‘Look to your front, legionary,’ Scipio ordered, his voice hoarse with tension. He stood beside Fabius with sword drawn, staring ahead. While they had been watching Polybius the rest of the phalanx on either side had moved rapidly forward, exactly as Scipio had predicted. They were no more than two hundred paces away now, but the line directly in front of Fabius and Scipio had been broken as the Macedonians negotiated a dried-up watercourse caused by melt-water run-off from the mountain, widening into a gulley with sides about the height of a man.
‘There’s our chance,’ Scipio said. ‘We need to get at them while they’re in the gully, before they close up the line again.’
Fabius glanced at Aemilius Paullus, who had put his helmet on and stood among his other staff officers with sword drawn. Behind them the maniples of the first legion stood in full battle array, the centurions marching up and down in front of them, bellowing orders to keep in position, to wait for the order, to do what legionaries do better than any others, to kill the enemy at close quarters, to thrust and slash and draw blood and show no mercy.
Scipio put his hand on Fabius’ shoulder. ‘Until we meet again, my friend. In this world or the next.’
As Scipio turned to him he looked young, too young for what they were about to do, and Fabius had to remember that Scipio was only seventeen years old, a year younger than he himself was; it was an age difference that had given him an edge of authority over Scipio when they had been boys, which made Scipio still listen to him even though they were divided by rank and class, but now the difference was irrelevant as they stood as one with six thousand other legionaries ready to do their worst. Fabius replied, his voice hoarse, sounding strangely disembodied, ‘Ave atque vale, Scipio Aemilianus. In this world or the next.’
He grasped his standard tightly and drew his sword. He saw Scipio catch his father’s eye, and Aemilius Paullus nodding. Time suddenly seemed to slow down; even the increasing crescendo of noise seemed drawn out, distant. Fabius watched Scipio run to the left, out in front of the first maniple, and then turn to the lead centurion, leaning forward and bellowing at him, then looking back to face the enemy, the sweat flicking off his face. He raised his sword and shouted again, and the legionaries behind him did the same – a deafening roar that seemed to drown out all other sensations. Fabius realized that he was doing the same, yelling at the top of his voice and shaking his blade in the air.
He tried to remember what the old centurion had told him about battle. You will see nothing but the tunnel in front of you, and that tunnel will become your world. Clear that tunnel of the enemy, and you may survive. Try to see what goes on outside the tunnel, take your eye off those who have their eyes on you, and you will die.
Scipio began to run. The whole ground shook as the legionaries followed. Fabius ran too, not far behind Scipio, parallel with the primipilus of the first legion. The gap in the phalanx was narrowing as the Macedonian soldiers divided by the gully realized their mistake and ran forward to the head of the gully to join up again; but in so doing they extended their line along the sides, some of them swinging their spears around to protect the flanks and others surging ahead to try to close the gap.
Fabius was breathing hard and could feel the dryness of his throat. Scipio was no more than a hundred paces from the phalanx now. Suddenly an elephant appeared in a swirl of dust from the right, a Macedonian spear stuck deep in its side, out of control and dragging the mangled corpse of a rider behind. It saw the gulley and veered right into the phalanx, trampling bodies that exploded with blood as it crashed through the lines and then tripped and rolled to a halt inside the gully, creating further disarray in the Macedonian ranks. Following the elephant came the first of the Paeligni warriors, screaming and waving their swords as they hurtled into the Macedonian line. The first one was skewered on a spear but kept running forward into the shaft until he reached the Macedonian soldier, beheading him with a single swipe of his sword before falling dead. The same happened all along the line, suicidal charges that opened more and more gaps in the phalanx, allowing the mass of legionaries who followed to break through and get behind the front ranks of spearmen, using their thrusting swords to bring down the Macedonians in their hundreds.
In seconds, Fabius was among them. He was conscious of passing through the line of spears and swerving to avoid the dying elephant, and then seeing Scipio stabbing and hacking ahead of him. He swept his sword down across the exposed ankles of the line of spearmen beside him, leaving them screaming and writhing on the ground for the legionaries who followed to finish off. Then he was close behind Scipio, thrusting and slashing, going for the neck and the pelvis, his arms and face drenched in blood, always keeping the standard raised. A huge Thracian came behind Scipio’s back and whipped out a dagger, but Fabius leapt forward and stabbed his sword up through the back of the man’s neck into his skull, causing his eyeballs to spring out and a jet of blood to arch from his mouth as he fell. All around him the din and smell was like nothing he had experienced before: men screaming and bellowing and retching, blood and vomit and gore spattering everywhere.
Then Fabius was conscious of another noise, of horns sounding – not Roman trumpets but Macedonian mountain horns. The fighting suddenly slackened, and the Macedonians around him seemed to melt away. The horns had sounded the retreat. Fabius staggered forward to Scipio, who was leaning over and panting hard, holding his hand against a bloody gash in his thigh. The combat had only lasted minutes, but it felt like hours. Around them the legionaries passed forward over the mound of bodies where the Macedonian line had been, slashing and thrusting to finish off the wounded, like a giant wave crashing over a reef and disappearing to shore. Scipio stood up and leaned on Fabius, and the two of them surveyed the carnage around them. As the dust settled, they could see the cavalry pouring around the flanks and pursuing the retreating Macedonians far ahead, a rolling cloud of death that pushed the enemy back into the plain and towards the sea.
Fabius remembered another thing the old centurion had told him. The tunnel that had been his world, the tunnel of death that seemed to have no end, would suddenly open up and there would be a rout, a massacre. There would seem no logic to it, but that was how it happened. This time, it had gone their way.
Aemilius Paullus came down the slope towards them, his helmet off, followed by his standard-bearers and staff officers. He made his way over the mangled bodies and stood in front of Fabius, who did his best to come to attention and hold his standard upright. The general put his hand on his shoulder and spoke. ‘Fabius Petronius Secundus, for never letting the standard of the legion drop and for staying at the head of your maniple, I commend you. And the primipilus said he saw you save the life of your tribune by killing one of the enemy while still holding the standard high. For that I award you the corona civica. You have made your mark in battle, Fabius. You will continue to be the personal bodyguard of my son, and one day you may earn promotion to centurion. I fought beside your father when I was a tribune and he was a centurion, and you have honoured his memory. You may go back to Rome proud.’
Fabius tried to control his emotions, but felt the tears streaming down his face. Aemilius Paullus turned to his son. ‘And as for the tribune, he has proven himself worthy to lead Roman legionaries into battle.’
Fabius knew there could be no greater reward for Scipio, who bowed his head and then looked up, his face drawn. ‘I congratulate you on your victory, Aemilius Paullus. You will be accorded the greatest triumph ever seen in Rome. You have honoured the shades of our ancestors, and of my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus. But I now have another task. I must prepare the funeral rites for Polybius. He was the bravest man I have known, a warrior who sacrificed himself to save Roman lives. We must find his body and send him to the afterlife like his heroes, like Ajax and Achilles and the fallen of Thermopylae.’
Aemilius Paullus cleared his throat. ‘Fine, if you can persuade him to leave aside the far more interesting business of interviewing Macedonian priso
ners of war for the account he intends to write of this battle for his Histories.’
‘What? He’s alive?’
‘He carried on riding to the right flank of the phalanx, turned back to our lines, and charged again at the head of the cavalry, and then came back to collect his scrolls so that he could write an eyewitness account while it was still fresh in his mind. That is, before he had a sudden brainwave and galloped off by himself to find King Perseus, wherever he might be hiding, to get his take on the battle.’
‘But he couldn’t be bothered to stop and tell his friends that he was alive?’
‘He had far more important things to do.’
Scipio shook his head, then wiped his face with his hand. He suddenly looked terribly tired.
‘You need water,’ Fabius said. ‘And that wound needs to be tended.’
‘You too are wounded, on your cheek.’
Fabius reached up with surprise and felt congealed blood from his ear to his mouth. ‘I didn’t feel it. We should go to the river.’
‘It runs red with Macedonian blood,’ Aemilius Paullus said.
‘It’s everywhere.’ Scipio looked at the drying blood on his hands and forearms and on his sword. He squinted at his father. ‘Is this an end to it?’
Aemilius Paullus looked over the battlefield towards the sea, and then nodded. ‘The war with Macedonia is over. King Perseus and the Antigonid dynasty are finished. We have extinguished the last remnant of the empire of Alexander the Great.’
‘What does the future hold for us?’
‘For me, a triumph in Rome like no other in the past, then monuments inscribed with my name and the name of this battle of Pydna, and then retirement. This is my last war, and my last battle. But for you, for the others of your generation, for Polybius, for Fabius, for the other young tribunes, there is war ahead. The Achaean League in Greece to the south will need subduing. The Celtiberians in Spain were stirred up when Hannibal took them as allies, and will resist Rome. And, above all, Carthage remains – unfinished business even after two devastating wars. It will be a hard road ahead for you, with many challenges to overcome, with Rome herself sometimes seeming an obstacle to your ambitions. It was so for myself and for your adoptive grandfather, and will be ever thus as long as Rome fears her generals as much as she lauds their victories. If you are to succeed and stand as I am victorious on a field of battle, you must show the same strength of determination to remain true to your destiny as you have shown strength on the field of battle. And for you, the stakes are even higher. For those of your generation, for those of you who are young tribunes today, those whom we in Rome concerned for the future have nurtured and trained, your future will not be to stand on a battlefield as we are today at Pydna or as your grandfather did at Zama, to see the glory of triumph and then retirement. Your future will be to look away from Rome, to see from your battlefield a horizon that none of us has seen before, and to be tempted by it. The empire of Alexander the Great may be gone, but a new one beckons.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Scipio.
‘I mean the empire of Rome.’
PART ONE
ROME
168 BC
Three months before the Battle of Pydna
1
Fabius Petronius Secundus strode purposefully down the Sacred Way through the old Forum of Rome, the Capitoline temple behind him and the aristocratic houses on the slope of the Palatine Hill to his right. He was carrying a bundle containing the bronze greaves that his master Scipio Aemilianus had forgotten to take that morning to the Gladiator School, where the old centurion Petraeus was due shortly to supervise training for the young men who would be appointed as military tribunes later that year. Scipio was the oldest of the pupils at the school, almost eighteen now and in charge of the others while the centurion was absent, so it would be double the humiliation, and more than double the punishment, if the centurion found that he was missing any of his equipment.
But Fabius knew the old centurion’s movements exactly. Every morning with military precision he spent half an hour in the baths, an amusing indulgence for a hoary old soldier, and Fabius had seen him enter his favourite bathhouse behind the Temple of Castor and Pollux only a few minutes before. It was not the first time that Fabius had saved Scipio’s skin, and Fabius knew the value of becoming indispensable. But his feelings towards Scipio were those of a friend rather than a servant: in future he might be destined to be a legionary while Scipio became a general, but they had first met on equal terms on the streets of Rome when Scipio had wanted to shed his aristocratic grandeur for a night and run with the gangs, and that was how it stayed between them, even though convention dictated that in public the one must be master and the other a servant.
An official with the rod of a lictor was waving an olive branch to signal a procession and stopped him as he was about to cross the road. Fabius stood behind the crowd of onlookers and glanced up and down to see if there was a way across, but then thought better of it. If it was a religious procession the lictors would chase him down and beat him for it, and he could not afford a transgression that might jeopardize his position in the Scipio household. His friendship with Scipio Aemilianus after Fabius had saved him from being beaten up that night had been the big break of his life, the chance to escape the slums of the Tiber bank and honour his father’s memory. He remembered the last time he had seen his father in full armour, near this very spot, marching in triumph after the first Celtiberian War, a centurion of the first legion resplendent in his corona civica and the silver arm bands he had been awarded for valour. But that had been followed by years of peace, and when the legions were called up again he had been too old, too dissipated by his weakness for wine, and after that the hard times had only got worse. Fabius knew that his father’s name was one reason why Scipio’s father Aemilius Paullus had accepted him into his household as a servant, and had put his name forward for the first legion when he came of age. Had Aemilius Paullus and Scipio’s adoptive grandfather, the great Scipio Africanus, been given the power by the Senate, then Rome would not have let his father down; they would have ensured that experienced soldiers remained in the ranks and were not thrown back into civilian life where their skills were wasted and they could never settle down.
Fabius peered over the heads of the people to see what was passing. It was the twelve Vestal Virgins, garlanded in laurel and wearing white, followed by a group of girls who served as their retainers, spreading incense and flower petals over the bystanders. Among the retainers he spotted Julia, her flaxen hair visible above the others. She should have been with him today, secretly joining the boys to study battle tactics while the old centurion was out. It was Fabius’ job to escort her into the academy and then to spirit her out again by a back entrance as soon as they heard the clunk of the centurion’s staff in the corridor. Julia’s greatest dread was that she would be forced to spend so much time with the Vestals that she would become one herself, but to have missed today’s procession would have been to upset the tolerance her mother showed towards the time she spent with the young men in the academy, which was the one thing that made life as an aristocratic girl in Rome with all of its conventions and restrictions tolerable for her.
Julia saw him, flashed a smile, and he waved. Once, months before, she had come to him in the servants’ quarters of Scipio’s house and had stroked his hair, admiring its auburn curls. He had been momentarily taken aback, his heart pounding, and had told her that his hair colour came from his mother, the daughter of a Celtic chieftain imprisoned in the Tullianum dungeon under the Capitoline Hill and guarded by Fabius’ father. He had sensed Julia’s breathing quicken, excited perhaps by the exotic, by a boy who was not from her own social class and not even fully Roman, who opened out the possibilities of the world for her. But he had come to his senses and had moved out of her reach. It was not as if he were innocent of the pleasures of women; on occasion he had spent the few asses that he made on the prostibulae in the bathhouse, and he h
ad his admirers among the girls of his own neighbourhood. But he knew there could be no hope with Julia. As a servant boy, little better than a slave, he would be whipped out of the house if they were found out, or worse. And, above all, he had known that Scipio was in love with Julia, a love that had blossomed secretly in the months that followed after Julia had become aware of his feelings, despite her own betrothal since childhood to Scipio’s distant cousin Metellus. If Fabius lost the patronage of Scipio he would never rise above the streets again. But it was Scipio’s friendship that mattered most: a friendship that had enriched his life, that had introduced him to Polybius and a world of books and knowledge that had lit his imagination and made his dream the same dream as Scipio’s, to see a world his father had seen as a soldier that he yearned to explore himself.
The procession passed, and Fabius hurried over the road towards the Gladiator School, making his way through the warren of alleyways and wooden houses until he came to the two-storey building that surrounded the practice arena. He pushed past the crippled old soldiers begging at the entranceway, past the mound of sand that was used to mop up the blood, and then the stable where they kept Hannibal, the gnarled old war elephant who was the last survivor of his namesake’s march over the Alps almost fifty years before – the final Carthaginian prisoner left alive in Rome. Fabius ran along a dark passageway and up the stairway to the closed door, careful not to brush against the sputtering tallow candles that lined the walls. Officially, the academy was a private school for the instruction of sons of senators in philosophy and history, staffed by professors recruited from the hundreds of Greek captives taken to Rome since the war with Macedonia had begun. Unofficially, it was a training school established by the elder Scipio before he died to ensure that the next generation of Roman war leaders were more skilled than the last, and better able to hold their own against the agitations of the Senate. It was this last fact that made the elder Scipio keep the academy as private as possible, away from the eyes of those who were suspicious of anything he did. In theory, the old centurion Petraeus was there only to instruct the boys in swordplay, but for two mornings of the week behind closed doors they were allowed to simulate the great battles of the past, battles that the centurion or other veterans brought in for the purpose would mastermind for them based on their own experience of tactics and combat.
Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage Page 3