Aemilius turned to his secretary for the last time. "To the noble Senate. The battle of the River Arnus is lost. I die here on the field with my legions. Long live Rome." He watched as the messenger pelted away, saw him almost overtaken by enemy horsemen; then he was clear and riding for the bridge.
Then he and Buteo watched, helpless, as his proud legions broke up into isolated groups, fighting shield-to-shield, and then there were just pairs of men back-to-back, all of them struggling until they fell.
"Not one of them fled for the camp or the bridge," Aemilius said.
"They're Romans," Buteo said, "even if some of their fathers came from Germania. Will you fall on your sword?"
"No, I'll make some of those bastards fall on mine. Will you join me?"
"Might as well," Buteo said. The little group of men on the platform drew their swords and descended to the bloody field below. Only the secretary stayed. He was a slave and noncombatant.
Within an hour the field was a vast expanse of fallen men and horses, shattered shields, weapons and standards. Of the fallen, many were still alive but maimed. Soldiers went among the wounded Romans, killing them with swift stabs of sword or spear. Already, ravens hopped among the dead, pecking at eyes and spilled viscera.
"So they aren't unbeatable," said the Spartan officer.
"No, they are not," Mastanabal concurred. But his satisfaction was severely tempered. The dead of his own army far outnumbered the Roman dead. His clerks had brought him a preliminary casualty list: more than twenty thousand dead and many others severely wounded. The Romans had sold their lives dearly. And this had not been a first-rate Roman army. What would it be like to face the cream of the legions?
A man rode up holding, in his hand something that dripped blood. He halted before his general and raised his trophy. It was a human head. "This is the Roman commander, general. A captive.slave identified him."
Mastanabal looked into the rolled-back eyes of his late adversary. This had been a second-rate commander of inexperienced soldiers and he had almost ruined a splendid Carthaginian army almost twice the size of his own. Mastanabal reached out, bloodied his fingers on the severed neck and drew three red lines across his forehead to protect himself from the vengeful spirits of the dead.
"Do we march on Rome, General?" asked the Spartan.
Mastanabal surveyed the field once more. "With this cut-up remnant?" he snarled. "No! We return to Gaul. We have to rebuild our strength before we engage these people again." He wondered how he was going to explain this to the shofet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For once, the Senate of Rome was not boisterous. The senators stood in their ranks downcast and grim. All day the messengers had been coming in from the battlefield to the north. The first report had sounded ominous, and subsequent reports had done nothing to lighten the sense of foreboding. Now the princeps stood with Aemilius's final report in his hand, and it required an effort to keep that hand from trembling.
"There you have it," Gabinius said. "Two legions destroyed, and Rome now open to attack from the north." He closed the tablet, lowered his head, then looked up at his peers. "We have been too confident. We have had everything our own way for too long. We have been too contemptuous of our enemy. I point no fingers, for I have been as foolish as anyone here. We should have seen it coming. This Carthaginians used Hannibal's old route, only he bypassed the Alps."
An elderly senator stepped forward. He was an old familyconservative, and notoriously reactionary. "They were inferior legions. They were made up of half-Gauls and Germans! We should never have entrusted our safety to such men!" This raised shouts of agreement and of protest.
The senior consul stood. "Let's have none of that! Those men were Roman citizens. They were guilty of no worse than being green troops. This is an inevitable consequence of raising so many new legions, so quickly. We sent them north precisely because it seemed like a quiet theater of the war, a place where they could be trained and blooded without demanding their utmost. We thought there might be a weak feint from the north, accompanying the thrust of the main Carthaginian army and navy from the south. As the princeps has pointed out, we were wrong. The blame lies with this body assembled here, not with men who stood between Rome and her enemies, and died on their feet, sword in hand, to repel the barbarian! I will hear no word spoken against them!" This raised a fierce roar of agreement.
"Senators!" shouted Gabinius, whose duty as princeps it was to set the order of debate. "We must now decide upon a course of action, and do it quickly. Above all, we must know the Carthaginian's intentions. Is he still in sufficient strength to march upon Rome? We have sent scouts north to report upon the Carthaginian's movement, but we dare not wait for them to return. I suggest that we summon some of the legions garrisoned in Campania. If it should prove that this Mastanabal and his hirelings have been so bloodied that they dare not advance, our legions can always be sent back, or else posted to the north against a renewed offensive. Let's have a show of hands." His suggestion was carried unanimously.
"Secondly," he continued, "I urge that we take every measure to get the younger Titus Norbanus and his four legions back to Italy."
Norbanus the elder stood from his curule seat. "My son is already striving to return. Have you not read his reports?"
"I have," Gabinius said, dryly. "He's not striving hard enough. He's getting involved with Eastern politics and building his own foreign policy over there."
"Building his own power base, you mean!" shouted the same old senator.
"Quiet, if you please," said Gabinius. "I submit that young Norbanus now commands our four most hardened, most experienced legions, and that they are legions that we require here in Italy. Time enough later for adventures in the East. First, we must make Italy and Sicily absolutely secure, and that is going to take every man we have. We must smash Carthage utterly! Only then will we be free to bring the rest of the world beneath the Roman yoke."
"And how are we to go about this?" asked the Consul Scipio. "Young Norbanus is as far away as ever, and we can only send messages, which he is inclined to ignore!"
"Perhaps," Gabinius said, "this might be a model training exercise for that new navy we've built. A voyage around southern Greece and across to the coast of Asia might just be the thing to accustom our new sailors to voyaging. If Norbanus finds transport home awaiting him at some convenient port, he will have no excuse to avoid returning."
The possibilities were thrashed out over the rest of the afternoon. Outside, word of the defeat had spread through the city and the mood was bleak. People began to speculate that the gods had withdrawn their favor. Gabinius was concerned that panic might set in, should word come that the victors of the Arnus were marching upon undefended Rome. He summoned a meeting of all the augurs still in Rome. Since the members of the college were all senators, all were present in the curia and he took them into a side room.
"I want no unfavorable omens spread about," he told them tersely. "If you see any, keep them to yourselves. People here are on edge as it is. Until our legions arrive from the| south, or else we know that the Carthaginians are not on the march toward us, let's see nothing but approval from the gods." The rest nodded. Augurs were not priests, but elected officials co-opted into the college of augurs. They read the omens according to an ancient list and did not believe themselves to be divinely inspired.