of the harbour protect our flanks and reduce their advantage in numbers. They could attack by day but it would be a costly victory. A surprise attack at night would be their best bet.’
Septimus nodded, knowing also of the terrifying confusion that would accompany a night attack, chaos that would be an ally to the aggressors. He looked to the rising sun and then to the enemy, their formation the same as it had been when he last saw it at dusk the evening before. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword and silently muttered a challenge to the Carthaginians, daring them to make their play.
The bireme moved quickly through the swarm of larger galleys, the helmsman giving way to the towering quinqueremes as he skilfully exploited the agility of the smaller ship. Hamilcar stood beside him at the tiller, watching the crewman at work, admiring the display of prowess, a skill Hamilcar suspected had been taught to the helmsman by his father or grandfather in the tradition of all Carthaginian naval families.
Hamilcar looked to the multitude of galleys surrounding him, noticing their clean lines and ordered formation, the efficiency of the crews clearly evident even after five days of monotonous duty. The bireme progressed smoothly and Hamilcar glanced to his right, catching glimpses of the inner harbour of Aspis between the moving galleys, the stationary Roman ships indistinguishable across a thousand yards of water. A shouted hail caught his attention and he looked to the fore once more, the familiar galley ahead a welcome sight.
The bireme moved swiftly alongside the Alissar and, as it nudged the hull, Hamilcar jumped on to the rope ladder and ascended to the main deck.
‘Well met, Commander,’ Himilco the captain said as he extended his hand.
Hamilcar took it. ‘Report, Captain,’ he said brusquely.
‘As you predicted, Commander,’ Himilco began. ‘The Romans have made no move to surrender.’
Hamilcar smiled grimly and nodded, looking once more to the inner harbour, his view now unobstructed. The sight prompted him to reach into his tunic and he took out a brass cylinder, fingering it lightly as he turned once more to Himilco.
‘Come about, Captain,’ he ordered. ‘Take us in to the harbour.’
‘We are to attack?’ Himilco asked.
‘No, signal the fleet. Tell them to hold station: we go alone.’
Himilco saluted and within moments the Alissar broke formation and turned her bow to the inner harbour. Hamilcar looked to the cylinder in his hand, his expectation tightening his grip on the container. Within minutes he would finally be able to put a face to his enemy.
‘Carthaginian galley approaching,’ Corin called from the masthead, and Atticus looked to the outer harbour, the lone galley’s oars falling and rising slowly, the formation of enemy ships behind her unchanged.
‘An envoy?’ Septimus suggested. Atticus nodded.
‘But why now?’ he asked, and turned to look for his second-in-command. ‘Baro, get us under way. Signal the other galleys to make ready but to hold station.’
Baro nodded and the Orcus moved off at steerage speed before Gaius, the helmsman, brought her up to standard. Atticus and Septi
mus moved to the foredeck, the centurion ordering a contubernia of ten legionaries to accompany them, and both men lapsed into silence as they watched the opposing galley approach.
The two galleys approached each other warily, as if manoeuvring for position, the helmsmen testing each other’s skill. The Carthaginian ship was first to slow its advance and her oars dropped neatly into the water, their combined drag bringing the quinquereme to a halt within a half-ship length before two oars re-engaged fore and aft to keep the galley steady in the gentle current. Atticus turned and nodded down the length of the galley. Gaius acknowledged the gesture and carried out the same manoeuvre with similar ease; as the two ships covered the remaining distance, in silence now that the drum beat had halted, Atticus stared across at the group of armed men standing on the enemy foredeck.
Two Carthaginians stepped forward and Atticus and Septimus responded in kind, moving to the starboard forerail as the galleys kissed with a heavy thud, the timber hulls grinding against each other, each moving independently in the swell as the oars maintained the connection. Atticus focused his attention on the taller of the two Carthaginians, noticing how the other deferred to him. He was of a similar age to Atticus but his bearing was that of an older man, his self-assurance clearly evident in his expression. He stood with his shoulders slightly stooped as if poised to charge. Atticus made to address him but the Carthaginian spoke first.
‘You are Perennis?’ he asked.
Atticus was taken aback. ‘You have me at a disadvantage, Carthaginian,’ he said, and waited for the officer to introduce himself.
The Carthaginian smiled, as if relishing a private joke. ‘I am Hamilcar Barca,’ he said, and again Atticus was stunned. ‘You know of me,’ Hamilcar said.
‘I know of you, Barca,’ Atticus replied coldly. ‘You were the commander of the quinquereme that escaped Tyndaris.’ The memory formed quickly in his mind and he felt Septimus shift restlessly beside him, the centurion’s anger stirred at the discovery of whom they were addressing, remembering the desperate fight at Tyndaris that had cost him so many of his men.