‘Carthage still seems an impossible dream. The Senate is too self-absorbed to order an assault, or to sanction a standing army that would deal with the threat. Rome is becoming weak.’
‘It is not the older generation that would fight Carthage, but your generation, a generation who must play the game and become legates and consuls. The best of that generation have forsaken Rome, and if they stay away too long they will never be allowed back.’
‘What happened to the senator Sextius Calvinus, by the way? I know he died soon after we left Rome. My father sent word.’
‘A terrible accident. Brutus saw it, by chance. He was run over by a bullock cart, and then gored by the bulls. His body was mangled beyond recognition.’
‘That sounds like Brutus.’
‘Those who were against you, Sextius Calvinus among them, were fired up that night of the triumph by the ascendency of your father Aemilius Paullus, by the sudden popularity of your gens among the plebs and the threat those senators saw of an imminent takeover, perhaps of dictatorship. Some of them may genuinely have been moved by constitutional fears, but most of them were simply protecting their own vested interests in the established order. Petraeus was seen as the rock that held you and the other young tribunes loyal to your cause together, and getting rid of him was a way of loosening those bonds and reducing the threat without going to the extreme of political assassination, of murdering a fellow patrician. Your departure may have persuaded them that they have won, but there are others, rivals of yours, who will still see you as a threat. That will never go away, and you must always be on your guard, even out here.’
‘Rome when I left was enervated by lack of direction, only able to look ahead to the next consular elections, to which marriage will tie which gens to another.’
Polybius cast a penetrating eye on Scipio, and then looked ahead. ‘I’d love to know more about those spears. You were going to tell me about Ptolemy.’
Fabius knew what Polybius was doing. He was drawing Scipio out, talking passionately about topics that he knew were close to Scipio’s heart, yet which Scipio had professed to disdain when he went into self-imposed exile in the forest. Polybius might be the only one who could snap him out of his melancholy, but he was going to have to play him carefully if he wanted them to ride out of this forest together for Rome.
Scipio pulled out another of the boar spears from his quiver, showing its flexibility as it bounced in his hand. ‘Ptolemy was passionate about hunting too, and perhaps that was his undoing.’
Polybius eyed Scipio keenly. ‘It has been the undoing of many men, some because success in the hunt gave them delusions of grandeur, others because they were destined for greatness but frittered away all of their energy in the hunt.’
‘You always said it was ability, and not destiny, that made a man great. The joy of the hunt is that it is entirely about ability, and there is nobody burdening you with expectations of destiny, of forefathers held proud or betrayed by your course of action. Here, in the forest, the hunt is like a battle, where you live for the moment, where all depends on your courage and individual prowess, not on destiny.’
‘Tell me about Ptolemy. About the spears.’
‘He sought me out at my father’s funeral games three years ago. He invited me to join an expedition to the upper reaches of the Nile at the cataracts, where crocodiles of huge size are said to live, beasts shrouded in myth like the royal boar we seek today. I told him that after I’d succeeded here and sent him a pickled boar’s head to prove it, I’d take ship to Alexandria and join him. Meanwhile, he sent me some of his spears, and I replaced the thin iron spike they use to penetrate a crocodile’s hide with the leaf-shaped head of our boar spears. As for the curious wood, he says it comes from an island called Taprobane, far out in the Erythraean Sea.’
‘Taprobane,’ Polybius said, astonished. ‘That’s to the south of India, a prodigious distance away.’
‘Ptolemy said that the Egyptians have been receiving goods from there since the time of the pharaohs, shipped in native craft across the Erythraean Sea to the coast of Egypt and then taken across the desert to the Nile. They even bring goods from a distant empire called Thina, including serikon, a fine fabric woven from moth cocoons. This wood they call mambu. It has incredible strength for its weight, so that lengths of twelve or fifteen feet are as light as our throwing javelins. If the iron tip breaks off, the wood shatters into razor-sharp shards that are held in place by the strength of the next segment below it, meaning that the shaft can still be used as a spear in its own right. And finally, because the air in each segment is closed off from the adjoining segments, lengths of mambu thrown into a fire will explode as the air inside heats up and expands, sending lethal shards everywhere. The native warriors in those parts use them when they clear villages and towns, throwing mambu into burning buildings to kill and maim any occupants still left inside.’
‘Fascinating,’ Polybius murmured. ‘The wood is perfect for long thrusting spears, to be deployed in a charge on horseback. The Sarmatians and the Parthians have used lances of this length, and Alexander tried it with his cavalry. But they were inhibited by the thickness and weight of the wood needed for a lance. If it could be acquired in sufficient quantities, this mambu could arm a whole new branch of the cavalry and greatly boost the effectiveness of a charge on an infantry line.’
‘For now, we have it to hunt boar, and that’s all that matters out here,’ Scipio said, spurring his horse forward. ‘We’ve only got a couple of hours of daylight left, and I don’t want to have to camp beyond the treeline. It’s cold enough as it is, and the wind up there will make it worse.’ They had come up several hundred feet in elevation while they had been talking, scanning the ground for signs of boar. Polybius dropped back beside Fabius, and pointed up at the grey mist over the treetops ahead. ‘Do you remember when you and Hippolyta’s Celtic slave girl Eudoxia, the one from the Albion Isles, came to me to learn Greek, and I showed you Eratosthenes’ map of the world to point out where she came from? That’s another edge of the world up there, somewhere ahead of us.’
‘I don’t remember the map, but I do remember Eudoxia very well, Polybius. I was fourteen years old, and she had just become a woman.’
‘Tell me, Fabius. Do you have a girl now, in Rome perhaps?’
Fabius cleared his throat. ‘It’s Eudoxia. I should say, I would like it to be her, above all things. But we haven’t set eyes on each other for three years, since Scipio and I came out here. Hardly any word of the outside world reaches us, except through the foresters.’
‘Then I have happy tidings for you. Eudoxia is well, and grown to a beautiful young woman. She has many suitors, but keeps them at arm’s length. It has surprised me, but now I know why. You see, I know her well, as I took her into my household when Hippolyta left to join Gulussa in North Africa.’
Scipio had dropped back alongside them, and turned to Polybius, astonishment in his voice. ‘Hippolyta and Gulussa?’
‘It’s not what it seems. The Numidian tradition is for a prince to have many wives, and I doubt whether she would go along with that. Zeus knows, in her homeland in Scythia the woman probably has to kill off all other female contenders for the man she desires, something I can well envisage her doing. The truth is, Gulussa’s father Masinissa was so impressed by her in his visit to the academy that he invited her to lead a cohort of cavalry archers in his army, so she has gone out to train them alongside Gulussa. If Rome goes to war against Carthage again, they will be our allies. Their allegiance to us was secured in the academy. That was your grandfather Africanus’ vision, and his wisdom has been borne out.’