Ally of Carthage

by Rob Edmunds

  Masinissa furrowed his brow, sighed, reached over the haunches of Hanno’s mount and offered him a silent pat. The poor lad was carrying a greater burden than he had suspected after all. “I will aid your vengeance as best I can. That part is assured, but how do you intend to retrieve Melqart’s cup?”

  Hanno paused mischievously and raised a finger to emphasise the moment, made a big comical circle with his mouth and then gave Masinissa some good news. “Well, the reason that the cup of Melqart is still at Xativa is because the Romans don’t know it’s there. I’m sure they knew that it was taken there from the chatter of the local tribes, but they must have assumed that Imelce would have taken it with her when she fled or that perhaps it was still in Hannibal’s possession. In reality, it is buried beneath the ramparts close to where that old olive tree is. Thank Tanit it is still there! I’m going to need that old stump for my bearings.”

  Hanno glanced quickly at his companion and then took the moment to lionise Masinissa, perhaps with the subliminal intention of ingratiating himself further. From his effusiveness, it was plain he wasn’t yet sure to what extent Masinissa would be willing to support him. Attacking enemies in open country was Masinissa’s forte, but storming a fortress was something he was less well renowned for. “Thank Tanit too that I am so fortunate to be in the company of our army’s most illustrious soldier. All my way through North Africa and Iberia, your name is always the talk of the fires, and always in association with intrepid and indomitable actions. I’ve seen men visibly take courage hearing about your exploits, and if they know you are to join them in any raid or battle, their spirits revive.”

  Masinissa was not always at ease with such flattery, especially with those comments that strayed into sycophancy. Women and those closest to him could flatter him as wildly as they wished, but strangers or juniors were another matter altogether. They were more likely to cause irritation rather than amusement or approval. “Enough, now; it is sufficient that I know the reasons that lie behind this mission. Let’s hope Melqart is listening to the petitions of his thirsty Turdetani supplicants in Gades.”

  Since Hanno had mentioned the true motivation for his approach to Xativa, Masinissa had been reassessing the situation slowly. A frontal assault on such a citadel could be prolonged and costly. The numbers and quality of the defenders of the castle were also uncertain. The last thing he needed was to be confronted by capable slingers who could deliver rocks to the jaws of his riders and the eyes of his horses. Fortunately, they were still sufficiently distant to not have drawn attention to themselves. There were agricultural plains around most of the castle and the village, but the presence of some uninterrupted woodland gave him optimism that a small party might approach the castle unnoticed with a little stealth and with the blessing of a cloudy night. Once in the village, it should be easy enough to pass unnoticed or despatch anyone who crossed their path. He resolved to take that approach initially. It was very risky to be so exposed, massively outnumbered and immobile, and to approach the castle undetected would necessitate approaching it on foot – or on his stomach for some parts, by the looks of the terrain – but it seemed the better course. With any luck, he could slaughter the livestock if they could get into the inner courtyards and accelerate any siege if that was deemed a possibility. It seemed unlikely. The Carthaginian armies were still busy reinforcing, and attacking a provincial outpost would surely be considered a waste of manpower. The strategy was to stick to raids until enough men had crossed from North Africa or until enough funds had been found to convince the mercenary tribes of the peninsula to rally for Carthage.

  Hanno responded encouragingly to Masinissa’s suggestion, albeit with a little trepidation. It was decided that Ari and Capuca would join them: Ari to take out any sentries from distance, and Capuca as the most agile of the party and the one best equipped to infiltrate the castle.

  As night fell and they were blessed with the clouds they had hoped for, the four departed, leaving the remaining detachment beyond the furthest ridge to the west. They entered the woods quickly, but stayed on its fringes, and were not enveloped completely by the darkness of the trees. The dim fires of the village, and the muffled noises of livestock and men kept them pointed in the right direction, and they, for the most part, only needed to skirt the small grove as the looming shadow of the Xativa fortress always remained in their murky vision. Swiftly, they gained the stony path that snaked through the village. Ari looked at the walls of the castle, closed his fingers around his stone pouch and then flashed them forwards, indicating to the others that anyone on its parapet was by then in the range of his sling. It appeared larger to Masinissa than he’d assumed from their earlier vantage point, and its turrets more foreboding. It was eerily quiet too. The hour was late, and both village and castle seemed sound asleep. Hanno’s eyes shone eagerly as he surveyed the battlements.

  “What shall we do now?” Capuca asked the others. They had ropes, but they looked inadequate and a pretty cumbersome form of entry.

  “We have time,” replied Masinissa. “We can wait until someone comes through the main gates. It might be that we’ll have to return tomorrow if it gets to gets too close to the dawn, but my guess is that there will be movement. This does not seem the most vigilant of citadels! We might even be bold and fake our identities to the sentry. How’s your Latin, Cap?”

  “Not as good as yours, Mas. How about we give it a few hours and then trust to your mimicry?”

  “All right, but if they don’t buy my fancy voice, it’s going to get a whole lot harder to pilfer this chalice. I’m hoping that a late night tryst might come to our aid.”

  “You’ve got the call of the drongo, boss. You’ll convince them,” interjected Ari.

  Both Capuca and Hanno turned to him, looking a little puzzled, compelling the young Libyan to explain that a drongo was a small passerine bird that lived south of the desert, and that mimicked other birds and would make hoax calls of other species in order to fool them.

  “You got it, Ari; Masinissa the drongo will fool these Romans easily,” agreed Capuca.

  The men all smiled at the silliness of the moment. They smiled again when they heard the bellowing laugh of an approaching figure, oblivious to their lurking presence. It quickly transpired, from the cooing response to the outburst, that it was a couple, and both seemed to have enjoyed a few libations, by their tone and the irregular pattern of their footsteps.

  They passed them in a grapey haze and knocked on the thick, iron-framed door of the outer bastion. A gaunt face appeared at the slots in the window, who recognised them with a little morose nod. A clanking of keys and irons followed, and the door lurched. The amorous couple did the same, and fell forwards as their support yielded inwards.

  As the couple stumbled clumsily, the four waiting men offered their antithesis and pounced nimbly, almost in a choreographed wave. Masinissa led and kicked the man forwards. In truth, he needed little to assist his collapse, and, as he did so, Masinissa used his back as a springboard, leapt into the saturnine sentry and drove his knife into his throat. Simultaneously, Masinissa’s companions selected their targets and attended to them. Ari smashed his fist into the unfortunate courtesan, and she barely yelped as she hit the floor. Capuca finished off what Masinissa had started, and stabbed his blade into the exposed neck of the prostrated centurion. Ari, for his part, had spied the large dog that accompanied the sentry and was clearly useless as a scent hound, and had broken its neck before it could have barked an alarm.

  As their victims crumpled, the four checked the courtyard quietly and realised quickly that their good fortune had continued, as the area appeared deserted, and no fires were lit.

  “It looks like Metellus will be receiving guests at this late hour after all,” Hanno whispered, although his elation was easy to note despite his murmuring.

  Masinissa scowled a little at his exuberance, grabbed him by his tunic and hissed into his ear, “This h
as only begun. This is not the time for a celebration.” He brought the men into a huddle and gave them instructions. “Cap, take the stables, ready four horses and kill as many of the others as you can when you see me next. Ari, secure the walls and find an elevation overlooking the barracks. If anyone approaches or emerges, take them quietly. Hanno, you and I will take the keep, meet justice upon Metellus and get this cup.”

  The men all nodded in unison and it struck him momentarily how effortless his decision-making could be under such extreme conditions. I’ve been doing this too long! he thought to himself a little ruefully. He had learnt the trick that, sometimes, all you need to do is appear decisive or certain when everyone around you is not and is looking for exactly those characteristics to follow.

  The four separated quickly, and he felt confident that they would do as he had commanded. He couldn’t be certain that they would not be detected, but, even in that event, he was sure that, as long as they could get to the horses, they had the wit to evade capture, if not injury. Hanno tucked in beside him, and they padded as softly as they could along the walls to the keep. Hanno shivered a little, and Masinissa shot him a glance.

  “It’s OK to be cold, but don’t get scared on me now,” he warned the young Carthaginian.

  The entrance was as carelessly patrolled as the gatehouse.

  “Looks like this Metellus likes a little privacy,” Masinissa offered, as much to buoy the spirits of his confederate as to reassure himself.

  They mounted the stairway and crept around, with their falcatas drawn, each of them hugging the wall and wondering whether, at any moment, an enemy would spring down upon them with their own sabres. Advantage would certainly be with any prospective assailant. At least they were blessed with a few olive oil lucerna dotted into crevices to light their way. They were spared the Stygian gloom they could easily have encountered within a less well-maintained staircase.

  As he saw the edge of the upper floor, Masinissa sped up his measured pace and burst out of the stairway. The confined spiral had started to trigger a little of the giddiness and claustrophobia that nomadic people feel in such places, and, besides, if anyone was at the top, he wanted to be going as quickly as he could when they noticed him. For a soldier who was braced for the lunge of iron or fist or skull, what met his gaze at the top of the flight was quite vapid and underwhelming. He still held tight to his sword and his posture, but what lay in front of him posed no immediate threat.

  For the presumed former suite of Hannibal and Imelce, it was quite a small and drab space, lit only slightly less dimly than the stairway had been. It is easy to assume that someone’s renown and station in life will automatically translate to opulence in all their dwellings, but this one was markedly humble, an impression only aggravated by the obvious absence of a female touch, even of an occasional maid. The room was fusty, to say the least, with the sourness of an oblivious man.

  The furnishings, such as they were, were spartan and dirty, indicating long months of neglect. There was a recess in the furthest wall, indicating a further chamber, presumably a bedroom, and Masinissa motioned Hanno to investigate, although no sound or motion was apparent from there. Before him, lay a classic triclinium, although one that had certainly seen better days. A low table abutted the couches, and it consolidated the sense of disorderliness. Dishes and detritus lay haphazardly all over it and represented the remains of several meals. A few deflated-looking goatskins lay close by, and their edges were stained crimson, indicating that the party was long over and the participants were pretty uncoordinated when they tipped wine out of the end of the skin. No cup or goblet was in view.

  This survey was done as an ancillary to Masinissa’s main focus, which was to keep to a cautious eye on the occupant of the furthest couch, who faced him with a swaying attentiveness that suggested the wine from the skins had not long been consumed and his sensibilities were quite impaired.

  Never underestimate a drunk man, though, Masinissa cautioned himself.

  The injunction seemed quite wise, given the appearance of the man. He was enormous, larger than Masinissa but clearly more dissolute, and with a brutish aspect that he seemed to exude like a poisonous odour. The glare with which he fixed his intruder was chilling, despite his woozy state, and it was clearly one that he’d fixed on many of his prior victims. This was a cold-blooded, merciless killer. The stains on his lips may have been blood rather than wine, for all the look suited him. His eyes were tiny and scrunched in hatred, and he needed to work the muscles around his lenses harder than usual to retain focus. He was dishevelled, with matted hair and beard, but there was something of a cornered animal’s readiness in him, despite his obvious dissipation. His hackles were raised, and it struck Masinissa that he looked a little like the hyena Masinissa had seen once in an arena in Carthage before they had let the dogs loose on it. That ugly, condemned beast had taken quite a few of those snarling mutts with him, he recalled.

  The man’s head rocked in a short semicircle into the nape of his neck, a motion that would be intended to loosen the muscles ordinarily, but clearly had the opposite intention in this case. When he snapped his head back into its usual cradle, his gaze had lost a little of its vagueness. “I don’t need a uniform or a herald to know you, Numidian. I’m honoured,” he declared.

  The words and their lucidity corroborated Masinissa’s sense that Metellus’s inebriation (for indeed it was him) was at this stage mostly theatrical.

  Metellus continued, “Have you come with news of your armies rout or surrender? There can’t be too many able-bodied men left in Africa by now. Why are you even fighting for that cause? Carthage has as much kinship with you as Rome has with the Gauls.” He added a little hiccup.

  Masinissa bought only the spitefulness and not the deception. Masinissa just looked at him, mirroring his antagonists’ contempt. He knew Hanno must have his moment and be given the opportunity to confront his father’s murderer. He arrived on cue, with their exchange of looks confirming that it was only the three of them in the chambers.

  “Atilius Metellus,” Hanno said as he drew in front of the Numidian’s sword.

  Metellus’s response was only to turn and look at him, almost dismissively, with an expression so empty it almost made him appear like a giant grotesque doll.

  “Atilius Metellus.” Hanno’s inflection even more agitated and urgent.

  “Do I need to write my name on my forehead for you, idiot? Who else would I be?”

  The confirmation visibly eased the tension in the vengeful boy. “Good, I don’t want to be groping around another corner of this fort tonight. I am Hanno Brega, and finding and killing you is all I’ve wanted to do for some time.”

  Metellus laughed contemptuously. “Funny, I don’t seem to have paid you any mind.” There was no fear in his eyes at the revelation that one of his many sins had come back to revisit him. “These are the fortunes of war. Your father fell here at my hands. It could have been anywhere. Killing isn’t something you schedule or plan. It’s anonymous. People have simply two categories: enemies or allies.”

  “You think you can sanitise your evil so easily?” Hanno responded, outraged and enraged by the fact that his father’s killer had explained his torture as almost a humdrum, everyday matter. “What kind of beast are you that you can regard feeding a fellow officer to dogs as a customary undertaking?”

  “Even the mutts gotta eat, boy.”

  Both intruders shook at the insult. There appeared to be no depths to Metellus’s effrontery.

  Hanno had heard enough. This pig could have eviscerated his father and would have shown more mercy, and he appeared to not have a shred of remorse, nor even the guile to plead for his life. “You invite your own death. Trust that I will show you greater mercy than you have ever granted.”

  Metellus exhaled a mix of exasperation and relief. “About time!” he rebuked, and with that he pushed the table upwards and tow
ards them.

  A mix of crashing plates, bowls and food debris shot towards them, and both men leapt back as the turning table threatened their shins. Hanno’s reflexes were a little slow, and the table caught him just above his ankle, sufficient to make him lose balance but not fall.

  The Roman had given himself an edge, had armed himself with his gladius, and swung it with all his force at the stumbling Hanno. As much as Masinissa knew that this was a fight for the boy, at the same time, the force and direction of Metellus’s lunge was about to tear through Hanno’s throat, and if the blade was sharp, would most likely decapitate him. He parried the thrust and took the gladius in the meat of his falcata. The swords resounded on contact, and Metellus’s gladius scraped like chalk on stone down the convex edge of Masinissa’s sickle-like blade.

  This kind of commotion shouldn’t last long, thought Masinissa a little anxiously, as it would surely alert others in the slumbering fortress.

  As their swords met, Masinissa sensed his adversary’s power, and despite Metellus’s bulk and the considerable force he wielded in his arms, the test was enough for Masinissa to realise he was the stronger. He pushed back with his sword arm as his opponent’s blade got close to his grip and the heave checked Metellus and gave Masinissa enough room to crash his open hand straight into the nose of his foe.