"These are the signs of conquest, of mastery," Roxana said.
"But there is another," said Glaphyra, sweeping a gilded fingernail over a line of symbols that he thought resembled Egyptian picture writing and might as well have been, for all he could make of them.
"Another?" Norbanus said.
"Yes," Glaphyra informed him. "There is another, lesser person, born near you, with signs that are similar but not as propitious. He bears the attributes of envy and jealousy. He will be your enemy all your days."
"But you are the greater," Roxana assured him. "You will always prevail."
Scipio, he thought. It must be Marcus Scipio.
"You see," Glaphyra said, "how your sign entered the House of the Lion. Alexander's did the same. It meant that he was to take mastery of a foreign civilization and make it greater than ever before. Born in barbarous Macedon, he took up the cause of glorious Greece and spread its culture throughout the world."
And my forbears were Gauls and Germans, he thought. But it is my destiny to make Rome master of the world. It is true. It all fits. They are not frauds. How could they know this otherwise?
"What do the stars say of Manasseh?" Tamar asked. "A battle of kings is in the offing. Surely there are signs."
"The squabbling of petty monarchs are little noted in the stars," Glaphyra said, smiling. "Not like the fortunes of one such as Titus Norbanus."
"Indeed," Tamar said through gritted teeth.
Norbanus decided that he would have to keep these two close to him from now on. He would need to consult with them frequently. No doubt he could work something out with Jonathan, along with the business of Manasseh's horses.
Never forgetting, he reminded himself, that they were still a pair of scheming bitches.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The walls of Syracuse were formidable but, Scaeva thought, they could have been a far more daunting prospect. Carthage had seized the city almost one hundred years previously in. a siege of great brutality, concluded with massacres and mass crucifixions. With the city and its harbor in their hands, they had repaired the walls but had done nothing since to improve the fortifications. Rome had been eliminated as a foe several years before the siege and there was no enemy left in the western sea to threaten the primacy of Carthage. More powerful walls might only tempt what was left of the native population to rise against their masters in a future generation.
From his command tower, erected at the northern end of the island in the Great Harbor, Scaeva surveyed the works being erected against the southern wall of the city. There the bulk of the Carthaginian garrison had been concentrated in a massive fort built directly into the wall in the approved fashion developed by Carthage's military engineers.
"It's a tough one," said Fabius, his praefect of the camp. "Walls inside walls, forts inside forts, that's their style. Crack one nut, and there's another nut inside to be cracked. It's a lot of work."
"It suits me," Scaeva said. "It means that they've lost their taste for battle. They think only of defense now. It means a great deal of labor, but we're good at that. A Roman soldier is as handy with his spade and pickaxe as he is with sword and pilum."
Not that the Romans were doing all the digging and pounding. Over against the great wall, men swarmed like ants, digging trenches, erecting shelters for the workers, pounding heavy pilings into the marshy ground on the west side of the city, making an artificial island to support the great rams and catapults that soon would pound the walls. But many of these workers were locals rounded up by the Romans in the surrounding countryside. Some were mercenaries captured when the Romans took the smaller cities and forts of the island. Men working directly beneath the walls of a besieged city took awful casualties, and the Romans preferred that somebody else do the suffering.
Titus Scaeva was the proconsul sent by the Senate to reduce the island of Sicily, and he took great satisfaction in knowing that he had done a superb job of it. Against a conservative bloc of senators who had wanted to attack Syracuse at the outset of the campaign, he had insisted on a strategy of encirclement, snapping up the smaller forts and cities, seizing all the ports and fortifying them against the inevitable Carthaginian attempt to retake the island. By taking the most productive land and grabbing all the storehouses, he had made his campaign self-sustaining, so that all his shipping could be used to bring in more men and necessary military supplies instead of using precious cargo space for food, for man and beast.
He had left Syracuse till the last. True, it had given the Carthaginian commander time to improve the defenses somewhat, and concentrate his forces within, but that would work against him in the long run. More men inside would strain his resources, and Scaeva had cut him off from any hope of resupply.
"Still," Fabius said, "I wish they'd come out and fight. We'd crush them handily then."
"That's exactly why they won't opt for open battle. They think that Hamilcar will be here soon, to relieve them. If they can just hold out long enough."
The capture of Syracuse would make him the most distinguished military man in Rome, he thought with great satisfaction. He had been a famous soldier all his life, having won the Civic Crown at the age of sixteen, at the siege of Mogantum. He had risen in rank and honor up the cursus honorem, holding each civil office and military command in approved fashion, and had had the great good fortune to be a serving consul when the auguries had shown that the gods wanted Roma Noricum to retake Rome of the Seven Hills.
Taking the nearly demilitarized Italian peninsula had been a walkover for a few veteran Roman legions, but everyone knew that the war against Carthage itself would be another matter entirely. He had pushed for the immediate seizure of Sicily, and the command had fallen to him naturally. Already he had earned the right to petition the Senate for a triumph: the ultimate vindication for a military man. His supply ships returned to Italy with endless cargoes of loot. Just take Syracuse, he reminded himself, and your name will live forever.
This meant much to him. Like all Romans, he was ambitious for personal fame and prestige, but in his case he wanted glory for his family as well. The Scaevae were among the new families: clans of German and Gallic descent whose ancestors had helped the Roman refugees to found Roma Noricum. There was great rivalry between the old families and the new. With such a campaign to his credit, capped with the capture of Syracuse and a grand triumph in Rome of the Seven Hills, no one could claim that the new families were less patriotic, less Roman, than the old.
"Do you think they can?" Fabius asked. "Hold out long enough for Hamilcar to get here, I mean?"
"Not a chance," Scaeva said. "Those boys we sent to spy out Carthage did their job well. We know more about the capabilities of his military than Hamilcar does himself. He's under the impression that he's Hannibal come again, but we know better." Both men chuckled, but Scaeva knew well the worry that gnawed at his subordinate: Hamilcar or his designated commander would appear by sea, with an immense navy. The Roman navy was new and untried, all but untrained. The Carthaginian navy was the most powerful in the world. Scaeva had to take Syracuse before the navy could appear.
Despite their distance from the fighting, both men wore full military gear, down to belted sidearms. This was Roman military regulation, just like fortifying every camp and posting sentries even in peacetime, with no enemy within hundreds of miles. Regulations were to be obeyed, even by generals. Sunlight glittered on their polished bronze, which was collecting dust, raised by all the marching, pounding and digging. The two cut the dust in their throats by sipping at cups of posca: the traditional soldier's drink of vinegar diluted with water.