The Seven Hills

by John Maddox Roberts

  In order of rank, the officers filed from the platform. Norbanus watched them rejoin their units, saw the men stand and take up their shields and pila. He savored the moment. This was where he would lay the foundations for his future. Up until now, he had built a reputation, first as a daring commander, then as a victorious general. Here, on this field, he would establish his true greatness. And he would do it by eschewing glory for once.

  By the time the sun was high, Hamilcar had his own observation and command platform erected. It was not as high as the rather Spartan Roman construction, but it was far more splendid. Its fine wood was richly carved and inlaid with ivory and shell. It was draped with beautiful cloth and adorned with bronze tripods in which burned incense to fend off the disagreeable smells of battle. His own throne, and the slightly lower throne of Queen Teuta, were covered with the skins of rare animals. At the shofet's right hand stood an altar consecrated to the gods of Carthage.

  Hamilcar had performed all the prayers and sacrifices; he had seen to the final dispositions of his troops, and now he was ready to observe the battle and enjoy the pleasures of victory.

  Opposite him, on the far side of the stream, the Roman army was thinly stretched, grown attenuated as Norbanus extended his line to avoid outflanking. It only thinned at the center, where his own troops would punch through by their sheer weight.

  "Why," Hamilcar mused, "did this man Norbanus choose such an exposed field? I have studied the old Roman tactics, you know. In the old days, a Roman commander, faced with an enemy so much larger, would anchor his flanks with a swamp or a rocky hill or other terrain that would make it difficult for the enemy to flank him. That way he could achieve maximum depth all along his line of battle. I think Norbanus is overrated."

  "I don't doubt he fancies he has a surprise for us," Teuta said, "though I can't imagine what it might be."

  "No matter." Hamilcar stood, a resplendent sight in his golden armor and crown-shaped helmet. An attendant handed him a golden spear and Hamilcar held it high, then slowly lowered it until it pointed toward the center of the Roman line.

  The horns brayed and the drums thundered and an enormous shout rose from the huge army. With a great surge, it began to advance toward the enemy. In front of the rest, the missile troops went forth at a run, singing tribal war songs. The Romans stayed where they were. The missile troops ran into the stream and began to flounder across.

  Teuta felt the first feathery touch of apprehension along her spine. "That stream is deeper than it looks."

  Hamilcar shrugged. "As long as it is fordable, that means nothing."

  The missile troops halted before the Roman lines and began raining arrows, javelins and lead sling-bullets among them. The Romans replied by raising their customary shield roof. The more lightly equipped Gauls and Spaniards suffered more, but most of them obeyed Norbanus's instructions and stayed in place. A few high-spirited warriors ran out and attacked on their own, to little effect.

  "This is tedious," Hamilcar complained, watching the missiles fall upon the shields. As far as he could see, not a single Roman had been harmed.

  "Let them keep up their fire," Teuta advised. "Their arms have to get tired. Soon gaps will appear and the arrows will get through."

  "No, I've seen them practice this formation before, outside Carthage and in the siege at Alexandria. It would take too long. I will send my army in and finish this." He nodded to an officer, who called out to the trumpeters, and the call went out from them for the missile troops and skirmishers to fall back. These men scrambled to find gaps for themselves to fade back within the advancing ranks.

  Now the shield roof came down and the Roman legions began to advance, very slowly and deliberately, keeping their lines strictly dressed, in what was almost a parade-ground maneuver. The cavalry force rode to the right flank next to the Greek-Macedonian block and, strangely, halted there, keeping up with the advance at a walking pace. Hamiicar's lead regiments entered the stream and trudged across, many stumbling, some falling, thrashing briefly as the men behind trod them under.

  On the eastern side of the stream they paused to dress their lines. At this point the Roman army had halted, foot and horse, barely fifty paces away. The Romans stood in utter calm, making no war cries, sounding no trumpets; neither did they wave weapons aloft. Only at their southern flank was there any uproar, for the Gauls and Spaniards had a noisy way of displaying their warrior spirit, and they did not depart from it now. Their countrymen in Hamilcar's army made similar demonstration.

  Their order restored, Hamilcar's men advanced at the double-quick, and so many of them were of warrior races that soon they were half-running. When twenty paces separated the two armies, the arms of the first three Roman ranks rocked back as one, then shot forward. The terrible, heavy, viciously barbed pila arched briefly skyward, then plunged downward with awful force, sending men tumbling, skewered, pierced, bleeding, to the ground. Men had their shields nailed to their bodies, their bodies pinned to the ground. So tightly were the men packed that scarcely a Roman spear failed to kill or wound an enemy soldier. The weight of the heavy javelin at such close range carried it through armor, helmet or shield. Even when a shield was stout enough to resist the weapon, it could not be dislodged, forcing its bearer to abandon it and fight henceforth unprotected.

  For crucial moments the attack faltered as men fell and others tripped over the fallen. Shaken but confident and valiant, Hamilcar's men reordered themselves and prepared another charge. But the men behind them, still crossing the stream and unaware of what was happening ahead, pressed forward. Hamilcar's army grew very dense. Men were still waiting to step into the stream, the bottom of which was being churned to a deep, clinging mud.

  Maddened, the bloodied warriors charged again. But during the lull, slaves and rear-rankers had passed more pila forward. Again, the arms of the first three ranks went back, shot forward and again men tumbled like wheat before the scythe. Slowed, many hurled lighter javelins of their own, but these were easily fended off by the large, heavy Roman shields.

  After a shorter pause, the massive army resumed its advance and a third volley of pila fell among them. Now the front lines were barely twenty feet apart, but so many corpses and writhing, wounded men littering the ground slowed the advance to a crawl. Still, their anger and the terrible pressure from behind drove Hamilcar's men on.

  Teuta was filled with a terrible apprehension. What sort of fighting was this? The army before them, small as it was, was like some sort of terrible machine. In moments she had seen thousands of men go down before the simple but devastating Roman javelin. And then it happened again and yet again and the mad rush was stalled, and the Romans had hardly lost a man yet. Now she saw the glitter all along the Roman lines as thousands of their short swords, worn so strangely on the right hip instead of the left, were drawn in a singular, upward-and-forward motion. Instantly, distracted though she was, she knew the reason for the strange carry and draw. The man is not hindered by his shield and his draw does not disturb the men to either side. These people think of everything.

  And still the men were crossing the stream, churning the ground on the far side to mud, crowding the ranks against one another. The army was losing cohesion and turning into a mob. She looked north and saw that Norbanus's small cavalry force was confining its activities to keeping the much larger Carthaginian force from flanking the Greek contingent.

  "Hamilcar," she said, her voice sounding hoarse in her own ears. "Stop your men from crossing the water. They can do no good and the pressure over there will not let up until the Romans begin to retreat."

  The shofet just looked annoyed. "They will break very soon. Look, I am already victorious on the south."

  She looked that way and indeed the Gauls there were being driven back in confusion by the orderly lines of the Greeks and the Macedonians. Soon they would flank the Romans at that end and roll up the line. This looked encouraging, but a nagging thought assailed her: He knowingly left his south end w
eak and vulnerable. He did not take the city and port to the south. The road south is wide open. What can this mean?

  Then she was appalled to see Hamilcar order his reserve regiments across the stream, into the center. "Shofet! You tire your men to no cause!"

  "That will be enough, woman!" he snapped. "They are engaged all along the front now. Soon the weight of my army will crush them underfoot!"

  Frustrated, she sat and watched. It occurred to her that Hamilcar had not studied his battles as closely as he thought. His ancestor, Hannibal, had once won a battle something like this: beating a larger army with a smaller. That was Cannae, his greatest victory. She was sure that Norbanus was using some form of the Cannae strategy, but the battles were so dissimilar that she could not understand what he intended.

  She did see, plainly, that the Romans were not distressed by the vaunted "weight" of Hamilcar's army. Only the men of the front lines could engage actively. The Romans had a well-drilled maneuver by which, every few minutes, the front-line men stepped back and those behind them stepped forward, keeping fresh, untired men at the fighting line. If the rear men of Hamilcar's army pushed, they merely drove the front-line men into the Roman swords. At intervals, more of the murderous pila would arch out above the heads of the legionaries and plunge into the struggling' mass of Hamilcar's men.

  She saw men detach from the rear of the Roman formation, form a neat, orderly rectangle and march to the southern end of the Roman line, there to form a thickened, south-facing line just as Hamilcar's Greeks had their flanking maneuver almost concluded. The Gauls, caught between the two forces, were slaughtered. But the Roman line held. They inflicted few casualties on the orderly Greeks, but the phalanx was stymied.

  Teuta stood and paced before the glowering shofet. She saw how long her shadow had grown and turned to look at the sun. She was amazed to see how low it stood in the west. To the north she saw a new movement. The block of Norbanus's Greek-Macedonian phalanx was moving, pushing against the lightly armored Iberians, shoving them back, spearing them, striding over their bodies. Already, men were breaking away from the battle, frustrated at being unable to come to grips with the Romans, unable to take heads and win glory. Slowly, a step at a time, the Greeks were cutting themselves a strong position at Hamilcar's left flank.

  "Look!" she said, grasping the shofet by the shoulder and shaking him. "You are being flanked!"

  He shook off her hand. "They can accomplish nothing! There are not enough of them."

  She knew now that Hamilcar was seeing only the ideal battle in his head, the battle that he wanted to see. Immediately, she determined to extricate her men from this disaster. Hamilcar did not even glance in her direction as she walked to the rear of the platform and leapt upon her horse. Her bodyguard rode behind her as she pelted northward, toward the cavalry action. Beside her rode her standard-bearer. Atop a long pole he bore a golden dragon, its long, waving tail a silken tube that filled with air as he galloped, making the queen conspicuous to her men.

  She rode through thousands of wounded men, seeking to put distance between themselves and the battle. She saw that not all were wounded. Idly, she axed a few of these deserters down when they strayed too near. She did not plan to stay on this field, but neither was she deserting. She knew when it was time to withdraw an army to fight another day.

  She found her men engaging the Roman cavalry. They were greatly frustrated that the smaller Roman force refused to engage them in a mass and obligingly allow themselves to be slaughtered. Teuta shouted and her trumpeter sounded his horn, and swiftly, the Illyrian horsemen rallied to their queen's banner.

  "Come with me!" she yelled to them. "You are needed in the south!" Without question they obeyed, ignoring the dismayed cries and jeers of the other cavalry. They followed their queen, not some foreign king. They cared nothing for his hired lackeys and their fate.

  While they assembled, she studied the progress of the battle. The Greeks at this end were now at the stream, able to spear with contemptuous ease the men still trying to cross. When their enemy gave up and ceased trying to cross, the Greeks raised their spears upright, then performed an elegant left-facing maneuver and lowered their spears once again. This time the formation, and its spears, faced south. Then the Greeks began their slow, inexorable push.

  They have us, boxed! she thought. There is no way out but south. Now she could see what Norbanus intended. Why he was doing it remained a mystery. With her men behind her, she made a wide half circle around the now-disintegrating army. Whole units were pulling away and retreating to the west, unwilling to cross the stream into what was now nothing more than a slaughter yard. With just a few more men, he could have bagged this whole army, she realized. Yet another doubt assailed her on this day full of doubts. She had a suspicion that the utter destruction of the Carthaginian army and its shofet was the last thing Norbanus wanted. But why?

  She found Hamilcar pacing on his platform. His face was worried, his glance straying every few seconds to the city on the southern horizon. She dismounted and climbed to the carpeted deck. "Hamilcar," she said quietly. "It is time to go. You are doing nothing to harm them. You still have the bulk of your army. Break off and retreat. Fight this man somewhere else, some other time. You won't beat him here, today, no matter how many men you sacrifice."

  "It cannot be!" he cried. "He has a paltry little army and I have a great host. He should be at my feet begging for his life!"

  "That is not going to happen. If you stay here, he will grind all your men to blood sausage and then it will be your turn to beg. Get away from here, now!"

  Abruptly, his face went slack. "How did this happen?" he said with little expression.

  "You allowed him first to destroy the army of Mastanabal, that otherwise would have been here this day, making you truly invincible. You allowed Norbanus to choose the time and the ground for this battle, then you gave him all the time he needed to make his preparations." She saw no reason for merciful words. Now she was sure that she had chosen the wrong man. Perhaps that could be rectified. In the meantime, it was up to her to salvage what she could from this debacle.

  He said nothing for a while, then: "You are wise. I should have listened to you."

  She nodded. Perhaps he was beginning to show some sense.

  "But that cannot be all of it," he said further. "I must have offended the gods in some fashion. When I return to Carthage, I shall order a Tophet. The children of the highest families of Carthage shall be sacrificed in the fires of Baal-Hammon."

  She rolled her eyes. Like every other man who could not face the reality of his own failure, he was passing responsibility to the gods. "Then let us go now. Back the way we came. The Romans will pause here to loot your camp. With your men reorganized, we can make a fighting retreat."

  "No," Hamilcar said. "Do you not see that the way south is unimpeded? My fleet is in the harbor of Cartago Nova. We will take ship from there."

  "Notice?" she said, frustrated. "I've been noticing it all day! He left Cartago Nova untouched! He put his weakest forces on his south flank, opposite.your strongest! His Macedonian phalanx is pressing your men southward! In the name of all the gods, Hamilcar, can't you see when you are being herded?" She all but screamed the last word.

  Oddly, he took no offense at her tone. He pointed to the mass of Gauls and Iberians now trudging westward, away from the battlefield. "Those men will regain their spirit and their senses soon. It will occur to them that they can curry favor with Rome by attacking us. It will be that way all the long road to the Strait of Hercules. I can rely only on my Greek professionals, and I do not have enough of them."

  She calmed herself. His words were not without sense. At least that was something. "Very well. But we don't wait and try to defend Cartago Nova. He's already thought of that and has something planned. I don't care about the rest of your army. I want my men and their horses embarked on the first transports, along with you and me. We don't wait for the rest of the army to go. We leave as so
on as we're aboard. The rest can follow, if they can contrive to. You can raise another army when we get to Carthage."

  A dusty, bloody man climbed the steps to the platform. It was Euximenes, the commander of the Greeks. "Shofet," he said, "we've won our part of the field, but everywhere else is chaos. My men are in good order and haven't taken many casualties. Let us get you out of here. There is no time to waste." He looked back and forth between the two, as if unsure where his orders were to come from.

  "Prepare a retreat to Cartago Nova, Commander," Hamilcar said, sounding firm and decisive again.

  "Then if Your Majesties will come with me, you'll be safest among my men."

  The two mounted, and surrounded by Hamilcar's honor guard and Teuta's Illyrians, they crossed the stream and joined the solid, orderly mass of the Greek-Macedonian mercenaries. The officers called their orders, and the standards waved and the trumpets sounded. They turned southward and walked away from the field. Behind them, the survivors of the army followed them, some throwing away shields and stripping off armor to move more easily. Far in their rear, the other phalanx kept up its steady pressure. The Roman legions had not advanced a step from the battle line they had established at the outset of the fight.

  Atop his own high tower, Norbanus watched them go. His highest officers stood with him. Although they understood everything that had happened, they were still amazed.

  "General, we could still bag the lot and finish this," Cato said, his fingers working feverishly on his sword grip.

  "Finish what?" said Norbanus. "Finish this battle? It is finished. Killing every man out there, including Hamilcar, would not finish the war. Another war, perhaps, but not this one, because we have sword to destroy Carthage utterly and Carthage still stands. That is why we will now invest Cartago Nova, but we will not hinder his escape."