Fabius had guessed that as soon as they reached that point the remaining defenders would flee the ramparts and retreat into the old quarter ahead of them, to take refuge among the civilians cowering there and make a last stand. They had seen nothing of Hasdrubal since the grisly mutilation of the Roman prisoners on the walls, but Fabius could guess where he had gone. He squinted up at the temple on the Byrsa, its smoke-wreathed roof visible high above the houses, then looked back down at Brutus as he scythed his way to left and right to clear the last of the Carthaginians from the alley. Scipio held up his arm, halting the legionaries. Polybius made his way through from the rear and came alongside, his sword dripping with blood.
‘Ennius has exhausted his ammunition,’ he panted. ‘The last fireball contained green dye as a signal, and I saw it. That means the way ahead is open for you.’
Scipio wiped the sweat and blood from his face on his tunic sleeve. ‘There can be no more than a few hundred of them left.’
‘The Sacred Band?’
Scipio nodded. ‘The mercenaries are all dead or hiding. There’s no escape for those who are left. They’ll burn to death or die in the smoke.’
‘Hasdrubal?’
Scipio pointed his sword at the temple. ‘I’m sure he’s gone up there, waiting for me. For now, I’m more concerned about my legionaries. They’ve seen Brutus kill dozens, seen Hippolyta’s archers take down more, seen me kill in that alleyway. But so far most of them have spent this battle huddled under their shields.’ He took the cloth that Polybius offered, wiped his face again and jerked his head at the testudo. ‘This lot are the first legion. Some of them fought with me in Spain. They’ll be baying for blood. If I don’t give it to them, they might just take it out on us.’ He grinned at Polybius, tossing the cloth back. ‘And then you really would be writing your history book in the afterlife, wouldn’t you?’
‘Could you offer Hasdrubal terms of surrender?’ Polybius said. ‘There are hundreds, maybe thousands of civilians in that quarter. It’s where most of the surviving inhabitants of the city have sought refuge from the fires. If you unleash the legionaries, they won’t easily distinguish soldiers from civilians. It will be a massacre.’
Scipio shook his head. ‘Surrender? Hasdrubal? Not likely. And wasn’t it you who read Homer to me last night, about the fall of Troy? I don’t recall Achilles hesitating because of women and children. Rome showed Carthage mercy once before, half a century ago. This time there will be none.’
He turned round, facing his centurions and legionaries, and raised his bloody sword. ‘Men,’ he bellowed. ‘It seems that I have had all the fun. Now that’s not fair, is it?’
They bellowed back, a great roar, and Scipio grinned at them. ‘Men of the first maniple,’ he continued, ‘some of you have been with me since Spain. Some of you centurions even taught me how to fight. Old Quintus Pesco over there was once so dismayed with my pilum throwing that he promised to give me five of the best on my backside and send me to clean out the latrines. And I was his commanding officer.’
There was a roar of approval, and Scipio slapped the nearest centurion on the back, then put his hand on the man’s shoulder, looking back at the legionaries. ‘You are all my brothers. And like brothers everywhere, we love a good fight.’
There was another roar, and Scipio pointed his sword up the alleyway. ‘Over there, in those houses, are the last remaining Carthaginians, the so-called Sacred Band. Kill them all, and you will have won the greatest victory Rome has ever known. You will go home heroes, and your families will be honoured for all time. But do your job well here, and I won’t let you stay at home for long. Where we’re going after this, I promise you war and plunder like you’ve never seen before.’
Another deafening chorus rose from the men. The centurion Quintus Pesco turned to him, his voice hoarse. ‘Scipio Africanus, the men of the first legion would follow you to Hades and back. As they would have done for your grandfather.’
Scipio raised his sword and moved back against the wall of the alley, pulling Polybius with him. ‘Men, are you ready?’ he shouted. There was a huge cry, and he nodded at the centurions, who angled their shields forward from the testudo formation and raised their swords, followed by the legionaries. Scipio pointed his sword forward and bellowed. ‘Do your worst!’
* * *
Ten minutes later, Fabius and Scipio walked into the cloud of dust that had been left by the advancing legionaries, entering a storm of death like nothing Fabius had seen before. The narrow alleys of the old quarter were strewn with flickering patches of fire, some of it consuming the timbers of houses where the fireballs had impacted half an hour before. In the dust the glowing naphtha made a nightmarish sight, as if they were walking again into the burning fumeroles of the Phlegraean Fields, only this time the fire was man-made. The air was filled with the an acrid smell of burning, and with the stench from a place where people had lived confined together for months with little food and hardly any water for sanitation; each narrow house had its own rainwater cistern, and they had seen lower down in the city that they were nearly all empty.
For a few minutes after the legionaries had gone on ahead there had been a terrible din of shrieking and yelling, a noise that had come from further away as the soldiers had moved forward; now the place was eerily quiet, punctuated only by the sound of soldiers kicking around inside the houses looking for loot, and the occasional grunt as a wounded Carthaginian was finished off. Corpses lay everywhere: soldiers of the Sacred Band with their polished armour, most of them mere boys; mercenaries who had stripped off theirs in a futile attempt to escape recognition, but been hacked down anyway; old men and women, even children, all caught up in the slaughter. To clear the streets the legionaries were hauling bodies off to either side and dumping them in the cisterns, filling them to the brim so that limbs and torsos were visible poking out, some still twitching. The legionaries had been incensed by the terrible scenes of their comrades being mutilated, and they had spared nobody. Fabius knew the inevitable reckoning of war, but this was beyond any rampage he had seen before.
He followed Scipio as he picked his way through the bodies and headed to the foot of the Byrsa. Silently, the legionaries they passed joined them, their swords dripping with blood, until most of the maniple had rallied again under their centurions. Polybius came up and stood beside him, wiping the blood off his face. ‘We’re at the temple steps. The city is nearly taken.’
Fabius passed Scipio a skin of water that a legionary had brought up to them. He gulped it down gratefully, then raised the skin above his head to let the water pour over his face. He passed it back, and wiped his forehead against his tunic sleeve. Fabius was conscious for the first time of his own rasping breathing, coming short and fast, and he tried to calm himself. The noise of battle had abated all round the city; he heard only the occasional shriek and cry, the sounds of falling masonry as the fires took hold, the stomping and whinnying of horses, the heavy breathing and marching of a thousand legionaries crammed into the streets behind. Even Brutus had stopped, a few paces away to the right, panting like a bear, the bloody point of his scimitar resting on the lower step that led up to the temple. The whole army was waiting, watching to see what Scipio would do next.
Fabius peered through the smoke towards the top of the steps. The Carthaginian army had been annihilated, but he knew there were still people up there, cowering in the temple precinct. He remembered the little boy he had watched mounting the steps in the Tophet less than an hour before, Hasdrubal’s own son. He knew the man himself would be up there now, waiting for them. It was as if the temple were another altar and Hasdrubal was orchestrating the ceremony, forcing Scipio to mount the steps as if he himself were a participant in some final, apocalyptic scene of sacrifice.
Fabius sensed the army behind him, shifting, restless. He took a deep breath, tasting the acrid reek of smoke, the coppery tang of blood, feeling his veins engorge. He remembered what the old centurion had taught them. Scipio must n
ot let his men see him hesitate. Fabius watched him grip his sword and look at Polybius, and then at Brutus. ‘Let’s finish it,’ he growled.
He began to run up the steps, sword in hand, his armour clanking, swerving to avoid the burning patches of naphtha from Ennius’ fireballs. Fabius followed, and he could hear Polybius and Brutus behind him, and the mass of legionaries surging forward to the base of the steps. He pounded forward, his teeth bared, every muscle and sinew in his body straining, the sweat spraying off his face. Time seemed to slow down, as if the weight of history were pulling him back, a history that had denied this day to Rome for so long. Then he was over the final step and on the temple platform, crouched in readiness with his sword forward, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, hearing only the pounding of blood in his ears. He was beside Scipio, and could only see eight or ten paces ahead; the temple was obscured by a billowing plume of smoke that rolled off the platform to the north to join the pall that hid the city streets, making the group at the temple seem cut off and on their own, invisible to the thousands of legionaries below as they confronted the final nemesis of Carthage.
Polybius and Brutus came up on either side of him, breathing hard, catching their breath. ‘I can feel heat, coming from ahead,’ Polybius panted. ‘The temple must be on fire.’
‘I see nobody,’ Brutus growled, looking around.
‘He’s here,’ Scipio said under his breath. ‘Trust me. Keep alert.’
The four men stood in a semi-circle, their backs to the stairs, their swords held out as they stared into the smoke. Gulussa and Hippolyta joined them silently on either side, Gulussa with his whip coiled in readiness and Hippolyta with her bow drawn, a barbed arrow pulled back. They waited, hearing nothing, not moving. And then a sudden gust of wind blew the smoke aside and revealed the temple, its great stone columns soaring into the air some fifty paces ahead. Polybius had been right, but it was not the fireballs that had caused the heat. The temple was packed around with bundles of olive branches, just as the Tophet sanctuary had been. Hasdrubal had planned the suicide of his own city down to the last detail. Flames licked at the bundles between the columns, a crackling and hissing that soon became a roar. The doorway to the inner sanctum beyond the columns looked like the entrance to a furnace, an orange-red glow where the fire had already consumed the wood that had been rammed inside. Fabius put his hand up to shield his eyes, feeling the heat scorch his arm. He remembered being shown the place in the Phlegraean Fields where Aeneas had descended into the underworld. That had required imagination to envisage, but this needed none. This looked like the entrance to Hades.
The wind gusted again and he saw Hasdrubal, no more than twenty paces away to the left of the temple, a torch burning in a metal holder beside him. He was still wearing his lionskin, but it was smeared with blood; he stood with his feet planted firmly apart. Beside him was a woman with crudely cropped hair, her scalp blotched and bleeding and her clothing in rags, stooping over two small children. Hasdrubal held her by the nape of her neck and pushed her forward, his face contorted with rage and grief.
‘Scipio Aemilianus,’ he bellowed, his voice hoarse. ‘Look what you have done.’ He pulled the woman’s head up with his other hand to reveal her face. Fabius stared, and reeled. Even on this day of bloodletting, when he had watched their own legionaries being horribly mutilated on the parapet, he was not prepared to see a woman like this. Her eyes were gone, the sockets empty and red, the blood dripping down her face and spattering on the stone slabs in front of her. Fabius remembered the piercing shriek he had heard after the little boy had been sacrificed. This was the boy’s mother, Hasdrubal’s wife, and those were her other children. In her anguish she had not only ripped her clothes, and cut her scalp. She had torn out her own eyes.
Hasdrubal leaned forward, saying something to her, and then steered her between the two children, placing their hands in hers. He turned them towards the burning entrance to the temple. He pushed, and she stumbled, and then she started to run, dragging the children along. She shrieked as she passed through the columns with her children still beside her, their little bodies erupting like torches as they disappeared in the flames, and then they were gone.
Hasdrubal crouched forward, his huge arms bent in front of him, his fists clenched, and roared like a beast. He stayed there for a few moments, panting, staring at Scipio. Then he reached back and picked up a pottery amphora that had been lying behind him, smashed its neck and raised it up, his biceps bulging as he poured oil over his head, over the lion’s mane, until it was dripping and glistening. He tossed the pot aside, and then grasped the burning torch from the holder beside him. With both hands outstretched, he turned towards the mountain of Bou Kornine to the east, its twin peaks just visible over the pall of smoke, and closed his eyes. Then he turned back towards Scipio, roared again and dipped his head into the flaming torch, igniting his beard and the lion skin in a blast of burning oil.
Fabius again seemed to see movements happening slowly, as if in a dream. Hasdrubal crouched down, the flames sizzling over his head, his mouth wide open, the torch held out. He turned towards the temple and began to run, his huge legs pounding the stones, the flames from his head rising high above him as he picked up speed, a human torch rushing to join his wife and children in the underworld. At the last moment the torch tumbled from his hand and he disappeared into the burning temple, fire joining fire, and was gone from sight.
They all stood transfixed for a moment, staring.
‘It is finished,’ Brutus growled.
Polybius put a grimy hand on Scipio’s shoulder. ‘Thus ends Carthage.’
Scipio wiped the sweat from his eyes, blinking hard, still staring at the temple that had become a funeral pyre. Gulussa came up beside him, put one foot on the tip of his whip and shook the handle, lowering it as the whip coiled round into a tight bundle. He picked it up, stowed it into a pouch on his belt and sniffed the air, shading his eyes and peering to the south. ‘I can taste the desert in the wind,’ he said. ‘We should be wary of staying here too long. The wind is picking up and will carry with it much dust, and will fan the flames below.’
Polybius walked a few steps over to the north edge of the platform, and came back with a look of concern on his face. ‘It’s worse than that,’ he said. ‘Ennius warned me that the substance in his fireballs burns with such intensity that when the fires join together they create their own wind, and that in turn feeds the flames. The houses are mostly built of stone and mud brick, but the frames are timber and the fires are already leaping from house to house. When they reach the old quarter below us with all those bodies for fuel, the fire will burn even more ferociously. Ennius calls it a firestorm, and that’s what’s happening now. Our soldiers will have to be content with looting what they can find as they leave. We don’t have much time.’
Fabius glanced beyond the blackened façade of the temple and saw what he meant. It was a different kind of wind, a sucking, swirling motion in the smoke that seemed to tumble down the side of the platform like a whirlpool. Where it disappeared he could see a red glow in the city street as intense as the glow inside the temple; the leading edge of the fire was advancing along the street at frightening speed, engulfing more and more buildings as it went. Scipio turned to Gulussa and Hippolyta. ‘Go down and order the trumpeters to sound the retreat. The legions must evacuate the city immediately, marching back to the harbours. Send messages to Ennius and the naval commander to draw all ships further offshore. Brutus, join them.’
‘There are horses from my cavalry without riders after the fighting,’ Hippolyta said. ‘I will find mounts for us.’
‘Go now,’ Scipio said. Fabius watched them rush down the steps, leaving only Polybius and Scipio by his side. He looked at the firestorm. Carthage would destroy itself, just as its leader had destroyed himself and his people. He turned to Polybius. ‘I remember what you once read to me from Homer’s Iliad, the words of the goddess Athena. The day shall come when sacred T
roy will fall, and king and people shall perish all.’
Polybius looked at the scene of devastation in front of them, and then at Scipio. ‘But the fall of Carthage owes nothing to the utterances of a god. It was a Roman feat of arms, and the feat of not just one Scipio, but two. Today, your grandfather can rest easy in Elysium. When I come to write my history of this war, people will forget about Achilles and Troy and will instead read about the two generals named Scipio Africanus, and the fall of Carthage.’
Scipio raised an eyebrow at his friend. ‘If I ever give you time to write it.’
‘The war is over, my friend.’
Scipio said nothing, but looked across the sea to the northeast. Fabius followed his gaze, trying to read his thoughts. This war is over. Some day soon, perhaps already, another city would fall, the final Greek stronghold of Corinth, and Metellus would stand on that acropolis too, scanning the devastation and feeling the same rush in his veins as he stared into the future.
Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage Page 31
