The Seven Hills

by John Maddox Roberts

"Indeed," Tamar said through gritted teeth.

  Norbanus decided that he would have to keep these two close to him from now on. He would need to consult with them frequently. No doubt he could work something out with Jonathan, along with the business of Manasseh's horses.

  Never forgetting, he reminded himself, that they were still a pair of scheming bitches.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The walls of Syracuse were formidable but, Scaeva thought, they could have been a far more daunting prospect. Carthage had seized the city almost one hundred years previously in. a siege of great brutality, concluded with massacres and mass crucifixions. With the city and its harbor in their hands, they had repaired the walls but had done nothing since to improve the fortifications. Rome had been eliminated as a foe several years before the siege and there was no enemy left in the western sea to threaten the primacy of Carthage. More powerful walls might only tempt what was left of the native population to rise against their masters in a future generation.

  From his command tower, erected at the northern end of the island in the Great Harbor, Scaeva surveyed the works being erected against the southern wall of the city. There the bulk of the Carthaginian garrison had been concentrated in a massive fort built directly into the wall in the approved fashion developed by Carthage's military engineers.

  "It's a tough one," said Fabius, his praefect of the camp. "Walls inside walls, forts inside forts, that's their style. Crack one nut, and there's another nut inside to be cracked. It's a lot of work."

  "It suits me," Scaeva said. "It means that they've lost their taste for battle. They think only of defense now. It means a great deal of labor, but we're good at that. A Roman soldier is as handy with his spade and pickaxe as he is with sword and pilum."

  Not that the Romans were doing all the digging and pounding. Over against the great wall, men swarmed like ants, digging trenches, erecting shelters for the workers, pounding heavy pilings into the marshy ground on the west side of the city, making an artificial island to support the great rams and catapults that soon would pound the walls. But many of these workers were locals rounded up by the Romans in the surrounding countryside. Some were mercenaries captured when the Romans took the smaller cities and forts of the island. Men working directly beneath the walls of a besieged city took awful casualties, and the Romans preferred that somebody else do the suffering.

  Titus Scaeva was the proconsul sent by the Senate to reduce the island of Sicily, and he took great satisfaction in knowing that he had done a superb job of it. Against a conservative bloc of senators who had wanted to attack Syracuse at the outset of the campaign, he had insisted on a strategy of encirclement, snapping up the smaller forts and cities, seizing all the ports and fortifying them against the inevitable Carthaginian attempt to retake the island. By taking the most productive land and grabbing all the storehouses, he had made his campaign self-sustaining, so that all his shipping could be used to bring in more men and necessary military supplies instead of using precious cargo space for food, for man and beast.

  He had left Syracuse till the last. True, it had given the Carthaginian commander time to improve the defenses somewhat, and concentrate his forces within, but that would work against him in the long run. More men inside would strain his resources, and Scaeva had cut him off from any hope of resupply.

  "Still," Fabius said, "I wish they'd come out and fight. We'd crush them handily then."

  "That's exactly why they won't opt for open battle. They think that Hamilcar will be here soon, to relieve them. If they can just hold out long enough."

  The capture of Syracuse would make him the most distinguished military man in Rome, he thought with great satisfaction. He had been a famous soldier all his life, having won the Civic Crown at the age of sixteen, at the siege of Mogantum. He had risen in rank and honor up the cursus honorem, holding each civil office and military command in approved fashion, and had had the great good fortune to be a serving consul when the auguries had shown that the gods wanted Roma Noricum to retake Rome of the Seven Hills.

  Taking the nearly demilitarized Italian peninsula had been a walkover for a few veteran Roman legions, but everyone knew that the war against Carthage itself would be another matter entirely. He had pushed for the immediate seizure of Sicily, and the command had fallen to him naturally. Already he had earned the right to petition the Senate for a triumph: the ultimate vindication for a military man. His supply ships returned to Italy with endless cargoes of loot. Just take Syracuse, he reminded himself, and your name will live forever.

  This meant much to him. Like all Romans, he was ambitious for personal fame and prestige, but in his case he wanted glory for his family as well. The Scaevae were among the new families: clans of German and Gallic descent whose ancestors had helped the Roman refugees to found Roma Noricum. There was great rivalry between the old families and the new. With such a campaign to his credit, capped with the capture of Syracuse and a grand triumph in Rome of the Seven Hills, no one could claim that the new families were less patriotic, less Roman, than the old.

  "Do you think they can?" Fabius asked. "Hold out long enough for Hamilcar to get here, I mean?"

  "Not a chance," Scaeva said. "Those boys we sent to spy out Carthage did their job well. We know more about the capabilities of his military than Hamilcar does himself. He's under the impression that he's Hannibal come again, but we know better." Both men chuckled, but Scaeva knew well the worry that gnawed at his subordinate: Hamilcar or his designated commander would appear by sea, with an immense navy. The Roman navy was new and untried, all but untrained. The Carthaginian navy was the most powerful in the world. Scaeva had to take Syracuse before the navy could appear.

  Despite their distance from the fighting, both men wore full military gear, down to belted sidearms. This was Roman military regulation, just like fortifying every camp and posting sentries even in peacetime, with no enemy within hundreds of miles. Regulations were to be obeyed, even by generals. Sunlight glittered on their polished bronze, which was collecting dust, raised by all the marching, pounding and digging. The two cut the dust in their throats by sipping at cups of posca: the traditional soldier's drink of vinegar diluted with water.

  The soldiers working beneath the walls of Syracuse did not glitter. They toiled in full armor, again according to regulation, but their mail was dusty and dingy from the long campaign, greased against the salt sea air. Most of them wore the new iron helmets turned out by the Gallic armorers for the unprecedented expansion of legions demanded by the war of reconquest. These helmets.with their deep, flaring neckguards and broad cheekplates, completely unadorned, still looked strange and ugly to Roman eyes, but they had proved their battle-fitness repeatedly.

  The battlements of Syracuse were lined with expert slingers from the Balearic Islands; They hurled lead sling-bullets the size of a boy's fist, with enough power to dent a bronze helmet deeply, often fracturing the skull beneath. The bullets merely glanced from the harder iron. Men from the older legions frequently tried to trade their beautiful old bronze helmets for the new ones, but they found few takers.

  The trumpets sounded and the noise lessened for a few

  minutes as one legion retired to the camp on the island and

  another went out to take its place. By working each legion

  four hours at a time, the Romans were able to keep the work

  going day and night. The impressed labor worked in gangs

  for twelve hours at a stretch. Attrition among them was

  high, but plenty of prisoners arrived every day to replace the

  fallen. -

  "Here comes old Cyclops," Fabius said.

  "He can observe, it's his duty," Scaeva said. "But don't let him try to give orders. You know he'll try. The old bugger's been giving orders all his life."

  Moments later they were joined by Publius Cornelius Scipio, only living grandson of the hero of Cannae and second oldest man in the Senate. Wearing some forty-five pounds of old-fashi
oned armor, he climbed the steps of the command tower with the springy step of a man one-third his years. A broad eyepatch covered one side of his face.

  "Proconsul," he said, nodding to Scaeva. "Praefect." Another nod, toward Fabius. "Any progress?" The old man wasted few words. He had been sent out by the Senate as special observer, with no command authority but with the right to see every aspect of operations and report in regular dispatches. He had already made forays inland to see the progress of Roman forces on the island and had been stunned by the beauty of the landscape and the richness of its farm and pasture land. The Romans were soldiers from birth, but they were agriculturalists to their bones and loved fine farmland above all else. They fought to protect their farms and they conquered to gain more land. It was that simple.

  "The sappers are undermining the base of the big tower over there," Scaeva said, gesturing with his cup. "They'll have it down in a few days."

  Cyclops squinted with his remaining eye at the activity opposite. "What about the rams? Are they doing any damage?"

  "They're a feint," Scaeva said, "to distract the enemy from the mines. By afternoon we'll have the catapults in action; then there'll be a little relief from those damned slingers and archers. They've been the real danger in this fight, not the Carthaginians."

  Cyclops nodded. "That being the case," he said, "the men will probably massacre them when the city is taken." He chose his next words carefully so that he was making a suggestion, not giving an order. "You might consider passing the word to spare them, much as it might grieve the men to let them live. We'll need every missile soldier we can get when we assault Carthage."

  "Already done," Scaeva told him. "I've promised ten silver denarii a head for every archer or slinger brought in alive."

  "Very well," Cyclops said, far from satisfied and showing it.

  Scaeva knew what rankled the old man: Roman soldiers should obey orders. They should not be bribed. But Cyclops was an old-fashioned man, filled with antique, old family tradition. Scaeva knew that the world had changed irrevocably when the Romans crossed south of the Alps. It was a new world, a new age and a new army. The disciplines of the old legions campaigning in the savage, austere North would not prevail in the unbelievably rich and luxurious kingdoms surrounding what the Romans had gone back to calling Our Sea.

  "Senator," Fabius said, wanting to change the subject and ease the tension, "has a timetable yet been set for the assault against the African mainland?"

  Cyclops shook his head. "First Sicily must be secured. The new navy must be tested. We've moved so fast, accomplished so much already. There are many who want to slow down and consolidate."

  "Fools!" Scaeva spat. "We've accomplished so much precisely because we've moved so fast. Because the gods have told us that now is our time!"

  "You'll hear no argument from me," Cyclops assured him. "We must seize the favor of the gods when it is offered. The gods can always change their minds. But I am not a majority. Some want the new legions blooded gradually, not thrown into immense battles before they've even seen a skirmish. Others want to wait until young Norbanus returns with his four legions."

  "They'll wait a long time, then," Scaeva said. "Where, is he now, or does anyone know?"

  "In Judea at last report, mixed up in a civil war between brothers."

  "Judea," Scaeva mused. It was a name from old books: an obscure place, but much fought over. At least Norbanus was making progress, not least because he had cut himself loose from the authority of the Senate. Scaeva could sympathize. Senatorial meddling was the curse of commanders in the field. If the boy finished his epic march with his legions intact, he would win unprecedented glory, perhaps eclipsing that of Titus Scaeva. He pushed the thought aside as unworthy. Opportunities for winning glory would be boundless in the coming years.

  "Any idea who will get the command in the African campaign?" Fabius asked.

  "That depends upon who pleases the Senate and the Assemblies in the months preceding," Cyclops said.

  A great shout and a roaring of masonry distracted them. A section of the wall opposite was toppling, raising a huge cloud of dust as men scrambled to get away, running for their lives, soldiers and laborers alike.

  "Has it fallen?" Cyclops cried eagerly. "Are the men ready for an assault?"

  Scaeva shook his head, his face worried. "This is too soon. This was not supposed to happen yet."

  "There may have been a weak spot," Fabius said hopefully. "We'd better signal an assembly to take advantage instantly if there's a breach."

  But already the dust was clearing and Scaeva cursed loudly. A ragged section of cut-stone facing had broken away from the wall, leaving the concrete-rubble core exposed but solid. The wall was very little weakened.

  "Mars curse them!" Scaeva cried. "Now they know where the danger lies and they'll countermine, if they haven't begun already! I'll have some heads for this."

  Cyclops said nothing, but he was not greatly surprised. The Romans had read all the old military books and knew the theory, but reducing large, stone fortifications was | something with which they had no practical experience. The Gauls and Germans they had been fighting for generations built earthwork and timber forts at best.

  "Get the awnings up!" Scaeva called to the slaves attending the command tower. Then, to the others: "It looks like we have a long day ahead of us up here."

  Beneath the battlements of Syracuse, the soldiers were already driving the work gangs back before them. Work had already resumed, repairing the shelters and now clearing away the rubble of fallen stone, all under the hot sun and the merciless pelting of missiles from above.

  From her litter atop the gate of Melkarth, Princess Zarabel, sister of Hamilcar, shofet of Carthage, watched as her brother inspected his army on the plain beyond the city. Since his return from the Egyptian debacle, Hamilcar had fretted and busied himself with his preparations for the coming war to take Sicily and Italy back from the upstart Romans.

  It was splendid; there was no denying it. The tents of the host stretched out of sight to the east, and this was only a part of the force. The full army was too vast to encamp by one city, even so great a city as Carthage. The rest were quartered upon the subject cities.

  Hamilcar, mounted on a beautiful horse, rode along the lines of" a formation of Lacedaemonian spearmen: still soldiers of high repute though Sparta had ceased to be a power of military importance generations previously. Their antiquated linen cuirasses glittered with scales of bronze, their round shields were bright with new paint, their long spears held in perfect alignment as the officers, identifiable by their crests of white horsehair, saluted the shofet.

  As always, the armies of Carthage were a polyglot assemblage of conscripts levied on the subject cities and mercenaries hired from every corner of the world surrounding the great Central Sea. Greeks from both Greece proper and the cities of Magna Graecia and Asia Minor formed a large part of the force. The Greek cities squabbled endlessly with one another, and between wars their soldiers hired themselves out to whoever was paying. Besides the hard core of Spartans, Hamilcar had Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans and soldiers from the Asian towns of Ionia. There were men from the Greek islands of Lesbos, Delos, Crete, Rhodes and Corcyra.

  There were great pike formations from Epirus on the Ionian Sea, home of the oracle of Dodona. Their repute as professional soldiers was matchless. From the Adriatic coast came Illyrians: tough, barbarous men with tattooed bodies. Their ruler was a queen named Teuta, and this formidable woman had accompanied her soldiers, determined to extort favorable concessions from Hamilcar in return for their services. She was in a position to bargain because her land, usually of little strategic significance, lay across a narrow arm of the sea from Italy.

  The bulk of Hamilcar's forces here consisted of the army he had raised to invade Egypt and had brought back with him. Further forces were being raised far from Carthage. In Spain, Hamilcar's subordinate commanders were rounding up an army from the warlike tribes of the inte
rior and from the Greek colonies of the coast. This army would never come to Africa. Instead, it would assemble at New Carthage on the southern coast, march eastward along Hannibal's old route past the Pyrenees and into southern Gaul, picking up allies as it progressed, and enter northern Italy. This army would distract the Romans from the main thrust into Sicily and southern Italy, stripping the Romans of some of those surprisingly numerous legions that seemed to be springing up like weeds after a rainstorm.

  This was the special genius of Carthage: to raise and lead armies so diverse in nation, language and custom that at any other time they would happily have massacred each other. They accomplished this by educating the most capable of the noble youth of Carthage in schools that turned out professional officers of terrible force and efficiency. Hannibal had kept such an army intact through years of campaigning, with never a murmur of mutiny, no matter how awful the hardships. His men had been ferocious on the battlefield, meek as lambs in camp.

  Of course, not every Carthaginian general was a Hannibal. After the first war with Rome, the wealthy men of the city, the ruling caste at that time, had balked at paying the huge mercenary army camped immediately without the walls of Carthage. This foolishness had resulted in a rebellion and brought about a war so terrible that the rest of the world, hardened by many merciless wars, had looked on, appalled. Even Rome had offered aid.

  This had been the last time that the gods of Carthage had demanded a Tophet: the supreme sacrifice to Baal-Hammon and the myriad of other deities who had made Carthage mistress of the world. In the ordinary, everyday sacrifices, men and women of the subject peoples supplied the victims. But, when a Tophet was required, Carthaginians were sacrificed. In extreme cases, the children of the greatest families, from newborns to boys and girls of ten years, were thrown into the fires that raged in the bellies of the merciless bronze idols.

  The sudden reappearance of the Romans, the abortive campaign against Egypt, were clear signs of the displeasure of the gods, so said the priests. It had been too long since a great Topbet had been held: True, there had been a lesser such sacrifice held during a time of plague in the reign of Hamilcar's father. It had been effective and the pestilence had abated, but the priests were determined that the gods hungered for the flesh of the noble children of Carthage.