Now the shield roof came down and the Roman legions began to advance, very slowly and deliberately, keeping their lines strictly dressed, in what was almost a parade-ground maneuver. The cavalry force rode to the right flank next to the Greek-Macedonian block and, strangely, halted there, keeping up with the advance at a walking pace. Hamiicar's lead regiments entered the stream and trudged across, many stumbling, some falling, thrashing briefly as the men behind trod them under.
On the eastern side of the stream they paused to dress their lines. At this point the Roman army had halted, foot and horse, barely fifty paces away. The Romans stood in utter calm, making no war cries, sounding no trumpets; neither did they wave weapons aloft. Only at their southern flank was there any uproar, for the Gauls and Spaniards had a noisy way of displaying their warrior spirit, and they did not depart from it now. Their countrymen in Hamilcar's army made similar demonstration.
Their order restored, Hamilcar's men advanced at the double-quick, and so many of them were of warrior races that soon they were half-running. When twenty paces separated the two armies, the arms of the first three Roman ranks rocked back as one, then shot forward. The terrible, heavy, viciously barbed pila arched briefly skyward, then plunged downward with awful force, sending men tumbling, skewered, pierced, bleeding, to the ground. Men had their shields nailed to their bodies, their bodies pinned to the ground. So tightly were the men packed that scarcely a Roman spear failed to kill or wound an enemy soldier. The weight of the heavy javelin at such close range carried it through armor, helmet or shield. Even when a shield was stout enough to resist the weapon, it could not be dislodged, forcing its bearer to abandon it and fight henceforth unprotected.
For crucial moments the attack faltered as men fell and others tripped over the fallen. Shaken but confident and valiant, Hamilcar's men reordered themselves and prepared another charge. But the men behind them, still crossing the stream and unaware of what was happening ahead, pressed forward. Hamilcar's army grew very dense. Men were still waiting to step into the stream, the bottom of which was being churned to a deep, clinging mud.
Maddened, the bloodied warriors charged again. But during the lull, slaves and rear-rankers had passed more pila forward. Again, the arms of the first three ranks went back, shot forward and again men tumbled like wheat before the scythe. Slowed, many hurled lighter javelins of their own, but these were easily fended off by the large, heavy Roman shields.
After a shorter pause, the massive army resumed its advance and a third volley of pila fell among them. Now the front lines were barely twenty feet apart, but so many corpses and writhing, wounded men littering the ground slowed the advance to a crawl. Still, their anger and the terrible pressure from behind drove Hamilcar's men on.
Teuta was filled with a terrible apprehension. What sort of fighting was this? The army before them, small as it was, was like some sort of terrible machine. In moments she had seen thousands of men go down before the simple but devastating Roman javelin. And then it happened again and yet again and the mad rush was stalled, and the Romans had hardly lost a man yet. Now she saw the glitter all along the Roman lines as thousands of their short swords, worn so strangely on the right hip instead of the left, were drawn in a singular, upward-and-forward motion. Instantly, distracted though she was, she knew the reason for the strange carry and draw. The man is not hindered by his shield and his draw does not disturb the men to either side. These people think of everything.
And still the men were crossing the stream, churning the ground on the far side to mud, crowding the ranks against one another. The army was losing cohesion and turning into a mob. She looked north and saw that Norbanus's small cavalry force was confining its activities to keeping the much larger Carthaginian force from flanking the Greek contingent.
"Hamilcar," she said, her voice sounding hoarse in her own ears. "Stop your men from crossing the water. They can do no good and the pressure over there will not let up until the Romans begin to retreat."
The shofet just looked annoyed. "They will break very soon. Look, I am already victorious on the south."
She looked that way and indeed the Gauls there were being driven back in confusion by the orderly lines of the Greeks and the Macedonians. Soon they would flank the Romans at that end and roll up the line. This looked encouraging, but a nagging thought assailed her: He knowingly left his south end weak and vulnerable. He did not take the city and port to the south. The road south is wide open. What can this mean?
Then she was appalled to see Hamilcar order his reserve regiments across the stream, into the center. "Shofet! You tire your men to no cause!"
"That will be enough, woman!" he snapped. "They are engaged all along the front now. Soon the weight of my army will crush them underfoot!"
Frustrated, she sat and watched. It occurred to her that Hamilcar had not studied his battles as closely as he thought. His ancestor, Hannibal, had once won a battle something like this: beating a larger army with a smaller. That was Cannae, his greatest victory. She was sure that Norbanus was using some form of the Cannae strategy, but the battles were so dissimilar that she could not understand what he intended.
She did see, plainly, that the Romans were not distressed by the vaunted "weight" of Hamilcar's army. Only the men of the front lines could engage actively. The Romans had a well-drilled maneuver by which, every few minutes, the front-line men stepped back and those behind them stepped forward, keeping fresh, untired men at the fighting line. If the rear men of Hamilcar's army pushed, they merely drove the front-line men into the Roman swords. At intervals, more of the murderous pila would arch out above the heads of the legionaries and plunge into the struggling' mass of Hamilcar's men.
She saw men detach from the rear of the Roman formation, form a neat, orderly rectangle and march to the southern end of the Roman line, there to form a thickened, south-facing line just as Hamilcar's Greeks had their flanking maneuver almost concluded. The Gauls, caught between the two forces, were slaughtered. But the Roman line held. They inflicted few casualties on the orderly Greeks, but the phalanx was stymied.
Teuta stood and paced before the glowering shofet. She saw how long her shadow had grown and turned to look at the sun. She was amazed to see how low it stood in the west. To the north she saw a new movement. The block of Norbanus's Greek-Macedonian phalanx was moving, pushing against the lightly armored Iberians, shoving them back, spearing them, striding over their bodies. Already, men were breaking away from the battle, frustrated at being unable to come to grips with the Romans, unable to take heads and win glory. Slowly, a step at a time, the Greeks were cutting themselves a strong position at Hamilcar's left flank.
"Look!" she said, grasping the shofet by the shoulder and shaking him. "You are being flanked!"
He shook off her hand. "They can accomplish nothing! There are not enough of them."
She knew now that Hamilcar was seeing only the ideal battle in his head, the battle that he wanted to see. Immediately, she determined to extricate her men from this disaster. Hamilcar did not even glance in her direction as she walked to the rear of the platform and leapt upon her horse. Her bodyguard rode behind her as she pelted northward, toward the cavalry action. Beside her rode her standard-bearer. Atop a long pole he bore a golden dragon, its long, waving tail a silken tube that filled with air as he galloped, making the queen conspicuous to her men.
She rode through thousands of wounded men, seeking to put distance between themselves and the battle. She saw that not all were wounded. Idly, she axed a few of these deserters down when they strayed too near. She did not plan to stay on this field, but neither was she deserting. She knew when it was time to withdraw an army to fight another day.