Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (10 page)

The route march had been bad enough, but it had been punctuated by an experience that was etched in Fabius' memory. On the Appian Way a few miles outside Rome, beyond the family tomb of the Scipiones, they had come across a line of wooden crucifixes being set up on the edge of the road. There had been a slave revolt in a travertine quarry to the east of the city, and the culprits were paying the penalty. They had seen the progression of death by crucifixion as they marched alongside, from those nearest the city who had been hoisted up first to the ones being set up that day: from the grey dangling corpses to the men still struggling for breath, their eyes wide open with fear, no longer with the strength in their arms to hold their chests up and prevent themselves from drowning in their own fluids, their legs and the post below streaked with faeces and urine and blood.

Gaius Paullus had turned away and retched, and the old centurion had pounced on him, pulling him up by the collar of his tunic and snarling into his face. ‘You can fight all the wars you want in the dioramas and sandpits of the academy. But you will never fight a real war unless you learn to love the sight of death. Breathe it all in. Learn to relish it. Otherwise you may as well go back and join the spotty youths in the Forum learning oratory and social niceties. Give me a girl like Julia in my legion any day over any of them.' He had dragged Gaius Paullus along to the front of the line of crucifixes, stripped him of his load and spoken with the centurion commanding the execution party, who had gladly handed over the hammer and nails and ropes to the boys to carry on with the job. They had spent the next several hours hoisting and nailing prisoners to the crosses, enduring their writhing attempts to break free and the screams of pain as they knocked the foot-long spikes through their wrists and feet. Fabius had been sickened and knew that Scipio felt the same too, but there was nothing they could do to ease the agony for the prisoners; many were muscular giants captured in the Macedonian wars who should have been recruited as mercenaries to fight for Rome instead of being wasted in the quarries – another failing of Roman policy that Scipio Africanus had railed against but which for now they could do nothing to change.

At the end, Scipio and Gaius Paullus had stood in front of Petraeus while he addressed them. ‘I want you to become tribunes whom I would serve under,' he had said. ‘That's what Scipio Africanus told me to make of the students in the academy. Make them or break them, he said. And if I break you, you'll feel the pain and the shame for all your lives. So you'd better learn what I'm telling you now. One day you are going to have to order men to be executed, some of them superb warriors like these slaves, some of them men you have fought alongside and loved like brothers. You will have to be able to do it in front of their comrades, without flinching, and without mercy. Now get back to the road, pick up those sacks of rocks and march. You've got thirty seconds or you'll feel the lick of my whip.'

*   *   *

Fabius followed Scipio and Gaius Paullus down the rocky path into the crater, followed by Petraeus. Somewhere ahead of them in the smoke lay the Sibyl's cave, and near that the crack in the earth that was said to lead to the underworld. As they reached the bottom of the slope they passed fissures stained yellow that reeked of sulphur, just like Ennius' concoction in the academy. The base of the crater was an expanse of glassy rock as flat as a lake, wreathed in smoke that swirled up and obscured the sun, making the way ahead seem dark and forbidding. At the edge of the crater the rock bulged up in forms that looked like half-finished giants, borne of the earth but trapped in the rock before they could fully emerge. Polybius had told Fabius how he had been high up the volcano in Sicily and seen bulbous shapes like these as they were being formed, solidified from rivers of molten rock. He had said that the Phlegraean Fields truly were an entrance to the underworld, a place where the rock they stood on was a mere crust over the fiery chaos within, but that it was an entrance to Hades only inasmuch as those who lingered too long near the smoke or slipped into the molten streams were certain to die. Out of earshot of Petraeus he had said that those who came here were deluded, people whose desperation to know the future or to meet the shade of a loved one had tricked them into seeing visions, their minds fogged by the fumes and by the intoxicating leaf that the servants of the Sibyl burned on her fire; it was a leaf that Polybius himself knew was not some special gift of the gods but had been shipped from India by way of Alexandria, along with the drug known as
lachryma papaveris,
poppy tears. It was said that the priests of the Sibyl gave out these drugs freely to any of those who came to see her, and that those who brought gold were given especially large doses and were the ones who kept coming back for more, some of them wealthy aristocrats who had moved their homes from Rome to Neapolis and nearby Cumae just to be close to the source of the drugs that had begun to consume their minds.

Fabius caught sight of human forms huddled behind the rocks, staring at them. These were not aristocrats but were people who had fallen away from society, emaciated forms with faces and hands blackened by the smoke. It was said that they included a sect of Jews who believed that one day their god would come to them in this place; most, though, were escaped slaves and other fugitives from the law, those at the end of their tether who had come to spend their final days here before the fumes overcame them, hoping for some kind of salvation. One of them scurried up now, a filthy wretch clothed only in a loincloth, his eyes glazed over as if drunk, gesticulating wildly and pointing down a line of rocks laid across the floor of the crater. Scipio tossed him a coin and he scurried away, and then stopped and looked back at Petraeus for confirmation. He nodded, pointing forward, and they turned and made their way along the line of rocks, their feet crunching on the glassy surface of the crater. Fabius could feel the heat underneath and was glad for the thickness of his sandals, but Gaius Paullus was hopping and grimacing, the leather of his sandals smouldering. After what seemed an age they came to the other side of the crater and a tumble of rock that had fallen from the rim, in the middle of which was a jagged black hole the size of a temple entrance; in front was a hearth, tended by two black-robed forms who disappeared among the rocks as soon as they came close.

They had reached the cave of the Sibyl. They made their way up a well-worn path towards the hearth, the rocks smoothed by the countless supplicants who had clambered this way before. A few paces from the hearth they stopped, smelling the sweet odour that rose from the embers, and stared into the yawning blackness beyond. ‘They say she's three hundred generations old,' Gaius Paullus whispered, staring in awe. ‘They say she was old before Aeneas stood here, and is now so shrunken and wizened that she hangs in a little cage in the darkness, fed and tended by her priests like a pet monkey.'

‘Be careful what you say,' Petraeus growled. ‘The god Apollo himself will hear you, and mete out his punishment.' He turned to Scipio. ‘Her attendants have seen you, and she knows you are here. You must go forward alone into the cave.'

Scipio gave Fabius a wry look, took a deep breath and strode forward, walking around the hearth and disappearing out of sight into the blackness beyond. For a few minutes there was silence, and Fabius tensed, hating to see Scipio go out of his sight. And then a strange noise issued from the cave, indiscernible, like the muffled sound of a priest's incantation in the back
cella
of a temple. A few moments later Scipio reappeared, stumbling towards them, his face flushed and running with sweat. He passed the hearth and then turned back to peer at the cave, breathing heavily.

‘Did you see her?' Gaius Paullus whispered, his voice tremulous.

‘I don't know.' Scipio's voice was hoarse with the smoke, and he passed his hand over his face, leaning with the other on Fabius for support. ‘The fumes from the hearth were very strong, a sweetness that made me feel light-headed. It must be the weed that Polybius warned of. I'm not sure what I saw, but there might have been something in the darkness, hanging there, and I felt an exhalation that wafted the leaves over the fire, making them crackle and burn. When that happened there was a voice, a deep voice but that of a woman, ancient and cackling. I nearly fainted when I heard it.'

‘Well,' Gaius Paullus asked, his voice hushed, ‘what did she say?'

Scipio shook his head. ‘I'm not sure. It was a verse, a riddle. All that I heard was this:
The eagle and the sun shall unite, and in their union shall lie the future of Rome.
'

‘What on earth can that mean?'

Fabius led Scipio back down a few steps to where Petraeus had been waiting for them, and thought hard. ‘If the eagle means Metellus and the sun represents the Scipiones, then your joint destiny is to take Rome forward.'

‘Metellus in the east, Scipio in the west,' Petraeus growled. ‘That's what the Sibyl foretold when Scipio Africanus and I came here all those years ago. She said that one with the name Scipio would conquer Carthage and have the world at his feet.'

‘It cannot be me, then,' Scipio said, pushing Fabius away, stumbling against the rocks and then standing without assistance, blinking in a shaft of sunlight that came through the smoke. ‘The Senate is too cautious to declare war, and Carthage will remain unfinished business.'

‘Maybe for now, but war with Carthage is possible within our lifetimes,' Gaius Paullus said cautiously.

Scipio took a swig of water from the skin that Fabius had offered him. ‘How can you know this?'

‘The day that we left Rome I spent the morning in the Forum. It began as a rumour among the people, and then became a murmur in the Senate, and then a clamour that drowned out all debate, until the consuls ordered the guard to unsheathe their swords to shut everybody up. And then Cato stood up to the rostrum and said the words that had been on everyone's lips.'

The centurion stared at him. ‘Out with it, man.'

Gaius Paullus swallowed hard.
‘Carthago delenda est.'

In the silence that followed, Fabius looked up and saw a crow flying high across the sky, just as his father had told him he had twice seen before sailing to war. Scipio turned to Gaius Paullus and repeated the words, his voice hoarse now with emotion. ‘
Carthago delenda est.
Carthage must be destroyed.'

The centurion fixed Scipio in his gaze, his eyes gleaming with a fire that Fabius had not seen in them before. ‘Almost fifty years ago I stood with your adoptive grandfather at this very spot, when war was in the offing. Eighteen years later we stood before the walls of Carthage, battle-hardened, watching Hannibal crawl before us, pleading for peace. Then, the Senate baulked at issuing the final order. Now, you are a new breed of men, and when those of you who live to see the day stand in front of those walls yourselves, there will be no appeasement, no mercy to the vanquished. That much I have taught you in the academy. There will be much preparation, and much hardship, and I myself will not live to see it. But I will die happy, knowing that the job will at last be finished.'

Gaius Paullus stood at attention, staring straight ahead, the toll of the last few days showing on his face. Scipio straightened and slapped his right hand on his chest, his voice still clenched with emotion. ‘You can depend on us, centurion.'

Just as they were about to turn and leave, the sound of a horse's hooves came clattering from the crater, and a rider wearing an official messenger's gold-rimmed tunic and neck gorget came into view. He dismounted, holding the horse's bridle as it stomped and snorted in the fumes, and came up to them. ‘Gnaeus Petraeus Atinus, holder of the
corona obsidionalis,
I have news from the Senate. The war against King Perseus of Macedon is heading for a decisive battle. Lucius Aemilius Paullus has requested a further call to arms. The Senate has authorized the raising of another legion.'

Fabius' heart began to pound. He looked towards Scipio, seeing his eyes suddenly gleam. The messenger turned to Scipio. ‘Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, your father requests that you be appointed a temporary military tribune on his staff. Gaius Aemilius Paullus, you are appointed temporary tribune to be second in command of the third maniple of the new legion. And Fabius Petronius Secundus, as your eighteenth birthday has passed, you are to be a legionary and standard-bearer of the first cohort of the first legion, on the special recommendation of
primipilus
Gnaeus Petraeus Atinus.'

Fabius felt a surge of excitement and glanced at the centurion, who nodded curtly. Petraeus must have put in a word for him in Rome before they left. He must have known that the call to arms would come before their journey was over. That was what this trip had really been about, preparing them for this moment. Scipio stood up and spoke. ‘So this is it. Our time in the academy is finished.'

The centurion placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Now you must prove yourselves in blood. You must learn to kill like legionaries, winning the respect of the toughest soldiers the world has ever known. I do not know what the words of the Sibyl mean. But I do know this. Your right to order legionaries into battle must be earned. Then, you can heed the call of Cato and lead a Roman army back to Carthage.'

‘And today, centurion?'

‘Today, you march to war.'

PART TWO