From her litter atop the gate of Melkarth, Princess Zarabel, sister of Hamilcar, shofet of Carthage, watched as her brother inspected his army on the plain beyond the city. Since his return from the Egyptian debacle, Hamilcar had fretted and busied himself with his preparations for the coming war to take Sicily and Italy back from the upstart Romans.
It was splendid; there was no denying it. The tents of the host stretched out of sight to the east, and this was only a part of the force. The full army was too vast to encamp by one city, even so great a city as Carthage. The rest were quartered upon the subject cities.
Hamilcar, mounted on a beautiful horse, rode along the lines of" a formation of Lacedaemonian spearmen: still soldiers of high repute though Sparta had ceased to be a power of military importance generations previously. Their antiquated linen cuirasses glittered with scales of bronze, their round shields were bright with new paint, their long spears held in perfect alignment as the officers, identifiable by their crests of white horsehair, saluted the shofet.
As always, the armies of Carthage were a polyglot assemblage of conscripts levied on the subject cities and mercenaries hired from every corner of the world surrounding the great Central Sea. Greeks from both Greece proper and the cities of Magna Graecia and Asia Minor formed a large part of the force. The Greek cities squabbled endlessly with one another, and between wars their soldiers hired themselves out to whoever was paying. Besides the hard core of Spartans, Hamilcar had Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans and soldiers from the Asian towns of Ionia. There were men from the Greek islands of Lesbos, Delos, Crete, Rhodes and Corcyra.
There were great pike formations from Epirus on the Ionian Sea, home of the oracle of Dodona. Their repute as professional soldiers was matchless. From the Adriatic coast came Illyrians: tough, barbarous men with tattooed bodies. Their ruler was a queen named Teuta, and this formidable woman had accompanied her soldiers, determined to extort favorable concessions from Hamilcar in return for their services. She was in a position to bargain because her land, usually of little strategic significance, lay across a narrow arm of the sea from Italy.
The bulk of Hamilcar's forces here consisted of the army he had raised to invade Egypt and had brought back with him. Further forces were being raised far from Carthage. In Spain, Hamilcar's subordinate commanders were rounding up an army from the warlike tribes of the interior and from the Greek colonies of the coast. This army would never come to Africa. Instead, it would assemble at New Carthage on the southern coast, march eastward along Hannibal's old route past the Pyrenees and into southern Gaul, picking up allies as it progressed, and enter northern Italy. This army would distract the Romans from the main thrust into Sicily and southern Italy, stripping the Romans of some of those surprisingly numerous legions that seemed to be springing up like weeds after a rainstorm.
This was the special genius of Carthage: to raise and lead armies so diverse in nation, language and custom that at any other time they would happily have massacred each other. They accomplished this by educating the most capable of the noble youth of Carthage in schools that turned out professional officers of terrible force and efficiency. Hannibal had kept such an army intact through years of campaigning, with never a murmur of mutiny, no matter how awful the hardships. His men had been ferocious on the battlefield, meek as lambs in camp.
Of course, not every Carthaginian general was a Hannibal. After the first war with Rome, the wealthy men of the city, the ruling caste at that time, had balked at paying the huge mercenary army camped immediately without the walls of Carthage. This foolishness had resulted in a rebellion and brought about a war so terrible that the rest of the world, hardened by many merciless wars, had looked on, appalled. Even Rome had offered aid.
This had been the last time that the gods of Carthage had demanded a Tophet: the supreme sacrifice to Baal-Hammon and the myriad of other deities who had made Carthage mistress of the world. In the ordinary, everyday sacrifices, men and women of the subject peoples supplied the victims. But, when a Tophet was required, Carthaginians were sacrificed. In extreme cases, the children of the greatest families, from newborns to boys and girls of ten years, were thrown into the fires that raged in the bellies of the merciless bronze idols.
The sudden reappearance of the Romans, the abortive campaign against Egypt, were clear signs of the displeasure of the gods, so said the priests. It had been too long since a great Topbet had been held: True, there had been a lesser such sacrifice held during a time of plague in the reign of Hamilcar's father. It had been effective and the pestilence had abated, but the priests were determined that the gods hungered for the flesh of the noble children of Carthage.
So far, Hamilcar had resisted their entreaties. He was a Hellenizing monarch and did not wish his nation to appear barbarous in the eyes of the civilized world. He also wanted to suppress the power of the priests over the minds of the people. The shofet should rule; the priests should tend to the rituals of the gods and stay out of the affairs of state.
All of these things passed through Zarabel's mind as she watched the martial display. Her brother was a competent shofet, in her estimation, but his attempts to be a great war leader like their ancestor Hannibal the Great were ludicrous. He had not been trained in the officer schools, but raised in the palace. Like so many men born to rule, he thought he was a great natural military genius and that, confronted with an enemy in the field, he would know with unerring instinct exactly what to do.
During their sojourn in Carthage, she had come to know these Romans far more intimately than her brother, who was ever surrounded by a buffer of his courtiers. She knew that they laughed at such amateurism. Not only did they insist upon absolute professionalism among military men, but also they taught that even great generals could be the victims of mere bad luck, and they planned for such eventualities. It was how they had survived defeat after devastating defeat by Hannibal, with their nation intact, though just barely. They did not intend to be defeated, but one defeat, or even several, did not demoralize them. They just analyzed what had gone wrong and took steps not to let the same thing happen again.
"When will they depart for Sicily?" she said, annoyed.
"My brother could exhaust his whole army with his endless
inspections."
"The winds have not been favorable, Princess," said Echaz, eunuch priest of Tanit.
"Our ships have oars. They shouldn't need to worry about winds."
"Against winds that blow untimely from the north, even the oared galleys of Carthage cannot prevail," he said. "It is further proof of the displeasure of the gods. We have neglected our duties toward the baalim for too long."
She nodded, absently running a gilded fingernail along the line of blue tears tattooed from the corner of her eye down one cheek, the ritual tears shed for Adonis. She was high priestess of Tanit and the goddess's champion in the eternal rivalry between Tanit and Baal-Hammon. She led the priestly party in its own rivalry with the secular Hellenizing court, upholding the ancient customs and religion of Carthage against the incursions of foreign philosophy.
"To the harbor!" she said to the litter slaves. Then, to Echaz: "I want to look at this inert fleet of ours."
The slaves raised the great litter to their brawny shoulders and set out at a brisk trot, their gait skillfully broken to provide a smooth ride. The litter was large enough for the princess, a dozen of her serving women and a few priests. Runners armed with staves preceded the litter, clearing away any who stood in its path. Their efforts were scarcely necessary: The moment the unique vehicle came into view, all citizens and slaves immediately went down on their faces. Only the sentries at their guard posts remained standing.