Balas and his Huns were allotted the inland flank defence, there being no need for that on the shoreside of the advance; that was guarded by the fleet which would accompany the army and match its pace as long as they hugged the coast. Flavius brought up the rear with the remainder of the bucellarii as well as his own comitatus, these being his best troops. Gelimer had last been placed south of their landing place; being behind his main force their commander was well placed not only to protect them but to launch an immediate attack should the need arise.
They arrived at Syllectus to be greeted by a wary populace, but that caution evaporated in the face of the way the Romans behaved. Soon a delegation of the leading citizens were happy to inform Flavius that he had their full support and the first task he had for them was that these worthies should give him some indication of the methods of fighting he was likely to face.
Being non-military it could only be partial but that proved edifying. The first point established that the Vandals did not train as an army, each fighter was expected to work on his own skills but never in large bodies, more in small local detachments, and that boded well. Better still was their opinion regarding the Moors, the local rivals of the Vandals, nomads occupying the lands to the west all the way to the Pillars of Hercules and beyond, into which these northern barbarians were inclined to encroach.
The two protagonists had fought a battle not long past in which the Moors had triumphed by placing a screen of camels ahead of their army, which threw the mounted attack into disarray, the stink of camels being one equines cannot abide. They had then, from behind that screen, assailed their enemies with archery and volleys of stones fired from small ballistae, throwing the entire Vandal assault into turmoil and eventually obliging them to retire. The first lesson to be drawn from this was obvious: the Vandals would struggle against any force that could disrupt their structure, for it appeared they lacked the ability to make swift tactical changes.
With the population of Syllectus on his side these elders were happy to send out riders to gather intelligence from the cities that lay in the Roman army’s path. The reports that came back indicated that another brother of Gelimer, Ammatus, was in the capital with some five thousand effectives while the unconfirmed news was that Gelimer was hurrying north to join up with him, traversing the road between the capital and Hermione. His numbers were greater but that was yet to be established, so in essence it was a race to Carthage.
That allowed Flavius to alter his dispositions; the cavalry were to go ahead of the infantry, which he would command, keeping with him his mounted comitatus as a shock and protective force bringing up the rear until notice came that Gelimer may have reached his columns. There was no hiding the fact that this was a strategy that carried risks. The Vandals had morphed in North Africa from travelling in carts and fighting on foot into a mounted power and that was the kind of opposition the Roman infantry ever struggled to contain.
Like the Vandal messengers he would base his advance on the roads. The difficulty was that moving at the pace of a foot soldier imposed some restrictions: first there was the speed of penetration; Gelimer would not forever be in ignorance of the whereabouts of those he must fight and destroy. There would be scouts out soon if not already, so Flavius wanted any information he received to put the Roman army well ahead of where it was in total, which would form the basis of his contrary tactics.
Strung out along a highway made the infantry vulnerable but with a strong cavalry screen and the fact that he had spent so much time in training them to manoeuvre, their commander was sure by the time any enemy came upon them they would be formed up and ready to defend themselves, very likely on favourable ground chosen by their general. At that point he would send out skirmishers and archers to disrupt the Vandal preparations in order to delay any attack.
The cavalry, operating in strong flying columns, would have standing orders to retire on the position Flavius took up, which might completely surprise the enemy in the first instance. But more importantly it would unite the two arms into a formidable whole in a spot where the Romans should enjoy the advantage. To any observation on the dangers Flavius Belisarius had his response ready: war was ever carried out in a fog of uncertainty and that applied to Gelimer just as much as it applied to him.
Never one to underestimate his opponent, he knew that his enemy would be seeking to surprise him, and putting the sandal on the other foot he sought to outguess him. There was one obvious point on the old Roman maps which told Flavius danger would very likely threaten, the narrow pass at Ad Decimum, some three leagues from Carthage, a place where, if his information was accurate, success depended more on how troops were deployed than the mere numerical supremacy he was sure he enjoyed.
Could Gelimer leave his capital city undefended? To ask Ammatus to come towards him was to bring that to pass, which meant wherever battle was joined the Vandal leader must win for any other outcome would leave his capital at the mercy of the invader. But the Romans were between the two Vandal forces and Flavius could not see how they could combine without him being aware of their dispositions.
Truly war was carried out in a fog; for all his intelligence and the aid of the locals no one told the Romans that there was another road to the south by which Gelimer could join forces with his brother, other than the direct route from Hermione. That road met the main route from the coast and Leptis Magna, south of the very pass where danger threatened.
It had been the intention to draw the enemy towards him, and as was his way, fight a battle on his chosen ground. If his insistence on what amounted to a defensive tactic met with disapproval from his more fiery inferiors, that he was willing to suffer, so, on the fourth day, having found a suitable site for an encampment, on ground he knew he could defend, Flavius ordered it made secure before sending Solomon and a force of mounted foederati riding off to reconnoitre for the enemy as well as join up with John the Armenian.
Unbeknown to the man in command, battle was already being joined. Balas and his Huns were still to the west of the main force to guard its flank, albeit they had increased the distance somewhat, which brought them to the main road from Hermione to Carthage and there they encountered a force of Vandals outnumbering their six hundred by some three or four times. Sense indicated an immediate withdrawal but one of Balas’s men rode right on to top a slight mound and gazed down upon the enemy, defying them to attack.
This piece of bravado caused the Vandals to stop, either because they feared a trap or they were merely nonplussed by such behaviour and it was at that point Balas saw an opportunity. Famously fierce and sometimes uncontrollable he attacked an enemy now static, which was a bad situation for cavalry under any circumstances and deadly when they lacked the discipline to properly react.
Before the Vandals could get into any sort of defensive formation, the fast-riding Huns were peppering them with arrows just before, swords out, they got amongst them, throwing the Vandals into utter confusion. To say they acted like headless chickens was only to anticipate the fate of many who ended up as headless humans, many more being skewered or dragged from their horses by whips in the hands of riders of great skill.
The enemy were routed, many of them killed, including their leader who, it transpired, was the nephew of Gelimer. The Huns also established that, two thousand strong, they had been on their way to defend Carthage, which was a solid indication that Ammatus had left the city to join his elder brother.
The next phase of the battle was as much a mystery to Flavius Belisarius as the first; at almost the same moment at Balas was routing his enemies, John the Armenian had encountered a force of Vandals scouting forward, one clearly a high-ranking leader with a small escort of no more than thirty men, and that led to an immediate engagement. John suffered casualties, for the Vandals fought bravely and well, but for his dozen dead John could account in profit of the bodies of every man he had faced.