‘Some of the surviving warriors will kill themselves. We have seen that before among the Celtiberians.’
‘So be it. They have fought well and hard, and deserve to part this life with honour. It is better than being put to the sword, as Lucullus will doubtless wish to do to those who refuse to submit, even in captivity. But those are not the ones whom we would take to Rome. We want their sons, those who could be trained and nurtured to be our allies.’ He looked across again at the woman and her boys. ‘It is their children who must be allowed to live. They will soon hear of the massacre at Cauca, and they must not be allowed to think that Lucullus’ legionaries will be let loose in their oppidum and that they will suffer the same fate.’
‘Speaking of Lucullus, I have had a message that the legion is less than a mile away. By nightfall, they will be in the camp. What would you have me do?’
‘Take your fabri and repair that breach in the wall. Station men there, and at the entrance to the oppidum. They are to keep the men from the legion out, and the Celtiberians in. Once you have seen the fire from the funeral pyres and know that the Celtiberians have completed their rites, march the remainder of your cohort inside to occupy the town. Nobody is to leave their post until the legion has left.’
‘What do you know of Lucullus’ plans?’
Scipio watched the legionaries make their way off the walls and back through the entrance to the camp, and saw the other Celtiberian women begin to search through the mud for the bodies of their menfolk. There was no sound, no cry of lamentation, only a whisper of wind over the battlements and the distant crackle of fire from the houses that were still burning in the oppidum. Over the battlefield the wisps of steam rising from the entrails and abdomen wounds of corpses had mingled with the dampness in the air to form a thin mist, floating a few feet above the ground, as if the souls of the dead were being drawn away in a ghostly miasma. Fabius watched Scipio stare at it, and then turn back to Ennius. ‘Lucullus has rekindled a war that will simmer on far into the future, like those burning embers in the oppidum, and will only finish when Numantia itself falls. If your fabri had not achieved what they have done today, this campaign could have ground on like the other ones, for months, probably years. But now that we have given him Intercatia to add to Cauca, Lucullus will have what he came for. He has enough victories for a triumph.’
‘And you?’
Scipio cracked a grin. ‘A river to wash off the mud and the blood, and then some wine and food. But not at this place. Lucullus sent me on a mission, and I don’t want him to change his mind when he sees that we’ve finished the job here for him.’
‘A mission? You have not yet told me.’
‘To find more elephants for this campaign. He knows of my friendship with Gulussa and his father Masinissa. He thinks the name Scipio is magic in Africa, and that elephants will appear out of the sand dunes of Numidia as soon as I arrive. He wants fifty of them, elephants that will be useless here if he returns home now.’
‘You can have them sent directly to Rome, for his triumph. He can pretend that our three elephants were fifty, and that he was at their head.’
‘He can take them across the Alps like Hannibal for all I care. With Intercatia fallen and this campaign all but over, I will seek reappointment as a special envoy to Numidia. There are big things afoot in Africa. Polybius hinted at it six years ago in Macedonia, when it was only a rumour. But yesterday I had a message from Gulussa. The Carthaginians are rearming. Their new circular harbour is complete, and galleys have been constructed in the shipsheds. They have recruited mercenaries from Gaul, and sent them out to the very borders of Carthaginian territory. It is only a matter of time before they clash with Masinissa’s forces. If Rome provides support and we play our cards right, it could be the beginning of the final showdown with Carthage that Cato has been clamouring for in Rome for two generations now.’
Ennius grasped Scipio’s hand, the sinews of his forearms hard and strong. ‘Ave atque vale, Scipio Aemilianus Africanus. May Fortuna smile on you.’
‘Perhaps I can earn that agnomen now. But it will need Mars Ultor the war god, not just Fortuna.’
‘Remember what Polybius taught us. Gods do not win wars, just men.’
Scipio jerked his head towards the camp. ‘Not just men. Roman legionaries.’
‘When you summon us, we will join you.’
‘Perhaps not this year, or even the next. But it will be soon. I can smell it, the smell of the desert sands of Africa blowing north, just as they did in my grandfather’s day. There will be war again before you and I are much older, and it is that war that is our destiny.’
‘Go now. I can hear the pounding of the approaching legion.’
Scipio released Ennius’ hand, slapped him on the shoulder and turned to Fabius. ‘A fast galley is waiting for us at Tarraco. If we ride now, we could be there by dawn and with Gulussa in four days. We have no time to lose.’
PART FIVE
14
Fabius and Scipio stood on the deck of a small merchant galley off the coast of North Africa, its single square sail billowing above them. They had rowed hard all morning to get as far as they could offshore, taking their turn at the sweeps with the crew, the sail furled and the wind on the starboard beam; but then the captain had decided that they were far enough out into the bay to avoid being blown inshore before their objective had been reached, and had ordered the sail unfurled and the tiller heaved to starboard, causing the twin rudder oars to bring the bow to the south-west and the ship to plough across the waves towards land with the wind on her starboard quarter. Fabius had just finished helping the helmsman to push the tiller hard to the right and lash it to the gunwales, to counteract the tendency of the vessel to run before the wind. They had adjusted the ropes holding the sail to keep it at the best angle to fill with wind without buckling and flapping, and to avoid filling so much that it risked capsizing the ship.
Fabius was sweating in the sun, and took a swig from a water skin. He had enjoyed the rowing, pulling hard as the ship sliced through the waves on an even keel, but now that she was heaving up and down with every peak and trough he felt considerably less comfortable. He could scarcely believe that they were now within sight of Carthage, its whitewashed buildings spread out along the seafront less than a mile away, rising to the Byrsa hill with its temple in the centre. He knew he should have been apprehensive, weighing up their chances of getting in and making it out alive, but with the motion of the ship getting worse rather than better he found himself praying for landfall, anywhere, whatever the dangers. The sooner they arrived, the better.
He looked at Scipio, who was standing with his feet firmly planted on the deck, swaying with the ship and staring ahead. He had let his hair and beard grow for several months in anticipation of this mission, to look more like a merchant and less like a Roman soldier in disguise. In the three years since they had left Spain his features had become more chiselled and his skin dark and lined from the African sun. He was thirty-seven now, old for a tribune, but he still relished the opportunity that the rank gave him to lead men from the front, and he knew that the odds would be stacked in his favour for command of a legion should the Senate finally be persuaded to commit to all-out war. It had been three years of hard grind, of small-unit action supporting Gulussa and his Numidians on the fringes of the desert, violent clashes with the Carthaginian patrols that were constantly probing forward into the scrubland, pushing against the boundaries that had been agreed by treaty with Rome over fifty years before. Six months ago, Scipio and Gulussa had begun to sense that something bigger was afoot, an increasing stream of mercenaries reaching the front from the Carthaginian training camps under the walls of the city, a massing of men large enough to force a breakthrough. They knew that if that happened there would be little they could do to stop it, and Numidia would be overrun. The mission that Scipio had proposed was a last-ditch attempt to provide Polybius with evidence of Carthaginian intentions to take to Rome and present to the Senate. There would be those who would be suspicious of it, knowing Scipio’s position and suspecting exaggeration, but his reputation for fides might be enough to persuade even the doubters. Their mission was a huge risk, but it was better than dying in the desert. Everything depended on what they found out today.