Master of Rome

by John Stack

  A sudden shriek broke the near silence and the tribune beside Scipio jumped with fright, his mount darting forward ten yards before the young man could bring it under control. Scipio scowled at the officer, a silent admonition, although he too had been startled by the sound. Panormus resembled the far bank of the Styx, a cursed place where the damned lay awaiting their passage to the inner depths of Hades. It had been forty-eight hours since the walls had been breached and the carnage was absolute. No inhabitant had been spared and the outnumbered garrison had been butchered to a man.

  Scipio had allowed the men to gorge themselves on the town, wanting to set an example to every other town in Sicily, but even he was shocked by the level of savagery to which the legionaries had descended. In his youth, when he’d served his time as a tribune, Scipio had witnessed the brutality of close-quarter fighting, the fury men displayed in battle when the instinct to survive overrode all others, and where barbarity separated the living from the slain. But never before had he seen that fury unleashed on a civilian population. Although Scipio had long since hardened his heart to the plight of his enemy, he knew that few deserved the fate meted out to the inhabitants of Panormus.

  That morning Scipio had ordered in the remainder of the Second Legion to take charge. These men, an unneeded reserve, had not taken part in the assault. They had marched through the open gate in disciplined ranks, tasked with gathering up the scattered legionaries within the walls and ensuring no enemy strong points remained. They had taken to the task with a ruthless efficiency, many of them no doubt angry that they had missed the spoils of victory, and within hours every legionary had been banished from the town, save a garrison force that now occupied a barracks near the docks.

  Scipio spurred his horse to a canter and his tribunes came up to match his pace, following the slight downhill slope that led to the docks. They quickly reached the wide expanse of beaten earth that straddled the shoreline and Scipio reined in his mount, his gaze sweeping across the bay. Nearby, a group of legionaries stood guard as Carthaginians, brought ashore from the captured trading ships, gathered up the corpses that lay about the ground, loading them on to carts to be taken outside the town walls, where they would be cremated in an effort to stave off the dreaded pestilence that followed on the heels of every battle.

  Scipio ignored them, focusing instead on the galleys anchored fifty yards from the docks. He instinctively searched for the Greek’s ship, looking for the prefect’s masthead banner; his eyes narrowed as he spotted the Orcus in the midst of the fleet. Their losses had been heavy, nineteen galleys in total, although the blockade had been a success and no enemy ships had escaped, vindicating Scipio’s decision to leave the Greek in command. He smiled coldly, remembering a story his father had told him as a child of how Dionysius II of Syracuse had demonstrated the precariousness of life by suspending a sword over the head of a retainer, held by a single horse hair. It was an appropriate image, although in this case the Greek was totally unaware of how immediate the threat was.

  He turned his back on the fleet and looked again to the town that straddled the shoreline. It was a rich prize, the Carthaginians’ main port on the northern coast, and Scipio had already dispatched instructions to his wife in Rome to hire orators to spread the news of his great victory across the entire city. From out of the corner of his eye he saw his tribunes looking at him, their expressions now edged with respect. He was no longer just their consul, he was a victorious commander; triumphantly, Scipio turned to them to reveal the next town that would fall to his sword: Lilybaeum.

  Regulus paced the floor of his room, stopping occasionally to peer out of his window to the streets of Lilybaeum many storeys below. Each time he looked, his instinct told him that something was wrong. He sensed it in every squad of soldiers he saw moving quickly through the streets of the town, or in the galleys and trading ships entering and leaving the port, all moving with undue speed, their haste signifying some crisis.

  He was living in isolation, an enforced seclusion that had begun without warning. It had been five weeks since he had returned to Lilybaeum. He had sailed from Ostia on a Roman military galley to the prearranged rendezvous on the island of Lipara, and from there the Carthaginians had escorted him back to Sicily. He had been taken immediately to see Barca, whereupon he had told the Carthaginian commander of Rome’s refusal to make peace. Initially Barca had been furious, but within a few days he had calmed down. Although his demeanour remained cold, he had continued to visit Regulus in his room, questioning him on the reasoning behind Rome’s decision.

  Three weeks before, however, Barca’s visits had stopped, and thereafter Regulus had not seen or spoken to him. In addition, the proconsul’s guards had become overtly hostile, refusing to be drawn into any conversation when they delivered his food. Regulus’s sense of foreboding had increased with each passing day.

  The sound of approaching footsteps alerted Regulus and he turned as the door was thrown open.

  ‘Barca,’ he began, but he stopped as he saw the Carthaginian’s murderous expression. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, his apprehension growing.

  Hamilcar stood rock still, anger and hatred coursing through him, finding focus in the Roman standing before him, the very enemy he had foolishly thought to parley with. As if for the first time, he saw the arrogant stance of the proconsul, the air of conceit that he had come to associate with – and loathe in – his Roman enemy.

  ‘Seize him,’ he said over his shoulder, and two guards rushed in to grab Regulus by the arms.

  ‘What is the meaning of this, Barca?’ Regulus said angrily.

  ‘Your usefulness has come to an end, Roman,’ Hamilcar said coldly, and he nodded to his soldiers, who jostled Regulus out of the room. Hamilcar followed, watching impassively as Regulus fought against the grip of his captors, shouting over his shoulder, protesting against his treatment.

  Regulus turned away from the glare of the noon sun as he was led out into a courtyard. He looked about him, all the while trying to suppress the rising fear he felt in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Barca,’ he shouted, his voice steady, hiding his fear with anger, ‘what do you mean? What’s happened?’

  Hamilcar ignored him and Regulus was led forward. He immediately saw the four spikes in the ground, each one at the corner of an invisible square. He pushed back against his captors, his feet sliding on the loose surface, but they forced him to the ground, pushing him on to his back. Rough hands spread-eagled his limbs, tying each one to a stake.

  Regulus kept his eyes shut tightly against the sun, his breath coming in shallow gasps as panic threatened to overcome him. He fought to keep the tone of his voice even, but he heard the tremor in his voice as he called out for Barca, beseeching him to explain what had happened. He sensed someone approach and stand over him, but when he tried to open his eyes to see, the glare of the sun forced them shut.

  ‘I have been blind,’ Hamilcar said slowly, ‘blind to the true nature of my enemy, into believing there could be a peace.’

  ‘There can be peace,’ Regulus said, struggling against his bonds, turning his head in Hamilcar’s direction. ‘The Senate just needs more time. I can get them to see sense—’

  ‘No,’ Hamilcar continued. ‘My eyes are open, Roman, and now I will open yours.’

  Suddenly Regulus felt hands holding his head tightly. He struggled hard, trying to twist away, but they held him fast. Terror swept through him as his eyelid was pinched and held away from his eye and he screamed in pain as the tip of a knife sliced away the thin veil of flesh, his cries reaching a higher pitch as the other eyelid too was cut away.

  His vision swirled with the blood but slowly he discerned the shadow of a man standing directly over his face. The pain from his wounds was replaced with another, more terrible agony: the intensity of the blue sky piercing his unguarded eyes.

  ‘Now your eyes are open,’ Hamilcar said vehemently, and he moved aside so that his shadow left Regulus’s face, exposing him
to the full glare of the sun.

  Regulus’s screams were terrible to hear, his face contorting in a hopeless effort to shield his eyes. The searing pain shattered the last of his self-control. His mind was overwhelmed by the agony, the white light from the brilliant sun like a flame to his eyes. His struggles intensified and he shook his head free, finally turning it away from the light, but the loss of his sight was irreversible and he wailed in blindness and pain.

  Hamilcar stood back, hardening his heart to the cries of the Roman. He thought of the man he once was, before the war had taken the better part of his mercy, and knew he could never go back. Ruthlessness was the tool of the Romans, and if Hamilcar was to defeat them he would have to stoop to their level. Regulus would be sent back to his own kind, again as a messenger, only this time to tell the Romans that there would be no more offers of peace. First, however, the proconsul would have to be made ready for the journey.

  Regulus surfaced from beneath the torrent of pain, his mind slowly regaining consciousness, his senses returning to the realization of his fate. He was no longer screaming but he called out for release, hearing the voices of the Carthaginians around him.

  He felt the first tremor in his back, a dull, rhythmic vibration as if the ground was shifting beneath him. The sensation triggered a hidden memory. Then a sudden bellow cut through the air, a horrifying sound that chased everything else from Regulus’s mind.

  He began to struggle again, the ropes tearing into his flesh as he pulled against them with all his might and his bowels voided as he screamed in absolute terror, his cries echoed by the enormous elephant. His whipped his head around to face the sound, blindness mocking his efforts to see the beast, but his other senses flooded his mind with detail: an over powering musky smell, the deep, snorting sound of breathing and the thud of each footfall. The sensations increased and Regulus realized the elephant was standing over him, his defenceless position adding to his terror. He shook his head violently as if to wake himself from his nightmare.

  Suddenly he felt a weight on his chest, a solid, immovable burden. The pressure increased, pushing the air from his lungs. He tried to regain his breath but couldn’t, his chest unable to expand, and he opened his mouth to scream a stillborn sound. His mind began to fog over and Regulus reached the very depths of his fear, sinking through it as his final reserves of air were spent; as he slipped into unconsciousness on the threshold of death, he heard the sharp crack of his ribs snapping under the weight of the elephant’s foot.

  Hamilcar nodded to the elephant handler who barked commands at the beast to withdraw, slapping it lightly on its hindquarters with a switch. The elephant moved away ponderously and Hamilcar stepped forward. Although it was an ancient form of execution, Hamilcar had never before witnessed the act, and he was both fascinated and appalled by the result. Regulus’s chest was completely staved in, every bone and organ crushed into the ground. Even to the uninitiated there could be no doubt as to how Regulus had died and Hamilcar nodded slowly. Now, the proconsul was ready to deliver his message.

  The hollow crack of timber resounded around the main deck of the Orcus as the legionaries fought with wooden training swords. They were broken into pairs, each moving independently across the deck, and Atticus’s gaze darted from one to the other, assessing their potential with an experienced eye.

  A cautionary voice breached his concentration and he looked to the four points of his ship before glancing up at Corin at the masthead. The young man’s head was turning continuously through the same circle, his gaze sweeping the horizon, oblivious to the activities on the deck. Atticus nodded in approval. There was a time the youngest member of the crew would often become fixated by what was going on beneath him, a lapse brought on by boredom and one Lucius used to angrily berate him for. Those reprimands, and experience, had quickly taught Corin, and now his keen eyesight was fixed firmly on his task.

  Atticus grasped that trust in Corin and kept it in the forefront of his thoughts, using it to assuage the doubts that had crept into his consciousness since the battle at Panormus, but the relief was fleeting and he looked anxiously to the waters ahead. The Orcus was sailing deeper and deeper into enemy waters, a course that was taking them around the northwestern tip of Sicily to the next target of Scipio’s campaign, Lilybaeum. It was the heart of the Carthaginians’ lair and, although victory lay in the Romans’ wake, Atticus had little confidence in the task ahead.

  Ten galleys had been left in Panormus as a garrison force, although four of those were heavily damaged and would require weeks of repair. The remainder sailed behind the Orcus. Atticus knew if his command were to be caught in open waters by a comparable Carthaginian force, his fleet would be annihilated. For the Romans, safety lay only in numbers, and Atticus eagerly anticipated his contact with the first half of the new fleet that he was scheduled to meet in the lee of the Aegates Islands, west of Lilybaeum.

  An angry shout caught Atticus’s attention and he looked to Baro, the second-in-command’s expression twisted with frustration as he manhandled a legionary aside to demonstrate once more the sequence of sword thrusts he was trying to teach the soldiers. Despite the seriousness of the task, Atticus smiled in sympathy. Baro’s patience had worn through after only an hour’s training, long after Atticus felt his would have lasted, and he noticed the stubborn, almost hostile, expression of the legionary that Baro was instructing.

  Atticus knew from experience that it would be a near impossible task to persuade the legionary commanders of the need to train the men in one-to-one combat, vital for a force that was going to board an enemy ship. His only hope, he believed, was to train the legionaries on the Orcus and thereafter use them to demonstrate the possibilities and effect of such training, but even this limited objective was going to be difficult to achieve.

  The younger legionaries, Atticus had observed, were eager enough to adapt, however much they hid that enthusiasm behind indifference. They were relatively new to the army and had not forgotten some of the skills of swordplay they had learned before joining the legion. The older soldiers, however, were intractable, their abilities with a gladius forged in countless battles into a smooth obelisk of instinctive manoeuvres that was near unbreakable. They had fought the same way for years, had bested many foes with the technique, and saw no reason to change, particularly to a style that mocked one of the fundamental tenets of legionary combat: the protection of closed ranks.

  Fundamental to that protection was the scutum, the long, broad shield of the legions, and the second obstacle to any transformation. Too cumbersome for boarding, the legionaries had been ordered to stack their scuta on the foredeck and take up the rounded Greek hoplon shields used by the sailing crews of the fleet. It was an exchange offensive to the legionaries, and added to the difficulties of training, as the men wielded the smaller shields as they would the larger, a fault that would be instantly exploited by a skilled Carthaginian fighter.

  As Baro spoke, Atticus glanced at Drusus, the centurion standing quietly to one side, his sword and hoplon held as Baro demonstrated, mimicking the second-in-command’s every move. As a legionary centurion, there were few better. A strict disciplinarian, he was a man of singular conviction and one of the most determined fighters Atticus had ever met. He followed orders to the letter and expected his men to do the same, the embodiment of every rigid component that was the backbone of the legions, and therein lay the essence of the problem. In single combat, rigid adherence to rules led to predictability and death, but to teach the legionaries the necessary fluidity of style meant reversing years of ingrained training.

  Looking at Drusus, Atticus felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems facing him. The sailing crews were outmatched and would need months of training in ramming techniques, and the legions were no longer able to call on their inherent indomitable strength; they would need to adapt quickly to a new style of fighting. Before the corvus had been invented, these had been exactly the problems that Atticus had faced, but back then he ha
d not been alone in trying to solve the problem.

  With Gaius’s help, he could train the sailing crews. Together they had honed the skills of the crew of the Orcus, and perhaps he could draw on the trust that Duilius assured him he had amongst the fleet captains. Maybe he could pass on to them his own belief that the only way to defeat the Carthaginians was by matching their prowess with the ram. Atticus, however, knew he had no such relationship with the legions. His link, and any trust he gained, had always been through Septimus, and although the centurion was a strong advocate of one-to-one combat training for all marines, he no longer stood at Atticus’s side, or at the head of the legionaries on board the Orcus.

  Baro was a good teacher but he was not a legionary, and it was obvious the soldiers had no faith in the new techniques. They followed his instructions because they were ordered to do so. Atticus was suddenly doubtful that even his limited approach would be successful. If he couldn’t persuade the legionaries of his own ship, how could he possibly convince others? Not for the first time, Atticus wished Septimus was on board.

  He looked to the four points of his ship again, trying to find comfort in the routine tasks of sailing, and his thoughts strayed to the Aquila and his life before he was drawn into the war with Carthage. He focused on the memory, refusing to let it go as the Orcus sped onwards.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Calix glanced at the wind-driven ripples across the surface of the water, estimating their speed, and looked to the northeastern horizon beyond the reaches of the headland, turning his face directly into the oncoming wind. It was laden with moisture, the remnants of a distant storm, and he rubbed the sheen of soft water from his face and his shaven pate.