The Roman party laughed, though without much amusement. The Carthaginian party stared. There was something extremely unsettling about that Roman laugh.
"Well, that's blunt enough," Aemilius said when he had breath. "Why did your general not come to deliver his ultimatum? Why is he lurking behind his army?"
"A nobleman of Carthage does not treat with foreign peasants!" the Greek said scornfully.
"Is that so?" Aemilius said. "Tell your general that before this day is over, this peasant will flay his princely hide from his body and make saddlebags from it. I need a new set."
The Greek seemed not to understand. "That is all you have to say? No counterterms? No offers?"
"If your general wishes to surrender to us, he may," Aemilius said. "Same terms: Lay down your arms and pass beneath our yoke. Or if he wishes to go back to Spain, where I presume this expedition originated, he may. We shall not molest him. But tell him that he has come as close to Rome as he is going to get."
"You are mad!" the Greek said. "None of you will live to see the sun go down."
"Are we keeping you here, hireling?" Aemilius asked. "Don't you have pressing business elsewhere?"
"Your blood is on your own heads!" the Greek said. He wheeled his horse and pelted back to the Carthaginian lines, followed by the rest of his party.
"Fine, arrogant words," Buteo commented. "Think we can live up to them?"
Aemilius shrugged. "In a situation like this, you might as well speak arrogantly. It-doesn't cost anything and may give them something to think about. While I speak to the men, the rest of you join your units or go to the command tower. Send your horses to the rear. From here on, only the cavalry and the messengers are to be mounted."
As customary as the parley was the harangue. Every army expected to be given a rousing, inspirational speech by its general. But how to inspire on an occasion like this, when the odds were worse than two to one and most of the soldiers had never seen battle before? Aemilius prayed to Mars and the Muses to gild his tongue and inspire him to say the right thing. He reined up before his men and used the Forum speaker's voice that could be heard from one end of the line to the other.
"Soldiers of Rome! Until today, we have been stationed here, complaining that the other legions were winning all the glory and wealth in Sicily, and in the East. But now, today, it falls to you to win glory far beyond the lot of any other legions. Today you must save Rome of the Seven Hills! Except for us, Rome lies defenseless, all her temples and tombs naked to the desecration of the barbarians! Over there," he swept an arm around, pointing to the host opposite, "are those who would destroy Rome. But they are barbarians, and barbarians cannot outfight Roman soldiers. Crush them, and the names of your legions will live forever, and you will have undying glory for yourselves and for your descendants. As long as Romans speak of the glories of their ancestors, they will speak of the men who stopped the barbarians here, on the River Arnus!"
The men raised a deafening shout, beating the insides of their shields with spear butts. Aemilius rode back to his command tower, dismounted and slapped his horse on the rump before climbing to his post.
"No time for the sacrifices," he commented.
"Pretty soon," Buteo said, "there'll be all the blood spilled that any god could want."
"Still," Aemilius said, "it's always best to make the sacrifices and take the omens. Oh, well, I suppose Jupiter will understand."
"Is there any reason to wait?" Buteo asked.
"None at all. Sound the advance."
The cornus brayed and the standard-bearers, draped with wolfskins, stepped out toward the enemy. There would be no maneuver, no subtle play of tactical advantage and deception. There was no time for planning and preparation. This would be a simple clash of two armies in an open field, a test of strength and courage. Aemilius knew all too well that in such a fight, numbers could be decisive. It was too late to worry about it.
As the trumpets conveyed their general's orders, the cohorts transformed from a series of blocks in checkered formation to a solid battle line, with four cohorts of each legion in reserve, keeping open order so that they were free to maneuver to defend a flank or strengthen a weak spot in the line should there be danger of a breakthrough.
"I think we should extend the line," Buteo said.
"I'll send the reserves to the flanks if it looks like they're going to outflank us," Aemilius said.
The Carthaginian army advanced at a slow, deliberate pace. Officers advanced along the whole front, but walking backward, facing their own men. They barked orders to speed up or slow down, close right or left, as they saw disorder in their lines. The watching Romans could only approve. This was the sort of professionalism they understood.
"This is going to be different from fighting a pack of howling Germans, isn't it?" Aemilius commented. Buteo didn't bother to answer. On the field across from them, a large number of lightly armed men ran out past the flanks and arranged themselves in double lines.
"Here come the arrows," Aemilius said. The trumpets
sounded, and all along the Roman lines shields were lifted.
Except for the front line, each man raised his shield and held
it over the head of the man in front of him. In seconds, the
whole army looked as if it had grown a tile roof. The
Carthaginian flankers drew their bows and soon arrows
came down like rain on the Roman force. Very few got
through, but here and there a shaft slipped beneath an unsteadily held shield and the Romans took the first casualties of the battle.
"First blood to the enemy," Buteo said.
Aemilius's look was bleak, but he was a Roman. "It's last blood that counts."
When the Carthaginian front line was within fifty paces of the legions, the arrow storm let up. Aemilius spoke to his trumpeter, and the signal to advance and close with the enemy brayed out, to be echoed by the trumpeters who accompanied the individual standards. As one man, the first two lines stepped out toward the Carthaginian center.
Soon the Carthaginian light troops began to pelt the Romans with light javelins. Since the light infantry was concentrated on the flanks, the center of the Roman lines took no casualties. When the opposing lines were fifty feet apart, a trumpet barked and the Roman advance stopped abruptly. As if controlled by a single nervous system, the right arms of the Romans rocked back, poised a moment, then shot forward. The heavy, murderous javelin called the pilum was a mainstay of the Roman arsenal. The front line hurled theirs directly at the men a few paces before them. The second line launched theirs over the heads of the men in front. These fell into the ranks of the enemy behind the battle line.
Instantly, hundreds of men went down, their shields and bodies pierced by the deadliest close-quarters missile ever invented. Hundreds more found their shields rendered useless by the massive spears impaling them. The small, barbed heads could not be easily withdrawn, nor the long, iron necks and thick, wooden shafts easily cut through.
With a move as precise as the spear hurling, the Romans drew their short, razor-edged swords. They advanced at the double, striking the Carthaginian center along its length. Behind the protection of their large, body-covering shields, they brushed the enemy's long spears aside or lifted them overhead. Where a pilum protruded from an enemy shield, it was kicked aside or trodden down, exposing the man behind the shield for execution. These front-rankers wore excellent armor, so the short swords lanced into throats, into the lower abdomen below the rim of the breastplate, directly into the face between the cheekplates of the helmet. While it was intended primarily for thrusting, the broad, heavy blade of the gladius also cut extremely well, and wielded in short, vicious chops it exposed the user no more than did a swift thrust. An exposed arm could be severed completely, and an incautiously advanced thigh could be laid open to the bone on its inner side, severing the great artery and dumping out all of a man's blood in a few seconds.