Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

12

Half an hour later, the Roman assault force was drawn up inside the wall, some four hundred strong, arraigned in a line three deep that stretched along a frontage of some five hundred yards. Scipio and Fabius stood a few yards ahead of the line, the primipilus of the fabri beside them, while Ennius remained with a reserve of one hundred men on the wall where he could also look back down towards their camp and direct the fire of their solitary catapult.

Their plan to mount a pre-emptive assault had been overtaken by the Celtiberians, who had clearly been watching intently and had sallied forth from their palisade as soon as they saw the legionaries begin to form up. They were there now, perhaps three hundred of them, bellowing defiance, solitary piercing yells that joined and rose steadily to a roar, a straggling line about a thousand feet from the Romans in a field that dropped from both lines of soldiers down a slight slope towards a strip of flat ground in the centre, some five hundred feet from where Fabius was standing.

He felt the heft of his sword, weighing it in his hand. He and Scipio had first whetted their blades with Celtiberian blood a week before when they had charged through the breach and taken the wall, and now the battle-lust was coursing through him again, and he was yearning for more. It was time.

Scipio turned towards the primipilus, and then to him. He raised his sword, and his mouth opened in a snarl. For a few seconds all that Fabius could hear was the pounding of the blood in his ears, and then he was bounding forward, running as fast as he could towards the charging Celtiberians, his sword raised, yelling at the top of his voice.

He could see the centre of the field more clearly now: a strip of level ground about thirty feet across where the two slopes converged. There were pools of standing water left by the recent rains, and patches of mottled ground where the mud showed through. It was a natural feature, an area of boggy ground that would normally have been covered by grass, but something that could have been protected and maintained to give the illusion of continuous firm ground. In that instant Fabius realized that there was something wrong. It was a trap. The Celtiberians may have been reduced by hunger and exhaustion, but what had seemed a desperate, disorganized charge had in fact been a ploy, duping the Romans into thinking that they could be met halfway and easily destroyed. They were being drawn into a killing ground, just as he and Scipio had once goaded an enraged water buffalo into a dried-up watercourse that was liquid mud beneath, leaving the beast trapped and wallowing and easy prey to their spears. If they carried on unchecked, the legionaries would become enmired in the same way, thrown into disarray and distracted by the need to stay upright — moments in which they would take their eyes off the enemy and the Celtiberians would have the advantage.

Fabius knew that the Celtiberian chieftain would be watching them with eagle eyes; if Fabius tried to stop the legionaries now, showing that he had spotted the trap, the chieftain would also halt the momentum of his own charge. But Fabius could play them at their own game: he must lead them into thinking that the Romans were going headlong into the morass, ignorant of its dangers. He sprinted further ahead, running as fast as he could, holding his sword high. The Celtiberians were like a foaming floodtide surging down the slope, swords and limbs waving, muddy water spattering above them like spindrift flecking the crest of a raging surf. Fabius was less than a hundred feet away from the mud now, and he counted the seconds. One. Two. Three. He suddenly stopped and turned, staggering sideways to regain his balance, and bellowed as loud as he could: ‘Halt! Hold the line!’

The primipilus of the fabri saw and understood and repeated the command, and it was conveyed down the line by the centurions and optios on either side. In a few seconds the entire Roman force had come to a shuddering halt, on firm ground on the very edge of the mire.

The centurions bawled another order: ‘Defensive positions.’ The leading men squatted down and drove the base of the pila into the ground, angling them forward towards the enemy and grasping them firmly with both hands. Between them the next line of men held their pila at the horizontal, tightening up to present a bristling wall of spears, their legs planted apart and flexed to withstand the coming onslaught. Behind them the third line stood with their pila poised to throw and their swords drawn, ready to cut down any who made it through.

Scipio had caught up with Fabius and they both stood ahead of the line, panting hard, every muscle in their bodies tense, swords held hard. Fabius’ calculation had worked: it was too late for the Celtiberians to stop. Their chieftain could only stir his men up even further, to increase the momentum of the attack so that they might make it through the mire before it bogged them down.

The centurions bawled again: ‘Steady! Hold your positions!’ The lines of pila seemed to quiver in unison, shaken by the thunderous approach of the enemy. Individual warriors could be made out more clearly now as they hurtled down the slope, the swifter ones running ahead screaming and waving their shields, then discarding them so that they could sprint even faster. Some were wearing old Corinthian helmets and Roman cuirasses taken in past battles, others nothing more than rough woollen tunics, but all of them held javelins or the curved double-edged Celtiberian sword. The shrieks and screams became a steady roar again, pummelling Fabius’ ears, and as they neared the mud he could feel a chill on his face, as if the war god were sweeping in his chariot down across the mire and brushing them with the cold wind of death.

He could barely breathe. He gripped his sword as tight as he could, trying to keep his nerve. Then the first warrior flew into the mud, slipped forward and lunged wildly, running straight into one of the pila a few feet to Fabius’ left, breaking it as the tip passed through his neck and falling in a spray of blood. Another followed, and then another, each of them speared and then hacked to death by the rear line of legionaries. A javelin narrowly missed Scipio but struck the upper thigh of the primipilus, severing the artery and causing blood to gush out in a pulsing fountain, soaking Scipio and Fabius. The primipilus fell with a grunt, his hand pressing on the wound, and his place was taken by the second centurion of the cohort, who turned and bellowed at the rear line of legionaries. ‘Make ready with your pila.’ He watched for the main mass of Celtiberians to reach the mud, and then bellowed again: ‘Let fly.’ The pila swished through the air over Fabius like arrows, some of them bouncing off armour, but others finding their mark, bringing down dozens of warriors in a tumbling pile that tripped up many who came behind. The whole mass seemed to slide forward across the mud and crumple against the Roman line, the warriors writhing and shrieking as the legionaries hacked to death any who had not been killed by the pila of the front line.

Fabius felt his heart race. The time had come to go forward. Scipio roared, and plunged into the morass. The front two lines of legionaries dropped their pila and followed, swords drawn. Then Fabius was in the mire himself, slogging ahead with mud up to his knees, hacking and stabbing. A Celtiberian with braided red hair flew at him just as he was withdrawing his sword from a body, and he slashed upwards with all his might, catching the man under the chin and slicing his entire jaw off through to his forehead, leaving a mass of blood and mucus and brain where his face had been. The man fell with a shriek and Fabius lurched forward, thrusting his sword into another man’s head and then slashing the tip across an exposed neck, the jugulars exploding in a sheen of blood that sprayed over his face and into his eyes. He blinked hard, slashing his sword blindly, and as his vision cleared he saw that the legionaries had already moved forward, following Scipio as he ploughed through the slew of mud and blood towards the far slope.

Suddenly a horn blew, a deep, resonating sound, not a Roman trumpet, but from somewhere in the Celtiberian lines. The warrior Fabius had been stalking quickly backed off, and he saw others do the same to his right and left. The legionaries who had surged forward to engage the enemy were left reeling and panting, staring at the retreating Celtiberians, some of them red-faced and spitting and others pale with the shock of combat. It had lasted for only a few minutes, but dozens of bodies lay jumbled in the mud, most of them Celtiberian but the glint of Roman armour visible here and there among them. Fabius felt his left hand, noticing for the first time that it was sliced across with a sword cut, and then looked up again. The centurions were bawling down the line, ordering the men who had gone forward to return to firm ground, and those who had stayed in the line to tighten up and take up their pila again, in readiness for another onslaught.

But instead a single warrior came forward, an older man with flowing grey-flecked hair who had not yet taken part in the combat, his armour and weapons still gleaming and clean. He was wearing a muscled cuirass that looked Etruscan, and his helmet was like the Greek ones that Fabius had seen carved on the Parthenon in Athens. He remembered that many of the Celtiberians had served as mercenaries during times of peace at home, fighting for Carthage in the last war, and that battle scars and looted armour were all the pay they wanted. This man was not old enough to have served Carthage, but he could have been among the mercenaries on the Macedonian side at Pydna; his left eye socket was empty and he had a livid weal across his face that must have been caused by a savage blow decades ago, when he was a young man. Behind him an emaciated boy held the great curved cow horn that had signalled the retreat. Fabius realized that the man must be the chieftain. He had stopped at the edge of the mud, resplendent in his armour, his feet planted apart in defiance, looking at the Romans and then focusing his gaze on Scipio, who was standing dripping in the mud a stone’s throw away and watching him intently

The man pointed at him. ‘You are Scipio,’ he bellowed hoarsely, speaking in heavily accented Latin. ‘My grandfather fought a Scipio at Cannae, and now I will fight a Scipio at Intercatia.’

‘Do you challenge me?’ Scipio bellowed back.

‘On my command my warriors will return and fight to the death, and many more Romans will die. Or the contest can be finished with a single combat.’

‘What are your terms?’

‘That my men should be allowed to leave their arms and go free, that the woman and children of Intercatia should be left unmolested with their remaining houses unburned, and that they should be fed. I have heard that the word of a Scipio is a word of honour. Is that so?’

Scipio squinted up at him. ‘It is so.’

‘Do you give me your word?’

‘I give you my word.’

‘Then let the contest begin.’ He dropped his shield, shoved his sword into the ground and removed his helmet, taking a thong offered to him by the boy and tying his hair back. The boy undid his cuirass and took it from him. He was wearing nothing beneath it except his kilt, revealing a torso that had once been finely muscled but was now showing his age, the scars of many wars standing out as red weals against his pale skin. Scipio stripped off his own armour as the chieftain picked up his sword and limped towards the mud, dragging one leg behind him. Fabius could see why the man had not joined the melee earlier: he would have found it virtually impossible to stand upright. As his warriors closed up in a semi-circle behind him, Fabius sensed that they had done this before, watching duels for honour and women and power in this very place, contests that the chieftain in his younger years had undoubtedly walked away from many times victorious. This time it would be different. The contest with Scipio could only have one outcome, and they all knew it. The terms did not even allow for the chieftain’s victory, and if it came to it he could not afford to deal Scipio a death blow; if he did so it could only result in the Roman soldiers going on a rampage and massacring his people, whose future therefore depended on Scipio surviving and keeping his word. The chieftain was sacrificing himself for his women and children, in a time-honoured fashion that would also leave his warriors satisfied that honour had been done and their own rituals observed.

Fabius turned and looked at Scipio, at his hardened torso and his sword held ready by his side, his face grim and emotionless. He could guess the thoughts that were running through his mind. As boys they had dreamed of war as glorious contest, as battles between armies and warriors where the best fights were the most evenly matched, not just for Rome and glory but tests of manhood where the victor could walk away uplifted by killing an opponent who could as easily have won the day. But the reality of war was rarely like that. It was uneven, and messy. There might be honour in Scipio’s word, in his fides, but there would be no glory for him in this fight. Scipio was doing what he had to do to allow the enemy warriors to walk away with dignity, a decision that might make them more likely to be Rome’s allies in future, and to save his legionaries from dying unnecessarily. But this would be little more than an execution, the chieftain’s fate as certain as the deaths of the deserters they had watched being mauled by lions at the triumphal games after the Battle of Pydna. After years of yearning to return to war, Scipio was in at the ugly end, and Fabius knew he would be steeling himself to show utter resolve in what he had to do.

He knew that Scipio would not sham a fight, that he would respect the old warrior’s pride by fighting him man to man with his full strength for however long it lasted. The chieftain limped into the mud and stood a few feet from Scipio, his legs apart and his sword held in front of him with both hands, the blade down. Scipio nodded, and the man suddenly swung his blade like a scythe in front of Scipio’s chest, nicking the skin and making him fall back, staggering slightly. The man still had strength in his arms and a lifetime’s skill with the Celtiberian sword, its slashing blade longer than the Roman gladius but less versatile at close quarters. His weakness lay in his poor mobility, and Scipio was going to have to get around him and under the arc of the blade, deflecting it and going for a thrust. Scipio edged forward, crouched down this time with his sword held at the ready, just raising it in time to parry another vicious sweep by the chieftain that nearly sent Scipio’s gladius flying. He backed off again and crouched lower, suddenly springing to the side and catching the chieftain off-balance as he tried to twist his body round to confront him. Scipio darted in and thrust his sword hard into the man’s good leg, pulling it out of the calf just in time to avoid another sweeping blow. The man shifted, nearly toppling over, the mud beneath him shiny with fresh blood from the wound, steaming on the cool ground.

The chieftain had shown his skill and courage in front of his warriors, but now they would expect no more. At the next swing Scipio parried the blade, deflecting it, and then leapt forward and this time thrust his own blade into the man’s abdomen, running him through to the hilt and then holding him close, swaying together with him in the mud. The chieftain retched, throwing up yellow bile streaked with blood, and then Scipio pushed him back and heaved the sword up and down, slicing open a huge wound from the man’s pelvis to his ribcage. He withdrew the sword and the chieftain fell back, staggering and twisting, and as he did so the wound gaped open and his intestines spilled out, blue and red and steaming, dripping with blood. He looked down with his one eye, his face sheet-white, his expression uncomprehending. His intestines had dropped in a loop to the ground and he tripped over them, sprawling forward and then raising himself on his knees, scooping them up with his hands in the mud and trying to put them back inside.

Fabius looked at Scipio. It was time to finish it. Scipio dropped his sword and fell on the chieftain’s back, flattening him and holding him there, pushing his head into the liquid mud. The man coughed and spluttered and then suddenly heaved upwards in a last show of strength, tossing Scipio off his back and staggering to his feet, his arms held out and his head high, bellowing something towards the sky. He saw his sword in the mud and staggered towards it, trailing his insides behind him. Scipio leapt back and pushed him down again, this time not trying to drown him but holding his head tightly in an armlock. The man knew what he was trying to do and resisted, his neck and head held rigid against the pressure. Then he gave way, his energy spent. In that instant Scipio twisted the head sharply sideways, and the body suddenly went limp. Scipio pulled up the chieftain’s head by his hair, knelt back and then severed it with a single swipe of his sword, holding it high for a moment so that all could see and then dropping it into the mud.

Fabius felt light-headed, as if he had forgotten to breathe. He relaxed, and then inhaled deeply. It was over.

Scipio got up on his knees, then to his feet, staggering backwards and almost falling again. He was covered from head to foot in blood. He reached down to a muddy pool beside the chieftain’s body and splashed his face, and then caught a cloth tossed to him by one of the fabri. He wiped his eyes and then turned to face the Celtiberian warriors, who still stood in a semi-circle, silent and watching. For a few moments nothing happened, and Fabius let his hand drop to the hilt of his sword again. Then the warriors began to drop their weapons and turn back up the hill, where the entrance to the palisade was open and the women and children stood outside, also witness to the fight. Scipio remained where he was standing until the last of them had gone, and then he turned and made his way out of the mud, his feet squelching and slipping until he reached firm ground. The legionary who had given him the cloth gave him a wineskin, and he tipped it up and drank gratefully, and then shut his eyes as he poured the wine over his face and his neck, letting it drip to the ground. He wiped his face again, passed the skin back and looked at Fabius. His eyes were hard, burning with fervour. He scanned the legionaries, and raised his right arm. ‘Men, gather round.’ The legionaries came closer, forming a circle around him, several hundred exhausted and mud-spattered men. Within the space the second centurion was hunched over the body of the primipilus, laying his sword across his chest. Fabius stared at him, his mind blank. It had been less than fifteen minutes since the primipilus had taken the javelin thrust to his leg, yet it seemed almost too far back in time to remember.

Scipio raised his hand in salute. ‘You have fought hard and with honour today, against a worthy enemy whom we will honour in defeat by allowing the surviving warriors to return unharmed to their families.’ He turned towards the body on the ground, and the second centurion. ‘To the primipilus, ave atque vale. To the new primipilus, you are a worthy successor. To all who fell here today, we will meet again in Elysium.’ He turned to Fabius, and put a bloody hand on his shoulder, his eyes gleaming. ‘And to the legionary Fabius Petronius Secundus, you have earned the insignia of a centurion. The promotion is for Ennius to give as commander of our force, but he was watching from the walls and will have seen you in action this day. By spotting the danger and stopping our advance when you did, you won the battle for us and saved many Roman lives.’

There was a ragged cheer of approval from the legionaries. Fabius turned to Scipio. ‘You have earned the esteem of your men, Scipio Aemilianus. No legionary forgets a commander who fights an enemy chieftain in single combat.’

Scipio wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked around the assembled legionaries. ‘One day, one day soon, I may lead an army. Will you men be my personal guard? I can’t promise you booty. But I can promise you glory. And for those of you who are fabri, I can promise you plenty of digging and building and siege works.’

The new primipilus stood at attention. ‘We know your destiny, Scipio Aemilianus. We know where you will lead your army. And we will follow you anywhere, in this world or the next.’

Scipio nodded, and slapped him on the shoulder too. ‘Good. And now I think there is a cartload of Falernian wine sitting down below, sent ahead of the legion to be ready for Lucullus’ headquarters staff. I think they might just discover that the cart was in an accident and the amphorae smashed, don’t you think? But make sure you dilute it with plenty of water from the river. We need to remain clear-headed for funerary rites for our fallen comrades, and to build a pyre high enough to send them to their rightful place alongside the war god himself. Only then, when the fire is lit, can we let the wine flow freely and let ourselves go.’