Ally of Carthage

by Rob Edmunds

  What had possessed the Carthaginians to incorporate dolphins into their battle standards? They are hardly going to strike terror into the enemy. It is better than palm trees as a means of intimidation, though, Masinissa thought to himself a little wryly.

  As he rode into the makeshift symposium, Masinissa took a lighter view of the gathering, as Indibilis was there, waving at him enthusiastically and gesturing to the amphora beside him with equal relish. Masinissa could see the stark differences in the senior figures represented. Both Indibilis and Mandonius were splattered with the stains of earth and men, weary but triumphant, with hair streaking wildly across their faces and necks, and their shoulders still pulsing with the efforts of driving other men back, down and under them. Mago, in stark contrast, had clipped hair like a Roman, coiffed to the point where a golden laurel or crown would not have been out of a place. He was also quite pristine in appearance. He had certainly not risked any of his own blood in the recent encounter. His callousness, though, radiated out of him like the sins of the wicked. The impression was only exacerbated by the dripping head of a middle-aged man that he’d lodged next to his camp stool, which he was fiddling with idly with his toes. The sight was repugnant. Masinissa felt a tug of pity for the recently decapitated man, who was presumably the erstwhile Publius Cornelius Scipio.

  When Masinissa dismounted, Indibilis embraced him like a pining lover. Masinissa had probably arrived on the scene just quickly enough to spare his life, so the ardour was quite warranted under the circumstances. At that moment, between them, there was no need for communications, except what could be read in the eyes and felt in the body. They were fellow soldiers, but, on the edges of death, their instincts were those of inamoratos.

  The little bliss of survival and fellowship was interrupted by an impatient Mago. His tone was as abrupt as ever. “Save your relief and affections for your banquets and your women. We need to chase the other dog now. This one needs its partner.” He gave the head of Publius a little jiggle.

  The Carthaginian general’s curtness brought the Iberian and the Numidian back to their harsher reality. Each gave a sober bow.

  “You’re right, sire. What is the position now? Do you know the whereabouts of Gnaeus?” Masinissa asked.

  “You’re to the point, Masinissa; back in the room now, huh? We do… or we think we do. I don’t think Gnaeus was waiting for an outcome on this battlefield. He must feel more secure in the north, as he’s been spotted scurrying in that direction. He’s left the fires in his southernmost camp burning, and seems to be retreating towards the Ebro. If that was meant as a feint to wheel around on us, it will soon become the truth. He will learn soon that he has no axis on which to pivot. We should not wait too long to follow him. I want his head before his brother’s starts to rot. So…” He pointed behind them to the battlefield, which was then full of looters scything up their bloody harvest. “They have an hour, that’s all, then we march again. I will join my brother’s army, and you and Indibilis – well, the mounted part of his group, at least – will find and tie down Gnaeus till we can catch up with you. We won’t be long, I promise,” he added a little sarcastically.

  Hasdrubal Gisco, who was standing to the side of Mago, grinned at this minor condescension.

  Typical, thought Masinissa.

  “Haughty bastard,” muttered Indibilis when they had turned and were out of earshot of the imperious pair. “We’re going to have to patch ourselves up on horseback by the looks of it!” Indibilis offered, showing off a gash that he had taken in his shoulder and into which he’d plugged what was by then a very sodden rag.

  “That’s not too bad, Indy,” Masinissa consoled. “It won’t tear any worse, and I’ll clean it and sew it for you once I put the order in.”

  Indibilis scoffed, “OK, you’re on; do some of your best African tailoring, OK? I want a neat seal on this cut.”

  “You got it,” Masinissa replied, and he rode up to Juba Tunic and Pun to give them their instructions.

  Neither grumbled, but both were clearly weary and in need of a spell off horseback. As veteran campaigners, they understood the exigency of the pursuit. A well-matched adversary had turned into prey, and there is no dawdling when the horn blows on a hunt. The rabbit wasn’t going to take a rest.

  “The only friend the Romans have now is the hills,” Pun said grimly, and he was right. The Romans either had to get beyond them and across the Ebro to safer ground, or find an elevation sufficiently high to hold off the enemy. That would probably just prolong their deaths, though, as the Carthaginian forces would starve them out. There would be no relief coming from the north for a while, and not much of a viable force remained from Publius’s division to mount a counterattack.

  Without any further comment, Pun and Juba Tunic rode into the charnel slime to convey the news of their quick departure, and Masinissa, in the meantime, got to grips with stitching up the chieftain’s seeping wound. Indibilis had quite a lot of slices on him, and this battlefield patch appeared quite routine for him. He didn’t squeal and barely flinched as Masinissa’s needle laced him up. In fact, he was almost a little peaceful and reflective.

  Mid-stitch, he looked over towards Masinissa thoughtfully. “Do you think what has just happened will be remembered for long, or what might happen later or even the war itself? Will we be the heroes or villains? Will the sacrifices that have been made be appreciated or even known about? If you never knew those dead men, those young boys and old men who were just a little bit weaker or slower than the men they fought, how much would you really care or think of them? They died for our freedom; for noble causes, didn’t they? But what does that mean to the future?”

  “Not too much, probably,” Masinissa replied just as sceptically. “I’m sure they’ll make a fittingly heroic statue of you, though. Life moves on, doesn’t it? And the past is confined to smaller and smaller pockets. It’s like walking. The further we move away from something, the smaller it gets till, eventually, we can’t see it any more beyond the horizon. The endurance of our memories can be like these poor buggers we just killed too, in a way. They stood tall and proud and fresh, and then got reduced to nothing, both suddenly and slowly. I’m sure their mothers and wives will remember them, but their sons will know them only as causes and justifications.”

  “Have you ever thought about how we’ll be viewed if we lose? Our reputations will be torn to shreds then, won’t they? Or we’ll just be the anonymous bogey men: monsters who were justly defeated and removed from the world. Our losses won’t be calculated, measured, or held to be of any note or value. We’ll just be anonymous, non-beings, worthy of nothing but destruction, and just accessories to our enemy’s glory.”

  “Ah, you are such a pessimist, Indy,” Masinissa chided “We’re gonna win, and they’ll be the vile savages then. I agree with you, though. History isn’t written by the guy being flogged on the galley or the dead children massacred in the final acts of war, excising the last of your enemy’s legacy. Anything can be justified. Murders, torture and Nosejob’s dancing-men pyres – they never happened. They didn’t happen even when they were happening. None of it matters. None of it is of any interest. There’s your statue. There’s your slave. This is the present, and we got here the way we tell you we got here.”

  Indibilis snorted, in a sort of cynical agreement. “Maybe Mago is giving us too much time to relax if we’re starting to dwell on our own prestige or anonymity.”

  “Well, yeah, we’re the grunts, after all, you know. Killing and philosophising occupy exclusive realms. Let’s get back to the one we’re good at.”

  *

  The pattern of their days resumed as they got back on their horses and went in pursuit of their enemy. Gnaeus had quite a start, and they ended up hunting in darkness again. Although Masinissa let the horses slack a little that time, they were still travelling faster than infantry, and he let the trotting beasts’ rhythm lull him into s
omething just above consciousness but low enough to allow his mind and body to restore themselves slightly. Many of his men were in the same condition as him. They were exhausted, and had bowed heads and closed eyes, albeit with upright backs and postures. Their numbers were slightly reduced, but Masinissa consoled himself with the fact that most of that loss was down to injuries rather than fatalities. The battle had been light on the cavalry so far.

  He pulled up the bulk of his force just before the dawn to make the slumber official and allow the men at least an hour before the sun’s rays made sleep a trickier and more guilty experience. Scouts were despatched and guards posted, and the Numidians were soon dozing in the spreading twilight, with their bodies gaining ascendancy over their cares. A snoring chorus kept some up, but not many, as most grasped the opportunity to rest. It was inadequately brief, but, nevertheless, Masinissa woke feeling the benefit as the flesh of his eyelids turned lighter, forcing them open, and he started to muzzily nudge the others around him back to awareness. To be fair, Juba Tunic was doing much of that task for him, and, in a brusquer manner, was kicking many slumbering forms sharply, with the deeper sleepers earning a few extra revivers.

  As Masinissa drank some water, news came of the location and distribution of Gnaeus’s army. They had not got far, and they could be caught and harassed within a few hours. He estimated Mago and the Hasdrubals were half a day further away, and he sent word to them of the coordinates where they hoped to intercept Gnaeus’s army. He instructed them to rendezvous at Ilorca.

  *

  His rough calculations proved precise, as the moderately rested Numidians found them just outside the aforementioned town a few hours later. The numbers of Gnaeus’s army had plummeted precipitously. The mercenary army, so lavishly recruited, had abandoned Gnaeus and melted away into the hills, there to wait out this phase of the war. These mercenaries would possibly later be cajoled by the Carthaginians into an equivalent contract with them, with probably just as irresolute a commitment.

  The cavalry was by now exceptionally well drilled in their harassing manoeuvres, and deployed without much prompting. The fact that the mobility of Gnaeus’s forces was pretty limited, as he had few horses and no elephants, meant that his infantry could do little other than parry the projectile assaults with their shields, and look for higher ground where the physics of gravity imposed a restriction on the Carthaginian range and an extension on their own.

  Gnaeus may have thought the move a sage one. The Numidian horse stumbled on the steep slopes that the Romans retreated to, and their javelins made looping arcs that reduced their velocity and made them much more avoidable, if they even managed to get near their intended targets. They were also repurposed avidly by the Romans, who, heedless of the imperative to ration their arms in a position of encirclement, threw them back at the Numidians with relish. The error of their retreat, and their prodigal and wasteful use of their scavenged javelins only dawned on them slowly. Masinissa ordered his men to perform circuits of the hill on the fringes of their projectile range to entice them to throw, but also to pin them down. Gnaeus made no further move, and a stalemate of sorts ensued. Foolishly, Gnaeus had overlooked the fact that the strategic balance would be tipped imminently and in the favour of his enemies.

  *

  The armies of Hasdrubal Barca, Hasdrubal Gisco and Mago Barca reached the carousel as night fell. Few on either side had been killed by that point. It was almost as if the protagonists were waiting for the other to become exhausted and then settle on a dignified truce. Nothing so noble or merciful was going to happen once the rest arrived. In the manner of a gluttonous child spying a full table, Mago elbowed his troops through the encirclement, and set them off up the hill. The two Hasdrubals did likewise at other points on the hill, and threw their velite and hastati lines straight at the Romans. Unlike on the previous nights, the moon rose full in the sky this time and gave the death struggles an appropriate pallor as if their blood had already been drained from them.

  Masinissa turned his horse and cantered to a point where he could see all means of escape, should Gnaeus’s men find a way of breaking out down the slopes. He was joined by Ari, Massiva and Capuca, who knew their role as Masinissa’s effective entourage, but also had joined him opportunistically to gain a better view and spectate what promised to be an infantry bloodbath. Their spot allowed for a panoptic appreciation of the carnage, and they watched it half-grimly and half as connoisseurs. Even before the march upwards began and the improvised barricades were assembled, Masinissa had learnt at least one lesson. Higher ground was not always going to provide an advantage. Sometimes it was a trap, especially in Gnaeus’s case. If Gnaeus had retained at least some mounted troops, he could have organised some kind of charge or some kind of vanguard. Instead, the few horses he had at his disposal were being slaughtered and used as improvised barricades. It was as good a sign as any that their Roman equerries would be meeting a similar fate in the not too distant future.

  The heat was off Masinissa and his comrades, and their sudden detachment from the violence was apparent when Capuca broke the silence, and increasingly obvious as the heart rates of men and horses regained their normal equilibrium. His comment was at quite a tangent, but it was easy to understand the connection he was making. “Romans crucify their victims and their criminals on hills like this one. Maybe they like the silhouettes they make. I’ve spoken about it to some of the slaves who’ve seen them do it, and who may have nailed a few of those timbers and flesh together themselves when they were in possession of a more fortunate status. None of them admitted to it, but some of the descriptions were quite vivid. It’s a pathetic way to die and a sadistic way to kill.”

  Masinissa nodded. “The Romans have a flair for the gruesome. Their hilltops are often full of crosses, I’ve heard. It is amongst their favourite torments. I’m sure the Carthaginians won’t bother to prop up the dying and the condemned when they’re through with this hill.”

  They were close enough to the fighting to see it clearly, and the elevation allowed them to observe the tiers of the action. The first lines of the Carthaginian armies were pouring up the slopes, attacking with their swords rather than their javelins, as they would be hurled straight back at them. The reserve line of the Romans was composed of desperate men trying to establish barricades behind their dead animals, and attempting to dig into the ground for some kind of improvised bulwark. The ground was hard and stony, however, and their efforts were fruitless. In truth, the greatest impediment to the Carthaginian assault was the mounting piles of Roman dead, and they were mounting quickly.

  Masinissa could see the Roman line retreat incrementally, but, as they fell back onto the crest of the butte, the pressure upon them intensified and their retreat accelerated. It almost reminded Masinissa incongruously of an adolescent pimple about to be popped. The Romans wouldn’t burst in quite the same way, but a few were gushing as the Carthaginian swords sliced through arteries with increasing frequency.

  His line of sight was obscured finally as his sightlines blurred the opposing forces, and he could only see the backs of the Carthaginian attackers as they devoured the pocket like hunting dogs on a young deer. He heaved a little sigh, a half-hearted sough for the guilty being slaughtered, and turned from the scene. His ears couldn’t turn off the denouement, though, and the sounds had become more discernible as the cacophony subsided. The cries became more piteous, the begging more detectable, and the agonies more ripping. It was easier as a blur of numbing sound.

  Any threat to them was now past, and, in truth, the moment Mago had started his way up the hill was the end of his and the Numidian cavalry’s involvement. He mused a little about how the Carthaginians might commemorate their victory or clear the scene. They may roll the dead down the hill and stick a banner of victory at the top for all to see. It beat crucifixions, at least.

  Masinissa realised there were two aspects vying in him at that moment. An overwhelming s
tupefaction, as his mind and body could not be anything but stunned after the last days of relentless riding and killing, was commingling with an odd profundity. He was thinking about the nature of being, dwelling on his mortality and essence. His numbness and mental acuity rolled in waves into and through him. He became aware of the emptiness of his gaze and the fact that he had lost a sense of time. Around him, the men were finding shady spots and gulping wine, but not in a festive spirit, rather in an impulse to dim or obliterate the moment. He did the same and quaffed from a wineskin that Massiva, who was already a little glazed, had passed to him. He was as greedy with it as if it was his mother’s milk, and his sharpness was soon vanquished by his inebriation.

  *

  He had no idea how long he slept, but it was deep and consoling. The fact that it was interrupted didn’t stop him from feeling a little cleansed. It was Pun who woke him. He may not even have slept at all, as the circles under his eyes were dark and defined, and he held the weariness of a man who had not descended out of consciousness for a while.

  Pun said solemnly as he shook Masinissa gently, “Sire, sire, I’m sorry, but there is business.” And then, less formally, “He’s called your bluff boss.”

  At first, Masinissa didn’t quite catch Pun’s drift as he put his senses back in order and reached out for an understanding of the oblique reference. “What? Who?” was all he could manage, as his immediate focus was still on recognising that his mouth was fuzzy and his stomach empty.

  “Nosejob is the who and the what; well, you know the deal with him.”

  The mention of the sadistic trooper’s name sharpened Masinissa up, and he emitted a long breath of air that exhaled his frustration and disappointment, as well as giving him the time to come to terms with his own promise and his resolve to keep to it. “Bastard. OK, how did it go and where is he now? You’d better have him, Pun.”