Ally of Carthage

by Rob Edmunds

  “I do. I thought he might clear out once he lit his guys up, but he came willingly. Basically, he found a couple of Romans halfway up the hill. They were missing bits, but had enough to be dragged and to still feel fresh pain. So that’s what he did. He lashed them, oiled them and torched them. He had some water ready to douse them and start over when we grabbed him. We took their heads straight off, man. A sharp falcata was their best friend in the end. Anyway, he’s back a way. It’s on you now.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Masinissa replied, blowing long into his imaginary horn again. He squeezed his hands together, put his fingers onto his forehead and then ran his thumbs hard outwards from the bridge of his nose across the line of his eyebrows.

  Pun read the body language easily. “You don’t have to get involved, you know. I can check him out,” he offered considerately.

  “How would I look then, Pun? Come on. There are places you have to go and things you can’t hide from. We don’t write them down, and they don’t make any sense, but we all know the rules. We know the code. I gotta do it.”

  Masinissa stood, turned and saw Candamius, Nosejob, looking impassively in his direction. His hands looked tied behind him, and, as Masinissa crossed the dozen or so strides it took to reach Nosejob, he could see that they were. He didn’t want to understand him, and didn’t want a trial, judgement had been passed already. It was summary justice, with no frills or explanations.

  Nosejob’s concealing rag had slipped a bit and was not covering his missing cartilage so artfully, so you could see more of the grotesque remains of his nasal bone. It looked like a snout, and so it made him look more like a pig, which Masinissa thought was quite apt. Masinissa sensed Candamius knew what was coming, how could he not? What was it with this man? He was as brave as a lion in battle, but too afraid to kill himself and end his agonies, yet his vile actions would guarantee him the most agonising death. Was it an addiction or thrill? Why speculate? There were no answers. You’d just find more questions.

  Masinissa said, “A promise is a promise. I give you no dignity or mercy.”

  Candamius thrust out his chin, narrowing his jaw, in some form of natural tough-guy defiance. He inhaled and exhaled slowly and snorted softly before replying, “So be it,” and looking around him as if there were more things of idle interest in his wider field of vision than the man who had promised to take his life and was about to.

  Masinissa felt an odd absence of humanity; this was an automatic reaction, freed of pity or rage, incongruous to him and the nature of the moment. He took the oil, kicked Candamius to bring him to his knees, and doused him with it. Masinissa hesitated, and his humanity and mercy returned to him in that pause.

  “I could kill you like a chicken. It would be less,” he said in a gesture of mercy.

  Candamius’s eyes flashed a savage rage. “A promise is a promise.”

  There was no more to be said. Masinissa gestured to the men to remove themselves to a suitable distance and set him on fire. He saw a moistness at the corner of Candamius’s eyes as the first lick scorched him. Masinissa had no wish to imprint the vision in his mind, so he turned, and he rationalised the writhing human torch behind him by imagining it to be simply a pyre of a dead man, which, in many ways, it already was.

  When the Worst is Yet to Come

  The victory over the Scipios had come at relatively meagre cost to the Carthaginian and Numidian forces. The remnants of the two Roman armies had fled over the Ebro and were, in Masinissa’s estimation, ripe for further assault. They were ready to be driven beyond the next great river, the Rhone, and as far as Massalia and into the lands of the Ligurians. There, they would be close to the Roman fringes, and Mago would be emulating his brother in crashing another wave of Carthaginian arms into the Roman north. That shock, that degree of reinforcement and the shift in battlefield momentum may have been decisive in the war. As it was, no second surge over the Alps was forthcoming, and the Romans diversionary tactics, Hannibal’s mounting frustration, and perhaps even a seeping listlessness in his campaign and soldiers, robbed him of the critical victories he needed and preserved a still very bloody status quo. The last news Masinissa had heard from the Roman front was that Hannibal had been spending his time chasing the Roman tribune Appius Claudius Pulcher, aiding the defecting and besieged Capuans, and attacking Brundisium. It suggested a campaign that was turning worryingly desultory.

  The Barcid brothers in Iberia, though, appeared quite phlegmatic about their sibling chasing shadows behind enemy lines. They seemed more than happy to savour their triumph and enjoy the comfortable safety of the Celtiberian lands that they had supposedly pacified and extirpated of the Roman intruders by then. Maybe there was also an unknown element internal to the Barcids and the Carthaginian armies that Masinissa wasn’t privy to. Mago, for sure, was a man susceptible to his own sense of personal grandeur, and his ego and pomposity may have convinced him that he should stay where he was and let Hannibal struggle, then maybe to ride in triumph to Hannibal’s rescue at a point of his choosing. Maybe he was just apprehensive of campaigning deeper into the Roman territories without considerable reinforcements. The Romans were still a formidable adversary, and he certainly didn’t want to share the fate of the Scipios. They would surely take gleeful vengeance on his body if the fortunes of war turned on him. In any case, he lingered and occupied himself with his own aggrandisement, often at the expense of the local tribes that had fought for him, or at least not fought against him.

  Masinissa considered these actions foolish and a betrayal of the indigenous people. How do you win the hearts of minds of the people if you turn on them so quickly? It was a mighty victory, and they had vanquished the Romans from large swathes of the peninsula. Surely the time was right to press their advantage and continue an advance as fast as possible, before the enemy had time to reorganise or reinforce itself. Whilst not as costly in terms of men and beasts, the victory that had been secured in the twin battles of the Upper Baetis reminded him of the hollow victories decades earlier of the king of the Molossians, Pyrrhus of Epirus. This second cousin of Alexander the Great had won only in a certain sense. In the wider context, he had lost. At least he had the grim humour to realise it. Masinissa remembered well the comment he made after the Battle of Asculum: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined,” he was famously quoted as saying.

  Mago’s decision to sit on his hands and milk the Iberians struck Masinissa as a similar inversion and one that, unlike Pyrrhus, he was failing to recognise. Masinissa, despite his conviction, knew that making any comment would be pointless, as neither he nor any of the senior Numidian commanders had much influence in the war, which was a source of frustration for many. There was only equality in their sacrifices.

  As it was, at least by then he was temporarily idle and largely unemployed. He rode in the mountains with Massiva, Ari and Capuca, and managed to obtain, at a little inconvenience, the thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature by Epicurus. Masinissa found his ideas novel and, for the most part, appealing. The notion of minimising harm and maximising happiness was a little pacifist for the times, but, as a credo for ordinary life, there was much to recommend it. He read avidly through his Ethic of Reciprocity, in which rights and duties to one’s fellow man were described and recommended. Masinissa was sure that many people would find shocking the concept that people had individual rights to life, liberty and property. Half the world was the property of the other half, who were at liberty, so such an egalitarian view was quite utopian. One day, maybe, Masinissa thought.

  The lack of conflict, the retreat of the Romans north of the Ebro, and the warm, easy days tricked Masinissa into a sense of tranquillity that was quite in tune with Epicurus’s treatise. Of course, he pined for Sophonisba and the imagined future he envisioned with her, but, for that moment, that life was as immaterial and nebulous as the next world. At least it was fun to imagine better times. Epic
urus’s description of a state he called “ataraxia” – a tranquil, peaceful, fearless existence – seemed idyllic to him, being a man so used to fear that he lived with it like a constant knot of stage fright. The philosopher had described this condition as having a natural consort, which he called “aponia” or the absence of pain, which was to be found in a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle. However, as Masinissa read on, it became apparent that, for all the appeal of such an outlook and lifestyle, Epicurus had a shocking disregard for the gods, be they of the Greek, Roman or Phoenician pantheon. It was an ontological step too far for Masinissa.

  His actions – and those of all soldiers, all men and all women – attracted the attention of the gods. His prayers and supplications, be they ignored or granted, were heard. He was acknowledged in some form by the residents of the Empyrean, and his deeds and conduct deemed worthy or otherwise. The idea that the gods paid no attention to mankind, offered neither rewards nor punishments, or perhaps – most outrageously and blasphemously – may not exist at all was absurd. The stories of the gods and their heroes were numerous, with the twelve labours of Melqart being the most famous and valiant, which made such a proposition quite farcical. Death could not simply be the end. He had seen too much of it to believe such a view. The light of life must be transformed, not ended. Great thinkers are granted their depth of thought due to the narrowness of their field of vision, Masinissa reassured himself. Epicurus had a great idea about how to live in harmony and peace, but only at the expense of misunderstanding the heavens and the gods. He was sure they would be merciful towards him, nevertheless.

  Whilst Masinissa found himself, in his greater periods of inactivity, reading almost voraciously and even recording some of his own thoughts, mostly on governance and the fundamentals of morality, he spliced his contemplative moments with convivial moments with many of his closest companions, and, when their paths intermingled, with Indibilis and Mandonius. Their more intimate and trusted connections with the local communities gave Masinissa an insight into the state of play on the ground, far more so than could be learnt from his own troops, and certainly not from the Carthaginians, who evidently regarded the indigenous communities as little more than vassals, which was a perception that was clearly storing up resentments. When he met with the two veteran warlords, their warmth and affection towards him was as ebulliently expressed as ever. There was something to be said for bear hugs from men in bear skins, as both men favoured soft, warming layers even in the milder days.

  They had congregated, as many others had, in the pleasant coastal town of Malaka in the lands of the Bastetani. It was a relaxing region, with good fishing and cooling seas, albeit ones whose shorelines often shelved precipitously. After taking two or three steps into the ocean, you were out of your depth suddenly. Masinissa had made the lazy presumption that all the beaches in the areas were of the same steeply shelving sand, and had dived into the bay at Silniana the previous week, when the water was barely covering his knees. He smashed his face straight into a rocky outcrop, cutting his forehead, chin and nose, causing grazes he was parading for his Llergete friends.

  At first, he thought he would try to conceal the truth with a little deception. He was a little embarrassed by the self-inflicted scratches and, taking inspiration from his friends’ warm layers, tried to convince them that he had taken a dare to wrestle a small bear and the nicks were from the animal. Though this seemed plausible at first, he was caught out in his lie as he began to stumble in his description of the contest. Indibilis was also of the view that small bears either ran away, or caused much deeper and more parallel scratches in a man’s flesh, a point he brought up as Masinissa started to falter. His cause was not helped by the presence of Pun and Tigerman, whose theatrical expressions of mock surprise exposed the ruse for what it was. Even worse, Soldier Boy, whose comic talents were becoming more pronounced after each fresh battle or hardship, almost as if the laughter of others was an analgesic to his own pain and suffering, ran up to Pun, slashed wildly with his arms, and started vocalising very convincing bear sounds. Masinissa was used to men being able to mimic owls or wolves, but Soldier Boy’s bearish woofs, grumbles and moans were a fresh talent. It did for Masinissa, anyway, and he had to concede defeat, veering quickly away from a scrambling, “Ah, the thing is…” to, “Ah, OK, I’m talking rubbish; I faceplanted a reef.”

  “Thanks, Sold, I owe ya a betrayal down the line, or maybe I should just wrestle you in a costume? How about you give him your skins?” he asked Mandonius in an attempt to divert the mockery away from himself.

  Mandonius furrowed his chin up and palmed his hands in an impish show of helplessness. “Maybe next time you should make out it’s a shark. You can always say you made it swim away when you hurt yourself in the water next time.”

  “Ah, yeah, I can do that; thanks, funny guy. This really looks like a shark bite, doesn’t it?” He pointed to the tiny, brown marks drying on his nose.

  “Well, no,” Mandonius conceded, “but they sure don’t look like bear smacks either.” He paused and then went on, stretching out the syllables in a conciliatory tone, “Aaanyyyway, let’s get something wet on our lips and warm in our bellies.”

  “Oh.” It was Masinissa’s turn to mock up a little surprise. “OK. Yes, indeed. You two have got the perfect pair of shields for a nice, little casserole. I know all about you guys and your little barbeques. I want to sample some of this legendary stuff.” He gave them a knowing nod, which raised a smile from the flattered pair.

  Aside from the reputations they had carved out in the war, their knives and shields had been put to other, more recreational uses, and their gastronomic talents were well known and highly regarded. If they showed up at a large camp, they often drew a crowd as if they were celebrity chefs rather than battle-weary warlords. They were always, despite this, commendably hospitable, but it was always a bit of a “first come, first served” scenario. As soon as those aromas hit the open air or the word got around, they were overwhelmed with eager prospective diners.

  As they were from the northern parts of the peninsula, they had been greatly influenced by the cuisines of the neighbouring cities of Massalia and Barcino. Their seafood dishes and broths were full of flavour, and their prowess also extended to game (boar most notably) when they were foraging further inland, but even horse when times were tough.

  Their signature method, which earned them quite a lot of kudos amongst the soldiers, was to use their shields as alternative cooking pots, often sealing their matching pair together to aid the cooking and improve the flavours. It was a practical method that was used widely by the troops, and it was a clear point of approval for them that their commanders shared their practice and didn’t have the need to use the normal paraphernalia of the kitchen. The well-worn adage that the army marches on its well-fed stomach was well established to the extent that it was a point of principle or even a pre-battle tactic to get a good feed in whenever possible. However, that provision did not extend to ensuring that all the pots and pans were strapped to your horses or wagons. A true soldier cooked on his weapons.

  As they had intercepted the crew of a fishing vessel coming out of the harbour earlier in the day, and bartered for much of the contents of their heavily laden nets, there was an assortment of choices for them. This was a treat for men more familiar with riding with little more than dried bread and hard-boiled eggs. There was nothing as fancy as a menu, but Masinissa was able to make his preferences find the way into the concave shields that were now heating up their contents nicely. There were hunks of John Dory, sliced up octopus and plenty of prawns. The vegetables were of more incidental interest, but Mandonius had thrown in plenty of peas, celery, onions, leeks and quite a few cloves of garlic, the smell of which was now sharpening up their appetites. He also treated them to a little of their stash of precious pepper, so the meal was almost guaranteed to be a delicious one.

  When they doled out the food into their bowls
, Masinissa soaked his bread into it and savoured his first morsel. It was as delectable as he had surmised, but he gave a melodramatic grimace of disapproval towards the chefs in any case.

  It was a convincing show as Mandonius looked at him a little stunned.

  “Not good?” he asked bemused, “Not enough salt or have I gone overboard on the garlic?”

  Masinissa stifled a reflex to cave in and admit to enjoying the tasty fare, and faked some impromptu tact. “Well… I have to say,” he drawled out slowly in a show that was a little amateurish and betrayed by the creases of amusement at the corners of his mouth.

  Indibilis was a little more alert than his brother to the compromising micro expression. Before either Masinissa could continue his criticism or Mandonius could become any more affronted, he interjected, “Just hold on now, Mister Full-of-Shit. That’s as good a fish stew as we do, and we do a good one. OK, we’re missing a few things to turn it into a first-rate bouillabaisse and I’m sure the pros in Massalia will point out a few things we’re not quite doing right, but that’s good tucker.”

  Masinissa smiled, “You’ve got me; I couldn’t keep that one going. You guys never miss. Thank you. I can tell straight away that everything in this is going to be just right. Get some of the good wine to go with it, and we’re close to paradise.”

  “Well, I’m sure there are a few other morsels and diversions we can add to get it over that line, but I appreciate the appreciation,” Mandonius said just as effusively as Masinissa.

  The feast was enough to feed about fifteen of them in total, almost evenly split between the Iberians and Numidians. Pun and Tigerman knew a good thing when they smelt it and were first in the queue; Capuca, Ari, Juba Tunic and Soldier Boy had also sniffed the delights and eagerly got in on the action as Mandonius’s ladle started serving it up. Massiva was conspicuously absent, however; the young rake was probably burrowing into a different kind of flesh in another part of town. A few ribald comments acknowledged the absentee and his priority, but the food was too good and the jokes turned into murmurs of pleasure. This was a meal that merited a little focus. Eventually, the last of the bread cleaned up the shields, and the men got to drinking and gassing, from both ends, with some gusto.