Dubgetious saw the Masulians release their spears. He knew how accurate they were and his muscles stiffened in anticipation of the pain. His ankle twisted on the rutted surface of the road, toppling him to the left. Even so, one of the thrown spears found its mark. Or almost did. It skimmed off the surface of the round iron helmet that he wore. The blow knocked his head back as he fell.
Ears ringing and lights blinking behind his eyes, he breathed in a stifling breath of dust. He clawed the ground with his hands and kicked with his feet, trying desperately to raise himself. The pounding of hoofbeats receded and in their place came the ragged crunch of footfalls. A distant yell followed by a scream gave Dubgetious the will to blink away the blinding lights and stumble to his feet. The footfalls came from a handful of hill warriors who ran at him up the trail. Their ragged breathing was harsh, their eyes narrowed. He noticed a body laying just paces from him. His throw had been true. A Masulian lay on his back with Dubgetious’ spear standing proud from his chest.
Further down the trail, the surviving Masulian was surrounded by a handful of hill warriors. As Dubgetious watched, the rider was stabbed in the leg while simultaneously a spear rammed into his lower back. The rider’s mount turned and kicked out with its rear hooves, knocking a hill warrior senseless to the ground.
Dubgetious lunged for his spear and pulled at the shaft. The Masulian’s eyes opened and he tried to scream. Instead, a wave of bright blood erupted from his gaping mouth. Dubgetious cursed and stamped on the man’s chest and heaved the spear which came free with a hideous sucking. He leaped back and levelled the spear as the hill warriors charged at him. One loosed a stone from his sling and the missile cracked into the spear shaft, the force stinging Dubgetious’ hands and then the stone ricocheted into his chest. Gasping, he almost dropped the spear.
He tightened his grip and slashed his spear at the nearest hill warrior, a tall, rangy man wearing braccae tied at the waist and a mangy wolf skin over his shoulders. The hill warrior sprang back and gave him a yellow toothed snarl.
“I am Dubgetious of the Bastetani!” Dubgetious growled, his fighting spirit driving away the pain from his ribs. “I am going to gut you like the cur you are.”
The hill warriors remained silent apart from their heavy breathing. Fanning out they circled him. Like wolves around a wounded stag. Their spears were crude things, but there were five of them. Dubgetious fumed at them as they trod in a circle around him, forcing him into the centre of the track so he could not break for the trees.
When they struck, it came faster than Dubgetious could imagine. In a heartbeat they closed on him, whipping at his knees with the shafts of their spears. He lunged and twisted, trying to bury his spear into their pox-scarred flesh.
A blow behind his right knee numbed his leg and he went down on it. As he did, he hunched over and swung his spear like a scythe. His reward was the sudden impact of his spearhead and a pained grunt from a hill warrior. The edge of his spearhead opened the flesh of the man’s leg to the bone.
Then there was nothing more Dubgetious could do. A hill warrior stamped on his spear shaft, driving it to the ground while two more beat him across the back. Dubgetious let go of the spear and tried to catch one of those that swung at him. He missed, but the shaft slammed into his upper arm and he reared back in pain. If it had been a war spear, his arm would have snapped. A spear end was rammed into his gut and he doubled over, retching.
Rough hands clamped around his ankles as knees drove into his back, winding him further and forcing his face into the dirt. A strap of raw leather wrapped his wrists tight and he was dragged through the dirt while kicks were directed at his guts and sack. A stinking sandal of rotted leather and bark grazed his cheek.
“Not his face!” A hill warrior snarled while delivering a blow to the man who had kicked him.
“He is a fine one. Should last a few days.”
Dubgetious was dumped on the ground where the scent of crushed leaves filled his nostrils. Branches stirred high above him as his hands were tied to a tree trunk. He gritted his teeth to quell the bowl loosening fear of the death that would be his. His eyes snapped wide when his tunic was ripped away and a bony hand pulled at his small cloth. The sight of the violated bodies of the couple outside the town walls came to him and he screamed in rage and terror. The hill warriors had raped both man and woman as they lay begging and screaming side by side. This was surely not his fate. His eyes clenched tight as tears spilled and he cursed them with his vomit sour breath.
Writhing naked in the dirt, he kicked out wildly, but this only drew laughter from the hill warriors who stood back to leer at him.
“Tell you what; he is a big bastard.” One of them lashed him with a thin green twig he had broken off the tree.
“Go on! Hit him some more. Does good things to me when I hear them scream.”
“Eat shit you worm. My shade will forever torment you and yours.” Dubgetious hissed as he was whipped again and again.
The beating stopped and Dubgetious scrabbled toward the tree, pulling his knees close to his chest. Eyes wild, he stared at the ring of figures who were looking back down the track.
“What are they yelling? They killed their man now they want some of ours?” The yellow toothed hill warrior drew a foul gesture.
“Where are they running off too now?”
Dubgetious could see the hill warriors who had killed the Masulian disappearing into the wild growth alongside the track. They looked to be fleeing. He looked up the track towards the crest of the hill he would never reach. A figure on a horse was silhouetted there. His captors turned that way and stiffened with sudden gasps. Only the yellow-toothed hill warrior seemed unconcerned.
“One man on a horse and you are all shitting yourselves.” He spat. “It will be one of those soft-arsed messengers from the big army to the north. Nothing he can do unless he wants to join his fellow here.” He turned to Dubgetious with his teeth bared, one hand working the dirt fouled knot that tied his braccae around his waist.
The spear that grew from his chest wiped his smile away and turned his leer bloody. Before he could topple backwards, a dozen or more warriors in pale tunics and shining helmets burst from the trees behind Dubgetious and hacked the hill warriors down before they could utter a squeal. Dubgetious watched with disbelief as his captors fell dead at his feet. A blade appeared before his eyes, its point pressed into his cheek.
“This one to?” The dark-skinned warrior’s lips peeled back in disgust as he looked Dubgetious over.
“Hold!” A burly man with a voluminous black beard appeared beside the warrior, his sword gripped loosely, dripping blood onto Dubgetious’ feet.
“You speak Greek, savage?”
Dubgetious, the spear point pressing deep into his cheek and his neck over-extended, spoke with difficulty. “I am a messenger.” Fearful his response was not understood, he spoke more urgently. “For Hamilcar Barca. I am carrying a message to Eshmun.”
The bearded warrior had taken pity on the Bastetani youth, escorting him to the village and presenting him to the Carthaginian leader, Eshmun. Dubgetious had delivered the message, retrieved from among his torn clothing, and been dismissed. Amma, the bearded warrior, was a Libyan and in charge of five hundred Libyan spearmen. He guided Dubgetious from the Carthaginian’s pavilion with a hand on his elbow.
“Now. What to do with you?” Amma looked Dubgetious over. “You are a big lad and you know how to use a spear. Seems a waste to have you running around delivering messages.”
Dubgetious gazed at the army of a thousand or more men, unsure of himself and uncertain what was expected of him now that he knew Berut wanted him killed.
Amma laughed easily. “Do not worry about this Berut. Some foolhardy Turdetani have overrun one of our mines and we are off to whip them bloody. If you wish, I will have equipment and armour assigned to you and you can fight with my Spears.”
Amma looked steadily at Dubgetious who slowly nodded and grinned.
/> Weak sunlight shed gray shadows over the scarred hills where mines had been bored into the earth and rock. Like guts torn from a carcass, the spoil from the mines was tipped haphazardly on the hillside below the mines, gleaming a sickly white after the rain that had fallen in the night. Trees felled in the hills were stacked in piles beside the mine entrances, to be used to shore up tunnels. The valley below the mines was a hive of dwellings, a few built of timber and many more of hide, some so rotted it was more tatters than cover. The reek of shit and rot hung over the place, rising in ghostly wisps from the many midden mounds and even from the shallow stream in which floated the bloated corpses of the mine overseers. A large force of Turdetani warriors still resisting Hamilcar Barca’s rule had attacked the rich silver mine some days earlier.
“They threw the bodies into the stream from which they draw their water. What manner of fools are they?” Amma shook his head, his features twisted with scorn.
Dubgetious kept his lips sealed. His eyes were beginning to water from the stink and he did not wish for any of the tortured shades of the dead below to enter his body.
Eshmun had sent ahead his Masulian riders and a hundred Libyan warriors to block the trail to the north, trapping the rebels on the hill honeycombed with mine tunnels.
Dubgetious watched as the Turdetani warriors roamed between the lumber and mining spoil in tight groups, eyeing Eshmun’s army of Libyans and levied Turdetani. The levied Turdetani showed no misgivings as they formed untidy ranks to the left of the hill. They were no sooner in place then they began to shake their spears at the trapped Turdetani warriors. These in turn called to them to join them in throwing off their Punic overlords. The jeering and shield thumping continued as the Libyans formed neat ranks three deep and some hundred warriors wide.
Eshmun sat his mount amongst a knot of senior warriors and hardly seemed to take notice of the warriors about to do battle. Instead, he chewed on dates, spitting the pips between his mount’s ears, laughing at jests told. A drum pounded and the Libyans growled while the Turdetani levies whooped and shook their spears.
Dubgetious caught his breath when a half dozen Turdetani rebels threw down their weapons and ran towards their countrymen, arms outstretched and clearly calling for their lives. Only now did Eshmun take notice, his face turning to cold stone as he cocked his neck, like a vulture eyeing a meal. Dubgetious pitied the rebels.
“They are not to be harmed!” Eshmun flicked a hand at Dubgetious who turned his horse and dug his heels into its flanks. A messenger again, he reached the bottom of the hill and gagging on the stench, raced his mount to the front line of levied Turdetani, making for their Libyan leader.
“At Eshmun’s command, allow these to live!” Dubgetious called loudly, pointing his spear at the cringing Turdetani rebels.
“Very well, Messenger.” The veteran warrior shouted to the Iberian warriors he commanded to spare the Turdetani deserters even as Dubgetious was wheeling his mount away.
The remaining rebel warriors watched as the deserters were shepherded to the rear ranks. Many jeered their former companions, but it was lacklustre. The Libyan warriors began to move up the hill and the jeering ceased as the two hundred Turdetani and three hundred workers who had joined them shuffled into tighter groups, seeking courage against the overwhelming odds against them.
The Libyan ordered his levied Turdetani warriors to advance and a great bellow issued from their ranks as they charged up the hillside. Dubgetious regained his place beside Amma on the fringe of riders surrounding Eshmun and turned to watch the mismatched battle unfold.
The battle, if it could be called that, was short lived. The levied Turdetani struck from the left, shields clattering against their countrymen’s and spears thrusting at living flesh. The Libyans split neatly into two blocks. From their rear came the first trumpeting calls of the war beasts the Carthaginians had brought with them from their distant lands. Emerging into sight from between hills came the swaying oliphants.
Dubgetious’ jaw dropped at the sight of them. Their flanks and chests had been hung with heavy leather embedded with polished bronze lozenges. The tusks that curved forward from either side of their trunks were capped with iron and each beast carried two warriors wielding throwing spears.
The beasts were goaded into a swift run that shook the ground as they charged through the gap left between the Libyan warriors. Dubgetious glanced at the Turdetani rebels and the mine workers. They were backing up, mouths twisted with terror. Too late, they tried to scatter before the charging beasts, but they had backed into a tight press from which there was no escape except for the fortunate few at the very rear.
The oliphants plunged into the enemy, beating men and women to the ground with tusks and trunks. Swinging their great heads in wide arcs, they scythed deep into the press of enemy warriors, leaving behind a trail of crushed bodies and tangled limbs.
Close behind the war beasts, the Libyan warriors followed through, dispatching maimed warriors and cutting down small knots that had miraculously avoided being trampled and crushed.
The oliphants crashed through the enemy ranks, obliterating any resistance. Their role completed, they turned and trundled to the rear while the warriors perched on their backs loosed the last of their spears and arrows into the remaining enemy.
The tight bundle of enemy warriors and ill-equipped workers reeled and fractured into smaller and smaller groups as they were whittled down and driven back. Workers threw down the mining tools they had armed themselves with and dropped to their knees, beseeching their attackers for their lives, but to no avail.
The short fight turned into callous butchery, warriors taunting their pitiful victims before stabbing them through. Only three small groups still stood firm. These were centred on well-armed Turdetani leading men and it was clear they would sell their lives dearly. Two of these groups were assailed by the Libyan warriors while the third fought against the Turdetani levies. This latter group was giving ground slowly, backing towards a confluence of three mine entrances that opened onto a wide terrace carved into the side of the hill by miners. It was a good position for a final stand and once they reached it the Turdetani levies’ numbers were useless as they could attack from only one direction.
The other two groups were shrinking with every heartbeat as their fatigued muscles strained to beat back spears thrust at them from every side. A final defiant scream signalled the mortal blow to the last Turdetani warrior in one group and then a bellow and crash of arms as the Libyans splintered and engulfed the second group.
Dubgetious, an eye on the third and last group who had claimed the terrace and were beating back their tribesmen, saw Eshmun nod with bored satisfaction at the success of the Libyans.
“Perhaps the leaders of this rebellion are among those that still fight. It would be good to take them alive to serve as an example.” Eshmun spoke through his coiffured beard, his voice high. “The Turdetani levies lack the stomach to kill their own kind. Tell the Libyans to finish these last stubborn few and to capture any graybeards and leading men. Then they are to withdraw from the mines and any man found with unsmelted silver on him will be whipped and he and his tent mates will forfeit half their provisions and coin owed.”
Again, Dubgetious made swiftly for the Libyan commander who was trying to rally his men, beating them with the flat of his sword until he had goaded them enough to charge.
The enemy Turdetani were pushed back to the very mouths of the mines they had liberated from Hamilcar. Others scaled the raw rock using handholds cut into it by the miners, escaping the vengeful spears of their kin and seeking refuge among mounds of loose spoil and logged timber. Still, the Turdetani rebels held and now they forced back the levied warriors.
The Libyans grinned bloody slaughter when they received the orders to round the hillside and kill yet more of the enemy. Hardened warriors, many with long seasons of battle experience, their losses had been slight while the Turdetani and mine workers they had faced had been slain
to the last.
Dubgetious trailed Eshmun and his followers who rode close behind the rear ranks of Libyans. The dejected Turdetani levies filed away, their Libyan leader swaying with fatigue and bleeding freely from numerous wounds.
The Turdetani rebels numbered a hundred standing warriors and twice as many mine workers. They jeered the retreating levies and then the oncoming Libyan warriors. Spears floated into the sky and plunged towards the Libyans who roared and closed the distance between them at a charge. They crashed into the Turdetani, blades flaying flesh and smashing bone. A bitter stink of bile and shit rolled over the hill as bellies emptied and guts were torn open.
If the oliphants were a battering ram, the Libyans were a fire that spread and engulfed the enemy. The clash of iron, splintering of wood, and rip of leather and skin rose to a crescendo and then fell away sharply. The Libyans occupied the terrace overlooked by the three mine entrances. They dragged upright any enemy warrior that could stand, bound them and sent them flailing off the edge of the terrace to be tied together. That done, they departed with wide, empty grins, supporting their injured and carrying their handful of dead.
Perfumed linen held to his nose, Eshmun led his entourage onto the corpse bedecked terrace. Dubgetious looked with curiosity at the timber framed mine entrances that led into the heart of the hill, following the trail of silver bearing ore. He rode closer and squinted into the dusty darkness, but it was impenetrable. He circled the terrace, keeping close to the raw rock walls where he could. In places, he was forced to skirt mounds of rock that had broken off the cliff side and tumbled to the terrace. This seemed to happen frequently for there were many such mounds. Dubgetious saw rocks and dirt spilling in a widening stream from the hillside above the cliff and decided staying beside the walls was a poor idea. Better to risk the blade of a warrior feigning death than be crushed by a landslide of rock.
Rise of the Spears Page 7
