Masters of the Sea - Master of Rome (19 page)

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 had 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-toone 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.

C
alix 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.

The course of the wind had not changed in the two days since Calix’s galley, the
Ares
, had arrived on station in the Aegates Islands and, as he looked to the sun, he calculated that if it remained steady for another two hours, this day would also be wasted. The realization did not bother him. He was a patient man. Although he had been told his task was urgent, he was apathetic. A lifetime at his trade had given him an intimate knowledge of the winds and tides around this part of the Mediterranean, and he knew above all else that they could not be changed by any man’s desire or supplication. He would wait, at ease in the knowledge that if he did not depart today, then there was always tomorrow. Either way he would reach his destination.

He was known as ‘the Rhodian’, a label he had not created himself, but one he had nonetheless allowed to spread. Normally, in his business, it was unwise to become recognizable. Anonymity was a significant ally, but he had discovered that notoriety also had its benefits, and chief amongst them was that his clients had become increasingly important, men with considerable resources who were uncompromising in their demands and therefore only hired those that they perceived to be the best.

It was true that Calix was from Rhodes, as were his ancestors, although he had spent the better part of his early life on Ithaca. There, from the age of seven, he had been apprenticed to the captain of a bireme, a trader who had quickly discovered that his Greek protégé had innate sailing skills that surpassed any he had ever known. At seventeen, Calix was a seasoned boatswain, and he had moved to Syracuse to work for one of the larger trading houses. Again his skills had singled him out, and within three years he had been promoted to captain, a rank he held over the many years he spent sailing the coastal waters of Sicily and beyond to the outer shores of the Mediterranean.

Syracuse was a trading hub for the entire Mediterranean and, in a city where there were few secrets, Calix’s skills were widely known and respected. This simple fame led to his first contract, some years before, an unsolicited offer by a man to take him to the then Carthaginian-held city of Agrigentum at night. The gathering clouds of war were on the horizon, and Calix suspected the man was Roman, for why else the subterfuge? He had been poised to refuse him when the Roman produced the gold he was willing to pay for the simple task. For one night’s work, it was more money than Calix earned in six months working for the trading house, and his refusal died in the twinkling light of gold coins.

He was scheduled to take cargo to Agrigentum, a fact he suspected the Roman already knew, and so he sailed as planned with his passenger on board. He had lingered on the journey, laying off Camarina until nightfall and entering the port under the cover of darkness. It was a difficult task, but Calix knew the approaches intimately and his skills were equal to the challenge. He had dropped off his passenger after midnight and then patiently awaited the dawn to unload his cargo, his presence unnoticed on the busy docks, another vaguely familiar bireme that had been seen in Agrigentum many times.

Over the following years, the escalating conflict between Rome and Carthage had increased the opportunities for profit, and Calix had become adept at exploiting them. He soon outgrew the need for the cover provided by the trading house and purchased his own bireme, changing his usual cargo of cloth and grain for weapons and agents. All his initial contracts had come from the Romans, unfamiliar as they were with Sicilian waters and lacking any skilled crews of their own, but Calix had soon found work with the Carthaginians too, the Punici recognizing the unique advantage of stealth that an anonymous trading galley possessed.

He was loyal only to his profit, and smuggling cargo rapidly gave way to skirmishing and even piracy as each side in the conflict became more embittered against their enemy. His reputation as a mercenary grew and he commissioned his own ship, the
Ares
, specially designed and built by the finest ship-wrights of Greece and manned by a select crew. With his new ship, stealth was no longer his weapon, but speed and agility.

He pursued only the most lucrative of contracts, and so, a week before, when he was approached by a member of the Council of Carthage, he had quickly accepted the task, ensuring that the price was commensurate with the risk.

Just then Calix sensed a slackening of the wind and ordered his crew to stand ready. They moved quickly and within minutes the
Ares
was poised to sail. The galley became still again, each man turning their faces to the wind, trying to judge the eddy and flow, the steadfast breeze teetering on the edge of change. The wind shifted suddenly, swinging wildly to the west before reverting back to its original course, and then again to the new heading, stubbornly hanging on until it became steady once more. Calix smiled. He could not have asked for better timing and he looked to the falling sun behind him. He nodded to the helmsman and his gesture was seen by every officer on board, who issued their orders almost as one, the fluidity of command bringing the
Ares
up to standard speed within a ship length, its course now firmly fixed for the besieged city of Lilybaeum.

Septimus wiped the sweat from his face as he looked to the fading sun. The glare stung his eyes but he continued to stare, savouring the sight of its slow demise, knowing his day was almost complete. He turned back to his men and barked an order, his voice as hard as it had been at dawn, neatly hiding the weariness he felt, seeing that same exhaustion in the faces of his men.

They had arrived at Lilybaeum two weeks before and again their task was almost complete, with four new siege towers standing resolute before the walls of Lilybaeum, silently observing their prey. They had been constructed at a faster pace, utilizing the remnants of the towers at Panormus, but again the work had been carried out by the Ninth. The Second had been awarded a battle honour for their assault on Panormus, with the Ninth mentioned only in dispatches, an injustice Septimus had brushed aside, persuading his newer recruits to do the same. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that the deeds of men in battle were overlooked.

The speed of construction had also been augmented by the men’s eagerness to complete the siege. Panormus had been surrounded by pasture land and tillage, solid ground with good drainage, ideal for siege lines and the necessary congregation of so many men in semi-permanent camps. At Lilybaeum, however, the confluence of two streams behind the town walls had created a marshy swamp that girdled the walls and, although it was late summer and weeks before the arrival of the autumn rains, the ground was soggy underfoot and at dusk huge swarms of mosquitoes rose up to torment the legionaries.

The men of Septimus’s maniple complained bitterly under their breath each evening as they slapped the exposed flesh of their bodies, waging a constant battle against the tiny insects. Septimus let them moan, knowing it was better that they should vent their frustration, but all the while his own worries mounted. He knew nothing of the mysteries of pestilence, why some men escaped while others were fated to be struck down, and, of those, how Pluto decided which men would succumb to death and which would recover. But Septimus was well aware, as were many others, of the deadly plagues that dwelled in the toxic vapours of marshes. Years before he had fought in the battle of Agrigentum, a Roman-led siege where the legions themselves had been besieged by a relief army, and for weeks they had been imprisoned on marshy ground between the outer walls of the town and a line of contravallation. Casualties quickly mounted, not from blades and arrows but from pestilence, and Septimus remembered how roll call each morning quickly became a butcher’s bill of men who had breathed their last during the dark hours of night.

The memory caused Septimus unconsciously to hold his own breath, and he coughed as he finally inhaled the warm, fetid air into his lungs. It tasted of the deep muskiness of earth, and he suddenly craved the clean, salt-laden air that swept over the deck of the
Orcus
. He had not thought of that life in days, and he was surprised, as before, what triggered his memories. He recalled how he had at first hated that raw sea air, the cool wind that blew perpetually across the exposed galley, but now, as he filled his lungs with the humid air of the marsh, he missed the unsullied air of the sea.

He brushed the memory aside, suddenly angry at himself. That life was behind him now and to think of it fondly was a weakness that undermined his loyalty to the Ninth. His future lay with the IV maniple, not with the marines, and he forced his mind to focus on his command.

He looked to the siege towers, their wheels buried to the axle in the soft ground. They would be ready in less than three days and Septimus muttered a prayer to Mars that Scipio would grant the Ninth the honour of leading the assault. He knew, however, that it was a forlorn hope. The Ninth was a newly formed legion. The Second was the veteran formation. They had taken Panormus, even if in reality the ragged charge of the Ninth had pushed them over the battlements, and they would lead the assault again. The Ninth would watch from a distance and, as Septimus kneaded the hilt of his sword, he wondered if he would get a chance to draw his blade in the battle for Lilybaeum.

Hamilcar looked over the shoulder of the engineer seated in front of him, trying to read the tiny script of the annotations, but he could not, and so he concentrated on the sketch itself. He glanced out over the battlements to the Roman siege towers four hundred yards away, beyond effective arrow range. The engineer’s sketches were impressive, considering the distance, and Hamilcar questioned him on some of the details, knowing the engineer was using his judgement to draw what he could not see. He nodded slowly as the explanation was given, looking again to the siege towers, wondering when they would be ready.

The Romans’ ability to build effective siege engines was one of their military strengths, and to have siege towers constructed within sight was an opportunity Hamilcar could not allow to pass. The Carthaginian army had little knowledge of such modern technology and normally relied solely on time to force a besieged town to capitulate. The Romans had appropriated the design of the Carthaginian quinquereme. Perhaps Hamilcar could return the gesture by constructing siege engines of Roman design for his army. Panormus had fallen to such devices, and although Lilybaeum had more complex and stronger defences, Hamilcar knew that – should the infernal towers be brought to bear against the city walls – the outcome could not be predicted with any certainty. That was why Hamilcar had already put his plan of defence in motion and why the sketch of the towers was important.

Hamilcar looked at the sea beyond the harbour of Lilybaeum. He could see the blockade fleet of the Romans, their galleys moving slowly across his view. The width of the bay, and its unique approaches, had removed both the ability and the need for the enemy to form an unbroken blockade line, and so they were concentrated on the flanks, with smaller squadrons sailing continuously back and forth across the bay. Their numbers had been estimated at one hundred and fifty, a figure that had surprised and troubled Hamilcar, as he had thought their fleet to be a fraction of that number. Reports from Panormus spoke of a blockade fleet of seventy ships. He had surmised that some of them were destroyed in the ensuing battle in the harbour, and so expected only the remnants to arrive at Lilybaeum.

At first he had thought that many more Roman galleys had survived the storm after the battle of Cape Hermaeum, but then he began to hear disturbing rumours, second-hand reports from traders, that the Romans had constructed a massive new fleet north of Rome. He had dismissed the rumours out of hand, but then he had received confirmed reports that the bulk of the ships blockading Lilybaeum were part of a Roman fleet, over a hundred strong, that had been seen sailing southwest past Lipara towards the Aegates Islands weeks before.

The report had staggered him. What manner of men were these Romans that they possessed such self-belief, that they could endure the loss of so many ships and men and rebuild again so quickly. Their confidence and commitment to the war seemed indomitable and Hamilcar wondered if the Romans stood in awe of any men or gods. He thought of Carthage, how its forces were divided across two fronts, fully committed to neither, its political leaders split into competing factions, while the Romans stood squarely behind a single purpose.

Hamilcar had resolutely brushed his doubts aside. Others might believe that Carthage’s destiny lay elsewhere, but he was fully committed to the war against Rome, and to that end he was determined that Lilybaeum would not fall. With the arrival of a larger Roman fleet the odds had changed, but the foundation of Hamilcar’s defensive plan remained solid.

Weeks before, when the first reports confirmed the Roman encirclement of Panormus, Hamilcar had quickly dispatched a galley to Carthage carrying two requests to his father. The first of these was for men, land forces, to strengthen the garrison, preferably Carthaginians if he could procure them from Hanno’s army or, failing that, the mercenaries they had discussed. Hasdrubal had reacted quickly and, within three weeks, as the walls of Panormus were falling, a fleet of twenty transport ships arrived in Lilybaeum carrying two thousand Greek mercenaries and a message from Hasdrubal that he was pursuing the second request.

Hamilcar had then turned his attention to the sea; before the Roman fleet had arrived, he had ordered his own Gadir fleet north to the port of Drepana to avoid the stranglehold of the blockade. There they remained, over one hundred and twenty galleys, poised in readiness and awaiting his arrival. He had wanted to sail with them, but he had remained in Lilybaeum to finalize the city’s defences and oversee the operation he had devised for the Greek mercenaries, an attack that would buy him time and allow him to complete his plan.