Scipio’s battered breastplate was shaped like the musculature of a human torso, a legacy of the Aemilii Paulli that had once been a splendid example of Etruscan metalwork but was now pocked and dented by war. It had been worn by Scipio’s father as a young tribune in the war against Hannibal and by his grandfather in the war before that, the first great clash with Carthage over a hundred years ago. War with Carthage was never far from their thoughts, even out here. They were only fighting now because the Celtiberians had sided with Hannibal in his trek through Spain towards Rome more than sixty years before, and since then had proved an obstacle to Roman attempts to reach the gold-mining districts further to the north-west. War had flared up three years earlier and been put down by the Romans only after an arduous campaign in these desolate foothills, sapping the energy of attacker and defender alike. But then with peace in the offing Lucullus had been elected consul and had decided to raise a new legion and go out to finish the job in Spain in his own terms, reneging on the promises that had been made to the Celtiberians by his predecessors. Everyone knew that the campaign was a way to an easy triumph, the first opportunity in almost two decades for a consul to lead a victory parade through Rome, and that the Celtiberians had been treated with a contempt that angered those who had fought against them and learned to respect their sense of honour as warriors.
Scipio had been privately scornful of Lucullus, a boorish novus homo with little military background, and had thought the renewed war in Spain a distraction from the imminent threat of Carthage. But Scipio had just been made a senator and had seen his future trapped in Rome, with no other chance of attaining the military reputation he would need to be appointed to command a legion or an army when the time came for an assault on Carthage. For once Polybius had been absent, away in Greece advising the Achaean League on its military organization, and Scipio had been forced to mull over the question on his own, weighing his own ambition and sense of destiny against his conscience over joining a dishonourable war. Then, a few days before Lucullus and his legion were due to depart from Rome, word had reached him that a group of older senators who opposed Cato and were suspicious of anyone with the name Scipio were engineering an appointment for him as aedile in Macedonia, a post that would have been a welcome break from Rome except for the fact that the new provincial governor was his arch-rival Metellus. He had discussed it with Fabius, and the die was set. They had remembered what had happened in the forest of Macedonia six years before, and had no wish to end their days with a knife-thrust in some back alley of Pella.
Scipio had gone to Lucullus as he was forming up the legion on the Field of Mars and volunteered. He had accepted appointment as a military tribune, not among the young men who led the maniples and cohorts, but as an officer on Lucullus’ staff, to act as an emissary when the time came to discuss terms again with the Celtiberians. Lucullus was trading on Scipio’s reputation for fides, for keeping his word, a role that Fabius knew would batter Scipio’s conscience given Lucullus’ duplicity towards the Celtiberians. Scipio and Fabius were only here at Intercatia while they waited for the rains to abate and the road to the coast to become passable again, having marched into the camp ten days before with a reduced century from the oppidum of Cauca where Lucullus was encamped with his legion. Ennius was already here, commander of the small besieging force, and had deferred to Scipio because he knew how much Scipio yearned to see action, and honouring his seniority in the academy years before. Ennius’ main force was a cohort of fabri who were meant to complete the fortifications before the arrival of Lucullus’ legion, at which point Lucullus expected the oppidum to capitulate and another victory to be added to his basket without any need to risk his own skin leading his men into battle.
Fabius watched Scipio stand upright and peer at the walls. He was not wearing the silver phalera disc that his father had awarded him for valour at Pydna. Scipio had told Fabius that Pydna had been fought when most of the legionaries here were boys, and would have been an old war story told by their fathers. They all knew that he was the son of the legendary Aemilius Paullus and adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus; they all knew that princes often wore decorations bestowed on them by kings, even when they had never seen action. He would not rest on past laurels, but would earn their respect before their eyes. And he had done it a week before, storming the walls at the head of the legionaries, the first to stand atop the rubble and see the Celtiberian warriors fall back on their second defensive position, the wall across the centre of the oppidum that enclosed the huts and wooden halls of their settlement. The scars that gleamed fresh on Scipio’s breastplate from those few moments of ferocious fighting on the walls had far greater meaning to him than any decoration that Rome might bestow. And out here, where set-piece battles were never going to happen, where war meant tedious days and weeks of sieges punctuated by terrifying moments of violence when the Celtiberians sallied forth, individual combat was the key to a man’s reputation. No general was ever going to lead a fully formed legion into battle in this part of Spain, where the terrain of hills and confined river valleys only suited small-unit action by maniples and cohorts led by centurions and tribunes, or where action only took place during sieges in places where the Celtiberians themselves were prepared to give fight, on sloping ground below the oppida or in confined spaces within the curtain walls that were more like arenas for gladiatorial duels than battlegrounds for armies.
Fabius knew there was another reason why Scipio was not wearing the phalera. He had not worn it since the night of his father’s triumph in Rome when he had been jeered at by Metellus, when Julia had been by his side for the last time. It was the night when Scipio knew he had lost Julia, and when he had hardened his resolve not to let the derision of others and the conventions of Rome blur his focus on his destiny. Spain was to be his proving ground, and he would prove himself not as the son of Aemilius Paullus or the grandson of Scipio Africanus but as a soldier, engaging the enemy close-up as the legionaries did, when the fight was for survival and for your comrades and not for any other glory or honour.
* * *
Fabius leapt out of the ditch and walked over to Scipio and Ennius. He stared at the diorama, at the marks in the mud that Scipio had made with his stick, and pointed at a long furrow. ‘If that’s meant to be the river, it’s not quite right,’ he said. ‘It curves around to the south, beyond the camp of the fabri.’
Scipio shook his head. ‘This isn’t Intercatia, but Numantia. If we’re ever going to defeat the Celtiberians, we’ll need to take Numantia.’
‘It is their greatest stronghold,’ Ennius said.
Scipio pursed his lips, staring thoughtfully. ‘The biggest weakness of the Celtiberians is their clan structure, which means a lack of overall strategic control. They’re shepherds, just as we at Rome were cattle-drovers at the time of Romulus, loyal to our families and clans on each of the seven hills, but sharing allegiance with them only when we were attacked by a confederation of the Latin tribes. It’s a weakness of the Celtiberians but it’s also what makes the war arduous for us, as we have to fight each tribe piecemeal and besiege the oppida one at a time with no assurance that the fall of one oppidum will make the siege of the next one any less difficult, as the inhabitants may be from different clans and normally hostile to one another.’
‘It’s as if we’re fighting lots of small wars in succession,’ Ennius muttered. ‘You can finish each war by negotiating peace and keeping your word, giving the chieftain a sense of honourable defeat, even aloofness from the other tribes that remain at war. But if you break your word, it’s a different story; the clans might respond by banding together and presenting a more unified opposition. That’s what seems to have happened now with the arrival of Lucullus, and his reneging on the deal that pacified the Celtiberians last year.’