Warhorn

by J Glenn Bauer

  Throughout the summer night, bloodied warriors were moved to the reserve lines and fresh contingents brought forward to bolster the depleted front line warriors. Runners flowed in a continuous train between the pavilion and the front lines. Rams were brought forward from the lumber camp where they were built. Hannibal ordered drummers to beat the great leather and wood drums throughout the night and for a phalanx of men to circle the city, blowing huge warhorns. He wanted the Saguntines to know they were coming; he wanted them to sit through the night wide-eyed and in terror. To remember the flames that had destroyed more than a third of their city and know their fate was sealed.

  Caros sat beside Alfren and told the grim warrior of what had happened. How much Alfren heard, he was not certain as the man slipped between consciousness and sleep with no rhythm.

  Neugen stepped into the tent. “Here you go. Specially brewed just for nights like this.” He passed a cup to Caros who took it gratefully and inhaled the spicy aroma.

  “What is it?”

  “Something Alugra used to have us brew up after a battle. Wine and herbs. You wake up feeling good. That is if you don’t drink more than about that much.” He laughed as Caros made a face and took a cautious sip. “Hmm, not too bad.”

  He took a longer sip as he watched Alfren who was sleeping now.

  “Looks like you are in command now.” Neugen motioned towards Alfren.

  “At least till he decides to quit taking it easy.” Caros smiled at the prone form of Alfren before downing the rest of the warm brew and rose to usher Neugen out of the tent. Starlight sparkled like a thousand spear points in the night-black sky above the pair and Caros sighed up at them. “I am in command, yes. Hannibal has confirmed it, but I would prefer that Alfren would recover.”

  A man wailed nearby, overcome by pain. There was a constant, low exhalation of fear and pain seeping from the many scattered tents. Healers and helpers scurried from tent to tent to aid the injured. They would be busy all night.

  “Have the men turned out early tomorrow to build funeral pyres. Then I want three thousand of our best warriors armoured and ready to leave for the city.”

  The following morning, the Bastetani built the funeral pyres required to cremate their dead. By midday they had built eleven huge pyres, each to receive the bodies of two hundred slain warriors. Once the bodies had been placed on the log platforms the Bastetani shuffled past in double lines to throw small objects into the banked tinder and wood. Brooches, statuettes, articles of clothing and even food were offered along with invocations to the god Saur, who ruled the land of dead and to Endovex, who ruled all.

  Caros sat his mare and watched grimly until the army had passed the pyres and formed into rough ranks downwind. He wore a new outfit he had purchased from the camp merchants that morning. A pair of red and yellow breeches of double spun flax, tied around his waist with a leather belt. Over this he wore an under tunic of good weave and a thick outer tunic of blue. He had scrubbed and cleaned the iron cuirass that morning and used the time to think about taking the city.

  “It’s time Neugen. Where is the torch?”

  Neugen beckoned to one of the mounted warriors that accompanied them and the man came forward to pass a burning torch to Caros. He rode forward and lit the oil drenched fuse at the base of the first pyre. The mare snorted and pawed the ground, sensing the presence of the dead nearby and the sputtering flames. The fire took and ate its way into the heart of the pyre until it reached the tinder that ignited with a heated gust. Caros threw a silver stater into the midst of the conflagration. He repeated the rite at each pyre until at the last he lit the fuse and threw both the torch and the silver stater into the piles of tinder.

  He then addressed the Bastetani, reminding them that of all the people in Hannibal’s great army, it was they who had held the wall the longest, had plunged deepest into the city and had bested the Saguntines and burned their outer city. When others had sunk in defeat, it was they who roared defiance at the city. For this, Hannibal had taken the greatest pride in them, for they had re-ignited the morale of his entire army. The Bastetani warriors cheered lustily, their mood was grim and they ached to crush the Saguntines once and for all.

  Caros had allowed for a meal before his contingent set off for the walls. While the warriors tore at the roasted meat and drank the ale that Caros had ordered to be issued freely, he walked among them. He called greetings to the leading men and had learned the names of many of the regular warriors as well and whenever he recognised them, he would call them by name. The men watched him with a mixture of admiration and respect. He had become their talisman. Wherever he went, the enemy fell and the Bastetani were victorious.

  Caros dismounted at the outer walls along with Neugen and the warriors that formed his command guard. He stared across the devastation, the piles of smoking ruins that had once been homes, workshops, taverns and stables. Carrion crows screamed from the air above them as they eyed the meals they had been forced to abandon amongst the wreckage. Across the landscape a thin cloud of blue smoke hung in the still air, throwing a sickly light over the ruins. A rider approached through the wisps of smoke. Caros recognized Aksel, who waved and smiled down at him.

  “My friends! I am glad to see you both well after the battle.” The Masulian swung off his mount and embraced both Caros and Neugen in turn.

  “Good to see you too, Aksel.” Caros smiled at the Masulian. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I have come to see if you left anything for the rest of the army!”

  “Oh? Well even better, I left you a whole new wall just over there.” Caros pointed.

  Neugen groaned. “Do not get him started, Aksel. You know how lousy his jests are!”

  Aksel cocked his head. “Actually, I was sent to fetch you, Caros. Hannibal has asked for you.”

  “They are up here or at the pavilion?”

  “Right around the corner. Follow me.”

  “Neugen, sort the men out with guard duty. However unlikely an attack is, I want them prepared and into the habit.”

  “Right, will do. I will get some men up on the walls as well so we do not have to rely on the Turdetani.”

  Mago and Hasdrubal sat on stone stairs while above them Hannibal and Maharbal walked along the parapet of the outer wall, studying Sagunt’s second line of defence. Massinissa stood nearby and waved a greeting to Caros. Caros greeted Hannibal’s brothers warmly and Aksel pointed to Hannibal. Caros ascended the stone stairs to the parapet. Blood had soaked into the stonework and appeared as so many dark stains.

  “Ah, Caros! Just as you said, the way is open for us to storm the inner wall.”

  “It has been a long siege. It will be good to conclude it, but the Saguntines will defend their inner wall to the death I think.” Caros responded.

  “I expect they will, but time is not on our side. We must act quickly now to bring this bloody business to an end.”

  Alerted by Hannibal’s grim tone, Caros asked, “Has there been some development?”

  Hannibal looked strained. After a moment, the General pursed his lips and replied. “There has. The Romans have stirred themselves finally and even as we speak a deputation from Rome has sailed on to Carthage.”

  Caros knew of Sagunt’s alliance with Rome and had heard the recent rumours that it was at the recommendation of arbitrators from Rome that the pro-Carthaginian faction in Sagunt be expelled or executed.

  “Let me guess, they are not happy with us laying siege to Sagunt?”

  Hannibal flashed a wide grin. “They are definitely not happy. Bomilcar alerted us the moment his ships spotted a Roman vessel approaching the coast. We detained the Roman Tribunes at the harbour, but they will have verified from their spies that we are besieging Sagunt. They left some weeks ago to stir up the issue in Carthage.”

  Caros had a sudden sense of foreboding. This was not going to end with the fall of Sagunt. The Romans were a hard and martial people who considered their fides a fundamental part of thei
r way of life. From the expressions on both Hannibal and Maharbal’s faces, they too knew the Romans would not let the attack on Sagunt go unanswered.

  “So, we fight the Romans?”

  Hannibal burst out laughing and clapped Caros on the shoulder. Caros thought the General had perhaps misunderstood him and thought he wished to battle the Romans. He had absolutely no desire to do so. Once Sagunt had fallen, he would return to his farm and raise horses, trade in the summer months and stay away from other’s battles. He said none of this though and smiled as Hannibal’s laugh died.

  “Eh, Caros you are a bright young man and will always have a place in my army, but today we put aside thoughts of war on Rome and look to finish the battle we have before us. How would you propose to end this siege quickly?”

  Caros took a deep breath. He had been thinking of this all morning as he toiled to scour his armour. The rams had done a fair job under poor conditions, but had taken far too long. They were best suited for pounding down wooden gates and palisades rather than walls of rock. Ladders were easy to make, but the cost in lives scaling the walls was immense. He had thought perhaps building towering platforms as high as the walls, might enable warriors to attack in strength. While thinking of this he had suddenly remembered a trick his father had taught him. The principle was that whenever you had a solution to a challenge, you would examine the opposite solution. It was not an easy exercise, but in this instance, he thought the resulting idea might be the perfect answer to defeating the wall. With a gleam in his eye he told Hannibal of his idea.

  Rams had been brought forward to batter the two heavy wooden gates in the second wall. These were more of a distraction value though. Under the cover of heavy lattices of woven branches and hides, men were digging trenches into the rocky ground at the foot of the second wall. Night and day, the clinking of pickaxes rang across the hill. Two hundred men toiled continuously in the trench, prising their way into the rock and foundations of the second wall.

  On standby to protect the miners, were thousands of armed warriors. The burned buildings had been flattened and cleared away to leave a vast open space on which Hannibal’s army waited for the fruits of the digging. Caros paced beside Aksel, watching the defenders throwing their infamous burning javelins at any target that presented itself. The lattices protecting the miners were often set alight by these javelins and needed constant reinforcement.

  In addition, the Saguntines had taken to launching lightning raids on the rams and the diggers. In the darkest hours they would send rope ladders over the walls and their men would hastily descend on the workers in the trench. After the first sortie on the battering rams they had been expecting such surprise attacks and were better prepared to defend the rams and the diggers. Fifty of the Saguntine warriors, smeared black with ash and carrying spears, had dropped onto the men working below the walls. The battle had been wild and bloody. The men digging had fought like cornered beasts, swinging their pickaxes at the Saguntine warriors. The sounds of battle and cries of alarm had brought Hannibal’s warriors racing to the wall and the fifty Saguntine had all been dispatched. Less than twenty miners had been killed or injured, but they were badly shaken. More warriors had been injured as they closed within range of the javelins, arrows and slingshots loosed at them by the defenders on the wall. These had clearly been waiting there in silence for exactly that opportunity.

  By the time Caros approached the wall, their own archers and slingers had begun to fire back at the defenders on the wall and the skirmish was over. In the darkness he heard a shout and then feet pounding. Spinning, he saw a shadowy figure sprinting away from the wall. It seemed that one of the attackers had escaped the slaughter and had decided to flee the city rather than die in the siege. The deserter stumbled and righted himself, but was now dragging one leg behind him. An arrow had taken him in that leg. The man tripped and then warriors were on him. In a moment it occurred to Caros they would slaughter him where he lay. While that made no difference to Caros, he realised the man may have good information on circumstances in the city. He broke into a run.

  “Hoi! Halt! Do not kill him by Runeovex or I will take your bloody hands off at the wrists!” Caros yelled. He might have been whispering for all the effect his words had. He reached the group of warriors, his own guards just behind him, and laid into them with the flat of his blade, beating his way through. Behind him, his guards manhandled the warriors back. Caros reached the prone form and was relieved to see the man curled in a ball, slowly lower his hands to peer up at him, the whites of his eyes huge in his soot-blackened face. The last words he expected to hear came from the warrior’s throat.

  “You! You live!” The man gasped in surprise.

  “What do you mean? How do you know me?” Caros shouted, his falcata held menacingly over the man’s face.

  “I know you! I swear it, please for my life, I beg you for my life.”

  Piercing the soot and skin of the man’s cheek with the tip of his blade, Caros asked again. “Speak now, what do you know of me? I have never seen your miserable hide in my life! Speak!”

  His guards formed a grim-faced circle about the pair, eyes glowering at the would-be deserter.

  “I... you do not know me, but my name is Catalon and I know you and of you. Please, what I say will enrage you, but it is useful. Something you will want to know. Give me your word not to kill me when I speak?”

  Caros was baffled and he found himself shaking with emotion. Somehow, he knew that whatever words this man spoke, they would change his life in some unalterable way. He unclenched his arm and lowered his blade away from the man’s face.

  “Very well. Upon my word, you will have your life. Now speak before I change my mind.”

  The man rose unsteadily to his knees, his hands held imploringly before him. He looked around the circle of faces and with breath whistling through a bloodied and broken nose, he began. “My kin and comrades were paid to plunder the countryside of the Bastetani. It was spring. We came across you in a village near Baria and noticed you were with another man and...” He hesitated a heartbeat as though terrified of his own words. “And a woman.”

  Caros’ blood froze in his veins and his hand clenched the falcata in a white-knuckled grip.

  The man began to weep silently and his tears cut pale lines through the black on his cheeks. “We attacked you on the road. I saw the blow to your head. Never gave you a chance, that blow would have killed almost anybody. Your friend and you fought bravely, killed one of my brothers and injured four of us. You both escaped into the dark, but we took the woman.”

  Caros wanted to tear the man’s head off his shoulders and his body was as taut as a bowstring. Caros recalled the two men he had passed in the little village while walking from the well. This man must have been one of them.

  “What did you do with the woman?” His voice came from far away and sounded like a stone on a blade.

  “She lives! I swear she still lives. I have seen her with my own eyes right here in the city! Please, you swore.”

  Caros’ vision clouded and he felt as though the world had crashed away around him. He raised his blade in fury, but he could not dishonour his word. For long heartbeats the blade quivered as though with a life of its own above the deserter. Out of nowhere, Neugen appeared. He must have heard part of the man’s testimony because when he stepped before the man, his eyes were filled with rage and his hard-jawed face was waxy.

  “For that you will pay for I have not sworn to let you live.” His words were like arrows from his mouth and he would have killed the wide-eyed warrior right then except a firm hand stayed his arm. A powerfully built guard looked apologetically at Neugen.

  “Not yet. He needs to explain about the girl. If she is held in the city, it might be that we can free her.”

  Neugen glared at the guard who stood his ground. “Yes, you are right of course. Bind him and remove him to the wall. We will be there shortly.”

  Caros let out a long breath and lowered his bl
ade. Neugen took him by the arm and silently led him to where his tent was pitched.

  Aksel had heard the news the following morning and together with Neugen, kept close to Caros who alternated between fits of rage and depression. He worried and gnawed at the idea that Ilimic was alive and captive. The thoughts of what she was enduring were burning through his mind, reducing cool reasoning to unrecognisable indecision.

  “I cannot believe it! I do not know if I even want to believe it. That she might be alive and captive in the very city we are attacking. What she must be enduring!”

  The anguish lacing Caros’ words pierced his friends’ hearts. Caros had rarely spoken of the raid or the ambush that had first taken his family and then his love. His two companions had always sensed the sadness and rage Caros kept suppressed. Now, just as they were on the verge of defeating the city of Sagunt, Caros had received this news. To them this was either the worst of tricks played by the gods or a favour. Like Caros, they did not know if this news was good or evil.

  “Caros, I cannot answer these questions. I honestly do not even want to think along those lines and I implore you to think of her as still being the very woman you loved. I urge you to request Hannibal’s aid. He can have her bought from the city. The Saguntines will surely do anything to lessen the severity of their fate.”

  “No! Not that! No one must know other than us three. Imagine her being bought like some slave and walked from the gates like a cow released from a slaughter pen with every eye in the army watching her. By Cabar’s love I could not endure that.”

  Caros stopped and stared hard at the city and Aksel recognized a look of pure hate. He did not know what more to say so remained silent beside his friend.

  As for the deserter, he was bound with chains to a stout pole and kept under guard every moment of the day. He had told them that the woman had been taken by their Commander and on returning to the city, sold to a notorious house. Caros had made the man draw map after map of the location of the house, but each one seemed more confusing than the last.