Tyrant (8 page)

The low murmur of their conversation was interrupted by a clanging of arms, by loud voices in the dark, by sudden and unexpected commotion. They instinctively huddled together against the wall, already prepared for the worst, when a voice rang out: ‘It’s the reinforcements! We’re saved!’

The veterans ran towards the point where the voice had come from and thronged around a lad of about fifteen, firing questions at him:

‘Reinforcements? Are you sure?’

‘Who are they?’

‘Where did you see them?’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Who’s leading them?’

‘What direction are they coming from?’

The boy raised his hands to quiet them down. ‘It’s just twenty men for now . . .’

‘Twenty men? Are you joking?’

‘About twenty,’ confirmed the boy. ‘They’re being led by a Syracusan officer who has passed the enemy lines. He said that down there, somewhere down in the plain, there’s an army of three thousand men headed by Diocles. He’s talking with our commanders.’

The old men hastened towards the eastern gate where fires had been lit to illuminate the area of the breach. The commanders were grouped around the new arrivals, led by a young man armed with only a sword and a dagger. His long hair was tied back with a leather string, and he looked no older than twenty. They drew closer so they wouldn’t miss a word.

‘Diocles wants to enter the city tonight, under the cover of darkness, and attack without warning tomorrow with all the forces at his disposal.’

‘Enter the city?’ asked one of the officers. ‘How?’

‘Nearly all of the barbarians are at the camp. There are just a few sentinels posted around those campfires you can see down there. There’s a dune stretching along the coast that’s high enough to hide anyone walking along the waterline from view. Our men will come in that way, but you’ll have to draw up a contingent to guard the northern gate and ensure that it stays open. If you agree, we can launch the signal right now.’ He gestured to one of his men, who neared the fore with a tow-wrapped arrow.

‘Just a moment,’ said one of the Himeran commanders. ‘Who can tell me this isn’t a trick?’

‘I can,’ replied the young man. ‘I’ll stay here as a hostage with all my men.’

‘And just who are you?’ asked another officer.

‘Dionysius,’ replied the young man. ‘Son of Hermocritus. Now let’s get moving.’ He took the bow from the archer’s hand, ignited the arrow and let it fly high.

Far away, on the dune ridge, two sentinels saw the small meteor streak through the dark sky and exchanged a relieved look.

‘The signal,’ said one of them. ‘He did it again. Tell the commander.’

B
EFORE THE SUN
had set, the Syracusan squadron, twenty-five triremes strong, appeared offshore. They had dismasted and were advancing by oar; it was clear that the commanders were on the alert for any unexpected occurrences.

Diocles was camped on the beach, hidden from view by the long coastal dune that stretched towards the interior. He was preparing the contingent that he had brought to assist the besieged Himerans. The navarchs were instructed to stand by and remain ready to intervene if the ships were needed. Diocles waited until night had fallen to give the signal for departure; the password flew from one unit to the next.

The column began to march along the waterline without making a sound, their steps muffled by the damp sand. Diocles was at their head, followed by the companies and the battalions, each led by its own commander. Sentries crouched on the top of the ridge to keep an eye on the plain and ensure that the barbarians remained unaware of the fact that an entire army was marching at a short distance from their camp in the dark in silence, like a multitude of ghosts.

When they had neared their objective, Diocles sent out a couple of scouts who approached the Himeran troops guarding the northern gate. Before the garrison commander could challenge them, they identified themselves: ‘We’re the vanguard of the Syracusan army.’

‘May the gods bless you,’ said the commander. ‘We thought you’d never get here.’

The man whistled and the army moved forward, four-across, through the northern gate. In cadenced step now, their nailed boots rang out against the walls and porticoes. As soon as they began to enter, the news spread that reinforcements had arrived and the inhabitants of the city left their houses and thronged along the street that led to the agora. Such was their joy at seeing them that they would have liked to shout and applaud those young men who had come to risk their lives to help them, but they remained silent, each one of them anxiously counting the files that passed. Their hopes for salvation grew as each unit was added to the one that had preceded it and had disappeared up ahead, towards the entry colonnade of the main square.

‘Three thousand,’ said an old man when the last file had passed before him.

‘Not many,’ commented another with a disappointed tone.

‘You’re right,’ replied the first, ‘but they’re crack troops. Did you see how they march? Like a single man. Those men there, when they’re drawn up in line, they’re like a wall, I tell you. Each one of them counts for three.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ responded the other, ‘because I don’t think any more help is on the way.’ He walked off into the darkness.

Diocles held council in the agora with the Himeran officers. ‘I will take supreme command, if you have nothing against that,’ he began.

No one spoke.

‘How many men can you draw up?’ asked Diocles then.

‘Seven thousand,’ was the answer. ‘Counting youths of eighteen to men of fifty.’

‘There are three thousand of us. That makes ten; ten will be enough. Tomorrow we’ll leave the city in combat formation. A two-thousand-man front, five deep. A long line, but it’ll hold. We’ll be on the front line, because we’re fresh and none of my men are older than thirty. Each one of them has sufficient rations for four days; you’ll only need to supply water.’

The most highly ranked Himeran officer stepped forward. ‘I want to thank you and your men for having come to our aid. Tomorrow we’ll show you that you won’t regret it.’

‘I know,’ answered Diocles. ‘Let us get some rest now. We’ll attack tomorrow at dawn, in silence, without bugles. We’ll wake them up in person.’

The warriors settled down under the porticoes where hay had been laid out, and soon the whole city plunged into silence. Diocles checked that everything was under control, and then got ready for the night himself.

Dionysius appeared just then, as if from out of nowhere. ‘It’s all gone smoothly, I see.’

‘That’s right,’ replied Diocles, ‘and tomorrow we’ll settle our score with those barbarians down there on the plain.’

‘There are more of them on the hills. You know that, surely?’ retorted Dionysius.

‘I don’t need you to tell me anything.’

‘That’s a relief. Yet I don’t understand all this hurry to attack.’

‘It’s evident, isn’t it? The less time we stay away from home, the better for us.’

‘Haste is a poor counsellor. I would have tried to understand the situation better, the placement of the enemy forces. Hidden traps.’

‘You’re not in charge here.’

‘No, unfortunately,’ replied Dionysius, and walked away.

They left at dawn, as Diocles had ordained. Rested and refreshed, they marched for nearly a stadium before the war horns echoed from the enemy camp. The Punic army soon appeared on the open field: there were Libyans wearing light-coloured tunics with iron plates on their chests defending their hearts, their bronze helmets and shields painted with their tribal colours, Sicels donning long, ochre-tinted garments of raw wool with leather helmets and cuirasses, Sicans bearing wooden shields adorned with images of their totemic animals, Iberians wearing white tunics edged in red and embossed greaves decorated with tin; their leather helmets had neckguards which extended over their shoulders and were topped with a red tin crest to give them the look of magical creatures. Then there were the Balearics who whipped their slings, whistling them through the air, and the Mauritanian horsemen with their dark, shiny skin and thick heads of curly hair. They rode fiery steeds from the Atlas mountains barebacked, and carried long spears and antelope- and zebra-hide shields. Infantry and cavalry from many nations, all obedient to a few Carthaginian officers, were fitted out in the Oriental style with conical helmets, heavy leather cuirasses decorated with vivid colours, and green and ochre tunics with red and yellow fringes.

All of those warriors must have joined the ranks with empty stomachs, but they let out loud war cries nonetheless, jumping about and waving their weapons with threatening gestures. Their excitement grew visibly as the ranks swelled; it was their way of winning over the fear that grips a combatant before the moment of the attack. They filled their bellies with ferocity in anticipation of the clash.

The Greeks instead marched in absolute silence and perfect order, and when the sun rose, their mirror-polished shields flashed with blinding light and the ground trembled under their heavy cadenced steps.

The Balearics let loose with their deadly slings, but the hail of shots crashed against the wall of shields without doing any damage. They were too close for the archers now, for Diocles had ordered the Greek phalanx to close the gap between the opposing fronts at a run. The two formations collided with such violence that the shouts of the Punic mercenaries turned into screams of agony. The pressure from the enemy’s back lines had pushed the men in front, mostly Libyans, Sicels and Mauritanians, against the levelled spears of the Greeks, and they were mowed down in great numbers. The light arms of the mercenaries were a poor match for the heavy shields and thick metallic breastplates of their adversaries.

Dionysius, drawn up on the left flank with his soldiers from the Company, drove his spear into the chest of the Mauritanian chieftain he found before him – a Berber from the Atlas mountains with reddish hair and brilliant blue eyes – and ran his sword through the comrade who had lunged forward to avenge him. Even though the forces they were facing seemed to be wavering, he continued to shout out to his men: ‘Hold the line, men! Stay together!’ He used the tip of his sword to strike the shields of those who were pushing too far forward, to remind them to remain within the ranks.

The resistance of the Punic army, who had thought they would be fighting the desperate, battle-weary Himerans, was quickly worn down in the prolonged clash with the rock-solid Syracusan hoplites; when their commander fell and was trampled under the hobnailed boots of the enemy, the Carthaginians fled in utter disarray.

Diocles, sure of victory now, launched his men after them in pursuit without worrying about keeping them in formation. For the Himerans above all – for whom every dead Carthaginian meant a greater hope for the survival of their city – this was a licence for slaughter, with no thought to maintaining discipline. Drunk on the carnage, they did not see Hannibal loosing his troops to their right, down the side of the hill.

Dionysius saw, and ordered a bugler to sound the retreat. Diocles, who imagined that victory over the enemy camp was already in hand, fell upon him furiously, shouting: ‘Who told you to sound a retreat? I’ll have you arrested for insubordination, I’ll have you thrown . . .’

Dionysius did not allow him to finish the phrase: he punched him full in the face and sent him rolling to the ground. He put his sword to the throat of the bugler who had stopped blowing, and calmly gestured for him to put the instrument back to his lips.

The horn blared out the order to retreat, as more buglers fell in to echo the first. The warriors attempted to reform under the standards that Dionysius had had amassed at the centre of the field under the protection of the members of the Company, but many of the men were surrounded and slain before they could get safely back into their ranks. Even Diocles, realizing the extent of the disaster, did everything in his power to save what he could of the situation, and in an hour’s time had succeeded in drawing up his formation and retreating towards the city.

The people of Himera, ecstatic at first over the supposed victory, were forced to watch helplessly from the towers and bastions of the city as Hannibal ambushed and decimated their sons. When the army re-entered through the eastern gate, the sad spectacle that always accompanied the return of soldiers from the battlefield was repeated: fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts thronged along the road trying anxiously to pick out their own loved ones. It was terrible to see hope snuffed out on those faces little by little as the survivors filed past them, without their helmets so as to be more easily recognized. Their despair contrasted with the joy of those who had spotted a son or husband safe from harm.