The Seven Hills (16 page)

Despite their distance from the fighting, both men wore full military gear, down to belted sidearms. This was Ro
man 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 sip
ping at cups of
posca:
the traditional soldier's drink of vine
gar 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 sec
ond oldest man in the Senate. Wearing some forty-five pounds of old-fashioned 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." An
other 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 op
posite. "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 ac
tion; 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 sug
gestion, 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, accom
plished 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 ma
jority. Some want the new legions blooded gradually, not
thrown into immense battles before they've even seen a skir
mish. 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 attend
ing 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 al
ready 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 assem
blage of conscripts levied on the subject cities and merce
naries 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 Spar
tans, 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 interior 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 pro
fessional 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, ap
palled. 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.