Scipio peered at him. ‘Speak freely.’
Fabius paused. ‘It is about Lucullus being a novus homo. That’s another reason why he needs to offer his men plunder and blood. They know that he has come from nowhere, that he is one of them, that two generations ago his family were butchers in the Cattle Forum. The legionaries expect one of their own to rise to be primipilus, but not to be army commander. He is a rabble-rouser, like one of the tribunes of the people in Rome, pandering to these men as if they are still the undisciplined street thugs they were when he rounded them up, and not legionaries. The legionaries expect their officers to be patricians with an honourable lineage of military service in their families, men who will lead from the front. Lucullus is neither of those things. You may feel that you still have to prove yourself worthy of your lineage, Scipio, but the battle-hardened centurions would follow you over Lucullus any day.’
Ennius spoke quietly. ‘Keep these thoughts to yourself, Fabius. Scipio is only a tribune and we only have a maniple of five hundred men, most of them fabri. It is here before the walls of Intercatia that he must earn his reputation, not as a usurper responding to the discontent of a few centurions. When he is a legate, perhaps, but not now. Rome would destroy him for breaking the rules.’
‘I do not fault Lucullus for ordering the draft,’ Scipio said pensively. ‘He was punished because he conducted it as it should be conducted, without favouritism, and refused to exempt those who had been promised it by the tribunes. He may be boorish and a poor general, but he is not corrupt. The tribunes of the people came down harshly on Lucullus because he was a novus homo, one of their own, a man of plebeian origins who had forsaken his roots and aspired to become a patrician. I do not fault him for that either. But I do fault him for inducing men to volunteer by offering them booty, and for bringing them here without basic training. Because there has been no other war since Pydna, most of the existing veterans were already with the army in Spain and this new legion is composed almost entirely of men unversed in war, without discipline or skills or the cynicism of the veteran who takes promises of booty with a pinch of salt.’ Scipio put his hand on Fabius’ shoulder. ‘Our time for bigger things will come, Fabius. Until then I must show my loyalty to my general. And for now, we have an oppidum to take.’
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, they made their way up a rough path where the larger fragments of fallen stone from the breach had been pushed aside by the elephants. At the top the two sentries beside the wall moved aside, and they peered through the opening. Immediately in front of them was a large area of open ground, denuded of upstanding vegetation and pockmarked with muddy pools, occupying perhaps a third of the area within the outer walls of the oppidum. Beyond that was an inner curtain wall, built of rough stone like the wall they were standing on and surmounted by a wooden palisade that still survived in places to its original height, with one partly burned watchtower remaining intact above the entranceway. Through smouldering gaps in the palisade made by Ennius’ fireballs, they could see the crude houses of the Celtiberians inside, thatched and circular like the ancient hut of Romulus on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Fabius turned to the optio in charge of the sentry detachment, a grizzled veteran with only one ear, whom he thought he recognized from a draft of young recruits years before at Pydna. ‘How many do you reckon are still inside?’
The optio peered at the palisade. ‘Maybe two hundred warriors and the same number of civilians, most of them women and children. But the number is falling by the hour. Take a look at that little procession to the left.’
Fabius followed his gaze to a small opening in the inner curtain wall some fifty feet to the left of the entrance below the tower. Out on the open ground in front was a low flickering fire, and he realized that it must be the source of the faint odour of roasting flesh that wafted through the breach in the wall. He could make out several figures through the smoke, dragging something towards the fire, and others around it, seemingly rushing at random and running to and fro. ‘Is it some kind of ritual?’ Fabius said. ‘A sacred ground?’
‘It’s sacred, all right,’ the optio said grimly. ‘One of the prisoners says that the open area in front is used for single combat between warriors, to settle scores and select the next chieftain. But what’s going on out there is a different kind of ritual.’
Ennius was looking through a long tube with crystal lenses at each end that Fabius remembered seeing him make at the academy. He passed it to Scipio, who balanced it on a rock and aimed it at the smouldering fire and the people, closing one eye and squinting through the lens. ‘Jupiter above,’ he muttered. He looked down, and then passed the tube to Fabius, who leaned against the shattered edge of the opening and looked through it. The image was wavering, distorted, blurred at the edges with bursts of colour like a rainbow coming in and out of focus, but after a few moments he realized that the centre of the lens was undistorted and he settled his eye on the view, magnified four or five times from the image he could see with the naked eye.
What he saw was a vision of horror. The people going towards the fire were dragging human bodies behind them, mud-caked, emaciated forms barely distinguishable from the living, clothed only in rags and their hair long and knotted. Once there, they threw the bodies into the embers, and waited until they caught fire. But others were there too, circling the pyre like vultures. Fabius saw one of them dash in and pulled out a corpse, chopping frantically at it with an axe and then stumbling away with a severed arm in his grasp, sinking his teeth into the flesh. Those who had brought the corpse then ran after him as he staggered away and brought him down, hacking at him in the mud until he lay still. Surrounding the scene, Fabius could see others who had escaped with their prize, squatting in the mud like dogs and gnawing at hunks of dismembered flesh. Fabius lowered the tube and offered it to the optio, who shook his head. ‘Been watching that all day,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see any more.’
Ennius turned to Scipio. ‘We can talk all we like about starving a city into submission, drawing battle lines in the sand and pushing toy soldiers across model landscapes in the academy. But this is the reality. We may let hunger win the war for us, but there is no honour in watching a proud people reduced to this.’
Scipio raised himself on his knees, exposing his body for a moment through the breach. An arrow suddenly whistled in and clanged off his breastplate, cartwheeling away into the distance. They all ducked below the line of the wall, and Scipio looked down at the dent where the arrow would have plunged into his chest. He looked at Fabius, and then at Ennius. ‘All right. I’ve seen enough. With your fabri and my century we will have three hundred men to storm through this breach. We will form up on that open ground, and challenge their warriors to come out and meet us.’ He turned to the optio. ‘What do you say, legionary? Are your men ready?’
‘We await your command,’ the man growled, half pulling his sword from his scabbard. ‘Let’s finish it.’
12
Half an hour later, the Roman assault force was drawn up inside the wall, some four hundred strong, arraigned in a line three deep that stretched along a frontage of some five hundred yards. Scipio and Fabius stood a few yards ahead of the line, the primipilus of the fabri beside them, while Ennius remained with a reserve of one hundred men on the wall where he could also look back down towards their camp and direct the fire of their solitary catapult.